NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Apprentissage d'espaces sémantiques

In this work, we focus on learning semantic spaces for multiple domains, but also at the intersection of different domains. The semantic space is where the learned representation lives. This space is called semantic if similar entities from a human perspective have their similarity preserved in this space. We use different machine learning algorithms to learn representations with interesting intrinsic properties. The first article presents a pipeline including many different unsupervised learning techniques used to win the Unsupervised and Transfer Learning Challenge in 2011. In the second article, we present a pipeline taking advantage of the structure of the data for a scene classification problem. This approach allows us to drastically reduce the dimensionality while improving significantly on the scene recognition accuracy. The third article focuses on the space structure learned by deep representations. We show that performing the sampling procedure from deeper levels of representation space explores more of the different classes. In the fourth article, we tackle a semantic parsing problem with several Recurrent Neural Network architectures taking as input context windows of word embeddings. In the fifth article, an investigation on learning a single semantic space at the intersection of words and images is presented. We propose a way to perform ”augmented search” where a search on an image containing an object would also return images of the object’s parts.

Keyphrases: Semantics, Deep learning, Machine learning, Recurrent neural networks, Neural networks, Natural language processing, Computer vision
Symbolic geography in John Ruskin's modern painters, Volumes III, IV, V

John Ruskin writes Modern Painters Volumes III, IV, and V as events such as The Crimean War (1854-56), the Indian Mutiny (1857-59), and the Second Italian War of Independence (1859) unfold. As such, Ruskin’s work tends to reflect and respond to the political context of his time. In these works, Ruskin tries to symbolically interpret and represent geopolitical and taxonomical characteristics of the European continent, generally in an imperial narrative, paying particular attention to British identity and national stereotypes. Ruskin articulates his ideas using a unique style that combines visual and written elements to create powerful allegories. In these volumes, Ruskin is especially concerned with what he sees as an impending “crisis of civilization” of which the aforementioned conflicts are symptoms. As a response, Ruskin strongly advocates societal reform in the form of a return to old Christian values. He also supports a military alliance between Britain and France.

Keyphrases: John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Art history, Art and politics, Nineteenth century, Great Britain, Imperialism, Historiography, Stereotypes, Modern Painters, Symbolic geography
Activation chimiosélective et dérivatisation d’amides et d'alcools : synthèse de plusieurs groupements fonctionnels et hétérocycles

A major objective in organic chemistry is the development of methods for general, simple and cost-effective transformations allowing for the efficient modification of natural resources into different products of public interest. In particular, the research of chemoselective and “green” methods represents a growing interest for the industrial sector. In fact, the synthetic application on large-scale of catalytic and selective processes using mild conditions allows the reduction of wastes and energy usage, minimizing the cost of production and the harmful effects to the environment. In this context, the research group of Professor André B. Charette from Université de Montréal is interested in the development of general and chemoselective methods for the derivatization of readily available functionalities, such as amides and alcohols.  The amide function, also named peptide bond in proteins, is identified in diverse families of natural products and is commonly used as synthetic intermediate in the synthesis of pharmaceutical leads. The alcohol function is one of the most abundant functionalities in nature, intrinsically and largely used in synthetic chemistry.   In the context of this thesis, simple, general and chemoselective transformations were applied to secondary and tertiary amides, as well as to primary and secondary alcohols. The first part of the thesis relies on the activation of amides mediated by triflic anhydride, followed by the nucleophilic addition of different reagents, allowing for the formation of several key functional groups in organic chemistry, such as aldimines, aldehydes, amines, ketones, ketimines, and amidrazone derivatives. The latter functionality has been used in successive reactions towards the formation of heterocycles, such as 1,2,4-triazoles via a cyclodehydration reaction and 3-aminoindazoles via a palladium-catalyzed C–H functionalization reaction.   The second part of the thesis is based on an acid mediated Mitsunobu reaction allowing the nucleophilic substitution of alcohols in the presence of free carbamines (which doesn’t contain any electron-withdrawing substituents), normally basic entities with pKa over 13 (in DMSO), which are intrinsically unaccepted in standard Mitsunobu conditions. Contrary to the usual multi-step synthesis of amines using the Mitsunobu reaction, this method allows the formation of substituted amines in a single step without the need of protecting groups.

