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Background The collection of patient reported outcomes (PROS) is a standard of care in many cancer organizations. In Alberta, PROS have been integrated into routine clinical practice since 2012. This longitudinal collection of PROS provides a wealth of data and a unique research opportunity to improve cancer care. The goal of this PRO data initiative is to establish a robust repository of information for ongoing clinical care and research focused on PROS. In this paper, we describe the rationale, scope, and design of this initiative. Implementation The initiative consists of PROS and other administrative health data from the province of Alberta. Retrieval of health data from a variety of provincially governed sources will create a platform of information on PROS, health outcomes, cancer data, other health conditions, and demographics. The aims of the initiative are to use the data to inform best practices at the point of care; to conduct health services research, particularly clinical epidemiology studies; and to evaluate a variety of PRO-related outcomes. Discussion Because this effort represents our first to integrate routinely collected PROS with other administrative health data, a unique and robust data repository will be created. The ability to integrate various types of data will provide a comprehensive mechanism to evaluate a variety of outcomes. Because cancer care in Alberta is governed by a single health care system, the data linkages will include population health and psychosocial cancer data. We anticipate that research related to this initiative will ultimately help to inform more patient-centred care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to research on and theories of the state's role in Canadian sport development by examining factors that led the Alberta government to create the Alberta Sport Council, Canada's only Crown corporation with a sport mandate. The data used were collected from interviews and numerous documentary sources. The corporatism and the attribution of public status to private interest groups. Accordingly, the study identified key individuals, organizational factors, and the unique political and economic characteristics of Alberta that influenced the council's creation. The paper concludes that despite this or organization's uniqueness, it reflects the same contradictory form of sport intervention found in other Canadian governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Alberta Interconnected Electric System (AlES) forms a single integrated transmission network serving the Province of Alberta, Canada. A number of large critical industrial loads are served by the AlES. These loads operate 24 h a day and seven days a week. This paper deals with a critical industrial load which is normally supplied by the Alberta provincial grid through two 72-ky lines. This load also maintains a backup generation system consisting of a set of gas turbines to meet its operating demands in the case of Alberta grid failure. The basic objective of this paper is to derive the optimal number of gas turbines that this critical load should maintain in order to satisfy the plant's reliability criteria in the case of grid failure for continuity of its operation. A Monte Carlo simulation model is developed to assess the adequacy of the backup gas turbine system, and the results of a series of case studies performed using the developed model are presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most minimum wage studies are identified on small, plentiful, mostly expected wage changes, spread out over time. A recent set of changes have instead been large, rapid, and unexpected, following the "Fight for $15" movement. Alberta is the first North American province, state, or territory to have this $15 minimum wage, with an unexpectedly large increase (47%) occurring over a short time horizon (3 years). The employment effects of this policy are estimated using a synthetic control approach on Labour Force Survey data. Similar to the existing literature, workers moved up the wage distribution, increment by increment, but with a higher distributional reach. Employment losses occurred at similar elasticities, but with large level changes, mostly among younger workers. Newer to the literature, regional employment losses were found in four of the five non-urban economic regions, but not in Alberta's two main cities, showing the significance and nuance of regional heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Botany is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The mantra from emergency management professionals is that lessons learned when enacted are beneficial; when they are not, it is a lesson observed. The COVID-19 pandemic has required healthcare organisations to be agile and responsive. This paper describes how Alberta Health Services leveraged the lessons learned from previous incidents in order to provide a flexible response to a rapidly evolving situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the high prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in Canada and globally, as well as the staggering cost to human life and health systems, there is an urgent need to understand the successful applications of telemedicine in cardiovascular medicine. While telemedicine in cardiology is well documented, reports on virtual care in the form of synchronous, real-time communication between healthcare providers and patients are limited. As a result of the immediate suspension of ambulatory services for cardiology in Alberta, Canada, due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic, we undertook a rapid review on the impact of non-virtual visits in cardiovascular ambulatory settings on patients' healthcare utilization and mortality. Evidence from 12 randomized control trials and 7 systematic reviews was included in the rapid review, with the majority of papers (n  = 15) focusing on telemedicine in heart failure. Based on our appraisal of evidence from the last 5 years, virtual visits are non-inferior, or more effective, in reducing hospitalizations and visits to emergency departments in patients with CVD compared to traditional standard in-clinic/ambulatory care. The evidence for a superior effect of virtual visits in reducing mortality was not supported in this review. While telemedicine is an appropriate tool for CVD follow-up care, more research into the efficacy of different components of telemedicine and virtual visits is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Collecting and monitoring the information from patients through patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) about the quality of care they receive is important for tracking changes in healthcare quality, stimulate innovation, and enhance person-centred care. The objective of this theoretical paper is to discuss the use of implementation science theories, models, and frameworks to inform and evaluate the integration of the electronic collection of PREMs (ePREMs) in healthcare quality improvement for primary care in Canada. Methods: To assess potential knowledge-to-practice gaps in implementing ePREMs in primary care in Alberta, the overarching implementation model that will be used is the Knowledge to Action Cycle. An integrated knowledge translation approach will ensure ongoing engagement of key stakeholders (e.g. primary care providers, patients) throughout the study. ePREM implementation will be informed by the identification of barriers and facilitators to implementation using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR). The CFIR brings an organizational perspective providing an opportunity to explore the intervention characteristics, the context of implementation, individual factors, and the processes that influence implementation of ePREMs in healthcare. Identified barriers and facilitators to ePREM implementation will be mapped to evidence-based implementation strategies and prioritized by stakeholders. The RE-AIM framework will be used to guide the evaluation of ePREM implementation outcomes after six months of implementation by assessing Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance (sustainability). Discussion: Consultations with stakeholders affirm the importance of using integrated knowledge translation approaches and the need to better understand how to integrate ePREMs in primary care. Using an implementations science approach, this study can provide guidance for mitigating important ePREM implementation challenges and promote the successful uptake and use of ePREMs for quality improvement in healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cranes are one of the most critical and expensive pieces of construction industry equipment requiring intense safety considerations. Lifting crews should attempt to develop an effective lift plan to improve the operation's safety and reduce the risks of potential accidents. Although various systems are developed to enhance lifting operations' safety, most cannot evaluate the entire lifting process in an interactive visual environment. