Keynote Address: Polar Bears, Seals, and Climate in Hudson Bay and the High Arctic

Moderator: Ana Marusic, CSE President

Ian Stirling, Canadian Wildlife Service, Environment Canada, is an emeritus research scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service and an adjunct professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton. He has done research on polar bears throughout the Canadian Arctic for 37 years and polar seals (Arctic and Antarctic) for 42 years. For his work, he has won the Northern Science Award and been made an Officer in the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He participates in a number of national and international committees on polar bears and marine mammals and has authored or co-authored more than 200 scientific articles and 3 books.

From the speaker: Long-term climate warming in western Hudson Bay is causing the sea ice to break up earlier, with negative effects on polar bears. From 1981 through 2007, the condition of adult male polar bears and females accompanied by dependent young declined significantly. The average date of breakup is now about 3 weeks earlier than it was in the early 1970s. That trend is correlated with steadily warming air temperatures in spring (0.3-0.4º C from April through June per decade) for the last 50 years. There is a significant relationship between the time of breakup and the condition of adult males and females (i.e., the earlier the breakup, the poorer the condition of the bears). Changes in ringed seal and harbor seal populations also appear to be underway but are not well understood. In the High Arctic, areas of multiyear ice and low productivity may, in the short term, become more productive habitat for polar bears and seals. However, if long-term projections of the disappearance of ice in the polar basin are correct, this improvement will be temporary. Potential future problems for polar bears and seals in the future will be discussed.

Plenary Address: Looking Back, Looking Forward, Genetics: Can It Fulfill the Promise?

From the speaker: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are potentially life-threatening responses to medications. In the USA and Europe, ADRs rank as the 4th-5th leading cause of death and cost billions annually in health care costs. Children are at an increased risk of severe ADRs because they can metabolize drugs differently than adults, and more than 75% of medications used in children are untested in pediatric populations. We hypothesize that genetic polymorphisms in drug metabolism genes underlie a significant portion of concentration-dependent ADRs. The objectives of this national research program are to establish a network of full-time ADR clinical surveillors from across Canada to recruit and archive biomaterials and all relevant clinical data from patients that have suffered severe ADRs, and drug-matched controls from inpatient, outpatient and emergency departments at pediatric tertiary care hospitals.

Development of a national ADR surveillance network took 18 months and included collaboration at multiple levels from senior administration to support staff. In over two years of active surveillance, over 1200 severe ADRs and over 8000 drug-matched controls have been enrolled. Novel biomarkers have recently been identified for several serious ADRs, including life-threatening anthracycline-induced cardiotoxicity, cisplatin-induced hearing loss, and maternal-infant codeine CNS depression.

Active ADR surveillance networks are effective for ADR reporting and drug safety biomarker research. Design of the network allows capture of a broad range of ADR cases and targeted surveillance of specific drugs or ADRs of principal concern. Efforts are now underway to translate these early findings into the clinic for the benefit of patients.

Plenary Address: Thinking Like a Futurist

Blake Godkin, SHW Group, Plano, Texas, is a programmer and planner for the SHW Group, a firm globally known for the architecture, engineering, and planning of educational facilities. His expertise centers on research and training in the creation and management of new ideas. While on the faculty in the Department of Architecture at Texas A&M University, he taught courses in design process, creativity, invention, and futures studies. He has conducted research on the future of education, tools for creative thinking, the design process, human mobility, and using innovation in community planning, and also studies ways to forecast the impact of potentially disruptive technologies. He is working on the dissertation research for a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Science.

From the speaker: In a time of accelerating change — when the future of any nation will be based on how well it creates and manages new ideas — we can longer make current decisions primarily based on past experience. This is why it is imperative to become comfortable with the process of thinking like a futurist. But, how do we begin thinking like a futurist? In what ways might we communicate (create) and evaluate (manage) new ideas? During this session these questions will be answered through the presentation of a collection of deliberate guidelines and tools designed to help people make current decisions in light of their future effects.