L'autonomisation des apprentissages du français : enjeux et perspectives

Durant ces dernières années, les universités vietnamiennes ont adopté une politique générale d’innovation pour améliorer la qualité de leurs formations. L’évolution vers un système à crédits capitalisables en est un grand projet. Il s’agit d’une nouvelle organisation des activités d’enseignement-apprentissage, réduisant les cours en présentiel et privilégiant l’auto-apprentissage. Les pratiques de formation doivent nécessairement évoluer. Quelles transformations pédagogiques cette situation suppose-t-elle de mettre en œuvre afin de satisfaire aux exigences d’autonomisation du nouveau système à crédits capitalisables ? Dans le cadre de notre cursus de licence (bac+4), qui inclut des formations à l’activité enseignante et à la traduction-interprétation, nous avons initié, depuis 2012, un dispositif qui consiste à décloisonner certaines disciplines dans notre programme et à en restructurer les contenus. Les objectifs du dispositif sont, d’une part, de donner du sens aux contenus enseignés pour améliorer les apprentissages linguistiques et professionnels et, d’autre part, de former nos étudiants à l’autonomie et à la réflexivité.Comment ce dispositif d’enseignement a-t-il été conçu ? Quelle en est la réalisation ? En quoi il contribue à former à la réflexivité et l’autonomie ? Tels sont les éléments analysés dans cet article

Diversification of DNA-Binding Specificity by Permissive and Specificity-Switching Mutations in the ParB/Noc Protein Family

Specific interactions between proteins and DNA are essential to many biological processes. Yet, it remains unclear how the diversification in DNA-binding specificity was brought about, and the mutational paths that led to changes in specificity are unknown. Using a pair of evolutionarily related DNA-binding proteins, each with a different DNA preference (ParB [Partitioning Protein B] and Noc [Nucleoid Occlusion Factor], which both play roles in bacterial chromosome maintenance), we show that specificity is encoded by a set of four residues at the protein-DNA interface. Combining X-ray crystallography and deep mutational scanning of the interface, we suggest that permissive mutations must be introduced before specificity-switching mutations to reprogram specificity and that mutational paths to new specificity do not necessarily involve dual-specificity intermediates. Overall, our results provide insight into the possible evolutionary history of ParB and Noc and, in a broader context, might be useful for understanding the evolution of other classes of DNA-binding proteins

Towards Smart Homes Using Low Level Sensory Data

Ubiquitous Life Care (u-Life care) is receiving attention because it provides high quality and low cost care services. To provide spontaneous and robust healthcare services, knowledge of a patient’s real-time daily life activities is required. Context information with real-time daily life activities can help to provide better services and to improve healthcare delivery. The performance and accuracy of existing life care systems is not reliable, even with a limited number of services. This paper presents a Human Activity Recognition Engine (HARE) that monitors human health as well as activities using heterogeneous sensor technology and processes these activities intelligently on a Cloud platform for providing improved care at low cost. We focus on activity recognition using video-based, wearable sensor-based, and location-based activity recognition engines and then use intelligent processing to analyze the context of the activities performed. The experimental results of all the components showed good accuracy against existing techniques. The system is deployed on Cloud for Alzheimer’s disease patients (as a case study) with four activity recognition engines to identify low level activity from the raw data captured by sensors. These are then manipulated using ontology to infer higher level activities and make decisions about a patient’s activity using patient profile information and customized rules

The impact of albendazole treatment on the incidence of viral- and bacterial-induced diarrhea in school children in southern Vietnam: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Anthelmintics are one of the more commonly available classes of drugs to treat infections by parasitic helminths (especially nematodes) in the human intestinal tract. As a result of their cost-effectiveness, mass school-based deworming programs are becoming routine practice in developing countries. However, experimental and clinical evidence suggests that anthelmintic treatments may increase susceptibility to other gastrointestinal infections caused by bacteria, viruses, or protozoa. Hypothesizing that anthelmintics may increase diarrheal infections in treated children, we aim to evaluate the impact of anthelmintics on the incidence of diarrheal disease caused by viral and bacterial pathogens in school children in southern Vietnam.This is a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial to investigate the effects of albendazole treatment versus placebo on the incidence of viral- and bacterial-induced diarrhea in 350 helminth-infected and 350 helminth-uninfected Vietnamese school children aged 6-15 years. Four hundred milligrams of albendazole, or placebo treatment will be administered once every 3 months for 12 months. At the end of 12 months, all participants will receive albendazole treatment. The primary endpoint of this study is the incidence of diarrheal disease assessed by 12 months of weekly active and passive case surveillance. Secondary endpoints include the prevalence and intensities of helminth, viral, and bacterial infections, alterations in host immunity and the gut microbiota with helminth and pathogen clearance, changes in mean z scores of body weight indices over time, and the number and severity of adverse events.In order to reduce helminth burdens, anthelmintics are being routinely administered to children in developing countries. However, the effects of anthelmintic treatment on susceptibility to other diseases, including diarrheal pathogens, remain unknown. It is important to monitor for unintended consequences of drug treatments in co-infected populations. In this trial, we will examine how anthelmintic treatment impacts host susceptibility to diarrheal infections, with the aim of informing deworming programs of any indirect effects of mass anthelmintic administrations on co-infecting enteric pathogens.ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02597556 . Registered on 3 November 2015

