NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Whole genome sequencing of an avipoxvirus associated with infections in a group of aviary-housed snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis)

Avipoxvirus infections have been reported in both free-ranging and domestic birds worldwide. Fowlpox and canarypox viruses belong to the genus Avipoxvirus among the virus family Poxviridae. They cause cutaneous lesions with proliferative growths on the unfeathered parts of the skin and/or diphtheritic lesions generally associated with necrosis in the upper respiratory and digestive tracts. In this study, a poxvirus has been identified in wild-caught snow buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) housed in an outdoor aviary in the region of Rimouski, Quebec. During the falls and winters of 2015 and 2016, eight snow buntings affected by this infection were examined. Macroscopic and microscopic lesions observed were characteristic of an avipoxvirus infection. Electron microscopy imaging of an ultrathin section of the histopathological lesions of two birds confirmed the presence of the poxvirus. Afterward, the presence of the poxvirus was confirmed in three birds by a specific polymerase chain reaction assay that amplified a segment of the gene encoding the fowlpox virus 4b core protein. A 576-nucleotide amplicon was obtained from one of them and sequenced. The analyses revealed a 99% homology to other previously described avipoxviruses. Using high-throughput sequencing, almost the entire viral genome of this avipoxvirus was revealed and found to possess a 359,853-nucleotide sequence in length. Bioinformatic analyses revealed that the virus was genetically related to canarypox virus. To our knowledge, this is the first confirmed case and full description of a poxviral infection in this species. This episode suggests a high susceptibility of this northern species of passerine to avipoxviruses circulating in southeastern Canada during the summer months. Even if the source of the viral infections remains undetermined, transmission by local biological vectors is suspected. Management of poxviral infections in snow buntings housed outdoors in southeastern Canada could rely on the control of biting insects.

Keyphrases: Avipoxvirus, Canarypox, Pathology, Plectrophenax nivalis, Pox, Snow bunting, Whole genome sequencing
Early childhood education and care access for children from disadvantaged backgrounds : using a framework to guide intervention

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) can have substantial beneficial effects on overall child development and educational success for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Unfortunately, it is well documented that they are underrepresented in quality ECEC programs. In order to improve access to quality ECEC, it is important to understand the factors leading to these inequities. This paper is based on a synthesis of published literature on interventions aimed at improving access to ECEC. We propose a framework identifying the spectrum of factors influencing access to quality ECEC for disadvantaged populations. We also present, in the context of our proposed framework, different interventions that have been taken to improve access to ECEC opportunities for children from low socioeconomic and/or new immigrant backgrounds. We believe that the framework proposed in this paper serves not only as a framework by which to understand the overlapping processes, factors, and stages affecting access to ECEC, but also as a model to help decision makers coordinate their efforts and maximize their impact towards more equity in access to quality early childhood education.

Keyphrases: Childcare, Access, Equity, Framework
Exploring the interdisciplinarity patterns of highly cited papers

This study explores the relationship between interdisciplinarity and the citation impact of highly cited papers. In this paper, interdisciplinarity is investigated by comparing the dimensions of disciplinary diversity (variety, balance, and disparity) and the typical integration indicators (i.e., the Rao-Stirling index (RS) and the Leinster–Cobbold Diversity Index (LCDiv)) of all papers published in 2000 and indexed in Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. These papers are categorized into six percentile rank classes according to their citation rates, and the interdisciplinarity among these percentile rank classes is compared. Our results demonstrate that, whether control variables are considered or not, highly cited papers always exhibit higher variety and disparity, but they also exhibit lower balance. In terms of the integration interdisciplinarity indicators, the RS and LCDiv both have a positive effect on citation impact. From the perspective of effect size, our results suggest that the effect of variety on citation impact is most significant, followed by disparity and then balance. These results indicate that variety is likely the most important interdisciplinary factor for citation impact.

Keyphrases: Interdisciplinarity, Highly cited papers, Scientific impact, Percentiles
Strategy-proof and envyfree random assignment

We study the random assignment of indivisible objects among a set of agents with strict preferences. We show that there exists no mechanism which is strategy-proof, envyfree and unanimous. Then we weaken the latter requirement to q-unanimity: when each agent ranks a different object at the top, then any agent shall receive his most preferred object with probability of at least q. We show that if a mechanism satisfies strategyproofness, envyfreeness, ex-post weak non-wastefulness, ex-post weak efficiency and q-unanimity, then q must be smaller than or equal to 2 |N| (where |N| is the number of agents). We introduce a new mechanism called random careless dictator (RCD) and show that RCD achieves this maximal bound. In addition, for three agents, RCD is characterized by the first four properties. JEL Classification: D63, D70.

