NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
David Hume on probability and the Gambler’s fallacy

This presentation examines the degree of certainty which can be attained in science. The scientific paradigm is composed of two extremes; causality and determinism on one end and probability and indeterminism on the other. By appealing to Hume’s notions of resemblance and contiguity, we can dismiss any claim of objective causality or chance as being ungrounded for lack of an empirical basis. The problem of induction as well as the gambler’s fallacy stem from the same cognitive/heuristic source. Hume describes these mental tendencies in his essays ‘Of Probability’ and ‘Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion’. This will necessitate a discussion of Hume’s notion of probability, as well as other interpretations of probability. While science has glorified and romanticized causality, probability can be understood as being just as consistent. While a probabilistic stance is as non-empirical as a causal stance, it will be remarked that we may benefit from a paradigmatic switch to probabilism.

Keyphrases: philosophy, probability, David Hume, David Hume, uncertainty, Gambler's fallacy, induction, induction, chance, causality, science, science
Régulation de l’expression de HYAL-1 par le récepteur de l’oestrogène alpha

HYAL-1 (hyaluronidase-1) belongs to the hyaluronidase family of enzymes that degrade hyaluronic acid. HYAL-1 expression is elevated in many types of cancers including prostate, bladder, liver and breast cancer where it is involved in tumor growth and metastasis. In accordance to these observations, our group has also demonstrated high expression of HYAL-1 in clear cell and mucinous epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) subtypes which was inversely correlated to that of estrogen receptor alpha (ERα). However, despite the fact that the role of HYAL-1 in cancer is well established, the mechanism of its regulation is still unknown. ERα is a transcriptional factor that regulates target-gene expression following ligand binding. Upon hormone stimulation, activated ERα will upregulate transcription of many target genes. However, it has been recently well documented that a large number of ERα responsive genes are in fact repressed. In this work we propose to study the mechanism by which ERα regulates HYAL-1 expression in clear cell EOC subtype as well as in breast cancer. The ectopic expression of ERα in TOV21G cell line (ERα -) and estrogen treatment of MCF-7 cells (ERα +) decreased HYAL-1 mRNA expression and allowed us to confirm that HYAL-1 is an ERα target gene. It is also known that ERα may exert its action through different mechanisms of action including interacting with a DNA sequence called estrogen response element (ERE) found in the promoter of target genes or indirectly by protein-protein interactions by binding to other transcription factor such as Sp1. Having identified such sequences in the proximal promoter of HYAL-1, (one proximal ERE -900 bp, 3 distals at -32350, -48430, -50130 bp from the start site of transcription) in addition to the two known Sp1 (-60 and -1020pb), we have demonstrated by chromatin immunoprecipitation that ERα is recruited at the HYAL-1 promoter at the ERE sites -900 pb and -32350 pb as well as at the Sp1 site -1020. Furthermore, the biological activity of the proximal ERE -900 and Sp1 -1020 sites were further confirmed by luciferase reporter gene assay. Given its known role in tumorigenesis, identification of HYAL-1 as an ERα target may provide an interesting approach for the treatment of hormono-independent cancer.

Keyphrases: Hyaluronidase-1, Hyaluronidase-1, Estrogen receptor alpha, clear cell epithelial ovarian cancer, Transcriptional regulation, Gene repression
Le sacré et la représentation de la femme dans le théâtre et la peinture symbolistes

Symbolist art, be it pictorial or theatrical, which developed in the late nineteenth century was filled with sacredness, whatever its form: spiritual, religious or any other (spiritualism, occultism, mysticism). However in all its forms, sacredness is for all symbolists linked to Art. Formal research by symbolists, which is numerous and diverse, all tends to make the invisible visible. However all symbolists formal research saw in the works the emergence of the representation of women, which therefore becomes intimately linked to the "symbolism". By conveying sacredness, woman becomes the symbol of the ideas of the artists on their Art; even the symbol of the relationship of the artist to his Art. Thus this thesis studies woman in its relationship to the ideas and aesthetics of each artist, in its interrelationship with Art and the sacredness. The detailed studies of drama and paintings aim to show the variety and complexity of its representations. At the same time, this research is a global study on the relationship between theatre and painting in the end-of-century period, approached not from outside but from within (i.e. by the characteristics of works), as part of the theory of the open image developed by Georges Didi-Huberman. Finally, whatever the form of artistic expression – drama or painting – woman is only in the works, the manifestation of aesthetic reflection that is also a philosophical reflection, situated at the crossroads between the Ego and the Other, from which the work originates.