A Prospective Analysis of Meat Mutagens and Colorectal Cancer in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study

Background: Heterocyclic amines (HCAs) in cooked meats may play a role in colorectal cancer (CRC) development. Objectives: We aimed to prospectively examine the association between estimated intakes of HCAs and meat-derived mutagenicity (MDM) in two cohorts of health professionals, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) and the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS). Methods: In 29,615 men and 65,875 women, intake of the HCAs 2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo(4,5-j)quinoxaline (MeIQx), 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo(4,5-b)pyridine (PhIP), 2-amino-3,4,8-trimethylimidazo(4,5-f)quinoxaline (DiMeIQx), and MDM was estimated using a 1996 cooking questionnaire, the 1994 food frequency questionnaire, and an online database. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and to adjust for potential confounders. Estimates for both cohorts were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis. Results: Between 1996 and 2010, 418 male and 790 female CRC cases were identified. Meat mutagen intake was not statistically significantly associated with risk of CRC [highest vs. lowest quintile, pooled HR (95% CI) for MeIQx: 1.12 (0.93, 1.34), p for trend 0.23; PhIP: 1.10 (0.90, 1.33), p for trend 0.35; MDM: 1.03 (0.86, 1.24), p for trend 0.75] or subtypes of CRC defined by tumor location (proximal or distal colon, or rectum). When analyzed by source of meat, PhIP from red but not from white meat was nonsignificantly positively associated with CRC and significantly positively associated with proximal cancers [HR (95% CI) per standard deviation increase of log-transformed intake: PhIP red meat: CRC: 1.06 (0.99, 1.12), proximal: 1.11 (1.02, 1.21); PhIP white meat: CRC: 0.99 (0.94, 1.04), proximal: 1.00 (0.93, 1.09)]. Conclusions: Estimated intakes of meat mutagens were not significantly associated with CRC risk over 14 years of follow-up in the NHS and HPFS cohorts. Results for PhIP from red but not from white meat warrant further investigation. Citation: Le NT, Michels FA, Song M, Zhang X, Bernstein AM, Giovannucci EL, Fuchs CS, Ogino S, Chan AT, Sinha R, Willett WC, Wu K. 2016. A prospective analysis of meat mutagens and colorectal cancer in the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Environ Health Perspect 124:1529–1536; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/EHP23

Properties of rice straw reinforced alkali activated cementitious composites

© 2020 The paper investigates the characteristics of rice straw reinforced alkali activated cementitious composites (AACC). The untreated and NaOH treated rice straw at the proportion of 1%, 2%, 3% by weight of binder was added to the mixes. Characteristics of rice straw have been studied by using SEM and XRD. Mechanical properties, water absorption, drying shrinkage and durability under wet/dry cycling have been investigated to evaluate the performance of the AACCs. SEM was also used to investigate the mechanism of deterioration of the AACC. The results show that rice straw has very significant positive effects on the performance of AACCs including increase in flexural and compressive strength, durability under wet/dry cycling, large reduction in drying shrinkage, and water absorption. In addition, alkali treatment is an effective method for enhancing bond between the rice straw and the matrix leading to improved performance of AACCs

A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons

Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots for b/w printin

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Observation of associated near-side and away-side long-range correlations in √sNN=5.02 TeV proton-lead collisions with the ATLAS detector

Two-particle correlations in relative azimuthal angle (Δϕ) and pseudorapidity (Δη) are measured in √sNN=5.02  TeV p+Pb collisions using the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The measurements are performed using approximately 1  μb-1 of data as a function of transverse momentum (pT) and the transverse energy (ΣETPb) summed over 3.1<η<4.9 in the direction of the Pb beam. The correlation function, constructed from charged particles, exhibits a long-range (2<|Δη|<5) “near-side” (Δϕ∼0) correlation that grows rapidly with increasing ΣETPb. A long-range “away-side” (Δϕ∼π) correlation, obtained by subtracting the expected contributions from recoiling dijets and other sources estimated using events with small ΣETPb, is found to match the near-side correlation in magnitude, shape (in Δη and Δϕ) and ΣETPb dependence. The resultant Δϕ correlation is approximately symmetric about π/2, and is consistent with a dominant cos⁡2Δϕ modulation for all ΣETPb ranges and particle pT