Lone Female Headship and Welfare Policy in Canada

The principal qualifying condition for welfare in Canada, unlike the US, is financial need - there are no demographic criteria. We use a time-series of annual, national cross-sections for the period 1981 through 1993 to estimate a model of lone-female headship. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that welfare benefit levels for one-parent and two-parent families are important determinants of the likelihood that a Canadian woman is a lone mother. In all models with provincial fixed effects, the coefficients for welfare benefits are small, statistically insignificant and often of the unexpected sign. We do find that the probability that a woman is a lone mother is generally associated in the expected fashion with her earnings capacity and the earnings capacity of her potential male partner, and with her age and schooling.

Théorie, mon beau souci

L’interprétation des films a fait l’objet de plusieurs critiques ces dernières années de la part du mouvement cognitiviste en études cinématographiques. Selon d’aucuns, les énoncés interprétatifs seraient dépourvus de sens. Cet article cherche à démontrer le contraire en faisant appel à la philosophie pragmatique et sémiotique de Charles S. Peirce. L’argumentaire se divise en deux parties. La première porte sur le pragmatisme de Peirce et explique pourquoi toute théorie est inférentielle et interprétative. L’auteur distingue entre les méthodes pragmatique et scientifique, puis étudie le rôle que joue l’habitude pour pallier le dualisme qui oppose l’esprit et la matière. Enfin, il est question du réalisme et de la doctrine peircéenne du sens commun critique. La seconde partie de l’article examine certaines idées qui ont récemment dominé les débats sur l’interprétation en études cinématographiques et littéraires. Plus particulièrement, l’auteur s’interroge sur la critique de l’interprétation élaborée par David Bordwell et la façon dont elle se fonde sur des principes à la fois sceptiques et nominalistes empruntés au théoricien de la littérature Stanley Fish. Il montre comment la distinction bordwellienne entre compréhension et interprétation repose sur le rôle que joue, au cinéma, la perception sensorielle, puis critique cette distinction en faisant appel à l’empirisme peircéen, dont l’une des particularités est de ne pas se réduire au sensualisme. Pour Peirce, en effet, la perception se déploie de façon continue entre le monde extérieur et le monde intérieur. Suit un bref commentaire sur les travaux d’Umberto Eco quant à la distinction entre interprétation et surinterprétation qui conduit l’auteur à considérer le rôle du vague dans l’entreprise interprétative ainsi qu’à traiter des problèmes que soulèvent la visée et la pertinence des interprétations lorsque celles-ci sont définies à partir de tout ce qui s’impose à notre esprit au contact direct — ou même indirect — d’un film. Enfin, l’auteur conclut que l’interprétation d’un film relève d’un processus de croissance rationnel des signes — y compris des signes esthétiques.In recent years, the practice of film interpretation has come under attack by cognitive film theorists. It is said that interpretive claims are not truth-apt and have no cognitive value. This essay contests this claim by calling on the pragmatic and semeiotic philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. The essay is divided into two parts. The first part examines Peirce’s pragmatism and the notion that theories are inescapably inferential and interpretive. The author distinguishes between the pragmatic and the scientific methods, examines the role of habit as a way to bridge the gap of mind/matter dualism, and considers Peirce’s realism in the context of his critical common-sensism. The second section looks at some leading ideas in film/literary scholarship on interpretation. In particular, the author questions David Bordwell’s critique of interpretive criticism and its reliance on skeptical and nominalist principles borrowed from Stanley Fish. It is shown how Bordwell’s distinction between comprehension and interpretation in the cinema rests on the role played by sensory perception in the film experience. The distinction is criticized by adopting a form of empirism—that of Peirce—that is not limited by sensualism. Indeed, for Peirce, perception spreads continuously between the external and the inner worlds. A brief commentary on the work of Umberto Eco and the distinction between interpreting and overinterpreting then leads the author to consider the role of vagueness in interpretation and the problems raised by purpose and relevance of interpretation now defined as all that compels the mind of the spectator through direct—or even indirect—contact with a film. This turn opens up the issues of truth, rationality and normativity in interpretation. The paper concludes with the author arguing that film interpretation constitutes a process whereby signs—including aesthetic signs—can grow in rationality

Lone Female Headship and Welfare Policy in Canada

The principal qualifying condition for welfare in Canada, unlike the US, is financial need - there are no demographic criteria. We use a time-series of annual, national cross-sections for the period 1981 through 1993 to estimate a model of lone-female headship. Our findings do not support the hypothesis that welfare benefit levels for one-parent and two-parent families are important determinants of the likelihood that a Canadian woman is a lone mother. In all models with provincial fixed effects, the coefficients for welfare benefits are small, statistically insignificant and often of the unexpected sign. We do find that the probability that a woman is a lone mother is generally associated in the expected fashion with her earnings capacity and the earnings capacity of her potential male partner, and with her age and schooling.

