Facilitating Social-Ecological Transformation of a Vacant Lot on an Urban Campus: the Houston-Congolese Connection

The importance of urban universities in civic ecology education and the transformation of urban spaces and mindsets has been little explored. With as many as 1475 colleges, universities, and communities colleges in large cities around the United States, many of which possess significant land holdings, it is conceivable that these institutions could make a significant contribution to the greening of cities. This paper posits that urban universities, especially those with environmental science and studies or sustainability-related programs, can be a locus for civic ecology education and can contribute, not only to the transformation of urban landscapes but also to the training of future environmental leaders, and ultimately to the transformation of urban young people. The paper describes an urban gardening project undertaken at University of St. Thomas in Houston as an example of this kind of social-ecological transformation and as a potential model for other urban universities

Probing neural language models for understanding of words of estimative probability

Words of estimative probability (WEP) are expressions of a statement's plausibility (probably, maybe, likely, doubt, likely, unlikely, impossible...). Multiple surveys demonstrate the agreement of human evaluators when assigning numerical probability levels to WEP. For example, highly likely corresponds to a median chance of 0.90+-0.08 in Fagen-Ulmschneider (2015)'s survey. In this work, we measure the ability of neural language processing models to capture the consensual probability level associated to each WEP. Firstly, we use the UNLI dataset (Chen et al., 2020) which associates premises and hypotheses with their perceived joint probability p, to construct prompts, e.g. "[PREMISE]. [WEP], [HYPOTHESIS]." and assess whether language models can predict whether the WEP consensual probability level is close to p. Secondly, we construct a dataset of WEP-based probabilistic reasoning, to test whether language models can reason with WEP compositions. When prompted "[EVENTA] is likely. [EVENTB] is impossible.", a causal language model should not express that [EVENTA&B] is likely. We show that both tasks are unsolved by off-the-shelf English language models, but that fine-tuning leads to transferable improvement

La loi de Gibrat s’applique-t-elle à l’économie sociale urbaine ? Une note de recherche sur la croissance de l’économie sociale de Montréal

La principale contribution de cette courte note de recherche est méthodologique. Notre article prolonge les travaux précédents par la prise en compte de la dynamique multidimensionnelle de l’économie sociale (bénévolat, emplois et revenus). Nous estimons un modèle de Cragg avec système d’équations de croissance simultanées et équation de sélection sur les deux éditions de l’enquête sur l’économie sociale de Montréal (2007 et 2012). Les résultats empiriques sont doubles : D’une part nous mettons en évidence un déclin moyen des revenus et de l’emploi et une croissance du bénévolat pour l’ensemble de la population. D’autre part nous rejetons la loi de Gibrat de croissance proportionnelle pour notre population d’économie sociale urbaine, en en soulignant une baisse de l’hétérogénéité. Les plus grandes organisations semblent ainsi avoir plus souffert que les plus petites. Deux processus différents sont à l’œuvre : l’un pour la survie et l’autre pour la croissance.The main contribution of this short research note is methodological. Our paper extends previous researches by taking into account the multidimensional dynamic of social economy: volunteering, employment and income. We estimate a Cragg Model with simultaneous growth equations system and a hurdle equation on the two waves of the Montreal survey on social economy. Our main empirical results are twofold: First we highlight an average decrease in income and employment (although with an increase in volunteering) for the whole population. Second, our model allows us to reject the Gibrat Law for our urban social economy enterprises population. On the contrary, it is as if there is convergence effect (regression toward the mean) and a decrease in the heterogeneity of the social economy. The biggest organizations seem to suffer more from the crisis (than the smaller ones). Two different processes are at stake for the social economy: one for the survival and the other for growth

Dynamic mechanical properties of oral mucosa: comparison with polymeric soft denture liners.

The purpose of this work was to characterize the viscoelastic behaviour of oral mucosa and compare it with the dynamic mechanical properties of different soft liners. For this purpose, a sample of pig oral mucosa and six commercialized soft liner samples have been investigated. A comparison was also carried with the first suitable hard rubber for dental prosthetics: vulcanite. Creep recovery (CR) and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA)have been used to determine the mechanical modulus of oral mucosa and soft liners respectively. The Poisson ratio is used to compare mucosa bulk modulus and soft liner shear modulus. The biomechanical concept of conventional complete dentures needs a good adjustment of dynamic mechanical impedance between the base and oral mucosa. The viscoelastic mechanical property of the oral mucosa as a referent biopolymer has been confirmed in vitro. The modulus value, adjusted for old patients in physiological conditions, is in the order of 3 MPa. This study underlines the plasticization effect of absorbed water on the mechanical properties of the underlying tissue. This study allows us to define some characteristics of the most adapted biomaterial according to the clinical exigency. The required biomaterial must display the following properties: compatibility and chemical resistance with biological environment perpetuated mechanical properties during physiological conditions and clinical use, good adjustment of dynamic mechanical impedance with supporting mucosa and easy sample processing

Bisimulations up-to: beyond first-order transition systems

International audienceThe bisimulation proof method can be enhanced by employing 'bisimulations up-to' techniques. A comprehensive theory of such enhancements has been developed for first-order (i.e., CCS-like) labelled transition systems (LTSs) and bisimilarity, based on the notion of compatible function for fixed-point theory. We transport this theory onto languages whose bisimilarity and LTS go beyond those of first-order models. The approach consists in exhibiting fully abstract translations of the more sophisticated LTSs and bisimilarities onto the first-order ones. This allows us to reuse directly the large corpus of up-to techniques that are available on first-order LTSs. The only ingredient that has to be manually supplied is the compatibility of basic up-to techniques that are specific to the new languages. We investigate the method on the pi-calculus, the lambda-calculus, and a (call-by-value) lambda-calculus with references

Transition des PMEs industrielles vers le couplage produits/services

http://www.simagi.polymtl.ca/cigi2011/articles/_Boucher-Transition.pdfInternational audienceL'objectif de cette communication est de présenter la démarche de recherche adoptée dans le projet " Système de Production Orientés Services " financé par la région Rhônes-Alpes, ainsi qu'une synthèse de premiers résultats obtenus. Ces recherches concernent la transition des PMEs industrielles vers l'intégration progressive d'activités de production de services au côté d'activités de production de biens matériels, transition dénommée processus de servicisation. La démarche de recherche s'appuie notamment sur un ensemble d'études de cas pour identifier des facteurs clés de pilotage de ce type de transitions économiques et organisationnelles : (i) formes types de couplages, (ii) facteurs intervenant comme catalyseurs de transition, (iii) facteurs intervenant comme déterminant de l'offre produit/services. Cette phase de recherche de type 'sciences de gestion' débouchera ultérieurement sur le développement d'outils et de méthodes d'aide à la décision plus formels

Blind Symbol Rate Estimation of Faster-than-Nyquist Signals Based on Higher-Order Statistics

Both faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) and cognitive radio go towards an efficient use of spectrum in radio communications systems at the cost of an added computational complexity at the receiver side. To gain the maximum potential from these techniques, non-data-aided receivers are of interest. In this paper, we use fourth-order statistics to perform blind symbol rate estimation of FTN signals. The estimator shows good performance results for moderate system's densities beyond the Nyquist rate and for a reasonable number of received samples