Skills Development Fund (SDF)in Ontario, Canada

Overview

SDF offers funding to organizations for innovative projects that address challenges of hiring or training workers to drive the economic growth of Ontario, Canada.

SDF supports:

●projects that address the labor shortage and stimulate growth in key sectors(部门，区域) of Ontario’s economy;

●projects helping people with prior involvement in those with disabilities, newcomers, and others facing barriers to employment;

●projects that will increase Ontario’s long-term economic competitive advantage by creating a sustainable and adaptable workforce.

Qualified Organizations

The following organizations are qualified to apply for SDF as primary applicants:

●local trade unions;

●local training delivery agencies;

●non-profit organizations in Ontario;

●employers with a presence in Ontario;

●native professional, industry or employer associations;

●District Social Services Administration Boards and hospitals.

The following organizations are qualified to apply for SDF as a co-applicant with one or more of the organizations above:

●publicly assisted colleges, universities or institutes in Ontario;

●private career colleges registered under the Private Career Colleges Act,2005.

Attention

Projects will be prioritized (优先考虑) based on the strengths of their applications. Please be aware that funds are limited and therefore the applicants are encouraged to apply and submit their completed application forms as soon as possible.

A song called Lonely Warrior (《孤勇者》) is always ringing in my ears. Six years ago, after hosting an annual ceremony for my school, I found that my left leg was a little swollen, and very soon I could barely walk. In fact, the swollen part became a fist-sized meatball that was so painful that I could barely sleep. Of course, I went to a local hospital, where I was given very bleak (不乐观的) news-osteosarcoma, which means bone cancer.

I underwent chemotherapy (化疗) for the next two years, and it was the worst time of my life. Physically, I felt that the side effects of chemotherapy were killing me. I lost all of the hair on my body and I became totally bald. I could barely eat anything, even if felt hungry. I no longer needed an alarm clock to wake up in the morning. Instead, what woke me was my body telling me that I needed to vomit (呕吐).

I had no idea where all this treatment would leave me, and the dreams I had once nursed about the future were entirely wiped out. I wanted to feel the world and experience more, so I stuck to the course of treatment. As time went by, however, I became weaker and weaker. The side effects now were far worse than they had been earlier.

I eventually suggested that the leg be chopped off, and the doctor said that might be the best thing to do, as long as I could cope with the psychological and social pressures afterward. I made my decision very calmly, because I knew things could not be worse than they were at that moment, and I was determined that this was just one more battle I would win.

Now, six years later, I have weathered all these difficulties. I have been so lucky to be able to find the strength to deal with all of this, and what I have to tell anyone still struggling with difficulties is this: have faith in yourself, and do not let bad moments drag you down. Just hang on and you will come through.

Zoologists track animals using global-positioning-system(GPS)tags(标签) which then return their data via satellite. Marine(海洋的)biologists have a harder time of it, though, because radio signals can’t pass through seawater. This makes it impossible either to receive GPS signals or to send any data collected back to base.

That does not stop people tagging sea creatures. Data collected and stored in a tag can be sent to a satellite in bursts if the species in question is one that comes to the surface from time to time. A tag may also be recovered if the animal carrying it is caught by a fishing boat. Fisherfolk are typically paid a few hundred dollars per tag returned to its home laboratory.

None of these methods, though, keeps accurate track of where the animal carrying the tag has been. For these and other reasons, it would therefore be useful to have a marine equivalent of GPS. And one is now being employed. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, hopes to fill the seas with sonic beacons(声波信标) that will play the role of GPS satellites.

The sea is divided into distinct layers that have different temperatures. During the Second World War, American scientists showed that some of these layers act as sonic waveguides. They called them “sound fixing and ranging” (sofar) channels. Sound sent out in one of these channels echoes(回响) between the layers above and below, thus staying in the channel. Thus constrained(被约束)，a sound wave can travel hundreds of kilometers before it becomes too weak to detect.

The sofar transmitters from Woods Hole are usually at an appropriate depth for the channel concerned. Every 12 hours they broadcast a 32-second-long location signal known as a pong. Pongs are so called because they are similar to sonar “pings”, but of lower frequency. In typical conditions a pong can be picked up 1,000 km away. By listening to the pongs from several beacons a receiver can calculate its location. Existing receivers for the two sofar transmitters are currently carried on free-floating instrument packs. But the plan is to have two more transmitters this year, and more in future years.