If it Matters, Measure it: Unpacking Diversification in Canada

Will greater diversification benefit our economy? While many think it will, few are explicit about what they mean by diversification or what an “ideal” level would be. Even fewer recognize that favoured policies to promote diversification could actually do more harm than good. There are many ways to measure diversification in Canada, and each measure tells a different story. Canada’s GDP and employment, for example, are more diverse than many other countries, including the U.S.  Employment is also more diversified today than at any point in its recent history, even in resource-rich provinces. Perhaps surprisingly, Alberta and Saskatchewan lead the country in employment diversity. Even accounting for non-resource jobs that are indirectly linked to resources does not reveal resource-rich provinces to be less diverse than others. To be sure, by other measures they are less diverse and more volatile, so we gather and analyze a wealth of data to paint a full, nuanced, and sometimes surprising picture of diversification in Canada. But does diversification even matter? Economists, for centuries, have found gains from specializing in areas where we have a comparative advantage. Subsidizing certain selected industries therefore risks causing economic damage by distorting activity and displacing workers and investment from more valuable uses. Policy-makers should therefore focus on neutral policies: create a favorable investment climate, facilitate adjustment and re-training, encourage savings (including by government), and so on. We discuss the pros and cons of various options. At the end of the day, responsible governments must define their objectives clearly, and recognize the costs of policies meant to achieve those objectives. We cannot hope to have a sensible debate on economic policy without full and complete information. If it matters, measure it

Public-Interest Benefit Evaluation of Partial- Upgrading Technology

Approximately 60 per cent of Alberta’s oil sands production is non-upgraded bitumen which, after being mixed with a diluting agent (diluent) to allow transport, is exported. A popular view within Alberta — and particularly among Albertan politicians — is that a much larger share of oil sands bitumen should be upgraded in the province. However, without public subsidies or government underwriting, it is uneconomic to build and operate new facilities in Alberta to fully upgrade the bitumen into synthetic crude oil. But there are new partial upgrading technologies being developed that, subject to successful testing at a larger (commercial) pilot scale, can prove to be not only economic in Alberta, but also generate large social and economic benefits for the province. The advantages include a much smaller capital investment, a significant increase in the value of the product and market for the product and, even more importantly, a dramatic reduction in the need for large amounts of expensive diluent to transport the product to market. Indeed, the only diluent required will be that to move the bitumen from the production site to the partial upgrader and this can be continually recycled. The market for the synthetic crude oil produced by full upgrading is only getting tougher. Any Alberta bitumen fully upgraded here would compete closely with the rapidly expanding supply of light U.S. unconventional oil. Partial upgrading does not upgrade bitumen to a light crude, but to something resembling more of a medium or heavy crude, and at a lower cost per barrel than full upgrading. Unlike in the increasingly crowded light-crude market, the Alberta Royalty Review Advisory Panel recognized that currently there are gaps in several North American refineries that could be filled by this partially upgraded Alberta oil. A partial upgrader serving that less-competitive market not only appears to hold the potential for investors to make attractive returns in the long term, it would also provide important benefits to Alberta from a social perspective. Since partially upgraded crude can be shipped via pipeline without diluent (as bitumen requires), producing it in Alberta would free up pipeline capacity otherwise tied up by current volumes of diluted bitumen or dilbit (diluent typically represents about one-third of each barrel of dilbit). It also reduces the cost to shippers of paying tolls for diluent exported in the dilbit and recovering diluent at the U.S. pipeline terminal, where it is less valuable than if it were recovered in Alberta at the partial upgrader. The value of each barrel produced would also be higher, benefitting oil sands producers. Partial upgrading also seems to promise a lower emissions-intensity profile compared to other bitumen-processing technologies. Based on the model of a single 100,000-barrel-a-day partial upgrader, the value uplift could be $10 to$15 per bitumen barrel. Meanwhile, there could be an average annual increase to Alberta’s GDP of $505 million, and as many as 179,000 person-years of employment created (assuming a 40.5-year operating period). The increase in taxable earnings would increase provincial revenues by an average of$60 million a year, not including additional federal tax revenues. If successful, there would be many such partial upgraders with corresponding multiplication of these benefits. But there remains the critical task of proving partial upgrading technology at a higher scale than current testing. This might also depend on the province helping sustain investors through the “death-valley” between successful research and initial testing and demonstration of full commercial viability. The province has stepped into help technologies cross that “death valley” before. The promise of partial upgrading may well justify, as manager and steward of Alberta’s resources, helping bridge that valley again

Size, Role and Performance in the Oil and Gas Sector

The oil and gas sector is a key driver of the Canadian and Albertan economies. Directly and indirectly it typically accounts for roughly half of Alberta’s GDP, as well as one-third of the country’s business investment and a quarter of business profits — and rising global demand will only add to these figures. However, that energy sector is also a changeable place populated by companies of all shapes and sizes, from small Emerging Juniors to wellestablished Majors whose daily production capacities are hundreds or thousands of times greater. The sector’s assorted firms have different structures and ambitions, respond in distinct ways to market forces and have unique impacts on the economy. These differences in size, role and performance must be reflected in energy and related economic policies if they are to be effective in achieving policy goals. For example, they must recognize that the smallest firms are not always the fastest growers or the most innovative; that Intermediates are the most highly leveraged, with the highest debt-to-equity ratios; and that while Majors tend to have the lowest average cost per well drilled, they also (along with Emerging Juniors) have the highest operating costs. Despite the industry’s critical importance, relatively little hard data has been made available concerning companies’ structure, behaviour and performance, based on size. This paper goes a considerable way toward filling that gap, bringing together comprehensive datasets on 340 public oil and gas firms to chart essential patterns and trends, so policymakers and industry watchers can better understand the complexity and functioning of this important sector

