NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Relation entre les caractéristiques des armes à feu et les violences associées à ces armes: un portrait de la situation au Québec

This study approaches the phenomenon of misappropriated uses of firearms (crime and suicide) by exploring and documenting the relationship between the technical characteristics of firearms and the reason for their recovery. These characteristics are related to why a certain firearm is used and are such that different firearms are not found in the same contexts, they are not wanted by the same clients, and they are not acquired for the same reasons. By assumption, the technical characteristics of firearms can therefore influence their availability, accessibility and their uses (legitimate or not). The study examined data from 20,658 firearms that were recovered by Quebec police forces between 1991 and early 2011, and whose owner was involved in a crime or suicide. A series of bivariate analysis was made between the different characteristics of firearms and the reason for their collection. The results of the study indicate that the spatial distribution of the different firearms recovered by police authorities across the various regions of Quebec is closely correlated with the type of firearm that is recovered. Also the types of weapons found in major cities in Quebec are more diverse than those in small towns or in rural areas. It remains however that the most often recovered firearms, regardless of the location, are those most commonly owned by the Quebec population, that is to say, the conventional hunting weapons. The results indicate as well that certain characteristics of the firearms maintain closer relations with specific inadequate uses as handguns and fake guns with holdups. Thus, the availability of certain weapons and the misappropriate purpose that it could be use for are correlated with the type of the firearm as well as with the environment in which the weapon will be recovered. The weapon that could be used to diverted purposes depends of the weapons available and accessible to an individual. The data show the importance of considering the context and circumstances of the individual's environment where the firearms are found in studies on criminality involving firearms.

Keyphrases: firearm, technical characteristics, environment, diverted uses
Amputations : un cycle de l’éthique médicale

Amputation is a surgical procedure that often highlights a failure in management of infection or in the accompaniment of a disease such as diabetes. It raises a question of identity for the patient. Reconstructive surgery reduces the identity issues. Although the benefit received by the patient, reconstructive surgery is not the one coming first. The history of amputation is relatively well known (Kirkup, 2007). Why a so ancient practice? Why a so abundant practice today - in particular, more than 1,200 amputations performed in few days in January 2010 in Port au Prince? Alternative surgical techniques have been developed parallel to amputation. Large progress in medical history led to a fall in the death rate, but not a reduction in the variety of therapeutic practices. Two models of interpretations can be used to explain the variation of the surgical practices: either a cycle with recurrences, or a succession of phases. In L’Usage des plaisirs, Michel Foucault explains how the Hippocratic medicine induces the setting of the first professional ethics. The history of sexuality is a succession of phases. However, the analytical form of a cycle seems to be confirmed by the analysis in the case of the history of amputation. This ethical cycle consists of general recommendations in low phase and an ethical decision in high phase.

Keyphrases: philosophy, ethics, economics, medical ethics, amputation, cycle, philosophy, ethics, economics, amputation, cycle
Engaging Ethical Issues Associated with Research and Public Health Interventions During Humanitarian Crises: Review of a Dialogic Workshop

On November 7th, 2014 the Humanitarian Health Ethics Workshop was held at McGill University, in Montreal. Co-hosted by the Montreal Health Equity Research Consortium and the Humanitarian Health Ethics Network, the event included six presentations and extensive discussion amongst participants, including researchers from Canada, Haiti, India, Switzerland and the US. Participants had training in disciplines including anthropology, bioethics, medicine, occupational therapy, philosophy, physical therapy, political science, public administration and public health. The objective of the workshop was to create a forum for discussion amongst scholars and practitioners interested in the ethics of healthcare delivery, research and public health interventions during humanitarian crises. This review is a summary of the presentations given, key themes that emerged during the day’s discussions, and avenues for future research that were identified.

Keyphrases: ethics, interdisciplinary dialog, humanitarian aid, health, workshop
Individual and Collective Responsiveness to Climate Change: A Response to Dwyer

James Dwyer’s story about a fictional GAIA Commission highlighted unresolved concerns about the scope of bioethics, specifically regarding the global distribution of, and responsibility for, the health impacts of climate change. This commentary discusses the potential impact of an individual on greenhouse gas emissions and the importance of engaging institutional responses in order to have meaningful impacts.

