NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
La traduction au Maroc sous le protectorat français 
1912-1956 : 
étude de trois auto-traducteurs de l’IHEM

The Textes arabes de l’Ouargha (Lévi-Provençal, 1922), the Textes arabes de Rabat (Brunot, 1931) and the Textes arabes des Zaër (Loubignac, 1952), dealing with three regions in Morocco, draw attention to their methodological organization, as well as to their themes.  The three works, consisting of an Arab version, a transcription using Latin characters and an annotated translation, provide a portrait of colonial Morocco between 1912 and 1956. Following in the footsteps of Orientalist William Marçais, the three self-translators concerned themselves with Moroccan ethnography in all its facets. To examine the works of these self-translators, we studied their translation not only from a comparative perspective, but also from a paratextual standpoint. In addition, we conducted a socio-historical study of these translators that proved useful to better understand their ideology and above all shed light on their membership in the community of scholars. For this purpose, our theoretical framework was based on both an archaeological component and a critical component in order to identify the norms underlying the translators’ intentional interventions. The preface and numerous notes clearly illustrate the different translation projects, namely, to “strengthen the edifice” of the French administration. Admittedly, our analysis of the self-translations did not reveal significant interventions and, thus, the study of the Moroccan dialect transcription became an important part of my research. A reading of each transcription – an intralinguistic translation from the oral to the written – and a grasp of all its aspects demonstrate that the role of each of the three self-translations, done by translators in the service of the IHEM, was to shape the image of Moroccans and consolidate the French colonial project in Morocco.

Keyphrases: Postcolonialisme, IHEM, Morocco, French protectorate, Ethnographic translation, Post-colonialism
Échantillonnage des distributions continues non uniformes en précision arbitraire et protocole pour l'échantillonnage exact distribué des distributions discrètes quantiques

The thesis is divided mainly into two parts. Chapters 2 and 3 contain the first part. Chapters 4 and 5 contain the second part. The first part is about sampling non uniform continuous distributions with a given level of precision. Knuth and Yao showed in 1976 how to sample exactly any discrete distribution using a source of unbiased identically and independently distributed bits. The first part of this thesis extends the theory of Knuth and Yao to non uniform continuous distributions once the precision is fixed. A lower bound and upper bounds for generic algorithms based on discretization or inversion are given as well. In addition, a new simple proof of the original result of Knuth and Yao is given here. The second part is about the solution of a problem in communication complexity that originally appeared within the field of quantum information science. Given a network of N computers with a server capable of generating random unbiased bits and a parametric discrete distribution with a vector of N real parameters where each computer owns one and only one parameter, a protocol to sample exactly the distribution in a distributed manner is given here.

Keyphrases: Distribution, Inversion, Sampling, Discretization, Von Neumann rejection, Entropy, Communication complexity
Une signature du polymorphisme structural d’acides ribonucléiques non-codants permettant de comparer leurs niveaux d’activités biochimiques

Recent experimental evidence indicates that RNA structure changes, sometimes very rapidly and that these changes are both required for biochemical activity and captured by the secondary structure prediction software MC-Fold. RNA structure is thus dynamic. We compared RNA sequences from the point of view of their structural dynamics so as to investigate how similar their biochemical activities were by computing a signature from the output of the structure prediction software MC-Fold. This required us to accelerate considerably the software MC-Fold. The algorithmic approach to this acceleration is described in chapter 1. In chapter 2, point mutations that disrupt the biochemical activity of microRNA are explained in terms of changes in RNA dynamics. Finally, in chapter 3 we identify dynamic structure windows in long RNA with potentially significant roles in autism spectrum disorders and separately in Xenopus ssp. (species of frogs) egg polarisation.

Keyphrases: NCM, ARNm VegT, neuroligines, Nucleotides Cyclic Motifs, Dynamic Programming, microRNA, RNA Dynamic Structure, VegT mRNA, neuroligins
Diversified query expansion

