ABEC News for August
– September 2008
The Council of
The
Association of Bulgarian Engineers in Canada
Invites its Members to the annual
ABEC
PICNIC 2008
September 7th 2008, in the Boyd
Conservation Picnic Area.
ABEC Reservation
for “Elmgrove
1” Picnic Area
Boyd
Conservation Area
905-851-0575
Boyd Conservation
Park is an oasis of green at the edge of the city.
Directions
Boyd is located at Islington
Avenue, just south of Rutherford Road in Woodbridge, Ontario.
Personalized Driving Directions
With the personalized driving directions, you can enter any address and we will give you the complete route from that address to Boyd Conservation Area. Click here to start. (Powered by Yahoo!/MapQuest)
Alcohol
The consumption or sale of alcohol is strictly prohibited.
Parking
Please Park in designated areas only; roadsides and picnic sites are not for
parking.
Admission
Adult (16+) -- $ 6.00 per person
Children (0-15), with their family
-- FREE
Please note, for the parents
with children, that this "Permit is at own risk conditions".
The permit holder, ABEC Council members shall not be responsible for
any injury, loss or damage which may occur in any way related to the issuing of
this permit to ABEC, who are renting the picnic grounds from the TRCA (
Press Release from PEO
This Press release was
sent just at this time to ABEC by Maxim Bozhilov-Editor
Bulgarian Horizons newspaper & radio program
For:
Professional Engineers Ontario
Contact: David Smith, Manager, Communications, Professional Engineers Ontario
Primary Phone: 416-840-1068
Toll-Free: 800-339-3716
E-mail:
dsmith@peo.on.ca
Press
release distributed by
PR
Director
CCN
Matthews
1-866-736-3779
Date issued: August 8, 2008, 09:00 e
Attention: Assignment Editor, City Editor, News Editor, Government/Political
Affairs Editor
Financial
Incentive Encourages Licensure as a Professional Engineer
Toronto,
Ontario, Aug.08 /CCNMatthews/
Since
enabling qualified engineering graduates and newcomers to Canada to apply for
an Ontario professional engineer licence at no cost
in May 2007, Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) reports that fewer than 10
per cent of eligible international engineering graduates and fewer than 20 per
cent of graduates from Ontario engineering schools have taken advantage of it.
"Our main goal is to remove the cost barriers and get engineering
graduates to apply for the licence," said PEO
President J. David Adams, P.Eng., MBA. "We want to ensure that every qualified person
can succeed in engineering and encourage recognition of their skills. We have
provided the tools and we want all those eligible to use them."
Under the Engineering Intern Training Financial Credit Program (FCP),
international engineering graduates and Canadian university graduates may be
eligible to apply free for licensure and be enrolled in the first year of PEO's Engineering Intern Training Program. Normally, the
cost of application is $230. Enrolment in the EIT program is $70 a year.
"Comprehensive licensure is in the public interest," said PEO chief
executive officer and registrar Kim Allen, P.Eng.
"Not only does a licence demonstrate that its
holder has been rigorously educated, is experienced and committed to a Code of
Ethics, it also provides the most effective means to make the holder
accountable to the public."
As of June 30, 2008, PEO has invested more than $500,000 in the program -
including $325,000 in waived fees - with only 246 of the 3,500 newcomers to the
province claiming to have engineering qualifications and 832 of 4,500 graduates
from Ontario university engineering programs applying for licensure through the
program. Approximately one-third of graduates from Ontario engineering
schools typically apply for licensure within five years of graduation. Under
the FCP, one-fifth of eligible grads have applied so far.
To increase these numbers, PEO is launching a province-wide multi-media
campaign called Movin' Up!, targeting students, new
engineering graduates and newly arrived international engineering graduates
through advertisements, marketing brochures and information sessions on
university campuses. The association is also investigating the creation of a
multi-tiered licensing program that would officially recognize engineering
students and internationally trained professionals when they graduate or arrive
in Ontario.
"We want all those who have studied or are studying engineering to take
the initiative and get licensed. That includes engineering students and
Canadian and international graduates, as well as those already participating in
our Engineering Intern Training Program," added Mr. Adams
Background
In May 2007, Professional Engineers Ontario introduced
a program to encourage engineering graduates and newcomers to
Called the Engineering Intern Training Financial Credit Program (FCP), the
program enables eligible graduates of bachelor of engineering programs
accredited by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) and eligible
international engineering graduates with a bachelor of engineering or a
bachelor of applied science degree to apply for a professional engineer (P.Eng.) licence at no cost. They
may also be registered in the Engineering Intern Training program for the first
year at no cost, if they meet eligibility criteria established by PEO.
