Back to Basics: Restoring Equity and Efficiency in the EI Program - EI Reform Part II

Regionally based entry requirements and benefit durations prolong the persistence of unemployment and reduce economic incentives to adjust to labour-market conditions. Reforms aimed at equity are overdue. Regionally based criteria should be replaced by uniform, countrywide, employment insurance entrance requirements and benefit durations.employment insurance reform

Protected subspace Ramsey spectroscopy

We study a modified Ramsey spectroscopy technique employing slowly decaying states for quantum metrology applications using dense ensembles. While closely positioned atoms exhibit superradiant collective decay and dipole-dipole induced frequency shifts, recent results [Ostermann, Ritsch and Genes, Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{111}, 123601 (2013)] suggest the possibility to suppress such detrimental effects and achieve an even better scaling of the frequency sensitivity with interrogation time than for noninteracting particles. Here we present an in-depth analysis of this 'protected subspace Ramsey technique' using improved analytical modeling and numerical simulations including larger 3D samples. Surprisingly we find that using sub-radiant states of $N$ particles to encode the atomic coherence yields a scaling of the optimal sensitivity better than $1/\sqrt{N}$. Applied to ultracold atoms in 3D optical lattices we predict a precision beyond the single atom linewidth.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

The Piggy Bank Index: Matching Canadians’ Savings Rates to Their Retirement Dreams

As Canada’s babyboom generation approaches retirement age, public concern about the adequacy of retirement income is mounting, note the authors. Most of the public debate has been about potential reform of the tax and fiduciary rules governing corporate pension plans, the possibility of expanding contributory public pension plans such as the CPP/QPP, about how much tax-deferred saving the Income Tax Act should allow, and for how long. To date, say the authors, there has been little focus on the fraction of annual earnings that must be saved by Canadians – either through employer plans, private saving, or expanded contributions to a public plan – to provide adequate and reasonably assured retirement incomes.Pension Papers, retirement income, Registered Retirement Savings (RRSPs), Canada Pension Plan (CPP/QPP), Income Tax Act

Study on the internalization mechanism of the ZEBRA cell-penetrating peptide

Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) represent a noninvasive method for delivering functional biomolecules into living cells. We have recently shown that the Epstein-Barr virus transcriptional factor ZEBRA contains a protein transduction domain, named Z9 or minimal domain (MD). Only few of currently identified CPPs including MD are able to rapidly cross the mammalian cell membrane without being entrapped into endosomal compartments, even when fused to cargo macromolecules. In this work, a series of MD deletion mutants has been engineered and their cellular uptake has been analyzed by confocal microscopy and FACS. We identified a domain MD11 (8 amino acids shorter than MD) able to enter mammalian cells via a mainly endocytosis-independent mechanism. All the other generated truncated forms exhibited reduced cellular uptake and penetrated into cells through endocytic mechanisms. These results have highlighted the role of the MD11 C-terminal region as essential for efficient cellular entry and endosomal escape  and open new perspectives for the use of this CPP as carrier for delivering biologically active macromolecules with therapeutic potential