Le Régime québécois d’assurance parentale : un système discriminatoire à l’endroit des enfants adoptés

Le Régime québécois d’assurance parentale (RQAP) crée une distinction dans l’attribution du nombre de semaines assurées selon que le congé est demandé par des parents biologiques ou des parents adoptants. Ces derniers bénéficient d’un congé parental nettement plus court au moment de l’arrivée de leur enfant, l’objectif du législateur étant vraisemblablement de tenir compte de la réalité de la grossesse et de l’accouchement. Se peut-il toutefois que le régime occulte la situation des familles adoptantes et les difficultés qui leur sont propres, au point d’être discriminatoire ? Afin de répondre à cette question, les auteurs proposent de déplacer le foyer d’analyse traditionnellement placé sur les droits des parents pour le tourner vers les droits et l’intérêt supérieur des enfants. Considérant le vécu et les besoins particuliers des enfants adoptés, ils démontrent que le RQAP, comme les conventions collectives qui reproduisent une distinction similaire, ne résisterait pas à un examen judiciaire fondé sur le droit à l’égalité garanti par les chartes. En conséquence, les auteurs proposent une nouvelle façon de concevoir le régime plus respectueuse des droits de tous.Abstract: The Québec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP) provides for a benefit period that varies according to whether the applicants are the biological parents or the adoptive parents of the child. Adoptive parents are entitled to a significantly shorter parental leave upon their child’s arrival. It would appear that the legislative intent is to take into account distinguishing factors based on pregnancy and delivery. Couldn’t one argue that the QPIP overlooks the situation of adoptive families and their specific challenges to the extent where it might be deemed discriminatory? To address this question, the writers suggest shifting the analytic focal point away from the traditional focus on the rights of the parents, to the rights and best interests of the children. Considering the personal history and specific needs of adopted children, the writers argue that the QPIP, like all collective agreements that set out similar distinctions, would not withstand a legal challenge based on the right to equality guaranteed under the Canadian and Quebec Charters. Consequently, the writers come up with a proposal that takes into account the rights of all stakeholders

Potentiel stratégique technologique d'une entreprise : développement du concept et une étude de cas illustrative

Modèle de stratégie technologique vue dans une perspective évolutionniste -- Contribution recherchée sur le plan théorique et sur le plan pratique -- Modèle conceptuel de l'étude -- Bilan technologique et potentiel technologique d'une entreprise -- Édification du potentiel stratégique technologique d'une entreprise -- Édification du potentiel stratégique technologique d'une entreprise -- Actualisation du potentiel stratégique technologique d'une entreprise -- Finalité du potentiel stratégique technologique d'une entreprise -- Cadre méthodologique -- Stratégie de recherche -- Design de la recherche -- Le choix du Régional Jet de Canadair de 50 places -- La Société Bombardier Inc. -- Données et analyse comparative des avions régionaux

New Observations and Methods for Modeling Nonlinear Site Response

Refuge accelerogram, 1987 Superstition Hills, CA; and the Kushiro Port station, 1993 Kushiro-Oki, Japan, among others. To understand the nature of these nonlinear effects, we have developed a model of nonlinear soil dynamics that includes nonlinear effects such as anelasticity, hysteretic behavior and cyclic degradation due to pore water pressure. The hysteresis behavior is given by the Generalized Masing rules. This new formulation has a functional representation and it includes the Cundall-Pyke hypothesis and Masing original formulation as special cases. It also provides a mean to quantify anelastic damping as a function of the stress-strain loop. Using the in situ observations from the Gamer Valley downhole seismographic array (GVDSA), we have modeled scenarios of ground motions at the surface for this site. The simulations show amplitude reduction as well as the shift of the fundamental frequency to lower frequencies as observed on vertical arrays. The synthetic accelerograms show the development of intermittent behavior-high frequency peaks riding on low frequency carrier-as observed in the acceleration records mentioned above. Comparisons between the nonlinear model predictions and those computed with the equivalent linear model demonstrate that the latter model fails to capture essential manifestations of nonlinear soil response

Compaction of Hyaloclastite from the Active Geothermal System at Krafla Volcano, Iceland