Search Result Diversification (SRD) aims to select diverse documents from the search results in order to cover as many search intents as possible. For the existing approaches, a prerequisite is that the initial retrieval results contain diverse documents and ensure a good coverage of the query aspects. In this thesis, we investigate a new approach to SRD by diversifying the query, namely diversified query expansion (DQE). Expansion terms are selected either from a single resource or from multiple resources following the Maximal Marginal Relevance principle. In the first contribution, we propose a new term-level DQE method in which word similarity is determined at the surface (term) level based on the resources. When different resources are used for the purpose of DQE, they are combined in a uniform way, thus totally ignoring the contribution differences among resources. In practice the usefulness of a resource greatly changes depending on the query. In the second contribution, we propose a new method of query level resource weighting for DQE. Our method is based on a set of features which are integrated into a linear regression model and generates for a resource a number of expansion candidates that is proportional to the weight of that resource. Existing DQE methods focus on removing the redundancy among selected expansion terms and no attention has been paid on how well the selected expansion terms can indeed cover the query aspects. Consequently, it is not clear how we can cope with the semantic relations between terms. To overcome this drawback, our third contribution in this thesis aims to introduce a novel method for aspect-level DQE which relies on an explicit modeling of query aspects based on embedding. Our method (called latent semantic aspect embedding) is trained in a supervised manner according to the principle that related terms should correspond to the same aspects. This method allows us to select expansion terms at a latent semantic level in order to cover as much as possible the aspects of a given query. In addition, this method also incorporates several different external resources to suggest potential expansion terms, and supports several constraints, such as the sparsity constraint. We evaluate our methods using ClueWeb09B dataset and three query sets from TRECWeb tracks, and show the usefulness of our proposed approaches compared to the state-of-the-art approaches.

Keyphrases: Search Result Diversification, Query Expansion, Multiple Resource Integration, Resource Weighting, Latent Aspect Embedding
L'histoire de l'art mise en pièces : analyse matérielle, spatiale et temporelle de la period room comme dispositif muséal

This dissertation studies the period room as exhibited in the art museum. Through an examination of its material, spatial, and temporal specificity, I analyze the mechanisms proper to this exhibition strategy and identify its main conditions of possibility. I study the several knowledges at play in this exhibition strategy and their interactions, as well as the period room’s reciprocal contribution to the construction of these knowledges. In so doing, I establish the basis for an epistemology of the period room and argue for the period room’s singular contribution to the elaboration and mediation of history within the museum space. This study allows me to lay down conceptual foundations for rethinking the period room’s role for art historical practice, and thus to overcome the aporias of historicism and authenticity for which the period room is most often discredited.  In the first part, I establish the period room’s museographic typology. Through an analysis of its double status as pastiche and simulacrum, I consider the issues, especially ideological, related to the question of the period room’s “authenticity.” In addition, I elaborate one of this dissertation’s theoretical premises by demonstrating that, because it consists of the articulation of powers and knowledges, the period room is an apparatus (dispositif) as understood by Michel Foucault (1977) and Giorgio Agamben (2007). In the second part, I examine the period room’s material specificity by showing that it is simultaneously a gathering of objects and a “whole,” that is to say, a museographic object in itself. I study the epistemological implications of this idea for the representation of history that the period room offers, while paying special attention to the political stakes informing this representation in the museum space. In the third part, I concentrate on the spatial and temporal particularities of this exhibition strategy. I demonstrate that, despite its seeming unity of place and time, the period room is composed of multiple spaces and concentrates various times. By drawing on its specificity, I develop new theoretical and methodological tools that contribute to the renewal of the period room’s function for the shaping and transmitting of history.

Keyphrases: period room, museum studies, period room, decorative arts, North America, material history
Soin des corps, soin des âmes : genre et pouvoirs dans les hôpitaux de France et de Nouvelle-France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

How did Ancien Régime hospitals mark and regulate the bodies of its inhabitants and its officers? From the mid-seventeenth century, the French colonial space was the subject of a hospital reform implemented in collaboration with Church and the State, the latter in the process of absolutism. The creation of the General Hospitals across the kingdom, throughout colonial land, had the effect of gradually clarifying the role of Hôtel-Dieu, and thus contributed to the establishment of a network of health institutions where secular and religious, caregivers and patients, men and women worked alongside each other. In order to capture the primary settings where this process took place, the dissertation analyzes the Parisian establishments under which state and religious wishes were fully expressed, a provincial territory - Auvergne - which, far from the center of royal power adapted the workings of hospital to its territory and colonial space - St. Lawrence Valley in Canada - where the implementation of hospital institutions responded both to the will of the missionary Church and colonial authorities as well as to meet the needs of a particular population. The project demonstrates how the powers of the Church, the caregiver and the dynamics of gender intertwined in hospitals and acting on all those involved in the hospital life from the Earlier this hospital reform until the end of the eighteenth century For this, this thesis brings together various documents from the archives of hospitals and hospital communities. By crossing the prescriptive texts and documents showing hospital practice, this thesis shows that the bodies of the institution's staff and those of the users underwent a process of disciplining relatively similar, especially in the religious sphere. It also shows that the distribution of power between men and women that evolves during the study period for the benefit of mankind as a result of a phenomenon of professional caregivers trades framed by the secular authorities. Comparing the three territories, this thesis, furthermore, shows how institutions adapt to different contexts. It helps to emphasize, in particular through an analysis of hospital space, the similarities between the Auvergne and the Canadian contexts, at least during the decades of peace for the colony. However, the colony is clearly distinguishable from the metropolis by the primacy accorded to religious throughout the period, which ended with the conquest, while the metropolitan institutions, first those of Paris and the Auvergne, testify to the increasingly power given to lay medical issues.

