January Welcome Day is UPEI's orientation day for all students beginning at UPEI in the winter 2013 semester. On January 5, you are invited to UPEI campus for welcome orientation, advisement, campus tours, and a free lunch! This half-day program will introduce you to UPEI, administrators, current students, and what you need to know for your first semester at UPEI. If you're new to campus in January register today through your campus login to secure your spot!

At the next Research on Tap, Dr. Sandy McAuley, Associate Professor of Education at UPEI, will lead a discussion about how school needs to change to engage students. The title of his discussion is “Education for Innovation: problem solving for Twenty-first century schools.” “K-12 students are capable of becoming relatively sophisticated creators of knowledge,” said McAuley. “Right now, schools are not intellectually engaging for the majority of students. Intellectual engagement is critical for graduates who can take active roles in a culture of innovation which is becoming increasingly important for our future on PEI and Canada.” The discussion begins at 7 pm, January 8, at The Pourhouse (above The Old Triangle Irish Alehouse in Charlottetown). Research on Tap is a series of public discussions led by UPEI researchers. For more information, contact Dave Atkinson at (902) 620-5117 or datkinson@upei.ca.

Join the Faculty of Arts in the Main Faculty Lounge on Wednesday, January 16 at 4:30 pm for a book launch. There will be seven authors/editors and nine publications to celebrate: Godfrey Baldacchino and Anna Baldacchino, A Taste of Islands: 60 Recipes and Stories from Our World of Islands (Charlottetown: Island Studies Press, 2012). Godfrey Baldacchino, ed, Island Songs: A Global Repertoire (launched at a separate event earlier this year). This book is the first to emerge from the UPEI-led AIRS Project (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing). Ann Braithwaite, Catherine M. Orr, and Diane Lichtenstein, eds, Rethinking Women's and Gender Studies (New York: Routledge: 2012). Sarah Glassford & Amy J. Shaw, eds, A Sisterhood of Suffering & Service: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland during the First World War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012). John McIntyre, and Miranda Hickman, eds, Rereading the New Criticism (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2012). Richard Raiswell, ed, with Peter Dendle, The Devil in Society in Premodern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, 2012). Raiswell is also an editor of a new academic journal: Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural (published bi-annually by Penn State University Press). Richard Lemm, ed. Riptides: New Island Fiction. Introduction by Richard Lemm. (Charlottetown: Acorn Press, 2012). Laurie Brinklow, author, Here for the Music (Charlottetown: Acorn Press, 2012). Please join us in our celebration of these authors and their work. Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event! For more information: http://research.upei.ca/events/faculty-arts-book-launch-0

Departments of Biomedical Sciences & Pathology and Microbiology Seminar Ben Perry, Department of Biomedical Sciences will give a seminar entitled "Anti-Obesity Efficacy and Mechanism of a Chinese Herbal Formulation" on Tuesday, January 8 at 1:30 pm in AVC, Lecture Theatre "C". Everyone is welcome.

Join members of the AIRS Project - UPEI International Choir & Song Circle every Wednesday from 4:30–5:30 pm in Robertson Library Building Annex, lower level - Room 103. Share songs from many cultures, learn about singing, and meet new people! No prior music experience is required. UPEI students, staff and faculty are all welcome to attend!

MODULE 1 Introduction to Bayesian Risk Assessment 3 day course June 13-15, 2013 Instructed by: Drs. Curtis Smith & Javier Sanchez This three-day course will introduce the concepts of probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) using a Bayesian framework. PRA is an analysis of the frequency and consequences of unwanted events in a system. This type of analysis relies on probabilistic (i.e., predictive) models and associated data. Because of PRA’s focus on low frequency scenarios, empirical data are often lacking. Bayesian inference techniques are useful in such situations because, unlike frequentist statistical methods, Bayesian techniques are able to incorporate nonempirical information. Furthermore, from a practical perspective, Bayesian techniques, which represent uncertainty with probability distributions, provide a ready framework for the propagation of uncertainties through the risk models, via Monte Carlo sampling. All the examples and exercises for this course will be using animal health and food safety problems and they will be developed using the statistical package WinBUGS (http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bugs/winbugs/contents.shtml). The main instructor for this course will be Dr. Curtis Smith, one of the authors of the book entitled: “Bayesian Inference for Probabilistic Risk Assessment” (http://www.amazon.com/Bayesian-Inference-Probabilistic-Risk-Assessment/d...).

MODULE 2 Introduction to Multilevel Modelling 5 day course June 17-21, 2013 Instructed by: Drs. Ian Dohoo & Henrik Stryhn This five-day course is designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills required to successfully fit multilevel models to both continuous data (linear models) and discrete data (emphasis on logistic and Poisson models). The presentation of theoretical background material is limited to that which is required for a reasonable understanding of the methods employed. Specific topics covered in the course include: introduction to multilevel/hierarchical data, mixed models for continuous data, mixed models for discrete data, model evaluation (diagnostics), analysis of repeated measures and alternative approaches to dealing with clustered data (including Bayesian methods). The main software used for the instruction is MLwiN, but code for fitting models in either Stata or R will also be provided. Students are encouraged to bring their own data to the course and will be provided with time and assistance to analyze those data.

MODULE 3 Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery – an introductory course with focus on veterinary epidemiology applications 4 day course June 23-26, 2013 Instructed by: Drs. Fernanda Dorea & Crawford Revie The increasing quantity of electronic data available (including clinical and laboratory data) is allowing epidemiological intelligence to move from hypothesis testing to knowledge discovery. Data mining technology allows researchers to analyse large observational data sets, previously collected for different purposes, to summarize the data in novel ways, and to find unanticipated relationships. This data-driven process adopts fundamentally different approaches to traditional question-driven methods. Data mining has been used in epidemiology for early detection of disease outbreaks (syndromic surveillance) and studies of antimicrobial resistance, among others. This four-day course provides an introduction to machine learning techniques, covering both unsupervised – those in which training datasets are not required – as well as supervised approaches to both classification and regression tasks in data mining. The main software used in the course will be RapidMiner, the most widely used open source package for data mining; some use of R will also be made to illustrate the integration of features not yet available within RapidMiner.

The Students of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (SCVMA) will hold its annual symposium at the Atlantic Veterinary College from January 10 - 12. The SCVMA Symposium is the only national event in Canada which is planned by veterinary students, for veterinary students. The symposium will consist of a series of wet labs, conferences, and lectures as well as tours and social events. For more detailed information please visit: http://www.canadianveterinarians.net/programs/scvma-symposium.aspx#.UOcj...

As part of the UPEI Music Department Recital Series, the Toronto-based jazz trio Myriad will perform on Tuesday, January 22, 2013 featuring Chris Donnelly, jazz piano; Dan Fortin, bass and Ernesto Cervini, drums. The cost is $15 adult/$10 student and the concert will take place in the Dr. Steel Recital Hall.