Les Nouveaux Intermédiaires du Travail B2B: Comparer les modèles d'affaires dans l'économie numérique collaborative

Ce rapport s’intéresse aux activités B2B qui mettent en relation des entreprises clientes avec des professionnels avec la conviction que la transformation numérique rend possible des modalités de travail innovantes et invite à réfléchir aux frontières mêmes de l’entreprise, et, dans certains cas, du travail. Il propose d’éclairer les conditions du développement de ces nouveaux intermédiaires, les freins et leviers communs aux différents modèles d’affaires, et de documenter la capacité de ces acteurs à apporter des réponses collectives aux aspirations des travailleurs en termes de droits, de parcours professionnel, de conditions de travail, de sens et engagement

The LifeCycle Project-EU Child Cohort Network : a federated analysis infrastructure and harmonized data of more than 250,000 children and parents

Early life is an important window of opportunity to improve health across the full lifecycle. An accumulating body of evidence suggests that exposure to adverse stressors during early life leads to developmental adaptations, which subsequently affect disease risk in later life. Also, geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic differences are related to health inequalities from early life onwards. To address these important public health challenges, many European pregnancy and childhood cohorts have been established over the last 30 years. The enormous wealth of data of these cohorts has led to important new biological insights and important impact for health from early life onwards. The impact of these cohorts and their data could be further increased by combining data from different cohorts. Combining data will lead to the possibility of identifying smaller effect estimates, and the opportunity to better identify risk groups and risk factors leading to disease across the lifecycle across countries. Also, it enables research on better causal understanding and modelling of life course health trajectories. The EU Child Cohort Network, established by the Horizon2020-funded LifeCycle Project, brings together nineteen pregnancy and childhood cohorts, together including more than 250,000 children and their parents. A large set of variables has been harmonised and standardized across these cohorts. The harmonized data are kept within each institution and can be accessed by external researchers through a shared federated data analysis platform using the R-based platform DataSHIELD, which takes relevant national and international data regulations into account. The EU Child Cohort Network has an open character. All protocols for data harmonization and setting up the data analysis platform are available online. The EU Child Cohort Network creates great opportunities for researchers to use data from different cohorts, during and beyond the LifeCycle Project duration. It also provides a novel model for collaborative research in large research infrastructures with individual-level data. The LifeCycle Project will translate results from research using the EU Child Cohort Network into recommendations for targeted prevention strategies to improve health trajectories for current and future generations by optimizing their earliest phases of life.Peer reviewe

Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Press, New-York, 2018, 272 p.

International audienc

Retours sur la Sunbelt 2018 : réflexions et perspectives sur l'analyse des réseaux sociaux

Compte rendu de la Sunbelt Conference 2018 pour la rubrique Actualités de la revue ARC

The problem with annotation. Human labour and outsourcing between France and Madagascar

Artificial intelligence advancements have reignited job displacement debates that focus on how the use of artificial intelligence affects labour, without considering how the production of this technology influences labour division. The generalisation of machine learning has created an increased demand for outsourced data workers. Outsourcing companies and crowdwork platforms are both used to generate, annotate, and enrich data. This data tasks are performed by workers from low-income countries, who often earn poverty wages. As with traditional outsourcing, workers must integrate complex multinational subcontracting networks. In this article, we examine how France outsources artificial intelligence-related tasks to workers in the African island nation of Madagascar. For our study, we interviewed 26 data workers, eight employees of French start-ups, and conducted secondary research on two artificial intelligence systems – a canteen checkout terminal and an algorithm to detect shoplifters in stores. The data collected allowed us to reconstruct an end-to-end artificial intelligence production value chain, revealing the need for data classification and artificial intelligence problematisation . Commercial artificial intelligence, therefore, does not displace employment by automating service jobs. Rather, by delocalising labour into the Global South, it lengthens the externalisation chain

Beyond ‘platformisation’ : Designing a mixed-methods approach to inspect (digital) working conditions through organisational systems