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by presenting a crane simulator system developed in the virtual reality (VR) environment integrated with a database of comprehensive lift studies and a detailed crane path planning system. This interactive system evaluates the lift operation quantitatively in real time in terms of its safety and practicability for the entire operation (entire lift path). The developed system can be employed in practice by crane operators and lift engineers for various objectives, including gaining hands-on experience before the actual operation, enhancing engineered lift planning, increasing workplace awareness, and evaluating and mitigating lift-related risks. The proposed framework is validated through two scenarios in a modular construction project in Alberta, Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning lift activities of mobile cranes for a modular project can raise productivity and improve safety. An optimized lift plan is essential for multiple lifts due to high rental cost of heavy lift cranes. However, choosing among a large number of available lift options (e.g., types, configurations, and locations of cranes) to develop multilift plans can be challenging. Despite numerous efforts in this area, there is still room for improvement to enhance the optimality of solutions, which leads to considerable cost reduction. This paper introduces an integrated framework to automatically generate an optimum lift plan based on a predetermined lifting sequence. Dijkstra's search algorithm is utilized in the current study to select each module's optimum lift option. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by proposing an enhanced graph-based optimization algorithm for multiple concurrent heavy lift operations. The suggested framework is validated successfully in an actual modular construction project in Alberta, Canada. The results are also compared with the previously developed lift planning algorithms, showing a remarkable reduction in the project's total cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer patients experience numerous distressing symptoms and concerns across the course of their illness, which negatively influence their quality of life. Regardless of cancer type, unmanaged symptoms can lead to adverse downstream consequences. Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) can be used to inform patient care and lead to targeted symptom management but simply gathering this information does not improve outcomes for the patient. Patient generated information must be easy for the clinicians to access and interpret if it is to be used to inform care delivery in ambulatory oncology facilities. This pragmatic work responded to this need. One Canadian provincial ambulatory oncology jurisdiction implemented digital tracking of PROMs over time in the provincial Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to support full integration of PROMs into standard care workflows and processes. Due to an inability within the EMR for direct patient entry, a hybrid data-entry was designed where the patient completes a paper-based PROM in the waiting room, and after clinical review, a clinician documents this along with their clinical assessment in the EMR. Several digital dashboards were developed which report PROMs data at the micro (individual), meso (clinic) and macro (program) levels. Using PROMs routinely in these provincial practice settings has numerous benefits including enhanced patient-clinician communication, assisting with problem detection, management of symptoms, and improving outcomes for patients. There are over 60,000 unique patients represented in our PROMs database, and over 300,000 unique screening events captured. The PROMs data is now used at all levels of the provincial cancer jurisdiction to provide targeted person centred care (micro), to staff appropriately at a clinic or program level (meso), and for capacity planning for provincial programs (macro). A new provincial EMR is currently being implemented which has an associated patient portal. Based on the success of this work, integration of direct entry of PROMs by the patient prior to the appointment and an associated workflow for symptom management is underway in this jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PROMs use in primary care has expanded from simply describing patient populations to contributing to decision-making, in response to the increasingly complex, ever-changing healthcare environment. In Alberta, primary care is organized into primary care networks (PCNs), where family physicians are grouped geographically and supported by allied health professionals. PCNs implement programs and services in response to local population health needs with frequent evaluation, often incorporating PROMs for this purpose. As PCN programs and services vary greatly across Alberta, so do their use of PROMs. An area of commonality is the use of the EQ-5D-5L instrument; 29 out of 41 PCNs are registered and licensed to use the instrument. It is often administrated by paper, pre- and post-program, and in combination with other specific measures, depending on the program or target population. Some PCNs share programming and therefore outcome measurement, but often the selection, implementation (including training and administration procedures) and evaluation/reporting of PROMs are unique to the PCN. As well, data analysis is largely dependent on the size and capacity of the PCN. Using PROMs for PCN program evaluation supports clinical understanding and complements clinical outcomes. PROMs describe the population attending a program, as well as provide an element of consistency when examining trends across multiple programs or timepoints. This contributes to inquiries and decisions around program development, components, administrative features, resource allocation and delivery. Challenges of PROMs use in primary care include the absence of cohesive data capture technology. This limits data capabilities and presents difficulties with data fidelity, storage, export, and analysis. Additionally, this real-world application lacks a control arm and presents methodological challenges for comparative research purposes. Furthermore, capturing long term patient outcomes poses administrative challenges of multiple follow ups. More research is required into best reporting mechanisms to ensure the data is used to its full potential. To overcome these challenges, leadership and clinician engagement are key. As well, determining consistent PCN PROM reporting requirements will ensure data are comparable across PCNs and contribute to provincial level evaluations, further supporting the movement towards overall health system quality improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Alberta Journal of Educational Research is the property of Alberta Journal of Educational Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background: Implementing Patient-reported Outcome Measures (PROMs) and Patient-reported Experience