NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Analyse génétique de la fonction du gène Polycomb Bmi1 dans le développement et la survie des photorécepteurs chez la souris

The retina is composed of several types of neurons such as amacrin, ganglion, bipolar and photoreceptor cells. Photoreceptors, which include cones and rods, are highly specialized neurons that convert light into electrical signals by phototransduction. The molecular mechanisms involved in differentiation of retinal progenitors (RPCs) into specialized neurons such as photoreceptors are poorly understood. The polycomb gene Bmi1 is a member of the Polycomb gene family that forms multimeric complexes involved in chromatin remodeling leading to gene repression. Biological functions of Bmi1 include regulation of cell proliferation, free radical metabolism, and DNA repair. Recently, it was shown that Bmi1 plays a critical role in the proliferation and self-renewal of a specific immature RPC group. Moreover Bmi1 is essential for post-natal retinal development. The objective of the current study is to analyze Bmi1 function in photoreceptor development and survival. Our results show that Bmi1 deficiency in mice causes degeneration of cone photoreceptors, but not of rods. Furthermore, Bmi1 is predominantly expressed in cones. Experiments using primary retinal cell cultures suggest a cell-autonomous phenotype. In addition, codeletion of Bmi1 and the critical DNA damage response protein Chk2 resulted in partial rescue and slow-down of cone degeneration. Bmi1-/- and Bmi1-/-Chk2-/- retinas also exhibit an important increase in oxidative DNA damage, suggesting that cellular redox state could play an important role in cone survival. Our studies on the role of Bmi1 in photoreceptors elucidate the mechanisms contributing to cone survival, and could lead to the development of new treatments for cone degenerative diseases.

Keyphrases: Retina, Photoreceptors, Survival, Degeneration, Polycomb gene Bmi1, Cone
Propriétés électrophysiologiques des canaux ioniques formés par la toxine nématicide Cry5Ba du bacille de Thuringe dans les bicouches lipidiques planes

Cry toxins are proteins synthetized as crystal inclusions by the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium upon sporulation. They are used widely as biological control agents, as they exhibit toxicity to a range of invertebrates, including nematodes. The Cry5B toxins are active against a number of parasitic nematode species, such as Ancylostoma ceylanicum a human gastro-intestinal parasite. So far, the mode of action of nematicidal Cry toxins is largely unknown, except for the facts that their specific receptors are glycolipids and that they cause prominent damage to nematode intestinal cells. In this study, we show for the first time that the nematicidal Cry5Ba toxin, a member of the three domain family of toxins produced by the Bacillus thuringiensis forms pores in receptor-free planar lipid bilayers. The pores formed by the toxin were cation selective, both under acid and alkaline pH conditions. Under symmetrical 150 mM KCl conditions, pore activity was characterized by conductances ranging from 17 to 330 pS, at both pH 6.0 and 9.0. The most frequently observed conductance levels differed from each other by approximately 17 to 18 pS consistent with the existence of clusters of different number of elementary, similar, co-operatively gated pores, or with the presence of variable size oligomers with different pore diameters.

Keyphrases: Cry5Ba, Formation de pores, C.elegans, Bacillus thuringiensis, Nematicidal δ-endotoxine, Lipid bilayer membrane, Pore formation, Electrophysiology, Homology modeling
Considérer l’expérience du visiteur, une clé pour la gestion intégrée des forêts

The practice of outdoor recreational activities in western forests is becoming increasingly popular.  Therefore, the implementation of integrated management with regards to publicly-owned forests is more important than ever in order to maintain conditions necessary for all activities on the territory.  The province of Québec which has recently adopted a new Forestry Act is following this trend by addressing the numerous forest management issues such as harmonizing of various uses which represents a major challenge, particularly with regards to recreation and timber production.  Throughout this research, we focused on the concept of visitors’ experience as a means to facilitate harmonization.  The objectives were to identify the attributes of visitors’ experiences in a regional park and to assess how it can be useful in forest management. Two complementary qualitative methodologies were applied: on the one hand, we analyzed the comments written by visitors on guest books, and on the other hand, we interviewed visitors we met on the site.  Results indicate the relevance of using visitors’ experiences to promote a plural and harmonious use of forest lands.  The study allows for an in-depth understanding of experience components, both common and specific, which vary according to visitors.  Moreover, the study reveals that it’s possible to connect certain experience profiles with harmonization terms.  Finally, beyond the mere experience, it appears that forest managers who are aware of the perception and image of forest management will certainly benefit from this information.