Keyphrases: responsabilité collective, climate change, individual responsibility, collective responsiveness
Amputations : Un cycle de l’éthique médicale

Amputation is a surgical procedure that often highlights a failure in management of infection or in the accompaniment of a disease such as diabetes. It raises a question of identity for the patient. Reconstructive surgery reduces the identity issues. Although the benefit received by the patient, reconstructive surgery is not the one coming first. The history of amputation is relatively well known (Kirkup, 2007). Why a so ancient practice? Why a so abundant practice today - in particular, more than 1,200 amputations performed in few days in January 2010 in Port au Prince? Alternative surgical techniques have been developed parallel to amputation. Large progress in medical history led to a fall in the death rate, but not a reduction in the variety of therapeutic practices. Two models of interpretations can be used to explain the variation of the surgical practices: either a cycle with recurrences, or a succession of phases. In L’Usage des plaisirs, Michel Foucault explains how the Hippocratic medicine induces the setting of the first professional ethics. The history of sexuality is a succession of phases. However, the analytical form of a cycle seems to be confirmed by the analysis in the case of the history of amputation. This ethical cycle consists of general recommendations in low phase and an ethical decision in high phase.

Keyphrases: philosophy, ethics, economics, medical ethics, amputation, cycle, philosophy, ethics, economics, amputation, cycle
L’agriculture biologique contribue-t-elle au bien-être ?

Through a case study of a producer association of organic fruit and vegetables in the Loire Valley Region of France (Loire Ocean Bio), this article proposes several approaches for understanding the potential links between organic farming and health and well-being. In the cases encountered by the authors, the classic utilitarian approach used by economists regarding health and well-being does not prove very useful in analyzing these links. Multidimensional measurements of the determinants of health and well-being, such as those proposed by Stiglitz report (Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi, 2009), prove to be better suited in this matter. Using their framework, this article highlights the finding that there appears to be a mutually reinforcing relationship between organic agriculture and health and well-being. That is to say, on certain points, organic agriculture helps to improve the quality of life in the region concerned, while at the same time the interests of health and well-being are of a central concern to organic producers.

Keyphrases: philosophy, ethics, economics, measurements of health and well-being, organic farming, fair trade, case study, philosophy, ethics, economics, commerce équitable
Return and Volatility performance comparison of Ethical and Non-ethical publicly-listed financial services companies

This study compares return and volatility performance of ethical and non-ethical publicly- listed financial companies through their long-memory and volatility asymmetry properties. The paper finds that the volatility of the daily stock price returns for both groups of financial companies can be used to predict their future values. Both also follow market fundamentals by exhibiting asymmetric volatility response properties, are not immune to negative shocks and experience losses in economic downturns. However, an interesting finding shows that ethical financial companies generally have higher returns and lower volatility than their non- ethical counterparts. This can be attributed to the positive perception of the investing public on ethical companies, which invites more potential investors providing them with steady investment flows. This study encourages fund managers and investors in continuously adding ethical investment instruments and creating portfolio related to corporate social responsibility initiatives. Findings can also offer more understanding in the properties of ethical financial companies, and open future channels of research to academicians and researchers.

Keyphrases: philosophy, ethics, economics, ethical and non-ethical financial companies, returns and volatility, long-memory models, volatility asymmetry property, philosophy, ethics, economics
Population Ethics, Social Choice Theory, and Two problems in the Measurement of Economic Poverty

The headcount ratio and the aggregate headcount are alternative headcount measures of money-metric poverty, of which the first is by far and away the more widely employed index in the poverty measurement literature. The two indices can present conflicting judgements on poverty in both cross-section and time-series comparisons involving variable populations. The headcount ratio, it turns out, can also violate an intuitively appealing ‘vector dominance’ requirement in poverty comparisons. The present essay traces some of these difficulties to issues in population ethics and principles of social choice. The simple point of the essay is that apparently innocuous and widely observed conventions in the measurement of poverty are actually compatible with problems of both logical coherence and normative appeal.

Keyphrases: philosophy, ethics, economics, population ethics, Constituency Principle, Focus Axiom, social choice theory, Pareto Principle, Axioms of Subgroup Unanimity, aggregate headcount, headcount ratio, philosophy, ethics, economics, Axiome de concentration
Addition of exogenous polypeptides on the mammalian reovirus outer capsid using reverse genetics

Addition of exogenous peptide sequences on viral capsids is a powerful approach to study the process of viral infection or to retarget viruses toward defined cell types. Until recently, it was not possible to manipulate the genome of mammalian reovirus and this was an obstacle to the addition of exogenous sequence tags onto the capsid of a replicating virus. This obstacle has now been overcome by the advent of the plasmid-based reverse genetics system. In the present study, reverse genetics was used to introduce different exogenous peptides, up to 40 amino acids long, at the carboxyl-terminal end of the σ1 outer capsid protein. The tagged viruses obtained were infectious, produce plaques of similar size, and could be easily propagated at hight titers. However, attempts to introduce a 750 nucleotides-long sequence failed, even when it was added after the stop codon, suggesting a possible size limitation at the nucleic acid level.