Measures (PREMs) is an effective way to deliver patient- and family-centered care (PFCC). Although Alberta Health Services (AHS) is Canada's largest and fully integrated health system, PROMs and PREMs are yet to be routinely integrated into the pediatric healthcare system. This study addresses this gap by investigating the current uptake, barriers, and enablers for integrating PROMs and PREMs in Alberta's pediatric healthcare system. Methods: Pediatric clinicians and academic researchers with experience using PROMs and PREMs were invited to complete a quantitative survey. Additionally, key stakeholders were qualitatively interviewed to understand current challenges in implementing pediatric PROMs and PREMs within AHS. Quantitative data gathered from 22 participants were descriptively analyzed, and qualitative data from 14 participants were thematically analyzed. Results: Participants identified 33 PROMs and 6 PREMs showing diversity in the types of pediatric PROMs and PREMs currently being used in Alberta and their mode of administration. The qualitatively identified challenges were associated with patients, family caregivers, and clinicians. The absence of system-level support, such as integration within electronic medical records, is considered a significant system-level challenge. Conclusions: The significant variation in the types of PROMs and PREMs used, the rationale for their use, and their mode of administration demonstrate the diverse and sporadic use of these measures in Alberta. These findings highlight the need for province-wide uniform implementation of pediatric PROMs and PREMs in Alberta. Our results could benefit healthcare organizations in developing evidence-based PROM and PREM implementation strategies in pediatrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Traffic signs play a critical role in the safety and efficiency of any roadway; however, limited information exists on current traffic sign inventories (TSIs). The size of current traffic sign networks makes it economically challenging to apply traditional survey methods to the collection of a TSI. This paper proposes the use of light detection and ranging and video-log imaging to conduct a TSI, tested along a 4-km segment in Alberta, Canada. Signs along the segment were extracted through a Gaussian mixture model before measuring sign panel orientation. Then, the road surface near each traffic sign was extracted to measure its lateral and vertical placement. Next, sign classification was determined by applying a trained convolutional neural network. Finally, traffic sign visibility was measured to assess the time available for drivers to read and react to traffic signs. The extraction of traffic signs and the left and right lane markings had F1 scores of 95.1%, 94.4%, and 89.6%, respectively. The extractions were completed with a high degree of accuracy and with time benefits over traditional manual methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lakes act as important sinks for inorganic and organic sediment components. However, investigations of sedimentary carbon budgets within glacial lakes are currently absent from Arctic Siberia. The aim of this paper is to provide the first reconstruction of accumulation rates, sediment and carbon budgets from a lacustrine sediment core from Lake Rauchuagytgyn, Chukotka (Arctic Siberia). We combined multiple sediment biogeochemical and sedimentological parameters from a radiocarbon-dated 6.5 m sediment core with lake basin hydroacoustic data to derive sediment stratigraphy, sediment volumes and infill budgets. Our results distinguished three principal sediment and carbon accumulation regimes that could be identified across all measured environmental proxies including early Marine Isotope Stage 2 (MIS2) (ca. 29–23.4 ka cal BP), mid-MIS2–early MIS1 (ca. 23.4–11.69 ka cal BP) and the Holocene (ca. 11.69–present). Estimated organic carbon accumulation rates (OCARs) were higher within Holocene sediments (average 3.53 g OC m -2 a -1) than Pleistocene sediments (average 1.08 g OC m -2 a -1) and are similar to those calculated for boreal lakes from Quebec and Finland and Lake Baikal but significantly lower than Siberian thermokarst lakes and Alberta glacial lakes. Using a bootstrapping approach, we estimated the total organic carbon pool to be 0.26 ± 0.02 Mt and a total sediment pool of 25.7 ± 1.71 Mt within a hydroacoustically derived sediment volume of ca. 32 990 557 m 3. The total organic carbon pool is substantially smaller than Alaskan yedoma, thermokarst lake sediments and Alberta glacial lakes but shares similarities with Finnish boreal lakes. Temporal variability in sediment and carbon accumulation dynamics at Lake Rauchuagytgyn is controlled predominantly by palaeoclimate variation that regulates lake ice-cover dynamics and catchment glacial, fluvial and permafrost processes through time. These processes, in turn, affect catchment and within-lake primary productivity as well as catchment soil development. Spatial differences compared to other lake systems at a trans-regional scale likely relate to the high-latitude, mountainous location of Lake Rauchuagytgyn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A career-planning unit was implemented into the Grade 7 Alberta science curriculum at a rural school in southern Alberta. This paper contains nine lessons wherein career-themed topics have been incorporated into the Grade 7 science curriculum. The study examines students' opinions of the effectiveness of the unit's activities in regards to increasing their career awareness and career-planning skills. On average, 92 per cent of students rated the activities as either good or great; 54 per cent stated the unit helped them learn a lot about themselves; 80 per cent reported the unit helped them learn a lot about careers; 73 per cent noted the unit made them excited about what they could do with their lives; and 59 per cent indicated the unit made them want to learn more about careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) experience significant angina symptoms and lifestyle changes. Revascularization procedures can result in better patient-reported outcomes (PROs) than optimal medical therapy (OMT) alone. This study evaluates the impact of response shift (RS) on changes in PROs of patients with CAD across treatment strategies., Methods: Data were from patients with CAD in the Alberta Provincial Project on Outcome Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH) registry who completed the 16-item Canadian version of the Seattle Angina Questionnaire at 2 weeks and 1 year following a coronary angiogram. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) was used to assess measurement invariance across treatment groups at week 2. Longitudinal MG-CFA was used to test for RS according to receipt of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), or optimal medical therapy (OMT) alone., Results: Of the 3116 patients included in the analysis, 443 (14.2%) received CABG, 2049(65.8%) PCI, and the remainder OMT alone. The MG-CFA revealed a partial-strong invariance across the treatment groups at 2 weeks (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA [90% CI] = 0.05 [0.03, 0.06]). Recalibration RS was detected on the Angina Symptoms and Burden subscale and its magnitude in the OMT, PCI, and CABG groups were 0.32, 0.28, and 0.53, respectively. After adjusting for RS effects, the estimated target changes were largest in the CABG group and negligible in the OMT group., Conclusion: Adjusting for RS is recommended in studies that use SAQ-CAN to assess changes in patients with CAD who have received revascularization versus OMT alone., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Purpose: Unsupervised item-response theory (IRT) models such as polytomous IRT based on recursive partitioning (IRTrees) and mixture IRT (MixIRT) models can be used to assess differential item functioning (DIF) in patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) when the covariates associated with DIF are unknown a priori. This study examines