Keyphrases: Activation, Amide
Réaction de photocyclodéshydrogénation par catalyse photorédox

This thesis presents a new method to perform the Mallory reaction by using visible light. To achieve this goal, photoredox chemistry which has emerged recently, was used to effect efficient use of visible light. Moreover, continuous flow chemistry was used to increase the irradiated reaction mixture surface.  During this work, a new photochemical method using a copper photocatalyst and visible light proved efficient for the synthesis of 5helicene. An oxidative quenching mechanism was proposed for this transformation. Also, this new method was used for the synthesis of a 5helicene derivative and a 4helicene-pyrene hybrid.  The photochemical method featuring a copper photocatalyst with visible light was used next for the synthesis of various carbazoles substituted by alkyl and aryl groups at the nitrogen position. During this synthesis, the reaction exhibited a regioselective issue that was further studied in the synthesis of new triarylamines. Finally, it was discovered that an iron photocatalyst can replace the copper photocatalyst by using oxygen as the oxidant in the synthesis of 9-phenylcarbazole.

Keyphrases: carbazoles, helicenes, photochemistry, continuous-flow, photoredox, copper, iron
De la musique au-delà des frontières du son

Visual environments nowadays regularly accompany music. From the video clip to installations, web-art and cinema, audiovisual occupies a great part of our world and constitutes an important development pole of musical practices.  The mixing of sound and image is often attached to the history of cinema but the premises of audio-vision date back to Antiquity. The connections between sound and colors were first encountered with the Pythagoricians and the research surrounding these relationships is still pursued nowadays. Different technologies have paved the way to new formulations of this artistic decompartmentalization. In XIXth century, electricity enables the development of an experimental musical instrument fabrication research with Alexander Rimington’s color organ amongst others. These audiovisual instruments give birth later to Lumia, an art form willingly close to music and that renders nothing to hear.  In parallel to these new artistic propositions, a body of work later called Visual Music is emerging from early cinematographic avant-gardes. The possibilities offered by the filmic support opens to new ways of organizing color and movement. This hybrid art is then reformulated by video art practitioners before going through a vast phase of democratization with the advent of domestic computers in the early 1990.  I cover the different historic parts of these resolutely musical audiovisual practices. This summary is mainly made of art and theoretical works dotted with personal reflections. I comment the theoretical aspects attached to these artistic propositions by opposing another major audiovisual format: cinema.  All this in order to pave the way for a presentation and contextualization of my creative output. I propose Trombe (2011) and Lungta (2012), two propositions that inherit from visual music, interactive art and kinetic art.

Keyphrases: Sémiotique, lumia, Color music, Creative coding, Visual Music, Semiotics, physical computing, Interactive art
École(s) de Paris : enquête sur les compositeurs étrangers à Paris dans l'entre-deux-guerres

“School of Paris” (École de Paris) is a term often used to indicate a group of foreign composers who resided in Paris in the years between World War I and II. However, depending on the source, “School of Paris” can have various meanings. In a broader sense, it includes all composers in any era who lived at least part of their lives in Paris. In its strictest sense, it refers to the alleged group of four to six composers who arrived in Paris in the 1920s: Conrad Beck, Tibor Harsányi, Bohuslav Martinů, Marcel Mihalovici, Alexandre Tansman, and Alexander Tcherepnin.  In order to revisit the history of the use of this term, we have reconstructed the complex and contradictory discourse concerning the question: “what is the School of Paris?”. Our “investigation”, which took place through historical documents of the interwar years, as well as historiographical and popularized texts published up to today, led us to the conclusion that the School of Paris is a discursive phenomenon that each performer could manipulate at will, since no factual evidence justifies an unequivocal use of this term in the Parisian musical milieu of the 1920s and 1930s. Most notably, the study of musical programming allowed us to demonstrate that no particular event or gathering of the so-called “members” of the School of Paris ever took place between 1920 and 1940.  Subsequently, we have contextualized this discourse to understand which facts and which prominent rhetoric made it possible. The term used in music is an extension of that which was introduced in the milieu of visual arts in the 1920s, dictated by the dominant tendency in cosmopolitan Paris to make a clear distinction between the French and the non-French. In this light, we have thoroughly examined the different forms of musical nationalism and their role in creating a discourse on the School of Paris as a question of style — a position that asserts the existence of a “School of Paris style”, distinct from that of “French music”.  In addition to the reconstructions of third party and contextualized discourse, we have examined the discourses held by the composers in question. The study of several unpublished documents shows us that these composers were strongly opposed, during the interwar years, to attempts to treat them as a group. Not until after the Second World War do they couple this discourse with the favourable image of a homogeneous and coherent School of Paris, thus contributing to its historiographical fortune.

