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International trade is often viewed as environmentally unproblematic, even beneficial. This article challenges this view, using new trade data from the Food and Agriculture Organization to document inefficiencies in global food trade and to question the prioritization of economics over environment. It can be difficult to identify the effects of macro-level phenomena, such as trade agreements and climate change, on people’s lives at the micro-level. This article uses qualitative research conducted with farm women in the Canadian prairies to illustrate the intersection of policy, climate change, and their gendered effects in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study on the capacity of biocompatible coatings to attenuate the effects of cardiopulmonary bypass. It notes that biocompatible circuits (BCC) are designed to decrease blood activation to the artificial cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) surface. The study concludes that BCC, though not harmful, are ineffective in preserving tromboelastography (TEG).

Past aeolian activity was reconstructed at four dunefields in the prairie parkland and boreal forest of central Saskatchewan to elucidate landscape response to environmental change. Optical ages from stabilized dunes in the boreal transition ecoregion indicate two episodes of activity. The first, at about 11 ka, corresponds to a period of early-Holocene parkland and grassland cover following deglaciation and drainage after about 13.0 ka, and brief establishment of boreal forest. The second, between about 7.5 and 5 ka, corresponds to a period of mid-Holocene parkland–grassland cover. Optical ages from dunefields in the prairie parkland primarily record mid-Holocene activity, between about 7.5 and 4.7 ka, corresponding to a period of grassland cover, with some reworking continuing into the late Holocene. Although this area was deglaciated by about 13.5 ka, there is no evidence of early-Holocene dune activity, suggesting that mid-Holocene activity may have reworked earlier deposits here. Consequently, much of the morphology and stratigraphy observed in these dunefields are associated with mid-Holocene activity, likely associated with increased aridity and reduced vegetation cover at that time. This study provides the most northerly evidence of mid-Holocene dune reactivation on the Great Plains, lending support to the assertion that aeolian activity was widespread at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a perspective on the public policy issues concerning health care reforms and public health administration in Canada and discusses how the Canadian health system evolved in Saskatchewan. A number of principles govern the Canadian health system. Several innovations are being made in Saskatchewan which are dedicated to health care reform.

Clearwater Lake, Saskatchewan, is a relatively shallow, topographically closed, perennial lake centrally located in the Palliser Triangle region of western Canada. Despite its present-day small size, Clearwater Lake is one of only a few lacustrine basins in this vast 400 000 km 2 region of the northern Great Plains whose stratigraphic record extends to the early Holocene. Multiple proxy indicators are used to interpret the early-Holocene limnologic and hydrologic conditions in the basin. Changes in solute chemistry and concentration are reflected by siliceous microfossils and the endogenic and authigenic mineralogy of the sediment. The diatoms also provide evidence of fluctuations in water depth and water column stratification. Plant macrofossil assemblages, sediment texture and bedding features, and detrital mineralogy help to reconstruct drainage basin conditions and water level changes. Stable O- and C- isotopic composition of inorganically precipitated, endogenic carbonate minerals provide insight into the hydrologic budget of the basin and the residence time of the water. An early-Holocene shallow, clastic-dominated, freshwater lake, probably surrounded by boreal forest type vegetation, was followed by a mesosaline to hypersaline phase between 9800 and 8600 BP. A fresh to hyposaline lake with an open basin hydrology returned after 8600 BP and persisted until at least 6600 BP except for a short episode of higher salinity, closed-basin evaporitic conditions about 8200–7700 BP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]