Gouvernement du Québec

Journal Article The Numerical Interpretation of Fermentation-Tube Results Get access M. H. McCrady M. H. McCrady From the Laboratories of the Board of Health of the Province of Quebec Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 17, Issue 1, July 1915, Pages 183–212, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/17.1.183 Published: 01 July 1915 Article history Received: 08 May 1915 Published: 01 July 1915

Abstract. Environment Canada has been developing a community environmental modelling system (Modélisation Environmentale Communautaire – MEC), which is designed to facilitate coupling between models focusing on different components of the earth system. The ultimate objective of MEC is to use the coupled models to produce operational forecasts. MESH (MEC – Surface and Hydrology), a configuration of MEC currently under development, is specialized for coupled land-surface and hydrological models. To determine the specific requirements for MESH, its different components were implemented on the Laurentian Great Lakes watershed, situated on the Canada-US border. This experiment showed that MESH can help us better understand the behaviour of different land-surface models, test different schemes for producing ensemble streamflow forecasts, and provide a means of sharing the data, the models and the results with collaborators and end-users. This modelling framework is at the heart of a testbed proposal for the Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment (HEPEX) which should allow us to make use of the North American Ensemble Forecasting System (NAEFS) to improve streamflow forecasts of the Great Lakes tributaries, and demonstrate how MESH can contribute to a Community Hydrologic Prediction System (CHPS).

A critical component of assessing the impacts of climate change on forest ecosystems involves understanding associated changes in the biogeochemical cycling of elements. Evidence from research on northeastern North American forests shows that direct effects of climate change will evoke changes in biogeochemical cycling by altering plant physiology, forest productivity, and soil physical, chemical, and biological processes. Indirect effects, largely mediated by changes in species composition, length of growing season, and hydrology, will also be important. The case study presented here uses the quantitative biogeochemical model PnET-BGC to test assumptions about the direct and indirect effects of climate change on a northern hardwood forest ecosystem. Modeling results indicate an overall increase in net primary production due to a longer growing season, an increase in NO 3 – leaching due to large increases in net mineralization and nitrification, and slight declines in mineral weathering due to a reduction in soil moisture. Future research should focus on uncertainties, including the effects of (1) multiple simultaneous interactions of stressors (e.g., climate change, ozone, acidic deposition); (2) long-term atmospheric CO 2 enrichment on vegetation; (3) changes in forest species composition; (4) extreme climatic events and other disturbances (e.g., ice storms, fire, invasive species); and (5) feedback mechanisms that increase or decrease change.

The abrasion resistance of 12 concretes is compared with the ASTM C779‐82 (procedure C) testing method. Four different types of aggregates were used; their source rocks are completely characterized in terms of compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, Los Angeles loss, and abrasion resistance. The first series of air‐entrained concretes show that while silica fume can slightly improve concrete abrasion resistance, coarse aggregate nature is more significant. The second series, focusing on the effect of water/cementitious ratio (W/C) on abrasion resistance, reveal that as long as W/C is maintained at about 0.30, the concrete's abrasion resistance almost equals that of the coarse‐aggregate source rock. The third series demonstrates that abrasion resistance in high‐strength concretes with very low W/C is largely determined by that of the coarse aggregate. It is noted, however, that when the wet‐sieved concrete (mortar) and aggregate are of roughly equal abrasion resistance, the concrete itself exhibits slightly higher resistance than either of them alone.

