Regulation and Productivity in the Quebec Manufacturing Sector

We investigate the impact of occupational safety and health (OSH) and environmental regulation on the rate of growth of total factor productivity (TFP) in the Quebec manufacturing sector during the 1985-88 period. Our results show that environmental regulation and OSH protective reassignments (a prevention policy with respect to OSH) have led to a reduction in productivity growth, while the presence of mandatory prevention programs and of fines for infractions to OSH rules have led to an increase in productivity growth. Interestingly, this is, to our knowledge, the first result showing that OSH regulation may have had a positive effect on productivity growth. Nous évaluons l'impact qu'ont eu les réglementations en matière de santé et sécurité du travail et d'environnement sur la croissance de la productivité totale des facteurs (PTF) du secteur manufacturier québécois au cours des années 1985-88. Nos résultats montrent que la réglementation environnementale et les réaffectations préventives (une mesure de prévention des accidents de travail) ont réduit la croissance de la productivité, alors que les mesures de prévention obligatoires et l'importance des amendes imposées pour infraction aux normes du travail ont augmenté la productivité. Notre étude est la première, à notre connaissance, qui indique un effet potentiellement positif de la réglementation sur la croissance de la productivité.Environmental regulationl Safety and health regulation; Productivity, Réglementation environnementale ; Réglementation de la santé et de la sécurité du travail ; Productivité

A False Perception? The relative riskiness of AIM and listed Stocks

This research examines the perception that the AIM market is riskier than the Official List market in comparable stocks. The empirical analysis uses high frequency data for January 2000 to December 2004 on 533 AIM stocks and 264 comparable Official List stocks. Risk is measured in a variety of ways. At a superficial level AIM stocks appear riskier than comparable Official List stocks. However, as the analysis is refined to ensure the comparison focuses purely on the effects of being listed on different markets, the additional AIM risk shrinks and finally disappears. This conclusion concurs with the current market practitioner view that there is no significant risk differential.

La collaboration scientifique et technologique en Amérique du Nord : un point de vue Canadien

Canada, as a country with a small, open economy, faces the immediate challenge of learning to shape dynamic comparative advantage in the emerging international economy. About 75 % of Canada's trade linkages are with the United States, and a very large component of the Canadian experience of « globalization » is driven by North American economic integration. This integration is taking place in the absence of institutions and policy mechanisms to promote and manage science, technology, and innovation relations on a continental scale. Bilateral s & T arrangements centered on the United States presently characterize the North American innovation System. Circumstances in North America pose three sets of challenges to Canadian s & T policy. 1) Science and technology are increasing in importance in international trade, environmental, and social/cultural matters. This means that Canada must learn to improve its management of an increasingly internationalized domestic s & T System. 2) Canada must cultivate mutually beneficial bilateral s & T relationships with its two partners in NAFTA, Mexico and the United States. 3) Canada must identify where its interests lie in the development and governance of trilateral and international rules and arrangements for science, technology, and innovation

Behavior analytic methods

Behavior analysts typically conceptualize social skills as behaviors, or series of behaviors, that mediate the responses of others. As such, practitioners may assess and teach social skills using the principles of learning derived from operant conditioning (e.g., positive reinforcement). In the current chapter, we first discuss the conceptualization of social skills from a behavior analytic standpoint. That is, social skills are behaviors that are evoked by environmental stimuli and reinforced by others. Next, we describe behavioral assessments that may be useful to conduct prior to teaching social skills to children such as task analysis, preference assessment, and functional assessment. Finally, we review teaching strategies that may be adopted by practitioners to teach the social skills identified by assessments. These strategies include prompting, fading, chaining, shaping, and discrete trial training. We also discuss how to adapt reinforcement schedules to teach social skills and present multiple methods to promote the generalization of the newly learned skills

Persuasion via audiovisual transmission: Is the persuasiveness of a message affected by whether the audience believes the message presentation is a videotaped recording or is an unrehearsed live telecast?