Keyphrases: Random assignment, Strategy-proofness, Envyfreeness, q-unanimity
Cross-sectional analysis of picture descriptions of healthy young and older adults

It is poorly understood whether and how normal aging affects different aspects of connected speech production, such as fluency, informativity, efficiency, and vocabulary use. The present study crosssectionally investigates the effects of age on a broad variety of language production measures, using connected speech samples elicited by the two most frequently used picture description tasks. Twenty-six young (20-25 y.o.) and twenty-two older participants (55-90 y.o.) were included in this study. Speech samples were transcribed using the CLAN program and eight measures were extracted. Our results indicate that, in a picture description task, older adults produce more disruptions to fluency, but that lexical diversity, informativity, and efficiency of speech remain unaffected by age. The use of less frequent words by older adults might reflect a larger vocabulary size. These findings have implications for future studies assessing changes in connected speech production, in both healthy and clinical populations. Le vieillissement normal module certaines habiletés cognitives, mais on ne sait pas si, et de quelle manière, différents aspects de la production du discours continu, tels que la fluence, l’informativité, l’efficacité et l’utilisation du vocabulaire, sont affectés. La présente étude transversale examine les effets de l’âge sur plusieurs mesures langagières à partir d’échantillons de discours continu suscités par les deux tâches de description d’image les plus utilisées. Vingt-six jeunes (20-25 ans) et vingt-deux participants âgés (55-90 ans) ont été recrutés. Les échantillons ont été transcrits via le programme CLAN et huit mesures ont été extraites. Nos résultats indiquent que les adultes plus âgés produisent plus de bris de fluidité verbale, mais que la diversité lexicale, l’informativité et l’efficacité du langage ne sont pas affectées par l’âge. L’usage de mots moins fréquents par les adultes plus âgés pourrait refléter un vocabulaire plus étendu. Ces résultats ont des implications pour les études futures portant sur les changements dans la production de discours continu chez les populations saines et cliniques.

Keyphrases: Normal aging, Language production, Connected speech, Picture description task, Word-finding difficulties, Vieillissement normal, Production langagière, Discours continu, Tâche de description d’images, Manque du mot
L’importance du soutien des adultes et du rendement
en mathématiques : perceptions des élèves issus de cours de mathématiques enrichies au secondaire, lors de leurs
choix de filières de formation préuniversitaire

L’objectif de la présente étude est de documenter l’incidence du soutien des parents et des enseignants en mathématiques, et du rendement en mathématiques sur le choix de filières de formation préuniversitaire des filles comparées aux garçons. Des questionnaires auprès de 586 filles et 543 garçons finissants du secondaire et issus de classes de mathématiques enrichies ont été remplis. Des régressions multinomiales ont montré que l’incidence du soutien en mathématiques des parents et des enseignants sur le choix de formation distingue les garçons et les filles de certaines filières, mais pas toujours dans le sens attendu. The objective of this study is to document the impact of parents and teachers’ support in mathematics and students’ mathematics performance on their choice of pre-university training courses for girls compared to boys. Questionnaires from 586 girls and 543 boys from enriched math classes and graduating from secondary schools have been completed. Multinomial regressions showed that the incidence of mathematical support of parents and teachers on the choice of training distinguishes boys and girls in certain sectors, but not always in the expected direction

Keyphrases: Rendement en mathématiques, Soutien des parents, Soutien des enseignants, Choix scolaires, Filières préuniversitaires, Mathematics achievement, Parental support, Teacher support, School choice, Pre-university courses
A methodological scoping review of the integration of fMRI to guide dMRI tractography. What has been done and what can be improved; a 20-year perspective

Combining MRI modalities is a growing trend in neurosciences. It provides opportunities to investigate the brain architecture supporting cognitive functions. Integrating fMRI activation to guide dMRI tractography offers potential advantages over standard tractography methods. A quick glimpse of the literature on this topic reveals that this technique is challenging, and no consensus or “best practices” currently exist, at least not within a single document. We present the first attempt to systematically analyze and summarize the literature of 80 studies that integrated task-based fMRI results to guide tractography, over the last two decades. We report 19 findings that cover challenges related to sample size, microstructure modelling, seeding methods, multimodal space registration, false negatives/positives, specificity/validity, gray/white matter interface and more. These findings will help the scientific community (1) understand the strengths and limitations of the approaches, (2) design studies using this integrative framework, and (3) motivate researchers to fill the gaps identified. We provide references toward best practices, in order to improve the overall result's replicability, sensitivity, specificity, and validity.