the consistency of results for IRTrees and MixIRT models., Methods: Data were from 4478 individuals in the Alberta Provincial Project on Outcome Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease registry who received cardiac angiography in Alberta, Canada, and completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) depression subscale items. The partial credit model (PCM) based on recursive partitioning (PCTree) and mixture PCM (MixPCM) were used to identify covariates associated with differential response patterns to HADS depression subscale items. Model covariates included demographic and clinical characteristics., Results: The median (interquartile range) age was 64.5(15.7) years, and 3522(78.5%) patients were male. The PCTree identified 4 terminal nodes (subgroups) defined by smoking status, age, and body mass index. A 3-class PCM fits the data well. The MixPCM latent classes were defined by age, disease indication, smoking status, comorbid diabetes, congestive heart failure, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease., Conclusion: PCTree and MixPCM were not consistent in detecting covariates associated with differential interpretations of PROM items. Future research will use computer simulations to assess these models' Type I error and statistical power for identifying covariates associated with DIF., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Details matter, especially when they can influence whether users engage with a new digital initiative that relies heavily on their support. During the recent development of MacEwan University's institutional repository, the librarians leading the project wanted to ensure the site would offer users an easy and effective way to deposit their works, in turn helping to ensure the repository's long-term viability. The following paper discusses their approach to user-testing, applying Dan Saffer's framework of microinteractions to how faculty members experienced the repository's self-archiving functionality. It outlines the steps taken to test and refine the self-archiving process, shedding light on how others may apply the concept of microinteractions to better understand a website's utility and the overall user experience that it delivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The oil sands (OS) of Alberta, Canada, which are classified as unconventional oil, are the third-largest oil reserves in the world. We describe here a 6-year effort to improve the emissions data used for air quality (AQ) modeling of the roughly 100 km×100 km oil extraction and processing industrial complex operating in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region (AOSR) of northeastern Alberta. This paper reviews the national, provincial, and sub-provincial emissions inventories that were available during the three phases of the study, supplemented by hourly SO2 and NOx emissions and stack characteristics for larger point sources measured by a continuous emission monitoring system (CEMS), as well as daily reports of SO2 from one AOSR facility for a 1-week period during a 2013 field campaign when the facility experienced upset conditions. Next it describes the creation of several detailed hybrid emissions inventories and the generation of model-ready emissions input files for the Global Environmental Multiscale-Modelling Air quality and CHemistry (GEM-MACH) AQ modeling system that were used during the 2013 field study and for various postcampaign GEM-MACH sensitivity studies, in particular for a high-resolution model domain with 2.5 km grid spacing covering much of western Canada and centered over the AOSR. Lastly, it compares inventory-based bottom-up emissions with aircraft-observation-based top-down emissions estimates. Results show that emissions values obtained from different data sources can differ significantly, such as a possible 10-fold difference in PM2.5 emissions and approximately 40 and 20% differences for total VOC (volatile organic compound) and SO2 emissions. A novel emissions-processing approach was also employed to allocate emissions spatially within six large AOSR mining facilities in order to address the urban-scale spatial extent of the facilities and the highresolution 2.5 km model grid. Gridded facility- and processspecific spatial surrogate fields that were generated using spatial information from GIS (geographic information system) shapefiles and satellite images were used to allocate non-smokestack emissions for each facility to multiple grid cells instead of treating these emissions as point sources and allocating them to a single grid cell as is normally done. Facility- and process-specific temporal profiles and VOC speciation profiles were also developed. The pre-2013 vegetation and land-use databases normally used to estimate biogenic emissions and meteorological surface properties were modified to account for the rapid change in land use in the study area due to marked, year-by-year changes in surface mining activities, including the 2013 opening of a new mine. Lastly, mercury emissions data were also processed in addition to the seven criteria-air-contaminant (CAC) species (NOx , VOC, SO2, NH3, CO, PM2.5, and PM10) to support AOSR mercury modeling activities. Six GEM-MACH modeling papers in this special issue used some of these new sets of emissions and land-use input files. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate and reliable short-term forecasts of influenza-like illness (ILI) visit volumes at emergency departments can improve staffing and resource allocation decisions within hospitals. In this paper, we developed a stacked ensemble model that averages the predictions from various competing methodologies in the current frontier for ILI-related forecasts. We also constructed a back-of-the-envelope prediction interval for the stacked ensemble, which provides a conservative characterization of the uncertainty in the stacked ensemble predictions. We assessed the accuracy and reliability of our model with 1 to 4 weeks ahead forecast targets using real-time hospital-level data on weekly ILI visit volumes during the 2012-2018 flu seasons in the Alberta Children's Hospital, located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Our results suggest the forecasting performance of the stacked ensemble meets or exceeds the performance of the individual models over all forecast targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Montney tight siltstone reservoir is a multi-stacked play, which covers a total area of 130,000 km2 along the Alberta–British Columbia border in Western Canada. Since the late 1990s, different fracturing methods and fluids have been tested in 4000-plus Montney wells to find the optimal fracturing method and fluid. The previous studies reviewing the performance of fracturing methods in Montney do not represent a holistic evaluation of these methods, owing to some limitations, including: (1) using a small sample size, (2) having a limited scope by focusing on a specific aspect of fracturing (method/fluid), (3) relying on data analytics approaches that offer limited subsurface insight, and (4) generating misleading results (e.g., on optimum fracturing method/fluid) through using disparate data that are unstructured and untrustworthy as a result of significant regional variations in true vertical depth (TVD), geological properties, fluid windows, completed lateral length, fracturing method/fluid/date, and drawdown rate management and choke size strategy. The present study eliminates these limitations by rigorously clustering 4000-plus Montney wells based on the TVD, fluid window, completed lateral length, fracturing method/fluid/date, and drawdown rate strategy to isolate the effect of each fracturing method by comparing each well's production to that of its offsets, which use different fracturing methods but possess similar geology, fluid window, and TVD. With similar TVD, fracturing fluid, and completion date, wells completed with pinpoint fracturing method outperform their offsets completed with ball-and-seat and plug-and-perforate (PnP) fracturing methods. However, wells completed with ball-and-seat and PnP methods that outperform their offset pinpoint wells have either: (1) been fractured one to four years earlier than the pinpoint wells and/or (2) used energized oil-based fluid, hybrid fluid, and energized slickwater versus slickwater used in the pinpoint offsets. This suggests that the water-phase trapping is more severe in these pinpoint wells attributable to the use of slickwater. Previous studies often favored one specific fracturing method or fluid without highlighting these complex interplays between the type of fracturing method, fracturing fluid, completion date (regional depletion or well vintage), and the reservoir properties and hydrodynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Established in 1907, Jasper National Park (JNP) comprises 10,880 km2 of mountainous terrain in western Alberta, Canada. Its large mammals have been protected from hunting and trapping, but are subject to accidental collisions with vehicles and trains on the Yellowhead Highway and the Canadian National Railway (CNR) that transect JNP. This paper reviews the park's historical inventory of Elk (Cervus elaphus), Bighorn Sheep (Ovis Canadensis), and Gray Wolves (Canis lupus), and reports on their number killed by vehicles and trains from 1980 to 2018. Elk population estimates declined from 1000 in 1975 to 318 in 2018. An aerial survey of Bighorn Sheep flown in 2018 over all of JNPs sheep range recorded a decline of 58–62% compared to 1987. In the lower main valley, discrete bands of rams and ewes declined on 2 traditional winter ranges. The road and rail fatalities of Elk and sheep were superimposed on predation. In the late 1970s, wolves were estimated at 160, but reached an undetermined low in 2018 following year-round trapping on JNPs boundaries and accidental fatalities on the park's roads and railways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methane emission quantification from gas migration (GM) and surface casing vent flow (SCVF) is needed to support strategic methane reduction targets and mitigate explosion and groundwater quality risks. This paper assessed which of 451 990 Alberta oil and gas wells should have been (or will be) tested for SCVF and/or GM according to regulations, and compared the results with the provincial GM testing database. As of 2017, GM testing was required on 3.5%, and reported for 0.75%, of Alberta's energy wells. Similarly, SCVF testing was required on 58.2%, and reported for 6.2%, of all wells. An estimated 14.5% of all wells were legally abandoned before GM and SCVF testing regulations existed. All of the remaining wells will require SCVF testing prior to legal abandonment, and an estimated 32.9% to 75.5% of the total will not require GM testing before abandonment based on current regulations. The cumulative number of 'serious' GM reports that have remained open since submission has continuously been increasing each year, which contradicts the requirement for repair within 90 days, suggesting regulations are not enforced. The GM testing procedure is inadequate for quantitative testing. We conclude that fugitive methane emissions, and in particular gas migration, are not well constrained in Alberta. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Failures in governance can jeopardize the responsibility of regulatory authorities to protect the public. Since governments set mandates for regulatory authorities under their jurisdiction, it's up to the former to mitigate the risk with effective oversight and legislation. Effective oversight should be founded on the five core principles of good governance: accountability, leadership, integrity, stewardship and transparency. In practice, regulatory authorities need leadership, ethics and a culture committed to good governance. They need strong relationships with stakeholders, effective risk management, both internal and external compliance and ongoing monitoring, evaluation and support. Unfortunately, jurisdictions do not always follow these principles and practices. As an example, several agencies found that the Alberta Energy Regulator, significantly exceeded its mandate in establishing an affiliated consultancy. Controls and processes to protect against conflicts of interest failed, while board oversight and AER leadership did not create a healthy corporate culture and the CEO grossly mismanaged public funds and assets. The results of three investigations into the AER led to new processes for board and CEO accountability, improved staff relations, retraining, closer watch of executive expenses, and improved channels of communication between the CEO and board and the board with government. Above all, the government of Alberta learned that when pursuing new and innovative activities, it must carefully define mandates; and that effective whistleblowing processes are vital to uncovering misdeeds. While the investigations focused on wrongdoing at the top, this paper identifies three other areas of concern. First, there is a lack of co-operation among regulatory agencies. Second, Self-Regulating Professional Organizations (SRPOs) are often reluctant to engage on issues involving licensed corporate entities or professionals. Third, members often see SRPOs as clubs rather than regulators. These flaws are evident in the AER's case. Anywhere from 10-50 individuals were involved, directly or indirectly, in wrongdoing -- including public servants, licensed professionals and members of quasi-regulatory associations or societies. Many of these people were professionals bound by clear codes of conduct, but these professionals did not approach this respective SRPOs with complaints about inappropriate behaviours at their employer. To ensure regulatory bodies stay within their mandates, governments should define the limits of allowable activities and use open, competitive recruitment processes to find competent leaders. They should also consider appointing respected members of the relevant stakeholder community to the selection panel. Governments must also establish competency and experience criteria for board members and the board chair to guarantee in-depth knowledge and avoid conflicts of interest; and back this up with transparent annual reports to government and the public. Boards and governments should establish equally strict criteria for choosing a regulatory body's CEO, with an emphasis on exceptional leadership skills, openness to performance assessment and knowledge of risk management. These are crucial steps if governments are to maintain public trust and confidence in regulatory agencies. Similar accountabilities should apply to agency employees who are members of SRPOs; they should be ready to seek guidance from SRPOs if faced with possible ethical breaches. Proper governance principles and best practices should be at the heart of every regulatory agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the design and implementation of the Alberta Healthy Youth Relationships (AHYR) Strategy. The AHYR is a province-wide practice and policy change initiative in Alberta, Canada, that aims to prevent intimate partner violence by promoting service provider and systems capacity to support healthy relationships in adolescence and beyond. Developed in 2012 within a broader initiative called Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence, the design of the AHYR began with work with provincial policy-makers, in order to create a policy climate that championed primary prevention practice. This policy climate subsequently supported the province-wide implementation of three evidence-based/evidence-informed programs that focus on building the skills and capacities required for healthy youth relationships. Through these programs, the AHYR has reached over 62,000 youth in grades 7-9, 900 teachers, 850 parents, and 1300 adults that work with youth across the province. In addition to these three programs, the AHYR also works with larger systems (e.g., policymakers, local funders, post-secondary institutions) to advance primary prevention