Message from the Editor in Chief: It is with great enthusiasm that the AAR journal invites you to read our first issue! It contains the research of University of Alberta students on two very important topics to Canada and the world today. We hope that our readers will enjoy reading these publications. With this issue AAR opens the sequence of a variety of high-quality interdisciplinary research that we will continue to publish for years to come. As the Editor in Chief of AAR journal I would like thank our hard-working volunteers, the University of Alberta Library, and the patient authors themselves for helping AAR to achieve this first milestone!