Brent Lievers

Congratulations to @crosh.bsky.social senior researcher Dr. Katie Goggins for receiving an NSERC discovery grant to fund her occupational vibration research. 🎉 Well done!

Congratulations also to the other awardees.

laurentian.ca/news/researc...

A permanent sign reading "Attention: Bear in area / Présence d'ours" has been added at the base of the path up from Lot 15.

Seems the bear has moved in because we now have some more permanent signage advising of their presence.

Canada geese in the swimming area, marked off by buoy lines, at Bell Park's Main Beach in Sudbury, Ontario. A woman sits on the beach watching them.

This morning they didn't wait for the lifeguard but they did bring an adult to supervise their swim.

Photo of the Bell Park Main Beach in Sudbury, Ontario at sunrise. Canada geese are lined up along the water's edge within the swimming area marked off by a buoyline. An empty lifeguard tower is visible.

Impressed that these Canada geese are waiting for a city lifeguard to arrive before entering the swimming area.

#Sudbury

Screen shot of some of the Environment Canada forecast for today in Sudbury, Ontario. At 6pm there is a high of 19°C and 70% probability of precipitation. Weather conditions described as "Chance of showers. Risk of thunderstorms." The icon for the weather is combination of the sun, rain and rain clouds, plus dark thundercloud and lightnight.

Not a meteorologist, but I feel Iike the folks at Environment Canada are being non-committal with that icon: 🌞 + 🌧 + ⛅️ + 🌩?

(At least it doesn't include ❄️ + 🦈 + 🌪.)

Bird on the floor of the Fraser Auditorium foyer.

Bird on the wrong side of the Fraser Auditorium window.

A somewhat traumatized bird finally outside!

To my Dean: Is it too late to add catching & releasing this grackel as "service" on my annual report?

Vale superstack demolition inspires Laurentian engineering project Students develop innovative way to demolish large industrial stacks

Final year capstone projects are an important part of engineering education, but they're even better when they're inspired by real-world problems.

Hat tip to Markus & Greg for the great job they do finding these projects and guiding our students.

www.sudbury.com/local-news/v...

Happy Mother's Day!

A special shut-out to all those who have to work today so that others can celebrate. My SIL is a chef at a fancy hotel. They are expecting 700-800 for brunch across two dining rooms! Be sure to tip your servers well today!

Rendering of a CAD model of an ice auger, with a detailed view of the engine and handle.

Rendering of a CAD model of a bicycle.

Rendering of a CAD model of an office chair.

Rendering of a CAD model of a vacuum.

My final marks are all submitted, so my winter-term course work is officially done! 🎉🥳🎈

Enjoy these renderings of some of the group projects completed by my 1st-year #ENGR1017 computer aided design (CAD) class, where they had to recreate digital models of a commercial product. Colour me impressed.

Sign indicating the row for those writing ENGR-3566 in the exam hall.

The calm before the storm. My second and final exam of the winter term starts soon… Best of luck to the students writing #ENGR3566 tonight!

Perhaps:

1/ Pretending the baby/parenthood is—
⋮
1.6/ an appointment/role/promotion

although I'm not sure I've seen this one in the wild.

Grocery store sign which reads: NNNI PEPPERS SWEET MIXED 2.5L $8.00 where NNNI == No Name® "Naturally Imperfect".

“We are the Knights Who Say…”

Laurentian University (Cliff Fielding Building in the foregroune, Parker Building in the background) with snow falling and accumulating on April 7, 2025

Laurentian University (Fraser Building) with snow falling and accumulating on April 7, 2025.

Spring is a myth. Please send pictures of green, flowering things.

Weather advisory on April 6 warning of roughly 24cm of snowfall over the next 48 hours.

Spring is having a hard time spring-ing in our part of the world. *sigh*

Pavlova covered in kiwi, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. There is a lemon curd beneath the cream.

Three layered blueberry cheesecake on an oatmeal cookie crumb base.

A lot of dessert was made — and eaten! — in our house this weekend. The pavlova disappeared in a day. The layered blueberry cheesecake lasted until tonight.

We heard from 3 of Dr. Mariana Kersh's (UIUC) students to close out our #ENGR3566 guest lectures for this year: Melany Opolz, Michael Focht & Mikayla Hoyle. A great overview of their multidisciplinary research, applying a variety of imaging, testing, & modelling approaches to bone & tendon in 🚶& 🐎.

