Assessing the Water Pollution of the Brahmaputra River Using Water Quality Indexes

Water quality is continuously affected by anthropogenic and environmental conditions. A significant issue of the Indian rivers is the massive water pollution, leading to the spreading of different diseases due to its daily use. Therefore, this study investigates three aspects. The first one is testing the hypothesis of the existence of a monotonic trend of the series of eight water parameters of the Brahmaputra River recorded for 17 years at ten hydrological stations. When this hypothesis was rejected, a loess trend was fitted. The second aspect is to assess the water quality using three indicators (WQI)–CCME WQI, British Colombia, and a weighted index. The third aspect is to group the years and the stations in clusters used to determine the regional (spatial) and temporal trend of the WQI series, utilizing a new algorithm. A statistical analysis does not reject the hypothesis of a monotonic trend presence for the spatially distributed data but not for the temporal ones. Hierarchical clustering based on the computed WQIs detected two clusters for the spatially distributed data and two for the temporal-distributed data. The procedure proposed for determining the WQI temporal and regional evolution provided good results in terms of mean absolute error, root mean squared error (RMSE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE).

Creating Effectiveness Principles for Principles-Focused Developmental Evaluations in Health-Care Initiatives: Lessons Learned from Three Cases in British Colombia

Principles-focused developmental evaluation is an emergent method of evaluation that is increasingly achieving relevance in initiatives seeking to transform health-care delivery within complex-adaptive systems. Creating meaningful eff ectiveness principles is considered a crucial first step in setting up such evaluations. In this article, we describe four practical steps that we applied in defi ning eff ectiveness principles to align with Patton’s GUIDE criteria. To illustrate our approach, this article features three principles-focused developmental evaluations implemented in British Columbia, highlighting lessons learned through the process of creating eff ectiveness principles.

Wildfire smoke in the lower stratosphere identified by in situ CO observations

Wildfires emit large quantities of aerosols and trace gases, which occasionally reach the lower stratosphere. In August 2017, several pyro-cumulonimbus events injected a large amount of smoke into the stratosphere, observed by lidar and satellites. Satellite observations are in general the main method of detecting these events since in situ aircraft- or balloon-based measurements of atmospheric composition at higher altitudes are not made frequent enough. This work presents accidental balloon-borne trace gas observations of wildfire smoke in the lower stratosphere, identified by enhanced CO mole fractions at approximately 13.6 km. In addition to CO mole fractions, CO2 mole fractions as well as isotopic composition of CO (δ13C and δ18O) have been measured in air samples collected using an AirCore and a LIghtweight Stratospheric Air sampler (LISA) flown on a weather balloon from Sodankylä (4–7 September 2017, 67.37° N, 26.63° E, 179 m a.s.l.), Finland. The greenhouse gas enhancement ratio (∆CO : ∆CO2) and the isotopic signature based on δ13C(CO) and δ18O(CO) independently identify wildfire emissions as the source of the stratospheric CO enhancement. Back-trajectory analysis, performed with the Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere (CLaMS), corrected for vertical displacement, due to heating of the wildfire aerosols, by observations made by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP) instrument, trace the smoke’s origin to wildfires in British Colombia with an injection date of 12 August 2017. Knowledge of the age of the smoke allowed for a correction of the enhancement ratio, ∆CO : ∆CO2, for the chemical removal of CO by OH. The stable isotope observations were used to estimate the amount of tropospheric air in the plume at the time of observation to be about 34 ± 14 %. The in situ observations provide information on the trace gas chemistry of smoke plumes that reach the stratosphere, as well as the vertical extent of 1 km of the 2017 smoke plume.

Raw milk producers with high levels of hygiene and safety

There is world-wide increasing interest in the consumption of unprocessed, natural food commodities including fresh (unpasteurised) milk and milk products. Consumers are actively seeking out raw milk, partly due to health reasons, but also for taste, freshness, closeness to the producer and to support local agriculture. The need for high levels of hygiene and safety in farms producing raw milk for direct consumption has long been recognised and has led to federal and industry-initiated systems for safe raw milk production. Raw milk producers in North America and Europe have demonstrated that raw milk, intended for direct consumption, can be produced safe and hygienic. The aim of this paper is to describe practices that have been developed for safe raw milk production. The German Vorzugsmilch is a federally regulated programme for legal raw milk production that was established already in the 1930s to provide raw milk with high hygienic standards controlled for zoonotic diseases to consumers. The Raw Milk Institute is a non-profit organisation established in California that has developed a voluntary safe raw milk programme in North America. RAWMI has developed a risk analysis and management system for raw milk dairy farmers to assist farmers in making individually tailored solutions for various production systems. In British Colombia, Canada, small herd share farms have employed good manufacturing practices, a risk management approach and performed monthly samples for pathogens and indicator bacteria to demonstrate safety and consistency. The major components of the raw milk systems applied, and the results of regular milk microbial indicator bacteria are presented. For the German system, the results from standard monthly pathogen tests are compared to zoonotic pathogen tests from other milk sources. The overall results indicate that raw milk can be produced with a high level of hygiene and safety in various systems.

Travel Time as Work Time? Nature and Scope of Canadian Labor Law’s Protections for Mobile Workers

The spectrum of employment-related geographical mobility ranges from hours-long daily commutes to journeys that take workers away from home for an extended period of time. Although distance and travel conditions vary, there is a strong consensus within existing literature that mobility has physical, psychological, and social repercussions. However, is time spent traveling considered as working time? This question is crucial as it dictates whether or not workers can effectively access different sets of labor rights. The objective of this paper is twofold. First, contributing to a deeper understanding of travel time by offering a more sustained and complex representation of the various employment-related travel schemes. Second, assessing the circumstances under which travel time counts as work time with regard to the employment standards legislation in force in four Canadian provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Alberta, and British Colombia.

Mapping in, on, towards Aboriginal space: trading routes and an ethics of artistic inquiry

This chapter discusses the project of Trading Routes, an art/research project seeking to engage with the contested geographies in Northern British Colombia, Alberta, and relations of Indigenous and non Indigenous ways of knowing. It emphasizes the need for the ontological differences between Indigenous and non Indigenous/Western maps. The chapter calls attention to new coalitions — among artists, academics, and community leaders — that are respectful of land-based knowledge systems. Differences between colonial and Indigenous mapping and ways of knowing fissure the singular map Canada. Coming to terms with these differences is crucial to developing a more nuanced understanding of the spatial dynamics underwriting a colonial will to power as well as the means of resisting that will.

Subnational Finance in Australia and China

The political and economic benefits of decentralization have been cogently represented, to the extent that decentralization and devolution comprise identifiable programs of reform across a range of polities. However, the public policy question of finance following function – and the oversight of this process – is less resolved. Further, concerns over the financial sustainability of sub-national governments continue across a range of polities. Against the backdrop of reforms to municipal finance in both Australia and China, this chapter provides an account of the formation and functioning of two successful sub-national financial institutions, the Local Government Finance Authority of South Australia (LGFA) and the Municipal Finance Authority of British Colombia. The case studies suggest that sub-national finance may not be the thorn in the side of decentralization it sometimes appears to be. The broader introduction of such financial instruments is considered.