L'intégration de l'éducation à la sexualité dans les cours de philosophie au collégial : vers une approche féministe et pragmatiste

L’éducation à la sexualité est un aspect déterminant des courants féministes qui promeuvent une sexualité positive. Malgré son retour comme matière obligatoire dans le cursus scolaire en 2018, l’éducation québécoise à la sexualité demeure incomplète en raison de certaines lacunes du programme et de certains enjeux sociopolitiques actuels. Ce mémoire porte sur l’intégration de l’éducation féministe et antioppressive à la sexualité dans les cours de philosophie au collégial comme support au développement de l’agentivité sexuelle, principalement par l’apprentissage d’une posture critique et éthique. Par une méthodologie inspirée des théories critiques et des épistémologies féministes, nous y analysons d’abord les manières dont le sujet se forme dans les systèmes de pouvoir – qui caractérisent l’éducation et la sexualité – à partir des pensées de Michel Foucault et de Judith Butler. Nous nous intéressons ensuite aux mécanismes de privilèges et d’oppressions théorisés par les autrices du féminisme intersectionnel Patricia Hill Collins et Sirma Bilge et à la proposition de l’éducation comme pratique de liberté de bell hooks. Enfin, nous proposons une approche pédagogique et philosophique inspirée du pragmatisme de John Dewey.Abstract : Sexuality education is a determining aspect of feminist theories that promotes positive sexuality. Despite its return as a compulsory subject in the school curriculum in 2018, sexuality education in Quebec remains incomplete due to certain shortcomings in the program and current socio-political issues. This master thesis focuses on the integration of feminist and anti-oppressive sexuality education in college philosophy courses as a support for the development of sexual agency, mainly by learning a critical and ethical posture. Using a methodology inspired by critical theories and feminist epistemologies, we first analyze the ways in which the subject is formed in the systems of power, which characterize education and sexuality, from the thoughts of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Then, we turn to the mechanisms of privilege and oppression theorized by the authors of intersectional feminism Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, and then to the proposition of education as a practice of freedom by bell hooks. Finally, we propose a pedagogical and philosophical approach inspired by the pragmatism of John Dewey

Adipocyte ACLY Facilitates Dietary Carbohydrate Handling to Maintain Metabolic Homeostasis in Females

Sugars and refined carbohydrates are major components of the modern diet. ATP-citrate lyase (ACLY) is upregulated in adipocytes in response to carbohydrate consumption and generates acetyl-coenzyme A (CoA) for both lipid synthesis and acetylation reactions. Here, we investigate the role of ACLY in the metabolic and transcriptional responses to carbohydrates in adipocytes and unexpectedly uncover a sexually dimorphic function in maintaining systemic metabolic homeostasis. When fed a high-sucrose diet, Acly(FAT-/-) females exhibit a lipodystrophy-like phenotype, with minimal fat accumulation, insulin resistance, and hepatic lipid accumulation, whereas Acly(FAT-/-) males have only mild metabolic phenotypes. We find that ACLY is crucial for nutrient-dependent carbohydrate response element-binding protein (ChREBP) activation in adipocytes and plays a key role, particularly in females, in the storage of newly synthesized fatty acids in adipose tissue. The data indicate that adipocyte ACLY is important in females for the systemic handling of dietary carbohydrates and for the preservation of metabolic homeostasis

Why alternative teenagers self-harm: exploring the link between non-suicidal self-injury, attempted suicide and adolescent identity

Background: The term ‘self-harm’ encompasses both attempted suicide and non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Specific adolescent subpopulations such as ethnic or sexual minorities, and more controversially, those who identify as ‘Alternative’ (Goth, Emo) have been proposed as being more likely to self-harm, while other groups such as ‘Jocks’ are linked with protective coping behaviours (for example exercise). NSSI has autonomic (it reduces negative emotions) and social (it communicates distress or facilitates group ‘bonding’) functions. This study explores the links between such aspects of self-harm, primarily NSSI, and youth subculture.<p></p> Methods: An anonymous survey was carried out of 452 15 year old German school students. Measures included: identification with different youth cultures, i.e. Alternative (Goth, Emo, Punk), Nerd (academic) or Jock (athletic); social background, e.g. socioeconomic status; and experience of victimisation. Self-harm (suicide and NSSI) was assessed using Self-harm Behavior Questionnaire and the Functional Assessment of Self-Mutilation (FASM).<p></p> Results: An “Alternative” identity was directly (r ≈ 0.3) and a “Jock” identity inversely (r ≈ -0.1) correlated with self-harm. “Alternative” teenagers self-injured more frequently (NSSI 45.5% vs. 18.8%), repeatedly self-injured, and were 4–8 times more likely to attempt suicide (even after adjusting for social background) than their non-Alternative peers. They were also more likely to self-injure for autonomic, communicative and social reasons than other adolescents.<p></p> Conclusions: About half of ‘Alternative’ adolescents’ self-injure, primarily to regulate emotions and communicate distress. However, a minority self-injure to reinforce their group identity, i.e. ‘To feel more a part of a group’

Sustained proliferation in cancer: mechanisms and novel therapeutic targets

Proliferation is an important part of cancer development and progression. This is manifest by altered expression and/or activity of cell cycle related proteins. Constitutive activation of many signal transduction pathways also stimulates cell growth. Early steps in tumor development are associated with a fibrogenic response and the development of a hypoxic environment which favors the survival and proliferation of cancer stem cells. Part of the survival strategy of cancer stem cells may manifested by alterations in cell metabolism. Once tumors appear, growth and metastasis may be supported by overproduction of appropriate hormones (in hormonally dependent cancers), by promoting angiogenesis, by undergoing epithelial to mesenchymal transition, by triggering autophagy, and by taking cues from surrounding stromal cells. A number of natural compounds (e.g., curcumin, resveratrol, indole-3-carbinol, brassinin, sulforaphane, epigallocatechin-3-gallate, genistein, ellagitannins, lycopene and quercetin) have been found to inhibit one or more pathways that contribute to proliferation (e.g., hypoxia inducible factor 1, nuclear factor kappa B, phosphoinositide 3 kinase/Akt, insulin-like growth factor receptor 1, Wnt, cell cycle associated proteins, as well as androgen and estrogen receptor signaling). These data, in combination with bioinformatics analyses, will be very important for identifying signaling pathways and molecular targets that may provide early diagnostic markers and/or critical targets for the development of new drugs or drug combinations that block tumor formation and progression

The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background

We report multiple lines of evidence for a stochastic signal that is correlated among 67 pulsars from the 15-year pulsar-timing data set collected by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves. The correlations follow the Hellings-Downs pattern expected for a stochastic gravitational-wave background. The presence of such a gravitational-wave background with a power-law-spectrum is favored over a model with only independent pulsar noises with a Bayes factor in excess of $10^{14}$, and this same model is favored over an uncorrelated common power-law-spectrum model with Bayes factors of 200-1000, depending on spectral modeling choices. We have built a statistical background distribution for these latter Bayes factors using a method that removes inter-pulsar correlations from our data set, finding $p = 10^{-3}$ (approx. $3\sigma$) for the observed Bayes factors in the null no-correlation scenario. A frequentist test statistic built directly as a weighted sum of inter-pulsar correlations yields $p = 5 \times 10^{-5} - 1.9 \times 10^{-4}$ (approx. $3.5 - 4\sigma$). Assuming a fiducial $f^{-2/3}$ characteristic-strain spectrum, as appropriate for an ensemble of binary supermassive black-hole inspirals, the strain amplitude is $2.4^{+0.7}_{-0.6} \times 10^{-15}$ (median + 90% credible interval) at a reference frequency of 1/(1 yr). The inferred gravitational-wave background amplitude and spectrum are consistent with astrophysical expectations for a signal from a population of supermassive black-hole binaries, although more exotic cosmological and astrophysical sources cannot be excluded. The observation of Hellings-Downs correlations points to the gravitational-wave origin of this signal.Comment: 30 pages, 18 figures. Published in Astrophysical Journal Letters as part of Focus on NANOGrav's 15-year Data Set and the Gravitational Wave Background. For questions or comments, please email [email protected]

Evaluation of individual and ensemble probabilistic forecasts of COVID-19 mortality in the United States

Short-term probabilistic forecasts of the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States have served as a visible and important communication channel between the scientific modeling community and both the general public and decision-makers. Forecasting models provide specific, quantitative, and evaluable predictions that inform short-term decisions such as healthcare staffing needs, school closures, and allocation of medical supplies. Starting in April 2020, the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub (https://covid19forecasthub.org/) collected, disseminated, and synthesized tens of millions of specific predictions from more than 90 different academic, industry, and independent research groups. A multimodel ensemble forecast that combined predictions from dozens of groups every week provided the most consistently accurate probabilistic forecasts of incident deaths due to COVID-19 at the state and national level from April 2020 through October 2021. The performance of 27 individual models that submitted complete forecasts of COVID-19 deaths consistently throughout this year showed high variability in forecast skill across time, geospatial units, and forecast horizons. Two-thirds of the models evaluated showed better accuracy than a naïve baseline model. Forecast accuracy degraded as models made predictions further into the future, with probabilistic error at a 20-wk horizon three to five times larger than when predicting at a 1-wk horizon. This project underscores the role that collaboration and active coordination between governmental public-health agencies, academic modeling teams, and industry partners can play in developing modern modeling capabilities to support local, state, and federal response to outbreaks

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Information Internet en langue française en oncologie ORL

Objective: Internet has become the first place where patients go when seeking information on their disease. The type and the quality of the medical information available on French-language websites is poorly known, especially in the field of head and neck surgery. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of these sites. Materials and methods: We entered six keywords-"cancer du larynx", "cancer de l'amygdale", "cancer de la thyroïde", "carcinome papillaire de la thyroïde", "cancer de la langue", and "cancer de la parotide"-in two different search engines and, for each keyword, the first 50 websites were reviewed using the tool called DISCERN. With two head and neck surgeons, we rated their contents in terms of quality and comprehension. Results: On 600 websites only 95 (16%) contained information that proved to be somewhat useful to patients. According to our scoring system, 8% of websites were found to be excellent, 24% good, 14% fairly good, 15% mediocre, 27% poor, and 12% very poor. Just over 60% of the websites were found to be clear. The study also showed that the order in which these websites were ranked in the search engine, their affiliation, the target population, or who financed them had little impact on quality. The websites were more likely to be high quality if they were managed by doctors and had bibliographical references as well as a date indicating a recent website update. Conclusion: This study again shows that the search for medical information on the Internet is time-consuming and often disappointing: very few websites provide information that is both clear and exhaustive. However, we also found that very few websites contained information that was seriously inaccurate. Given the growing popularity of the Internet, a high-quality French-language website specializing in head an neck surgery would be highly beneficial to patients, as would an ENT portal that would take them to selected websites, saving time and providing a guarantee of quality. © 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved

Relationships between absorbed dose and proton energy with bremsstrahlung spectra for in vivo dosimetry of preclinical hadrontherapy

International audienceContext: The ARRONAX cyclotron preclinical platform was upgraded to enable irradiations of mice with 70 MeV proton beams [1]. Currently, radiochomic films are used for online comparison with the simulated dose distribution after the irradiation but do not provide online verification. Hence, this study proposes to use the bremsstrahlung X-rays emitted by the medium as an in vivo dosimetry method. Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using the bremsstrahlung yield to monitor the delivered dose at the entrance of a several-mm-thick PMMA phantom using a silicon drift detector SDD, with maximal intrinsic efficiency on the range 1-10 keV [2]. In addition, Ralite et al. have shown the yield's dependence on the beam energy and, therefore, the possibility of monitoring the incident beam energy.Material and Methods: In this work, an additional CdTe detector was used to detect X-ray energy up to 100 keV to access a broader spectrum, enabling a precise quantification of the main components of the bremsstrahlung, the Quasi Free Electron Bremsstrahlung (QFEB) (up to 37 keV for 70 MeV protons) and the Secondary Electron Bremsstrahlung (SEB) (mainly under 100 keV). Several calibrated tissue substitute cylinders (solid water, breast, lungs, bone - Gammex-RMI, WI, USA) were irradiated to investigate the spectrum dependencies on medium density and effective atomic number with proton energy. The information on dose and energy have been simulated with the code Monte Carlo GATE. The diameter of the cylinders is 28 mm, mimicking the mouse size, and the beam spot was 10 mm. The cylinders were positioned on a motorized translational axis in the beam propagation direction, and the detectors were shielded with lead to scan in depth by 5 mm slices.Results: Spectra at different depths and in various materials were acquired with both detectors. The method's sensitivity to dose was studied, and despite medium auto-attenuation, the bremsstrahlung X-rays were detected even in the Bragg peak region. Moreover, several characteristics of the bremsstrahlung spectrum (mean energy, FWHM, etc.) were studied to establish a direct link with the beam energy in the medium and its chemical composition.Conclusion and perspectives: This work is a comprehensive experimental study of bremsstrahlung spectra dependencies, for preclinical in vivo dosimetry verification. Analytical and Monte Carlo simulations will be used to optimize experimental set-up and to provide information on absorbed dose maps in mice, in relation to bremsstrahlung spectra, allowing the online comparison with treatment planning in a preclinical context.[1] M. Evin et al.,« Methodology for small animals targeted irradiations at conventional and ultra-high dose rates 65 MeV proton beam », Physica Medica, vol. 120, p. 103332, avr. 2024, doi: 10.1016/j.ejmp.2024.103332.[2] F. Ralite et al., « Bremsstrahlung X-rays as a non-invasive tool for ion beam monitoring », NIM-B, vol. 500-501, p. 76-82, août 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.nimb.2021.05.013

