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The official narratives that Canada tells itself about its history and identity facilitate the contemporary exercise of power, determining who is to be regarded as fully belonging and who is alien. While race is excised from these national narratives, it has in fact been central to the formation of Canadian nationhood. The image of the respectable, peaceful, multiculturalism-loving Canadian citizen, descendant of the two founding nations, France and Britain, goes hand in hand with its opposites: the Indigenous ‘Indian’, the Black, the immigrant newcomer and the refugee. This article examines the historical and contemporary variants of these images and the narratives constructed around them, arguing that Canada’s history of colonial violence, slavery and racism has been marginalised through their circulation, and that their continued invocation in public debates on crime, terrorism and immigration is a crucial factor in the perpetuation of racial exclusion. The particular ways in which Québec has conceived its relationship to English Canada add an interesting dimension to this discussion: in the 1960s, Quebecers saw in the political struggles of Africans and African Americans a metaphor for their own identity. But Québec’s own version of a founding national narrative is a tale of innocence and victimhood that conveniently omits the colonisation of Indigenous peoples, the practice of slavery and racial exclusion.

Drug-eluting stent (DES) use has increased greatly as a result of early trial evidence of a reduction in restenosis. However, thet are expensive and do not improve patient survival. Therefore their use has been rationed in some countries. There is a paucity of clinical evidence for some patient groups such as non-ST elevation myocardial infarction and multi-vessel disease. Recent studies suggest that the early benefits of drug-eluting stents may be offset by an increased risk in late stent thrombosis which is a potentially fatal complication. However, the absolute risk appears low and, as yet, there is no evidence of an increased risk of stent-thrombosis related myocardial infarction or death in patients studied in randomised clinical trials. Long-term use of anti-platelet therapy may protect against the risk of late stent thrombosis but the optimal treatment strategy is currently unclear. The aim of this paper is to provide an up-to-date review of the current evidence on DES; including clinical effectiveness, the limitations of existing trials, the emerging evidence on late stent thrombosis and the potential role of clopidogrel.

In this wide-ranging interview, the renowned development economist Kari Polanyi Levitt reflects on the nature of social transformation in the English-speaking Caribbean and the cultural conditions that would facilitate it. Describing her long-standing collaboration with Lloyd Best and the innovative work on Caribbean economies that they undertook, she indicates both the continuities with the past and the more recent obstacles to the achievement of social and economic justice thrown up by globalisation. In this, she shows how concepts and understanding of what development means have shifted, from a process that, despite shortcomings, entailed some notion of public betterment to one in which the dictates of neoliberalism are paramount — with disastrous social effects.

A new hybrid dynamic controller synthesis methodology for the successful convergence of force-controlled assembly tasks with friction is presented. Hybrid dynamic modeling has been shown to be a very effective strategy to incorporate both the continuous-time and discrete-event natures of an assembly task. Previously, hybrid dynamic controllers have used velocity control. This paper develops a hybrid dynamic controller that uses force control, the accepted paradigm for constrained motion systems such as assembly tasks. Frictional forces present a significant problem for force control and cannot be neglected in the development of a controller. Constraints on the control command are developed for each type of single-contact transition, and then further constraints are developed to ensure that superposition can be used for multicontact situations. Experimental results are presented for the new controller synthesis method performing an assembly task with a 0.8 mm tolerance and requiring four degrees of freedom for completion. These experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the combination of hybrid dynamic control and force control for assembly tasks, successfully completing the assembly with positioning errors of up to 50 mm and orientation errors of up to 10 degrees.

This report on progress deals with the development of research resources within the field of social work since the 1991 report of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Task Force on social work research. This report on progress describes the NIMH investment in research development, other national research development initiatives, research dissemination, research publications, research conferences, and research development in social work education programs. Significant research domains are identified; the status of doctoral education is analyzed; and major sources of current funding for social work research are identified. A second section of the report includes a series of recommendations for future action to support future research initiatives within social work.