Keyphrases: Québec, Visitors’ experience in forest, Harmonization of uses, Integrated management
La maladie cœliaque et les allergies alimentaires sévères : les effets sur les relations sociales au Québec

This research is about the social consequences, in Québec, of the celiac disease and food allergies.  Its aim is to bring an explanation and a better understanding of how celiac disease and food allergies influence the social relations, the social activities and the perceptions of the people that are living with those conditions and their close relations. With this aim in mind, semi-directed interviews were carried out with 11 participants that were either celiac, allergic or near relations.  During these interviews, diagnostic, food accidents, accessibility, activities with friends, the family’s reaction and adaptation, perceptions and relationships were the main topics that were discussed.  The experiences of the people living with celiac disease (CD) or food allergies (FA) were compared following their description.  The data stemming from the interviews was analysed by using Bourdieu’s habitus concept (1980), Giddens’s concepts of agency and rules (1979), concepts of exclusion and identity as well as the definitions of sickness, illness and disease and a gravity scale of perceptions. From this research will be noticed that perception of illness is different for the people living with CD than those living with FA.  CD tends to be taken less in charge by health professionals and to be taken with less seriousness, by people living with CD and the general population, than FA are.  Both conditions lead to a modification of habitus and an adaptation phase.  Nevertheless, these changes seem to be harder to deal with and more complex for people living with CD than for people living with FA because of the age period where the condition was revealed.  Depending on the flexibility of the individual and group habitus, the confrontation to the recasting of habitus will go more or less well.  If the confrontation is more on the negative side of the spectrum, social disapproval or personal denial will take place, leading to exclusion.  The literature generally shows that the quality of life for people living with CD and FA gradually diminishes over time, bringing negative social, emotional and physical consequences.  My participants, however, are apparently living well with their respective conditions because they benefit from a good support of their peers.

Keyphrases: Habitus, Agency, Perceptions, Celiac disease, Food allergy, Social consequences, Exclusion, Illness, Identity, Rules
Masculinité en crise : transformation des pratiques et des représentations de la masculinité chez les jeunes salariés japonais

During the second half of the twentieth century, several structural processes have led the ideology of the Japanese employment system to be globally accepted, not only as a legitimate system, but as a model to be followed and pursued as well. The “salaryman”, the iconic figure of this system – that is the male employee of the big Japanese corporations or administrations – has been imposed into Japanese society as a unique model of masculinity. The ideology conveyed by the employment system has then been seen by a few authors as a hegemonic discourse, a culturally dominant image of work and daily life in Japan. Today, following the economic conjuncture caused by the economic crisis of the 1990s, the image of the salaryman is crumbling and is loosing its hegemonic value to give way to new practices and values antagonistic with the previous discourses and the representations of work and masculinity. A historical analysis and a field survey (semi-structured interviews) would show us how the salaryman can be analysed as a hegemonic discourse and why the new practices and representations of the young Japanese men reflect the newly fragmentary nature of the image of the salaryman within a crisis context. These results will lead us to more broadly consider the implications of the transformations of the Japanese employment system in the social change in Japan.

Keyphrases: Japan, Social change, Hegemony, Ideology, Representation, Practice, Masculinity, Capitalism, Company, Historical anthropology
"Job : humoriste" : vécu de la professionnalisation de l'humoriste québécois francophone

This exploratory and empirical research focuses on the professionalization experience of the francophone comedian in Quebec. The theoretical and scientific resources on the subject being scarce, Glaser and Strauss’ Grounded Theory (1967) will allow us to use and compare our field data so that we can check them against each other and establish a theoretical framework on the job of comedian. We also examined Bergson’s study of laughter. According to him, laughter can have a social function and it is also a universal language that allows everyone to recognize themselves and be part of a whole. From a methodological point of view, we interviewed eight Quebec comedians, seven men and one woman, young and old, whether they have studied at the École nationale de l’humour or not, but with the common feature of humor being their livelihood. Following these interviews, we decided to ask the Director of the École nationale de l’humour, Louise Richer, because every comedian has a special relationship with the institution. Interviews, of a semi-structured type, were carried out in a chronological form, connected to a set of questions on the theme of professionalization. The data were collected and transcribed (verbatim) with a sound recording. Making humor is an unconventional profession in which every comedian is left to himself, but where quickly he creates a kind of microcosm around himself so he can move and act independently. Adolescence, the École nationale de l’humour and the Quebec cultural context will be essential elements to their professionalization.