Keyphrases: Époque fin-de-siècle, Georges Didi-Huberman, «Fin-de-siècle» period, Symbolism, Theater, Painting, Representation of women, Sacredness, Theory of the image, Georges Didi-Huberman, Mimesis, Mysticism
Développement d’un système de spectroscopie infrarouge résolue temporellement pour la quantification des concentrations d’hémoglobine cérébrale

Our understanding of the functional organization of the human brain has been greatly influenced by the development of new medical imaging techniques. Pr. Hoge’s research has focused on the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and continuous diffuse optical imaging (DOI) for non-invasive localization and quantification of brain activity associated with behavioral stimuli or tasks (e.g. cognitive, motor or visual). The respective signals of both techniques are based on cerebral haemoglobin concentrations because of the coupling that exists between neuronal activity and cerebral blood flow. Relating BOLD fMRI signals with those acquired using DOI has been complicated by the fact that fMRI yields fractional change values, while the majority of DOI methods have provided absolute changes from an unknown baseline. To address this, we adopted a newer technique known as time-resolved DOI, which allows absolute quantification of cerebral haemoglobin concentrations. Time-resolved DOI thus has the capacity to quantify the subject’s resting hemoglobin concentrations in absolute micromolar units. The main objective of my masters’ project was to implement and optimize a time-resolved DOI system for use in a large study exploring the links between cardiovascular fitness, aging, neuroimaging markers, and cognitive performance. In this thesis we describe the fabrication of the system, followed by its characterisation and validation using solid optical phantoms (homogeneous and heterogeneous) developed for this purpose. Haemoglobin concentrations obtained non-invasively with the system are validated against blood draws, while the sensitivity to variations in concentration are assessed during a cognitive task. Finally, we present the results of a large study in which the time-resolved DOI system was used to characterize age-related vascular changes in the brain.

Keyphrases: Diffuse optical imaging, Near-infrared spectroscopy, Cerebral hemoglobin concentration
Profils d'utilisation d'antipsychotiques en conditions réelles dans la population de personnes âgées démentes vivant à domicile : impact des interventions de communication de risque

Antipsychotics (APs) are frequently prescribed for the management of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). However, three safety warnings have been issued (2002, 2004 and 2005) due to an increased risk of cerebrovascular event and mortality.  The aim of this thesis was to evaluate AP usage in the population of community-dwelling elderly with dementia, and to determine the effect of safety warnings on usage patterns.   A retrospective cohort of 10,969 elderly with dementia who initiated an AP treatment between January 1st, 2000 and December 31st, 2009 was identified through in the databases of Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ). Segmented time series analysis was used to quantify the effect of safety warnings on AP dispensing rate. The effect of the 2005 warning on the characteristics of treated patients and on usage patterns (dose and duration) was evaluated, respectively through multivariate logistic and multiple linear regression models. Atypical AP dispensing rates increased until the 2005 safety warning and decreased by 8.96% (95% CI: -11.91% – -6.02%) thereafter. Analysis by individual products yielded similar trends for risperidone, the only AP approved in Canada for elderly with dementia. However, usage of quetiapine, which is off-label, kept increasing.  For all products, rate of treatment initiation decreased over time. Safety warnings did not seem to be associated with either changes in prescribed treatment dosage or duration, nor with prescription channeling toward lower risk patients. Apparent lack of efficacy of safety warnings is likely due, in part, to absence of effective treatment alternatives for BPSD.

Keyphrases: Antipsychotics, Dementia, Elderly, Safety warnings, Risk minimisation intervention, Pharmacoepidemiology
Approche hybride : une approche pour une meilleure intégration des outils CAAD dans le développement du processus architecturale du projet

The CAAD tools have been widely adopted in the architectural design process with the popular utilization of CAAD. In spite of the advanced features that have been designed for the CAAD systems, the utilization of CAAD is mainly concentrated on the production stage of design, as a graphic medium for drawing, modeling, rendering and simulation.  Therefore, it is reasonable to deem that the current situation of CAAD tools involvement in the architectural profession is calling for further improvement. In other words, we need to find a way to better integrate the CAAD tools/technology into the architectural conceptual design stage, which is our research question. We need to find out how CAAD could be utilized to improve the architect’s design ability during the conceptual design. The discussion and research conducted for this study lead to the assessment that we want technology to help us design better, but not to design for us. We would like to have a CAAD system that could help us as a design assistant.  By studying the current situation of the integration of CAAD tools into architects’ design practice and reviewing the approaches that have been employed to create a CAAD tool that could be better integrated into the design process, we reach the decision that the exploring & heuristic approach would be a preferred approach that could be adopted to further develop a more feasible CAAD system.  In addition, within the two sub-approaches of the Exploring & Heuristic Approaches (case-based approach and constraint approach), further study has proved that both of them are applicable approaches, but neither of them could sufficiently serve as the sole approach for this purpose. Therefore, a hybrid approach that takes advantage of both approaches would be the most applicable one because it can help us develop a CAAD tool that could be really integrated into the conceptual architectural design procedure.

