NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Les déterminants de l’acceptation d’une affectation à l’international

This study’s main focus is the reasons that are involved in the acceptance of an international assignment. While the number of multinational corporations is increasing, so is the pressure to attract and select candidates that will accept an international assignment. Based on a sample of employees working in engineering and construction, our study had two main goals. First, we sought to identify which are the key individual, organisational and assignment variables in the decision to accept or refuse an international assignment. The second goal was to verify the relative importance of those key variables in the acceptation of an international assignment. Our analyses revealed that two individual variables and seven organisational variables have a significant and positive influence in the acceptance of an international assignment.

Keyphrases: International, Expatriation, Acceptation, Refus, Assignment, Refusal, Individual, Organisational
L’égalité souveraine : entre fiction et outil juridiques

The idea of sovereign equality emerged along with the multilateral international system. Although sovereign equality is explicitly entrenched in the United Nations Charter, a definition remains lacking. This study proposes a three dimensional definition of sovereign equality: formal equality, legislative equality and existential equality.  Following an in-depth examination of its three dimensions, a strong conception of sovereign equality cannot be sustained because of legalised hegemony, bifurcation of the international legal order, unequal representation within multilateral institutions and anti-pluralism. Hence, the study of each dimension of sovereign equality shows that sovereign equality is a mere legal fiction. It can hardly be justified in light of the reality of international society. Nevertheless, the principle is still relevant for the purpose of restraining the prerogatives of the Great Powers and remains an ideal to achieve.

Keyphrases: fragmentation, Colonialism, Fragmentation, Inequality, International law, Legalised hegemony, Pluralism, Sovereign equality, Sovereignty, Voluntarism
Dynamique de l'aveu et de la dénonciation dans les récits du sida d'Hervé Guibert

                                    The impact of Aids on the intellectual community anticipates an important change in contemporary literature’s aesthetics. Testimony of the writer’s experience, in an epoch of collective disarray and social repression towards homosexuals, strived to create a new context for self-confession by prospecting the personal subject into public sphere. This mode of self-exposure was already manifest in feminine texts from the 70’s, but it underwent an important transformation in the 80’s and 90’s. In the age of Aids, it is the masculine subject that, by means of the body, unveils itself in narratives about the disease. Discourses about personal intimacy attempted to bring social and literary spaces closer by elaborating forms of heterogeneous ethics and aesthetics.                                    The closing period of Guibert’s work, which focuses on illness is anchored in the social context of the Aids epidemic. Consequently, the three texts, À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie (1990), Le protocole compassionnel (1991) and Cytomégalovirus (1992) constitute the central subject of my reflection, along with the personal diary that Guibert kept from his teenage years until his death, Le mausolée des amants (2001). To a certain extent, this journal bears witness to the encroaching disease, which evolved between the years 1987 and 1991, the period during which the writer felt a growing vulnerability regarding his health.  This study will focus on Guibert’s thinking about confession and denunciation. It will be a matter of reflecting on the strategies and functions of literature bearing intensity to the subjective experience of Aids. Moreover, the quest for achieving intensity by self-confession which concerns telling the story of illness, sexuality and death, seeks to go beyond an apocalyptic dimension by inscribing the work in a social and ethical context. In this way, self-exposure holds forth the collective aspect by confronting society and community.

Keyphrases: Intensification, Violence, French contemporary literature, Self writings, Social discourse: disease, sexuality, death, Disclosure, Intensification, Violence, Community, Reader, Autobiography, Reading contract
D’une Semaison à l’autre : contribution à une lecture des carnets de Philippe Jaccottet

This M.A. thesis concerns the notebooks of the poet Philippe Jaccottet ; it attempts to find the main lines of a practice of writing which evolves as time goes by and to determine the status of the notebooks with regard to the rest of the work.  The first four chapters of this thesis establish the characteristics of the writing of notebooks, by studying closely texts as well as their evolution over the years, and by comparing these texts with the works published at the same time.  We notice that as time advances, the works tend to look like the texts found in notebooks.  The last two chapters interpret, more globally, the work that we see in notebooks.  Not only the notebooks are the most suited to lead a reflection on the poetry, they also insure cohesion and validity to the work.

