The effect of Sovereign Wealth Funds’ investments on stock markets

This study assesses the reaction of stock markets, when Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) announce that they have taken a stake in a listed company. It adds useful empirical results to the debate on the effect of SWFs on financial markets, which remains so far largely reliant on guess work. We perform an event study using a sample of 50 SWF acquisitions of equity stakes in listed companies around the world, from May 2005 to April 2008. According to our results, the announcement of an acquisition by a SWF has a transitory positive impact on the share price of the target company, but there is no lasting effect. This stands in contrast to the results obtained in the academic literature for the investments of private equity funds, and to a lesser extent pension funds. The tests conducted on a sub-sample of announcements targeting banks only made during the subprime crisis (between July 2007 and April 2008) do not exhibit more lasting effects. This may suggest that markets are not convinced that SWFs alone are capable of restoring the position of the banks concerned. These results are however subject to some caveats, and notably, the relatively small size of the sample as well as a selection bias in favour of transparent SWFs, due to the lack of information on other funds.Sovereign Wealth Funds, Event Study.

Gold and financial assets: Are there any safe havens in bear markets?

This paper looks into the role of gold as a safe haven or a hedge against stocks. We extend the existing literature in two ways. First, we consider crisis periods successively defined by recessions and bear markets. Second, we use a bivariate ARMA-GARCH-X model to estimate conditional covariances between gold and stocks returns. The regressions are run on monthly data for gold and several stock market indices (France, Germany, the UK, the US, the G7). We find that gold qualifies as a safe haven against all these stock indexes. This result holds for crises defined as recessions or bear markets, as the covariance between gold and stocks returns is found negative or null in all cases. Gold is also able to hedge against stock losses in most cases, although results are less clear-cut.gold, stocks, safe haven.

But the Pain Remains: A Response to Verpaelst

Commentaire / CommentaryLes personnes aux prises avec la douleur chronique évitent parfois d’exprimer leur douleur ouvertement, par crainte d’être stigmatisées. Les professionnels de la santé travaillant auprès de cette clientèle peuvent également avoir de la difficulté à accepter la nature persistante de la douleur de leurs clients. À travers sa peinture, Verpaelst aide à surmonter ces difficultés.People who experience chronic pain often refrain from expressing their pain overtly due to fear of stigmatization. Health professionals working with these persons may also find it challenging to face the persistent nature of their clients’ pain. Through his painting, Verpaelst helps to overcome these difficulties

Endoscopic Papillary Balloon Dilation and Extraction of Bile Duct Stone

AbstractEndoscopic therapy is the first-line treatment for patients with common bile duct stones. Removing bile duct stones by endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreaticography (ERCP) requires enlarging the papillary opening, either by cutting the biliary sphincter with an endoscopic sphincterotomy or by endoscopic papillary balloon dilation. Dilation has the advantage of sphincter preservation and a lower risk of hemorrhage, but carries an increased risk of post-ERCP pancreatitis. Although popular in Asia, in the Western world this technique is therefore reserved for patients with a major risk of bleeding or difficult anatomy. Here the technique of balloon dilation of the papillary sphincter is demonstrated in a patient with cholangiosepsis and septic coagulopathy. This article is part of an expert video encyclopedia

L'intérêt du concept de mentorat en service social

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

René Vautier, l’arpenteur

Lycéen engagé dans la résistance, militant communiste, René Vautier entre à l’IDHEC en 1946, à 18 ans, pour apprendre une technique à même de montrer des réalités masquées par l’ordre social et politique établi. Il vise un art du « démenti violent » qui est la forme de la vérité, selon la formule de Georges Bataille, et qu’il définit ainsi : « Quand tu te dis, je vais simplement informer, ta façon d’informer fait que, obligatoirement, tu crées une forme en recherchant la manière la plus effic..

La priorisation des demandes en ergothérapie dans les programmes de soutien à domicile

