NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Economic evaluation of benzodiazepines versus cognitive behavioural therapy among older adults with chronic insomnia

Insomnia is common in the geriatric population, typically treated with benzodiazepine drugs which can increase the risk of falls. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a non-pharmacological intervention with equivalent efficacy and no adverse events. This thesis compares the cost of benzodiazepines versus CBT for the treatment of insomnia in older adults, with and without consideration of the additional cost of falls incurred by benzodiazepine use. A decision tree model was constructed and run from the health payer’s perspective over 1 year.  The probability of falls, ER visits, hospitalisation with and without hip fracture, cost data and utilities were derived from a comprehensive literature review.  Cost consequence, cost utility and potential cost saving analyses were performed. Both probabilistic and deterministic sensitivity analyses were conducted to account for uncertainty around the data estimates.  Benzodiazepine treatment costs 30% less than the price of CBT when the costs of falls are not considered (CAN $231 vs. CAN $335 per individual per year).  When the cost of falls is considered, CBT emerges as the least expensive option (absolute cost-saving CAN$ 177 per person per year, CAN $1,357 with benzodiazepines vs. $1,180 for CBT).  CBT dominated benzodiazepines, with a mean cost saving of CAN $ 25,743 per QALY gained with CBT due to fewer falls. The cost savings analysis shows that if the CBT were to completely replace benzodiazepine therapy, the expected annual direct cost savings for the treatment of insomnia would be $ 441 million CAD dollars, with a cumulative cost savings of $112 billion CAD dollars over 5-years. The PSA report shows that even at different varying parameters, benzodiazepines cost CAD$ 1,305, S.D $ 598 (range 245-2,625) on average / person / year vs. CAD$ 1,129, S.D $ 514 (range 342-2,526) on average / person / year for CBT.   Current treatment reimbursement options that fund pharmacologic therapy instead of non-pharmacologic therapy for geriatric insomnia are neither cost-saving nor ethically recommendable from the health system’s perspective.

Keyphrases: Benzodiazepines, cognitive behavioural therapy, insomnia, community dwelling elderly, economic evaluation
Étude descriptive de la consommation et de la contamination bactérienne de gibier en zone urbaine au Gabon

Meat poses some risks to human health and meat-borne diseases constitute a high burden worldwide. In central Africa, bushmeat is commonly consumed in the urban setting. A lack of information on bushmeat consumption and contamination limits the evaluation of risks to human health linked to bushmeat. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 205 households of Port-Gentil (Gabon) to quantify relative consumption levels of different meat types and to explore certain determinants of meat consumption. A separate cross-sectional study aimed to determine the prevalence of Campylobacter, Salmonella and Shigella within bushmeat sold in markets of Port-Gentil. Based on a three-day recall period, 86% of household consumed poultry compared to 84% for fish, 44% for beef, 25% for pork and 24% for bushmeat. Bushmeat consumption was more important on Sundays and within high monthly income households. Most bushmeat was acquired as whole carcasses without formal meat conservation methods, but all bushmeat was boiled prior to consumption. One Salmonella was detected among one of 128 bushmeat samples, whereas no Campylobacter or Shigella were detected. This study provides useful information to help better understand risk factors associated with the consumption of bushmeat in Gabon. Further studies on bacterial contamination of meat, including bushmeat carcasses, are required to better understand potential health risks specific to different bacterial pathogens.

Keyphrases: Campylobacter, contamination, Salmonella, Shigella, bushmeat, Campylobacter, central Africa, consumption, contamination, meat, public health, Salmonella, Shigella
Impact of pesticides on indicator and pathogenic microorganism persistence under laboratory and field conditions

There is a concern about the impact of pesticide on plant microflora, especially in the context of vegetables contaminated with pathogens. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of various pesticides on indicator and pathogenic microorganisms’ persistence. In laboratory, survival of E. coli and Salmonella in four pesticides (Ripcord 400EC, Copper 53W, Bioprotec CAF, Serenade MAX) was evaluated. Petrifilm count plates and XLD agar were used to enumerate E. coli and Salmonella counts. Results showed a direct effect of various pesticides on microorganisms: Serenade MAX promoted microbial growth; Bioprotec CAF and Ripcord 400EC supported microbial survival; and Copper 53W inhibited both E. coli and Salmonella growth. In field conditions, three pesticides (Ripcord 400EC, Copper 53W, Bioprotec CAF) were studied on broccoli irrigated with E. coli - contaminated water. Broccoli samples were analyzed to determine E. coli, mold and yeast, and total aerobic counts. Irrigation resulted in mold and yeast counts decline but aerobic bacteria populations increased slightly in all treatments. Higher E. coli prevalence in Bioprotec CAF treatments compared to Copper 53W treatments was consistent with results observed during the laboratory assay. However, statistical analysis showed no significant difference between treatments.  The direct effect of pesticides on microorganisms under laboratory conditions was demonstrated but it is still unclear under experimental field conditions.