Keyphrases: Philippe Jaccottet, Poetry, French poetry, Contemporary poetry, Notebooks
Le sensemaking collectif dans une équipe virtuelle

Virtual teams have been subject of much attention in the last two decades. Organizations have included them as regular units to adjust with globalization of markets. They are increasingly more common in schools as well. Universities developed virtual learning environments to cope with the market and prepare their students to be competitive. Those environments were also made popular because of the trends instigated by the constructivist approach to learning and educational methods. Researchers have been studying virtual teams most generally with teleological and utilitarian goals giving teachers’ and mangers’ point of view of the phenomenon. In addition, the will to draw general laws of virtual teams lead up researchers to sacrifice a part of its complexity. Our study aims to observe how students made sense of their collaboration experience in a virtual team. We adopt an interpretive perspective with a narrative approach that allows us to access the richness of the phenomenon while studying the sensemaking process. Our research questions are: how do students make sense of the collaboration? And how does individual sensemaking plays a role in constructing collective sensemaking? Our findings show that the sensegiving process is crucial for virtual teams to create collective sensemaking.

Keyphrases: Sensemaking, Sensegiving, Narrations, Virtual teams, Sensemaking, Collaborative sensemaking, Sensegiving, Narrative approach, Narratives
Ordered Conflict Resolution

Ordered conflict resolution: understanding her tenets cost Keynes his life and Arrow to live under extortionate threat. Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has conquered the Informal Capital Market Cartel’s stranglehold on academic freedom, the literature can now vindicate impossibility- resolved social choice theory in the venue of a marriage between ethics and economics; as Sen has pled need be the case. This paper introduces ordered conflict resolution and her two impossibility-resolving axioms in effecting (individual: societal) well-being transitivity.

Keyphrases: philosophy, ethics, economics, Social choice, Impossibility theorem
La relation attitude-comportement : un état des lieux

The psychosocial definition of attitude is a mental state predisposing one to act in a certain manner when the situation implies the real or symbolic presence of the object of attitude, hence the recurring effort to evaluate this bond which exists between verbal answers and acts. The author presents three generations of work which approach the question of the consistency between attitude and behavior from different perspectives: those which conclude with a very weak relation, those which conclude with a moderated relation, those which highlight conditions necessary to the predictivity of the attitudes.

Keyphrases: attitude, prédiction, relation, attitude, behavior, prediction, act, relation
Aide au développement et santé comme droit humain

As health is more and more recognized as a « human right », we can wonder if this tendency leads to an important increase in foreign aid for health. We try to show that aid has been considered for a few years as a big stake for international security. This approach focused on security issues is a very narrow use of the concept of global public goods. As a consequence, infectious disease is the priority of health assistance and other sub-sectors generally considered pro-poor are loosing chare in health funding. This evolution raises questions about efficiency and ethics in the fund allocation. We outline a few perspectives for the use of a different theoretical background in the aid for health.

Keyphrases: Development assistance, health, human right
Travail des enfants, enfants des rues et approche par les capabilités : Liens méthodologiques et implications pour les politiques

The debate on child labour has taken a fullness these last twenty years. Policies are actually largely based on the promotion of education. Meanwhile, the debate has not taken into account the very question of street children. Integrating this category of children set new issues. Particularly, education must be non violent and spaces of work must be openned for street children.

Keyphrases: Child labour, Street children, Education
Expression des SOCS-1 et SOCS-3 par les lymphocytes T humains en réponse à des cytokines immuno-modulatrices

Cytokines regulate fundamental biological processes via the JAK-STAT signaling pathway. Suppressors of Cytokine Signaling proteins (SOCS), intracellular proteins, inhibit the JAK-STAT pathway. Emerging evidence supports the involvement of SOCS in diseases of the immune system but no data is available regarding their expression in human T cells. We postulate that the cytokines Interferon-β (IFN-β) and Interleukin-27 (IL-27), both potential immuno-regulators, have beneficial roles through the induction of SOCS proteins. The impact of IFN-β and IL-27 on the SOCS-1 and SOCS-3 expression by human CD4 and CD8 T cells was assessed using peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy donors. We evaluated the expression of SOCS-1 and SOCS-3 at the mRNA level by qRTPCR and at the protein level by immunocytochemistry. A rapid increase of SOCS-1 and SOCS-3 mRNA levels was observed upon cytokine addition, and such upregulation was confirmed at the protein level. To mimic patients under IFN-β treatment, both T cell subsets were chronically exposed to IFN-β. We observed an increase of SOCS-1 after each stimulation but not for SOCS-3. IL-27 stimulation increased SOCS-1 and SOCS-3 mRNA levels in CD8 T cells but only slightly in CD4 T cells; these observations correlate with previous observations in our laboratory showing less IL-27 receptors on CD4 T cells than CD8 counterparts. Our project determined the distinct expression of SOCS proteins in different human T cells subsets. This study could highlight the mechanism of action of cytokines such as IFN-β and IL-27.