Keyphrases: Functional MRI, Tractography, Diffusion MRI, Multimodal neuroimaging, Scoping review
Peut-on contraindre un État à sauver l'environnement ?  La problématique du respect des obligations en droit international environnemental

Peut-on contraindre un État à sauver l'environnement? Si les récents jugements rendus en droit interne semblent vouloir répondre à cette question par l'affirmative, cela n'est pas évident en droit international. Érigée autour de ce plafond de verre hérité du traité de Westhphalie, la sphère juridique internationaliste se voit confrontée aux limites qu'elle s'est elle-même imposée : l'impossibilité de contraindre un État à agir contre sa volonté.  Dans le but de brider les actions de ces entités supranationalement toutes puissantes dans leur propre domaine de compétence, maintes conventions environnementales ont été conclues. Au sein d'un processus de fabrication normatif contrôlé par le sujet et l'auteur de la disposition à venir, les organisations internationales se rendent compte de leur impuissance devant la difficulté de convenir d'une surveillance intrusive et de sanctions rigides, en somme d'un mécanisme de contrôle des obligations efficace. La surpuissance de l'État n'est pas pour autant synonyme d'invincibilité sur la scène internationale, en ce que divers moyens ne cessent d'apparaître dans l'optique de mener à une gouvernance environnementale mondiale désirée depuis des décennies. Can we compel a State to save the environment? Whereas recents judgements made in domestic law seems to want to answer to this question in an affirmative way, it is not as clear in international law. Erected around the Westhpalian-inherited glass ceilling, the international legal sphere is confronted to limits that were self-imposed : the impossibilty to constrain a State to act against its will.  In an attempt to restrain the acts of those supranational all-mighty entities in their competencies, many environnemental agreements were made. Inside a process of manufacturing new norms that is controled by the subject and the author of the future provision, the international organizations are aware of the fact that they are powerless. Especially regarding the difficulty to strike a intrusive surveillance or rigid sanctions, in sum anything that is included in an effective compliance mechanism. The State's supreme power is not tied with an invincibility on the international scene, as diverses means to lead to global environnemental governance are starting to emerge.

Keyphrases: contrôle des obligations, gouvernance environnementale, juridiquement contraignant, mécanisme de non-respect, obligations de l'État, surveillance inter-étatique, Accord de Paris, non-application, Paris Agreement, control of obligations, environnemental governance, legally binding, compliance mechanism, non-compliance, State's obligations, inter-state monitoring
Empreintes du désir dans le poème d'Espriu

Le poète Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) est l’auteur d’une œuvre méditant sur l’absence. Son long poème composite, écrit sur plusieurs décennies, donne à penser l’inscription du poème comme expression singulière dans l’horizon de l’œuvre entrevue comme itinéraire spirituel.  Le poème d’Espriu est hanté par la possibilité de se saisir, par les moyens du langage, de ce qui ne s’offre pas aux sens. Afin de comprendre cette articulation du sensible (le poème, la langue, la présence) et du suprasensible (la poésie, l’œuvre, l’absence), je fais appel à la notion de désir, envisagée à la fois comme pulsion fondamentale du littéraire, et comme représentation du discours figuratif.  Dans le but de dépouiller ce désir des métaphores qui correspondent à la thématique amoureuse, et pour en dégager la forme d’un élan, je passe par l’archive des représentations d’Éros dans des textes de la tradition européenne (Platon, Apulée, Dante, Llull), avant d’interroger le désir à l’œuvre dans la poétique de Salvador Espriu, ce désir qui fouille les images de la mort, les mots de la langue catalane et les inscriptions littéraires et religieuses, s’en servant comme appui pour accéder à ce qui les dépasse. The poet Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) is the author of a body of work that meditates on absence. His long composite poem, written over several decades suggests the inscription of the poem as a singular expression in the horizon of the work seen as a spiritual itinerary. Espriu’s poem is haunted by the possibility of grasping, through language, what is not available to the senses. So as to understand this articulation of the sensible (poem, language, presence) and the suprasensible (poetry, the work, absence), I call on the notion of desire, considered both as a fundamental drive of the literary and as a representation of figurative discourse. In order to strip this desire of the metaphors that correspond to the theme of love, and to extract the shape of an impulse I pass through archive of representations of Eros in texts from the European literary tradition (Plato, Apuleius, Dante, Llull), before questioning the desire at work in Salvador Espriu’s poetics, this desire which delves in the images of death, the words of the Catalan language and literary and religious inscriptions, using them as a support to access what is beyond them.