Graduates of programs accredited by the CEAB are eligible for the FCP if they
apply online at
www.peo.on.ca/FCP/FCP1.html within six
months of the date their degree was conferred. Within this six-month
application window, PEO must also receive:
- acceptable academic documents;
- an acceptable proof of age document;
- acceptable documents proving their status in Canada;
- a valid email address for all PEO communications with them;
- and a signed declaration of application as per the online Engineering Intern
Training Financial Credit Program form.
International engineering graduates are eligible for the program if they have a
bachelor of engineering degree or a bachelor of applied science degree
acceptable to PEO, and apply online for the program at
www.peo.on.ca/FCP/FCP1.html within six
months of their landing in Canada. Within this six-month application window,
PEO must also receive:
- acceptable academic documents;
- an acceptable proof of age document;
- acceptable documents proving their status in Canada;
- a valid email address for all PEO communications with the applicant;
- a signed declaration of application as per the online Engineering Intern
Training Financial Credit Program form;
- and a work experience summary, if the applicant has obtained at least five
years of engineering experience since graduation.
Professional Engineers Ontario administers the Professional Engineers Act by
licensing Ontario's 70,000 professional engineers, granting temporary, limited
and provisional licences to practise
professional engineering, and authorizing businesses to provide engineering
services to the public. It sets standards for and regulates engineering in
Ontario so that the public interest is served and protected. Rigorously
educated, experienced, and committed to a Code of Ethics that puts the public
first, licensed professional engineers can be identified by the P.Eng. after their names.
- END RELEASE - 08/08/2008
For further information:
David Smith, Manager, Communications
Tel: 416-840-1068; 800-339-3716, ext.1068
Email:
dsmith@peo.on.ca
MAIL
Follow-up to March 16, 2008 Meeting
Thu 03/27/08 08:33 am
Good Morning
Mrs. Lawrence:
Further to your meeting with Mr. Boshcoff and members
of ABEC, please find a copy of correspondence forwarded to the Hon. Diane
Finley on behalf of the group. The same letter has also been sent to the
Hon. Monte Solberg. Please feel free to forward the letter to other
members of your group who attended the March 16th meeting.
Sincerely
Mary Kozorys
Constituency Assistant
Ken Boshcoff M.P.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 27, 2008
The Honourable Diane Finley
Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration
Room 707,
Confederation Building
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
Dear Honourable Finley:
BULGARIAN
ENGINEERS
Please find
attached two items of correspondence outlining the concerns of members of the Association
of Bulgarian Engineers in Canada regarding their experiences in seeking
employment at their level of competence.
As you can see
they have reasonable concerns with the integration process. Hopefully you will be able to provide the
name of someone within the Toronto Region Office for Citizenship and
Immigration who can contact Mrs. Lawrence and then meet with the Association to
fully address their issues.
Thank you for your
attention to this important issue.
Yours Sincerely
Ken Boshcoff M.P.
/mk
Engineers Canada co-hosts Picnic on Parliament Hill
https://bge.engineerscanada.ca/index_e.cfm
Newsletter
-
Engineering on the Hill---Summer Issue 2008
-
Engineering on the Hill - Fall Issue 2007
-
Inaugural issue of Engineering on the Hill Newsletter -
Summer 2007
https://bge.engineerscanada.ca/documents/newsletter%20%20draft%2007%20JULY%20FINAL.pdf
Engineers Canada co-hosts Picnic
on Parliament Hill
*****
The
Engineering Connections *****
For more information call:
John
Mavrogiannakis, P.Eng.
Project
Coordinator,
Engineering
Connections:
Software
Skills Enhancement Program
School
of Applied Technology
Humber
Institute of Technology &
Advanced
Learning
205
Humber College Boulevard
Toronto,
Ontario, M9W 5L7
Tel: 416-675-6622 ext.
4742
www.appliedtechnology.humber.ca/ite
|
***NEW*** From TD Insurance Meloche Monnex
Get added peace of mind... * * * |
|
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 –
“We'd like to introduce you to the logical solution in home and auto insurance. TD Meloche Monnex partners with more than 250 associations, offering professionals and alumni preferred group rates*, high-quality insurance products and exceptional service. Your special status gets you outstanding value! To discover more about your insurance coverage options with TD Meloche Monnex, visit our website and get a free online quote now.”
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
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! Find out more...
From the ABEC Council
Association of Bulgarian Engineers in Canada – ABEC
The Council of the Association of Bulgarian Engineers in Canada is happy to inform all Bulgarian Engineers that we reached an Agreement in Principle with Mr. Tchavdar Elenkov, CFP, for Employee Group Benefits Program.
