In Search of the Fisherman’s Path: Rethinking the American Assault on Queenston Heights

Canadian historians of the War of 1812 tend to associate a fisherman’s path with the initial success achieved by the Americans at the Battle of Queenston Heights. Unobserved, they made their way to the top of the escarpment and forced Brock to evacuate the redan battery located just below the brow of the heights. Desperate to retake this commanding position, Brock launched the ill-fated charge which resulted in his untimely death. It is a standard interpretation. But as this study reveals, the Americans had no particular need of a fisherman’s path

On Nonlocal Energy Transfer via Zonal Flow in the Dimits Shift

The two-dimensional Terry-Horton equation is shown to exhibit the Dimits shift when suitably modified to capture both the nonlinear enhancement of zonal/drift-wave interactions and the existence of residual Rosenbluth-Hinton states. This phenomenon persists through numerous simplifications of the equation, including a quasilinear approximation as well as a four-mode truncation. It is shown that the use of an appropriate adiabatic electron response, for which the electrons are not affected by the flux-averaged potential, results in an $\boldsymbol{E}\boldsymbol{\times}\boldsymbol{B}$ nonlinearity that can efficiently transfer energy nonlocally to length scales on the order of the sound radius. The size of the shift for the nonlinear system is heuristically calculated and found to be in excellent agreement with numerical solutions. The existence of the Dimits shift for this system is then understood as an ability of the unstable primary modes to efficiently couple to stable modes at smaller scales, and the shift ends when these stable modes eventually destabilize as the density gradient is increased. This nonlocal mechanism of energy transfer is argued to be generically important even for more physically complete systems.Comment: 28 pages, 7 figures, 4 movie

Long-term cultures of murine fetal liver retain very early B lymphoid phenotype.

Long-term cultures of murine fetal liver have been successfully established using a modification of our in vitro bone marrow culture system (14, 15). Fetal liver cells from midgestation BALB/c embryos were plated onto BAB-14 bone marrow stromal cell-adherent layers. After a 3-5 wk period, cell growth began to increase and these cells were expanded in number on fresh feeder layers. The cultured fetal liver cells were lymphoid in morphology, 5-20% cytoplasmic Ig-positive, but less than 1% surface Ig-positive. Southern blot analysis of the cultured fetal liver cells, as well as cultured bone marrow-derived B cells, demonstrated a population with germline Ig heavy chain loci, possibly representing very early B cell precursors. Abelson murine leukemia virus (A-MuLV) clonal transformants of such cultured fetal liver cells had a phenotypic distribution similar to that seen with fresh fetal liver transformants but distinct from those obtained with the transformation of either cultured or fresh bone marrow. All A-MuLV transformants isolated had rearrangements at the mu heavy chain locus of both chromosomes, irrespective of Ig production. In addition, most mu heavy chain producers had at least one rearranged kappa gene locus. These long-term fetal liver cultures provide large numbers of cells for studying events early in the B lymphocyte lineage. The cultured fetal liver cells retained phenotypic traits similar to fresh fetal liver B cells and distinctive from bone marrow cells cultured under similar conditions

La prise de décision d’urgence chez les pompiers premiers répondants : Une illustration de la pertinence d’une approche empirique en éthique professionnelle

ArticleLors d’une urgence médicale, l’intervention se doit d’être immédiate. Le temps de délibération est court, voire inexistant. Pourtant, l’intervenant portera la responsabilité de ses décisions et de ses actions. Cette complexité de la décision d’urgence demeure peu étudiée en éthique. Pour contribuer à combler cette lacune, cet article portera sur la prise de décision chez les pompiers premiers répondants. Il présente les données issues de focus groups réalisés auprès de pompiers du Service de Sécurité Incendie de la Ville de Montréal. Dans un premier temps, cet article illustrera la compréhension de la prise de décision d’urgence de ces pompiers premiers répondants. Dans un deuxième temps, il montrera qu’une approche empirique est indispensable à l’éthicien qui s’aventure en caserne : cette approche empirique est révélatrice des confrontations éthiques des pompiers et des moyens mis en place pour neutraliser ces confrontations.During an emergency, response has to be immediate. Deliberation time is limited, even nonexistent. But professionals are responsible for their decisions and their actions. The complexity of decision-making during an emergency is an under-researched topic in bioethics. To contribute to this topic, this article focuses on decision- making by firefighter first responders. It presents empirical data from focus groups with firefighters who are first responders for the Service de Sécurité Incendie de la Ville de Montréal. First, this article describes the way that firefighters understand decision-making during an emergency. Second, an empirical approach is shown to be necessary for bioethics researchers who venture to do research in fire departments: this empirical approach reveals firefighter’s ethical challenges and how they can be neutralised

Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu: Réapprendre à vivre la ville

Affiche de projet terminal, baccalauréat en Urbanisme. Institut d'urbanisme, Université de Montréal

How Could Emergency Modify our Normal Ethics Standards? A Brief Review of Selected Chapters in Emergency Ethics

Compte-rendu / ReviewCe compte-rendu porte sur Emergency Ethics, le premier livre d’une série de quatre volumes intitulée Emergency Ethics, Law and Policy. Il analyse les chapitres qui abordent la question à savoir comment l’urgence pourrait modifier nos standards éthiques normaux. Les chapitres prennent la question sous trois angles : analyse conceptuelle, analyse empirique et étude de cas.This review is about Emergency Ethics, the first in the four-volume series Emergency Ethics, Law and Policy. It analyses chapters addressing the question: How could emergency modify our normal ethics standards? The chapters offer three angles on the question: conceptual analysis, empirical analysis and case study

In Search of the Fisherman’s Path: Rethinking the American Assault on Queenston Heights

Canadian historians of the War of 1812 tend to associate a fisherman’s path with the initial success achieved by the Americans at the Battle of Queenston Heights. Unobserved, they made their way to the top of the escarpment and forced Brock to evacuate the redan battery located just below the brow of the heights. Desperate to retake this commanding position, Brock launched the ill-fated charge which resulted in his untimely death. It is a standard interpretation. But as this study reveals, the Americans had no particular need of a fisherman’s path

Tevatron results on the Standard Model Higgs search in the high-mass region

Results for the Tevatron search for the Higgs boson decaying to W boson pairs in proton antiproton collisions at √s = 1960 GeV/c2 are presented. The CDF results are based on the entire Tevatron Run II dataset having an integrated luminosity of 9.7 fb−1. The CDF results exclude a Standard Model Higgs at 95% confidence level for a Higgs mass MH in the range 148 ≤ MH ≤ 173GeV/c2 with an expected sensitivity of 153 ≤ MH ≤ 177GeV/c2, comparable to the previous Tevatron combined sample from July 2011