One hundred and fifty-nine university students participated in a study examining the effect on persuasion of believing that an audiovisual message presentation was a videotaped recording or was an unrehearsed live telecast from an adjacent room. Participants were also assigned to one of two other groups, one instructed to focus its attention on the information being presented (i.e., a centrally focused group), the other instructed to focus on the message source\u27s physical appearance (i.e., a peripherally focused group). A 2 (Believed Live vs. Believed Recorded) x 2 (Centrally Focused vs. Peripherally Focused) Analysis of Variance was performed on the data. The interaction approached significance ($F$ (1, 155) = 3.049, $p$ =.083). Significance was reached for the live/recorded manipulation ($F$ (1, 155) = 4.68, $p$ =.032), but not reached for the central/peripheral manipulation ($F$ (1, 155) = 1.159, $p$ =.283). Results are explained in terms of involvement, psychological reactance, and the particular persuasion characteristics chosen for this study

Cellulose valorization in biorefinery: integration of fast pyrolysis and fermentation for building blocks production

A combination of thermochemical and biological conversion of cellulosic materials is a promising alternative for the production of biofuels and building blocks in an integrated biorefinery. Indeed, enzymatic depolymerization is selective but slow and expensive. It would be of interest to associate thermochemical conversion for a fast depolymerization of biomass with biochemical conversion for a selective conversion of depolymerized liquid streams. In this work, cellulose is pyrolyzed to produce sugars that can be used as substrate for a fermentation process. This work is the result of a scientific collaboration between ICFAR (London, Canada) and CNRS (Nancy, France). Pyrolysis was performed in a fluidized bed reactor at 475ᵒC with a bio-oil yield of 73.4 wt.% (Figure 1). Different fractions of bio-oil were recovered with a set of 5 condensers. Levoglucosan and total sugars were quantified by GC-FID-MS and phenol/sulphuric acid method respectively. The maximum yields of levoglucosan (43.7 %) and total sugars (80.4 %) were found in the first condenser that was kept at 70ᵒC. Due to the non-fermentable condition of levoglucosan, all the oil fractions, as well as a mixture of them, were hydrolyzed to obtain fermentable glucose. The different bio-oil fractions and a mixture of all fractions were used as substrate in a fermentation reactor to produce acetone, butanol and ethanol (ABE). The talk will present the mass yields obtained for the integrated process combining pyrolysis, hydrolysis and fermentation (figure 2). The microorganisms were not able to grow in the mixture of all fractions. On the contrary, fractions from condenser 1 and 2 lead to normal bacterial growth and fermentation products pattern. Maximum yields (per gram of oil) of acetone=4.6 %, butanol=13.2 % and ethanol=0.1 % were found for the bio-oil collected in the first condenser. These results put in evidence the importance of pyrolysis with staged condensation as an entry for fermentation processes. The methodology proposed in this work could be applied to other biochemical conversion of bio-oils to produce higher added-value products. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Mild-stretch mechanical ventilation upregulates toll-like receptor 2 and sensitizes the lung to bacterial lipopeptide

INTRODUCTION: Mechanical ventilation (MV) could prime the lung toward an inflammatory response if exposed to another insult such as bacterial invasion. The underlying mechanisms are not so far clear. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) allow the host to recognize selectively bacterial pathogens and in turn to trigger an immune response. We therefore hypothesized that MV modulates TLR2 expression and in turn modifies responsiveness to agonists such as bacterial lipopeptide (BLP). METHOD: Both in vitro and in vivo experiments were conducted. First, TLR2 expression and protein were measured in the A549 pulmonary epithelial cell line submitted to 8-hour cyclic stretch (20% elongation; 20/minute rate). After a 24-hour period of cyclic stretch, the inflammatory response of the A549 cells to the synthetic BLP, Pam(3)CSK(4), was tested after 8 hours of exposure. In a second set of experiments, healthy anesthetized and paralyzed rabbits were submitted to 8-hour MV (tidal volume = 12 ml/kg, zero end-expiratory pressure; FIO(2 )= 50%; respiratory rate = 20/minute) before being sacrificed for TLR2 lung expression assessment. The lung inflammatory response to BLP was then tested in animals submitted to 24-hour MV before being sacrificed 8 hours after the tracheal instillation of Pam(3)CSK(4). RESULTS: Cyclic stretch of human pulmonary epithelial cell lines increased both TLR2 mRNA and protein expression. Cells submitted to cyclic stretch also increased IL-6 and IL-8 secretion in response to Pam(3)CSK(4), a classical TLR2 ligand. A mild-stretch MV protocol induced a 60-fold increase of TLR2 mRNA expression in lung tissue when compared with spontaneously breathing controls. Moreover, the combination of MV and airway exposure to Pam(3)CSK(4 )acted synergistically in causing lung inflammation and injury. CONCLUSIONS: Mild-stretch MV increases lung expression of TLR2 and sensitizes the lung to bacterial TLR2 ligands. This may account for the propensity of mechanically ventilated patients to develop acute lung injury in the context of airway bacterial colonization/infection