Keyphrases: École de Paris, School of Paris, French Music, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, Migrant Artists, Historiography
Malnutrition, VIH et traitement antirétroviral dans les pays à ressources limitées

Introduction: Over the past decade, access to highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) has rapidly increased in low and middle income countries (LMIC). In those settings, the HIV epidemic has been superimposed onto preexisting and prevalent conditions of malnutrition. HIV and malnutrition are part of a vicious cycle known to contribute to decreased nutritional status and immune function. Despite access to HAART, malnutrition, either at initiation or in the course of treatment, persists as a prognostic factor for poor health and mortality. Nonetheless, few data exist concerning nutritional trajectories or concerning the determinants of immune and nutritional status amongst patients initiating HAART. Objectives : To document the methodological challenges in nutritional research in LMIC. To investigate the determinants and trajectories of nutritional status at HAART initiation and in the first year of treatment. To investigate immune function and reconstitution according to baseline malnutrition. Results: Among anthropometric measures, only weight and height were found to be reliable. Consequently, these were the only anthropometric measures to be used in longitudinal analyses. Treatment led to a rapid amelioration of the nutritional status for a majority of patients. However, the initial effect quickly tapered off to reach a plateau 6 to 9 months post HAART. One year after treatment initiation malnutrition persisted in many patients active and alive (between 7-29% according to the population and nutritional indicator used). As observed in our cohorts and in our systematic review, attrition was strongly associated with baseline malnutrition. However, there does not appear to be a clear relation between the immunological response and nutritional status either at treatment initiation or during the course of HAART. The limited quantity and quality of available evidence did not permit us to draw definitive conclusions to that effect. Conclusions: In our cohort study, collected evidence suggested the existence of a cross-sectional and longitudinal association between nutritional and immunological statuses in treated patients. However, there exists no consensus concerning these associations. Based on uncovered data, we cannot draw conclusions on the impact of malnutrition on immune function and reconstitution either at baseline or within the first year post HAART. Methodological difficulties pertaining to nutritional status assessment iv and the frequent attrition of malnourished people initiating treatment, complicates the investigation of these relations; as is the coexistence of multiple inflammatory processes in those populations.

Keyphrases: Traitement antiretroviral, HIV, Antiretroviral treatment, Antropometric measurements, Immune response, Low and middle income countries
Growing Up in Exile : An Ethnography of Somali Youth Raised in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya

Chronic violence has characterized Somalia for over two decades, forcing nearly two million people to flee. This ethnography studies the experience of protracted exile of Somalis who were raised in Kakuma refugee camp, in Kenya, and are now young adults. Their experience is relatively uncommon, although increasing numbers of people spend long periods in camps conceived as temporary, due to the length of conflicts and the normalization of excluding populations deemed undesirable. I explore how young people perceive their living environment and how growing up in exile structures their view of the past and their country of origin, and the future and its possibilities. In doing so, I regularly shift perspectives from the specificities of the context to the global environment, to understand how people’s experience is shaped by (and shapes) the social, political, economical and historical dynamics in which it is embedded. My observations can be summarized into a few broad statements: regardless of how long it has existed, the camp is and remains a space of containment; conceived as a rationally organized space to manage populations, the camp becomes a messier social world where new practices develop; young Somalis display agency and interpret their experience in a way that makes the present bearable; frustration grows when Somali youth complete their education and struggle to establish themselves as adults, catalyzing their determination to leave Kakuma. Indeed, although refugees have been living there since the early 1990s, the camp remains a space of transition. Although there have been a number of studies on refugee camps in Kenya, no study has focused on the experience of Somali youth raised in a refugee camp. I argue that this experience is traversed and shaped by tensions between constraints and opportunities, mobility and immobility, isolation and connectedness, victimization and affirmation of the subject, citizenship and refugeeness – and by conflicting temporalities. This ethnographic study highlights the fact that notions such as conviviality or the multiplicity of people’s belongings developed in the literature on interethnic cohabitation in cities or the ethnic identity of migrants, help us to understand the camp experience. This research also shows that, far from being powerless victims, people actively contribute to finding solutions to their exile.

