Action syndicale, démocratie et santé mentale au travail

La problématique de la santé mentale au travail est très présente dans les milieux syndicaux, replaçant au coeur de l’action syndicale l’importance de la qualité de vie au travail. Plusieurs recherches participatives, inspirées de la psychodynamique de travail et des récits de pratiques ont permis d’explorer le vécu et la réflexion de militants syndicaux sur la santé mentale au travail, tant dans leur travail à l’intérieur des structures syndicales que dans leurs interventions dans divers milieux de travail. Les nouvelles formes d’organisation du travail, marquées par l’idéologie néoproductiviste portent atteinte à la santé mentale de nombre de travailleurs et travailleuses, y compris chez les représentants et militants syndicaux. La difficile démocratisation au travail constitue un risque important pour la santé mentale au travail, un signe peut‑être de la toujours présente aliénation au travail.The mental health issue in the workplace is quite present in unions, putting at the core of action the centrality of working quality of life. Many participative researches, based on psychodynamic of work and practitioners’ narratives gave access to the reflective experience of unions workers about mental health at work, in their own union working context and through their interventions in external workplaces situations. New forms of working organisations, influenced by the “neoproductivist” ideology, have negative effect on mental health of numerous workers. The difficult access to democracy in the workplace is one important risk for mental health and the sign of a still prevalent condition of work alienation

The seeds of divergence: the economy of French North America, 1688 to 1760

Generally, Canada has been ignored in the literature on the colonial origins of divergence with most of the attention going to the United States. Late nineteenth century estimates of income per capita show that Canada was relatively poorer than the United States and that within Canada, the French and Catholic population of Quebec was considerably poorer. Was this gap long standing? Some evidence has been advanced for earlier periods, but it is quite limited and not well-suited for comparison with other societies. This thesis aims to contribute both to Canadian economic history and to comparative work on inequality across nations during the early modern period. With the use of novel prices and wages from Quebec—which was then the largest settlement in Canada and under French rule—a price index, a series of real wages and a measurement of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are constructed. They are used to shed light both on the course of economic development until the French were defeated by the British in 1760 and on standards of living in that colony relative to the mother country, France, as well as the American colonies. The work is divided into three components. The first component relates to the construction of a price index. The absence of such an index has been a thorn in the side of Canadian historians as it has limited the ability of historians to obtain real values of wages, output and living standards. This index shows that prices did not follow any trend and remained at a stable level. However, there were episodes of wide swings—mostly due to wars and the monetary experiment of playing card money. The creation of this index lays the foundation of the next component. The second component constructs a standardized real wage series in the form of welfare ratios (a consumption basket divided by nominal wage rate multiplied by length of work year) to compare Canada with France, England and Colonial America. Two measures are derived. The first relies on a “bare bones” definition of consumption with a large share of land-intensive goods. This measure indicates that Canada was poorer than England and Colonial America and not appreciably richer than France. However, this measure overestimates the relative position of Canada to the Old World because of the strong presence of land-intensive goods. A second measure is created using a “respectable” definition of consumption in which the basket includes a larger share of manufactured goods and capital-intensive goods. This second basket better reflects differences in living standards since the abundance of land in Canada (and Colonial America) made it easy to achieve bare subsistence, but the scarcity of capital and skilled labor made the consumption of luxuries and manufactured goods (clothing, lighting, imported goods) highly expensive. With this measure, the advantage of New France over France evaporates and turns slightly negative. In comparison with Britain and Colonial America, the gap widens appreciably. This element is the most important for future research. By showing a reversal because of a shift to a different type of basket, it shows that Old World and New World comparisons are very sensitive to how we measure the cost of living. Furthermore, there are no sustained improvements in living standards over the period regardless of the measure used. Gaps in living standards observed later in the nineteenth century existed as far back as the seventeenth century. In a wider American perspective that includes the Spanish colonies, Canada fares better. The third component computes a new series for Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is to avoid problems associated with using real wages in the form of welfare ratios which assume a constant labor supply. This assumption is hard to defend in the case of Colonial Canada as there were many signs of increasing industriousness during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The GDP series suggest no long-run trend in living standards (from 1688 to circa 1765). The long peace era of 1713 to 1740 was marked by modest economic growth which offset a steady decline that had started in 1688, but by 1760 (as a result of constant warfare) living standards had sunk below their 1688 levels. These developments are accompanied by observations that suggest that other indicators of living standard declined. The flat-lining of incomes is accompanied by substantial increases in the amount of time worked, rising mortality and rising infant mortality. In addition, comparisons of incomes with the American colonies confirm the results obtained with wages— Canada was considerably poorer. At the end, a long conclusion is provides an exploratory discussion of why Canada would have diverged early on. In structural terms, it is argued that the French colony was plagued by the problem of a small population which prohibited the existence of scale effects. In combination with the fact that it was dispersed throughout the territory, the small population of New France limited the scope for specialization and economies of scale. However, this problem was in part created, and in part aggravated, by institutional factors like seigneurial tenure. The colonial origins of French America’s divergence from the rest of North America are thus partly institutional

