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\"In Paramedics On and Off the Streets, Michael K. Corman embarks on an institutional ethnography of the complex, mundane, intricate, and exhilarating work of paramedics in Calgary, Alberta. Corman's comprehensive research includes more than 200 hours of participant observation ride-alongs with paramedics over a period of eleven months, more than one hundred first hand interviews with paramedics, and thirty-six interviews with other emergency medical personnel including administrators, call-takers and dispatchers, nurses, and doctors. At the heart of this ethnography are questions about the role of paramedics in urban environments, the role of information and communication technologies in contemporary health care governance, and the organization and accountability of pre-hospital medical services. Paramedics On and Off the Streets is the first institutional ethnography to explore the role and increasing importance of paramedics in our healthcare system. It takes readers on a journey into the everyday lives of EMS personnel and provides an in-depth sociological analysis of the work of pre-hospital health care professionals in the twenty-first century.\"-- Provided by publisher.

Demands for public input on Olympic bids have made local referenda an increasingly common feature of the Olympic bid process. This case study advances our knowledge about the factors that lead local residents to support or oppose an Olympic bid by presenting the results of a representative survey of local residents at the time of an Olympic bid plebiscite in Calgary, Canada. Building on past research, five correlates of Olympic bid voting behavior are identified: sociodemographic characteristics, local civic identity, political partisanship, attitudes towards government spending, and local political leadership. While all five factors are related to support or opposition to the Olympic bid, civic identity and fiscal conservativism were particularly powerful predictors of preferences. The data suggest that pro-Olympic and anti-Olympic coalitions have an unusual character that challenge those involved in Olympic advocacy.

National levels of personal health-care access and quality can be approximated by measuring mortality rates from causes that should not be fatal in the presence of effective medical care (ie, amenable mortality). Previous analyses of mortality amenable to health care only focused on high-income countries and faced several methodological challenges. In the present analysis, we use the highly standardised cause of death and risk factor estimates generated through the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) to improve and expand the quantification of personal health-care access and quality for 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2015. We mapped the most widely used list of causes amenable to personal health care developed by Nolte and McKee to 32 GBD causes. We accounted for variations in cause of death certification and misclassifications through the extensive data standardisation processes and redistribution algorithms developed for GBD. To isolate the effects of personal health-care access and quality, we risk-standardised cause-specific mortality rates for each geography-year by removing the joint effects of local environmental and behavioural risks, and adding back the global levels of risk exposure as estimated for GBD 2015. We employed principal component analysis to create a single, interpretable summary measure–the Healthcare Quality and Access (HAQ) Index–on a scale of 0 to 100. The HAQ Index showed strong convergence validity as compared with other health-system indicators, including health expenditure per capita (r=0·88), an index of 11 universal health coverage interventions (r=0·83), and human resources for health per 1000 (r=0·77). We used free disposal hull analysis with bootstrapping to produce a frontier based on the relationship between the HAQ Index and the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a measure of overall development consisting of income per capita, average years of education, and total fertility rates. This frontier allowed us to better quantify the maximum levels of personal health-care access and quality achieved across the development spectrum, and pinpoint geographies where gaps between observed and potential levels have narrowed or widened over time. Between 1990 and 2015, nearly all countries and territories saw their HAQ Index values improve; nonetheless, the difference between the highest and lowest observed HAQ Index was larger in 2015 than in 1990, ranging from 28·6 to 94·6. Of 195 geographies, 167 had statistically significant increases in HAQ Index levels since 1990, with South Korea, Turkey, Peru, China, and the Maldives recording among the largest gains by 2015. Performance on the HAQ Index and individual causes showed distinct patterns by region and level of development, yet substantial heterogeneities emerged for several causes, including cancers in highest-SDI countries; chronic kidney disease, diabetes, diarrhoeal diseases, and lower respiratory infections among middle-SDI countries; and measles and tetanus among lowest-SDI countries. While the global HAQ Index average rose from 40·7 (95% uncertainty interval, 39·0–42·8) in 1990 to 53·7 (52·2–55·4) in 2015, far less progress occurred in narrowing the gap between observed HAQ Index values and maximum levels achieved; at the global level, the difference between the observed and frontier HAQ Index only decreased from 21·2 in 1990 to 20·1 in 2015. If every country and territory had achieved the highest observed HAQ Index by their corresponding level of SDI, the global average would have been 73·8 in 2015. Several countries, particularly in eastern and western sub-Saharan Africa, reached HAQ Index values similar to or beyond their development levels, whereas others, namely in southern sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and south Asia, lagged behind what geographies of similar development attained between 1990 and 2015. This novel extension of the GBD Study shows the untapped potential for personal health-care access and quality improvement across the development spectrum. Amid substantive advances in personal health care at the national level, heterogeneous patterns for individual causes in given countries or territories suggest that few places have consistently achieved optimal health-care access and quality across health-system functions and therapeutic areas. This is especially evident in middle-SDI countries, many of which have recently undergone or are currently experiencing epidemiological transitions. The HAQ Index, if paired with other measures of health-system characteristics such as intervention coverage, could provide a robust avenue for tracking progress on universal health coverage and identifying local priorities for strengthening personal health-care quality and access throughout the world. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Recent literature has demonstrated the importance of fieldwork in geology. However, as resources become scarce, field experiences are often targeted for cuts. This was the case at the University of Calgary when massive enrollments placed a tremendous burden on resources. In courses throughout, field trips and other excursions were eliminated, making it so students do not have any field experiences until their third year. In response, we have developed three virtual field experiences (VFEs) of geologically relevant locations near Calgary. A burgeoning technology, VFEs offer advantages of convenience and versatility when compared to actual field trips. Our VFEs comprise drone-captured images used to form high-resolution 2-D photomosaics and 3-D computer models. We piloted one VFE in an introductory geology course. We wanted to understand how students engaged with the models so that we could make the VFE as effective as possible. Observing student engagement over two iterations allowed us to make changes to the activity. We found that students had difficulties with the VFE's open endedness. They also demonstrated difficulty with the relationship between observations and inferences. This is indicative of a broader issue with how geology (or science in general) is taught. Traditional instruction in geology places great emphasis on the \"what\" of geology as opposed to the \"how.\" We contend that teaching geology with more emphasis on how geology works will help students develop a better understanding of the relationship between inference and observation, enhancing their fieldwork and their understanding of science.