Keyphrases: Body, Gender, religious history, Hospital Architecture, XVIII century
Photographier la ville, penser l'histoire : Beyrouth dans la représentation photographique artistique contemporaine

This study focuses on the connection between a medium (photography), a city (Beyrouth), and the events that have marked its recent past. The theme of the relationship between photography and history, with the plurality of meanings that describes it, defines the scope of this study. The link between seeing and knowing, which in Antiquity was the root of historical knowledge (Hartog, Loraux), represents its vanishing point. The photographic and historical relationship with the event constitutes the purpose of this research, the aim of which is to identify in photography a reference to history considered as writing. The argument of this dissertation unfolds in two stages. The first stage requires a series of theoretical analyses, which aim at studying the knowledge potential and the formal nature of photography as a factual representation. Starting with the experimentation of the avant-gardes (Lugon, Braqué), and exploring the twinning of photography and the press, our goal will be to demonstrate the part of readability that belongs to the photographic narratives (Barthes, Lavoie). We will then take into consideration the work accomplished by the historian during the historiographic process, aiming at producing an historical representation of the event (de Certeau, Ricoeur, Ginzburg). In addition to emphasizing the characteristic of visibility, which belongs to historical writing, this will also provide the occasion to produce a comparative study of photography and history through particular notions such as imprint, sign, and evidence. The driving force behind this first part is the notion of event. Broached from the point of view of phenomenology (Zarader, Marion, Dastur, Diano), it will enable us to analyze photography and history according to the genetics of their construction. Beyrouth and its history, shaped by images, are the context in which the second stage is organized. The analysis of the works of Sophie Ristelhueber (Beyrouth photographies, 1984), Robert Frank (Come again, 1991), and Lamia Joreige (Beyrouth, autopsie d’une ville, 2010) are conceived as dialogical spaces between photography, the epistemology of history and the historical events that they represent. The aim is to emphasize the shift they present in moving from chronicle to the writing of history.

Keyphrases: Beyrouth, Siegfried Kracauer, Paul Ricoeur, Carlo Ginzburg, Sophie Ristelhueber, Robert Frank, Lamia Joreige, Lebanese Contemporary Art, Middle East Studies, Art History, Comparative Literature, photographie
Analyse des facteurs biodémographiques, sociéconomiques et familiaux de la longévité exceptionnelle

A growing body of literature has documented the multiple and complex factors and pathways through which longevity and mortality in old age may be shaped. It appears indeed that surviving to a very old age is modulated by a familial component, whether it arises from environmental or genetic confounds. The scientific debate on longevity and its determinants has put considerable interest in studying the centenarians and the role of shared early life conditions have been addressed extensively in the literature, but those two elements have rarely been mixed together. The main objective of my research thesis is to discuss some of the key factors involved in aging and longevity with a focus on the role of family determinants and shared frailty. More specifically, it aims to (1) highlight the central importance of family on exceptional longevity by examining similarity in age at death among siblings and between spouses; (2) examine whether there is a persisting effect of maternal age and birth order on exceptional survival when both variables are considered and adjusted for season of birth; and (3) investigate whether early life factors, such as the socioeconomic background, shape the course of aging and longevity and whether this association is mediated by the socioeconomic status in adulthood. Our analysis rest upon family-based samples of siblings of centenarians and controls born in Québec at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century which compile information from the Canadian Census and Quebec vital statistics registers. The results, in the form of scientific articles, have shown that siblings of centenarians lived longer compared to members of their birth cohort suggesting the existence of a genetic component to longevity. However, there is also a survival benefit for spouses of centenarians compared to the general population which implies that longevity is also modulated by the shared environment in adulthood (1st article). Furthermore, the within-family analysis has shown that elements of the unshared early life environment, such as maternal age at reproduction, birth order and season of birth, not only have an independent impact on exceptional survival but also interact with one another to create vulnerabilities for later-life mortality (2nd article). Finally, the use of a longitudinal framework engaging both biodemographic and socioeconomic factors emphasize the contribution of early life conditions in longevity inequalities both directly and indirectly through adult profession. The influence of socioeconomic conditions in childhood were stronger for men of the general population compared to brothers of centenarians and early life origin showed almost no effect for women (3rd article).