Keyphrases: Virus, Oncolytic viruses, Reverse genetics, Tag
Amino acids substitutions in σ1 and μ1 outer capsid proteins of a Vero cell-adapted
mammalian orthoreovirus are required for optimal virus binding and disassembly

In a recent study, the serotype 3 Dearing strain of mammalian orthoreovirus was adapted to Vero cells; cells that exhibit a limited ability to support the early steps of reovirus uncoating and are unable to produce interferon as an antiviral response upon infection. The Vero cell-adapted virus (VeroAV) exhibits amino acids substitutions in both the σ1 and μ1 outer capsid proteins but no changes in the σ3 protein. Accordingly, the virus was shown not to behave as a classical uncoating mutant. In the present study, an increased ability of the virus to bind at the Vero cell surface was observed and is likely associated with an increased ability to bind onto cell-surface sialic acid residues. In addition, the kinetics of μ1 disassembly from the virions appears to be altered. The plasmid-based reverse genetics approach confirmed the importance of σ1 amino acids substitutions in VeroAV's ability to efficiently infect Vero cells, although μ1 co-adaptation appears necessary to optimize viral infection. This approach of combining in vitro selection of reoviruses with reverse genetics to identify pertinent amino acids substitutions appears promising in the context of eventual reovirus modification to increase its potential as an oncolytic virus.

Keyphrases: Virus, Reovirus, Reverse genetics, Oncolytic viruses
Amino acid substitutions in σ1 and μ1 outer capsid proteins are selected
during mammalian reovirus adaptation to Vero cells

Establishment of viral persistence in cell culture has previously led to the selection of mammalian reovirus mutants, although very few of those have been characterized in details. In the present study, reovirus was adapted to Vero cells that, in contrast to classically-used L929 cells, are inefficient in supporting the early steps of reovirus uncoating and are also unable to produce interferon as an antiviral response once infection occurs. The Vero cell-adapted reovirus exhibits amino acids substitutions in both the σ1 and μ1 proteins. This contrasts with uncoating mutants from persistently-infected L929 cells, and various other cell types, that generally harbor amino acids substitutions in the σ3 outer capsid protein. The Vero cell-adapted virus remained sensitive to an inhibitor of lysosomal proteases; furthermore, in the absence of selective pressure for its maintenance, t he virus has partially lost its ability to resist interferon. The positions of the amino acids substitutions on the known protein structures suggest an effect on binding of the viral σ1 protein to the cell surface and on μ1 disassembly from the outer capsid.

Keyphrases: Virus, Reovirus, Mutant, Viral persistence, Uncoating
La génétique inverse dans l'étude des réovirus: Progrès, obstacles et développements futurs

In « classical » genetics, examination of a phenotype leads to the study of the gene(s) involved in its obtention. Reverse genetics is a powerful experimental approach in which, on the contrary, the genetic material is modified and used to reconstruct a complete organism, in order to study the result of these modifications. This approach is especially well adapted to the study of viruses, considering their relative simplicity and small size of their genomes; the main obstacle remains to recover infectious viruses from cloned viral genomes. Over the years, this exploit has been achieved with representatives of almost all families of mammalian viruses. Until recently, the Reoviridae, viruses with segmented double-stranded RNA genome, were an exception. In this review, the progress accomplished toward the development of such an approach for the reovirus will thus be discussed. Reverse genetics could have a major impact for the optimization of novel reovirus strains for their use in therapy as oncolytic viruses and for the development of vaccines in the case of rotaviruses and orbiviruses. However, current works stress the limitations of the approach, the need for careful analysis of the results obtained, as well as the necessity to develop more efficient and polyvalent systems.

Keyphrases: Virus, Reovirus, Oncolytic viruses, Mutagenesis, Reverse genetics
Une approche fréquentielle pratique pour l'échantillonnage adaptatif en espace image

In realistic image synthesis, a pixel's final intensity is computed by estimating a multi-dimensional shading integral. A large part of the research in this domain is thus aimed at finding new techniques to reduce the computational cost of rendering while preserving the fidelity and correctness of the resulting images. When trying to reduce rendering costs to approach real-time computation, complex realistic effects are often left aside or replaced by clever but mathematically incorrect tricks.  To accelerate rendering, previous directions of work have either addressed the computation of individual pixels by improving the underlying numerical integration routines; or have sought to amortize the computation across regions of an image using adaptive methods based on predictive models of light transport.   This thesis' - and resulting paper's - objective is to build upon the latter of the aforementioned classes of methods[Durand2005], and foray into fast adaptive rendering techniques using frequency-based light transport analysis to efficiently guide and prioritize ray tracing. We thus propose an adaptive sampling and reconstruction approach to render animated scenes lit by environment lighting and faithfully reconstruct all-frequency shading effects such as shadows and reflections while preserving temporal coherency.