Huge thanks to Aiden Dillon & Brett Brouse, from the Taylor Lab @uoregon.bsky.social, who tag-teamed yesterday's #ENGR3566 guest lecture about fractals, neurons, & their potential for helping restore lost vision. It was a great mix of math, computing, physics, material science, & biology.

Enjoyed an amazing guest lecture this morning by Dr.
@melodyoungg.bsky.social from Duke University. She covered her doctoral work on climbing mechanics in various species (🐸🦜🦥🚶‍♀️), plus her post-doctoral studies on latch-mediated spring actuation in trap jaw ants & snapping shrimp! #ENGR3566

Yesterday we kicked off this year's series of guest lectures in #ENGR3566 with Dr. Emily Rogers-Bradley from @ucalgary.bsky.social. She spoke on gait and her work with semi-active prosthetics. A great talk with lots of quality questions from the students!

Congratulations, Dr. Dorman!

My daughter has experienced two big milestones this week. She voted for the first time in yesterday's Ontario election. Today, she's gotten to experience her first university reply-all storm. (William: She hopes you get your bursary!)

Screen shot of an email titled "I forgot my phone at home". The body of the email reads as follows: Dearest Mother and Father, It appears I am so unattached to my cellular device that I failed to bring it with me to my place of post-secondary education to-day. As a result, electronic mail is the only forum through which you may be able to reach me until the afternoon. Please be advised it may take me 3-4 business hours to respond. Sincerely, Your daughter. P.S. Mother, if you would be so kind as to unplug my device from its charging port so it does not overcharge, that would be most appreciated.

I love my children

Pacakge of Cadbury Dairy milk & MiniEggs.

Hand holding a chocolate with a bite out of it, revealing the MiniEggs within the DairyMilk.

I've doubled my chocolate eating efficiency recently after discovering these beauties. To think that I used to eat my Dairy Milk and MiniEggs *separately*. Thanks to Cadbury, those days are behind me now.

Follow me for other productivity hacks.

Our annual series of mock interviews for @laurentianu.bsky.social Engineering & Computer Science students is underway! Three days, 16 companies, & 85 interviews where students get feedback from industry professionals. A great way for them to prepare for their careers!

A copy of "James: a Novel" by Percival Everett.

A copy of "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman.

Was given a copy for Christmas (along with Richard Osman's "The Thursday Murder Club", which I read first). Only about 1/4 into "James" thus far.

I don't follow the literary world, so I am not familiar with the book's reception, so I am glad to learn that others have enjoyed it.

Photo of the pointing Spiderman meme recreated with beanie baby Spidermen.

Daughter & I arrived home from university to find my wife had picked up three Spiderman beans babies on clearance. We immediately set out to recreate this meme:

LAMARCHE, Britney It is with the heaviest hearts that the family announces the passing of their beautiful daughter Britney at the young age of 28 years. She passed away peacefully at home surrounded by family and frien...

There is a sad coda to this story. Britney passed away on September 8, 2024, exactly 4 month ago today, after an extended battle with cancer (www.sudbury.com/obituaries/l...). She was a brilliant young engineer and only 28! The JBMR Plus article and this thread are dedicated to her memory.

fin/

Graph showing a statistically significant decreasing relationship between the amount of cement line per unit area and the compression strength of the adjacent vertebra.

Significant correlations were also noted with the compressive strength of the neighbouring vertebra; however, we cannot yet isolate the effects of cement line from the well-known contributions of the cancellous architecture (particularly BV/TV). Always more work to do!

9/

Plots of cement line length per unit area as a function of age, bone volume fraction (BV/TV), and structure model indiex (SMI). Cement line length increased with age (but not significantly). Statistically changes with BV/TV (decreasing) and SMI (increasing) are also shown.

Based on these measurements, she was able to show that the length of cement line per unit area (Cm.Ln.Pm/Tb.Pf.Ar) wasn't correlated with age per se, but was significantly related to the cancellous architecture (bone volume fraction [BV/TV] and structure model index [SMI]).

8/

Image from the paper illustrating a cross-section of a human vertebra, a region of interest within that vertebra, as well as the BSU that have been manually traced with the trabeculae so that they can be measured.

As part of her master's work, in collaboration with colleagues in Denmark, Britney spent *months* (while listening to Jeopardy on Netflix) tracing BSU from female vertebrae in image analysis software to test this hypothesis. She traced almost 17,000 across 16 specimens to measure their shape!

7/