Les représentations de la violence dans les récits concernant la santé et les moyens de subsistance de femmes migrantes vivant en Afrique du Sud

Dans le cadre de ce mémoire de maîtrise, nous tenterons de répondre à la question de recherche suivante : comment les femmes migrantes, vivant dans des contextes élevés de violence en Afrique du Sud, représentent et intègrent les violences dans leur récits concernant leur quotidien, leur santé et leur recherche de soins? Plus précisément, l’objectif est de comprendre comment ces femmes intègrent les violences vécues et comment celles-ci les communiquent afin d’en dégager les différentes représentations qu’elles en font. Bien que plusieurs chercheurs se soient intéressés à ces nouvelles vagues de violences, peu d’entre eux ont orienté leurs études sur la manière dont les migrants vivent ces adversités au quotidien. Afin de répondre la question de recherche, nous avons fait une analyse secondaire d’une base de données. Au total, quatorze entretiens, où des femmes ont fait mention de violence, ont été retenus. L’échantillon à l’étude est composé de femmes migrantes ainsi que de community healthcare workers, que nous traduirons par travailleurs de santé communautaire (TSC), ayant le mandat de fournir des soins de base ainsi que de faire la promotion et la prévention de la santé à l’intérieur des communautés. Dans le cadre de cette recherche de nature qualitative, l’approche favorisée est descriptive interprétative. En ce qui a trait à la méthode d’analyse, nous avons employé la méthode d’analyse de données par comparaison constante, tel que développé par la Professeure Kathy Charmaz (2006). Au terme des analyses, le thème retenu afin d’expliquer comment les femmes du corpus à l’étude représentent les violences vécues au quotidien est la xénophobie. Ce concept a été soulevé dans les passages où les femmes ont parlé d’exclusion sociale et de discriminations envers la population à l’étude. En ce qui a trait à la manière dont les migrantes du corpus à l’étude intègre les violences vécues, deux conclusions ont été retenues de nos analyses. La première est liée aux violences physiques et psychologiques et sont les stratégies de protection utilisées par certaines femmes afin d'échapper aux situations considérées risquées. La dernière conclusion tirée est le lien entre les adversités que vivent les migrantes et le sentiment d’appartenance, où les violences vécues diminueraient leur attachement envers le pays d’accueil. Finalement, à travers nos analyses, un lien a été établit entre les violences interpersonnelles et collectives et la présence d’une violence dite structurelle en Afrique du Sud. Celles-ci seraient inter-reliées et pourraient servir à expliquer, dans une certaine mesure, la forte prévalence de violence au pays.In this Master’s thesis, we will attempt to answer the following question: How do migrant women, living in high violence contexts in South Africa, portray and incorporate violence into their narratives about their health, healthcare access and livelihood? More specifically, our goal is to understand how these women integrate experienced violence and how they communicate it in order to identify the different representations that they make of it. Although several researchers have shown interest in these news waves of violence, few have focused their attention on how migrant women experience these adversities on a daily basis. To answer our research question, we performed a secondary analysis of a database. In total, fourteen interviews were selected in which violence was mentioned. Our sample is composed of migrant women and community healthcare workers (CHW) that are mandated to provide basic care as well as promote health and prevent disease within communities. As part of this qualitative research, the favoured approach to analyse our data is descriptive interpretative, because it allows the use of data that was not collected by the initial researcher of the study. We used the constant comparative method of data analysis, as developed by Professor Kathy Charmaz (2006), to analyse our data. The results of the process showed that xenophobia is the theme used by the women in our study corpus to represent the violence migrants experience on a daily basis. Although the concept was not explicitly mentioned in the interviews, it was noticeable in the passages where migrant women and CHWs spoke of social exclusion and discrimination against migrant population living in South Africa. Two conclusions were drawn from our analysis in regard to the way migrant women integrated the violence experienced. The first is related to physical and psychological abuse and can be described as protective strategies used by some women to avoid risky situations. The last conclusion drawn is the link between the adversities experienced by migrant women and they’re feeling of belonging, where violence reduces their sense of belonging. Finally, through our analysis, a link has been established between interpersonal violence and collective violence and the presence of a so-called structural violence in South Africa. This could help explain, to a certain extent, the high prevalence of violence in the country

Leading Order Calculation of Shear Viscosity in Hot Quantum Electrodynamics from Diagrammatic Methods

We compute the shear viscosity at leading order in hot Quantum Electrodynamics. Starting from the Kubo relation for shear viscosity, we use diagrammatic methods to write down the appropriate integral equations for bosonic and fermionic effective vertices. We also show how Ward identities can be used to put constraints on these integral equations. One of our main results is an equation relating the kernels of the integral equations with functional derivatives of the full self-energy; it is similar to what is obtained with two-particle-irreducible effective action methods. However, since we use Ward identities as our starting point, gauge invariance is preserved. Using these constraints obtained from Ward identities and also power counting arguments, we select the necessary diagrams that must be resummed at leading order. This includes all non-collinear (corresponding to 2 to 2 scatterings) and collinear (corresponding to 1+N to 2+N collinear scatterings) rungs responsible for the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect. We also show the equivalence between our integral equations obtained from quantum field theory and the linearized Boltzmann equations of Arnold, Moore and Yaffe obtained using effective kinetic theory.Comment: 45 pages, 22 figures (note that figures 7 and 14 are downgraded in resolution to keep this submission under 1000kb, zoom to see them correctly

Transition et socialisation professionnelles d’une nouvelle professeure d’université : dynamiques collectives et institutionnelles en question

En contexte nord-américain, la plupart des nouveaux professeurs d’université ont eu l’occasion d’entrevoir certains aspects du professorat au cours de leurs études doctorales et de se faire une idée assez juste de ce qui les attend, à la condition qu’ils aient eu la possibilité d’occuper les fonctions d’assistant de recherche ou de chargé d’enseignement. Les doctorants sont habituellement conscients que la charge de travail du professeur peut être lourde ; dès leur entrée dans cette catégorie d’emploi, cette crainte semble se confirmer, parfois au-delà de leurs appréhensions. En s’appuyant sur un entretien de recherche semi-dirigé et l’analyse de celui-ci, cet article fait état du processus transitoire effectué par une nouvelle professeure d’université ainsi que des étapes et des écueils de sa socialisation à sa nouvelle profession. Le besoin d’un soutien institutionnel mieux ciblé et l’importance, pour le professeur novice, d’être accueilli au sein d’une équipe de collègues seront aussi discutés.In the North-American context, most new university professors come to better understand what a faculty position entails while they are completing their doctoral studies, and if they have had the opportunity to work as a research assistant or a lecturer, they have a fairly accurate idea of what awaits them. PhD students are usually aware that the workload of a professor can be heavy. Once employed, they realize that this fear may have been well-founded, and that the workload may even exceed their initial apprehensions. Based on the analysis of one semi-structured interview, this article examines the process of transition as well as the steps and challenges of the process of socialisation of a new university professor beginning her faculty career. The importance and need for more directed institutional support and for a welcoming team for early career professors will also be discussed in this article

Nutritional content of sliced bread available in Quebec, Canada : focus on sodium and fibre content

Bread is a highly consumed food and an important source of nutrients in the diet of Canadians, underlining the need to improve its nutritional quality. The Food Quality Observatory (Observatory) aimed to evaluate the nutritional value of the sliced bread products available in Quebec (Canada), according to their grain type and main flour. Analyses included comparing the bread’s sodium content to Health Canada’s daily values (DV) and sodium voluntary targets, comparing the bread’s fibre content thresholds with the source of fibre mentioned, and assessing whether the main flour was associated with the nutrient content. The nutritional values of 294 sliced breads available in Quebec were merged with sales data (from October 2016 to October 2017), with 262 products successfully cross-referenced. The results showed that 64% of the breads purchased were ‘low’ in fibre (i.e., below 2 g per two slices), while 47% were ‘high’ in sodium (i.e., above 15% DV per two slices). Attention should be paid to 100% refined grain bread and to bread with refined flour as the main flour, since they are great sellers, while showing a less favourable nutrient content. This study shows that there is room for improvement in the nutritional content of Quebec’s bread offer, particularly regarding sodium and fibre content

The prominent role of the heaviest fragment in multifragmentation and phase transition for hot nuclei

The role played by the heaviest fragment in partitions of multifragmenting hot nuclei is emphasized. Its size/charge distribution (mean value, fluctuations and shape) gives information on properties of fragmenting nuclei and on the associated phase transition.Comment: 11 pages, Proceedings of IWND09, August 23-25, Shanghai (China

Genetic association study of UCMA/GRP and OPTN genes (PDB6 locus) with Paget's disease of bone