Keyphrases: Cache, Reconstruction, Light transport, Caching, Adaptive sampling, Reconstruction, Filtering, Image synthesis, Computer graphics
Développement et implémentation du jeu des vingt questions

This document is a master internship report, it involved the implementation of a game of 20 questions (20Q) the computer has to guess an object in the house chosen by the player. The computer asks questions in natural language and parses the player’s responses. 20Q aims to provide free advertising for North Side Incorporation. 20Q is related to the Bot Colony project, a video game developed by the company based on the game characters ability to use NLU for conversation. This technology is used in 20Q as digressions, and also indirectly in the algorithm for the definitions and the links to human needs. 20Q is presented on a web platform that allows the player a free access through the portal Bot Colony. In order to attract the interest of players and more users, we have added an aspect of competition with a ranking system and scores. We also present the progress of our internship within the company.

Keyphrases: semantic, interactivity, competition, OALD, ILF, digressions, 20 questions
Environnement virtuel générateur d’émotions

Emotions play an important role in daily decision-making. Indeed, they greatly influence how individuals interact with their environment. In this study, we first designed a virtual driving environment and various emotion-inducing scenarios using the Belief-Desire-Intention method. We evaluated the effectiveness of these scenarios with a group of 30 people and an EEG headset to measure the emotions. Over 70% of scenarios designed with this method induced the emotion that had been anticipated in 52% to 76% of the participants. The second phase of this experiment is the reduction of emotions with a corrective agent. We noted an efficiency in reducing emotions ranging from 36.4% to 70.0% of the participants through the different scenarios.

Keyphrases: Bdi Model, Virtual environment, Inducing emotions, Eeg driving, Creation of emotional inducing scenarios
Evaluating perceptual maps of asymmetries for gait symmetry quantification and pathology detection

The gait movement is an essential process of the human activity and also the result of coordinated effort between the neurological, articular and musculoskeletal systems.  This motivates why gait analysis is important and also increasingly used  nowadays for the (possible early) diagnosis of many different types  (neurological, muscular, orthopedic, etc.) of diseases.  This paper introduces a novel method to quickly visualize the different parts of the body related to an asymmetric  movement in the human gait of a patient for daily clinical. The goal is to provide a cheap and easy-to-use method to measure the gait asymmetry and display results in a perceptually relevant manner.  This method relies on an affordable consumer depth sensor, the Kinect. The Kinect was chosen because this device is amenable for use in small, confined area, like a living room.  Also, since it is marker-less, it provides a fast non-invasive diagnostic. The algorithm we are going to introduce relies on the fact that a healthy walk has (temporally shift-invariant) symmetry  properties in the coronal plane.

Keyphrases: Kinect, Gait asymmetry analysis, Kinect, loco-motor disorders, multidimensional scaling (MDS), nonlinear dimensionality reduction, perceptual color map, temporal shift-invariance
Rôles sociaux et consommation d’alcool des femmes et des hommes au Canada : une analyse située du rôle parental

The objective of this doctoral thesis is to examine how the parental role influences women and men’s alcohol consumption. More precisely, it explores whether the dynamic relationships between the parental role, the circumstances into which it is enacted and drinking contexts provide an explanation to the various individual manners to consume alcohol. This research is based on the observation that within the alcohol field, there is a tendency to treat social actor and the social action as if they were detached from their immediate social environment. Therefore, existing models that focus on the mechanisms through which social roles influence alcohol consumption are limited.   To achieve a better sociological understanding of alcohol consumption, this thesis proposes a theoretical framework that highlights the necessity to take into account the situation. A social actor behaves according to certain circumstances (between-role stressors) into which his/her role is enacted. Drinking depends on the contexts (spatial, temporal, symbolic and relational characteristics) in which it occurs. The general hypothesis of this research postulates that to understand the association between social roles and alcohol consumption, both the social actor and social action need to be situated.  The empirical validity of the theoretical framework has been tested from quantitative analyses of data from the GENACIS Canada (GENder Alcohol and Culture: an International Study) survey and data from the Canadian Addiction Survey. The results of these analyses are presented in three articles submitted for publication.   The analyses reveal the legitimacy of the proposed theoretical framework. Situating the act of drinking has allowed to observe that drinking contexts are mediators of the relationship between the parental role and alcohol consumption and more specifically, that parents report to less frequent abusive drinking than non-parents because they drink in different locations. Situating the act of drinking has also revealed that men and women tend to consume alcohol in accordance with the immediate drinking context rather than their positional role. However, observing the circumstances into which individual enact their parental role has not improved our understanding of the relationship under study.   The scientific evidences provided by this doctoral thesis open the door to the development of preventive environmental measures that focus on the immediate drinking context instead of the individual in order to reduce abusive drinking behaviors among both men and women.

Keyphrases: situations, Canada, alcohol consumption, social roles, parental role, gender, situations, circumstances, drinking contexts, mediation and moderation models, sociology, Canada