Keyphrases: francophone, Comedian, professional, francophone, experience, professionalization, humor
La distribution des connaissances dans la gestion du risque : 
analyse des interactions dans le cadre du Comité de la protection civile de la Mairie de Tecoluca - Salvador

The subject of risk management has always interested me, especially after I lived through two hurricanes and a devastating earthquake in El Salvador. Although there is a lot of literature on this subject, often linked to the question of climate change, we do not know how governmental and civil organizations deal with risk management on a daily basis. Based on an ethnographic study of the Civil Protection Commission of the mayoralty of Tecoluca, El Salvador, I observed processes that are taking place in the research and analysis of structural factors causing situations of vulnerability. To do this, I adopted an approach based on the study of interactions, involving the theory of distributed cognition and actor-network theory. As I show, the risk management seen as a participatory process is characterized, on one side, by the cooperation and coordination of individuals and, on the other side, by the contribution of tools, technologies, materials and methods that contribute to the detection of risk. This requires the mobilization of knowledge that must be produced, shared and distributed among the members of a group through the various artefacts, tools, methods and technologies that they mobilize and that mobilize them. In this regard, the theory of distributed cognition allows me to explore the interactions that occur within a working group by focusing on what contributes to the act of knowing, an activity is not just individual but also collective and distributed. Moreover, the actor-network theory allows me to show how in the execution of this task (risk management), the active contribution of non-human actors, both by themselves and in relation to human actors, participates in activities of detection and risk prevention.

Keyphrases: distributed cognition, actor-network theory, conversation analysis, risk management
Une analyse des facteurs reliés au sentiment d’insécurité en milieu carcéral

For a long time, the feeling of safety has been a subject matter of interest to social scientists. Applied in prisons, this phenomenon is not much studied. Different studies have come to inconsistent results with respect to factors related to insecurity. The different ways of conceptualizing and measuring this phenomenon often appear as a cause of the inconsistency of the results. The present study aims to deepen general knowledge about the insecurity sentiment and present the following specific objectives: (1) provide a quantitative picture of the feeling of safety, taking into account its emotional, cognitive and behavioral dimensions; (2) estimate the victimization rate in Canadian penitentiaries in Quebec; (3) analyse the different factors that are related to the different dimensions of feeling of safety; (4) analyse the interrelation between the different dimensions of the feeling of safety.   To achieve these objectives, data from 293 inmates held in ten Quebec prisons were analyzed. Descriptive analyses were used to document the insecurity of prisoners taking into account various dimensions. Bivariate and multivariate analyses have permitted to identify the individual and contextual factors that are significantly associated with the different dimensions of insecurity. Hierarchical regression models were used to verify the interrelation between the different dimensions of feeling of safety, taking into account the influence of other factors. The results showed a level of insecurity that is low and variable among the prison population, and also that the different dimensions of insecurity were affected by various factors and were partially interconnected.

Keyphrases: Feeling of safety, Prison, Inmates, Factors, Multidimensional concept, Insecurity, Perceptions of risk, Constrained behaviors
Fécondité des femmes immigrantes et descendantes d’immigrantes selon le statut conjugal au Québec

In recent decades, many social changes occurred in Quebec have resulted in a loss of interest in marriage and the emergence of common law as a socially accepted status. With new attitudes related to personal and professional success, fertility has declined. In our study, we want to observe not only the fertility differentials by region of origin, which have already been the subject of previous research, but also those covered by the marital status of women (married or common law). The objective of our research is to determine if the fertility of immigrant women is higher than that of native women and if differences in fertility according to marital status categories (married or in common law) are the same for all groups of immigrant and native women. Results from the 2006 Canadian census have revealed that fertility is higher for most immigrant women. But, distinguishing between married and common law we see that women with higher fertility than the native-born represent a smaller proportion when we consider all immigrants. Although there are differences between the marital status, the trend shows that women have higher fertility within marriage compared to native-born are also in this situation when in common law. Finally, the majority of married women hold a higher fertility rate than those in common law.

Keyphrases: Fertility, Immigrants, Marital status, Women, Children, Quebec
Le chaos régulé : une approche épistémique de l’intervention humanitaire

The main goal of this study is to compare two modes of international interventions (state and non-state) that have the objective of maintaining or restoring order and peace, economical and social development, for humanitarian reasons. In fact, the limit between state and non-state interventions is blurry. To avoid such conceptual confusion, the object of study is an ensemble of three historical moments of American intervention in Haiti. The study is divided in two points. First, it will help comprehend the logic of action of the American state during past interventions in Haiti, and define the implicit and explicit goals of these interventions. Secondly this study focuses on biopolitics in humanitarian intervention and the application of the theory of regulated chaos. Because this theory implies various conditions, it proposes a theoretical model that wishes to explain contemporary intervention as a new epistemic framework of political action, one of the « regulated chaos » (McFalls; Pandolfi; Nguyen). This study shifts the emphasis on the effective necessity of the humanitarian intervention to its properties. It is therefore a tentative to understand social experiences of power in a humanitarian zone such as Port-au-Prince.

