L’entrepreneuriat social au Québec. L’exemple des centres de formation en entreprise et récupération

L’entrepreneuriat social au Québec a été peu étudié jusqu’ici. Pourtant, il recèle des comportements spécifiques liés tant aux paradigmes entrepreneuriaux traditionnels qu’aux intérêts des intervenants sociaux. Par exemple, les Centres de formation en entreprise et récupération (CFER), qui ont vu le jour dans une vingtaine de régions au Québec, offrent aux décrocheurs de seize à dix-huit ans une démarche d’apprentissage particulière, à partir d’une insertion partielle dans une entreprise de récupération mise sur pied et gérée par une équipe de professeurs-superviseurs. Ces Centres cherchent aussi à développer une entreprise rentable tout en permettant aux professeurs d’assurer la formation au travail de leurs étudiants plutôt que de déléguer cette responsabilité à diverses entreprises par le biais de stages. La mise sur pied de ces entreprises suppose d’avoir décelé une opportunité pour pouvoir assurer leur viabilité, une équipe entrepreneuriale avec un leader, informel ou non, et diverses ressources d’appoint à court et à long terme apportées par le milieu. De même, elle a besoin de l’enthousiasme des professeurs et de l’appui de la commission scolaire sinon de quelques mécènes de la région. L’expérience de six CFER analysés montre que celle-ci n’est pas nécessairement facile, mais donne des résultats importants tant à propos de la persévérance des étudiants que de leur placement par la suite dans des entreprises, sans compter les effets bénéfiques sur la récupération de diverses matières et ainsi sur l’environnement.Thus far, little research has focused on social entrepreneurship in Quebec. Yet it involves specific behaviours related both to traditional entrepreneurial paradigms and to the interests of social actors. For example, the, Centres de formation en entreprise et récupération – CFERs (enterprise and recycling training centres), which have been created in some twenty regions of Quebec, offer dropouts aged sixteen to eighteen a specific learning process, based on partial placement in a recycling enterprise set up and managed by a team of teacher-supervisors. These Centres also seek to develop a profitable business, while enabling the teachers to provide work training to their students, rather than delegating this responsibility to various firms via traineeships. The setting up of these enterprises presupposes the identification of an opportunity to ensure their viability, an entrepreneurial team with a leader, whether informal or otherwise, and various ancillary resources provided by the community over the short to medium term. It also needs the enthusiasm of the teachers and the support of the school board, or else that of a few local sponsors. The experience of the six CFERs analysed shows that this is not necessarily easy, but gives important results in terms of the students’ perseverance, and of their subsequent placement in enterprises, not to mention the beneficial effects in terms of the recycling of various materials and on the environment

Pooling problem: Alternate formulations and solution methods

Copyright @ 2004 INFORMSThe pooling problem, which is fundamental to the petroleum industry, describes a situation in which products possessing different attribute qualities are mixed in a series of pools in such a way that the attribute qualities of the blended products of the end pools must satisfy given requirements. It is well known that the pooling problem can be modeled through bilinear and nonconvex quadratic programming. In this paper, we investigate how best to apply a new branch-and-cut quadratic programming algorithm to solve the pooling problem. To this effect, we consider two standard models: One is based primarily on flow variables, and the other relies on the proportion. of flows entering pools. A hybrid of these two models is proposed for general pooling problems. Comparison of the computational properties of flow and proportion models is made on several problem instances taken from the literature. Moreover, a simple alternating procedure and a variable neighborhood search heuristic are developed to solve large instances and compared with the well-known method of successive linear programming. Solution of difficult test problems from the literature is substantially accelerated, and larger ones are solved exactly or approximately.This project was funded by Ultramar Canada and Luc Massé. The work of C. Audet was supported by NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council) fellowship PDF-207432-1998 and by CRPC (Center for Research on Parallel Computation). The work of J. Brimberg was supported by NSERC grant #OGP205041. The work of P. Hansen was supported by FCAR(Fonds pour la Formation des Chercheurs et l’Aide à la Recherche) grant #95ER1048, and NSERC grant #GP0105574