Abstract Plantation‐grown trees have to cope with an increasing pressure of pest and disease in the context of climate change, and breeding approaches using genomics may offer efficient and flexible tools to face this pressure. In the present study, we targeted genetic improvement of resistance of an introduced conifer species in Canada, Norway spruce ( Picea abies (L.) Karst.), to the native white pine weevil ( Pissodes strobi Peck). We developed single‐ and multi‐trait genomic selection (GS) models and selection indices considering the relationships between weevil resistance, intrinsic wood quality, and growth traits. Weevil resistance, acoustic velocity as a proxy for mechanical wood stiffness, and average wood density showed moderate‐to‐high heritability and low genotype‐by‐environment interactions. Weevil resistance was genetically positively correlated with tree height, height‐to‐diameter at breast height (DBH) ratio, and acoustic velocity. The accuracy of the different GS models tested (GBLUP, threshold GBLUP, Bayesian ridge regression, BayesCπ) was high and did not differ among each other. Multi‐trait models performed similarly as single‐trait models when all trees were phenotyped. However, when weevil attack data were not available for all trees, weevil resistance was more accurately predicted by integrating genetically correlated growth traits into multi‐trait GS models. A GS index that corresponded to the breeders’ priorities achieved near maximum gains for weevil resistance, acoustic velocity, and height growth, but a small decrease for DBH. The results of this study indicate that it is possible to breed for high‐quality, weevil‐resistant Norway spruce reforestation stock with high accuracy achieved from single‐trait or multi‐trait GS.

BACKGROUND: Genomic selection (GS) uses information from genomic signatures consisting of thousands of genetic markers to predict complex traits. As such, GS represents a promising approach to accelerate tree breeding, which is especially relevant for the genetic improvement of boreal conifers characterized by long breeding cycles. In the present study, we tested GS in an advanced-breeding population of the boreal black spruce (Picea mariana [Mill.] BSP) for growth and wood quality traits, and concurrently examined factors affecting GS model accuracy. RESULTS: The study relied on 734 25-year-old trees belonging to 34 full-sib families derived from 27 parents and that were established on two contrasting sites. Genomic profiles were obtained from 4993 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) representative of as many gene loci distributed among the 12 linkage groups common to spruce. GS models were obtained for four growth and wood traits. Validation using independent sets of trees showed that GS model accuracy was high, related to trait heritability and equivalent to that of conventional pedigree-based models. In forward selection, gains per unit of time were three times higher with the GS approach than with conventional selection. In addition, models were also accurate across sites, indicating little genotype-by-environment interaction in the area investigated. Using information from half-sibs instead of full-sibs led to a significant reduction in model accuracy, indicating that the inclusion of relatedness in the model contributed to its higher accuracies. About 500 to 1000 markers were sufficient to obtain GS model accuracy almost equivalent to that obtained with all markers, whether they were well spread across the genome or from a single linkage group, further confirming the implication of relatedness and potential long-range linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the high accuracy estimates obtained. Only slightly higher model accuracy was obtained when using marker subsets that were identified to carry large effects, indicating a minor role for short-range LD in this population. CONCLUSIONS: This study supports the integration of GS models in advanced-generation tree breeding programs, given that high genomic prediction accuracy was obtained with a relatively small number of markers due to high relatedness and family structure in the population. In boreal spruce breeding programs and similar ones with long breeding cycles, much larger gain per unit of time can be obtained from genomic selection at an early age than by the conventional approach. GS thus appears highly profitable, especially in the context of forward selection in species which are amenable to mass vegetative propagation of selected stock, such as spruces.

Abstract This paper describes a new approach for deriving a simple relation between mass attenuation coefficient and X‐ray energy or wavelength. Parameters of the latter have been adjusted to fit all up‐to‐date experimental, interpolated and extrapolated data thus providing means for computing a set of tables covering all values of coefficients usually encountered in applied X‐ray spectroscopy. The accuracy is generally much better than ±5% with respect to the average of well‐established data.