practice. In this paper, we describe how the AHYR contributed to a culture of intimate partner violence prevention practice in the province by improving the readiness of funders and system leaders, community organizations, and practitioners to support healthy relationships best practices. We also describe how we used process evaluation to explore the potential for practice change and to inform the design of the next iteration of the AHYR. The article concludes with implications for other researchers and practitioners aiming to build a culture of intimate partner violence prevention practice within their province or state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid combustion of fossil fuels in huge quantities resulted in the enormous release of CO2 in the atmosphere. Subsequently, leading to the greenhouse gas effect and climate change and contemporarily, quest and usage of fossil fuels has increased dramatically in recent times. The only solution to resolve the problem of CO2 emissions to the atmosphere is geological/subsurface storage of carbon dioxide or carbon capture and storage (CCS). Additionally, CO2 can be employed in the oil and gas fields for enhanced oil recovery operations and this cyclic form of the carbon dioxide injection into reservoirs for recovering oil and gas is known as CO2 Enhanced Oil and Gas Recovery (EOGR). Hence, this paper presents the CO2 retention dominance in tight oil and gas reservoirs in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) of the Alberta Province, Canada. Actually, hysteresis modeling was applied in the oil and gas reservoirs of WCSB for sequestering or trapping CO2 and EOR as well. Totally, four cases were taken for the investigation, such as WCSB Alberta tight oil and gas reservoirs with CO2 huff-n-puff and flooding processes. Actually, Canada has complex geology and therefore, implicate that it can serve as a promising candidate that is suitable and safer place for CO2 storage. Furthermore, injection pressure, time, rate (mass), number of cycles, soaking time, fracture half-length, conductivity, porosity, permeability, and initial reservoir pressure were taken as input parameters and cumulative oil production and oil recovery factor are the output parameters, this is mainly for tight oil reservoirs. In the tight gas reservoirs, only the output parameters differ from the oil reservoir, such as cumulative gas production and gas recovery factor. Reservoirs were modelled to operate for 30 years of oil and gas production and the factor year was designated as decision-making unit (DMU). CO2 retention was estimated in all four models and overall the gas retention in four cases showed a near sinusoidal behavior and the variations are sporadic. More than 80% CO2 retention in these tight formations were achieved and the major influencing factors that govern the CO2 storage in these tight reservoirs are injection pressure, time, mass, number of cycles, and soaking time. In general, the subsurface geology of the Canada is very complex consisting with many structural and stratigraphic layers and thus, it offers safe location for CO2 storage through retention mechanism and increasing the efficiency and reliability of oil and gas extraction from these complicated subsurface formations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Police understandings of honour-based crimes (HBCs) and forced marriages (FMs) vary in terms of an individual officer's level of expertise, knowledge, and experience in handling such situations. This study applied constructivist grounded theory approaches to analyze individual interviews with 32 police officers and 14 civilians in police agencies operating in urban and rural settings in Alberta, Canada. Specifically, this paper seeks to answer how police officers and civilians who work in police agencies experience, make sense of, and understand HBCs. Participants received a hypothetical vignette about a young woman who had reached out to the police. The vignette illustrated various forms of abuse by the woman's father, the involvement of other actors (mother, brother, family friend) and the culmination in an FM. After reading the vignette, participants were asked to respond to six questions. Analysis revealed that both police and civilians recognized the need in the vignette scenario for intervention, while experiencing uncertainty about how to respond. The findings showed that not everyone in policing would be able to identify reliably the need for police intervention, and that investigations could proceed differently depending on the investigator's level of knowledge and awareness of HBCs and FMs. Police have achieved some successful interventions, but still lack sufficient guidance on how to respond to these crimes. Clear, appropriate policies regarding which cases need to be directed to specialized domestic violence units for follow-up are needed. A significant finding points to the importance of considering cultural sensitivity discourses as well as the impact of cultural and racist stereotypes when responding to situations like the one outlined in the vignette. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining an up-to-date repository of horizontal curve attributes is extremely important due to the role curves play in the safe operation of highways. Such attributes are typically collected using traditional surveying techniques which have been shown to be time-consuming, traffic disruptive, and potentially unsafe methods. This burden is further aggravated when the data collection is required on a large highway network across North America. To overcome this burden, this paper proposes a framework for network-level detection and extraction of horizontal curve elements from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data in a fully automated manner. The proposed technique was validated and then tested on LiDAR data collected on 242 km of highways in Alberta, Canada. The algorithm was successful in detecting all curves on the test highways and estimated their attributes with accuracies ranging from 96% to 100% demonstrating the robustness of the extraction method and the feasibility of performing the extraction on such a large scale. The proposed method is an alternative approach that could help transportation agencies maintain an updated inventory of horizontal alignment information on a large-scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been an engineering practice that highway agencies collect traffic data using highway traffic monitoring techniques such as permanent traffic counts (PTCs) and weigh in motion (WIM). This research used the WIM traffic data collected for 6 years from one of six WIM sites installed and operated in the Alberta provincial highway network to develop a winter weather dummy variable model. Five other sites were used for a spatial transferability test of the estimated model. Few past studies have tested empirically whether a winter weather model developed for one site can be transferred spatially to other locations. A goal of this paper is to develop a winter weather dummy variable model using winter season traffic and weather data and then test its spatial transferability by applying the model to other geographically dispersed locations. A total of 16,746,310 vehicular records collected for 6 years spanning from 2005 to 2010 at a WIM site on a commuter road near the City of Leduc, Alberta, Canada, were used to calibrate a model. Three vehicle classes such as total traffic, passenger cars, and truck traffic were classified from raw WIM data and used for model development. Using four types of model structures differentiated from the initially developed model for each vehicle class, this research performed spatial transferability. This research shows that the developed dummy variable model can be successfully spatially transferred to the other five WIM sites. More accurate traffic estimates can be made during winter seasons by using other model structures for each vehicle type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We apply ERGM using