Keyphrases: Pesticides, Pesticides, Persistence, E. coli, E. coli, Salmonella, Salmonella, plant microflora, broccoli
L’effet de l’endotoxémie sur les paramètres pharmacocinétiques et pharmacodynamiques de la kétamine et de la xylazine lors d’anesthésie chez le rat Sprague Dawley

When inhalation anesthesia cannot be used in laboratory rats, ketamine-xylazine combination is the most frequent alternate regimen. The administrated doses can vary according to the experimental protocol. During fever episodes, infections or tumoral process, the pharmacokinetics of these drugs can be modified. This project focuses on the evaluation of the physiological, hematological, biochemical and pharmacokinetics changes in Sprague Dawley rats during ketamine-xylazine anesthesia, after administration of three different doses of lipopolysaccharide (LPS).  After administration of LPS to Sprague Dawley rats, ketamine-xylazine anesthesia was induced. Periodic blood samplings and monitoring of physiologic parameters were made in order to evaluate the effect of LPS on ketamine-xylazine pharmacokinetics and hematological and biochemical parameters.  The different LPS doses caused specific parameter modifications including a marked decrease of oxygen blood saturation and serum albumin, a longer anesthesia duration and minor hepatic lesions.   No significant modifications of pharmacokinetics parameters of ketamine were observed. An increase of area under curve (AUC) and a decrease of xylazine clearance were noted in groups who received medium and large doses of LPS. These results show that that xylazine doses need to be adapted in the presence of LPS, to allow a shorter duration anaesthesia and lesser physiological and biochemical changes when administered with ketamine.

Keyphrases: Sprague Dawley rat, anesthesia, ketamine, xylazine, xylazine, lipopolysaccharide, lipopolysaccharide, pharmacokinetic
Les stratégies d'intervention de l'Association des Paysans de Vallue (APV) dans le développement local

This study focuses on the movement of Peasants Association from Vallue (PAV) which started in 1986, after the end of Duvalier’s dictatorship in Haiti. The research aims to understand the strategies used by this association in the process of local development, and the effects of these strategies and initiatives on the living conditions of peasants and their relationship with their territory. Also, its purpose is to identify different modes of participation in the local community. After a brief review of the literature on the local development in Haiti, we present the problems faced by the peasants and the ways to survive. In order to understand and study the peasants’ experiences, we adopt a theoretical perspective based on the literature about local development and intervention strategies.  The data of this qualitative research comes from 17 interviews with 21 subjects living in Vallue. The results show that the PAV has built a variety of strategies to allow a development which is locally grounded and related with the peasants’ needs.  By structuring their interventions on education, awareness, negotiation, concentration, partnership and mobilisation resources from inside and outside the community, the PAV has successfully brought up changes in mentality and collective consciousness. These results can be seen in new ways of educating children and protecting the ecosystem. For instance, a new road construction has facilitated new ways of communication and new activities, which highlights local culture and products. The PAV’s actions built a new sense of the territory and a feeling of pride and dignity about their local community. Also, peasants’ participation in the elections and the mobilisation in the process of local decision constitutes another impact of the PAV interventions. However, this participation shows some limits, particularly in the level of education of certain participants. Finally, the last chapter presents the link between the theoretical and the empirical part of this study.

Keyphrases: Haiti, Peasant Association of Vallue (PAV), Local development, Partnership, Democratic participation, Haitian peasantry, Intervention strategies, Territory
Endeuillés, mais non isolés : création et mise en place d’une intervention de groupe axée sur le modèle de l’aide mutuelle auprès d’enfants endeuillés

This research presents a participatory action research with parentally bereavement children. The aim of the project is to understand the experience of  bereavement from the perspective of a children who participated at a mutual aid based group work intervention model on this process. First, the realisation of  pre and post intervention interviews provide insights on the children's experience of bereavement with regards to their needs and also their perception of their own reality. Second,  the group, used as an intervention and a data collect tool reflects, the dynamic's of mutual aid and it's influence on what the members are living emotionally as well to plan various adaptation strategies. In summary, this research in social work, which combines practical knowledge and theory, show the uniqueness of children's bereavement process at the same time than the potential for support obtained through mutual aid group work intervention.

Keyphrases: Bereavement, Children, Group work, Mutual aid, Lost of a parent, Participatory action research, Social work
«Tout perdre» : causes sociales des problèmes de santé mentale à travers le récit de vie de personnes en situation d’itinérance

During the 1960s, the study of the impact of social conditions on mental health seemed to be a logical path for psychiatric research (Sicot, 2001), it seems that it has once again become ''irrelevant'' in the present context. In a context wherein most are acknowledging the biological approach in psychiatry, where is the role of social conditioning to explain the roots of mental health issues?  Many authors from the field of social sciences and psychiatry have adressed that issue. From their perspective, specific social conditions, immigration, welfare recipients or housekeepers are particularly favorable to mental illness. The objective of this Dissertation is to focus on the impact of homelessness on the mental health of people living with that condition. Authors such as Furtos (2007) have acknowledged that homelessness - as an extreme form of social exclusion- can readily generate mental health disorders.   Keeping with the objective of adressing the issue of the consequences of social conditioning on mental health, thie aim of this Dissertation is to present the views of homeless people living with mental health problems. The methodology used is based on the life histories of 10 participants in the At home initiative, a research and demonstration project in Montreal. The objective of the Dissertation is to identify explanatory factors brought by participants during the sharing of their life stories and to compare them with the available and current sociological data in the field of socio-genesis.

Keyphrases: Socio-Genesis of Mental Health Disorders, Socio-Economic Background, Poverty, Social Factors, Homelessness, Etiology, Psychiatry, Mental Health
La dialectique socialisation/individualisation à l’œuvre dans les pratiques culturelles des jeunes de la génération numérique

This dissertation seeks to conceptualize the socialization/individualization dialectic at work in the formation and transmission of cultural tastes and practices among young adults. The analysis of ten interviews, conducted with young Montrealers aged 18 to 24, reveals that socialization operating within the family and school remains active without being coercive, because it proves favourable to the aptitude of young people to define themselves autonomously and to develop their own tastes in cultural practices. Peers also play a role in this regard, a role amplified by digital means. Relationships between peers generate tensions between group conformity and willingness to be authentic and to act upon one’s behalf. New technologies of information and communication, furthermore, appear as a source of socialization and individualization by providing access to "networks" that inflect the tastes and preferences shaping the practice of culture, while simultaneously allowing young adults the freedom to develop themselves.

Keyphrases: Transmission, Socialization, Individualization, Transmission, Cultural practices, New technologies of information and communication, Digital, Youth, Young adults
La régression de Poisson multiniveau généralisée au sein d’un devis longitudinal : un exemple de modélisation du nombre d’arrestations de membres de gangs de rue à Montréal entre 2005 et 2007

Count data have distributions with specific characteristics such as non-normality, heterogeneity of variances and a large number of zeros. It is necessary to use appropriate models to obtain unbiased results. This memoir compares four models of analysis that can be used for count data: the Poisson model, the negative binomial model, the Poisson model with zero inflation and the negative binomial model with zero inflation. For purposes of comparison, the prediction of the proportion of zero, the confirmation or refutation of the various assumptions and the prediction of average number of arrrests were used to determine the adequacy of the different models. To do this, the number of arrests of members of street gangs in the Montreal area was used for the period 2005 to 2007. The sample consisted of 470 men, aged 18 to 59 years. After the analysis, the most suitable model is the negative binomial model since it produced significant results, adapts well to the observed data and produces a zero proportion very similar to that observed.

Keyphrases: Count data, Longitudinal multilevel analysis, Street gang, Poisson law, Negative binomial law, Zero-inflated models
Le progiciel PoweR : un outil de recherche reproductible pour faciliter les calculs de puissance de certains tests d'hypothèses au moyen de simulations de Monte Carlo

Package PoweR aims at facilitating the obtainment or verification of empirical power studies for goodness-of-fit tests. As such, it can be seen as a reproducible research computational tool because it becomes very easy to reproduce (or detect errors in) simulation results already published in the literature. Using our package, it becomes easy to design new simulation studies. The empirical levels and powers for many statistical test statistics under a wide variety of alternative distributions are obtained fastly and accurately using a C/C++ and R environment. One can even rely on package snow to parallelize their computations, using a multicore processor. The results can be displayed using LaTeX tables or specialized graphs, which can be directly incorporated into your publications. This paper gives an overview of the main design aims and principles as well as strategies for adaptation and extension. Hand-on illustrations are presented to get new users started easily.

Keyphrases: Monte Carlo, R, reproducible research, Monte Carlo, power study, goodness-of-fit test, R
Analyse en composantes indépendantes avec une matrice de mélange éparse

Independent component analysis (ICA) is a method of statistical analysis where the main goal is to express the observed data (mixtures) in a linear transformation of latent variables (sources) believed to be non-Gaussian and mutually independent. In some applications, the mixtures can be grouped so that the mixtures belonging to the same group are function of the same sources. This implies that the coefficients of each column of the mixing matrix can be grouped according to these same groups and that all the coefficients of some of these groups are zero. In other words, we suppose that the mixing matrix is sparse per group.   This assumption facilitates the interpretation and improves the accuracy of the ICA model. In this context, we propose to solve the problem of ICA with a sparse group mixing matrix by a method based on the adaptive group LASSO.  The latter penalizes the 1-norm of the groups of coefficients with adaptive weights. In this thesis, we point out the utility of our method in applications in brain imaging, specifically in magnetic resonance imaging. Through simulations, we illustrate with an example the effectiveness of our method to reduce to zero the non-significant groups of coefficients within the mixing matrix. We also show that the accuracy of the proposed method is greater than the one of the maximum likelihood estimator with an adaptive LASSO penalization in the case where the mixing matrix is sparse per group.

