Public Sphere(s), Public Narratives, and Counter Public(s): Student Papers at the 2017 Canadian Communication Association

It is with enthusiasm that we present this special issue of Stream devoted to the student conference proceedings from the 2017 Canadian Communication Association annual meeting during the Congress for Social Science and Humanities held at Ryerson University. As current graduate students, we understand and appreciate the challenges that graduate students face and having a medium like the annual CCA-ACC conference provides the kind of professionalization that graduate students need to continue a career as academics

A 'small-world-like' model for comparing interventions aimed at preventing and controlling influenza pandemics

BACKGROUND: With an influenza pandemic seemingly imminent, we constructed a model simulating the spread of influenza within the community, in order to test the impact of various interventions. METHODS: The model includes an individual level, in which the risk of influenza virus infection and the dynamics of viral shedding are simulated according to age, treatment, and vaccination status; and a community level, in which meetings between individuals are simulated on randomly generated graphs. We used data on real pandemics to calibrate some parameters of the model. The reference scenario assumes no vaccination, no use of antiviral drugs, and no preexisting herd immunity. We explored the impact of interventions such as vaccination, treatment/prophylaxis with neuraminidase inhibitors, quarantine, and closure of schools or workplaces. RESULTS: In the reference scenario, 57% of realizations lead to an explosive outbreak, lasting a mean of 82 days (standard deviation (SD) 12 days) and affecting 46.8% of the population on average. Interventions aimed at reducing the number of meetings, combined with measures reducing individual transmissibility, would be partly effective: coverage of 70% of affected households, with treatment of the index patient, prophylaxis of household contacts, and confinement to home of all household members, would reduce the probability of an outbreak by 52%, and the remaining outbreaks would be limited to 17% of the population (range 0.8%–25%). Reactive vaccination of 70% of the susceptible population would significantly reduce the frequency, size, and mean duration of outbreaks, but the benefit would depend markedly on the interval between identification of the first case and the beginning of mass vaccination. The epidemic would affect 4% of the population if vaccination started immediately, 17% if there was a 14-day delay, and 36% if there was a 28-day delay. Closing schools when the number of infections in the community exceeded 50 would be very effective, limiting the size of outbreaks to 10% of the population (range 0.9%–22%). CONCLUSION: This flexible tool can help to determine the interventions most likely to contain an influenza pandemic. These results support the stockpiling of antiviral drugs and accelerated vaccine development

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Le Service National d'Observation du KARST (SNO KARST)

Les formations carbonatées karstifiées occupent des surfaces très importantes sur tous les continents, à l'affleurement comme sous couverture : 10 % des surfaces émergées mondiales, notamment en Extrême-Orient, Chi-ne-Vietnam-Thaïlande, Amérique du Nord et Centrale, 30 à 70 % du pourtour méditerranéen, 22 % de la superficie de 18 pays européens, 33% pour la France, et jusqu'à 67 % pour l'Estonie (Chen et al., 2017). Elles recèlent une bonne part des ressources indispensables à la survie de l'homme : l'eau (25% des ressources en eau dans le monde), les hydrocarbures (55% des réserves de pétrole et 40% des réserves de gaz encore non exploitées à l'échelle mondiale) et bon nombre de minerais. Depuis plus de 50 ans, des hydrogéologues, notamment français, étudient et acquièrent des données sur différents hydrosystèmes karstiques. Ce travail d'acquisition est en général utilisé pour la caractérisation des entrées et sorties du site d'étude ou de l'un de ses sous-systèmes. De fait, si un modèle conceptuel commun incluant quatre grands sous-systèmes ou compartiments (sol, épikarst, zone d'infiltration et zone saturée) est admis, il existe peu de travaux de caractérisation ou de modélisation à vocation générique. En effet, chaque équipe développe une expertise liée à sa discipline ou spécialité et à ses sites d'étude ; de ce fait, elle peut avoir une vision partielle dépendante des caractéristiques de son site et de son objet d'étude (le pay-sage, la structure, le développement spéléologique, l'eau, le pétrole, le minerai) et de la méthodologie qu'elle maîtrise. La faible structuration de la communauté des hydro-géologues du karst s'est traduite par une multiplicité d'approches de modélisation conceptuelle et/ou mathématique. Parvenir à une approche plus globale des hydrosys-tèmes karstiques suppose de progresser dans notre appréhension de la structure du karst. Cette structure est conditionnée par des facteurs d'ordre géologique, tectonique, morphogénétique, climatique, hydrologique, tous sujets à évolution temporelle. En résulte une hétérogénéité particulière au karst, exceptionnellement marquée, qui conditionne l'exploitation des ressources offertes par ces réservoirs. L'un des défis majeurs de la recherche sur le karst est donc de tendre vers une nouvelle approche « synthé-tique » à l'échelle des grandes typ

