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\"Pathogens for War explores how Canada and its allies have attempted to deal with the threat of germ warfare, one of the most fearful weapons of mass destruction, since the Second World War. In addressing this subject, distinguished historian Donald Avery investigates the relationship between bioweapons, poison gas, and nuclear devices, as well as the connection between bioattacks and natural disease pandemics. Avery emphasizes the crucially important activities of Canadian biodefence scientists - beginning with Nobel Laureate Frederick Banting - at both the national level and through cooperative projects within the framework of an elaborate alliance system\"--Preliminary page.

Settler Feminism and Race Making in Canadaengages in a discursive analysis of three 'texts' - the narratives of Anna Jameson (Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada), Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney (Two Months in the Camp of Big Bear), and the 'Janey Canuck' books of Emily Murphy - in order to examine how, in the context of a settler colony, white women have been part of the project of its governance, its racial constitution, and its role in British imperialism. Using Foucauldian theories of governmentality to connect these first-person narratives to wider strategies of race making, Jennifer Henderson develops a feminist critique of the ostensible freedom that Anglo-Protestant women found within nineteenth-century liberal projects of rule. Henderson's interdisciplinary approach - including critical studies in law, literature, and political history - offers a new perspective on these women that detaches them from the dominant colony-to-nation narrative and shows their importance in a tradition of moral regulation. This project not only redresses problems in Canadian literary history, it also responds to the limits of postcolonial, nationalist, and feminist projects that search for authentic voices and resistant agency without sufficient attention to the layers of historical sedimentation through which these voices speak.

In the 1930s, scientists learned that small amounts of fluoride naturally occurring in water could protect teeth from decay, and the idea of artificially adding fluoride to public water supplies to achieve the same effect arose. In the 1940s and early 1950s, a number of studies were completed to determine whether fluoride could have harmful effects. The research suggested that the possibility of harm was small. In the early 1950s, Canadian and US medical, dental, and public health bodies all endorsed water fluoridation. I argue in this article that some early concerns about the toxicity of fluoride were put aside as evidence regarding the effectiveness and safety of water fluoridation mounted and as the opposition was taken over by people with little standing in the scientific, medical, and dental communities. The sense of optimism that infused postwar science and the desire of dentists to have a magic bullet that could wipe out tooth decay also affected the scientific debate.

The developmental paradigm, reading history sideways, and cross-cultural data have converged to exert a profound influence on social scientists and ordinary people. Through the use of these tools, social scientists of the 1700s and 1800s concluded that family patterns in northwest Europe had undergone many substantial changes before the early 1800s. These conclusions were accepted until the last several decades of the 1900s, when almost all were seriously challenged; many were declared to be myths. Further, the developmental paradigm, reading history sideways, and the conclusions of generations of social scientists created a package of ideas-developmental idealism-that subsequently became a powerful influence for family change in many parts of the world during the past two centuries. This developmental idealism has been a substantial force for changing living arrangements, marriage, divorce, gender relations, intergenerational relationships, and fertility.

In an interview, Dr William G. Kaelin Jr. professor in the Department of Medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School talked about his career among others. Kaelin said that as a young boy, I was interested in science and mathematics. I slowly gravitated toward medicine and later did a residency really thinking I was going to be a practicing clinician -- I didn't think I was going to be a scientist. I spent time in the laboratory of Dr. David Livingston [thinking] I would return to being a practicing physician, but it turned out David Livingston was a wonderful mentor. For me it was the right lab, the right problem to work on, the right time, and I got the bug and didn't look back. When I started working in David Livingston's lab, there were a handful of genes that we knew categorically played a role in cancer.

Plant phenology networks of citizen scientists have a long history and have recently contributed to our understanding of climate change effects on ecosystems. This paper describes the development of the Alberta and Canada PlantWatch programs, which coordinate networks of citizen scientists who track spring development timing for common plants. Tracking spring phenology is highly suited to volunteers and, with effective volunteer management, observers will stay loyal to a phenology program for many years. Over two decades beginning in 1987, Alberta PlantWatch volunteers reported 47,000 records, the majority contributed by observers who participated for more than 9 years. We present a quantitative analysis of factors that determine the quality of this phenological data and explore sources of variation. Our goal is to help those who wish to initiate new observer networks with an analysis of the effectiveness of program protocols including selected plant species and bloom stages.

