Améliorer le bien-être des collaborateurs en intégrant les facteurs humains dans les situations de travail : le cas d'une entreprise du numérique

International audienceThe issue of well-being at work is a crucial factor for companies. They want to develop this positive state of mind for their employees as a key driver of performance and competitiveness in the long term. The objective of this study is to evaluate the personality traits work-related that can impact the well-being of employees. The study case takes place in a digital service company which is composed of project teams. In order to maximize the acceptability of such an approach, our incremental method is in several steps: 1) Employees self-assessment to determine their motivation types (intrinsic, extrinsic), coping strategies with stressful situations, desirability for control and soft skills; 2) Employees assessment by human resource as part of the integration and monitoring process; 3) Employees assessment by project manager-related to objectively determine the criteria affecting the employee's "activities – personality traits" adequacy; 4) Team simulation tests by taking into account results of 3 assessment types and compare them with actual project teams. Finally, we propose a project team building method to best adapt activities for each employee according to his or her personality traits and promote their well-being in work situations

Les interactions naturelles en réalité virtuelle : impact sur la charge cognitive

International audienceMany of the virtual reality (VR) interaction devices available to the general public rely on the use of controllers. However, theses ones generate some usability constraints. Current availability of new gestural devices provides a more “natural” way to interact in VR, i.e. more intuitive, facilitating learning and especially minimizing cognitive load. However, this last one is rarely taken into account in the literature on VR design and evaluation. In order to fill this gap, we propose to evaluate, within a comparative study, the respective impact of 2 interaction paradigms on the cognitive load and performance of two different user populations (experienced vs. novice): gestural interaction using Leap Motion® (test group) and more traditional interaction using gamepad controllers (control group). Initial results indicate significantly higher cognitive load and significantly lower performance during gestural interaction with the Leap Motion® than during interaction with the controllers. These results highlight technical limitations related to Leap Motion® and the need to improve technically these devices to obtain a robust technologyUne grande partie des dispositifs d’interaction en réalité virtuelle (VR) accessibles au grand public repose sur l’usage des contrôleurs. Or, ces derniers génèrent certaines contraintes d’utilisabilité. La récente disponibilité de dispositifs d’interaction gestuelle permet d’avoir des interactions plus « naturelles » pour l’utilisateur, i.e. plus intuitives, permettant de faciliter l’apprentissage et surtout de minimiser la charge cognitive; or ce dernier trait est peu pris en compte dans la littérature en conception/évaluation VR. Afin de pallier ce manque, nous proposons d’évaluer au sein d'une étude comparative, l’impact respectif de 2 paradigmes d’interaction sur la charge cognitive et les performances de deux populations d’utilisateurs différentes (expérimentée vs. novice) : les interactions gestuelles à l’aide du Leap Motion® (groupe test) et les interactions plus classiques à l’aide de contrôleurs de mouvement de type gamepad (groupe contrôle). Les premiers résultats indiquent une charge cognitive significativement plus élevée et des performances significativement moindres lors de l’interaction gestuelle avec le Leap Motion® que lors de l’interaction avec les contrôleurs et ce, pour les 2 types de population. Ces résultats mettent en évidence les limites techniques liées au Leap Motion® ainsi que la nécessité d’améliorer techniquement ces dispositifs avant de pouvoir aboutir à une technologie robuste

Interactions naturelles en réalité virtuelle~: impact sur la charge cognitive

National audienceMany of the virtual reality (VR) interaction devices available to the general public rely on the use of controllers. However, theses ones generate some usability constraints. Current availability of new gestural devices provides a more "natural" way to interact in VR, i.e. more intuitive, facilitating learning and especially minimizing cognitive load. However, this last one is rarely taken into account in the literature on VR design and evaluation. In order to fill this gap, we propose to evaluate, within a comparative study, the respective impact of 2 interaction paradigms on the cognitive load and performance of two different user populations (experienced vs. novice): gestural interaction using Leap Motion\textregistered (test group) and more traditional interaction using gamepad controllers (control group). Initial results indicate significantly higher cognitive load and significantly lower performance during gestural interaction with the Leap Motion\textregistered than during interaction with the controllers. These results highlight technical limitations related to Leap Motion\textregistered and the need to improve technically these devices to obtain a robust technology.Une grande partie des dispositifs d'interaction en réalité virtuelle (VR) accessibles au grand public repose sur l'usage des contrôleurs. Or, ces derniers génèrent certaines contraintes d'utilisabilité. La récente disponibilité de dispositifs d'interaction gestuelle permet d'avoir des interactions plus " naturelles " pour l'utilisateur, c'est-à-dire plus intuitives, permettant de faciliter l'apprentissage et surtout de minimiser la charge cognitive ; or ce dernier trait est peu pris en compte dans la littérature en conception/évaluation VR. Afin de pallier ce manque, nous proposons d'évaluer au sein d'une étude comparative, l'impact respectif de 2 paradigmes d'interaction sur la charge cognitive et les performances de deux populations d'utilisateurs différentes (expérimentée vs. novice)~: les interactions gestuelles à l'aide du Leap Motion\textregistered (groupe test) et les interactions plus classiques à l'aide de contrôleurs de mouvement de type gamepad (groupe contrôle). Les premiers résultats indiquent une charge cognitive significativement plus élevée et des performances significativement moindres lors de l'interaction gestuelle avec le Leap Motion\textregistered que lors de l'interaction avec les contrôleurs et ce, pour les 2 types de population. Ces résultats mettent en évidence les limites techniques liées au Leap Motion\textregistered ainsi que la nécessité d'améliorer techniquement ces dispositifs avant de pouvoir aboutir à une technologie robuste