SNO KARST: A French Network of Observatories for the Multidisciplinary Study of Critical Zone Processes in Karst Watersheds and Aquifers

Karstaquifers and watersheds represent a major source of drinking water around the world. They are also known as complex and often highly vulnerable hydrosystems due to strong surface-groundwater interactions. Improving the understanding of karst functioning is thus a major issue for the efficient management of karst groundwater resources. A comprehensive understanding of the various processes can be achieved only by studying karst systems across a wide range of spatiotemporal scales under different geological, geomorphological, climatic, and soil cover settings. The objective of the French Karst National Observatory Service (SNO KARST) is to supply the international scientific community with appropriate data and tools, with the ambition of (i) facilitating the collection of long-term observations of hydrogeochemical variables in karst, and (ii) promoting knowledge sharing and developing cross-disciplinary research on karst. This paper provides an overview of the monitoring sites and collective achievements, such as the KarstMod modular modeling platform and the PaPRIKa toolbox, of SNO KARST. It also presents the research questions addressed within the framework of this network, along with major research results regarding (i) the hydrological response of karst to climate and anthropogenic changes, (ii) the influence of karst on geochemical balance of watersheds in the critical zone, and (iii) the relationships between the structure and hydrological functioning of karst aquifers and watersheds

ForestGEO: understanding forest diversity and dynamics through a global observatory network

ForestGEO is a network of scientists and long-term forest dynamics plots (FDPs) spanning the Earth's major forest types. ForestGEO's mission is to advance understanding of the diversity and dynamics of forests and to strengthen global capacity for forest science research. ForestGEO is unique among forest plot networks in its large-scale plot dimensions, censusing of all stems ≥1 cm in diameter, inclusion of tropical, temperate and boreal forests, and investigation of additional biotic (e.g., arthropods) and abiotic (e.g., soils) drivers, which together provide a holistic view of forest functioning. The 71 FDPs in 27 countries include approximately 7.33 million living trees and about 12,000 species, representing 20% of the world's known tree diversity. With >1300 published papers, ForestGEO researchers have made significant contributions in two fundamental areas: species coexistence and diversity, and ecosystem functioning. Specifically, defining the major biotic and abiotic controls on the distribution and coexistence of species and functional types and on variation in species' demography has led to improved understanding of how the multiple dimensions of forest diversity are structured across space and time and how this diversity relates to the processes controlling the role of forests in the Earth system. Nevertheless, knowledge gaps remain that impede our ability to predict how forest diversity and function will respond to climate change and other stressors. Meeting these global research challenges requires major advances in standardizing taxonomy of tropical species, resolving the main drivers of forest dynamics, and integrating plot-based ground and remote sensing observations to scale up estimates of forest diversity and function, coupled with improved predictive models. However, they cannot be met without greater financial commitment to sustain the long-term research of ForestGEO and other forest plot networks, greatly expanded scientific capacity across the world's forested nations, and increased collaboration and integration among research networks and disciplines addressing forest science