L’aventure filmologique : documents et jalons d’une histoire institutionnelle

C’est un décret du 28 octobre 1950 qui crée officiellement l’Institut de filmologie au sein de la Sorbonne, même si, officieusement, les activités de l’Institut — notamment les cours en Sorbonne — remontent à 1948. Le décret de sa fermeture officielle paraît en juin 1963. Que se passe-t-il entre ces deux dates ? Comment naît le premier diplôme universitaire français en études cinématographiques et quelles sont les conditions de la fermeture de l’Institut près de quinze ans plus tard ? Cet article, fondé sur des documents d’archives, examine l’étonnante histoire institutionnelle, politique et même « secrète » de l’Institut de filmologie et le rôle qu’y joua son fondateur et principal acteur, Gilbert Cohen-Séat.In collaboration with the Sorbonne, the Institute of Filmology unofficially began offering courses leading to a degree in film studies—the first such degree to be offered in France—in 1948. Its official birth, however, came through a decree published on October 28, 1950. It was subsequently closed down by another decree published in June 1963. What happened between these two dates? What were the conditions of birth of the Institute and why did it suddenly cease its operations some fifteen years later? This article, based on archival materials, examines the surprising institutional, political and even “secret” history of the Institute of Filmology and the role played by its founder and principal protagonist, Gilbert Cohen-Séat

A Spatial Exploration of Institutional Investment in Canada for the Year 2010

Using measures of central tendency, the average nonUS-based institutional investor has more capital invested in securities than his US-based counterpart. The present study shows that US-based investors favour manufacturing companies, whereas Canadian investors prefer companies based in natural resources. Nationally, Toronto acts more as the centre of gravity for Canadian institutional investors than New York City does for the United States. Comparatively, Toronto accounts for 70% of all Canadian investors while New York accounts for only 30% of the American total, despite it being the city with the most capital invested worldwide. Notwithstanding Alberta’s oil boom, inter-provincial investment capital show that Ontario is the leading province for receiving investment capital from Canadian sources, as well as investing institutional capital across Canada. Locally, investors in Montreal and Toronto are more spatially clustered than their American counterparts (Chicago and New York), since both Canadian cities are devoid of investors located in suburban areas

Introduction aux Études critiques en autisme (ÉCA) issues de la recherche anglophone

Within the historic context of a distinct lack of autistic people’s representation in research, a body of emancipatory research is emerging under the banner of critical autism studies (CAS). The focus of CAS is the co-creation of scientific knowledge to produce research by and for the autistic community. Most CAS research emanates from the United Kingdom and Australia (e.g., Chown et al., 2017; Pellicano et al., 2014), with little present within Francophone academia in French as emancipatory design in disability research has only emerged since the 2010s. This paper aims to introduce CAS from the Anglophone academia. We begin by stating the fundamental principles of the neurodiversity movement in which CAS has taken root (Chamak, 2010; et al.; Nicolaidis, 2012). Next, we contrast the predominant medical model with the social model of disability (Chamak, 2010, Rosqvist et al., 2020). We then discuss CAS principles such as acknowledgement of power imbalances, recognition of autistic people’s meaningful input to research, and inclusiveness through adapting the research environment (Waltz 2009; Fletcher-Watson et al. 2019; Pickard et al., 2021; Rosqvist et al., 2019). We consider potential obstacles to CAS within the academic culture, such as lack of trusting relationships, practical and systemic barriers, and limited investment to support collaborative research (Pickard et al., 2021; Rosqvist et al., 2019). This paper concludes by discussing the need for a change in the language used to refer to autism (Fletcher-Watson et al., 2019; Woods, 2017) and environmental modifications to facilitate fair and socially just inclusion of neurodivergent people (Fletcher-Watson et al., 2019), within research and wider society

Learning without feedback: Fixed random learning signals allow for feedforward training of deep neural networks

While the backpropagation of error algorithm enables deep neural network training, it implies (i) bidirectional synaptic weight transport and (ii) update locking until the forward and backward passes are completed. Not only do these constraints preclude biological plausibility, but they also hinder the development of low-cost adaptive smart sensors at the edge, as they severely constrain memory accesses and entail buffering overhead. In this work, we show that the one-hot-encoded labels provided in supervised classification problems, denoted as targets, can be viewed as a proxy for the error sign. Therefore, their fixed random projections enable a layerwise feedforward training of the hidden layers, thus solving the weight transport and update locking problems while relaxing the computational and memory requirements. Based on these observations, we propose the direct random target projection (DRTP) algorithm and demonstrate that it provides a tradeoff between accuracy and computational cost that is suitable for adaptive edge computing devices.Comment: This document is the paper as accepted for publication in the Frontiers in Neuroscience journal, the fully-edited paper is available at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2021.62989

The proliferating cell nuclear antigen regulates retinoic acid receptor transcriptional activity through direct protein–protein interaction

Retinoic acid receptors (RARs) interact, in a ligand-dependent fashion, with many coregulators that participate in a wide spectrum of biological responses, ranging from embryonic development to cellular growth control. The transactivating function of these ligand-inducible transcription factors reside mainly, but not exclusively, in their ligand-binding domain (AF2), which recruits or dismiss coregulators in a ligand-dependent fashion. However, little is known about AF2-independent function(s) of RARs. We have isolated the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) as a repressor of RAR transcriptional activity, able to interact with an AF2-crippled RAR. The N-terminus of PCNA interacts directly with the DNA-binding domain of RAR, and PCNA is recruited to a retinoid-regulated promoter in intact cells. This interaction affects the transcriptional response to retinoic acid in a promoter-specific manner, conferring an unanticipated role to PCNA in transcriptional regulation. Our findings also suggest a role for RAR as a factor coordinating DNA transcription and repair