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September 2006
Dear Colleagues
Association of Bulgarian Engineers in
Canada – ABEC
The Council of the Association of
Bulgarian Engineers in Canada is bringing to the attention of all
Bulgarian Engineers in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, the signed Agreement
between TD Meloche Monnex and the Coalition “European Engineers”. The
Coalition is formed from the Associations of Bulgarian, Polish, Romanian
and Hungarian Engineers in Canada.
The Group Insurance Affinity Agreement
provided to “European Engineers” by Meloche Monnex allows the Members to
participate at preferred group rates to obtain home, automobile, travel
and small business (micro enterprise) insurance coverage for the
members, their spouses and children living at home.
See -
http://www.melochemonnex.com
The program conditions, administration,
marketing, confidentiality, indemnifications are similar for all
professional and alumni association programs (CIM, PEO).
The TD Meloche Monnex home and auto
program offered to groups is underwritten by Security National Insurance
Company and distributed by Meloche Monnex Financial Services Inc. Due to
provincial legislation, the automobile insurance program is not offered
in British Columbia, Saskatchewan or Manitoba. The group auto insurance
rates are not applicable in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island
Please note that we are in the process of
preparing an “Eligibility List” for Meloche Monnex. Only Members of ABEC
in good standing will have their name activated into the group of the
“European Engineer”. To be a Member of ABEC you must possess a Degree
from Technical Engineering Universities and paid-up membership fees of
50 dollars CDN.
New Members are always welcome!
www.abec.ca
Please communicate this announcement to your friends, colleagues and
compatriots, so more Bulgarian Engineers could use this Insurance
Program.
The Bulgarian Engineers are highly knowledgeable professionals
working with honesty, competence and integrity all over the world.
This Program may be for you!
From the ABEC’s Council
Mail
http://www.skillsforchange.org
Language
Instruction for Newcomers to Canada
http://www.skillsforchange.org/linc/index.html (LINC)
Mentoring for
Employment
http://www.skillsforchange.org/mentoring/index.html
Sector-specific
Information Sessions
http://www.skillsforchange.org/information_sessions/index.html
Sector Terminology,
Information and Counseling
http://www.skillsforchange.org/stic/index.html
Are you an Engineer educated outside
Canada? Get information NOW on how to get licensed in your profession.
Skills for
Change
INFORMATION
SESSION FOR INTERNATIONALLY EDUCATED ENGINEERS
When:
September 19, 2006, 1:30 p.m.
Where: Skills for Change
791 St. Clair Ave. West
TOPICS
- Information on
certification and Accreditation
- Review of
credentials
- Increase
marketability through certification
- Labour market
information
- Where to find a
job
Please register at:
(416) 658-3101 ext, “0” or ext. “103”
You only need to attend once.
Guest Presenter:
Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO)
Bulgarian Horizons, 28 August 2006
Engineering position
Employment opportunity
Available for civil/structural engineer
with
AutoCad 2000/2004 experience for an
Engineering Construction Company.
Basic English needed.
Please call Anne or Josef at
416-740-5671.
(Interested contacting this phone Number,
should quote the newspaper ad)
Schools of the coop-education:
Brown Fleming Catholic Adult Center
870 Queen Street West
Tel.905-891-3034
Website:
www.dpcdsb.org/coopcentre
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P.O. Box 23027
Westgate Postal Outlet
Cambridge, ON N1S 4Z6
Tel: +1 519 622 8168
Fax: +1 519 622 8323
http://www.csme.ca
----
Mechanical Engineering Magazines
Mechanical Engineering
http://www.memagazine.org
http://www.asme.org
----
http://www.engineering.com/content/DirectoriesDisplay?action=viewAssociationDetails&listingID=60&disciplineID=mechanical&tabID=600&subTabID=650
Engineering Jobs
http://www.maple-reinders.com/careers.php
http://www.technical-sys.com
http://www.recrutech.ca/
http://www.careerladder.ca
http://www.thesudburystar.com
http://www.ospreycareers.com
http://www.suncor.com
How healthy is the Don River?
Flowing through the heart of Toronto, the Don River is one of
Canada's most degraded urban rivers. Their 360-square kilometre of land
is over 80 per cent urbanized and is home to over 800,000 people.
As degraded as the Don is, it is also blessed: no other urban
watershed in Canada has a more dedicated group of passionate stewards
actively advocating on its behalf.