Keyphrases: SOCS-1, SOCS-3, lymphocytes T CD8, SOCS-1, SOCS-3, CD8 T lymphocytes, CD4 T lymphocytes, Interferon-beta, Interleukin-27, Multiple sclerosis
Effet de chaperones pharmacologiques sur les formes mutantes du récepteur mélanocortine de type 4 responsables de l'obésité morbide précoce

The MC4R is a G-protein coupled receptor involved in the central regulation of food intake and energy homeostasis. Eighty percent of childhood obesity-related MC4R mutants are retained intracellularly, probably via the quality control system acting on misfolded receptors. Thus, rescuing cell surface targeting and functionality of these mutant receptors could be of therapeutic value. Cell permeable MC4R selective ligands have been tested and were able to restore cell surface expression and signalling activity of S58C and R165W MC4R mutants. Those compounds, according to their mode of action, are described as pharmacological chaperones (PC). The MC4R-PCs also helps to rescue the glycosylation pattern (maturation) of the MC4R mutants. The site of action of MC4R-PCs of the MC4R mutants monitored by BRET suggests an action downstream of the calnexin-MC4R interaction, most likely at the level of the Golgi apparatus. Generally, a CP can have different effects according to the mutant by stabilizing distinct conformations of the receptor that are more or less able to exit the quality control system and to activate the signaling pathway, and a mutant can respond differently according to the CP used by its distinct affinity to the ligand, the CP itself and the effectors. A better understanding of PCs’ mode of action could help in the design of novel therapeutic approaches not only for early-onset morbid obesity (EOMO) but also for other conformational diseases resulting from protein misfolding.

Keyphrases: Melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R), Conformational disease, Early-onset morbid obesity (EOMO), G protein coupled receptor (GPCR), Quality control system, Pharmacological chaperone (PC), Surface immunoprecipitation (surface IP), Bioluminescence Resonance Energy Transfer (BRET)
Le pouvoir communal et l'émancipation urbaine au XVe siècle : le cas de la ville de Liège (1400-1455)

The city of Liege, in the late Middle Ages, witnessed the assertions of its bourgeois through their guilds and municipal institutions. The fourteenth century was indeed marked by significant gains for the municipal power at the expense of the urban patriciate on one hand and of the prince-bishop of Liege on the other hand. From 1384, the Council of Liege, entirely in the hands of the craftsmen, possessed extensive powers in the administration and management of the city. However, the growth of the power of these bourgeois was suddenly stopped for a decade after their defeat in Othee in 1408. This thesis discusses the evolution of communal power in Liege during the first half of the fifteenth century, less well known by historians. The study of the chronicle of Jean de Stavelot can highlight this troubled period. The defeat of Othee, as well as reforms imposed by prince-bishops, caused notably dramatic changes. Political parties also entered the scene and the neighboring presence of the powerful Duke of Burgundy influenced the lives of the bourgeois of Liege. These features of the political and social context are factors which influenced the willingness of the bourgeois’ assertion and the exercise of communal power in Liege.

Keyphrases: Liege, fifteenth century, guilds, municipal institutions, urban power, relations prince-ville, prince-city relationship, Jean de Stavelot, Jean of Stavelot
Modes de représentation pour l'éclairage en synthèse d'images

In image synthesis, the main computation involved to generate an image is characterized by an equation named rendering equation [Kajiya1986]. This equation represents the law of energy conservation. It stipulates that the light emanating from the scene objects is the sum of the emitted energy and the reflected energy. Moreover, the reflected energy at a surface point is defined as the convolution of the incoming lighting with a reflectance function. The reflectance function models the object material and represents, in the rendering equation, a directional and energetic filter that describes the surface behavior regarding the reflection. In this thesis, we introduce new representations for the reflectance function and the incoming lighting.   In the first part of this thesis, we propose two new models for the reflectance function. The first model is targeted for artists   to help them create and edit highlights. Our main idea is to let the user paint and sketch highlight characteristics (shape, color, gradient and texture) in a plane parametrized by the incident lighting direction.  The second model is designed to represent efficiently isotropic material data. To achieve this result, we introduce a new representation of the reflectance function that uses rational polynomials. Their coefficients are computed using a fitting process that guarantees an optimal solution regarding convergence.   In the second part of this thesis, we introduce a new volumetric structure for indirect illumination that is  directionally represented with irradiance vector. We show that our representation is compact and robust to geometric variations, that it can be used as caching system for interactive and offline rendering and that it can also be transmitted with streaming techniques. Finally, we introduce two modifications of the incoming lighting to improve the shape depiction of a surface. The first modification consists in warping the incoming light directions whereas the second one consists in scaling the intensity of each light source.