Bayesian techniques to a large multilevel criminal network. • Collaboration across organised criminal groups depends on illicit market overlap. • In general, market overlap between groups makes collaboration less likely. • Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs are more likely to collaborate when their markets overlap. Collaboration between members of different criminal groups is an important feature of crime that is considered organised, as it allows criminals to access resources and skills in order to exploit illicit economic opportunities. Collaboration across criminal groups is also difficult and risky due to the lack of institutions supporting peaceful cooperation in illicit markets. Thus cross-group collaboration has been thought to take place mostly among small and transient groups. This paper determines whether and under what conditions members of different, larger organised crime groups collaborate with one another. To do so we use intelligence data from the Canadian province of Alberta, centering on criminals and criminal groups engaged in multiple crime types in multiple geographic locations. We apply a multilevel network analytical framework and exponential random graph models using Bayesian techniques to uncover the determinants of cross-group criminal collaboration. We find cross-group collaboration depends not only on co-location, but also on the types of groups to which the criminals are affiliated, and on illicit market overlap between groups. When groups are operating in the same geographically-situated illicit markets their members tend not to collaborate with one another, providing evidence for the difficulty or undesirability of cross-group collaboration in illicit markets. Conversely, members of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs are more likely to collaborate across groups when markets overlap, suggesting the superior capacity and motivation of biker gangs to coordinate criminal activity. Our paper contributes to the understanding of criminal networks as complex, emergent, and spatially embedded market phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper was the development of surface organic layer severity maps for the 2014 and 2015 fires in the Great Slave Lake area of the Northwest Territories and Alberta, Canada, using multiple linear regression models generated from pairing field data with Landsat 8 data. Field severity data were collected at 90 sites across the region, together with other site metrics, in order to develop a mapping approach for surface severity, an important metric for assessing carbon loss from fire. The approach utilised a combination of remote sensing indices to build a predictive model of severity that was applied within burn perimeters. Separate models were created for burns in the Shield and Plain ecoregions using spectral data from Landsat 8. The final Shield and Plain models resulted in estimates of surface severity with 0.74 variance explained (R 2) for the Plain ecoregions and 0.67 for the Shield. The 2014 fires in the Plain ecoregion were more severe than the 2015 fires and fires in both years in the Shield ecoregion. In further analysis of the field data, an assessment of relationships between surface severity and other site-level severity metrics found mixed results. Surface organic layer severity, a gauge of carbon loss from fire, was reliably modelled with a multiple linear regression approach using Landsat 8 data for predicting fire's effect on organic soil. The 2014 fires in the Plain ecoregion were more severe than the 2015 fires and all fires in the Shield ecoregion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper describes the results of an emergency recording and archiving of a historic structure in Southern Alberta and explores the lessons learned. Digital recording of the Quon Sang Lung Laundry building in Fort Macleod, Alberta, was a joint initiative between Alberta Culture and Tourism and the University of Calgary. The Quon Sang Lung Laundry was a boomtown-style wood structure situated in the Fort Macleod Provincial Historic Area, Alberta. Built in the mid-1800s, the structure was one of the four buildings comprising Fort Macleod's Chinatown. Its association with Chinese immigration, settlement and emergence of Chinese-owned businesses in early twentieth-century Alberta, made the Quon Sang Lung Laundry a unique and very significant historic resource. In recent years, a condition assessment of the structure indicated that the building was not safe and that the extent of the instability could lead to a sudden collapse. In response, Alberta Culture and Tourism engaged the Departments of Anthropology and Archaeology and Geomatics Engineering from the University of Calgary, to digitally preserve the laundry building. A complete survey including the laser scanning of all the remaining elements of the original structure, was undertaken. Through digital modeling, the work guarantees that a three-dimensional representation of the building is available for future use. This includes accurate 3D renders of the exterior and interior spaces and a collection of architectural drawings comprising floor plans, sections, and elevations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alberta's current NDP government has multiple money problems. Some of those problems arose as a result of the drop in oil prices; others arose because of spending choices the government made. Either way, a course correction is necessary. Otherwise, the burden from this government's building up of debt will be unfairly shifted to the shoulders of future Albertans. This paper examines various measures the government can, and should, employ in both the short and long term to better align spending and revenue. The NDP's spending choices appear to be based on the precarious assumption that a rebound in oil prices will heal what ails the Alberta economy, as well as on the refusal to significantly reduce spending with almost zero attempt to contain costs. The NDP bases its choices on a black-and-white scenario of either spending or imposing austerity and drastic cutbacks. However, there is a middle ground that would allow the government to maintain services without the quality of those services suffering. These include moderating public sector wages, engaging in better procurement practices, lowering administrative costs, and delivering services and programs more effectively. Alberta is a big spender on health care, but the government could learn much from what other provinces are doing that enables them to spend less while still delivering quality health care. Alberta's 2017 budget projects deficits of $10.3 billion this fiscal year, dropping to $7.2 billion by 2019-2020, and offers no concrete budget-balancing plan. Credit-rating agencies such as Moody's see danger in the NDP budget of a speedily increasing debt burden, long-term deficits and growth in spending that is above inflation levels. The government's projected rise in oil prices, on which it is depending to stabilize the economy, is also considered to be far too rosy. There are ways out of the gloom. For example, by reducing raises for all public sector workers, unionized or not, the province could save $1.5 billion over three years. Emulating Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia by applying the brakes to runaway infrastructure spending would save $4.6 billion over the next three years. Public programs and services can be restructured, as has been done in other provinces, to make them more efficient and effective and administrative and procurement costs can be reduced. Reducing Alberta's per capita spending levels to those akin to levels in other large provinces would eventually yield annual savings of $6.6 billion. Economic growth won't come from poorly thought-out spending; rather, it will evolve from the creation of a more positive climate for investment. The NDP's carbon tax and its emphasis on more heavily taxing higher income earners do nothing to promote economic growth that could shore up government revenue. Tax reform is