Keyphrases: intervention, ONG, domination, Port-au-Prince, chaos, intervention, humanitarian, military, NGO, United States, America, domination, Haiti, Port-au-Prince, Chaos
A layered JavaScript virtual machine supporting dynamic instrumentation

Run-time monitoring of JavaScript applications is typically achieved by instrumenting a production virtual machine or through ad-hoc, complex source-to-source transformations. This dissertation presents an alternative based on virtual machine layering. Our approach performs a dynamic translation of the client program to expose low-level operations through a flexible object model. These low-level operations can then be redefined at run time to monitor the execution. In order to limit the incurred performance overhead, our approach leverages fast operations from the underlying host VM implementation whenever possible, and applies Just-In-Time compilation (JIT) techniques within the added virtual machine layer. Our implementation, Photon, is on average 19% faster than a state-of-the-art interpreter, and between 19× and 56× slower on average than the commercial JIT compilers found in popular web browsers. This dissertation therefore shows that virtual machine layering is a competitive alternative approach to the modification of a production JavaScript interpreter when applied to run-time monitoring of object operations and function calls.

Keyphrases: Metacircularity, Instrumentation, Dynamism, Object model, Flexibility, Performance, Virtual machine, JavaScript, Instrumentation, Performance, JavaScript
Détection de chute à l'aide d'une caméra de profondeur

Elderly falls are a major public health problem. Studies show that about 30% of people aged 65 and older fall each year in Canada, with negative consequences on individuals, their families and our society. Faced with such a situation a video surveillance system is an effective solution to ensure the safety of these people. To this day many systems support services to the elderly. These devices allow the elderly to live at home while ensuring their safety by wearing a sensor. However the sensor must be worn at all times by the subject which is uncomfortable and restrictive. This is why research has recently been interested in the use of cameras instead of wearable sensors. The goal of this project is to demonstrate that the use of a video surveillance system can help to reduce this problem. In this thesis we present an approach for automatic detection of falls based on a method for tracking 3D subject using a depth camera (Kinect from Microsoft) positioned vertically to the ground. This monitoring is done using the silhouette extracted in real time with a robust approach for extracting 3D depth based on the depth variation of the pixels in the scene. This method is based on an initial capture the scene without any body. Once extracted, 10% of the silhouette corresponding to the uppermost region (nearest to the Kinect) will be analyzed in real time depending on the speed and the position of its center of gravity . These criteria will be analysed to detect the fall, then a signal (email or SMS) will be transmitted to an individual or to the authority in charge of the elderly. This method was validated using several videos of a stunt simulating falls. The camera position and depth information reduce so considerably the risk of false alarms. Positioned vertically above the ground, the camera makes it possible to analyze the scene especially for tracking the silhouette without major occlusion, which in some cases lead to false alarms. In addition, the various criteria for fall detection, are reliable characteristics for distinguishing the fall of a person, from squatting or sitting. Nevertheless, the angle of the camera remains a problem because it is not large enough to cover a large surface. A solution to this dilemma would be to fix a lens on the objective of the Kinect for the enlargement of the field of view and monitored area.

Keyphrases: Kinect, Computer vision, Video surveillance, Fall detection, Motion detection, Tracking, Shape analysis, Depth camera, Motion analysis
Parallelization of SAT on Reconfigurable Hardware

Though very difficult to solve, the Boolean satisfiability problem (SAT) is extensively used to model various real-world applications and problems. Over the past two decades, researchers have tried to provide tools that are used, to a certain degree, to find solutions to the Boolean satisfiability problem. The nature of these tools is broadly divided in software and reconfigurable hardware solvers. In addition, the main algorithms used to solve this problem have also been complemented with heuristics of various levels of sophistication to help overcome some of the NP-hardness of the problem. The end goal of these tools has been to provide solutions to industrial-sized problems of enormous size. Initially, reconfigurable hardware tools provided a promising avenue to accelerating SAT solving over traditional software based solutions. However, the level of sophistication of software solvers overcame their hardware counterparts, which remained limited to smaller problem instances. Even so, modern state-of-the-art software solvers still fail unpredictably on some instances. The main focus of this thesis is to explore solving SAT on reconfigurable hardware in order to gain an understanding of what would be essential ingredients to add (and discard) to a very efficient hardware SAT solver that obtains its processing power from the raw parallelism of an FPGA platform. The parallel prototype solver that was implemented in this work has been found to be comparable with other hardware and software solvers in terms of execution speed even though no heuristics or other helping techniques were implemented. We thus show that our approach provides a very promising avenue to solving large, industrial SAT instances that might be difficult to handle by software solvers.

Keyphrases: SAT, Hardware Solver, FPGA parallel SAT solver