Participation politique, expressions de la citoyenneté et formes organisées d’engagement : La contribution des coalitions à un renouvellement des conceptions et des pratiques

Dans un contexte où les formes classiques de la démocratie représentative apparaissent remises en question par des revendications d’une participation accrue, nous examinons les conduites citoyennes sous l’angle d’engagements organisés. À partir de résultats préliminaires d’une recherche consacrée aux coalitions actives au Québec et par référence à des observations et à des propositions théoriques rapportées à d’autres contextes, nous mettons en lumière la diversité des formes de mobilisation et nous nous penchons notamment sur l’importance croissante des coalitions comme forme d’engagement. Articulée à la théorie de la survie organisationnelle, notre étude accrédite partiellement la thèse d’une instrumentalisation de l’idée de participation citoyenne au profit des organisations.In a context where classical forms of representative democracy are challenged by demands pressing for participation, it is relevant to consider the citizens’ political involvement from the perspective of organized political action. Against the background of recent theoretical developments and empirical observations, we present the preliminary results of a research on coalitions in Quebec. We examine, first, the growing importance of coalitions and their main characteristics in comparison with other political forces. Then, our analysis both confirms and qualifies some major insights derived from the survival theory, an approach which stresses the idea of participation being turned into a benefit for organizations

Caractérisation du tropisme du HIV-1 : implications physiopathologiques et thérapeutiques

La détermination des corécepteurs d'entrée utilisés par le HIV-1 est nécessaire afin d'étudier l'impact du tropisme viral sur l'évolution de la maladie et la réponse aux traitements par des antagonistes de CCR5. Un test phénotypique sensible fondé sur la construction de virus recombinants ainsi que des approches génotypiques de détermination du tropisme du HIV-1 ont été développés en parallèle et nous avons évalué la concordance entre ces deux approches. Notre travail a montré que la détermination génotypique du tropisme par analyse de la séquence V3 du HIV-1 était une alternative simple et efficace aux tests phénotypiques avant la prescription d'antagonistes de CCR5 chez les patients infectés par des virus de sous-type B, ainsi que par des sous-types C et CRF02-AG. Nous avons également montré que la primo-infection HIV-1 avec un virus utilisant CXCR4 était peu fréquente mais prédictive d'une évolution plus rapide de la maladie que la primo-infection avec un virus utilisant exclusivement CCR5.Determining the coreceptor used by HIV-1 for entry is necessary to study the impact of HIV-1 tropism on disease progression and the virological response to CCR5 antagonists and requires methods with validated performances. We developed a sensitive phenotypic entry assay based on the production of recombinant viruses and genotypic approaches for assessing HIV-1 tropism. Then, we studied the concordance between both genotypic and phenotypic approaches and we demonstrated that the genotypic determination of HIV-1 coreceptor use by V3 direct sequencing was a reliable alternative to phenotypic assays for tropism determination before using CCR5 antagonists in subtype B, but also in subtypes C and CRF02-AG infected patients. We also found that primary HIV infection with a CXCR4-using virus was rare but predictive of a faster disease progression than primary infection with a virus using exclusively CCR5

School Choice and Competition

The literature suggests that competition among schools might increase quality. However, not much empirical evidence is present as only a few countries allow competition at a large scale. One exception is the Netherlands. Free parental choice is the leading principle of the Dutch education system since the beginning of the 20th century. Based on panel data for the Netherlands we show that there is a relation between competition and student achievement in upper secondary education, but that it is negative. In addition, private schools have higher quality levels

Erste Ergebnisse eines Artenvergleichs von Erbsen und Ackerbohnen

Organic farmers have to take the decision which grain legume specie is the best for their site. The existing recommendations are based on variety tests and studies on cropping systems. The best grain leg¬ume specie on one site has not been investigated. The aim of this work is to test field pea and faba bean on one and the same site. In 2011/2012 these two species were sown in autumn and in spring, as well as in pure stand and in mixture with cereals (for the field pea) in a field trial. Hardiness of the winter crops and yield were assessed. Winter field pea in mixture with triticale had the highest hardiness and was significantly different from field pea in pure stand and from faba bean. Spring faba bean was the crop with the highest yield and had no significant difference from the winter form and the spring field pea. Results show that it is important to test different grain legume species on one and the same site

Evolved Galaxies at z > 1.5 from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey: The Formation Epoch of Massive Stellar Systems

