A bushel Half Full: Reforming the Canadian Wheat Board

The Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) has been earning poor financial returns for farmers over the last three years, based on our benchmarking analysis. Reforms are required, including more transparency in reporting financial returns to farmers, and greater accountability on the part of CWB management to the farmer-elected board of directors.governance and public institutions, Canadian Wheat Board, Daily Price Contract (DPC)

Average tree solutions for graph games

In this paper we consider cooperative graph games being TU-games in which players cooperate if they are connected in the communication graph. We focus our attention to the average tree solutions introduced by Herings, van der Laan and Talman [6] and Herings, van der Laan, Talman and Yang [7]. Each average tree solution is defined with re- spect to a set, say T , of admissible rooted spanning trees. Each average tree solution is characterized by efficiency, linearity and an axiom of T - hierarchy on the class of all graph games with a fixed communication graph. We also establish that the set of admissible rooted spanning trees introduced by Herings, van der Laan, Talman and Yang [7] is the largest set of rooted spanning trees such that the corresponding aver- age tree solution is a Harsanyi solution. One the other hand, we show that this set of rooted spanning trees cannot be constructed by a dis- tributed algorithm. Finally, we propose a larger set of spanning trees which coincides with the set of all rooted spanning trees in clique-free graphs and that can be computed by a distributed algorithm.

Les conséquences des choix politiques : choix rationnel et action publique

Cet article cherche à dégager les partis pris de méthode essentiels dans l’approche de l’action publique par le choix rationnel. Il rend compte de quelques travaux récents sur une série de questions cruciales pour la compréhension de l’action publique contemporaine : les déterminants des politiques de privatisation, la convergence des politiques macro-économiques, la maîtrise des dépenses de santé, et enfin la production des normes dans l’action publique. Ce que démontrent ces travaux, c’est qu’une part significative des variations fines des politiques publiques se comprend comme la résultante de choix raisonnés. C’est moins le calcul d’optimisation, empiriquement très imparfait, que l’anticipation par les acteurs des conséquences de leurs choix, qui fonde l’originalité et l’apport du choix rationnel. L’intérêt de l’approche dans une perspective politologique est justement d’intégrer cette capacité d’anticipation dans l’explication de l’action publique.Pierre Muller, Bruno Palier, Yves Surel Présentation Bruno Palier, Yves Surel Les "Trois I" et l'analyse de l'État en action Richard Balme, Sylvain Brouard Les conséquences des choix politiques : choix rationnel et action publique Christine Musselin Sociologie de l'action organisée et analyse des politiques publiques : deux approches pour un même objet Pierre Bongrand, Pascale Laborier L'entretien dans l'analyse des politiques publiques : un impensé méthodologique? Patrick Hassenteufel De la comparaison internationale à la comparaison transnationale. Les déplacements de la construction d'objets comparatifs en matière de politiques publiques Renaud Payre, Gilles Pollet Analyse des politiques publiques et sciences historiques : quel(s) tournant(s) socio-historique(s) ? Pierre Muller Esquisse d'une théorie du changement dans l'action publique. Structures, acteurs et cadres cognitifs LECTURES CRITIQUES Pierre Favre Un dictionnaire des politiques publiques : problématiques et enjeux de l'analyse de l'action publique Gil Delannoi Du bon usage du libéralisme. En relisant Raymond Boudon COMPTES RENDUS Sabine Saurugger Jean-Philippe Viriot Durandhal, Le pouvoir gris. Sociologie des groupes de pression de retraités Nicolas Sauger Agnès Alexandre-Collier, Xavier Jardin, Anatomie des droites européennes Sylvain Brouard Herbert Döring, Mark Hallerberg, Patterns of Parlementary Behaviour. Passage of legislation across Western Europe Jean-Philippe Dedieu Amy J. Binder, Contentious Carricula : Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public School

Optical Spectral Properties of Swift BAT Hard X-ray Selected Active Galactic Nuclei Sources

The Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) survey of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) is providing an unprecedented view of local AGNs ( = 0.03) and their host galaxy properties. In this paper, we present an analysis of the optical spectra of a sample of 64 AGNs from the 9-month survey, detected solely based on their 14-195 keV flux. Our analysis includes both archived spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and our own observations from the 2.1-m Kitt Peak National Observatory telescope. Among our results, we include line ratio classifications utilizing standard emission line diagnostic plots, [O III] 5007 A luminosities, and H-beta derived black hole masses. As in our X-ray study, we find the type 2 sources to be less luminous (in [O III] 5007 A and 14-195 keV luminosities) with lower accretion rates than the type 1 sources. We find that the optically classified LINERs, H II/composite galaxies, and ambiguous sources have the lowest luminosities, while both broad line and narrow line Seyferts have similar luminosities. From a comparison of the hard X-ray (14-195 keV) and [O III] luminosities, we find that both the observed and extinction-corrected [O III] luminosities are weakly correlated with X-ray luminosity. In a study of the host galaxy properties from both continuum fits and measurements of the stellar absorption indices, we find that the hosts of the narrow line sources have properties consistent with late type galaxies.Comment: 84 pages, 20 figures, 17 tables, accepted in Ap

Predicting the impacts of climate change on genetic diversity in an endangered lizard species

Many endangered species persist as a series of isolated populations, with some populations more genetically diverse than others. If climate change disproportionately threatens the most diverse populations, the species' ability to adapt (and hence its long-term viability) may be affected more severely than would be apparent by its numerical reduction. In the present study, we combine genetic data with modelling of species distributions under climate change to document this situation in an endangered lizard (Eulamprus leuraensis) from montane southeastern Australia. The species is known from only about 40 isolated swamps. Genetic diversity of lizard populations is greater in some sites than others, presumably reflecting consistently high habitat suitability over evolutionary time. Species distribution modelling suggests that the most genetically diverse populations are the ones most at risk from climate change, so that global warming will erode the species' genetic variability faster than it curtails the species' geographic distributio

Non destructive investigation of defects in composite structures by fullfield measurement methods

This paper presents different interests of non destructive full-field measurement. More precisely, it focuses on the characterization and the comparison of the X-ray tomography and two methods of infrared thermography in order to define the defect detection limits and to precise the specific application fields for each technique on multi-layered and sandwich composite structures. The obtained results are qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed