Anglais de spécialité et plurilinguisme

L’article est une version remaniée de la conférence d’ouverture prononcée par le professeur E. Guyon lors du 17e Colloque du GERAS, Aix-en-Provence, mars 1996. Il constitue le précieux témoignage de première main d’un éminent scientifique français, et doit à ce titre être considéré comme une base fiable de réflexion pour tous les anglicistes qu’intéresse la formation des spécialistes d’autres disciplines à l’utilisation de l’anglais pour les besoins de leur profession. Le bilinguisme du scientifique est ici présenté comme l’aptitude à manier un code minimal, présenté comme l’outil le plus adéquat de la communication entre chercheurs internationaux à propos de « l’objet réputé universel, la Science ». En corollaire se manifeste un vibrant plaidoyer pour le nécessaire « dialogue polyglotte » complémentaire. La relation dynamique entre l’une et l’autre utilisation de la langue fait l’objet d’une tentative de formalisation.This article is a revised version of the opening lecture given by Professor E. Guyon at the 17th GERAS Conference in Aix-en-Provence, March 1996. It is to be read as a rare piece of first-hand testimony by one prominent French physicist: as such, it will have to be taken into consideration by ESP researchers and teachers alike, involved in the training of students and colleagues in the use of English for the needs of their professional activity. The scientist’s bilingualism is here defined as the aptitude to use a minimal code of communication, the most efficient tool in international scientific exchanges about that so-called “universal object, Science”. As a parallel development, the authors also advocate “multilingual dialogue” as a necessary complement for human and cultural communication. A formalisation of the dynamic relation between these two ways of using language is attempted

Speech and language therapy students’ experience of peer assisted learning:Undergraduates investigate PAL as a means of enhancing academic and professional development

The implementation of Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) on healthcare courses in Higher Education Institutions has been explored in a number of studies. This paper presents research into the experience of PAL on a BSc Speech & Language Therapy (SLT) programme. The research was conducted by final year undergraduate SLT students to form the basis for their final dissertations. The focus for their research was on the effects of PAL on academic and professional development for both mentees and mentors on the same course. Data were generated from standard PAL evaluations and focus groups. Findings indicate that mentees benefit from PAL in terms of their university experience and learning. Mentors benefited from opportunities to develop and practice skills for their future employment. Engagement with PAL is attributed to its structured yet informal nature and the enthusiasm of the mentors. However, the collaborative nature of PAL takes time to develop, impacting on the behaviours of both mentees and mentors. Overall PAL offers mentees and mentors opportunities which enhance their academic learning and professional development

Benchmarking in cluster analysis: A white paper

To achieve scientific progress in terms of building a cumulative body of knowledge, careful attention to benchmarking is of the utmost importance. This means that proposals of new methods of data pre-processing, new data-analytic techniques, and new methods of output post-processing, should be extensively and carefully compared with existing alternatives, and that existing methods should be subjected to neutral comparison studies. To date, benchmarking and recommendations for benchmarking have been frequently seen in the context of supervised learning. Unfortunately, there has been a dearth of guidelines for benchmarking in an unsupervised setting, with the area of clustering as an important subdomain. To address this problem, discussion is given to the theoretical conceptual underpinnings of benchmarking in the field of cluster analysis by means of simulated as well as empirical data. Subsequently, the practicalities of how to address benchmarking questions in clustering are dealt with, and foundational recommendations are made

Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of Extrasolar Planets

Direct imaging and spectroscopy is the likely means by which we will someday identify, confirm, and characterize an Earth-like planet around a nearby Sun-like star. This Chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding discovering and characterizing exoplanets by direct imaging and spectroscopy. We detail instruments and software needed for direct imaging detections and summarize the current inventory of confirmed and candidate directly-imaged exoplanets. Direct imaging and spectroscopy in the past decade has provided key insights into jovian planet atmospheres, probed the demographics of the outskirts of planetary systems, and shed light on gas giant planet formation. We forecast the new tools and future facilities on the ground and in space that will enhance our capabilities for exoplanet imaging and will likely image habitable zone rocky planets around the nearest stars.Comment: 34 pages; 19 figures; Review of the Direct Imaging field in Protostars and Planets VII; in pres

Conceptual Design of the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS) for the Subaru Telescope

Recent developments in high-contrast imaging techniques now make possible both imaging and spectroscopy of planets around nearby stars. We present the conceptual design of the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS), a lenslet-based, cryogenic integral field spectrograph (IFS) for imaging exoplanets on the Subaru telescope. The IFS will provide spectral information for 140x140 spatial elements over a 1.75 arcsecs x 1.75 arcsecs field of view (FOV). CHARIS will operate in the near infrared (lambda = 0.9 - 2.5 microns) and provide a spectral resolution of R = 14, 33, and 65 in three separate observing modes. Taking advantage of the adaptive optics systems and advanced coronagraphs (AO188 and SCExAO) on the Subaru telescope, CHARIS will provide sufficient contrast to obtain spectra of young self-luminous Jupiter-mass exoplanets. CHARIS is in the early design phases and is projected to have first light by the end of 2015. We report here on the current conceptual design of CHARIS and the design challenges