International audienceThe transformations brought by the digitisation of work and the emergence of platform labour have deep implications for working conditions. However, researchers face difficulties studying platformised work. Workers’ invisibilisation and the lack of physical co-presence renders field access difficult. How can the variety of platforms, their organisational systems and the working conditions they offer be accounted for? In this article, we propose a mixed-methods methodology to study platforms in all their diversity by articulating the macro level – the market structure revealed through a multiple correspondence analysis – and the micro level – detailed studies of targeted platforms carried out using desk research. We apply this method in two projects, and, in each case, a typology emerges that supports the need for a diversification of the concept of ‘platform labour’ when related to working conditions

Uptake of UVc induced photoproducts of dipicolinic acid by Bacillus subtilis spores – Effects on the germination and UVc resistance of the spores

International audienceDipicolinic acid (DPA) is a specific molecule of bacterial spores which is essential to their resistance to various stresses such as ultraviolet (UV) exposure and to their germination. DPA has a particular photochemistry that remains imperfectly understood. In particular, due to its ability to absorb UVc radiation, it is likely to form in vitro a wide variety of photoproducts (DPAp) of which only about ten have been recently identified. The photochemical reactions resulting in DPAp, especially those inside the spores, are still poorly understood. Only one of these DPAp, which probably acts as a photosensitizer of DNA upon exposure to UVc, has been identified as having an impact on spores. However, as UVc is required to form DPAp, it is difficult to decouple the overall effect of UVc exposure from the possible effects of DPAp alone. In this study, DPAp were artificially introduced into the spores of the FB122 mutant strain of Bacillus subtilis, one that does not produce DPA. These experiments revealed that some DPAp may play a positive role for the spore. These benefits are visible in an improvement in spore germination rate and kinetics, as well as in an increase in their resistance to UVc exposure

Spectroscopic and microscopic characterization of dipicolinic acid and its salt photoproducts – A UVc effect study on DPA in solution and in bacterial spores

International audienceBacterial spores can cause significant problems such as food poisoning (like neurotoxin or emetic toxin) or serious illnesses (like anthrax or botulism). This dormant form of bacteria, made of several layers of barriers which provide extreme resistance to many abiotic stresses (radiation, temperature, pressure, etc.), are difficult to investigate in situ. To better understand the biological and chemical mechanisms involved and specific to spores resistance, the acquisition of environmental parameters is necessary. For that purpose, our research has been focused on the detection and analysis of a unique spore component, dipicolinic acid (DPA), used as the main in situ metabolite for sporulating bacteria detection. In its native form, DPA is only weakly fluorescent but after Ultraviolet irradiation at the wavelength of 254 nm (UVc), DPA photoproducts (DPAp) exhibit a remarkable fluorescence signal. These photoproducts are rarely identified and part of this study gives new insights offered by mass spectrometry (MS) in the determination of DPA photoproducts. Thanks to DPA assay techniques and fluorescence spectrometry, we highlighted the instability of photoproducts and introduced new assumptions on the effects of UVc on DPA. Studies in spectroscopy and microscopy allowed us to better understand these native probes in bacterial spores and will allow the implementation of a new method for studying the physico-chemical parameters of spore resistance

Multispectral fluorescence sensitivity to acidic and polyphenolic changes in Chardonnay wines – The case study of malolactic fermentation

International audienceIn this study, stationary and time-resolvedfluorescence signatures, were statistically and chemometrically analyzed among three typologies of Chardonnay wines (A, B and C) with the objectives to evaluate their sensitivity to acidic and polyphenolic changes. For that purpose, a dataset was built using Excitation Emission Matrices of fluorescence (N = 103) decomposed by a Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC), andfluorescence decays (N = 22), mathematically fitted, using the conventional exponential modeling and the phasor plot representation. Wine PARAFAC component C4 coupledwith its phasor plot g and s values enable the description of malolactic fermentation (MLF) occurrence in Chardonnay wines. Such proxies reflect wine concentration modifications in total acidity, malic/lactic and phenol acids.Lower g values among fresh MLF + wines compared to MLF- wines are explained by a quenching effect on wine fluorophores by both organic and phenolic acids.The combination of multispectral fluorescence parametersopens a novel routinely implementable methodology to diagnose fermentative processes