Following the portal vein injection of '261-insulin, radioactivity was taken up by rat liver and concentrated in microsomes (30 to 50% of homogenate).Subfractionation of microsomes revealed that 30 to 60% of the label accumulated in Golgi elements.Uptake was inhibited by co-injected unlabeled insulin in a dose-dependent manner, by desalanine and desoctapeptide insulins, and by proinsulin in parallel with their capacities to inhibit insulin binding to its receptors.Structurally unrelated hormones did not inhibit uptake.Maximum labeling of the plasmalemma and Golgi heavy, intermediate, and light fractions occurred at 30 s, 2, 5, and 10 to 15 min, respectively.Redistribution of radiolabel during homogenization had no significant influence on the in vivo data.Electron microscope radioautography revealed grains intimately associated with Golgi elements with 50 to 60% of grains overlying the membranes of vesicles in the Golgi light and intermediate fractions.In Golgi heavy more grains (49%) were associated with small vesicles than flattened saccular elements (35%).'ZsII-insulin eluted from the Golgi fractions had an integrity varying from 75 to 90% at 2 min to 44 to 55% at 20 min as judged by Sephadex chromatography and rebinding studies.These studies indicate that *251-insulin was internalized by a receptor-mediated process and concentrated in Golgi elements of the cell in a substantially intact form and, thus, raise the possibility of an intracellular site of action.In previous studies, using a direct binding approach and electron microscope radioautography, we have identified insulin binding sites in morphologically defined Golgi elements (I).The binding sites of the Golgi elements from both rat and mouse liver were found to be of high affinity and specificity for insulin and to have other properties similar to those of the plasmalemma (2, 3).The Golgi apparatus is involved in concentrating and modifying secretory material prior to exocytosis (4).On the basis of cytochemical evidence that 5"nucleotidase activity can be localized to Golgi membranes (5,6) and that both insulin and lactogen receptors can be identified

Abstract The immunogenic content of the afferent lymph stimulates structures in the lymph node. Thus, a better knowledge of the processes of lymph flow and filtration in the organ should help us better understand various aspects of the node's function. To gain this understanding, we analyzed the distribution of flow in rat node draining areas locally injected with a small dose of China ink. Because the lymph‐flow pattern is likely related to the overall architecture of the node, we simultaneously studied its morphology. Indeed, while the different structures of the node are known, some aspects of its overall architecture need to be resolved. The present work aimed to accomplish this by an analysis of semiserial sections of nodes from various anatomical locations in normal rats; the sections were stained by the Dominici technique or silver‐impregnated. With respect to their architecture, the nodes could be distinguished into those with either a discontinuous or a continuous subcapsular sinus and peripheral cortex. These are referred to here, respectively, as segmented and nonsegmented nodes. In the segmented nodes, the subcapsular sinus with the peripheral cortex is separated by “gaps,” in which medullary sinuses reached the capsule. Further, a node appears to be divided into one or more “physiological compartments,” each one representing a nodal area related to an opening of an afferent lymphatic. The findings on China‐ink distribution indicate that the lymph‐flow pattern varies in different nodes and is determined by the particular architecture of a node, i.e., the lymph flow in a given node aligns itself along the pattern of segmentation of the organ. The findings suggest that the lymph content is first held by the endothelium lining the inner wall of a restricted area of the subcapsular sinus in a concentration which decreases with the distance from the related afferent lymphatic opening. Part of the content, possibly its nonimmunogenic fraction, would later be released to flow further along the sinus. It would then be phagocytosed by the macrophage accumulation located in the portions of medullary sinuses into which the lymph enters from the subcapsular sinus. The lymph thus filtered then flows along the medullary sinuses and leaves the organ. The latter findings also indicate that a node is divided into physiological compartments, each one being stimulated by the lymph from a given afferent lymphatic opening. As the immunogenic content of the lymph can differ from one lymphatic to another, this explains the frequent variations in similar structures located in different areas of a given node. Hence, the pattern of distribution of the openings of the afferent lymphatics of a node can account for the particularities of its overall architecture and its division into physiological compartments.

The multiple organizational factors impacting upon a merger as well as those processes being impacted upon throughout the merger process will be examined. Part 1 of this article examined corporate culture and its affects on employees when two companies merge and considered the importance of lucid communication throughout the process. Part 2 of the article addresses the critical issue of stress, which is an outcome within the new and uncertain environment. Finally, the article concludes with the process of managing and strategy throughout the phases, giving guidelines that managers and CEOs should follow in the event of an M&A. Furthermore, the five major sections (communications, corporate culture, change, stress, and managing/strategy) are sub‐divided into three sub‐sections: pre‐merger; during the merger; post‐merger. This is intended to further assist managers and CEOs distinguish the important issues facing employees at each of the three junctures of the M&A process.