Hot Don Issues
Combined Sewer Overflows
In older areas of the City of Toronto, in the Don's lower reaches,
stormsewers still receive overflows from sanitary sewers in periods of
high rainfall. This means untreated waste - raw sewage - flows directly
to the Don River. The elimination of these Combined Sewer Overflows (or
CSOs) is a high priority for the future health of the Don.
Availability and Connectivity of Terrestrial Habitats
The Don, once 100% forested, now has only 7.2% forest cover. It has also
lost almost all of it's significant wetlands. The Don's health is
severely threatened by the loss of it's natural areas.
The Mouth of the Don
In the spring of 2000, a specially appointed task force, The Toronto
Waterfront Revitalization Task Force released their report on the future
of the Toronto Waterfront. The report, entitled Gateway to the New
Canada, Our Toronto Waterfront, joined a long list of reports
prepared by many different agencies to call for renaturalizing the
channelized and degraded section of the Don where it flows into lake
Ontario.
The West Don Lands
The West Don Lands is an 80-acre parcel of land located in the east
downtown of the City of Toronto between the mouth of the Don River and
the original ten blocks of the old Town of York. For over 100 years
industry thrived in the West Don Lands; today that industry is all but
gone and this prime tract of land sits in a largely derelict condition
awaiting redevelopment. Its location adjacent to the mouth of the Don
River presents a terrific opportunity to significantly add to the
restoration of this degraded and unnatural section of the Don.
Regeneration Projects in the Don Watershed
Oak Ridges Moraine
A major frontline for advocacy on the Don is the Oak Ridges Moraine, a
160-kilometre geological feature that is the source of the Don's
headwaters. The moraine area is about the only rural landscape remaining
in the Don.
The Oak Ridges Moraine has been called Toronto's Rain Barrel. It's a
vast glacially formed landform of rolling hills and porous gravels that
acts as the headwater's for some 30 rivers in the province. Its
important hydrological functions must be protected to save and restore
the Don.
Harding Park
Constructed by the Town of Richmond Hill, the concept for Harding Park
was suggested in the TRCA's Don River planning document, Forty Steps
to a New Don, 1994. Completed in 1996, its transformation was
progressive and radical for a city park. The old stormwater pond was
upgraded to treat the quality of the stormwater collected from the
area's houses and roads and the site was re-naturalized with thousands
of native plants, shrubs and grasses. It's now a prized natural nook,
located in the middle of houses, roadways, condominiums and commerce.
Harding Park is a good place to spot cedar waxwings feasting on berries
and to hear male green frogs crooning for female company  in the spring.
For more see
http://www.trca.on.ca/water_protection/strategies/don/default.asp?load=#new
Greenhouse Gas Bubbling From Melting
Permafrost Feeds Climate Warming
Source: Florida State University
http://www.fsu.edu/
Date: September 7, 2006
A study co-authored by a Florida State University scientist and
published in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Nature has found that as
the permafrost melts in North Siberia due to climate change, carbon
sequestered and buried there since the Pleistocene era is bubbling up to
the surface of Siberian thaw lakes and into the atmosphere as methane, a
greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon
dioxide.
In turn, that bubbling methane held captive as carbon under the
permafrost for more than 40,000 years is accelerating
global warming by heating the Earth even more ---
exacerbating the entire cycle. The ominous implications of the process
grow as the permafrost decomposes further and the resulting lakes
continue to expand, according to FSU oceanography Professor Jeff Chanton
and study co-authors at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.
Methane
bubbles trapped in lake ice during the first few days of ice formation
on a Siberian thermokarst lake. (Image Courtesy of Jeff Chanton, FSU
Oceanography Department)
"This is not good for the quality of human life on Earth," Chanton
said.
The researchers devised a novel method of measuring ebullition
(bubbling) to more accurately quantify the methane
emissions from two Siberian thaw
lakes and in so doing, revealed the world's northern
wetlands as a much larger source
of methane release into the atmosphere than previously believed. The
magnitude of their findings has increased estimates of such emissions by
10 to 63 percent.
Understanding the contribution of North Siberia thaw lakes to global
atmospheric
methane is critical, explains the
paper that appears in this week's Nature, because the concentration of
that potent greenhouse is highest at that latitude, has risen sharply in
recent decades and exhibits a significant seasonal jump at those high
northern latitudes.
Chanton points to the thawing permafrost along the margins of the
thaw lakes -- which comprise 90 percent of the lakes in the Russian
permafrost zone -- as the primary source of methane released in the
region. During the yearlong study, he performed the isotopic analysis
and interpretation to determine the methane's age and origin and
assisted with measurements of the methane bubbles' composition to shed
light on the mode of gas transport.