The Optical Design of CHARIS: An Exoplanet IFS for the Subaru Telescope

High-contrast imaging techniques now make possible both imaging and spectroscopy of planets around nearby stars. We present the optical design for the Coronagraphic High Angular Resolution Imaging Spectrograph (CHARIS), a lenslet-based, cryogenic integral field spectrograph (IFS) for imaging exoplanets on the Subaru telescope. The IFS will provide spectral information for 138x138 spatial elements over a 2.07 arcsec x 2.07 arcsec field of view (FOV). CHARIS will operate in the near infrared (lambda = 1.15 - 2.5 microns) and will feature two spectral resolution modes of R = 18 (low-res mode) and R = 73 (high-res mode). Taking advantage of the Subaru telescope adaptive optics systems and coronagraphs (AO188 and SCExAO), CHARIS will provide sufficient contrast to obtain spectra of young self-luminous Jupiter-mass exoplanets. CHARIS will undergo CDR in October 2013 and is projected to have first light by the end of 2015. We report here on the current optical design of CHARIS and its unique innovations.Comment: 15 page

The influence of feature selection methods on accuracy, stability and interpretability of molecular signatures

Motivation: Biomarker discovery from high-dimensional data is a crucial problem with enormous applications in biology and medicine. It is also extremely challenging from a statistical viewpoint, but surprisingly few studies have investigated the relative strengths and weaknesses of the plethora of existing feature selection methods. Methods: We compare 32 feature selection methods on 4 public gene expression datasets for breast cancer prognosis, in terms of predictive performance, stability and functional interpretability of the signatures they produce. Results: We observe that the feature selection method has a significant influence on the accuracy, stability and interpretability of signatures. Simple filter methods generally outperform more complex embedded or wrapper methods, and ensemble feature selection has generally no positive effect. Overall a simple Student's t-test seems to provide the best results. Availability: Code and data are publicly available at http://cbio.ensmp.fr/~ahaury/

CHARIS Science: Performance Simulations for the Subaru Telescope's Third-Generation of Exoplanet Imaging Instrumentation

We describe the expected scientific capabilities of CHARIS, a high-contrast integral-field spectrograph (IFS) currently under construction for the Subaru telescope. CHARIS is part of a new generation of instruments, enabled by extreme adaptive optics (AO) systems (including SCExAO at Subaru), that promise greatly improved contrasts at small angular separation thanks to their ability to use spectral information to distinguish planets from quasistatic speckles in the stellar point-spread function (PSF). CHARIS is similar in concept to GPI and SPHERE, on Gemini South and the Very Large Telescope, respectively, but will be unique in its ability to simultaneously cover the entire near-infrared $J$, $H$, and $K$ bands with a low-resolution mode. This extraordinarily broad wavelength coverage will enable spectral differential imaging down to angular separations of a few $\lambda/D$, corresponding to $\sim$0.\!\!''1. SCExAO will also offer contrast approaching $10^{-5}$ at similar separations, $\sim$0.\!\!''1--0.\!\!''2. The discovery yield of a CHARIS survey will depend on the exoplanet distribution function at around 10 AU. If the distribution of planets discovered by radial velocity surveys extends unchanged to $\sim$20 AU, observations of $\sim$200 mostly young, nearby stars targeted by existing high-contrast instruments might find $\sim$1--3 planets. Carefully optimizing the target sample could improve this yield by a factor of a few, while an upturn in frequency at a few AU could also increase the number of detections. CHARIS, with a higher spectral resolution mode of $R \sim 75$, will also be among the best instruments to characterize planets and brown dwarfs like HR 8799 cde and $\kappa$ And b.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, proceedings from SPIE Montrea

Relationship-Based Care and Behaviours of Residents in Long-Term Care Facilities

Introduction. In long-term care (LTC), person-centred approaches are encouraged. One such approach, relationship-based care (RBC), aims among other things to reduce residents’ agitated behaviours. RBC has been used in numerous Quebec LTC facilities over the past decade but it has never been studied. Objective. Explore correlations between use of RBC by trained caregivers and the frequency of agitated and positive behaviours of residents with cognitive impairments. Methods. Two independent raters observed fourteen caregiver/resident dyads in two LTC facilities during assistance with hygiene and dressing. Checklists were used to quantify caregivers’ RBC use and residents’ agitated and positive behaviours. Results. Scores for RBC use were high, suggesting good application of the approach by caregivers. Correlation analyses showed that offering residents realistic choices and talking to them during care were associated with both positive and agitated behaviours (P from 0.03 to 0.003). However, many other components of RBC were not associated with residents’ behaviours during care. Conclusions. There were only a few quantitative links between the RBC checklist items and the frequency of agitated or positive behaviours. Other studies with a more rigorous research design are needed to better understand the impact of relationship-based care on residents’ behaviours