NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Le rôle des nouvelles technologies dans le travail et la construction identitaire des journalistes politiques de la presse écrite

Do mobile technologies, Internet and social networks have a tangible effect on the work habits of written press political journalists? How do these new tools participate in building these journalists’ identities? In order to get a better sense of the conditions in which they work and perceive themselves, we have chosen to analyse the role being played out by technologies in their daily practice as well as in the way they perceive themselves and their work. In this qualitative study, seven francophone political journalists from traditional written press were interviewed to better understand both the freedom and constraints that come with the adoption of new tools and new techniques.   New technologies and social networks are not just work tools, they also redefine the role of journalists in society. Besides daily technical adaptations in changing work routines, they also destabilize deeply rooted traditional journalistic values. Increased interaction with an active public often puts the journalist in a defensive position in order to insure his never-before contested relevancy. While new technologies can be gratifying for the public, they can also be met with resistance from journalists.

Keyphrases: Technologies, Journalism, Mobility, Social networks, Identity, Affordances, Technologies
Living and fishing in a marine protected area : balancing traditional fisheries with conservation in Karimunjawa National Park, Indonesia

This research examined a few important issues related to marine protected area (MPA) management in Indonesia by looking at how MPAs are able to adapt their policies in order to better suit evolving socioeconomic and ecological conditions, what socioeconomic impacts have been felt as a result of MPA implementation, and what are the environmental subjectivities of local actors whose livelihoods are dependent on the resources that are being regulated. The livelihoods framework served as a guide when examining local socioeconomic changes in the region, while Agrawal’s concept of environmentality provided the theoretical underpinnings when examining the formation of environmental subjects in Karimunjawa National Park. This study found that the policy changes brought about in KNP’s reworked management plan are a step in the right direction, but that important goals related to park co-management were never fully realized in practice. The results also show that significant socioeconomic changes are occurring within the park, with many fishermen turning to alternative livelihoods in order to offset declining fish catches. Lastly, this study uncovered that significant positive shifts in environmental subjectivities have occurred since the re-zoning of the park, but that these have not fully translated into compliance towards the rules and regulations of the MPA.

Keyphrases: Marine protected areas, Coastal management, Small-scale fisheries, Co- management, Coastal livelihoods, Pêches destructives, Destructive fishing, Indonesia, Karimunjawa National Park
Algorithmes d'apprentissage pour la recommandation

The age of information in which we have entered brings with it a whole new set of challenges to take up in many different fields. Making computers process this profuse information is one such challenge, and this thesis focuses on techniques adapted for automatically filtering and recommending to users items that will fit their tastes, in the somehow original context of an online multi-player game. Our objective is to predict players' ratings of the game's levels. We first introduce machine learning concepts necessary to understand the two architectures we then describe; both of which taking advantage of deep learning and unsupervised pre-training concepts to solve the recommendation problem. The first architecture is a multilayered neural network for which we try to explain different performances we get for different settings of depth, training heuristics and unsupervised pre-training methods, namely, straight, denoising and contrative auto-encoders. The second architecture we explore takes its roots in energy-based models. We give possible explanations for the various results it yields depending on the configurations we experimented with. Finally, we describe two successful improvements on this second architecture. The former is a supervised fine-tuning taking place after the unsupervised pre-training, and the latter is a tentative improvement of the fine-tuning phase by using a multi-tasking training criterion. Our experiments show promising results, especially with the architecture inspired from energy-based models, justifying the use of deep learning algorithms to solve the recommendation problem.

Keyphrases: Artificial intelligence, Neural networks, Video games, Energy based models, Machine learning, Contractive autoencoders, Deep learning
Families of orthogonal functions defined by the Weyl groups of compact Lie groups

Several families of multivariable special functions, called orbit functions, are defined in the context of Weyl groups of compact simple Lie groups/Lie algebras. These functions have been studied for almost a century now because of their relation to characters of irreducible representations of Lie algebras, their symmetries and orthogonalities. Our main interest is the description of discrete orthogonality relations and their corresponding discrete transforms which allow the applications of orbit functions in the processing of multidimensional data. This description is provided for the Weyl group of different lengths of root, in particular groups of rank 2 for so-called $E-$orbit functions and of rank 3 for all the other families of special functions.