"My fellow researchers and I estimate that an expansion of these thaw
lakes between 1974 and 2000, a period of regional warming, increased
methane emissions by 58 percent there," said Chanton. "Because the
methane now emitted in our study region dates to the Pleistocene age,
it's clear that the process, described by scientists as 'positive
feedback to global warming,' has led to the release of old carbon stocks
once stored in the permafrost."
In addition to Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of
Oceanography at FSU, co-authors of "Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw
lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming" include K. M. Walter
(Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska-Fairbanks); S. A.
Zimov (Northeast Science Station, Cherskii, Russia); and D. Verbyla
(Forest Science department, University of Alaska-Fairbanks.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
The launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis, crewed by
York U alumnus Steve MacLean.
MacLean has documented his pre-launch preparations
in a diary published in the
Aug. 10
http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?Article=6865 and
Aug. 16
http://www.yorku.ca/yfile/archive/index.asp?Article=6898 issues of YFile.
This will be 51-year-old MacLean’s second flight into space – his first
was in 1992 – and the first space walk for the physicist, who earned a
BSc and PhD in physics at York as well as an honorary degree. During the
mission, MacLean and five fellow astronauts will install a second set of
solar arrays on the International Space Station.
Full details and updates on the mission and its
schedule, as well as NASA TV Webcasts, can be seen at NASA's main
shuttle page.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html
Quantum
effect offers molecular transistors
12:26 08 September 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Justin Mullins
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10031-quantum-effect-offers-molecular-transistors.html
A molecular switch that operates in a fundamentally
new way could usher in a generation of microprocessors that work on the
molecular scale.
The switch exploits the strange laws of quantum
mechanics to tackle one of the biggest barriers facing researchers
developing molecular electronics, say scientists.
With transistors becoming ever smaller, researchers
have long known that they would eventually have to tackle the problems
of building circuits on the molecular scale. A number of groups have
proposed molecules that should work as transistors and have even used
them to build rudimentary circuits.
But these molecular transistors work in essentially
the same way as larger, silicon ones. Current flows into the molecule
from one electrode and out through another. A third electrode switches
the current on and off by raising and lowering an electrical potential
barrier that prevents the flow of electrons.
The trouble with this type of switching is that it
requires relatively large amounts of power. And building more complex
microprocessors featuring molecular transistors would increase power
requirements dramatically.
Powering up
A conventional laptop with transistors that measure
roughly 100 nanometres across consumes something in the region of 100
watts. Molecular scale transistors – each about 1 nm across – would
require substantially more, if packed into the same physical space.
"Power dissipation goes up to a million watts," says
Charles Stafford, a physicist at the University of Arizona in Tucson,
US. "Not every Starbucks is going to be happy for you to plug [your
computer] in."
Now, Stafford and colleagues have come up with an
entirely different type of molecular switch which could solve this power
problem, based on a quantum process called "interference".
Quantum interference
On the molecular scale, electrons behave like waves
and can interfere with themselves and each other. When the peaks of two
waves coincide they combine to form a larger peak, a process called
"constructive interference". But when the peaks of one wave coincide
with the troughs of another they cancel out through "destructive
interference".
Stafford realised that current could be switched off
in a circuit if it could be constructed so that the electrons travelling
through it naturally cancel each other out through destructive
interference.
This quantum behaviour of electrons is fragile and
can easily be obliterated by disturbances, such as the movement of
nearby atoms. This movement destroys quantum interference, allowing
electrons to flow again – switching the current back on.
The result could be to produce an entirely new type
of transistor that regulates the flow of current by switching quantum
interference on and off. "This is a very robust effect," Stafford says.
Beautiful symmetries
Stafford and colleagues say that various well-known
molecules have exactly the structure needed to work as so-called
"quantum interference effect transistors".
For example, they have calculated that the ring-like
molecule benzene could work well as electrons exactly cancel each other
out as they flow in opposite directions around its ring. "We simply
exploit the beautiful symmetries that occur naturally in these
molecules," he says.
George Kirczenow at Simon Fraser University in
Burnaby, Canada is impressed with idea. "It's a very innovative approach
that could in principle require much less power than conventional
switching," he says.
However, the next step is to connect a suitable
molecule to three electrodes so that it can operate as a transistor,
with the electrodes taking the form of long chains of conducting
hydrocarbons. Attaching them to a single molecule will be difficult,
Kirczenow says: "People have done it with two electrodes but not with
three. The problem of creating interconnects is at least as challenging
as making the transistors themselves."
