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Monkeypox is a double-stranded DNA virus with an envelope and is a member of the Poxviridae family's Orthopoxvirus genus. This virus can transmit from human to human through direct contact with respiratory secretions, infected animals and humans, or contaminated objects and causing mutations in the human body. In May 2022, several monkeypox affected cases were found in many countries. Because of its transmitting characteristics, on July 23, 2022, a nationwide public health emergency was proclaimed by WHO due to the monkeypox virus. This study analyzed the gene mutation rate that is collected from the most recent NCBI monkeypox dataset. The collected data is prepared to independently identify the nucleotide and codon mutation. Additionally, depending on the size and availability of the gene dataset, the computed mutation rate is split into three categories: Canada, Germany, and the rest of the world. In this study, the genome mutation rate of the monkeypox virus is predicted using a deep learning-based Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model and compared with Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) model. The LSTM model shows "Root Mean Square Error" (RMSE) values of 0.09 and 0.08 for testing and training, respectively. Using this time series analysis method, the prospective mutation rate of the 50th patient has been predicted. Note that this is a new report on the monkeypox gene mutation. It is found that the nucleotide mutation rates are decreasing, and the balance between bi-directional rates are maintained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A state-of-the-art review of the dynamics of long combination vehicles (LCVs) is provided. The performance-based standards (PBS) that are commonly used globally are reviewed, including those in Canada and Australia. The discussions include the low-speed and high-speed longitudinal, lateral, and yaw performance of LCVs, which in many respects are different than the conventional tractor-semitrailers. The low-speed discussions include the vehicle startability, gradeability, acceleration, and offtracking. The high-speed considerations include rollover dynamics, braking distance and time, overtaking, down-grade holding, and ride quality. Some of the latest development in actively controlled (intelligent) systems to improve LCVs' dynamic performance is emphasised, such as hill-start assist (HAS), roll stability control (RSC), electronic stability control (ESC), electrified dolly (e-dolly), active trailer steering (ATS), active braking, slip control (SC), active trailer differential braking (ATDB), active and semi-active antiroll bars, and active and semi-active suspensions. The study concludes that although great progress has been made during the past two decades for integrating advanced, intelligent, electromechanical systems in LCVs, much more work remains to address some of the future environmental and performance demands, particularly considering the integration of electrical and alternative-fuel propulsion systems in heavy commercial vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an ongoing threat to the mental wellbeing of countless individuals worldwide, with healthcare workers at particularly high risk. We developed the STEADY staff wellness program prior to the pandemic based on the available literature and input from stakeholders, guided by the Knowledge-to-Action (KTA) Implementation Science Framework. We quickly adapted the STEADY program for implementation in selected high-need units within Canada's largest trauma hospital during the pandemic's first wave. This brief report describes implementation of the STEADY program, retroactively applying the structure of the Knowledge-to-Action Implementation Science Framework to the practical steps taken. We identified the importance of more frequent, shorter contact with HCWs that occurred in-person, with an emphasis on peer support. A flexible approach with strong support from hospital leadership were key facilitators. Our findings suggest that a flexible approach to practical program implementation, theoretically underpinned in best-practices, can result in an acceptable program that promotes increased HCW wellbeing during a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: More than half of adolescents have jobs in summer or sometime during the year. While employers are ultimately responsible for their safety, parents are often important in helping their children navigate the work environment. Our study examines the attitudes, beliefs and types of involvement parents have in their children's work.Methods: We modeled a telephone survey of 507 English-speaking parents of working adolescents in Ontario, Canada on a US study and examined their perspectives, comparing to earlier findings from the U.S. parents.Results: Most Ontario parents helped their teens consider questions to ask about work, for example, work hours (90.7%) and job tasks (78.2%) and fewer about workplace safety (57.9%). Parents overall were concerned about their teens, especially younger teens, getting behind on schoolwork (69.3%), being rushed on the job (60.1%) and doing hazardous tasks (58.3%) or working alone (51.9%), or being at work during a robbery (74.5%). Parents of 14-17-year-old daughters were more concerned about their child being assaulted than were parents of sons (62.4% vs. 51.4%), particularly if the teen was in the 18-19 age group (74.3% vs. 52.5%). Half the parents indicated 10-19 h per week was the right amount of work time for their teen, and most agreed that laws should limit the number of hours of youth work.Conclusions: Overall, Ontario parents appear to be more concerned about the safety and also more involved in the work of their adolescent children than U.S. parents previously surveyed. Parents are engaged with their children about their work and may serve as valuable assets to helping to advocate for safe work policies and environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the relationship between schedule instability and underemployment among hourly employees. The