\"A stranger-than-fiction story based on the real-life experiences of a young boy who was smuggled out of Ethiopia amid political unrest to start a new life from nothing in Calgary, Alberta.\"-- Provided by publisher.

Global expansion of antimicrobial drug–resistant Escherichia coli sequence type (ST) 131 is unrivaled among human bacteria. Understanding trends among ST131 clades will help with designing prevention strategies. We screened E. coli from blood samples (n = 1,784) obtained in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, during 2006, 2012, and 2016 by PCR for ST131 and positive samples (n = 344) underwent whole-genome sequencing. The incidence rate per 100,000 residents increased from 4.91 during 2006 to 12.35 during 2012 and 10.12 during 2016. ST131 belonged to clades A (10%), B (9%), and C (81%). Clades C1-nonM27 and B were common during 2006, and C2 containing blaCTX-M-15, C1-M27 containing blaCTX-M-27, and A were responsible for the increase of ST131 during 2012 and 2016. C2 was the most antimicrobial drug–resistant subclade and increased exponentially over time. Eradicating ST131, more specifically the C2 subclade, will lead to considerable public health benefits for persons in Calgary.

Seventeen-year-old Amelia feels like her life might be getting back on track after a bad break-up when her younger sister's pregnancy gets them both banished to Canada, where new relationships are forged, giving Amelia a new perspective.

Demands for public input on Olympic bids have made local referenda an increasingly common feature of the Olympic bid process. This case study advances our knowledge about the factors that lead local residents to support or oppose an Olympic bid by presenting the results of a representative survey of local residents at the time of an Olympic bid plebiscite in Calgary, Canada. Building on past research, five correlates of Olympic bid voting behavior are identified: socio-demographic characteristics, local civic identity, political partisanship, attitudes towards government spending, and local political leadership. While all five factors are related to support or opposition to the Olympic bid, civic identity and fiscal conservativism were particularly powerful predictors of preferences. The data suggest that pro-Olympic and anti-Olympic coalitions have an unusual character which challenge those involved in Olympic advocacy.