Our goal is to enable all Self employed Bulgarian Engineers - members of ABEC to have access to a benefits program that will cover them, their employees and their families with a Life, Accidental Death and Dismemberment and Extended Health Care (Basic Plan). This program can be upgraded by adding the optional Dental Care coverage (Basic + Dental Plan). Disability coverage can be added as well, subject to and according to the insurance companies’ underwriting requirements (Comprehensive Plan).
Every plan can be individually tailored to meet the specific needs of your business and your budget.
According to our Agreement in principle, Mr. Tchavdar Elenkov will offer 7% (seven percent) discount on the Basic Plan or the Basic + Dental Plan. This offer is valid exclusively for companies owned by members of ABEC, registered in Ontario, employing from 2 to 24 people. The discount applies equally for all companies notwithstanding the structure of their individually tailored Group Benefits Plan (Basic Plan or Basic + Dental Plan).
By setting up a Group Benefits Plan for your business you de facto increase your own salary and the salaries of your employees without having to pay additional income tax on the increase, additional CPP and EI contributions, Union Dues etc., and the premiums for the plan are tax deductible.
Other advantages of the Group Benefits Plans are:
- attracting and retaining the best employees;
- improving employee morale;
- promoting health and wellness;
To learn more about the offered Group Benefits Plans and to download the Request for Quotation Form you can visit http://www.elenkov.com/group_insurance.html . You can contact Tchavdar Elenkov at http://www.elenkov.com/contact.html and ask for more information in both Bulgarian and English Languages.
Please communicate this announcement to your friends, colleagues and compatriots, so that more Self employed Bulgarian Engineers could use this Employee Group Benefits Program.
The Council of ABEC
does not assume any responsibilities, liabilities or credit for any claims
otherwise stated or implied herein this endorsement.
From the Council of ABEC
*** Health
Spending Account
***
A New
Health Spending Account plan
which can convert all of everyone’s medical expenses into a 100% tax deductable
Business expenses instead, is now available.
The Health Spending
Account will become a special trust account, administered by a third party
organization.
For more information
about the Health Spending Account you can visit
the web site of
Mr. Tchavdar Elenkov
http://www.elenkov.com/health_spending_accounts.html
or you can call him
at 416 459-5679.
NEWS
ENERGY TECH
CERN
Announces Start-Up Date for LHC
by Staff Writers
|
CERN1
has announced that the first attempt to circulate a beam in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be made on 10 September. This
news comes as the cool down phase of commissioning CERN's new particle
accelerator reaches a successful conclusion. Television coverage of the
start-up will be made available through Eurovision. The LHC is the world's most powerful particle accelerator, producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010. Housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel, it relies on technologies that would not have been possible 30 years ago. The LHC is, in a sense, its own prototype. Starting up such a machine is not as
simple as flipping a switch. Commissioning is a long process that starts with
the cooling down of each of the machine's eight sectors. This is followed by
the electrical testing of the 1600 superconducting magnets and their
individual powering to nominal operating current.
|
The
|
These steps are followed by the powering together of all the circuits of each sector, and then of the eight independent sectors in unison in order to operate as a single machine.
By the end of July, this work was approaching completion, with all eight sectors at their operating temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-271 degreesC). The next phase in the process is synchronization of the LHC with the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator, which forms the last link in the LHC's injector chain.
Timing between the two machines has to be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond. A first synchronization test is scheduled for the weekend of 9 August, for the clockwise-circulating LHC beam, with the second to follow over the coming weeks.
Tests will continue into September to ensure that the entire machine is ready to accelerate and collide beams at an energy of 5 TeV per beam, the target energy for 2008. Force majeure notwithstanding, the LHC will see its first circulating beam on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV).
Once stable circulating beams have been established, they will be brought into collision, and the final step will be to commission the LHC's acceleration system to boost the energy to 5 TeV, taking particle physics research to a new frontier.
'We're finishing a marathon with a sprint,' said LHC project leader Lyn Evans. 'It's been a long haul, and we're all eager to get the LHC research programme underway.'
CERN will be issuing regular status updates between now and first collisions. Journalists wishing to attend CERN for the first beam on 10 September must be accredited with the CERN press office. Since capacity is limited, priority will be given to news media.
The event will be webcast through http://webcast.cern.ch, and distributed through the Eurovision network. Live stand up and playout facilities will also be available.