Keyphrases: Discrete transforms, Interpolation, Orbit functions, Polytopes, Wel groups
Effets de l’enseignement réciproque sur la compréhension en lecture d’élèves allophones immigrants nouvellement arrivés en situation de grand retard scolaire au secondaire

The present thesis explores the effects of reciprocal teaching on the reading comprehension of French as a second language learners who are recent immigrants with limited prior schooling educated in welcoming classes at the secondary school level. Two experimental groups and a control group took part in this research. In the experimental groups, two intervention models were proposed to the students, one which consisted of a traditional reciprocal teaching method and another with an intervention designed to foster openness to the first languages of the students. A questionnaire was administered to the three groups as well as 11 individual interviews which enabled the researcher to measure the effects of the interventions and to create reading portraits of the 11 individuals through case studies. The results of the questionnaire confirm that the interventions in reciprocal teaching had significant effects on the reading comprehension of the students in the two experimental groups in comparison to the students of the control group. Moreover, while the case studies support the same conclusions as of the questionnaire, the post-test results show that the students who took part in the experimental groups improved their cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Finally, when the two experimental groups are compared, both present positive gains in reading comprehension scores. However, the group which received an intervention with the added value of fostering openness to the first languages of the students showed a more positive and explicit perception of the relationship in reading between the first and second languages.

Keyphrases: French as a second language, immigrant students with limited prior schooling, high school, reading comprehension, reading strategies, reciprocal teaching, openness to the first languages of the students
Traduire le mètre, traduire le rythme : les poèmes de Sappho par Philippe Brunet

In 1991, Philippe Brunet published a new translation of the seventh century B.C. archaic Greek poet, Sappho. In this translation, he attempted to imitate and instigate the feel of the Greek meter in French. The difficulty of this project stands in the fact that the French language is not one of word accentuation and it doesn't take into account the syllables quantity. The poetic meters in French are indeed based on the syllables number and not on their quantity. During the Renaissance, a similar imitation experiment had already been attempted by Jean-Antoine de Baïf. But dismissing the accentual particularities of the French language, he failed to develop an adequate system. Meanwhile, Phillipe Brunet was able to use the French accentual rules to make his read feel about the quantitative Greek rhythm. Using the tonic accent as well as the initial accent, his system fully respects the French language while creating a new rhythm. When this translation is compared to others, we can see how much his sematic and prosodic research help to the creation of this peculiar system.

Keyphrases: Sappho, Accent, Greek, Translation, Rhythm, Meter, Metric, Accentuation
Vanités et résistances de la pensée critique. Du kitsch philosophique dans "Maîtres anciens" de Thomas Bernhard

In critically examining Thomas Bernhard’s Old Masters, this essay questions the relations between literary writing, philosophical thought and kitsch. Beyond the surprising assumption that philosophy  might also be a matter of taste, seduction and sentiments, analyzing the notion of philosophical kitsch allows for consideration of critical discourse as a double-edged sword that promises not only the emancipation but also the autoalienation of the thinking Kitschmensch. The figure of Reger, the principal character in Bernhard’s orchestrated comedy, embodies this paradoxical critical perspective. This paradox of kitsch critical thought attests to problems of legitimation that arise alongside a growing scepticism towards the claims of grand emancipatory narratives.  This examination of philosophy’s mise en scène in the novel allows for perceiving a specifically literary mode of thinking. This essay suggests that literary thinking differs from philosophical exposition as well as from metadiscourse generally. Literature, because it shows more than it affirms, therefore allows for understanding in a very specific manner the similarities and tensions between philosophy and kitsch, culture and barbarism. In sum, this study focuses in this literary specificity that comes to appear as a form of resistance to commodification, vanity, domestication – in short, to the kitschification of critical thought.

Keyphrases: Kitsch, Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters, philosophy, critic, resistance, vanity, literary thinking
Heuristic solution methods for multi-attribute vehicle routing problems

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is an important key to efficient logistics system management, which can result in higher level of customer satisfaction because more customers can be served in a shorter time. In broad terms, it deals with designing optimal delivery or collection routes from one or several depot(s) to a number of geographically scattered customers subject to side constraints. The VRP is a discrete optimization and computationally hard problem and has been extensively studied by researchers and practitioners during the past decades. Being complex problems with numerous and relevant potential applications, researchers from the fields of computer science, operations research and industrial engineering have developed very efficient algorithms, both of exact and heuristic nature, to deal with different types of VRPs. However, VRP research has often been criticized for being too focused on oversimplified versions of the routing problems encountered in real-life applications. Consequently, researchers have recently turned to variants of the VRP which before were considered too difficult to solve. These variants include those attributes and constraints observed in real-life planning and lead to solutions that are executable in practice. These extended problems are called Multi-Attribute Vehicle Routing Problems (MAVRPs). The main purpose of this thesis is to study different practical aspects of three multi-attribute vehicle routing problems which will be modeled in it. Besides that, since the VRP has been proved to be NP-hard in the strong sense such that it is impossible to optimally solve the large-sized problems in a reasonable computational time by means of traditional optimization approaches, novel heuristics will be designed to efficiently tackle the created models.