Stafford agrees but is philosophical about the
challenge: "I'm a theoretical physicist – I've done my bit."
Journal reference: Nano Letters (DOI
10.1021/nl0608442 S1530-6984(06)00844-7)
Gold Exploration in Bulgaria
NEW HIGH GRADE NADEDJA GOLD ZONE DISCOVERED AT
TRUN
http://www.euromaxresources.com
EurOmax Resources Limited (“EurOmax”) (EOX) is
pleased to announce the discovery of a high grade gold zone, Nadejda, on
the Trun Exploration Licence in western Bulgaria. This gold zone, with
notable coarse visible gold in outcrop and grades of up to 440 g /t gold
in channel samples, was not discovered by historic Roman
or Thracian miners or by more recent investigations by State geologists.
The Trun Exploration Licence is subject to a joint venture agreement
with Teck Cominco Limited (“Teck Cominco”).
www.asiagold.com
September 6, 2006
ASIA GOLD REPORTS ENCOURAGING DRILL RESULTS
FROM
TASHLAKA HILL, BULGARIA
Asia Gold Corp. (ASG: TSX-V) is pleased to announce
encouraging drill results, including 6.3 grams per tonne (g/t) gold over
5.8 metres, at the Tashlaka Hill project in southeastern Bulgaria.
ABEC’s News
Picnic13/08/06
ABEC’s picnic was
on August 13th 2006 was. The Hills between Caledon and Orangeville are
in the centre of Headwaters Country, one of the most scenic areas in all
of Ontario. Its rich water resources that spawn four major river systems
within the mysterious landscapes of the Niagara Escarpment, define the
region. The Nottawasaga, Credit, Humber, and Grand Rivers, each find
their course high in the hills of Headwaters Country.
The #1 picnic site, Forest View – for sun or rain provided access to
on-site shelter with hydro and an extra large BBQ.
This year’s picnic was team-work. Thanks to all Colleagues that
arrived early at 9.00 a.m. to secure the ground. That was very
important. Also thanks to Yordanka Zaharieva for making the shopping of
hot dogs, buns, liuteniza, and drinks; to Nick for purchasing the
kebapcheta; to Valentin Nedialkov for delivering the roasted lamb; to
Georo for the gorgeous Bulgarian music we had during the picnic; Thanks
to all Colleagues bringing more food and the sweet watermelons; to all
photographers for the good pictures that we have seen and those we
haven’t seen yet. It was fun. The picnic was sponsored from ABEC’s
membership fund.
We hope ABEC’s picnic becomes a yearly tradition for useful contacts
and a relaxed atmosphere of good feeling under the sound of Bulgarian
music and traditional food.
So, let’s wish for a healthy year and another enjoyable picnic in
2007.
After the picnic, I got a lot of questions about some useful
addresses for stores for meats and meats products, fish and fish
products bakeries and cake products. With that information I would like
to underline that I am not soliciting for anybody and this information
is only result of my experience. I knew in the Greate Toronto Area many
Greek, Croatian, German, French and Polish and many, many more excellent
butchers and fish shops and stores. They are just very far for me now.
So here are several addresses:
VICENTINA Meats,
Fresh Custom Butcher
Shop, Catering for Special Events
Mr. Mike Mannara –
125 Edulcan Drive,
Concord, Ontario L4K 3S6
Tel: (905) 738-9998, Fax: (905) 738-5833
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SEAFOOD DEPOT,
Directly from “Seacore” Italian Fish Broker
81 Aviva Park Drive,
Woodbridge, Ontario, L4L 9C1
(Off Weston Rd, - N of Steeles, S of Hwy 7)
Tel: (905) 856-2770, 1-888-485-FISH (3474)
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The Cake Boutique,
Special European Cakes, Pastries
Mr. Norbert Moushagen,
Licensed Cake Master (from Germany); Winner of numerous Cake &
Chocolate;
Masters Competitions In Europe and North America.
358 Wilson Ave.,
North York, Ontario, M3H 1S9
Tel: (416) 636-6942,
Ask for Norbert and as a member of ABEC you will get
10% off ***
Dear Colleagues, if you have any
interesting technical news or articles in digital form, please send them
to us for the next monthly news.
Best Regards to all ABEC Members
Pauline Loultcheva-Lawrence
pauline_m_lawrence@hotmail.com
p_lawrence@abec.ca
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