Hyaloclastites commonly form high-quality reservoir rocks in volcanic geothermal provinces. Here, we investigated the effects of confinement due to burial following prolonged accumulation of eruptive products on the physical and mechanical evolution of surficial and subsurface (depths of 70 m, 556 m, and 732 m) hyaloclastites from Krafla volcano, Iceland. Upon loading in a hydrostatic cell, the porosity and permeability of the surficial hyaloclastite decreased linearly with mean effective stress, as pores and cracks closed due to elastic (recoverable) compaction up to 22-24 MPa (equivalent to ~1.3 km depth in the reservoir). Beyond this mean effective stress, denoted as P∗, we observed accelerated porosity and permeability reduction with increasing confinement, as the rock underwent permanent inelastic compaction. In comparison, the porosity and permeability of the subsurface core samples were less sensitive to mean effective stress, decreasing linearly with increasing confinement as the samples compacted elastically within the conditions tested (to 40 MPa). Although the surficial material underwent permanent, destructive compaction, it maintained higher porosity and permeability than the subsurface hyaloclastites throughout the experiments. We constrained the evolution of yield curves of the hyaloclastites, subjected to different effective mean stresses in a triaxial press. Surficial hyaloclastites underwent a brittle-ductile transition at an effective mean stress of ~10.5 MPa, and peak strength (differential stress) reached 13 MPa. When loaded to effective mean stresses of 33 and 40 MPa, the rocks compacted, producing new yield curves with a brittle-ductile transition at ~12.5 and ~19 MPa, respectively, but showed limited strength increase. In comparison, the subsurface samples were found to be much stronger, displaying higher strengths and brittle-ductile transitions at higher effective mean stresses (i.e., 37.5 MPa for 70 m sample, >75 MPa for 556 m, and 68.5 MPa for 732 m) that correspond to their lower porosities and permeabilities. Thus, we conclude that compaction upon burial alone is insufficient to explain the physical and mechanical properties of the subsurface hyaloclastites present in the reservoir at Krafla volcano. Mineralogical alteration, quantified using SEM-EDS, is invoked to explain the further reduction of porosity and increase in strength of the hyaloclastite in the active geothermal system at Krafla

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

Multifractal analysis and simulation techniques and turbulent fields

In turbulent and other nonlinear geophysical processes, extreme variability is built up multiplicatively from large to small scales via cascade mechanisms generally leading to (canonical) universal multifractal fields. This thesis clarifies the distinction between "bare" and "dressed" cascade processes, the classification of multifractal singularities and the related nontrivial problem of sampling and estimation of their scale properties. It then describes the first data analysis techniques applicable to these highly variable multifractals: previously existing techniques are limited to much calmer geometric or microcanonical multifractals. The two techniques developed here (Probability Distribution Multiple Scaling and Double Trace Moment) are analyzed theoretically and numerically and are tested on turbulent and topographic data, providing the first estimates of their universal multifractal parameters, the Levy index $alpha$ which characterizes the degree of multifractality, and C$sb1$ (the codimension of the mean singularity) which characterizes the mean inhomogeneity of the process

Stochastic modeling of climatic variability in dendrochronology

Climatic variability can be characterized by invariant quantities arising from the analysis of scaling properties of paleoclimatic records. In this paper we discuss a stochastic model that reproduces the variability and the long-range correlation observed in dendrochronological time series. We have found that non-Gaussian distributions are better suited to describe the climatic variability embedded in these data. Our results indicate that Gaussian distribution fails to capture the large fluctuation -extreme events-that characterized climatic variability in these time series. This might have applications on the study of extreme weather events on future climate scenarios

Coupling of the random properties of the source and the ground motion for the 1999 Chi Chi earthquake

We show that both the slip distribution and the peak ground acceleration (PGA) for the 1999 Chi Chi earthquake can be described by Levy laws. Furthermore, we found that the tails of the probability density functions (PDF) characterizing the slip and the PGA are governed by a parameter, the Levy index, with almost the same values as predicted by the Central Limit theorem. The PDF tail controls the frequency at which extreme large events can occur. These events are the large stress drops-asperities distributed over the fault surface and the large PGA observed in the ground motion. Our results suggest that the frequency of these events is coupled; the PDF of the PGA is a direct consequence of the PDF of the asperities. The physical rationale responsible for the coupling is the principle of superposition of wave signals characterized by random properties that are governed by the Central Limit theorem