A media centre will be established at the main CERN site, with access to the control centres for the accelerator and experiments limited and allocated on a first come first served basis. This includes camera positions at the CERN Control Centre, from where the LHC is run. Only television media will be able to access the CERN Control Centre. No underground access will be possible.
http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/CERN_Announces_Start_Up_Date_For_LHC_999.html
Compressed Light Could Open Doors for Optical Communications
by Rachel Tompa
Berkeley CA
(SPX) Aug 08, 2008
|
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have devised a way to squeeze
light into tighter spaces than ever thought possible, potentially opening doors to new
technology
in the fields of optical communications, miniature
lasers
Optics researchers succeeded previously in passing light through gaps 200 nanometers wide, about 400 times smaller than the width of a human hair. A group of UC Berkeley researchers led by mechanical engineering
professor Xiang Zhang devised a way to confine light "This technique could give us
remarkable control over light," said Rupert Oulton,
research associate in Zhang's group and |
|
"There has been a lot of interest in scaling down optical devices," Z
Scientists
Just as computer engineers cram more and more transistors into computer chips in the pursuit of faster and smaller machines, researchers in the field of optics have been looking for ways to compress light into smaller wires for better optical communications, said Zhang, senior author of the study, which will be published in the August issue of Nature Photonics and is currently available online.
"There has been a lot of interest in scaling down optical devices," Zhang said. "It's the holy grail for the future of communications."
Not only would compressed light make possible smaller optical fibers, but it could lead to huge advances in the field of optical computing. Many researchers want to link electronics and optics, but light and matter make strange bedfellows, Oulton said, because their characteristic sizes are on vastly different scales.
However, confining light can actually alter the fundamental interaction between light and matter. Ideally, optics researchers would like to cram light down to the size of electron wavelengths to force light and matter to cooperate.
The researchers run into a brick wall, however, when it comes to compressing light farther than its wavelength. Light doesn't want to stay inside a space that small, Oulton said.
They have squished light beyond these limits using surface plasmonics, where light binds to electrons allowing it to propagate along the surface of metal. But the waves can only travel short distances along the metal before petering out.
Oulton had been working on combining plasmonics and semiconductors, where these losses are even more pronounced, when he came up with an idea to achieve simultaneously strong confinement of the light and mitigate the losses. His theoretical "hybrid" optical fiber consists of a very thin semiconductor wire placed close to a smooth sheet of silver.
"It's really a very simple geometry, and I was surprised that no one had come up with it before," Oulton said.
Oulton ran computer simulations to test this idea. He found that not only could the light compress into spaces only tens of nanometers wide, but it could travel distances nearly 100 times greater in the simulation than by conventional surface plasmonics alone.
Instead of the light moving down the center of the thin wire, as the wire approaches the metal sheet, light waves are trapped in the gap between them, the researchers found.
The research team's technique works because the hybrid system acts like a capacitor, Oulton said, storing energy between the wire and the metal sheet. As the light travels along the gap, it stimulates the build-up of charges on both the wire and the metal, and these charges allow the energy to be sustained for longer distances.
This finding flies in the face of the previous dogma that light compression comes with the drawback of short propagation distances, Zhang said.
"Previously, if you wanted to transmit light at a smaller scale, you would lose a lot of energy along the path. To retain more energy, you'd have to make the scale bigger. These two things always went against each other," Zhang said. "Now, this work shows there is the possibility to gain both of them."
Even though the current study is theoretical, the construction of such a device should be straightforward, Oulton said. The problem lies in trying to directly detect the light in such a small space - no current tools are sensitive enough to see such a small point of light. But Zhang's group is looking for other ways to experimentally detect the tiny bits of light in these devices.
Oulton believes the hybrid technique of confining light could have huge ramifications. It brings light closer to the scale of electrons' wavelengths, meaning that new links between optical and electronic communications might be possible.
"We are pulling optics down to the length scales of electrons," Oulton said. "And that means we can potentially do some things we have never done before."
This idea could be an important step on the road to an optical computer, a machine where all electronics are replaced with optical parts, Oulton said. The construction of a compact optical transistor is currently a major stumbling block in the progress toward fully optical computing, and this technique for compacting light and linking plasmonics with semiconductors might help clear this hurdle, the researchers said.
Other authors of the study are Volker Sorger, Dentcho Genov and David Pile, all of Zhang's research group at UC Berkeley.
The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense helped support this study
Membership fee, due for 2008 year is $50 per year. Please send your cheque (making it payable to ABEC) to our Treasurer Eng. Tonya Bojkova at the address:
Mrs. Tonya Bojkova,
701 Don Mills Road
Apt.2206
Toronto, Ontario,
M3C 1R9
New Members are always welcome!
Pauline Loultcheva Lawrence