CFB Goose Bay and Operation “Desert Shield”

Canada committed forces to the American-led Coalition in the 1990–1991 campaign to liberate Kuwait (Operation DESERT SHIELD and Operation DESERT STORM). The Navy played an important role in the naval portion in this campaign known as Operation DESERT STORM. Canadian CF-18s provided defensive combat air patrols over the Persian Gulf region (less Kuwait and Iraq). Canadian soldiers helped guard prisoners of war, defend airfields and provide security for the 1st Canadian Field Hospital that provided additional health service support. While all of these were important contributions, Canada also provided assistance for Operation DESERT SHIELD. A number of states deployed forces to Saudi Arabia to aid in that Kingdom’s defence should Iraqi forces have attacked. Some Canadian contributions to this operation remain unacknowledged. The massive victory in DESERT STORM was a direct result of the efforts expended in DESERT SHIELD. The two operations comprise the 1991 Gulf Campaign. Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Goose Bay played a little known but remarkable role in Operation DESERT SHIELD in August 1990. It was, in fact, the first unit of the Canadian Forces to support the 1990–1991 Gulf Campaign by acting as a transit station for the US Air Force’s Military Airlift Command (MAC) as well as other US Air Force formations during Operation DESERT SHIELD

Developing Strategic Lieutenants in the Canadian Army

This Canadian contribution to Parameters’ Strategic Lieutenant series shows how domestic context creates the conditions for professional military education reform to a greater extent than the global strategic context. The article assesses the junior officer education delivered by Canada’s military colleges and analyzes interviews with key stakeholders responsible for the formulation and implementation of reform at the military colleges

Persistent sleep problems among people in recovery from substance use disorders: a mixed methods study

Background The aims of this study are to examine the one-year trajectory of sleep problems, identify clinical correlates, and describe subjective experiences related to persistent sleep problems during recovery from substance use disorders (SUD). Methods This study builds on a sequential mixed method design. The quantitative component features data from a prospective longitudinal study of 127 poly-SUD patients in the Stavanger area in Norway, while the qualitative component describes a thematic analysis of interviews with 16 persons from this study still experiencing sleep problems after at least one year of abstinence. Results The prevalence of sleep problems at baseline for the whole cohort was 79%. Among the 59 patients who were abstinent after one year, N = 20 (33.9%) had moderate and N = 11 (18.6%) had severe sleep problems. Persistent sleep problems were associated with psychological distress and were experienced as a major challenge in the struggle to stay drug free. Establishing daily routines related to work, school, and care for children were coping strategies for participants with persistent sleep problems. Conclusions Persistent sleep problems are often overlooked in a clinical setting. Based on our findings, these issues pose a major challenge in the struggle to stay drug free. For patients with psychological distress, and lack of responsibilities that established daily routines, sleep difficulties may result in increased risk of drug use episodes that result in relapse. These results argue that screening and evidence-based methods for insomnia and sleep health-programs should be commonplace adjunct intervention for patients with SUDs.publishedVersio

Natural variation in abiotic stress responsive gene expression and local adaptation to climate in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Gene expression varies widely in natural populations, yet the proximate and ultimate causes of this variation are poorly known. Understanding how variation in gene expression affects abiotic stress tolerance, fitness, and adaptation is central to the field of evolutionary genetics. We tested the hypothesis that genes with natural genetic variation in their expression responses to abiotic stress are likely to be involved in local adaptation to climate in Arabidopsis thaliana. Specifically, we compared genes with consistent expression responses to environmental stress (expression stress responsive, "eSR") to genes with genetically variable responses to abiotic stress (expression genotype-by-environment interaction, "eGEI"). We found that on average genes that exhibited eGEI in response to drought or cold had greater polymorphism in promoter regions and stronger associations with climate than those of eSR genes or genomic controls. We also found that transcription factor binding sites known to respond to environmental stressors, especially abscisic acid responsive elements, showed significantly higher polymorphism in drought eGEI genes in comparison to eSR genes. By contrast, eSR genes tended to exhibit relatively greater pairwise haplotype sharing, lower promoter diversity, and fewer nonsynonymous polymorphisms, suggesting purifying selection or selective sweeps. Our results indicate that cis-regulatory evolution and genetic variation in stress responsive gene expression may be important mechanisms of local adaptation to climatic selective gradients

Displaced geostationary orbit design using hybrid sail propulsion

Because of an increase in the number of geostationary spacecraft and the limits imposed by east–west spacing requirements, the geostationary orbit is becoming congested. To increase its capacity, this paper proposes to create new geostationary slots by displacing the geostationary orbit either out of or in the equatorial plane by means of hybrid solar sail and solar electric propulsion. To minimize propellant consumption, optimal steering laws for the solar sail and solar-electric-propulsion thrust vectors are derived and the performance in terms of mission lifetime is assessed. For comparison, similar analyses are performed for conventional propulsion, including impulsive and pure solar electric propulsion. It is shown that hybrid sails outperform these propulsion techniques and that out-of-plane displacements outperform in-plane displacements. The out-of-plane case is therefore further investigated in a spacecraft mass budget to determine the payload mass capacity. Finally, two transfers that enable a further improvement of the performance of hybrid sails for the out-of-plane case are optimized using a direct pseudospectral method: a seasonal transit between orbits displaced above and below the equatorial plane and a transit to a parking orbit when geostationary coverage is not needed. Both transfers are shown to require only a modest propellant budget, outweighing the improvements they can establish

Pleiotropy of FRIGIDA enhances the potential for multivariate adaptation.

An evolutionary response to selection requires genetic variation; however, even if it exists, then the genetic details of the variation can constrain adaptation. In the simplest case, unlinked loci and uncorrelated phenotypes respond directly to multivariate selection and permit unrestricted paths to adaptive peaks. By contrast, 'antagonistic' pleiotropic loci may constrain adaptation by affecting variation of many traits and limiting the direction of trait correlations to vectors that are not favoured by selection. However, certain pleiotropic configurations may improve the conditions for adaptive evolution. Here, we present evidence that the Arabidopsis thaliana gene FRI (FRIGIDA) exhibits 'adaptive' pleiotropy, producing trait correlations along an axis that results in two adaptive strategies. Derived, low expression FRI alleles confer a 'drought escape' strategy owing to fast growth, low water use efficiency and early flowering. By contrast, a dehydration avoidance strategy is conferred by the ancestral phenotype of late flowering, slow growth and efficient water use during photosynthesis. The dehydration avoidant phenotype was recovered when genotypes with null FRI alleles were transformed with functional alleles. Our findings indicate that the well-documented effects of FRI on phenology result from differences in physiology, not only a simple developmental switch