Observation of Squeezed Light in the 2 Μm Region

We present the generation and detection of squeezed light in the 2  μm wavelength region. This experiment is a crucial step in realizing the quantum noise reduction techniques that will be required for future generations of gravitational-wave detectors. Squeezed vacuum is generated via degenerate optical parametric oscillation from a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate crystal, in a dual resonant cavity. The experiment uses a frequency stabilized 1984 nm thulium fiber laser, and squeezing is detected using balanced homodyne detection with extended InGaAs photodiodes. We have measured 4.0±0.1  dB of squeezing and 10.5±0.5  dB of antisqueezing relative to the shot noise level in the audio frequency band, limited by photodiode quantum efficiency. The inferred squeezing level directly after the optical parametric oscillator, after accounting for known losses and phase noise, is 10.7 dB

Broadband reduction of quantum radiation pressure noise via squeezed light injection

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that the position of an object cannot be known with infinite precision, as the momentum of the object would then be totally uncertain. This momentum uncertainty then leads to position uncertainty in future measurements. When continuously measuring the position of an object, this quantum effect, known as back-action, limits the achievable precision1,2. In audio-band, interferometer-type gravitational-wave detectors, this back-action effect manifests as quantum radiation pressure noise (QRPN) and will ultimately (but does not yet) limit sensitivity3. Here, we present the use of a quantum engineered state of light to directly manipulate this quantum back-action in a system where it dominates the sensitivity in the 10–50 kHz range. We observe a reduction of 1.2 dB in the quantum back-action noise. This experiment is a crucial step in realizing QRPN reduction for future interferometric gravitational-wave detectors and improving their sensitivity

Identification and Characterization of Trimethylamine-N-oxide Uptake and Efflux Transporters

Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) is a recently identified predictor of cardiovascular and chronic kidney disease. TMAO is primarily generated through gut-microbiome mediated conversion of dietary choline and carnitine to TMA, which is converted to TMAO by hepatic flavin monooxygenase 3 (FMO3) and subsequently undergoes renal elimination. We investigated the role of uptake and efflux drug transporters in TMAO disposition in vitro and in vivo. After screening a large array of uptake transporters, we show organic cation transporter 2 (OCT2) is the key transporter for TMAO cellular uptake. In Oct1/2 knockout mice, we observed increased plasma TMAO levels with reduced renal retention, suggesting the importance of Oct2 in facilitating the uptake of TMAO into renal tubular cells in vivo. Multiple transporters of the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) family, including ABCG2 (BCRP) and ABCB1 (MDR1), were capable of TMAO efflux. In human subjects, clinical, dietary, and pharmacogenetic covariates were evaluated for contribution to TMAO levels in a cohort of dyslipidemic patients (n = 405). Interestingly, genetic variation in ABCG2, but not other transporters, appeared to play a role in modulating TMAO exposure

Sensitivity and performance of the Advanced LIGO detectors in the third observing run

On April 1st, 2019, the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO), joined by the Advanced Virgo detector, began the third observing run, a year-long dedicated search for gravitational radiation. The LIGO detectors have achieved a higher duty cycle and greater sensitivity to gravitational waves than ever before, with LIGO Hanford achieving angle-averaged sensitivity to binary neutron star coalescences to a distance of 111 Mpc, and LIGO Livingston to 134 Mpc with duty factors of 74.6% and 77.0% respectively. The improvement in sensitivity and stability is a result of several upgrades to the detectors, including doubled intracavity power, the addition of an in-vacuum optical parametric oscillator for squeezed-light injection, replacement of core optics and end reaction masses, and installation of acoustic mode dampers. This paper explores the purposes behind these upgrades, and explains to the best of our knowledge the noise currently limiting the sensitivity of each detector.The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) for the construction and operation of the LIGO Laboratory and Advanced LIGO as well as the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, and the Max-Planck-Society (MPS) for support of the construction of Advanced LIGO. Additional support for Advanced LIGO was provided by the Australian Research Council. The authors acknowledge the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Fellows program for additional support. LIGO was constructed by the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology with funding from the National Science Foundation, and operates under cooperative Agreement No. PHY1764464. Advanced LIGO was built under Award No. PHY-0823459. This paper carries LIGO Document Number LIGO-P2000122

The Victorian Newsletter (Spring 1965)

The Victorian Newsletter is edited for the English X Group of the Modern Language Association by William E. Buckler, New York University, New York, N.Y. 10003.Methods in the Study of Victorian Style / Richard Ohmann -- The Prose of the Apologia Pro Vita Sua / George Levine -- Scott and Dickens: Realist and Romantic / Edgar Johnson -- A Note on Hegel and George Eliot / Darrel Mansell, Jr. -- Dialectical Structures in Hardy's Poems / D. E. Mayers -- William Johnson Fox and Mill's Essays on Poetry / F. Parvin Sharpless -- Parents and Children in Great Expectations / Vereen M. Bell -- The Name Jude / Robert F . Fleissner -- A Note on Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" / Victor Hoar -- Religion, Art, and the Poet / Arthur F. Beringause -- Henry James to Stopford Brooke: An Unpublished Letter / Fred L. Standley -- Carlyle, Jeffrey, and the "Helotage" Chapter of Sartor Resartus / Alvan S. Ryan -- English X New