We hypothesise that stream sediment elemental composition can predict mean and minimum concentrations of alkalinity, Ca and Mg in the river water throughout a river network. We tested this hypothesis for the River Derwent catchment in North Yorkshire, England, by using 6 years of water chemistry data from the Environment Agency and a digital elevation model to flow path-weight British Geologica...

Phenotypic plasticity may be favored in generalist populations if it increases niche width, even in temporally constant environments. Phenotypic plasticity can increase the frequency of extreme phenotypes in a population and thus allow it to make use of a wide resource spectrum. Here we test the prediction that generalist populations should be more plastic than specialists. In a common-garden e...

A case of meningitis due to a group B streptococcus in a newborn baby is described. Treatment was successful; it depended upon the bacteriological diagnosis and sensitivity testing. Only a few such cases are reported in the British literature, but this type of infection may be more common than these reports would suggest.

STUDY OBJECTIVE To explore the impact of de-industrialisation over a 20 year period on working conditions and health among sawmill workers, in the province of British Columbia (BC), Canada. DESIGN AND SETTING This investigation is based on a sample of 3000 sawmill workers employed in 1979 (a year before the beginning de-industrialisation) and interviewed in 1998. The sample was obtained by ra...

*Alaska Section of Epidemiology, Anchorage, Alaska, USA; †Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; ‡Center of Expertise for Rabies, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; §University of AlaskaFairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA; ¶Stanton Territorial Health Authority, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada; #Department of Health and Social Services, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada; and **...

Forest fire occurrence is affected by multiple controls that operate at local to regional scales. At the spatial scale of forest stands, regional climatic controls may be obscured by local controls (e.g., stochastic ignitions, topography, and fuel loads), but the long-term role of such local controls is poorly understood. We report here stand-scale (<100 ha) fire histories of the past 5000 year...

1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, Miami, FL 33136, USA 2Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, University of Kansas School of Medicine, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA 3Terry Fox Laboratory, British Columbia Cancer Agency and Department of Medicine, Unive...

Humans use a variety of deliberate means to modify biologically rich environs in pursuit of resource stability and predictability. Empirical evidence suggests that ancient hunter-gatherer populations engineered ecological niches to enhance the productivity and availability of economically significant resources. An archaeological excavation of a 3800-year-old wetland garden in British Columbia, ...

Until now there have been no national estimates of the extent of poverty in Britain at the turn of the 20 century. This paper introduces a newly-discovered household budget data set for the early 1900s that is more representative of urban working households in Britain in the period than any other existing record, although not without deficiencies. We use these data to estimate urban poverty amo...

1Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Centre, 107 Science Place, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada S7N 0X2; 2Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Range Research Unit, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada V0H 1Z0; 3Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Centre, Lethrbridge, Alberta, Canada T1J 4B1; 4Alberta Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food; 5Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Pacific Agri-...