Adaptive device for disease awareness and treatment adherence of asthma in children

International audienceAsthma is the first chronic disease in children: that concerns 10% of them. This is a real public health issue, because its frequency and gravity increase since 2000’s in this population. The major identified problem in asthma kids is the low rate of treatment adherence (50%). To increase adherence rate, there is some strategies as therapeutic education programs and numerical technologies as serious games or mobile applications but those learning systems are the same for all children, and it is proved that personalized program is more efficient than generic learning. In first step, we created a web responsive application composed by several interactive contents linked to asthma (based on criteria learnt in asthma therapeutic education) and displayed to different forms: learning activities with quiz, short games and videos. In a participatory design approach, the interfaces are tailored to children : they had been designed with iterative and user-centered methods. Moreover, asthma experts validated all the proposed content in the application and it was tested by asthma kids. In a preliminary study, we experimented usability, motivation and knowledge of few contents on 40 control children in choice/no-choice conditions. Observations showed KidBreath was easy to use, children were more motivated using it and acquire more knowledge in the choice condition rather no-choice. Later, to personalize learning activities linked to asthma, we have the objective to integrate learning optimization algorithm as an intelligent tutoring system in KidBreath

A method to calculate sediment fluxes from infrequent data: application to 65 rivers of the French river quality database

International audienceImproving knowledge of sediment exports represents one major challenge for environmental sciences considering their role in geochemical cycles and their link with Earth's surface processes. Because suspended sediment (SS) fluxes in rivers reflect the integration of combined erosion, transport and deposition processes that occur within the drained area, their calculation is thus essential in surface processes studies. Suspended sediment fluxes are estimated from discharge measurements and SS concentrations, either by averaging methods or by predicting sediment concentration values from continuous discharge data. In the latter case, a power function (or power law relation) is often defined between the observed SS concentrations and the corresponding discharge data. However it seems unrealistic to consider a single relation between SS concentrations and river discharges. The reason is hat sediment production processes are not homogeneous in time, showing local and seasonal effects for example in agricultural areas where land cover varies inside a year or in mountainous regions where snow melting has a strong influence. Moreover, these processes are also spatially heterogeneous, due to spatial patterns in landscape characteristics, meteorological phenomena and geomorphology. In addition, important gaps persist when calculating SS fluxes, mainly due to SS measurements are not always carried out with high frequency. Based on 65 river basins in France, with various sizes, geomorphologies and land uses, this study aims at testing methods for an estimation of annual sediment loads, based on infrequent SPM concentration data spanning over several decades

Fostering Health Education With a Serious Game in Children With Asthma: Pilot Studies for Assessing Learning Efficacy and Automatized Learning Personalization

Coupled with Health Education programs, an e-learning platform—KidBreath—was participatory designed and assessed in situ (Study 1) and was augmented and tested with an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) based on Multi-Armed Bandit Methods (Study 2). For each study, the impact of KidBreath practice was assessed in children with asthma in terms of pedagogical efficacy (knowledge of the illness), pedagogical efficiency (usability, type of motivation and level of interest elicited), and therapeutic effect (illness perception, system's expectation and judgement in disease self-management, child's implication in study). For the Study 1, asthma children aged 8 to 11 years used the tool at home without time pressure for 2 months according to a predefined learning sequence defined by the research team. Results supported pedagogical efficacy of KidBreath, with a significant increase of general knowledge about asthma after use. It also featured a greater learning gain for children knowing the least about the illness before use. Results on pedagogical efficiency revealed a great intrinsic motivation elicited by KidBreath showing a deep level of interest in the edutainment activities. Study 2 explored an augmented version of KidBreath with learning optimization algorithm (called ZPDES) after its use during 1 month. Pedagogical efficacy was less conclusive than Study 1 because less content was displayed due to algorithm parameters. However, the ITS-augmented KidBreath use showed a strong impact in pedagogical efficiency and therapeutic adherence features. Even if implementation improvements must be done in future works, this preliminary study highlighted the viability of our methods to design an ITS as serious game in health education context for all chronic diseases