Very little research has been done so far on the psychological determinants of performance-enhancing substance use in sports. The purpose of this study was to propose and test a motivational model of performance-enhancing substance use with elite athletes ( N = 1,201). The model posits that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation toward sport predict, respectively, positive and negative sportspersonship orientations, which in turn negatively predict the use of performance-enhancing substances. Participants completed a questionnaire assessing intrinsic and extrinsic motivation toward sport, sportspersonship orientations, and performance-enhancing substance use in the last 12 months. Findings supported the motivational model. The present findings support the role of intrinsic motivation and sportspersonship orientations in preventing athletes from engaging in unethical behavior such as the use of performance-enhancing substances. Future research should seek to replicate this model with professional and Olympic athletes.

This article describes the ongoing collaborative effort of six research teams to operationalize and execute an integrative approach to the study of gene x environment interactions in the development of tobacco dependence. At the core of the project is a longitudinal investigation of social and behavioral risk factors for tobacco use in individuals who were, on average, 13 years of age at intake and for whom smoking outcomes extending from early adolescence to young adulthood have been characterized previously (current average age of the cohort is 29 years). The conceptual framework for the integrative approach and the longitudinal investigation on which the study is based is presented. A description is also provided of the methods used to: (a) recruit participants and families to provide DNA samples and information on tobacco use; (b) assess participants for relevant tobacco-related phenotypes including smoking history, current use of tobacco, and nicotine metabolism; (c) assess the quality of the DNA samples collected from participants for genome-wide scanning and candidate gene analysis; (d) examine several research questions concerning the role of genetic and environmental factors in the onset and maintenance of tobacco use; and (e) ensure adherence to local and federal guidelines for ethical and legal investigations of genotypic associations with tobacco-related phenotypes in families. This investigation is unique among ongoing studies of the genetics of tobacco dependence in the extent to which equal importance has been assigned to both phenotypic and genotypic measurements.

BACKGROUND: Collaboration between physicians in different specialties is often taken for granted. However, poor interactions between family physicians and specialists contribute significantly to the observed discontinuity between primary and specialty care. The objective of this study was to explore how collaboration between family physicians and specialists was conceptualised as a competency and experienced in residency training curricula of four faculties of medicine in Canada. METHODS: This is a multiple-case study based on Abbott's theory of professions. Programs targeted were family medicine, general psychiatry, radiology, and internal medicine. The content of the programs' objectives was analyzed. Associate deans of postgraduate studies, program directors, educators, and residents were interviewed individually or in focus groups (47 residents and 45 faculty members). RESULTS: The training objectives related to family physicians-specialists collaboration were phrased in very general terms and lacked specificity. Obstacles to effective collaboration were aggregated under themes of professional responsibility and questioned expertise. Both trainees and trainers reported increasing distances between specialty and general medicine in three key fields of the professional system: the workplace arena, the training setting, and the production of academic knowledge. CONCLUSION: The challenges of developing collaborating skills between generalists and specialist physicians are comparable in many ways to those encountered in inter-professional collaboration and should be given more consideration than they currently receive if we want to improve coordination between primary and specialty care.