key: less economically damaging taxes would improve growth prospects and help close the deficit. Use of the carbon tax should address competitiveness issues through deregulation and cutting business taxes. And for the long term, the government needs a solid plan to balance the budget with specific annual deficit targets. Common sense, moderation in many things and a firm hand on the fiscal reins will go far towards righting this dangerously listing ship, but the NDP government has to be bold enough to take the initiative. Unrestrained spending is not the answer to any economic predicament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering is the property of Canadian Science Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This special issue reports on some of the results of a multi-disciplinary research program conducted in the Boreal Plains of northwest Alberta and northeast British Columbia. Several innovative approaches to conducting geoscientific research in this remote drift-covered region are presented, including geochemical analysis of bentonites for evaluating kimberlite potential, the use of electromagnetic surveys for mapping buried aggregate deposits, and paleo-topographic mapping techniques to define buried channels. Results of the program include the discovery of several large aggregate deposits, the first kimberlite indicator minerals in northeast British Columbia, a significant sphalerite dispersal train in northwest Alberta, the first documented report of kimberlite-sourced bentonites, and numerous previously unknown interglacial sites. Together these papers provide a greatly enhanced understanding of the glacial history, Quaternary stratigraphy, and kimberlite geology of northwest Alberta and northeast British Columbia and provide an improved framework for resource exploration in the region. Ce numéro spécial fait le point sur quelques résultats d’un programme de recherche multidisciplinaire effectué dans les plaines boréales du nord-ouest de l’Alberta et du nord-est de la Colombie-Britannique. Plusieurs approches innovatrices de recherche géoscientifique dans cette région éloignée recouverte de sédiments glaciaires sont présentées, incluant l’analyse géochimique des bentonites pour l’évaluation du potentiel kimberlitique, l’utilisation de relevés électromagnétiques pour cartographier des dépôts enfouis d’agrégats et des techniques de cartographie paléotopographique dans le but de définir des chenaux enfouis. Les résultats du programme comprennent la découverte de plusieurs grands dépôts d’agrégats, des premiers minéraux indicateurs de kimberlite dans le nord-est de la Colombie-Britannique, une traînée importante de dispersion glaciaire de sphalérite dans le nord-ouest de l’Alberta, la première documentation de bentonites dont la source est une kimberlite et de nombreux sites interglaciaires inconnus à ce jour. Ensemble, ces articles fournissent une bien meilleure compréhension de l’historique glaciaire, de la stratigraphie du Quaternaire et de la géologie des kimberlites dans le nord-ouest de l’Alberta et le nord-est de la Colombie-Britannique; ils fournissent aussi un meilleur encadrement d’exploration pour les ressources dans cette région. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses high-order categorical non-stationary Markov chains to model the occurrence of extreme temperature events, in particular frost days. These models can be applied to estimate: the probability that a given day in the future is a frost day (below zero); the probability that a given period is frost-free; the distribution of the length of the frost-free period. These quantities then can be used for pricing of weather derivatives. Several stationary and non-stationary high-order (yet parsimonious) Markov models are proposed and compared using AIC and BIC. Partial likelihood theory is used to estimate the parameters of these models. We show that optimal (in terms of AIC/ BIC) non-stationary Markov models that have constant 'Markov coefficients' (across the year) are not adequate to estimate the aforementioned probabilities. Therefore this paper develops Markov models with a time-varying periodic structure across the year. A challenge in fitting these models (by maximizing the partial likelihood) is the large number of parameters. The paper presents a method for overcoming this challenge; one that uses parametric fits to the logit of the nonparametric estimates of the seasonal transition probability curves to initialize the optim function in the R package. Satisfactory results are shown to obtain from this approach. The work is applied to temperature records for the Province of Alberta, Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Athabasca oil sands development in northeast Alberta, Canada, has disturbed more than 500 km2 of boreal forest through surface mining and tailings ponds development. In this paper, the authors compare the time series of temperatures and precipitation measured over oil sands and non-oil sands locations from 1994 to 2010. In addition, they analyzed the distribution of lightning strikes from 1999 to 2010. The oil sands development has not affected the number of lightning strikes or precipitation amounts but has affected the temperature regime. Over the past 17 years, the summer overnight minimum temperatures near the oil sands have increased by about 1.2°C compared to the regional average. The authors speculate that this is caused by a combination of the industrial addition of waste heat to the atmosphere above the oil sands and changing the surface type from boreal forest to open pit mines with tailings ponds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the 37th annual meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy (SEP) held in Edmonton, Alberta in 2009 which was organized by Bernard Linsky and F. Jeffrey Pelletier. According to the article, the Society consists mainly of American and Canadian academics in computer science, philosophy, and linguistics. It cites papers presented at the 2009 SEP meeting including "Disjunctive Effects," by Roberta Ballarin and "Visibility Logic," by Adam Morton.

African immigrant children and youth have some of the poorest social and mental health outcomes in Canada. Although parenting challenges have been widely documented as a key driver of these outcomes, limited systematic research has investigated this phenomenon. In this paper, we report the results of a study examining parenting challenges among a sample of African immigrant parents in Alberta, Canada. We relied on the theoretical lens of transnationalism to collect and analyse data from a purposive sample of African community leaders (n = 14), African immigrant parents (n = 32), and a range of stakeholders (n = 30). Our thematic data analysis revealed several intricately intertwined parenting challenges, organized around six overarching themes, namely, cultural incompatibility, family tension, state interference, limited social supports, poor access to services, and low socioeconomic status. We present these themes and the policy and service implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematical programming models of farmers' cropping decisions must first be calibrated before they can be used to examine agricultural producer responses to policy changes. In this paper, we compare three calibration approaches for disentangling the risk parameter from the parameters of the cost function: one assumes a logarithmic utility function, while the others employ an exponential utility function. Historical crop insurance data for southern Alberta, Canada, are used to assess the calibration performance of the three approaches, and sensitivity analysis is implemented to test whether the changes in the optimal land allocation caused by the changes in the values of the parameters are practically reasonable. Only one of the three models is of practical use for policy analysis because it can recover the true values of the parameters and the results of sensitivity analysis are reasonable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]