The St. Louis Crisis in the Canadian Press: New Data on the June 1939 Incident

Starting in late May 1939, a humanitarian crisis developed when some 900 German Jews were denied the use of prearranged Cuban temporary immigration permits in the port of Havana after having arrived on board of the MS St. Louis, a luxury German liner. The event soon attracted much media attention because of its dramatic character and negotiations immediately began to find a safe haven for the stranded passengers elsewhere on the Atlantic seacoast. Eventually, after a few days, all efforts in this respect failed and the captain of the MS St. Louis, Gustav Schröder, was forced to contemplate bringing his human cargo back to Western Europe where four countries allowed the passengers to disembark. This article discusses the involvement of the Canadian government and media in this crisis, and the role that the Mackenzie-King cabinet played in denying the German Jewish refugees any hope of being welcomed in the country. Of particular interest here is the fact that the Canadian public was not well informed of the fate of the St. Louis passengers, in either official language, and that largely for this reason no serious pressure was put on the government to bring a different resolution of the crisis. À la fin du mois de mai 1939, une crise humanitaire est apparue quand quelque 900 Juifs allemands, arrivés à bord du paquebot le Saint-Louis, n’ont pu bénéficier dans le port de La Havane de permis d’immigration temporaires cubains déjà émis. L’événement n’a pas tardé à attirer beaucoup d’attention de la part des médias par son côté dramatique et des négociations ont immédiatement été lancées afin de trouver sur la côte atlantique un autre port d’accueil pour les réfugiés apatrides. Après quelques jours, le capitaine du navire, Gustav Schröder a toutefois dû se résoudre à regagner l’Europe de l’Ouest, où quatre pays ont accepté de prendre en charge les passagers. Cet article s’intéresse au rôle joué par le gouvernement et par les médias canadiens dans cette crise, et en particulier au fait qu’aucun geste concret n’ait été fait pour accueillir les réfugiés juifs au pays. L’auteur porte une attention spéciale au fait que le sort des passagers du Saint-Louis n’ait pas fait l’objet de reportages dans les journaux canadiens, dans aucune des langues officielles, et que pour cette raison le cabinet de Mackenzie-King a senti peu de pression de la part des citoyens canadiens pour trouver une résolution différente à la crise

A multilevel perspective on the role of job demands, job resources, and need satisfaction for employees' outcomes

International audienceThis study investigates the mediator role of psychological need satisfaction for the effects of job demands and resources on turnover intentions, psychological distress, and work-to-family conflict, simultaneously at the employee and work unit levels. In doing so, we consider how need satisfaction, when considered at the work unit level, creates a context likely to play an additional role in the prediction of these outcomes. These questions were investigated using a combination of doubly latent multilevel confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation models applied to responses provided by a large sample (N = 5,716 employees nested within 50 work units) of Canadian Armed Forces/Department of National Defence personnel. The results supported the idea that work environment effects on the outcomes considered in this study were mediated by psychological need satisfaction at the individual and work unit levels and demonstrated that these associations were driven by global work environment perceptions and global need satisfaction. Furthermore, need satisfaction was found to create a context, at the work unit level, leading employees working in units including more highly satisfied co-workers to present higher levels of turnover intentions but lower levels of work-to-family conflict than would be expected based on their individual levels of need satisfaction

Work Fatigue Profiles: Nature, Implications, and Associations With Psychological Empowerment

International audienc

Toward an ecologically realistic experimental system to investigate the multigenerational effects of ocean warming and acidification on benthic invertebrates

International audienceHuman activities over the past 150 yr have led to significant carbon dioxide (CO$_2$) emissions, causing global warming and ocean acidification. Surface ocean temperature has risen by 0.93°C since 1850, with projections of an additional +1.42°C to 3.47°C by 2080–2099. Ocean acidification, driven by CO$_2$ absorption, has already lowered seawater pH by 0.1 units, affecting calcifying organisms, including shelled mollusks. Long‐term multigenerational studies on mollusk responses to both ocean acidification and warming, under realistic environmental conditions, are scarce. To address this knowledge gap, two mobile experimental units that can be deployed at the vicinity of shellfish farming areas were developed within the framework of the CocoriCO$_2$ project. The experimental systems were designed to manipulate temperature and pH as offsets from ambient conditions. The experimental units have shown their effectiveness in terms of controlling and maintaining pH and temperature to assess the multigenerational effects of ocean warming and acidification on benthic invertebrates. Finally, the developed experimental systems can be modified easily to provide an educated assessment of the impact of other relevant environmental changes such as deoxygenation and changes in salinity

Pathological investigation of placentas in preeclampsia (the PEARL study)

INTRODUCTION: Preeclampsia (PE), but mainly preterm PE, is associated with deep placentation disorders. We aimed to compare placental pathologies in pregnancies affected by term and preterm PE compared to normal pregnancies. METHODS: We performed a prospective case-cohort study. Low-risk nulliparous women were recruited in the first trimester and women who developed PE were recruited at diagnosis. Placental pathologies were reported according to the Amsterdam Placental Workshop Group Consensus Statement and were compared between cases and controls. PE cases stratified as term (≥37 weeks) and preterm PE (<37 weeks). Our primary outcome was maternal vascular malperfusion (MVM). RESULTS: Twenty-four women who developed preterm PE were compared to 10 women who developed term PE and 41 women without PE. Preterm PE (92%) was associated with more MVM than term PE (10%, p < 0.01) and controls (4%, p < 0.01), but the rate of MVM was similar between term PE and controls (p = 0.56). Preterm PE was also associated with more placental infarcts (65% vs. 20% vs. 15%); advanced villous maturation (91% vs. 30% vs. 1%); and hypoplastic villous maturation (70% vs. 10% vs. 3%); and moderate to severe decidual vasculopathy (56% vs. 10% vs. 3%) than term PE and controls (all p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Most cases of preterm PE are associated with MVM, placental infarcts, advanced and/or hypoplastic villous maturation, and moderate to severe decidual vasculopathy, while it is infrequent in term PE and pregnancies without PE. Preterm and term preeclampsia have a different pathologic process that should be considered for their prevention and clinical management

The HADDOCK web server for data-driven biomolecular docking

Computational docking is the prediction or modeling of the three-dimensional structure of a biomolecular complex, starting from the structures of the individual molecules in their free, unbound form. HADDOC K is a popular docking program that takes a datadriven approach to docking, with support for a wide range of experimental data. Here we present the HADDOC K web server protocol, facilitating the modeling of biomolecular complexes for a wide community. The main web interface is user-friendly, requiring only the structures of the individual components and a list of interacting residues as input. Additional web interfaces allow the more advanced user to exploit the full range of experimental data supported by HADDOC K and to customize the docking process. The HADDOC K server has access to the resources of a dedicated cluster and of the e-NMR GRID infrastructure. Therefore, a typical docking run takes only a few minutes to prepare and a few hours to complete

Microbial ecology of the cryosphere: sea ice and glacial habitats

The Earth's cryosphere comprises those regions that are cold enough for water to turn into ice. Recent findings show that the icy realms of polar oceans, glaciers and ice sheets are inhabited by microorganisms of all three domains of life, and that temperatures below 0 °C are an integral force in the diversification of microbial life. Cold-adapted microorganisms maintain key ecological functions in icy habitats: where sunlight penetrates the ice, photoautotrophy is the basis for complex food webs, whereas in dark subglacial habitats, chemoautotrophy reigns. This Review summarizes current knowledge of the microbial ecology of frozen waters, including the diversity of niches, the composition of microbial communities at these sites and their biogeochemical activities