Les demandes de service en ergothérapie à domicile au Québec sont priorisées en fonction du niveau d’urgence, mais cette pratique n’est pas standardisée et son impact sur l’accès aux services est incertain. Cette thèse, constituée de deux études interreliées, porte sur les processus de priorisation des demandes en ergothérapie dans les programmes de soutien à domicile. La première étude a pour but de décrire en détail les processus utilisés pour prioriser les demandes et d’investiguer l’association entre ces processus et la longueur des listes d’attente. Pour ce faire, un sondage a été réalisé auprès de la personne qui gère la liste d’attente en ergothérapie dans 55 programmes de soutien à domicile. Malgré une grande variabilité dans les processus de priorisation, la tendance générale indique que les problèmes affectant la sécurité et les activités à l’intérieur du domicile sont fortement priorisés alors que les problèmes affectant la qualité de vie et les activités à l’extérieur du domicile sont peu prioritaires. L’écart entre les temps d’attente en fonction des niveaux de priorité est important, avec un temps d’attente médian de 2 jours pour les demandes urgentes et de 18 mois pour les demandes non prioritaires. Les programmes qui utilisent des balises de temps d’attente maximal ont des listes d’attente significativement plus courtes que les programmes qui n’utilisent aucun mécanisme pour allouer des services aux clients non prioritaires. La deuxième étude vise à comparer les opinions des ergothérapeutes à domicile, des personnes âgées et des personnes ayant une déficience physique sur l’importance relative des principaux critères utilisés pour prioriser les demandes. Un sondage composé de mises en situation par choix de scénarios prioritaires démontre une différence significative entre les priorités des trois groupes de répondants. Les ergothérapeutes (n=241) priorisent fortement les personnes qui ont chuté alors que les personnes âgées (n=226) et celles ayant une déficience physique (n=247) priorisent principalement les personnes qui ne peuvent sortir de leur domicile. Des entrevues qualitatives avec un sous-groupe de 30 participants révèlent que les ergothérapeutes priorisent les problèmes relatifs à la sécurité en raison de contraintes institutionnelles liées au manque de ressources, mais qu’ils expriment d’importantes tensions éthiques à cet égard. Les personnes âgées et celles ayant une déficience physique priorisent en fonction d’autres enjeux comme l’autonomie, la dignité, l’inclusion, la participation et la liberté. Elles réclament donc des critères de priorisation qui reflètent une vision plus globale de la santé et des services de santé. Les résultats de la thèse soulignent la nécessité d’améliorer les processus de priorisation des demandes en ergothérapie à domicile et suggèrent certaines pistes pour y parvenir. Notamment, il serait souhaitable de porter une attention particulière au traitement des demandes non prioritaires, de consulter la clientèle cible des services sur les critères de priorisation et d’adopter une vision élargie des interventions, au-delà de la sécurité à domicile. La prise de conscience des enjeux et défis sous-jacents à la priorisation pour les ergothérapeutes et leur clientèle cible permet ainsi de viser un accès plus juste aux services d’ergothérapie à domicile.Referrals to home care occupational therapy services in the province of Quebec are prioritized according to urgency. However, this practice is not standardized and its impact on access to care is uncertain. This thesis, consisting of two related studies, investigates referral prioritization processes for occupational therapy services in home care. The first study aims to describe in detail the processes that are used to prioritize referrals and to examine the associations between these processes and the the wait for services. We conducted a survey with the person who manages the occupational therapy waiting list in 55 home care programmes. Referral prioritization criteria vary between programmes, but there is a general tendency for problems related to safety and activities inside the home to receive high priority whereas problems related to quality of life and activities outside the home are not prioritized. Priority levels are highly associated with wait times; urgent referrals wait for a median of 2 days and low priority referrals wait for a median of 18 months. Programmes that have guaranteed maximum wait times have significantly shorter waiting lists than programmes that do not use any strategies to allocate services to low priority clients. The second study aims to compare the opinions of home care occupational therapists, elderly people and persons with disabilities on the relative importance of the main criteria that are used to prioritize referrals. A survey consisting of fictional referral prioritization tasks revealed a significant difference between the priorities of the three groups of respondents. Occupational therapists (n=241) strongly prioritize persons who have fallen whereas elderly people (n=226) and persons with disabilities (n=247) mainly prioritize people who are unable to exit the home. Qualitative interviews with a subgroup of 30 participants revealed that occupational therapists prioritize issues related to home safety due to institutional constraints and lack of resources, but experience ethical tensions in doing so. Elderly people and persons with disabilities prioritize other issues such as independence, dignity, inclusion, participation and freedom. They call for referral prioritization criteria that reflect a broader view of health and healthcare. The findings from this thesis highlight the need to improve referral prioritization processes in home care occupational therapy and suggest possible avenues to do so. For example, it would be beneficial to use strategies to allocate services to low priority clients, to consult the target clientele on referral prioritization criteria and to adopt a broader view of occupational therapy interventions, beyond home safety. By considering the various issues and challenges underlying referral prioritization for home care occupational therapists and their clientele, we can target solutions to improve equitable service allocation of home care occupational therapy

Motility and phototaxis of Gonium, the simplest differentiated colonial alga.

Green algae of the Volvocine lineage, spanning from unicellular Chlamydomonas to vastly larger Volvox, are models for the study of the evolution of multicellularity, flagellar dynamics, and developmental processes. Phototactic steering in these organisms occurs without a central nervous system, driven solely by the response of individual cells. All such algae spin about a body-fixed axis as they swim; directional photosensors on each cell thus receive periodic signals when that axis is not aligned with the light. The flagella of Chlamydomonas and Volvox both exhibit an adaptive response to such signals in a manner that allows for accurate phototaxis, but in the former the two flagella have distinct responses, while the thousands of flagella on the surface of spherical Volvox colonies have essentially identical behavior. The planar 16-cell species Gonium pectorale thus presents a conundrum, for its central 4 cells have a Chlamydomonas-like beat that provide propulsion normal to the plane, while its 12 peripheral cells generate rotation around the normal through a Volvox-like beat. Here we combine experiment, theory, and computations to reveal how Gonium, perhaps the simplest differentiated colonial organism, achieves phototaxis. High-resolution cell tracking, particle image velocimetry of flagellar driven flows, and high-speed imaging of flagella on micropipette-held colonies show how, in the context of a recently introduced model for Chlamydomonas phototaxis, an adaptive response of the peripheral cells alone leads to photoreorientation of the entire colony. The analysis also highlights the importance of local variations in flagellar beat dynamics within a given colony, which can lead to enhanced reorientation dynamics