European Bat Lyssavirus Transmission among Cats, Europe

We identified 2 cases of European bat lyssavirus subtype 1 transmission to domestic carnivores (cats) in France. Bat-to-cat transmission is suspected. Low amounts of virus antigen in cat brain made diagnosis difficult

Evaluation of in vitro intrinsic radiosensitivity and characterization of five canine high-grade glioma cell lines

Glioma is the most common primary brain tumor in dogs and predominantly affects brachycephalic breeds. Diagnosis relies on CT or MRI imaging, and the proposed treatments include surgical resection, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy depending on the tumor’s location. Canine glioma from domestic dogs could be used as a more powerful model to study radiotherapy for human glioma than the murine model. Indeed, (i) contrary to mice, immunocompetent dogs develop spontaneous glioma, (ii) the canine brain structure is closer to human than mice, and (iii) domestic dogs are exposed to the same environmental factors than humans. Moreover, imaging techniques and radiation therapy used in human medicine can be applied to dogs, facilitating the direct transposition of results. The objective of this study is to fully characterize 5 canine glioma cell lines and to evaluate their intrinsic radiosensitivity. Canine cell lines present numerous analogies between the data obtained during this study on different glioma cell lines in dogs. Cell morphology is identical, such as doubling time, clonality test and karyotype. Immunohistochemical study of surface proteins, directly on cell lines and after stereotaxic injection in mice also reveals close similarity. Radiosensitivity profile of canine glial cells present high profile of radioresistance

ATP driven structural changes of the bacterial Mre11:Rad50 catalytic head complex

DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) threaten genome stability in all kingdoms of life and are linked to cancerogenic chromosome aberrations in humans. The Mre11:Rad50 (MR) complex is an evolutionarily conserved complex of two Rad50 ATPases and a dimer of the Mre11 nuclease that senses and processes DSBs and tethers DNA for repair. ATP binding and hydrolysis by Rad50 is functionally coupled to DNA-binding and tethering, but also regulates Mre11's nuclease in processing DNA ends. To understand how ATP controls the interaction between Mre11 and Rad50, we determined the crystal structure of Thermotoga maritima (Tm) MR trapped in an ATP/ADP state. ATP binding to Rad50 induces a large structural change from an open form with accessible Mre11 nuclease sites into a closed form. Remarkably, the NBD dimer binds in the Mre11 DNA-binding cleft blocking Mre11's dsDNA-binding sites. An accompanying large swivel of the Rad50 coiled coil domains appears to prepare the coiled coils for DNA tethering. DNA-binding studies show that within the complex, Rad50 likely forms a dsDNA-binding site in response to ATP, while the Mre11 nuclease module retains a ssDNA-binding site. Our results suggest a possible mechanism for ATP-dependent DNA tethering and DSB processing by MR

Biochemical indices and life traits of loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) from Cape Verde Islands

The loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) is an endangered marine reptile for whom assessing population health requires knowledge of demographic parameters such as individual growth rate. In Cape Verde, as within several populations, adult female loggerhead sea turtles show a size-related behavioral and trophic dichotomy. While smaller females are associated with oceanic habitats, larger females tend to feed in neritic habitats, which is reflected in their physiological condition and in their offspring. The ratio of RNA/DNA provides a measure of cellular protein synthesis capacity, which varies depending on changes in environmental conditions such as temperature and food availability. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the combined use of morphometric data and biochemical indices as predictors of the physiological condition of the females of distinct sizes and hatchlings during their nesting season and how temperature may influence the physiological condition on the offspring. Here we employed biochemical indices based on nucleic acid derived indices (standardized RNA/DNA ratio-sRD, RNA concentration and DNA concentration) in skin tissue as a potential predictor of recent growth rate in nesting females and hatchling loggerhead turtles. Our major findings were that the physiological condition of all nesting females (sRD) decreased during the nesting season, but that females associated with neritic habitats had a higher physiological condition than females associated with oceanic habitats. In addition, the amount of time required for a hatchling to right itself was negatively correlated with its physiological condition (sRD) and shaded nests produced hatchlings with lower sRD. Overall, our results showed that nucleic acid concentrations and ratios of RNA to DNA are an important tool as potential biomarkers of recent growth in marine turtles. Hence, as biochemical indices of instantaneous growth are likely temperature-, size- and age-dependent, the utility and validation of these indices on marine turtles stocks deserves further study.The authors thank the Cape Verde Ministry of Environment (General Direction for the Environment), INDP (National Fisheries Institution), the Canary Islands Government (D.G. Africa and D.G. Research and Universities), ICCM (Canarian Institution for Marine Sciences), the Andalusian Government (Andalusian Environmental Office) and AEGINA PROJECT (INTERREG IIIB) for funding and hosting them during this study. The authors also thank the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the COMPETE - Operational Competitiveness Programme, and national funds through FCT - PEst-C/MAR/LA0015/2011 for supporting the biochemical analysis