Keyphrases: APPROCHE  HYBRIDE, HYBRID APPROACH, INTEGRATION
Conception et synthèse d’aminoglycosides semi-synthétiques

Some aminoglycosides are part of a broad-spectrum family of antibiotics used in the clinic. They interfere in protein synthesis in bacterium cell by interfering with the transcription of proteins leading to cellular death. After an intense usage of aminoglycosides in the clinic, numerous cases of resistance have been encountered which render aminoglycosides less effective. Semi-synthetic aminoglycosides have been synthesized with the objective of restoring their original antimicrobial activity. Deoxygenation of the diol on ring A and introduction of the lateral chain HABA at N-1 had a significant impact on their antimicrobial activity against resistant strains. The present work will focus on deoxygenation of the diol at 3', 4' and on the introduction of the lateral HABA chain on aminoglycoside, more specificaly on paromomycin and neomycin. The selective dideoxygenation of the A ring diol was done using a methodology developed by Garegg and Samuelsson, which is a modification of the original Tipson-Cohen reaction. This method allows the dideoxygenation on ring A and D with unprecedented yields. The lateral HABA chain was introduced via the ring opening of a cyclic carbamate. These methods were combined to produce very potent analogs such as 3',4'-didehydro-N-1-HABA-neomycin and 3',4',3''',4'''-tetradeoxy-N-1-HABA-neomycin. Toxicity tests done in collaboration with Achaogen Inc. showed that these analogs were toxic to H2K renal cells, which reduced significantly their therapeutic index.  In order to lower the toxicity of those compounds, the relation between toxicity and basicity was explored. Substitution of the amine at 6''' was done in order to lower the basicity of this amine. The results showed a strong correlation beetween the basicity of this amine and toxicity/activity. The pKa of this amine was modulated by installing fluorinated alkyl chain on the amine at 6''' in order to see the effect of the pKa on the activity/toxicity on paromomycin and neomycin. A synthetic sequence was also developed to allow the 6''' amine on neomycin to be modified selectively.

Keyphrases: Aminoglycoside, HABA, Basicity, Toxicity, Paromomycin, Deoxygenation, Garegg-Samuelsson reaction, Cyclic carbamate, N6''', Basicity, Neomycin, Antibiotic
Complexité raffinée du problème d'intersection d'automates

The automata non emptiness intersection problem is to determine whether several deterministic finite automata accept a word in common. It is known to be PSPACE-complete (resp. NL-complete) whenever the number of automata is not bounded (resp. bounded by a constant).  In this work, we study the complexity of the automata intersection problem for several types of languages and automata such as unary languages, (abelian) group automata, commutative languages and finite languages. We raise the issue of limiting the number of final states to at most two in the automata involved.  This way, we obtain relationships with some algebraic problems and an interesting classification of automata intersection problems inside the class P. Finally, we briefly consider the bounded version of the automata intersection problem.

Keyphrases: automata intersection, algebraic problems, computational complexity, logspace
Trois utopies au temps de la Révocation de l'édit de Nantes : la vision de la France selon Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), Pierre Jurieu (1637-1713) et Pierre Bayle (1647-1706)

In 1685, during the reign of Louis XIV, the French monarchy tried to extirpate the Calvinist alterity from the kingdom by revoking the Edict of Nantes (1598). At that time three contemporaries, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), Pierre Jurieu (1637-1713) and Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), the first Catholic, the others Protestants, conceived utopias in which they introduce us to their vision of an ideal France. The general aim of this master's thesis is to analyze these three utopias and show their proposals in matters of government and interfaith relationship. More precisely, we will study the authors' positions about the politico-religious consequences of the Revocation. We will also see in their writings how they understand the tolerance issue.

Keyphrases: Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Pierre Jurieu, Pierre Bayle, Alterity, Intolerance, Edict of Nantes, Utopia, Tolerance
Le néak sraè, riziculteur khmer : mobilité paysanne, localité et communauté au Cambodge postcolonial

In Angkorian Cambodia, Khmer rulers administered a moving peasantry through temple-palaces.  When the French took over, in 1845, they found what administrators called an unorganized mass of peasants, “even inorganic” (Delvert, 1961: 201) and were confounded by Cambodian peasants’ mobility (Forest, 1980: 30).  During the postcolonial era, ethnologists essentially came to the same conclusions, while John F. Embree (1950) proposed to categorize South-East Asian indianized societies as “loosely structured”.  He postulated that the prevalence of ad hoc individualistic behavior and the lack of organization found in communities were due to a weak integration of social structures at the individual level.  Many ethnologists followed in Embree’s path. These observations appear just but the analysis seems unfruitful.  Embree’s structure is modeled on a highly syncretic Khmer culture which was randomly reflected in individual behavior indeed.  But Khmer social organization lies elsewhere: In the organizational strategies which govern individual choices when groups must come together to accomplish recurring tasks.  In this respect, Cambodian peasants evolved in a social organization that was rigorously minimalistic and flexible.  The household was the essential element here, while the local territorial community was incidental.  In Cambodia’s generous natural environment, a small mobile group of individuals united under one roof could easily accomplish all the tasks essential to their survival.  Thus the Khmer never attached themselves indefinitely to a locality: Only to ever evolving communities, centered on pagodas which acted as anchor harbors.