We present spectroscopic evidence from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS) for a significant population of color-selected red galaxies at 1.3 < z < 2.2 whose integrated light is dominated by evolved stars. Unlike radio-selected objects, the z > 1.5 old galaxies have a sky density > 0.1 per sq. arcmin. Conservative age estimates for 20 galaxies with z > 1.3; = 1.49, give a median age of 1.2 Gyr and = 2.4. One quarter of the galaxies have inferred z_f > 4. Models restricted to abundances less than or equal to solar give median ages and z_f of 2.3 Gyr and 3.3, respectively. These galaxies are among the most massive and contribute approximately 50% of the stellar mass density at 1 < z < 2. The derived ages and most probable star formation histories suggest a high star-formation-rate (300-500 solar masses per year) phase in the progenitor population. We argue that most of the red galaxies are not descendants of the typical z=3 Lyman break galaxies. Galaxies associated with luminous sub-mm sources have the requisite star formation rates to be the progenitor population. Our results point toward early and rapid formation for a significant fraction of present day massive galaxies.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, Accepted for publication, ApJ Letter

Cosmic Star Formation History and its Dependence on Galaxy Stellar Mass

We examine the cosmic star formation rate (SFR) and its dependence on galaxy stellar mass over the redshift range 0.8 < z < 2 using data from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey (GDDS). The SFR in the most massive galaxies (M > 10^{10.8} M_sun) was six times higher at z = 2 than it is today. It drops steeply from z = 2, reaching the present day value at z ~ 1. In contrast, the SFR density of intermediate mass galaxies (10^{10.2} < M < 10^{10.8} M_sun) declines more slowly and may peak or plateau at z ~ 1.5. We use the characteristic growth time t_SFR = rho_M / rho_SFR to provide evidence of an associated transition in massive galaxies from a burst to a quiescent star formation mode at z ~ 2. Intermediate mass systems transit from burst to quiescent mode at z ~ 1, while the lowest mass objects undergo bursts throughout our redshift range. Our results show unambiguously that the formation era for galaxies was extended and proceeded from high to low mass systems. The most massive galaxies formed most of their stars in the first ~3 Gyr of cosmic history. Intermediate mass objects continued to form their dominant stellar mass for an additional ~2 Gyr, while the lowest mass systems have been forming over the whole cosmic epoch spanned by the GDDS. This view of galaxy formation clearly supports `downsizing' in the SFR where the most massive galaxies form first and galaxy formation proceeds from larger to smaller mass scales.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ

Le scénario facteur 4 : les rhétoriques institutionnelles au regard des conduites ordinaires en matière de consommation d’énergie

L’objectif de cet article est de pointer et d’expliciter quelques « décalages » observables entre les catégories de pensée et d’action d’un certain nombre d’acteurs publics œuvrant pour le scénario facteur 4, et les rationalités réflexives et pratiques propres aux conduites quotidiennes et aux choix des citoyens ordinaires en matière de consommation d’énergie. Cette approche permettra de rendre compte des conduites dissonantes des acteurs ordinaires au regard des comportements attendus par les responsables publics, autrement qu’en postulant l’irrationalité ou l’inconscience de ces populations. Une telle analyse attentive aux dynamiques propres des populations dans leur diversité en matière de consommation d’énergie permettra de mieux comprendre les limites d’efficience de l’action publique en ce domaine.The aim of this article is: to point out and to clarify some « gaps » which can be observed between the thinking and acting categories of some public protagonists working towards the Factor 4 scenario, and the reflexive and practical rationalities peculiar to everyday behaviours and to ordinary citizens’ choices as regards energy consumption. This approach will enable us to give an account of ordinary protagonists’ discordant behaviours facing the behaviours expected by public leaders, in another way than postulating these people’s irrationalities or inconstancy. Such an analysis alert to the specific dynamics of populations in their diversity as regards energy consumptions will allow a better understanding of the efficiency limits of public measures in this field

hwloc: a Generic Framework for Managing Hardware Affinities in HPC Applications

International audienceThe increasing numbers of cores, shared caches and memory nodes within machines introduces a complex hardware topology. High-performance computing applications now have to carefully adapt their placement and behavior according to the underlying hierarchy of hardware resources and their software affinities. We introduce the Hardware Locality (hwloc) software which gathers hardware information about processors, caches, memory nodes and more, and exposes it to applications and runtime systems in a abstracted and portable hierarchical manner. hwloc may significantly help performance by having runtime systems place their tasks or adapt their communication strategies depending on hardware affinities. We show that hwloc can already be used by popular high-performance OpenMP or MPI software. Indeed, scheduling OpenMP threads according to their affinities or placing MPI processes according to their communication patterns shows interesting performance improvement thanks to hwloc. An optimized MPI communication strategy may also be dynamically chosen according to the location of the communicating processes in the machine and its hardware characteristics