Recently we reported that the deep cortex of the rat lymph node is made up of semi-rounded "units," some of which are partially fused into "complexes." We further found that each unit is centered on the opening(s) of an afferent lymphatic vessel, the topographical organization of the deep cortex of a node correlating with the distribution pattern of the opening(s) of its afferent lymphatic(s). The present study aims to clarify the morphology of the deep cortex unit, particularly with regard to its reticular framework, its lymphatic sinuses, as well as its network of postcapillary venules. For that purpose, we analyzed rat nodes from various locations by way of tridimensional reconstruction. The observations revealed that each unit is formed of a "center" and a "periphery," distinguishable from one another on the basis of their morphological features. The center is nearly devoid of reticular fibers, whereas the periphery exhibits a dense framework of fibers. Moreover, the periphery is the site of concentration of most postcapillary venules of a unit and contains lymphatic sinuses which, peculiarly, are often loaded with small lymphocytes. While both regions are populated mainly by small lymphocytes, the periphery usually contains a lower concentration of these cells than the center. The overall findings support the view that the center is a site of cellular retention and proliferation, whereas the periphery is a site of rapid lymphocyte migration in and out of the unit.

BACKGROUND: The scientific literature continues to advocate interprofessional collaboration (IPC) as a key component of primary care. It is recommended that primary care groups be created and configured to meet the healthcare needs of the patient population, as defined by patient demographics and other data analyses related to the health of the population being served. It is further recommended that the improvement of primary care services be supported by the delivery of feedback and performance measurements. This paper describes the theory underlying an interprofessional educational intervention developed in Quebec's Montérégie region (Canada) for the purpose of improving chronic disease management in primary care. The objectives of this study were to explain explicitly the theory underlying this intervention, to describe its components in detail and to assess the intervention's feasibility and acceptability. METHOD: A program impact theory-driven evaluation approach was used. Multiple sources of information were examined to make explicit the theory underlying the education intervention: 1) a literature review and a review of documents describing the program's development; 2) regular attendance at the project's committee meetings; 3) direct observation of the workshops; 4) interviews of workshop participants; and 5) focus groups with workshop facilitators. Qualitative data collected were analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: The theoretical basis of the interprofessional education intervention was found to be work motivation theory and reflective learning. Five themes describing the workshop objectives emerged from the qualitative analysis of the interviews conducted with the workshop participants. These five themes were the importance of: 1) adopting a regional perspective, 2) reflecting, 3) recognizing gaps between practice and guidelines, 4) collaborating, and 5) identifying possible practice improvements. The team experienced few challenges implementing the intervention. However, the workshop's acceptability was found to be very good. CONCLUSION: Our observation of the workshop sessions and the interviews conducted with the participants confirmed that the objectives of the education intervention indeed targeted the improvement of interprofessional collaboration and quality of care. However, it is clear that a three-hour workshop alone cannot lead to major changes in practice. Long-term interventions are needed to support this complex change process.

This research paper investigates the effect of drinking water quality on property values in Charlesbourg, a major municipality (70,000 inhabitants) of the Quebec City region where repeated water‐related health problems were experienced in 1990 and 1991. In this paper, 807 bungalow sales are sampled from the data bank of the Quebec Urban Community (QUC) Appraisal Division, and environmental information pertaining to local drinking water quality levels supplements data on physical, neighbourhood and access attributes. Our findings indicate that water‐related health hazards exert a detrimental and measurable impact on higher property values, with the average duration of the warning period per sector clearly emerging as the dominant factor. More precisely, market segmentation suggests that the higher the price of the property, the sharper the decline in market value because of this factor. In the current case study, the most severely affected properties of the upper third segment of the market experienced drops in value ranging from 5.2 to 10.3 percent of mean sale price.

The observation of frontal sinus patterning is a well-established technique of personal identification in forensic anthropology and odontology. Variations in size, shape, symmetry, border outline, and the presence and number of septa and cells are compared using antemortem and postmortem radiographs. Traditionally, a standard frontal view is utilized.Computed tomography produces contiguous radiographic images of the cranium at predetermined increments. Multiple comparisons of the sinus configuration can therefore be made at different levels. A technique is presented for the production of postmortem CT scans which allows precise comparison to preexisting antemortem scans. A scoring System is described for the comparison of frontal sinuses in antemortem to postmortem CT scans. Its application to a case is discussed.