Keyphrases: Cambodia, Peasantry, Riziculture, Rice growing, Mobility, Household, Nuclear family, Bilateral, Buddhism, Structuralism, Loosely structured social systems
La mémoire en mouvance

This master’s thesis develops and tests a methodology that tries to understand the textbook as an object of historical and discourse analysis. The method centers primarily on the textbook and combines tools of literary criticism and historical research, using quantitative and qualitative analysis, while trying to capture the reader’s experience of the narrated history. We analyze the narration of the Korean war in the textbooks from six different coun- tries (East and West Germany, mainland China, the United States, Chile and Argentina) at two different times (1962 and 1992). The Korean war has been a major event of the cold war between capitalist and communist world and lead to the nuclear arms race. It introduced the model of the proxy war as a means of conflict resolution between the two ideologies. A larger comparison of a precise event can yield indications about how the different levels of social memory work and can explain elements of of the cycles of historiograph- ical paradigms.

Keyphrases: Historiography, Cold war, Korean war, School textbook, Secondary education, Comparative methdology
L’influence des normes sociales sur le comportement : un processus médié par
l’élaboration de stratégies

Each day our behaviours are influenced by the social norms that surround us. When behaving according to social norms, the individual acts in accordance with the most consensual behaviours and thus receives approval from his/her group members. Notwithstanding the fact that social norms are at the centre of much research, the cognitive processes that lead an individual to act according to them are still unknown. However, the cognitive processes explaining behaviour are present in the literature on goal directed behaviour which states that cognitive strategies are needed achieve a behaviour. In this paper, we propose that strategies are the cognitive processes that lead an individual to act in accordance with a social norm. Two studies were conducted and the results of both studies show that individuals act according to social norms because they can generate the necessary strategies to reach the normative behaviour. The theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Keyphrases: Injunctive norms, Normes descriptives, descriptive norms, behaviour, cognitive strategies
Inattention et diplomation : le rôle protecteur du sport durant l'adolescence

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a mental health issue that many youths have to deal with. It is of great concern as many authors report a link between ADHD and academic problems. It has been shown that inattention levels contribute more to academic problems than hyperactivity levels per se. On the other hand, the results of few studies suggest that sport activities could influence the link between inattention and academic problems. The aims of this study was to investigate the link between inattention at the end of childhood and high school graduation and to examine the hypothesis that sport activities during adolescence could moderate that relation. To this end, 1043 youths were followed from 6 to 23 years old, as part of the Montreal longitudinal and experimental stud. Binary logistic regression analysis was conduct to test the proposed hypotheses. The results indicate a strong association between inattention and high school graduation. This relation remained statistically significant after controlling for associated problems (hyperactivity, internalized symptoms), I.Q., and familial adversity. The relation inattention-high school graduation was not moderated by sport activities, however. This study emphasizes the importance of implementing measures that could help youths with inattention problems achieving academic success.

Keyphrases: Inattention, High school graduation, Sports activities, Moderating effect, Longitudinal study
Les déterminants de l'épuisement professionnel et des troubles musculosquelettiques et leur cooccurrence chez les policiers

This thesis was written in the scope of a multidisciplinary research aiming to develop better intervention tools and policies for management of mental health in the workplace. The main objective was to identify the determining factors of burnout, musculoskeletal disorders, and their associated comorbidity within a population of police officers. Four hundred and ten officers from the Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal (SPVM) were interrogated using a questionnaire based on standard tools in work-related mental health research. The organizational conditions (main independent variables for this study) were derived from validated theoretical models. The data analysis consists of a segmented approach that looks at the effect of each concept (decisional latitude, social support, demands, rewards, and overcommitment). This revealed that the effects of organizational conditions were unevenly distributed among the three dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, cynicism and personal accomplishment). Moreover, it was observed that three different types of rewards described in the “Effort-Reward Imbalance Model” (Siegrist, 1996) also had uneven effects on the likelihood of burnout. According to our data, self-esteem rewards and the overcommitment phenomenon had the most significant impact on each of the three dimension of burnout and on its global index. Finally, our results show that self-esteem rewards are significantly related to the comorbidity of musculoskeletal disorders and burnout. However, we note that more specific research tools would enable further analysis of the effect of organizational conditions on musculoskeletal disorders and more detailed explanation of the comorbidity relationship between the two disorders.

Keyphrases: Burnout, emotional exhaustion, cynicism, professional accomplishments, organizational practices, musculosketetal disorders, comorbidity