Keyphrases: Québec, Mortality, Longevity, Centenarians, Family environment, Sibling analysis, Shared frailty models, Early life conditions, Life course analysis, Social inequalities in adult mortality
La diversité culturelle entre discours et pratique : une analyse multi-niveaux

The thesis is developed in the current “in vogue” speech on cultural diversity.  The main objective of our purpose consists in understanding the orientation of an international organization regarding the management of its cultural diversity. We think that, according to the change that modifies the socio-demographic configurations of the organizational context, it would be interesting to study an organization for which diversity is a tradition of its functioning. Our subject of study is an international organization affiliated to Unesco. The latter is recognized for its position, which values and protects the cultures.  The field of knowledge is bi-disciplinary. The first one is forged in the theories of management on diversity. The second field comes from “Cross-Cultural Studies”.  The methodological approach is also diversified in order to identify three levels of analysis of the cultural diversity in the Organisation. First, we have realized a historic study, based on the analysis of chosen articles from Unesco’s archives. It aims to reveal the evolution of the global discourse on cultural diversity, since its creation. Then, to better understand the internal organisational discourse about its cultural diversity, an analysis of the content of a “halo” of the internal policies takes place. This analysis allows us to understand the value of cultural diversity in a particular period. Finally, the stories of the actors of cultural diversity bring a rich description and complete the analysis with the interpretation of these actors of the management of the cultural diversity in the Organization. Additional elements of search are brought in the thesis and they are a part of the process of the analysis of the global orientation of the Organisation on the cultural diversity. We bring clarifications to the terminology of cultural diversity though an analysis of its use on the organisational literature. Besides, the thesis clarifies the notion of international organisation and proposes a description of the unesquian context defined by its internal cultural diversity.  All the examined levels allowed highlighting a double observation. On one hand the paradox between the three levels; Global-organisational-individual. On the other hand, the neutrality of the practices of management of the cultural diversity and the request of recognition of the cultural identities, implicitly formulated by them.   In conclusion, we provide the contributions and limitations of the thesis and we propose research possibilities.

Keyphrases: Unesco, Cross-cultural studies, Cultural diversity, International Organization, Unesco, Cross-cultural studies, Level of analysis
Development of a Phase Separation Strategy in Macrocyclization Reactions

Macrocyclization is a fundamentally important transformation in organic synthetic chemistry. The main challenge associated with the synthesis of large ring compounds is the competing oligomerization processes that lead to unwanted side-products. Moreover, the high dilution conditions needed to achieved “selective” cyclization are often daunting for industrial applications. Despite the level of interest in macrocycles, research aimed at developing sustainable strategies that focus on catalysis at high concentrations in macrocyclization are still rare. The following thesis describes the development of a novel approach aimed at improving the efficiency of macrocyclization reactions through the control of dilution effects. A “phase separation” strategy that allows for macrocyclization to be conducted at higher concentrations was developped. It relies on an aggregated solvent mixture controlled by a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) co-solvent. Insight into the mechanism of “phase separation” was probed using surface tension measurments, UV spectroscopy and chemical tagging. It was proposed to function by allowing slow diffusion of an organic substrate to the phase where the catalyst is active. Consequently, the nature of the polymer co-solvent plays a role in controlling both aggregation and catalysis. The “phase separation” strategy was initially developed using the copper and nickel co-catalyzed Glaser-Hay oxidative coupling of terminal alkynes in batch and was also transposed to continuous flow conditions. The “phase separation” strategy was then applied to the copper-catalyzed alkyne-azide cycloaddition in both batch and continuous flow.

Keyphrases: Macrocyclization, Phase Separation, Poly(ethylene glycol), Glaser-Hay Alkyne Coupling, Diynes, Copper Catalysis, Azide-alkyne Cycloaddition, Continuous Flow Chemistry, Triazole