Keyphrases: Migrations transnationales, Kenya, Kakuma, Somalia, Refugee camps, Humanitarianism, Asylum, Youth, Transnational migrations, Anthropology of forced displacement
La bioéthique et les conflits armés : la réflexion éthique des médecins militaires

The aim of this project is to study the ethical tensions that can be experienced by military physicians who must be, at the same time, healers, soldiers (even if they are non-combatants) and sometimes humanitarian actors. In the literature on the ethics of military medicine, potential ethical dilemmas are often presented as the result of pressures, real or perceived, from the military institution, rules, codes, laws or policies that divert physicians from their primary goal, i.e., the interest of the patient. To better understand the ethical challenges faced by Canadian military physicians and how these are dealt with, this project uses an empirical bioethics approach. Based on a literature review, I examine the ethical dilemmas of military physicians, the concept of profession, and Canadian codes of ethics (medical and military). The ethical experience is then explored through semi-structured interviews with 14 military physicians who participated in operational missions, particularly in Kandahar, Afghanistan between 2006 and 2010.  Both the conceptual and empirical results indicate that nuance is required. First, Canadian military physicians do not experience dilemmas as presented in the literature, in number or in frequency. They are aware that they must take into account both the patient’s interest and the common good but do not experience this as a sense of dual professional loyalty. In addition, they feel that they share the mission objective, which is to maintain the fighting force. Distinctions are also needed between physicians themselves, in the conception they have of their profession, and in the context (training or garrison) and the type of work they do (general practitioner or specialist). The main dilemmas reported concern inequalities in the provision of care between coalition soldiers and locals (soldiers and civilians) as well as the lack of resources that generate challenging clinical decisions. A surprising result of the interviews is the presence of two distinct groups in terms of professional identity. Eight military physicians saw themselves primarily as physicians, while the other six did not give priority to one or the other professions (military or medicine). These two groups differ in other dimensions, such as the number and type of identified ethical challenges and dilemma resolution mechanisms. Despite the ethical training courses offered by the military institution, gaps persist in the ability to identify ethical experiences, the values involved and the appropriate resolution mechanisms. Given the small sample size, these results are difficult to generalize. Nevertheless, these findings provide theoretical insights, highlighting the multidimensional nature of military medicine, and practical considerations, by enabling the identification of aspects to improve training and so facilitate ethical reflection on the part of military physicians.

Keyphrases: professional ethics, military physicians, ethical dilemmas, codes of ethics, dual loyalty, empirical bioethics
Une intervention de groupe post-parcours au cœur de l'insertion socioprofessionnelle des jeunes adultes

This critical essay offers a reflection on the social and professional integration of young adults and seeks to assess the implementation of a new intervention project. This project is anchored in the heart of a job integration company located in the Southwest of Montreal called Groupe Paradoxe and is aimed at young adults who have completed their training program in the fields of scene technician or video technician and for whom a follow-up program is offered. Due to a lack of time and human resources, this follow-up program is done by a majority of job integration companies as a response to punctual solicitations rather than a proactive follow-up. In order to promote social and professional integration of young people and to enable the acquisition of social capital favourable to employment integration, this intervention project proposes to develop an open support group for graduates at Groupe Paradoxe and to offer a platform meant to address common concerns each of them have encountered since the end of their training program.

Keyphrases: social and professional integration, young adult, social capital, follow-up program, support group, job integration company