Abstract. A large effort has been made over the past 10 years to promote the operational use of probabilistic or ensemble streamflow forecasts. Numerous studies have shown that ensemble forecasts are of higher quality than deterministic ones. Many studies also conclude that decisions based on ensemble rather than deterministic forecasts lead to better decisions in the context of flood mitigation. Hence, it is believed that ensemble forecasts possess a greater economic and social value for both decision makers and the general population. However, the vast majority of, if not all, existing hydro-economic studies rely on a cost–loss ratio framework that assumes a risk-neutral decision maker. To overcome this important flaw, this study borrows from economics and evaluates the economic value of early warning flood systems using the well-known Constant Absolute Risk Aversion (CARA) utility function, which explicitly accounts for the level of risk aversion of the decision maker. This new framework allows for the full exploitation of the information related to a forecasts' uncertainty, making it especially suited for the economic assessment of ensemble or probabilistic forecasts. Rather than comparing deterministic and ensemble forecasts, this study focuses on comparing different types of ensemble forecasts. There are multiple ways of assessing and representing forecast uncertainty. Consequently, there exist many different means of building an ensemble forecasting system for future streamflow. One such possibility is to dress deterministic forecasts using the statistics of past error forecasts. Such dressing methods are popular among operational agencies because of their simplicity and intuitiveness. Another approach is the use of ensemble meteorological forecasts for precipitation and temperature, which are then provided as inputs to one or many hydrological model(s). In this study, three concurrent ensemble streamflow forecasting systems are compared: simple statistically dressed deterministic forecasts, forecasts based on meteorological ensembles, and a variant of the latter that also includes an estimation of state variable uncertainty. This comparison takes place for the Montmorency River, a small flood-prone watershed in southern central Quebec, Canada. The assessment of forecasts is performed for lead times of 1 to 5 days, both in terms of forecasts' quality (relative to the corresponding record of observations) and in terms of economic value, using the new proposed framework based on the CARA utility function. It is found that the economic value of a forecast for a risk-averse decision maker is closely linked to the forecast reliability in predicting the upper tail of the streamflow distribution. Hence, post-processing forecasts to avoid over-forecasting could help improve both the quality and the value of forecasts.

A procedure for allocating classrooms in an educational institution is presented. It is based on a linear programming model in which a penalty function is minimized. With the default values of some parameters provided by the procedure, the model first assigns as many real rooms to the requests as possible. It also seeks to do so with the most preferred rooms. Finally, when it is necessary to depart from the most preferred rooms to satisfy the first objective, the model attempts to spread this departure uniformly among requests. By altering the default values in the penalty function, the user may also favour some requests in the attribution of rooms. Constraints are concerned with the availability of rooms at various hours of the day, and with the requests for these rooms. Since this approach implicitly explores all possible assignments, it should produce better results than manual allocation. Results of empirical applications confirm these expectations, taking the number of demands that can be met as the main criterion. Moreover, an automated procedure to prepare the problem and decode its solution has made it possible to decrease substantially the time spent on this task.

Employing incidence data from the Quebec Tumor Registry, we examined the relative risks of cancer of all sites for the years 1969-73 in the asbestos-mining, rural, and metropolitan counties of Quebec Province, Canada. Generally, rates for males exceeded those for females, and the relative risks in the asbestos-mining counties for 7-10 different sites of cancer, all of low incidence, were from 1.50 to 8.08 times those of other rural counties of the Province for both sexes. Metropolitan counties exhibited equally high risk for many of these sites. We discovered higher risks among males in asbestos-mining counties for cancer of the pleura, peritoneum, lip, tongue, salivary gland, mouth, and small intestine and higher risks among females for cancer of the pleura, lip, kidney, salivary gland, and for melanoma. Because of the likelihood of a long latent period for asbestos-related cancers, the risks we observed were possibly the product of since-altered occupational and environmental conditions existing 20-30 years ago in the asbestos-mining areas. The similarities in risks for most cancers in asbestos-mining and urban areas were noteworthy.