Phosphidoboratabenzene-Rhodium(I) complexes as precatalysts for the hydrogenation of alkenes at room temperature and atmospheric pressure

The di-tert-butylphosphido-boratabenzene ligand (DTBB) reacts with [(C2H4)2RhCl]2 yielding the dimeric species [(C2H4)Rh(DTBB)]2 (1). This species was fully characterized by multinuclear NMR and X-ray crystallography. Complex 1 readily dissociates ethylene in solution and upon exposure to 1 atm of H2 is capable of carrying out the hydrogenation of ethylene. The characterization of two Rh–H species by multinuclear NMR spectroscopy is provided. The reactivity of 1 towards the catalytic hydrogenation of alkenes and alkynes at room temperature and 1 atm of H2 is reported and compared to the activity of Wilkinson’s catalyst under the same reaction conditions

Les campagnes pour le 15$/h aux États-Unis et le processus de revitalisation syndicale

Les différentes campagnes pour le 15$/h aux États-Unis remportent des victoires économiques importantes et participent à mobiliser des secteurs de la classe ouvrière négligés par l'action syndicale traditionnelle. L'objectif de ce mémoire est de décrire et d'expliquer cette situation contradictoire : en pleine crise du pouvoir syndical, après des décennies de syndicalisme d'affaire bureaucratisé, naissent des perspectives de lutte ouvrière prenant l'apparence de mouvements sociaux. Spécifiquement, ce travail tente d'évaluer dans quelle mesure les campagnes pour le 15$/h aux États-Unis favorisent la revitalisation syndicale, c'est-à-dire favorisent l'accumulation de pouvoir par les organisations syndicales et le déploiement de stratégies inspirées du syndicalisme de mouvement social. Ce mémoire présente d'abord le contexte de l'adoption de la revendication d'un salaire minimum et d'un salaire décent par les organisations syndicales américaines au début du 20e siècle puis l'historique de l'évolution du salaire minimum fédéral jusqu'à nos jours. Concernant les campagnes pour le 15$/h, ce mémoire dresse un aperçu chronologique du développement des campagnes sur le plan national de 2012 à 2020. Sont aussi analysés le contexte d'émergence des campagnes, les balbutiements des campagnes de Chicago et New York et des mobilisations qui prennent une ampleur nationale dès la première moitié de l'année 2013. La campagne de SeaTac, première ville américaine à adopter le 15$/h, est analysée plus en profondeur. Il semble que ces campagnes, qui prennent souvent la forme d'authentiques mouvements sociaux, participent effectivement à la revitalisation syndicale. Cependant, malgré les victoires économiques importantes, les organisationsions syndicales américaines ont eu peu de succès à transcrire ces mouvements en pouvoir institutionnel durable capable de renverser la tendance lourde au déclin syndical qui persiste depuis la décennie 1980

[(IMes)2Pt(H)(ClBC5H4SiMe3)] : a Borabenzene–Platinum Adduct with an Unusual Pt‐Cl‐B Interaction

A Pt‐Cl‐B interaction is observed when a borabenzene derivative reacts with a platinum(0) precursor with bulky N‐heterocyclic carbene ligands. The resulting platinum(II) complex (see picture; Pt red, N blue, Cl green, B pink, Si yellow) involves a new bonding mode for borabenzene, which usually binds in an η6 fashion to transition metals

