Issue #22: Fall 2008

In this issue...

Editor's Letter

by Christopher Petty, MFA'86

Email, Junk Email & Building a New Place

The Good, the Bad, and the Tiny: Is nanotechnology the next big thing or the next big nightmare?

by Hilary Thomson

Nanotechnology has been called a molecular revolution – innovation so profound it will allow us to rebuild our world molecule by molecule. The unprecedented benefits of such control over matter have the potential to permeate every aspect of our lives. But so do the risks.

Engineers Without Borders: Small changes, big results

by Michael Awmack, BA'01

With stories of natural resource depletion, a worldwide economic crisis and diminishing food security gripping the international media in recent months, a suffocating sense of despondency has settled over the world, leaving many people wondering, “Where do we go from here?”

Engineers Without Borders: Sharing the Same Sky

by Ka-Hay Law, BASc’03

When she started studying at UBC nearly ten years ago, Ka-Hay Law’s experience of Africa was limited to the National Geographic poster of elephants and giraffes that hung on her brother’s wall. Now she lives and works in Zambia and Malawi with Engineers Without Borders.

Return of the Vets

In the summer issue of Trek magazine, we invited alumni who attended UBC in the 1940s and '50s as war vets to send in their recollections of campus life.

Letters From the Front

by Megan Robertson, BA’05, MA’08

Henry Wellington Ralston left BC in 1914 to join the war effort. Nearly a century later, a UBC student reads the letters he sent home from the front, donated to UBC library by his son.