Four key events are addressed in this briefing note. Key event one is the announcement in April and May of 2017 with the launch of two supercomputers in Canada (Graham at University of Waterloo; Cedar at Simon Fraser University) and a third (Niagara at The University of Toronto) using Compute Canada’s Resources Allocation (Compute Canada, 2018a). Key event two is the announcement that Huawei Canada is building Graham’s operating system (Feldman, 2017). Key event three entails CSIS being warned by the US Senators (Rep. Sen Marco Rubio and Dem. Sen Mark Warner) about the possibility of China and Russia spying on Canada. Key event four, the United States has reportedly banned sales of Huawei products on US military bases (Bronskill, 2018; Collins, 2018). This briefing note is particularly relevant as Compute Canada is now preparing for 2019 resource allocation; there may be a raised/elevated security risk of economic espionage intellectual property theft and abusing education access privileges which needs to be considered (SFU Innovates Staff, 2018).

On October 19th, 2018, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies (CASIS) Vancouver hosted its ninth roundtable meeting which covered “Cybersecurity in an Information Warfare Age.” The following presentation was hosted by Dr. Steven Pearce, a lecturer in the School of Computing Sciences at Simon Fraser University and an astrophysicist by trade. Dr. Pearce has over 30 years of experience in mathematics and technology, focusing on the theory of technology and socio-technology. In his presentation, Dr. Pearce used these themes to highlight how technological advancements accelerated the destructive capabilities of humans, while simultaneously warning of conflating cyberwarfare with information warfare as it detracts from their unique underpinnings and objectives. The subsequent roundtable discussion centered around a case study where Chinese microchips that create back- door access to systems were found embedded in server motherboards that Amazon purchased. After discovery, they were allegedly shown to have been distributed to banks, companies and US defence agencies. Thereafter, audience members discussed the security implications of hardware hacks and what the Canadian government and citizens could change to safeguard against both software and hardware hacks.

This book is the first to develop explicit methods for evaluating evidence of mechanisms in the field of medicine. It explains why it can be important to make this evidence explicit, and describes how to take such evidence into account in the evidence appraisal process. In addition, it develops procedures for seeking evidence of mechanisms, for evaluating evidence of mechanisms, and for combining this evaluation with evidence of association in order to yield an overall assessment of effectiveness. Evidence-based medicine seeks to achieve improved health outcomes by making evidence explicit and by developing explicit methods for evaluating it. To date, evidence-based medicine has largely focused on evidence of association produced by clinical studies. As such, it has tended to overlook evidence of pathophysiological mechanisms and evidence of the mechanisms of action of interventions. The book offers a useful guide for all those whose work involves evaluating evidence in the health sciences, including those who need to determine the effectiveness of health interventions and those who need to ascertain the effects of environmental exposures.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. It relates to the III Annual Conference hosted by the Russian Federal Ministry of Education and Science in December 2016. This event has summarized, analyzed and discussed the interim results, academic outputs and scientific achievements of the Russian Federal Targeted Programme for Research and Development in priority areas of development of the Russian Scientific and Technological Complex for 2014-2020. It contains 75 selected papers from 6 areas considered priority by the Federal programme: computer science, ecology & environment sciences; energy and energy efficiency; life sciences; nanoscience & nanotechnology; and transport & communications. The chapters report the results of the 3-years research projects supported by the Programme and finalized in 2016.

This volume focuses on microscopic plastic debris, also referred to as microplastics, which have been detected in aquatic environments around the globe and have accordingly raised serious concerns. The book explores whether microplastics represent emerging contaminants in freshwater systems, an area that remains underrepresented to date. Given the complexity of the issue, the book covers the current state-of-research on microplastics in rivers and lakes, including analytical aspects, environmental concentrations and sources, modelling approaches, interactions with biota, and ecological implications. To provide a broader perspective, the book also discusses lessons learned from nanomaterials and the implications of plastic debris for regulation, politics, economy, and society. In a research field that is rapidly evolving, it offers a solid overview for environmental chemists, engineers, and toxicologists, as well as water managers and policy-makers.