Keyphrases: Vehicle routing problem, Discrete optimization, Multi-attribute vehicle routing, Heuristics
La dimension subjective dans l'expérience de guérison de pratiquants du yoga Sivananda

This dissertation explores the healing journey of Sivananda yoga practioners in the context of the re-enchantment of the world. All respondents have been recruited at Sivananda Ashram in Val-Morin (Quebec) which has been defined as a transnational cosmopolitan territory that stimulates religious hybridity and promotes access to multiple symbolic and therapeutic resources. Through a phenomenological approach that emphasises the subjectivity of the individual, we propose to identify the key factors of healing proper to each interviewee are identified and to observe how they deal with worlds of meanings and various representations of the body, illness and healing circulating throughout society. We will define the position of the spiritual resource within this journey and observe how the biomedical resource is embedded in this spiritual resource. We are interested in how individuals are building up their own system of representations and manage to find a meaning to their illness and enlarge the scope of it beyond a holistic dimension while taking at the same time advantage of the biomedical technology in order to multiply their chances of healing. In my approach, I assume that the triggering of self-healing mechanisms depends upon the subjectivity of the individuals and that this subjectivity contains the keys of their healing. These keys are proper to each person and the research shows that each journey is unique. So, regarding this subjectivity, the main question of this thesis is to what participants attribute their healing.

Keyphrases: Medical anthropology, Body, Healing, Illness, Spirituality, Yoga
Bilgamesh, un ballet-opéra en deux actes.
Symbiose d’un genre oublié, une mythologie archaïque et une langue morte

Composed between 2009 and 2012, the ballet-opera Bilgamesh represents an ambitious project for two special reasons. Firstly, there is the attempt to revive a partially forgotten genre opera-ballet. Secondly, the ancient language of Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian, are used exclusively.  Drawing a parallel with other art forms, one must observe that the blending of singing and dance is more and more gaining a place in popular music and in contemporary cinema producers prefer more often the use of little-known but authentic languages to reflect the atmosphere of long- forgotten times. It is my deep conviction that a mythological subject opens up enormous possibilities for the embodiment of the ideas mentioned above, where dead languages can join together with the opera-ballet form in single organism, strengthening the action on stage with special, sacred thoughts.   The title itself is no accident. The name Gilgamesh is a Babylonian alteration of the original name of the hero, Bilgamesh, in Sumerian.

Keyphrases: Gilgamesh, Symbiose, Sumer, Babylon, Opera-ballet, Gilgamesh, Dead languages, Symbiosis, Sumer, Babylon, Mythology
Étude des propriétés plasmoniques des réseaux de nanotrous

This research aims at developing a multiplexed biosensor for protein detection based on the nanohole array technology. Gold nanohole arrays exhibit distinct plasmonics properties depending on the excitation mode of the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs). The interest of working with nanohole arrays is related to their high sensitivity, ease of fabrication and simple setup of excitation in transmission. The architecture of nanohole arrays leads to a nanostructure having multiple plasmonics properties. The intensity, the spectral signature and the sensitivity of the plasmonic signal were highly affected by the shape of the nanohole arrays. Varying the diameter of the holes, the periodicity and the metallic composition of the array were used to optimize the plasmonic signal. The optimal structure was found to have a periodicity of 1000 nm, a diameter of 600-650 nm and a metallic film with a thickness of 125 nm of gold. Such a transducer exhibits a bulk refractive index sensitivity of 500-600 nm/RIU for plasmonic bands absorbing around 600-700 nm. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in the Kretschmann configuration and enhanced optical transmission (EOT) mode were compared using large gold nanohole arrays (1000 nm periodicity, 600 nm diameter and 125 nm depth) in order to assess their relative analytical performance. Biodetection of IgG was found to be 6 times more sensitive with SPR in the Kretschmann configuration than in EOT mode for the same structure. The decay length of the electromagnetic field in EOT mode was determined experimentally to be around 140 nm with a layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte deposition. This results suggests that the plasmonic properties of EOT for nanohole arrays is much more associated to a Bloch wave SPPs mode rather than a localized SPR. Variation of the incident angle of excitation of the BW-SPPs in transmission leads to a higher surface sensitivity for the (1,0) diffraction mode for gold nanohole arrays of 820 nm periodicity. Optimization of the physical properties and the excitation angle of the nanohole arrays is essential in order to develop a transducer having a potential towards multiplexed biosensors.