Keyphrases: Independent component analysis, Sparse mixing matrix, Blind source separation, Adaptive group LASSO
Le périmètre métropolitain du Grand Montréal, son évolution, son encadrement et ses potentialités : le cas de la Couronne Nord

The new planning framework created by The Act to amend the Act respecting land use planning and development and other legislative provisions concerning metropolitan communities (S.Q. 2010, c. 10) raises a number of questions about land use issues, notably with regards to growth management and more specifically with the concept of urban growth boundaries. In light of the new planning framework, the aim of this research is to assess the design of Greater Montreal’s Metropolitan Growth Boundary as defined in The Metropolitan Land Use and Development Plan (PMAD) adopted by the Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM) and which came into effect on March 12, 2012, following approval of the Québec government. This paper will also look at the management of the Metropolitan Growth Boundary within the new planning framework by focusing on the content of The Land Use and Development Plan (SAD) in force in the five Regional County Municipalities (RCM) of Greater Montreal’s North Shore. The regional planning documents will be examined with regards to four complementary planning tools  (Minimum Density Thresholds, Phased Growth Programs, Agricultural Development Plans and Demands of Collective Scope) in order to ascertain whether the tools were used and if so, whether they contribute to supporting the Metropolitan Growth Boundary objectives. This research finds that, in terms of its design, even considering the lack of synchronization between regional growth boundaries and the Metropolitan Growth Boundary, the Metropolitan Growth Boundary is now a much more strategic tool than the previous regional incarnations within the regional Land Use and Development Plans. As well, in terms of the management of the Metropolitan Growth Boundary, it is possible to conclude that due to a highly variable planning situation, the regional planning framework highlights the need for a common planning approach in order to achieve the objectives of the Metropolitan Growth Boundary.

Keyphrases: Communauté métropolitaine de Montréal (CMM), Metropolitan Growth Boundary, Urban Growth Boundary, Metropolitan Land Use and Development Plan (PMAD), Regional County Municipality (RCM), Land Use and Development Plan (SAD)
Le développement international, les ONG religieuses et les personnes homosexuelles : le cas de Crossroads Christian Communications en Ouganda

On February 10, 2013, news broke that a religious organization describing homosexuality as a “perversion” and “sin” was receiving funding from the Canadian government for development work in Uganda. There followed a debate on the legitimacy of funding the projects of this non-governmental organization (NGO). In what follows, I identify some of the ethical issues raised by this case: the risks associated with beliefs and values espoused by NGOs for homosexuals in Uganda; the link between government funding of NGOs and the promotion of certain values, and the scope and limits of religious freedom of NGOs.

Keyphrases: Canada, discrimination, NGO, Uganda, homosexuality, government funding, health promotion
Quand des processus administratifs limitent l’accès aux médicaments chez les étudiants

The registration process of the Quebec public drug insurance plan does not permit students under 25 to register by themselves. This situation may limit access to drug treatments and the autonomy of some young people.

Keyphrases: Confidentialité, Access to care, Drug insurance, Confidentiality, Students, Youth, Public plan
Raconter une nouvelle vie Canada:  Un projet de soutien à l'action collective ciblant les oppressions vécues par les Caribéennes anglophones de Montréal

The internship project presented in this essay draws on an anti-oppressive theoretical framework. The collective action performed aimed at breaking the cycle of intergenerational violence and fight the injustices lived by the participating families, and more broadly by Anglophone Caribbean families in Montréal, as these violence and injustices constitute obstacles to their parenting.  An original approach to field research put to work during this internship makes it possible, firstly, to present a portrait of the women from St.-Vincent-and-the-Grenadines who participate to the services offered by La Maison Bleue. Secondly, an intervention project in support of collective action in an anti-oppressive and narrative approach is presented. Thirdly, an assessment of this intervention is presented, along with critical reflections. The publication of this essay aims at enriching knowledge on the realities of St.-Vincentian women and on the interventions to privilege in the context of this type of project.

Keyphrases: Théorie anti-oppressive, Approche narrative, Immigration, Anti-oppressive practice, Anti-oppressive theory, Narrative approach, Collective action, Community organization, Caribbean, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Structural violence, Parenthood