Stenger, Gerhardt. Le Triomphe des lumières. Perrin, 2024

Résumé: Published in 2024, this book is one among a series of current reappraisals concerning the Enlightenment (Antoine Lilti or Robert Darnton, for instance) to question the impact of the philosophers and authors of the Encyclopédie, their ideas of universalism and how much their novel ideas contributed to the advent of the 1789 French revolution.  Gerhardt Stenger offers an elegant and lively portrait of the encyclopedists, their personal and financial situations, and their motives for their participating in the translation of Chambers. He addresses the questions of universalism (and perhaps tenets of decolonization) from the historical frame of the advent of the Enlightenment, as centered on the epic developments and battles of l’Encyclopédie. As well, through Diderot’s alliances, his mails to his mistress, his strategies, we gain an intimate portrait of the man and his emotions regarding his engagement in the encyclopedic project. Stenger’s book is at once intensely scholarly and eminently accessible, in fact a great teaching tool for graduates and undergraduate students alike. Rousseau’s interferences will be at once more shocking, and yet intelligent and reasonable. Stenger discusses carefully selected encyclopedic articles representative of nodal disputes, such as the respective and conception of “citizen” (Diderot versus Rousseau), leading to a citizenship of rights (human rights eventually) as well as duties. For sure you will also laugh at the depiction of Diderot and d’Alembert occasional disputes. Stenger tells us about this adventure in such a way that we perceive what life possibly entailed in terms of writing and publishing, the compulsory homage to religion and power, and as well, how ministers, playwriters, powerful encyclopedic allies and enemies shaped the volumes or simply protected and championed them or failed one way or the other.Résumé: Published in 2024, this book is one among a series of current reappraisals concerning the Enlightenment (Antoine Lilti or Robert Darnton, for instance) to question the impact of the philosophers and authors of the Encyclopédie, their ideas of universalism and how much their novel ideas contributed to the advent of the 1789 French revolution.  Gerhardt Stenger offers an elegant and lively portrait of the encyclopedists, their personal and financial situations, and their motives for their participating in the translation of Chambers. He addresses the questions of universalism (and perhaps tenets of decolonization) from the historical frame of the advent of the Enlightenment, as centered on the epic developments and battles of l’Encyclopédie. As well, through Diderot’s alliances, his mails to his mistress, his strategies, we gain an intimate portrait of the man and his emotions regarding his engagement in the encyclopedic project. Stenger’s book is at once intensely scholarly and eminently accessible, in fact a great teaching tool for graduates and undergraduate students alike. Rousseau’s interferences will be at once more shocking, and yet intelligent and reasonable. Stenger discusses carefully selected encyclopedic articles representative of nodal disputes, such as the respective and conception of “citizen” (Diderot versus Rousseau), leading to a citizenship of rights (human rights eventually) as well as duties. For sure you will also laugh at the depiction of Diderot and d’Alembert occasional disputes. Stenger tells us about this adventure in such a way that we perceive what life possibly entailed in terms of writing and publishing, the compulsory homage to religion and power, and as well, how ministers, playwriters, powerful encyclopedic allies and enemies shaped the volumes or simply protected and championed them or failed one way or the other

Challenges and Opportunities Experienced by Service Providers at Homeless Shelters in Tshwane, South Africa During the COVID-19 Pandemic

While the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exerted a devastating impact on all members of society, it highlighted the worsening inequalities experienced by marginalised groups such as people experiencing poverty and homelessness in South Africa. The pandemic also exacerbated the multiple demands and stressors of service providers working in homeless shelters. Hence, the study examined the experiences of service providers in terms of challenges and opportunities derived from working at homeless shelters in Tshwane, South Africa, during the hard lockdown from 27 March to 30 April 2020. Guided by a qualitative approach, five service providers were interviewed online. Thematic analysis revealed organizational challenges, such as a lack of knowledge and preparedness regarding disaster management, while client challenges included getting service users to adapt to living with rules. Organizational opportunities included the opportunity for the organization to conduct research, while personal opportunities included the learning experience of working with a vulnerable population during an unprecedented pandemic. Findings highlight the need for programmes to support the wellness needs of service providers and the development of a national policy on homelessness.

Relative operator entropy properties related to some weighted metrics

In recent decades, intensive research has been devoted to the study of various operator entropies.  In this work, we investigate the properties of the parameterized relative operator entropy Sp(A | B) acting on positive definite matrices with respect to weighted Hellinger and Alpha Procrustes distances. In particular, we investigate  estimation of the distance between the entropy Sp(A | B) and certain standard means

Mettre en récit la circulation des documents savants sur Twitter: Étude de cas exploratoire sur l’article « Climate change impacts on bumblebees converge across continents » (Kerr et al., 2015)