Keyphrases: éros, poésie, absence, Salvador Espriu, tradition, langue catalane, littérature vernaculaire, absence, Salvador Espriu, tradition, Catalan language, vernacular literature, Poetry
Pièces d'eau ; suivi de Lisibilités de la trace dans The Obituary de Gail Scott

La partie création, pièces d’eau, est un recueil de proses poétiques qui mettent toutes en relief une fracture entre les termes par lesquels un lieu est rendu intelligible et la realité sensible qu’ils invoquent. Les textes procèdent d’une élaboration des traces de vie qui restent suspendues au développement architectural, patrimonial et économique d’un lieu. Qu’elles procèdent à partir d’une pulsion vers l’hagiographie, de connaissances parcellaires, d’une incapacité de faire des phrases, ou bien d’une certitude hystérique, les pièces d’eau du titre sont ici à considérer comme autant d’inachèvements, voire de rebuts des procès historiques dont elles sont le refoulement.  L’essai, Lisibilités de la trace dans The Obituary de Gail Scott, aborde la lisibilité en tant que question épistémologique, historiographique et esthétique. Le déchiffrement de la trace appelle une conception sans cesse recommencée de ce qu’est la lisibilité. Dans The Obituary, le déploiement d’une esthétique littéraire axée sur le paradigme de la trace concrétise une ambivalence profonde à l’égard des processus par lesquels le passé nous apparaît comme lisible au présent. À partir d’une aporie du discours historiographique, le travail poétique et narratif de Scott revient aux matières qui produisent cette machine à perte qu’est le réel. Il apprête au final un renouveau de l’imaginaire politique du savoir ainsi que des modalités littéraires définissant notre rapport sensible au passé. The creative work pièces d’eau is a collection of poetic prose texts that tease out fractures between the terms through which a place is made intelligible and the sensory information they seek to designate. The pieces each invoke forms of life constituting an externality to the architectural, patrimonial and economic development of place. Whether they proceed from a hagiographic impulse, a fractional knowledge, a struggle to form sentences, or a hysteric certainty, the pièces d’eau of the title are indisposed, involuntary documents of the progress of which they are the refuse. The essay, Lisibilité de la trace dans The Obituary de Gail Scott, addresses legibility as an epistemological, historiographic and aesthetic notion. Reading traces calls for a constantly renewed engagement with material at the edges of legibility. In The Obituary, the deployment of an aesthetic articulated around the paradigm of the trace mobilizes a deep ambivalence with regards to processes by which the past becomes legible in the present. Written across the aporias of historiographic thought, Scott’s poetic and narrative work in this novel beckons a reappraisal of the political imaginary of knowledge and of the literary modalities that define our sensate engagement with the past.

Keyphrases: poésie en prose, esthétique littéraire, historiographie, trace, lisibilité, poétique, trace, lisibilité, prose poetry, literary aesthetics, historiography, poetics, legibility
Mechanical characterization of rigid discrete interlocking materials

Les matériaux discrets entrecroisés (DIM) rigides sont une classe de matériaux qui se distinguent par la manière unique par laquelle ils se déforment: les DIMs sont composés d’éléments (connectés par entrecroisements) qui peuvent se déplacer librement à l’intérieur d’une amplitude définie par les contacts avec leurs éléments voisins. Ceci donne une réponse biphasique aux déformations unique à ces structures où soit aucune résistance n’est fournie à une déformation, soit un arrêt complet à la déformation se présente. Il n’est pas clair comment l’ensemble de paramètres discrets et continus décrivant un DIM influence ce comportement biphasique. De plus, nous ne possédons pas les outils pour le charactériser correctement. Dans le but d’élucider ce comportement, nous présentons une méthode qui s’inspire de techniques d’homogénisation qui peut détecter les contacts physiques entre éléments composés de tores. En définissant une énergie adéquate, nous pouvons minimiser les intersections entre éléments tout en déformant le DIM d’une façon arbitraire en utilisant des techniques d’optimisation standardes. Nous explorons les déformations auxquelles des arrangements planaires de DIMs peuvent être assujettis et investiguons comment le couplage de contraintes dans deux directions orthogonales influence ces déformations. Nos résultats permettent de mieux comprendre comment différents paramètres décrivant un DIM influence ces déformations. Rigid discrete interlocking materials (DIMs) are a class of materials that distinguish themselves by the unique way in which they deform: in DIMs, elements (connected through interlocking) can move freely within a range defined through contacts with neighbouring elements. This results in a biphasic deformation behaviour unique to these structures where no resistance is provided to deformation or a hard stop to deformation is met. It is yet unclear how the set of discrete and continuous parameters describing a DIM influences this biphasic behaviour. Likewise, we lack tools to properly characterize it. To that effect, we present a method which takes inspiration from homogenization and handles contacts by leveraging the definition of implicit surfaces, specifically tori, making up our elements. By defining an adequate energy function, we can minimize intersection between elements while deforming the DIM in an arbitrary way using standard optimization approaches. We explore the deformations that planar sheets of DIM can be subjected to and investigate how the coupling of constraints in two orthogonal directions affects these deformations. Our results give insights on how the tuning of various parameters describing the DIM affects these deformations.

Keyphrases: Matériaux discrets entrecroisés, Optimisation, Déformation, Arrangements planaires, Surfaces implicites, Discrete interlocking materials, Implicit surfaces, Optimization, Planar sheets