value to employers of specific hours of work often varies over short intervals, motivating variable scheduling and incomplete contracts that do not specify hours or availability. When employers offer variable weekly total hours, competition for scarce hours motivates employees to be available for work over a broader range of times. Workers may consequently be rewarded with more hours, but they garner fewer hours than their counterparts with stable hours. Cross-sectional analysis of the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey demonstrates that underemployment is significantly more likely among hourly workers on unstable schedules. Longitudinal analysis indicates that even among the initially underemployed, who are strongly motivated to increase their availability, switching into an unstable schedule results in significantly fewer hours, providing evidence of employer-driven constraints on hours. There is no evidence of compensating differentials for unstable schedules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses two visual representations of highly publicized cases of violence against women in Canada by drawing on innovative bridging of Gramsci's hegemonic common sense and Deleuze's cliché. I argue that as elements in the representational assemblage surrounding these cases, both cultural productions contributed to the construction of such acts of gendered violence as national events. Both images exploit the capacity of cliché to move images towards meaning and to move the audience into and out of affective proximity with those being represented. The first case study, a series of paintings by Pamela Masik entitled The Forgotten, fails to close the distance between the viewer and the marginalized women depicted. By contrast, the effect of cliché in the second case study, an episode of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's series, The Fifth Estate, is to create subjective distances, reinstating dominant common sense about the boundaries between strangers and neighbours and upholding the sanctity of the community. I highlight these images to demonstrate the role of cliché in conditioning and drastically limiting our ethical and political responses to violence against women. I conclude by attempting to add friction to the slippery surface of cliché, expanding the moments where representation fails. My contention is that spending more time in zones of incomprehension creates the potential for counterhegemonic memory-images to take hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a structural model of contingent capital. In contrast to existing approaches we explicitly link the firm’s total payout to its cost of debt, leading to a total payout that is linear in—as opposed to proportional to—asset value. In the special case that asset value evolves as affine geometric Brownian motion we derive closed-form expressions for limiting (i.e. perpetual) bond values. The proposed model is flexible, so that it can be used to gauge the relative merits of different variations of contingent capital, and parsimonious, so that it is relatively easy to implement in practice. An empirical example using data from the Canadian banking sector is provided that illustrates how the model can generate insights into problems that are of interest to both regulators and issuers of contingent capital (e.g. what range of conversion prices would be consistent with regulatory guidelines, and how expensive is contingent debt over this range). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper deals with randomization methods for valuing American options written on dividend-paying assets, which are based on the idea of treating the maturity date as a random variable. In the randomization method introduced by Carr in 1998, he used the Erlangian distributed random variable to develop a recursive algorithm starting from the so-called Canadian option with an exponentially distributed random maturity. The purposes of this paper are (i) to provide much simpler pricing formulas for the Canadian option; (ii) to interpret the Gaver-Stehfest method developed for inverting Laplace transforms as an alternative randomization method in the context of valuing American options; and (iii) to evaluate the performance of the Gaver-Stehfest method in details with theoretical and numerical views. Numerical experiments indicate that the Gaver-Stehfest method works well to generate accurate approximations for the early exercise boundary as well as the option value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines gender differences in the impact of paid and unpaid productive activities on well-being. Using recent Canadian data, we examine the time spent by prime-age women and men (25?–?54) on paid work, childcare, eldercare, household work, volunteering, and education, and then assess its impact on stress and work-life balance. Using multivariate analyses, we show that women's greater hours of unpaid work contribute to women experiencing more stress than men, and of that work, hours spent on eldercare and housework are more stressful than those spent on childcare. We also examine the influence of job characteristics and spouses' paid and unpaid work time on stress. Neither spouse's unpaid work nor most job characteristics alleviate stress, once work hours are controlled. However, the evidence suggests that women, more so than men, use strategies such as self-employment to improve work-life balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attrition, screening, and signalling models of strategic bargaining are characterized in terms of their predictions about the incidence, mean duration, and settlement rates of strikes and the terms of wage settlements. These predictions are compared with the general features observed in empirical studies of strikes in Canada and the United States. Conclusions are drawn about the types of models capable of generating these features, and about the conformity of the models to the evidence. Methods are described for computing the numerical examples used to illustrate the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]