Audrey Groleau

Trend analysis of winter rainfall over southern Québec and New Brunswick (Canada)

Abstract Winter rainfall is a non‐negligible issue for urban drainage in Canada as it can generate significant flooding, especially when it occurs at the same time as high air temperature and in the presence of an appreciable snow cover. According to climate change scenarios, it is expected that the occurrence of these events will increase in a future climate. The purpose of this paper is to perform a trend analysis on six indices related to winter rainfall (January–February) at 60 weather stations located in southern Québec and New Brunswick (Canada) in order to detect possible trends in the frequency or intensity of winter rainfall events during the twentieth century. Datasets were provided by Environment Canada and come from the Canadian Daily Rehabilitated Precipitation Database. The bootstrap‐based Mann‐Kendall test is used to detect possible non‐stationarities in the dataset, while Sens slope estimator is used to quantify the magnitude of the slope. Results show that 19 stations out of 60 present a significant trend (18 of them being positive) at a 5% level for winter (January–February) total rainfall. In most cases where a trend was detected for winter rainfall there was also an increase in the number of days with rainfall (42% of the stations). These results suggest that globally, for the region under study, rainfall during January and February was more likely to occur, often resulting in a significant increase in the total rainfall during these months. Increasing trends in maximum daily rainfall during January and February were also observed for 9 stations (15% of the stations). The spatial distribution of stations where significant trends were detected is consistent with the hypothesis that trends in winter rainfall are more likely to be observed for stations located in the southern part of the region under study.

WISE Preservice Teachers Discussing Social and Economic Disparities During a Discussion Game Dealing with Nanotechnologies

STEPWISE is a pedagogical framework that aims to encourage students and teachers to think of science and technology education as a way of fostering the well-being of individuals, societies and environments—and take action to this end. ‘Decide’ is a group discussion game published under a Creative Commons License. It broadly shares STEPWISE orientations, as it invites participants to inquire, discuss and take positions on a socio-technical controversy, such as xenotransplantation, stem cells or neuroscience, in the context of a discussion conducted democratically. STEPWISE and Decide also share the aim of encouraging students to reflect on the way economic relationships play out in techno-science. In this chapter, we first present the game, outlining its main features and ways to integrate it into a STEPWISE approach in the science and technology classroom. We then show how two groups of preservice teachers expressed their views on social and economic disparities during a game session focusing on the progression and management of controversies surrounding the development and commercialization of nanotechnologies. More specifically, we present excerpts of conversations in which these participants discussed limited access to the products and services that allow people to benefit from nanotechnologies—in particular, those aimed at slowing down the aging process—the unequal distribution of the costs and benefits of these technologies, the risk of offshoring factories and exploiting child labour, and the development of medical treatments—especially cancer treatments—for profit.

Éducation aux sciences et relations de pouvoir dans les controverses sociotechniques

RésuméDans cet article, nous illustrons la façon dont des étudiantes inscrites dans un profil d’études collégiales en éducation décrivent, en réponse à un questionnaire et pendant des séances d’un jeu de société portant sur les nanotechnologies, la gestion de controverses sociotechniques sous l’angle des rapports de pouvoir. Nous constatons que les participantes attribuent le pouvoir, notamment de décision, aux personnes qu’elles considèrent détenir des savoirs légitimes. Quatre cas de figure sont présentés. Selon le cas, la plus grande part du pouvoir est attribuée aux scientifiques et aux ingénieurs, aux représentants politiques, aux citoyens ou encore n’est attribuée à aucun groupe d’acteurs sociaux.AbstractIn this article, we show how students registered in pre-university college studies in Education characterize the management of socio-technical controversies in terms of power relationships. Using responses gathered from a questionnaire and from sessions where participants played a board game relating to nanotechnologies, we found that participants attribute power, specifically decisionmaking power, to the people they view as having legitimate knowledge. Four scenarios are presented. Depending on the scenario, the largest share of power is assigned either to scientists and engineers, to political representatives, to citizens, or is not assigned to any group of social actors.