We performed a genetic association study of rare variants and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of UCMA/GRP and OPTN genes, in French-Canadian patients with Paget's disease of bone (PDB) and in healthy controls from the same population. We reproduced the variant found in the UCMA/GRP basal promoter and tested its functionality using in vitro transient transfection assays. Interestingly, this SNP rs17152980 appears to affect the transcription level of UCMA/GRP. In addition, we have identified five rare genetic variants in UCMA/GRP gene, four of them being population-specific, although none were found to be associated with PDB. Six Tag SNPs of UCMA/GRP gene were associated with PDB, particularly the SNP rs17152980 (uncorrected P = 3.8 x 10(-3)), although not significant after Bonferroni's correction. More importantly, we replicated the strong and statistically significant genetic association of two SNPs of the OPTN gene, the rs1561570 (uncorrected P = 5.7 x 10(-7)) and the rs2095388 (uncorrected P = 4.9 x 10(-3)), With PDB. In addition, we identified a very rare variant found to be located close to the basal promoter of the OPTN gene, at -232 bp from its distal transcription start site. Furthermore, depending on the type of allele present (G or A), the binding of several important nuclear factors such as the vitamin D or the retinoic acid receptors is predicted to be altered at this position, suggesting a significant effect in the regulation of transcription of the OPTN gene. In conclusion, we identified a functional SNP located in the basal promoter of the UCMA/GRP gene which provided a weak genetic association with PDB. In addition, we replicated the strong genetic association of two already known SNPs of the OPTN gene, with PDB in a founder effect population. We also identified a very rare variant in the promoter of OPTN, and through bioinformatic analysis, identified putative transcription factor binding sites likely to affect OPTN gene transcription. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Fonds de la Recherche du Quebec - Sante (FRQS), Canada; Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation, Portugal [SFRH/BPD/48206/2008]; Catalyst Grant (Bone Health) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Canada); CHUQ Foundation (Canada); Groupe de Recherche en Maladies Osseuses (Canada); Canadian Foundation for Innovation (Canada); FRSQ (Canada); Laval University (Canada); CHUQ (CHUL) Research Centre (Canada); Centre of Marine Sciences (CCMAR) (Portugal)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Fragment properties of fragmenting heavy nuclei produced in central and semi-peripheral collisions

Fragment properties of hot fragmenting sources of similar sizes produced in central and semi-peripheral collisions are compared in the excitation energy range 5-10 AMeV. For semi-peripheral collisions a method for selecting compact quasi-projectiles sources in velocity space similar to those of fused systems (central collisions) is proposed. The two major results are related to collective energy. The weak radial collective energy observed for quasi-projectile sources is shown to originate from thermal pressure only. The larger fragment multiplicity observed for fused systems and their more symmetric fragmentation are related to the extra radial collective energy due to expansion following a compression phase during central collisions. A first attempt to locate where the different sources break in the phase diagram is proposed.Comment: 23 pages submitted to NP

IQRray, a new method for Affymetrix microarray quality control, and the homologous organ conservation score, a new benchmark method for quality control metrics.

MOTIVATION: Microarray results accumulated in public repositories are widely reused in meta-analytical studies and secondary databases. The quality of the data obtained with this technology varies from experiment to experiment, and an efficient method for quality assessment is necessary to ensure their reliability. RESULTS: The lack of a good benchmark has hampered evaluation of existing methods for quality control. In this study, we propose a new independent quality metric that is based on evolutionary conservation of expression profiles. We show, using 11 large organ-specific datasets, that IQRray, a new quality metrics developed by us, exhibits the highest correlation with this reference metric, among 14 metrics tested. IQRray outperforms other methods in identification of poor quality arrays in datasets composed of arrays from many independent experiments. In contrast, the performance of methods designed for detecting outliers in a single experiment like Normalized Unscaled Standard Error and Relative Log Expression was low because of the inability of these methods to detect datasets containing only low-quality arrays and because the scores cannot be directly compared between experiments. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The R implementation of IQRray is available at: ftp://lausanne.isb-sib.ch/pub/databases/Bgee/general/IQRray.R. CONTACT: [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Multifragmentation and phase transition for hot nuclei

5 pages, Proceedings of NN2009, August 17-21, Beijing (China)Recent important progress on the knowledge of multifragmentation and phase transition for hot nuclei, thanks to the high detection quality of the INDRA array, is reported. It concerns i) the radial collective energies involved in hot fragmenting nuclei/sources produced in central and semi- peripheral collisions and their influence on the observed fragment partitions, ii) a better knowledge of freeze-out properties obtained by means of a simulation based on all the available experimental information and iii) the quantitative study of the bimodal behaviour of the heaviest fragment distribution for fragmenting hot heavy quasi-projectiles which allows the extraction, for the first time, of an estimate of the latent heat of the phase transition