Commentary: Wildlife Conservation and Canada's North

... Canada's twin northern conservation challenges are, ... to find indigenous and innovative solutions to unique Canadian resource conservation problems and to place northern resource uses, including industrial uses, on a planning foundation

Roland Ernst Beschel (1928-1971)

A distinguished career ended suddenly on 22 January 1971, when Roland E. Beschel, Professor of Botany and Director of the Fowler Herbarium at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, and a Fellow of the Arctic Institute of North America, died at the age of 42. As a scientist, Roland Beschel was brilliant, energetic and innovative. He was born in Salzburg, Austria, on 9 August 1928. His education was crowned with the achievement in 1950 of a D.Phil. in Botany and Physical Geography, summa cum laude, from the University of Innsbruck, with a "benchmark" thesis on the ecology and growth of lichens. After teaching at Rosenburg College, Switzerland, until 1955, and later at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, he was appointed Assistant Professor at Queen's University, Ontario, in 1959, where he attained the rank of Professor in 1969. Professor Beschel applied his knowledge of lichens broadly to problems of dating rock surfaces, estimating precipitation, and assessing air pollution around industrial centres. His work in North America emphasized arctic problems. He performed extensive field investigations in West Greenland, Baffin Island, interior Quebec, Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg islands, the Yellowknife area, and Alaska where he was visiting lecturer on the Juneau Icefield with the Glaciological Institute of Michigan State University. During this period he visited Finland and, as a participant in the National Research Council of Canada-Academia Nauk scientific exchange program, the Soviet Union where again he engaged in active field work at a variety of localities. He also made useful published contributions to the botany of New Brunswick and the Kingston area, and revitalized the collections of the Fowler Herbarium at Queen's, which had been dormant for a number of years prior to his appointment. His over seventy publications include many works on lichens and floristics and, in addition, on vegetation associations, permafrost and frost patterns, dendrochronology, phytogeography and the automation of herbarium procedures. He was quick to adopt computer technology, applying it as a tool to the heavy tasks of information storage and processing, from scientific correspondence and specimen data filing to the analysis of the altitudinal zonation of arctic vegetation. Roland Beschel's activities made him widely known outside these specialized fields. He was a fine organizer who enjoyed involving those around him in his enthusiasm. Under his influence the Kingston Field Naturalists became active in botanical and phenological observation, and he was a valued committee member and former Director of the Federation of Ontario Naturalists. His work for the Canadian Committee for the International Biological Programme illustrates his immense energy. He was co-chairman of the panel charged with identifying and describing natural reserve sites in the Canadian tundra, as well as a member of the corresponding panel for Ontario. In addition, he took a leading part in initiating a tundra productivity program, and he involved a number of his own graduate students in these activities. His dedication to the tasks of the IBP panels extended beyond the purely scientific work into conferences and interviews with federal, provincial and territorial administrators and the managers of industrial enterprises. Professor Beschel was a stimulating, patient, charming and assiduous colleague. He leaves an international circle of collaborators, friends and admirers, as well as a gaping void in the arctic botanical sciences

The Barren Ground Grizzly Bear in Northern Canada

Discusses distribution of the bears, and takes exception to certain statements of A.W.F. Banfield (No. 56712). His thesis of a recent eastward range extension as a continuation of the species' postglacial dispersal from Beringia is rejected. The range of the species is considered to have changed many times since the end of the Wisconsin glaciation; recent increase of bears in the east is probably a minor range fluctuation. Occurrence of grizzlies in northern Quebec - Labrador is not to be discounted, as Banfield does: several records of bears seen near the eastern end of the range since 1948 are cited

New Lump-like Structures in Scalar-field Models

In this work we investigate lump-like solutions in models described by a single real scalar field. We start considering non-topological solutions with the usual lump-like form, and then we study other models, where the bell-shape profile may have varying amplitude and width, or develop a flat plateau at its top, or even induce a lump on top of another lump. We suggest possible applications where these exotic solutions might be used in several distinct branches of physics.Comment: REvTex4, twocolumn, 10 pages, 9 figures; new reference added, to appear in EPJ

A measurement of the tau mass and the first CPT test with tau leptons

We measure the mass of the tau lepton to be 1775.1+-1.6(stat)+-1.0(syst.) MeV using tau pairs from Z0 decays. To test CPT invariance we compare the masses of the positively and negatively charged tau leptons. The relative mass difference is found to be smaller than 3.0 10^-3 at the 90% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, Submitted to Phys. Letts.

Measurement of the B0 Lifetime and Oscillation Frequency using B0->D*+l-v decays

The lifetime and oscillation frequency of the B0 meson has been measured using B0->D*+l-v decays recorded on the Z0 peak with the OPAL detector at LEP. The D*+ -> D0pi+ decays were reconstructed using an inclusive technique and the production flavour of the B0 mesons was determined using a combination of tags from the rest of the event. The results t_B0 = 1.541 +- 0.028 +- 0.023 ps, Dm_d = 0.497 +- 0.024 +- 0.025 ps-1 were obtained, where in each case the first error is statistical and the second systematic.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett.

First Measurement of Z/gamma* Production in Compton Scattering of Quasi-real Photons

We report the first observation of Z/gamma* production in Compton scattering of quasi-real photons. This is a subprocess of the reaction e+e- to e+e-Z/gamma*, where one of the final state electrons is undetected. Approximately 55 pb-1 of data collected in the year 1997 at an e+e- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV with the OPAL detector at LEP have been analysed. The Z/gamma* from Compton scattering has been detected in the hadronic decay channel. Within well defined kinematic bounds, we measure the product of cross-section and Z/gamma* branching ratio to hadrons to be (0.9+-0.3+-0.1) pb for events with a hadronic mass larger than 60 GeV, dominated by (e)eZ production. In the hadronic mass region between 5 GeV and 60 GeV, dominated by (e)egamma* production, this product is found to be (4.1+-1.6+-0.6) pb. Our results agree with the predictions of two Monte Carlo event generators, grc4f and PYTHIA.Comment: 18 pages, LaTeX, 5 eps figures included, submitted to Physics Letters