Canadian Muslim Voting Guide: Federal Election 2019

This guide assigns a grade to each federal political party Leader\u27s response to identified key issues of importance to the interests of Canadian Muslims and the wider geopolitical concerns that affect Muslims globally. The criteria used to determine these grades has been based on whether a party leader\u27s particular political standpoints and/or policy initiatives are positive or detrimental to the interests of Canadian Muslims and the wider geopolitical concerns that affect Muslims globally

Distributed Bayesian Probabilistic Matrix Factorization

Matrix factorization is a common machine learning technique for recommender systems. Despite its high prediction accuracy, the Bayesian Probabilistic Matrix Factorization algorithm (BPMF) has not been widely used on large scale data because of its high computational cost. In this paper we propose a distributed high-performance parallel implementation of BPMF on shared memory and distributed architectures. We show by using efficient load balancing using work stealing on a single node, and by using asynchronous communication in the distributed version we beat state of the art implementations

A GPU-accelerated Branch-and-Bound Algorithm for the Flow-Shop Scheduling Problem

Branch-and-Bound (B&B) algorithms are time intensive tree-based exploration methods for solving to optimality combinatorial optimization problems. In this paper, we investigate the use of GPU computing as a major complementary way to speed up those methods. The focus is put on the bounding mechanism of B&B algorithms, which is the most time consuming part of their exploration process. We propose a parallel B&B algorithm based on a GPU-accelerated bounding model. The proposed approach concentrate on optimizing data access management to further improve the performance of the bounding mechanism which uses large and intermediate data sets that do not completely fit in GPU memory. Extensive experiments of the contribution have been carried out on well known FSP benchmarks using an Nvidia Tesla C2050 GPU card. We compared the obtained performances to a single and a multithreaded CPU-based execution. Accelerations up to x100 are achieved for large problem instances

Cultivating Concrete Utopia: Understanding How Japan's Permaculture Experiments are Shaping a Political Vision of Sustainable Living

While the Japanese culture has long fascinated because of its respect for nature, this did not prevent Japanese society from significantly fueling some of today's most burning agro-environmental issues. More recently however, in reaction to the increasing recognition of the problems posed by the industrial agriculture model, diverse alternative models of food production have emerged throughout the country. Within these alternative models, the case of permaculture is particularly interesting, as it merges internationally shared targets for sustainable agriculture with socio-cultural features of sustainable living. Indeed, permaculture was originally constructed from the terms "permanent," "agriculture," and "culture" and it has spread rapidly as a social movement promoting ways of living that tackle sustainability through the nexus between nature, culture and agriculture. Building on the data collected through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with Japanese permaculture practitioners, this paper gives an overview of the vision of sustainable living shared and conveyed by Japan's permaculture movement, and attempts to show from where this vision is experimented. In order to spell out the double bind in which the permaculture movement seems to be caught, I use the concept of "concrete utopia," which refers to concrete experiments with sustainable living that, while localized in time and space, nevertheless carry within them the seeds of a possible-but still utopian-generalization. I thus show how the Japanese permaculture movement seeks sustainability within Japanese culture. The Japanese case highlights how cultural and environmental sustainability mutually reinforce each other and thereby enriches the concept of concrete utopia

Qualité dyadique et régulation émotionnelle lors d'un court moment de séparation mère-bébé 12 mois après une naissance prématurée

Cette étude compare la qualité de l'interaction mère-bébé évaluée à 4 mois (âge corrigé pour les prématurés) avec la régulation émotionnelle de l'enfant à 12 mois chez des prématurés nés à moins de 33 semaines d'âge gestationnel et des nouveau-nés à terme. L'objectif est d'identifier les effets de la prématurité sur la régulation émotionnelle de l'enfant en évaluant le rôle des interactions précoces dans ce processus. La qualité interactive est évaluée à 4 mois à l'aide du Care-index qui classe les dyades en trois types de patterns interactifs (Sensible-Coopérant, Contrôlant-Compulsif et Passif). La régulation émotionnelle de l'enfant est mesurée lors d'un court épisode de séparation mère-bébé à 12 mois (paradigme de la Situation Etrange, Ainsworth 1978) à partir de l'évaluation de l'intensité et la durée des pleurs. Pour compléter cette analyse, des mesures des taux de cortisol salivaire, reflétant l'un des indicateurs de la régulation neuroendocrinienne, ont également été effectuées. Les résultats de cette étude ne montrent pas de différence de régulation émotionnelle à 12 mois, entre les prématurés et les nouveau-nés à terme. Par contre, lorsqu'on divise l'ensemble de l'échantillon en fonction de la qualité des interactions précoces, on note des capacités de régulation émotionnelle plus optimales à 12 mois lorsqu'il s'agit de dyades évaluées comme Sensible-Coopérant à 4 mois, comparées aux dyades de type Contrôlant. Les enfants ayant de meilleures capacités de régulation émotionnelle à 12 mois, montrent des différences quant à la régulation neuroendocrinienne. Ceci met en évidence un certain impact de la qualité interactive précoce sur la régulation émotionnelle ultérieure de l'enfant. Cette étude nuance l'impact de la prématurité sur le devenir de l'enfant en mettant en avant l'importance des aspects relationnels précoces

Empirical Evaluation of Investor Rationality in the Asset Allocation Puzzle

We examine the portfolio-choice puzzle posed by Canner, Mankiw, and Weil (1997). The idea is to test a conclusion reached by Elton and Gruber (2000), stating that a bonds/stocks ratio which decreases in relation to risk tolerance does not necessarily mean a contradiction of modern portfolio-choice theory and does not cast doubt on the rationality of investors. From data on the portfolio composition of 470 clients of a Canadian brokerage firm, we obtain that the bonds/stocks ratio does decrease in relation to risk tolerance. We also verify the existence of the two-fund separation theorem in the assets data available to the investors in our sample.Investor rationality, asset allocation puzzle, risk tolerance, separation theorem, bonds/stocks ratio

Contribution to the study of static and dynamic behaviour of plastic gears

RESUMEN: Inicialmente lleva a cabo un repaso del estado del arte para comprender adecuadamente la literatura sobre engranajes de plástico. A continuación, se propone introducir un modelo dinámico de 14 grados de libertad de un sistema tornillo sinfín – corona sobre el que se encuentran pocas referencias en la bibliografía a pesar de ser uno de los sistemas de engranajes más utilizados en aplicaciones de engranajes de plástico. El siguiente paso es modelar el comportamiento viscoelástico del plástico típicamente utilizado en los engranajes, para lo cual se utiliza un modelo reológico denominado modelo de Maxwell generalizado. Finalmente, se diseña y construye un banco de pruebas que se utiliza para validar el trabajo numérico.ABSTRACT: In the beginning of the PhD research work, a state of the art is made to properly understand the literature on plastic gears. Then, it is proposed to introduce a 14 degrees of freedom dynamic model of a worm drive. The latter is found to be one of the most widely used gearing systems in plastic gearing applications but with minimal mentions in the literature. The next step is to model the viscoelastic behaviour of the plastic typically used in gears. For this purpose, a rheological model called the generalized Maxwell model is used. In the end, a test bench is designed and built. It is therefore used to validate the numerical work