Keyphrases: BRDF, Global Illumination, BRDF, Appearance Modeling, Spherical basis functions
La IIIe République et Bismarck : le rôle des opportunistes dans le compromis franco-allemand

The European concert is often perceived, at least from the 1871s to 1890, as the unmistakable work of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and the major politicians of his time. The said Bismarckian policy  effectively influenced most of the interactions between opposing parties, particularly between France and Germany. Its bearing on the French policy  is such that it affects home and foreign policies. The opportunist republicans will personify this ambiguous reaction to new German giant. A pragmatic attitude allows them, between 1878 and 1885, to recover their former role as well as to guide a strong nationalist feeling. If the opportunists are often blamed for having preferred the short term, the governments of Ferry, Gambetta, Waddington and Freycinet governments managed to handle Bismarckian policy skilfully. Familiar with its ephemeral character, opportunist governments knew how to find advantages, insure that France recover its diplomatic position and acquire new colonial territories while protecting a certain independence vis-à-vis the Iron Chancellor.

Keyphrases: Franco-German conciliation, Bismarckian Policy, Third Republic, Opportunism
Étude des interactions entre Haemophilus parasuis et des cellules endothéliales et épithéliales porcines: implications d’une composante bactérienne, le lipooligosaccharide (LOS)

Haemophilus parasuis is a swine pathogen that causes Glässer’s disease characterized by fibrinous polyserositis, polyarthritis, meningitis and septicemia. The pathogenesis of the infection and virulence factors are not well known. Whether the upper respiratory tract is the site of colonization of H. parasuis is still a controversial issue. H. parasuis must invade the mucosa to gain access to the bloodstream. H. parasuis is able to adhere to newborn pig trachea cells (NPTr). H. parasuis must then cross the blood-brain barrier to gain access to the central nervous system in cases of meningitis. H. parasuis is able to adhere to and invade porcine brain microvascular endothelial cells (PBMEC). The aim of this work was to study the interactions between H. parasuis, its lipooligosccharide (LOS), and porcine endothelial and epithelial cells. Results showed that adhesion of H. parasuis Nagasaki to NPTr and PBMEC was partially mediated by its LOS. H. parasuis induced NPTr and PBMEC apoptosis, although purified LOS does not seem to be involved. H. parasuis, and to a lesser extent its LOS, stimulated the release of interleukin- (IL) 6 and IL-8. Field strains of H. parasuis serotypes 4 and 5 (the most prevalent serotypes in North America) also induced the production of IL-6 and IL-8. Results suggest that H. parasuis LOS plays a role in the pathogenesis of the infection, but other bacterial components are also involved.

Keyphrases: Haemophilus parasuis, Haemophilus parasuis, Lipooligosaccharide, Lipooligosaccharide, Adhesion, Apoptosis, Induction of cytokines, Endothelial cells, Epithelial cells
Le Régime Juridique de la mer Caspienne

From the creation of the Soviet Union to its dissolution, the Caspian Sea belonged to Iran and the USSR, which were its only two littoral States. The Caspian was, during this period, governed by two bilateral agreements signed in 1921 and 1940, in which the two States had agreed to “jointly” manage the Sea. However, after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 gave birth to three newly independent States (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan) with coast lines along the Caspian Sea, these three new actors demanded with insistence that the existing treaty-based regime be revised. During the course of the ensuing negotiations, several legal questions have been raised: Is the treaty-based legal regime established by the 1921 and 1940 treaties still valid in the new regional configuration? Are the newly independent States, successors to the USSR, obliged to respect the former Union's legal obligations towards Iran? If not, what is the appropriate legal regime applicable to the Caspian? Is it the law of the Sea (as defined mostly in the UNCLOS) or the law of treaties? Considering the new regional configuration, does the concept of rebus sic stantibus - or the fundamental change of circumstances - invalidate the 1921 and 1940 treaties? Will the internal administrative divisions established in 1970 by the former Soviet Union with regards to the Caspian become - de jure - the new international maritime frontiers? In this thesis, we argue in favour of the validity of the legal regime established by the 1921 and 1940 treaties and we support the position of those States which assert the transmissibility of the obligations of the former Union to the newly independent littoral States. In doing so, we will provide a complete analysis of the legal dilemma at hand and suggest appropriate analytical answers to the aforementioned questions. The law of treaties, the law of the succession of States, the 1982 United Nations' Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), doctrinal commentaries, case law of the I.C.J, and official U.N documents revealing the positions of each littoral States will be thoroughly conversed in this regard.

Keyphrases: Uti possidetis, Rebus sic stantibus, UNCLOS, Law of the Sea, Caspian Sea, Legal status, Law of treaties, Succession of States, Uti possidetis, Rebus sic stantibus, UNCLOS