New energy delivery models for communities: how utilities can transform their delivery models to meet the needs of their stakeholders, short and long term

Society has done little to modernize energy delivery or take advantage of proven, commonly available technology. In the past, change was driven by regulated entities with an exclusive franchise. Today, however, disruptors come from outside of the power sector – a phenomenon that is changing the grid. The grid of the future will provide an open platform, similar to a state-owned interstate that allows access to all. Generation, storage, and load elements will be self-registering building blocks, similar to the concept of all ‘Lego’ sets being compatible. Elements will be connected by providers or even consumers, they will self-register, and interact with each other optimizing grid performance with respect to economics, efficiency, adequacy, and reliability. The ubiquitous grid will encompass not only electric, gas, and water, but other services that either we’ve already come to rely upon or haven’t even considered yet. Is this farewell to the grid as we know it? The exclusive franchise model that has been around for more than a century might not be as long lived as expected

State of the science in women's cardiovascular disease : a Canadian perspective on the influence of sex and gender

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of premature death for women in Canada.1 Although it has long been recognized that estrogen impacts vascular responses in women, there is emerging evidence that physiologic and pathophysiologic cardiovascular responses are uniquely affected across the spectrum of a woman's life. Despite a global understanding that manifestations and outcomes of CVD are known to differ between men and women, uptake of the recognition of sex and gender influences on the clinical care of women has been slow or absent.2 To highlight the need for better research, diagnosis, treatment, awareness, and support of women with CVD in Canada, the Canadian Women's Heart Health Alliance (CWHHA), supported by the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and in collaboration with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (HSFC), undertook a comprehensive review of the evidence on sex‐ and gender‐specific differences in comorbidities, risk factors, disease awareness, presentation, diagnosis, and treatment across the entire spectrum of CVD. The intent of this review was not to directly compare women and men on epidemiological and outcome measures of CVD, but to synthesize the state of the evidence for CVD in women and identify significant knowledge gaps that hinder the transformation to clinical practice and care that is truly tailored for women, a significant health challenge that has only been recognized in Canada relatively recently. This review highlights the scarcity of Canadian data on CVD in women as part of the ongoing struggle to increase awareness of and improve outcomes for women with CVD. Because of a paucity of published Canada‐specific evidence, the purpose of this review is to provide an infrastructure to summarize world‐wide published evidence, including knowledge gaps that must be understood to then make effective recommendations to alleviate the glaring “unders” of CVD for women in Canada: under‐aware, under‐diagnosed and under‐treated, under‐researched, and under‐support