L'utilisation des médias sociaux au sein d'organisations syndicales aux fins de participation des membres à la vie syndicale : une étude de cas au sein du secteur de la santé

Les médias sociaux proposent de nouvelles façons de communiquer pour les organisations syndicales désireuses d'entretenir des liens avec les membres et les autres publics. Au Québec, les syndicats commencent peu à peu à investir cette nouvelle sphère médiatique et à intégrer les médias sociaux dans leur stratégie de communication. Dans un contexte de crise syndicale, les nouvelles technologies offrent plusieurs potentialités aux syndicats, notamment pour revitaliser leurs pratiques démocratiques et pour susciter la participation des membres aux décisions syndicales. Cependant, tout l'enjeu réside dans la complexité de l'utilisation des médias sociaux et de leur conciliation avec le fonctionnement traditionnel du syndicalisme. À partir d'entrevues semi-dirigées auprès de responsables des communications de dix (10) organisations syndicales québécoises appartenant au milieu de la santé, nous avons mené une étude de cas exploratoire afin de comprendre la façon dont les syndicats utilisent les médias sociaux pour favoriser la participation de leurs membres. Il est ressorti de nos résultats que les médias sociaux ne transforment pas les pratiques de participation syndicale des membres, car ils sont utilisés en complément d'autres moyens de communications « traditionnelles ». Plusieurs limites inhérentes aux ressources et aptitudes des syndicats (Lévesque et Murray, 2010) empêchent les dirigeants syndicaux d'utiliser les médias sociaux comme des outils démocratiques.Social media offer new ways of communicating for trade unions that want to connect with members and other audiences. In Quebec, unions are gradually beginning to invest in this new media sphere and to integrate social media into their communication strategy. In a context of union crisis, new technologies offer several potentialities to unions, notably to revitalize their democratic practices and to encourage members' participation in union decisions. However, the challenge lies in the complexity of social media and their reconciliation with the functioning of trade unions. Through semi-structured interviews with communications officers from ten (10) Quebec health care union organizations, we conducted an exploratory case study to understand how unions use social media to promote member participation. Our results show that social media do not transform members' union participation practices because they are used as a complement to other "traditional" means of communication. Several limitations inherent to the resources and abilities of unions (Lévesque and Murray, 2010) prevent union leaders from using social media as democratic tools

Effects of the Insemination of Hydrogen Peroxide-Treated Epididymal Mouse Spermatozoa on γH2AX Repair and Embryo Development

BACKGROUND: Cryopreservation of human semen for assisted reproduction is complicated by cryodamage to spermatozoa caused by excessive reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We used exogenous ROS (H(2)O(2)) to simulate cryopreservation and examined DNA damage repair in embryos fertilized with sperm with H(2)O(2)-induced DNA damage. Sperm samples were collected from epididymis of adult male KM mice and treated with capacitation medium (containing 0, 0.1, 0.5 and 1 mM H(2)O(2)) or cryopreservation. The model of DNA-damaged sperm was based on sperm motility, viability and the expression of γH2AX, the DNA damage-repair marker. We examined fertility rate, development, cell cleavage, and γH2AX level in embryos fertilized with DNA-damaged sperm. Cryopreservation and 1-mM H(2)O(2) treatment produced similar DNA damage. Most of the one- and two-cell embryos fertilized with DNA-damaged sperm showed a delay in cleavage before the blastocyst stage. Immunocytochemistry revealed γH2AX in the one- and four-cell embryos. CONCLUSIONS: γH2AX may be involved in repair of preimplantation embryos fertilized with oxygen-stressed spermatozoa

Sperm Chromatin-Induced Ectopic Polar Body Extrusion in Mouse Eggs after ICSI and Delayed Egg Activation

Meiotic chromosomes in an oocyte are not only a maternal genome carrier but also provide a positional signal to induce cortical polarization and define asymmetric meiotic division of the oocyte, resulting in polar body extrusion and haploidization of the maternal genome. The meiotic chromosomes play dual function in determination of meiosis: 1) organizing a bipolar spindle formation and 2) inducing cortical polarization and assembly of a distinct cortical cytoskeleton structure in the overlying cortex for polar body extrusion. At fertilization, a sperm brings exogenous paternal chromatin into the egg, which induces ectopic cortical polarization at the sperm entry site and leads to a cone formation, known as fertilization cone. Here we show that the sperm chromatin-induced fertilization cone formation is an abortive polar body extrusion due to lack of spindle induction by the sperm chromatin during fertilization. If experimentally manipulating the fertilization process to allow sperm chromatin to induce both cortical polarization and spindle formation, the fertilization cone can be converted into polar body extrusion. This suggests that sperm chromatin is also able to induce polar body extrusion, like its maternal counterpart. The usually observed cone formation instead of ectopic polar body extrusion induced by sperm chromatin during fertilization is due to special sperm chromatin compaction which restrains it from rapid spindle induction and therefore provides a protective mechanism to prevent a possible paternal genome loss during ectopic polar body extrusion

Improving metabolic health in obese male mice via diet and exercise restores embryo development and fetal growth