As studies about the evaluation of societal impact and attention to research on social media shift from metrics to contexts, this study explores the potential of storytelling to investigate how research papers circulate on Twitter. Specifically, we finely examined the dissemination of a paper about the effects of climate change on the population ranges of bumblebees. Combining network analysis, qualitative assessment of tweets and interview, this study provides key insights about the use of storytelling to provide more detailed assessment of the resonance of specific scholarly documents on Twitter.Les récentes études sur l’évaluation de l’impact social et l’attention envers la recherche sur les médias sociaux montrent la nécessité de changer le focus sur la signification des métriques pour s’intéresser aux contextes de circulation de la recherche. Cette étude s’inscrit dans une démarche exploratoire afin de saisir l’apport de la mise en récit pour examiner la circulation de la recherche sur Twitter à travers le cas d’un article sur les effets des changements climatiques sur les limites géographiques de l’habitat des populations de bourdons. En combinant l’analyse qualitative de tweets, l’analyse de réseaux et un entretien avec support visuel, cette étude montre comment la mise en récit de la diffusion d’un article scientifique peut jeter un éclairage spécifique à propos de sa résonance sur Twitter

Articles, software, data: An Open Science ethological study

Background. Open Science seeks to render research outputs visible, accessible, reusable. The Open Science framework is currently evolving vigorously due, among others reasons, to the UNESCO Open Science Recommendation adopted in November 2021. In this context, it is relevant to better visualize and describe the relationships that hold among the direct protagonists of this changing landscape: research teams and their research outputs, namely: articles, software and data, as their comprehension will certainly contribute to foster better Open Science practices.Method. In this work we review and describe, through the information collected in a large number of bibliographic references, the current changing trends involving some essential, defining, characteristics and behaviors of the main components of the scientific production, namely, research teams and three kinds of research outputs they produce in many scientific areas. This comparative study is based, among others, in our recent work on the evolving concepts of research software, research data in the context of Open Science.Results. In this work we observe and document some key features in this evolving landscape such as the changing and extended roles of research team members; the need to develop a new citing and referencing culture for articles, but specially for research software and data; the rising relevance of open access (to publications, software, data) policies all over the world; the existence of some barriers and difficulties like the regulations concerning academic research close to industry, or other technological applications; the need to develop standards for the “right to be forgotten”; the need to consider the impact of Open Science costs for less favored communities, countries, institutions...Conclusions. This calls for the urgent need to observe and depict further this changing Open Science ecosystem, and to propose –as we have partially attempted in this work– new concepts to analyze this context as well as to contribute to ongoing research-on-research and to improve the implementation of Open Science practices, in order to foster better ways towards a sound, inclusive and fairer Open Science landscape

Plastic Bits: Genitals and Plastigametes

In Countersexual Manifesto, Paul Preciado claims that we are on the verge of a historic planetary mutation. ‘We will soon stop printing the book’, Preciado tells us, ‘and start printing the flesh, thus entering the new era of digital biowriting.’ The radical juncture of which Preciado speaks is the potential rewriting of sex alongside recent advances in 3D bioprinting, a process of combining cells, nutrients, proteins and biopolymer gels to fabricate biomedical parts which imitate natural tissues or organs of the human body. The commercialization of 3D bioprinting might liberate the productive forces of desire and equip countersexual revolutionaries with the tools to invent new bodies without persecution. Yet bioethical frameworks continue to exclude access to bioprinting technologies for the production of sex organs, citing moral concerns. This article returns to Preciado’s rallying call for access to 3D bioprinting, to examine the importance of sexual plasticity as it appears today and to consider whether sex is always already interfaced with plastic technologies in quotidian life, for better or worse

Black Mirror in Diamond Leadlight

n/a see PDF document for detail

Where is Homelessness? When is Homelessness? Chronotopic Analysis of OECD Narratives of the Homelessness through Space, Time, and Body

Defining homelessness clearly without reducing the problem's complexity helps governments frame effective and conscious policies. There is a growing need for a theoretical framework that explores the common ground and generative structure among broad narratives about homelessness. In this article, we propose that Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of chronotope has excellent potential to achieve this goal. Chronotopes help us understand how time, space, and body configurations are represented in language and discourse for recognizing various situations and personas. Chronotope also enables us to reveal the assumptions and perspectives behind the narrative. Using a chronotopic lens, we analyzed  narrations of homelessness from national governments and international organizations of 38 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries. The findings reveal the dynamism, diversity, and assortment of dimensions related to time, space, and body in the analyzed narratives and highlight five main perspectives viewing homelessness as an issue of security, vulnerability, quantification, inclusivity, and human rights. The results of this analysis will guide upcoming research in two primary areas: investigating varied measurement methodologies for assessing different aspects of time, space, and body and scrutinizing how distinct attitudes towards homelessness impact policymaking and development processes

Short Term Experiences in Global Health (STEGH): An Ethical Enterprise?

Short Term Experiences in Global Health (STEGH) are becoming increasingly prevalent, where students and volunteers predominately from high income countries travel to lower income countries to work with local community organizations. Although the benefits of STEGHs have been touted, they have also been increasingly criticized as representing a new form of colonialism and have been shown to harm host communities in a number of ways. Can the enterprise of STEGHs be ethically justified? We argue that STEGHs must incorporate principles of bi-directionality, continuity, cultural humility and decolonization in order to be equitable and sustainable