Magnetic resonance imaging of human tissue-engineered adipose substitutes

Adipose tissue (AT) substitutes are being developed to answer the strong demand in reconstructive surgery. To facilitate the validation of their functional performance in vivo, and to avoid resorting to excessive number of animals, it is crucial at this stage to develop biomedical imaging methodologies, enabling the follow-up of reconstructed AT substitutes. Until now, biomedical imaging of AT substitutes has scarcely been reported in the literature. Therefore, the optimal parameters enabling good resolution, appropriate contrast, and graft delineation, as well as blood perfusion validation, must be studied and reported. In this study, human adipose substitutes produced from adipose-derived stem/stromal cells using the self-assembly approach of tissue engineering were implanted into athymic mice. The fate of the reconstructed AT substitutes implanted in vivo was successfully followed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is the imaging modality of choice for visualizing soft ATs. T1-weighted images allowed clear delineation of the grafts, followed by volume integration. The magnetic resonance (MR) signal of reconstructed AT was studied in vitro by proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR). This confirmed the presence of a strong triglyceride peak of short longitudinal proton relaxation time (T1) values (200±53 ms) in reconstructed AT substitutes (total T1=813±76 ms), which establishes a clear signal difference between adjacent muscle, connective tissue, and native fat (total T1 ∼300 ms). Graft volume retention was followed up to 6 weeks after implantation, revealing a gradual resorption rate averaging at 44% of initial substitute's volume. In addition, vascular perfusion measured by dynamic contrast-enhanced-MRI confirmed the graft's vascularization postimplantation (14 and 21 days after grafting). Histological analysis of the grafted tissues revealed the persistence of numerous adipocytes without evidence of cysts or tissue necrosis. This study describes the in vivo grafting of human adipose substitutes devoid of exogenous matrix components, and for the first time, the optimal parameters necessary to achieve efficient MRI visualization of grafted tissue-engineered adipose substitutes

Under ice spills of conventional crude oil and diluted bitumen: Physiological resilience of the blue mussel and transgenerational effects

Spillages at sea of diluted bitumen (dilbit) from oil sands have received little attention until now. To our best knowledge, there are no reports on the impact of a severe exposure to dilbit on the Blue mussel (Mytilus edulis). In this study, adult Blue mussels were exposed to one conventional crude oil (Heidrun) and two dilbits (Cold Lake Blend and Access Western Blend) for a period of 7 days in an ice-covered environment and then maintained for three months until the spawning season. The exposed mussels were monitored for aromatic hydrocarbon bioaccumulation, physiological energetic budget, cellular stress, byssus production and gametogenesis. In spring, spawning was induced to characterize breeding success. Bioaccumulation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) was detected after three days of exposure, with higher concentrations of PAHs associated to the conventional oil (5.49 ± 0.12 μg·g−1 d.w.) compared to both dilbits (0.91 ± 0.02 μg·g−1; 0.51 ± 0.03 μg·g−1 d.w.). Despite a fast depuration rate and a good resilience of the exposed mussels, significant negative effects were observed at the cellular, physiological and fitness levels, especially in offspring. Our results suggest a higher toxicity of the diluted bitumen compared to the conventional crude despite the lower bioaccumulation of total PAHs. Dilbit treatments caused evident negative transgenerational effects on unexposed F1 generation. -- Keywords : Diluted bitumen ; PAHs ; Blue mussel ; Winter oil spill ; Ice oil spill

Ablation of Proliferating Cells in the CNS Exacerbates Motor Neuron Disease Caused by Mutant Superoxide Dismutase

Proliferation of glia and immune cells is a common pathological feature of many neurodegenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Here, to investigate the role of proliferating cells in motor neuron disease, SOD1G93A transgenic mice were treated intracerebroventicularly (ICV) with the anti-mitotic drug cytosine arabinoside (Ara-C). ICV delivery of Ara-C accelerated disease progression in SOD1G93A mouse model of ALS. Ara-C treatment caused substantial decreases in the number of microglia, NG2+ progenitors, Olig2+ cells and CD3+ T cells in the lumbar spinal cord of symptomatic SOD1G93A transgenic mice. Exacerbation of disease was also associated with significant alterations in the expression inflammatory molecules IL-1β, IL-6, TGF-β and the growth factor IGF-1