Changes in the age-at-death distribution in four low mortality countries: A nonparametric approach

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, important transformations have occurred in the age-at-death distribution within human populations. We propose a flexible nonparametric smoothing approach based on P-splines to refine the monitoring of these changes. Using data from the Human Mortality Database for four low mortality countries, namely Canada (1921-2007), France (1920-2009), Japan (1947-2009), and the USA (1945-2007), we find that the general scenario of compression of mortality no longer describes appropriately some of the recent adult mortality trends recorded. Indeed, reductions in the variability of age at death above the mode have stopped since the early 1990s in Japan and since the early 2000s for Canadian, US, and French women, while their respective modal age at death continued to increase. These findings provide additional support to the shifting mortality scenario, using an alternative method free from any assumption on the shape of the age-at-death distribution.modal age of death, old-age mortality compression, P-spline smoothing, shifting mortality

Provincial Returns to Education for 21 to 35 year-olds: Results from the 1991-2006 Canadian Analytic Censuses Files

This paper examines the evolution of the returns to education and experience from 1990 to 2005 in Canada and across the provinces. The focus is on the earnings of young adults, age 21 to 35 at the times of the Censuses, classified by very detailed education groups, age and gender. Returns to higher education are very different across provinces and are particularly high in the western part of the nation. Over time, they are quite stable, but they are increasing for females in 2005 relative to 2000 in particular Bachelor’s degree and higher degrees. This is surprising given the very important increase in the supply of well educated females since 1991. These returns can explain partially why so many young women turned to higher education over time. It is also surprising that males have not followed suit, given that the returns are just as high for them as for women. Yet, the returns for university education are much higher than the returns for college or CEGE. Also, returns for trade degrees are much higher for males than for females. The male-female gap in higher education will certainly help to reduce the wage gap between genders, however, public policy must be concerned by the difference between male and female participation in higher education.Human Capital, Wage Differentials, Returns to Education, Young Workers, Canadian Provinces, Gender

New gamma/hadron separation parameters for a neural network for HAWC

The High-Altitude Water Cherenkov experiment (HAWC) observatory is located 4100 meters above sea level. HAWC is able to detect secondary particles from extensive air showers (EAS) initiated in the interaction of a primary particle (either a gamma or a charged cosmic ray) with the upper atmosphere. Because an overwhelming majority of EAS events are triggered by cosmic rays, background noise suppression plays an important role in the data analysis process of the HAWC observatory. Currently, HAWC uses cuts on two parameters (whose values depend on the spatial distribution and luminosity of an event) to separate gamma-ray events from background hadronic showers. In this work, a search for additional gamma-hadron separation parameters was conducted to improve the efficiency of the HAWC background suppression technique. The best-performing parameters were integrated to a feed-foward Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLP-NN), along with the traditional parameters. Various iterations of MLP-NN's were trained on Monte Carlo data, and tested on Crab data. Preliminary results show that the addition of new parameters can improve the significance of the point source at high-energies (~ TeV), at the expense of slightly worse performance in conventional low-energy bins (~ GeV). Further work is underway to improve the efficiency of the neural network at low energies.Comment: Presented at the 35th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2017), Bexco, Busan, Korea. See arXiv:1708.02572 for all HAWC contribution

Autorité, genre et expertise : le cas de l’assistance catholique à Montréal

Entre 1930 et 1970, les fédérations financières catholiques de Montréal, dirigées par des hommes d’affaires bénévoles des communautés francophone et anglophone, amassent les fonds nécessaires au travail des agences sociales de la métropole. Cet article explore les deux glissements d’autorité qui encadrent l’existence de ces fédérations, soit des femmes bénévoles de l’élite vers les hommes d’affaires, puis des hommes d’affaires vers les travailleurs sociaux masculins. Il démontre que ces glissements sont genrés, tout en dénotant des conceptions changeantes d’autorité et d’expertise à deux moments clés du xxe siècle, de l’apogée à la contestation de l’homme de l’organisation.Between the 1930s and the 1970s, the catholic financial federations of Montreal, the Fédération des Oeuvres de charité canadiennes-françaises and the Federation of Catholic Charities, managed by businessmen, raised the money needed by Francophone and Anglophone social agencies in order to pursue their work. This article explores two shifts in authority that bookend the existence of both federations, from elite volunteer women to businessmen, and from businessmen to male social workers. It shows how these shifts were gendered, and marked by changing ideas of authority and expertise during the 20th century

Moving Forward Together: Logics of the Securitisation Process

In its current configuration, the literature on securitisation – the process of integrating an issue into a security framework that emphasises policing and defence – relies mainly on two logics: the logic of exception and the logic of routine. For some scholars, these two approaches to the study of securitisation frame a battleground on which a conflict among various structural, critical, cultural and sociological standpoints is waged. Although many graduate students cut their theoretical teeth on these debates, little has been gained thus far in the battle for possession of the field. By questioning the literature’s underlying understanding of these two logics as opposing and competing, I pursue two aims in this article. First, I seek to bolster current research on the securitisation process by moving the conversation away from its current analytical stalemate. I caution scholars against overdrawing distinctions between the two logics, for it is not clear that they are mutually exclusive. Second, I seek to recognise and harness the strengths of both logics, and to identify the fruitful theoretical ‘bricks’ each framework contributes to our understanding of securitisation. I illustrate the preceding set of arguments through an analysis of the social construction of migration as a security threat in France since the end of the Cold War. This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Sage via http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/030582981454150

Resiliencism: premises and promises in securitisation research

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21693293.2013.765738In the past decade, a great deal has been written in the scholarly literature about the role of resilience in our social world. This scholarship has sparked vivid theoretical debates in psychology, criminology, social work and political geography about the nature of resilience and how scholars should go about studying it. Yet, International Relations and security studies have been relatively absent from the vibrant discussion. The term is employed but rarely unpacked, let alone theoretically analysed. This article outlines some necessary steps of convergence, enabling a coherent framework for a resiliencist approach to the study of the securitisation process. The bulk of the article lays out the premises of resiliencism, discusses the added value of the approach, suggests distinguishing between three types of resilience and illustrates the set of arguments with the case of the securitisation of migration in France and in Canada

Project Based Learning: Outline for Game Development Basics

Created through This is a Project Based Learning outline for a introductory class in Video Game Development that was ran in the Spring 2019 semester at Norco College. This outline focuses on the development of a vertical slice video game prototype with no previous skills and showcases several common disciplines and careers that can be found in the video game development industry. This project asks the students the question, What does it take to make a good commercial video game? and exposes them to what that it takes work and not just playing video games. We address artistic concerns, technical, communication, team organization, and business concerns that all go into the development for this project. By the end they will have a experience and information that can shape their choices for educational or career directions going forward

Does the recent evolution of Canadian mortality agree with the epidemiologic transition theory?

After studying the epidemiologic transition’s situation in Canada, it is determined that the delimitation of temporal stages within the epidemiologic transition as put forward by Omran (1971, 1998), Olshansky and Ault (1986), Rogers and Hackenberg (1987) and Olshansky et al. (1998) does not suit the Canadian evolution. Many of the researchers’ postulates on the epidemiologic transition were not confirmed, which leads us to assert that, since 1958, the epidemiologic transition is best described as an evolution process rather than specific stages confined within time limits.Canada, causes of death, chronic diseases, epidemiologic transition, mortality, new variants of the theory