Paternal obesity is now clearly associated with or causal of impaired embryo and fetal development and reduced pregnancy rates in humans and rodents. This appears to be a result of reduced blastocyst potential. Whether these adverse embryo and fetal outcomes can be ameliorated by interventions to reduce paternal obesity has not been established. Here, male mice fed a high fat diet (HFD) to induce obesity were used, to determine if early embryo and fetal development is improved by interventions of diet (CD) and/or exercise to reduce adiposity and improve metabolism. Exercise and to a lesser extent CD in obese males improved embryo development rates, with increased cell to cell contacts in the compacting embryo measured by E-cadherin in exercise interventions and subsequently, increased blastocyst trophectoderm (TE), inner cell mass (ICM) and epiblast cell numbers. Implantation rates and fetal development from resulting blastocysts were also improved by exercise in obese males. Additionally, all interventions to obese males increased fetal weight, with CD alone and exercise alone, also increasing fetal crown-rump length. Measures of embryo and fetal development correlated with paternal measures of glycaemia, insulin action and serum lipids regardless of paternal adiposity or intervention, suggesting a link between paternal metabolic health and subsequent embryo and fetal development. This is the first study to show that improvements to metabolic health of obese males through diet and exercise can improve embryo and fetal development, suggesting such interventions are likely to improve offspring health.Nicole O. McPherson, Hassan W. Bakos, Julie A. Owens, Brian P. Setchell, Michelle Lan

إمكانية اعتماد الميثاق العربي لحقوق الإنسان مرجعاً موحداً لمادة حقوق الإنسان في الجامعات العربية

مما لا شك فيه أنّ مؤسسات التعليم العالي هي المكان الطبيعي لإعداد النخب الشبابية، ومن خلالها يُقرأ مستقبلها وتستبين معالمها، على اعتبار أنّ الطالب لا يدخل الجامعة للدراسة الأكاديمية فحسب، وإنّما لبناء شخصيته من مختلف الجوانب العملية والعلمية والفنية والثقافية والاجتماعية. ولو بحثنا في واقع العمل العام في المجتمعات العربية لوجدنا بأنّ الشباب من خرّيجي الجامعات يعيشون حالة تأرجح بين الغلو في فهم وتطبيق مبدأ الحريات العامة (المنبثقة عن المواثيق الدولية لحقوق الإنسان في مجتمعات متعددة الجماعات المنتمية إلى ثقافات وهويات وطموحات سياسية ومفاهيم خاصة للتاريخ والقيم)، والتقصير والإهمال للحريات العامة مدعاته فوبيا وهواجس مبنية على أسس دينية وإجتماعية.. فالحديث دائماً يدور في منطقتنا العربية الملتهبة حول أهمية نشر ثقافة حقوق الإنسان، وفي الوقت عينه يتم في معظم الأحيان تجاهل الوسائل التي تعزّز نشر هذه الثقافة، وهل من مكان أهم من المحاضن التربوية لنشر هذه الثقافة وخاصةً في مرحلة التعليم الجامعي؟؟. ويأتي هذا البحث ليتحدث عن الخصوصية العربية والإسلامية التي يتميز بها الميثاق العربي لحقوق الإنسان، مسلطاً الضوء على قصور برنامج مادة حقوق الإنسان في الجامعات العربية من خلال استعراض تدريس المادة كمقررٍ جامعس في بعض الدول العربية، ليُختتم البحث بإمكانية اعتماد الميثاق العربي لحقوق الإنسان كمنطلقٍ رئيسي لتطوير برامج تعليم حقوق الإنسان في الجامعات العربية

Consequences of paternal exposure to the anti-cancer drug, cyclophosphamide, on rat pre-implantation development

Administration of cyclophosphamide to males targets the germ cells and causes DNA damage including single strand breaks and DNA-DNA cross links. When males are treated with a chronic low dose of cyclophosphamide and then mated to normal females, progeny loss is manifested at the pre- and post-implantation stages of development. The earliest events that lead to embryonic loss were traced to day 2 of gestation when embryos had a decreased DNA synthesis profile and lower cell numbers than control litters. I investigated the hypothesis that chronic exposure of male rats to cyclophosphamide alters zygotic gene expression thus leading to embryonic loss. To assess DNA damage in the embryo, the Comet Assay was performed on 1-cell stage embryos. A significant number of embryos sired by cyclophosphamide-treated males showed the appearance of the Comet indicative of the effect of damaged sperm on the embryos starting from the 1-cell stage. Using a candidate gene approach, the antisense RNA (aRNA), I described the presence of several DNA repair gene families in normal embryos. Progeny sired by cyclophosphamide-treated males manifested a differential expression profile for several of these genes when compared to controls, suggestive of the ability of the embryo to respond to damaged sperm through the major DNA repair systems. To study the functional capacity of progeny sired by cyclophosphamide-treated males, I assessed total RNA synthesis in both groups; while control litters showed a peak of RNA synthesis at the 4-cell stage, the treatment group showed constant low expression throughout the stages examined. I mapped the profile of a number of gene families whose roles are essential for early development in both control and cyclophosphamide-treated groups. While control embryos showed a peak of expression for the majority of genes at the 8-cell stage, that of the cyclophosphamide-group showed an early induction at the 2-cell stage, indicative of loss of the tightly regulate