Machiavel relisant Tite-Live : entre politique et histoire, entre Renaissance et Antiquité

Ce mémoire traite des Discours sur la Première Décade de Tite-Live de Nicolas Machiavel. Notre problématique est de savoir pourquoi Machiavel s'est intéressé à l'Histoire Romaine de Tite-Live, dans quelle optique il la lit, la commente et comment il en tire des leçons pour la vie politique de Florence. Dans un premier chapitre, nous présentons notre méthode qui s'inspire de l'école contextualiste de Cambridge. Nous replaçons ensuite Machiavel dans son époque à travers une brève biographie puis nous présentons l'Histoire Romaine de Tite-Live, ainsi que son auteur. Dans un second chapitre nous présentons les Discours sur la Première Décade de Tite-Live et le contexte de leur rédaction. Nous démontrons pourquoi cette œuvre de Machiavel est à la fois en continuité et en rupture avec leur époque (la Renaissance). Nous étudions les liens possibles entre l'antique Rome et Florence au XVIe siècle. Nous commentons ensuite certains chapitres des Discours à titre d'exemple. Dans un troisième chapitre, nous traitons des enjeux philosophiques des Discours: la vision de l'Histoire qui en ressort, le rôle des concepts de virtù et de fortuna et enfin, la possibilité d'actualiser l'approche de Machiavel, c'est-à-dire prendre en compte - ou non - les exemples de l'Histoire pour décider aujourd'hui des modes de l'agir politique.This master thesis is about Niccolò Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. Our main issue is to know why did Machiavelli interest in Livy's History of Rome, from which point of view did he read and comment on it, and the political lessons he taught Florence from it. In chapter one, we present our method inspired from the Cambridge contextualist school. Next, we put Machiavelli back in his time through a short biography; then we present Livy's History of Rome, and the author himself. In chapter two, we present the Discourses on Livy and the background in which Machiavellli wrote it. We demonstrate how this work follows on from the Renaissance litterature and at the same time breaks with it. Then we study the possible connections between the ancient Rome and the 16th century Florence. Afterwards, we comment some chapters of the Discourses, as an exemple. The last chapter deals with the philosophical issues in the Discourses: which view on History reveals through it, which part do play the concepts of virtù and fortuna and finally, the possibility of updating Machiavelli's approach, that is to say taking - or not - into account the historical exemples as a guide for today's political action

The resilience of verbal sequence learning:Evidence from the Hebb repetition effect

In a single large-scale study, we demonstrate that verbal sequence learning as studied using the classic Hebb repetition effect (Hebb, 1961)—the improvement in the serial recall of a repeating sequence compared to non-repeated sequences—is resilient to both wide and irregular spacing between sequence repetitions. Learning of a repeated sequence of letters was evident to a comparable degree with three, five, and eight intervening non-repeated sequences and regardless of whether the spacing between repetitions was regular or irregular. Importantly, this resilience of verbal sequence learning was observed despite the fact that there was complete item-set overlap between repeated and non-repeated sequences. The findings are consistent with the conceptualization of the Hebb repetition effect as a laboratory analogue of natural phonological word-form learning. The results also have implications for the two leading models of Hebb sequence learning: Whereas the results are incompatible with the model of Page and Norris (2009), they can be handled readily by the model of Burgess and Hitch (2006) through the abandonment of its assumption of long-term (across-trial level) decay

Pneumatosis cystoidis intestinalis presenting as bowel perforation, a rare entity

AbstractIntroductionPneumatosis cystoides intestinalis (PCI) is an uncommon condition. This following article describes a case of primary PCI presenting as acute abdomen due to perforation of a small bowel cyst.Presentation of caseThis following article describes the case of an 88 year-old woman admitted at the hospital with peritonitis and consequently operated for a presumed bowel ischemia and perforation. However surgical exploration revealed perforated PCI.DiscussionThe pathophysiology of secondary PCI is poorly understood. Gas produced by Gas-forming bacteria may enter the mucosal barrier due and consequently this gas accumulates within the bowel wall. Also malnutrition can prevent the digestion of carbohydrates, which leads to increased bacterial fermentation, and production of large volumes of gas leading to distention and ischemia and subsequently the submucosal dissection of gas. Colonoscopy is helpful in excluding other colonic lesions and it shows the submucosal cysts that have a typical dual appearance: multiple white small cysts coupled to a sub-atrophic mucosa or larger cysts (up to 3cm) with a reddened overlying mucosa.ConclusionThe treatment unless complicated should be conservative even in the presence of pneumoperitoneum, after excluding complications

Electrophysiological correlates of inattentional deafness: no hearing without listening

The analysis of airplane accidents reveals that pilots sometimes purely fail to notice yet critical auditory alerts. This inability of an auditory stimulus to reach consciousness has been recently coined under the term of inattentional deafness. Recent data from literature tend to show that tasks involving high perceptual load consume most of attentional capacity, leaving little for processing any taskirrelevant information. In addition, there is a growing body of evidence for a shared attentional capacity between vision and hearing. In this context, the numerous displays in cockpits are likely to produce inattentional deafness. A simplified piloting task was conceived, in which participants were required to make decisions based on complex visual indicators while continuous electroencephalographic(EEG) measurements were performed. During the task, a tone was played, either standard, which participants were told to ignore, or deviant (“the alarm”, probability = 0.10) which participants were told to report. Preliminary behavioural results showed that up to 30% of deviant sounds were not detected. The analysis of EEG showed that a drastic diminution of the auditory P300 amplitude was concomitant with the occurrence of the inattentional deafness phenomenon. Applications concern integrative online prevention of alarms omission, mental workload measurements and enhanced warning designs

Delivering a “Dose of Hope”: A Faith-Based Program to Increase Older African Americans’ Participation in Clinical Trials

Background: Underrepresentation of older-age racial and ethnic minorities in clinical research is a significant barrier to health in the United States, as it impedes medical research advancement of effective preventive and therapeutic strategies. Objective: The objective of the study was to develop and test the feasibility of a community-developed faith-based intervention and evaluate its potential to increase the number of older African Americans in clinical research. Methods: Using a cluster-randomized design, we worked with six matched churches to enroll at least 210 persons. We provided those in the intervention group churches with three educational sessions on the role of clinical trials in addressing health disparity topics, and those in the comparison group completed surveys at the same timepoints. All persons enrolled in the study received ongoing information via newsletters and direct outreach on an array of clinical studies seeking participants. We evaluated the short-, mid-, and longer-term effects of the interventional program on clinical trial-related outcomes (ie, screening and enrollment)

Motor Learning Improvement Remains 3 Months After a Multisession Anodal tDCS Intervention in an Aging Population

Healthy aging is associated with decline of motor function that can generate serious consequences on the quality of life and safety. Our studies aim to explore the 3-month effects of a 5-day multisession anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (a-tDCS) protocol applied over the primary motor cortex (M1) during motor sequence learning in elderly. The present sham-controlled aging study investigated whether tDCS-induced motor improvements previously observed 1 day after the intervention persist beyond 3 months. A total of 37 cognitively-intact aging participants performed five consecutive daily 20-min sessions of the serial-reaction time task (SRTT) concomitant with either anodal (n = 18) or sham (n = 19) tDCS over M1. All participants performed the Purdue Pegboard Test and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) measures of cortical excitability were collected before, 1 day after and 3 months after the intervention. The last follow-up session also included the execution of the trained SRTT. The main findings are the demonstration of durable effects of a 5-day anodal tDCS intervention at the trained skill, while the active intervention did not differ from the sham intervention at both the untrained task and on measures of M1-disinhibition. Thus, the current article revealed for the first time the durability of functional effects of a-tDCS combined with motor training after only 5 days of intervention in an aging population. This finding provides evidence that the latter treatment alternative is effective in achieving our primary motor rehabilitation goal, that is to allow durable motor training effects in an aging population

Temporal dominance of sensations of peanuts and peanut products in relation to Hutchings and Lillford’s “breakdown path"

Hutchings and Lillford’s (Journal of Texture Studies, 19, 103-115, 1988) proposed a “breakdown path” whereby particle size reduction occurs through mastication in conjunction with the secretion of saliva to form a swallowable bolus. The swallowing trajectory of whole peanuts, peanut meal and peanut paste were studied with the temporal dominance of sensations technique. The sensations for whole peanuts progressed from hard, to crunchy, to chewy, to soft and ended compacted on teeth. Predictably peanut meal missed out the first two sensations, progressing from chewy, to soft and ending compacted on teeth. However peanut paste, which starts as a soft suspension with relatively little structure appears to thicken and stick to the palate during oral processing. We propose that the “hard to swallow” sensation elicited by peanut paste may be due to water absorption from the saliva as they mix in the mouth

Serge Tousignant : jeux d'espaces, jeux de regards : le catalogue

L'exposition qui fait l'objet de ce catalogue a malheureusement été annulée à cause de la pandémie, mais elle aurait dû se tenir au Carrefour des arts et des sciences de l’Université de Montréal du 8 avril au 12 juin 2020.Catalogue d'exposition préparé à l'hiver 2020 dans le cadre du cours HAR 6080 / MSL 6509 : Muséologie et histoire de l'art, donné par la professeure Christine Bernier.Catalogue préparé sous la direction de Christine Bernie