Kym Boycott is currently a Clinical Geneticist at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and a Senior Scientist at the CHEO Research Institute, in Canada, where she tries to better understand mechanisms of rare genetic diseases and improve the management of pediatric patients with these conditions. Her interest in Medical Genetics dates back to her undergraduate studies at Queen's University in Kingston, when she was captured by Dr Patrick MacLeod's lectures on this subject. Thus, she embarked on a PhD in Medical Genetics and joined Dr Torben Bech-Hansen's lab at the University of Calgary, where she investigated the cause of a rare genetic form of vision loss. After completion of her PhD, she attended the medical school program at the University of Calgary and obtained her MD in 2005. Having both a PhD and MD allowed her to have a translational perspective from the beginning of her career. At CHEO, Kym and her group aim to bridge basic and clinical knowledge to quickly diagnose – by using next-generation sequencing – and improve the management of rare diseases, also known as orphan diseases. Kym is co-leader of the Canadian Rare Diseases Models and Mechanisms (RDMM) project, the goal of which is to connect basic scientists who work with animal models to clinician investigators studying rare diseases, thereby catalyzing investigation of disease mechanism and in some instances facilitating therapeutic configuration for rare diseases. In this interview, Kym shares with us her unique experience and expertise, fighting on the front line against rare diseases.

In his lecture, Banting set out \"to treat the subject of medical research from the standpoint of a general practitioner, in the hope that helpful suggestions may be given to all such who are here today.\" Much of what he went on to say remains relevant and helpful almost 85 years later. Paying tribute to the great general practitioner- researchers of history, including Harvey, Sydenham, Addison and MacKenzie, Banting noted that \"they were invariably workers and thinkers and accurate observers.\" That description brings to mind the crux of many of the problems facing researchers today. The bureaucratic constraints and imperatives of modern research have made it increasingly difficult to combine a career in research with sufficient clinical general practice to allow for this peculiarly productive combination of work, thought and observation. Banting asserted that the great general practice researchers \"observed every sign and symptom of disease, and then by weight of clinical experience, made deductions and elaborated theories.\" He wonders whether \"today ... we sometimes get lost in a maze of less important details and lose sight of the main issue.\" If that was already true in 1926, how much more so today, when the temptation is all but irresistible to identify associations within computer-analyzed data that are informed neither by clinical experience nor a plausible theory of causation?2 I am reminded of my favourite \"Memorable patient\" article from the British Medical Journal, 3 submitted in 1997 by a general practitioner who had been summarizing his patients' records and discovered the record of a memorable consultation from 10 years earlier. The patient had come for a repeat prescription of antibiotics for his acne rosacea and mentioned in passing that the antibiotics helped his indigestion. The doctor made a note: \"Occ. indigestion. Says oxytet [oxytetracycline] cures it!\" Ten years later, he reflected that \"the patient may seem peculiar, but he may be telling you something that is revolutionary. We ignore such things that do not fit into the standard view at our peril.\" How many other doctors heard patients making similar remarks in the preceding years and did not record them, so passing up any possibility of beating Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori and the subsequent Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005?

Since 1993, Dave has served as the Chair of the Parasitology Module for the Biological Survey of Canada, and he has been essential in strategic planning of parasite biodiversity studies and the application of these data to broad environmental issues at the ecosystem level. Among the more significant contributions has been the development of the long-term Ecological Monitoring and Assessment Network to evaluate threatened resources and the response of ecosystems to major perturbations. Dr. Eric Hoberg, one of his close colleagues, says that Dave has been a true ambassador for parasitology in the broader ecological community, placing parasitological research at the forefront of studies linking survey, inventory and monitoring of parasite populations to address complex problems in environmental biology.

A top UK-born scientist, Michael Smith, is helping wage a public campaign to increase funding for biomedical research and to combat the \"brain drain\" of medical researchers from Canada to the USA. Smith's campaign is discussed.