Keyphrases: Nanohole arrays, Surface plasmon resonance, Enhanced optical transmission, Transducer
L'impact de la volatilité des taux de change sur le commerce international : essai de validation empirique désagrégées des exportations sectorielles canadiennes vers les États-Unis via une approche d'estimation VAR

This study provides an overview on the interactions and linkages between the volatility of exchange rates and international trade. The objective of this work is to present this relationship theoretically and examine, empirically the existence of this causal relationship between international trade and exchange rate variability. The literature on the subject considers himself across as contradictory and supports several controversies that do not allow the clear conclusion about the relationship in question.   We try to push this research a step further by reviewing the evidence for Canada and providing an empirical investigation on the possible existence of a significant impact of volatility on sectoral disaggregated flows of Canadian exports to its trading partner, the United States. We empirically examine the response of five sectors of Canadian exports to changes in real effective exchange rate between Canada and the United States.  However, our results do not allow us to conclude about the significance of an impact on volatility of exchange rates on disaggregated sectoral exports to United States. Overall, even if we admit that the sign of the estimated coefficients of the exchange risk variable in each sector is negative, we reach the conclusion that the volatility does not seem to have a statistically significant impact on the real volume of exports from Canada to the United States.

Keyphrases: VAR, Exchange-rate variability, risk measurement, International trade
La toxoplasmose chez les Inuits : investigation de l'écologie de toxoplasma gondii dans l'Arctique canadien

Toxoplasmosis results from infection with Toxoplasma gondii, a widespread protozoan that can infect many species including warm-blooded mammals and birds. The public health impact of toxoplasmosis is important, particularly in immunocompromised individuals and the foetus. Levels of human infection in parts of the Canadian Arctic are among the highest in the world, despite the absence of felids that are the only hosts that can excrete T. gondii. Several studies have suggested that consumption of raw meat of marine mammals including seals is a source of infection for the Inuit. Our research sought to understand the dispersal mechanisms of T. gondii in aquatic ecosystems leading to contamination of the marine environment of the Arctic by oocysts, and to assess the importance of this route of dispersion for infection in seals and consequently in the Inuit. We hypothesized that the T. gondii oocysts excreted during the winter by felids in the subarctic area and transported by rivers during spring melt contaminated the estuaries of the Canadian Arctic. Initially, a cross-sectional study of seroprevalence in seals from the Canadian Arctic showed that these populations were infected with T. gondii and thus a priori could be a source of infection for Inuit. Spatio-temporal variations in seroprevalence were observed suggesting a potential link with variations in environmental contamination by oocysts. A conceptual diagram of the possible mechanisms of transport and fate of T. gondii oocysts, from the melting snow to the exposure of marine organisms, is proposed in the following chapter. Interactions between the various mechanisms identified, which act on various temporal and spatial scales, should favour the appearance of relatively high concentrations in estuaries allowing exposure and potential infection of seals. To assess environmental contamination by oocysts excreted by the lynx population living in the watershed of the Canadian Arctic (the only felines largely distributed in this vast territory), we conducted a serological cross sectional study in this population. This study showed that lynx were infected with T. gondii and also suggested the dynamics of lynx-hare population cycles as an important process in the transmission of T. gondii. Finally, the modeling of hydrological transport of oocysts indicated that the hypothetical concentrations of oocysts in meltwater could be sufficient to permit significant exposure in estuarine filter-feeding bivalves on which seals prey and therefore potentially representing sources of infection for them. In changing northern ecosystems, understanding the mechanisms of transmission of waterborne pathogens, including T.gondii is essential, especially in order to protect vulnerable populations that live in these regions.

Keyphrases: Toxoplasma gondii, Inuit, Canadian Arctic, public health, fecal contamination, river-to-sea transport, snowmelt period, hydrological modelling