Relationships between absorbed dose and proton energy with bremsstrahlung spectra for in vivo dosimetry of preclinical hadrontherapy

International audienceContext: The ARRONAX cyclotron preclinical platform was upgraded to enable irradiations of mice with 70 MeV proton beams [1]. Currently, radiochomic films are used for online comparison with the simulated dose distribution after the irradiation but do not provide online verification. Hence, this study proposes to use the bremsstrahlung X-rays emitted by the medium as an in vivo dosimetry method. Previous studies have demonstrated the feasibility of using the bremsstrahlung yield to monitor the delivered dose at the entrance of a several-mm-thick PMMA phantom using a silicon drift detector SDD, with maximal intrinsic efficiency on the range 1-10 keV [2]. In addition, Ralite et al. have shown the yield's dependence on the beam energy and, therefore, the possibility of monitoring the incident beam energy.Material and Methods: In this work, an additional CdTe detector was used to detect X-ray energy up to 100 keV to access a broader spectrum, enabling a precise quantification of the main components of the bremsstrahlung, the Quasi Free Electron Bremsstrahlung (QFEB) (up to 37 keV for 70 MeV protons) and the Secondary Electron Bremsstrahlung (SEB) (mainly under 100 keV). Several calibrated tissue substitute cylinders (solid water, breast, lungs, bone - Gammex-RMI, WI, USA) were irradiated to investigate the spectrum dependencies on medium density and effective atomic number with proton energy. The information on dose and energy have been simulated with the code Monte Carlo GATE. The diameter of the cylinders is 28 mm, mimicking the mouse size, and the beam spot was 10 mm. The cylinders were positioned on a motorized translational axis in the beam propagation direction, and the detectors were shielded with lead to scan in depth by 5 mm slices.Results: Spectra at different depths and in various materials were acquired with both detectors. The method's sensitivity to dose was studied, and despite medium auto-attenuation, the bremsstrahlung X-rays were detected even in the Bragg peak region. Moreover, several characteristics of the bremsstrahlung spectrum (mean energy, FWHM, etc.) were studied to establish a direct link with the beam energy in the medium and its chemical composition.Conclusion and perspectives: This work is a comprehensive experimental study of bremsstrahlung spectra dependencies, for preclinical in vivo dosimetry verification. Analytical and Monte Carlo simulations will be used to optimize experimental set-up and to provide information on absorbed dose maps in mice, in relation to bremsstrahlung spectra, allowing the online comparison with treatment planning in a preclinical context.[1] M. Evin et al.,« Methodology for small animals targeted irradiations at conventional and ultra-high dose rates 65 MeV proton beam », Physica Medica, vol. 120, p. 103332, avr. 2024, doi: 10.1016/j.ejmp.2024.103332.[2] F. Ralite et al., « Bremsstrahlung X-rays as a non-invasive tool for ion beam monitoring », NIM-B, vol. 500-501, p. 76-82, août 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.nimb.2021.05.013