Control System of the SPIRAL2 Superconducting Linac Cryogenic System

International audienceThe SPIRAL2 cryogenic system has been designed to cool down and maintain stable operation conditions of the 26 LINAC superconducting resonating cavities at a temperature of 4.5 K or lower. The control system of the cryogenic system of the LINAC is based on an architecture of 20 PLCs. Through an independent network, it drives the instrumentation, the cryogenic equipment, the 26 brushless motors of the frequency tuning system, interfaces the Epics Control System, and communicates process information to the Low Level Radio Frequency, vacuum, and magnet systems. Its functions are to ensure the safety of the cryogenic system, to efficiently control the cooldown of the 19 cryomodules, to enslave the frequency tuning system for the RF operation, and to monitor and analyze the data from the process. A model based Linear Quadratic regulation controls simultaneously both phase separators the liquid helium level and pressure. This control system also makes it possible to perform a number of virtual verification tests via a simulator and a dedicated PLC used to develop advanced model based control, such as a real time heat load estimator based on a Luenberger Filte

Muscle Quantitative MR Imaging and Clustering Analysis in Patients with Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy Type 1.

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy type 1 (FSHD1) is the third most common inherited muscular dystrophy. Considering the highly variable clinical expression and the slow disease progression, sensitive outcome measures would be of interest.Using muscle MRI, we assessed muscular fatty infiltration in the lower limbs of 35 FSHD1 patients and 22 healthy volunteers by two methods: a quantitative imaging (qMRI) combined with a dedicated automated segmentation method performed on both thighs and a standard T1-weighted four-point visual scale (visual score) on thighs and legs. Each patient had a clinical evaluation including manual muscular testing, Clinical Severity Score (CSS) scale and MFM scale. The intramuscular fat fraction measured using qMRI in the thighs was significantly higher in patients (21.9 ± 20.4%) than in volunteers (3.6 ± 2.8%) (p<0.001). In patients, the intramuscular fat fraction was significantly correlated with the muscular fatty infiltration in the thighs evaluated by the mean visual score (p<0.001). However, we observed a ceiling effect of the visual score for patients with a severe fatty infiltration clearly indicating the larger accuracy of the qMRI approach. Mean intramuscular fat fraction was significantly correlated with CSS scale (p ≤ 0.01) and was inversely correlated with MMT score, MFM subscore D1 (p ≤ 0.01) further illustrating the sensitivity of the qMRI approach. Overall, a clustering analysis disclosed three different imaging patterns of muscle involvement for the thighs and the legs which could be related to different stages of the disease and put forth muscles which could be of interest for a subtle investigation of the disease progression and/or the efficiency of any therapeutic strategy.The qMRI provides a sensitive measurement of fat fraction which should also be of high interest to assess disease progression and any therapeutic strategy in FSHD1 patients

Long-term follow-up of MRI changes in thigh muscles of patients with Facioscapulohumeral dystrophy: A quantitative study

International audienceFacioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) is one of the most common hereditary muscular disorders. Currently FSHD has no known effective treatment and detailed data on the natural history are lacking. Determination of the efficacy of a given therapeutic approach might be difficult in FSHD given the slow and highly variable disease progression. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been widely used to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate in vivo the muscle alterations in various neuromuscular disorders. The main aim of the present study was to investigate longitudinally the time-dependent changes occurring in thigh muscles of FSHD patients using quantitative MRI and to assess the potential relationships with the clinical findings. Thirty-five FSHD1 patients (17 females) were enrolled. Clinical assessment tools including manual muscle testing using medical research council score (MRC), and motor function measure (MFM) were recorded each year for a period ranging from 1 to 2 years. For the MRI measurements, we used a new quantitative index, i.e., the mean pixel intensity (MPI) calculated from the pixel-intensity distribution in T1 weighted images. The corresponding MPI scores were calculated for each thigh, for each compartment and for both thighs totally (MPItotal). The total mean pixel intensity (MPItotal) refers to the sum of each pixel signal intensity divided by the corresponding number of pixels. An increased MPItotal indicates both a raised fat infiltration together with a reduced muscle volume thereby illustrating disease progression. Clinical scores did not change significantly over time whereas MPItotal increased significantly from an initial averaged value of 39.6 to 41.1 with a corresponding rate of 0.62/year. While clinical scores and MPItotal measured at the start of the study were significantly related, no correlation was found between the rate of MPItotal and MRC sum score changes, MFMtotal and MFM subscores. The relative rate of MPItotal change was 2.3% (0.5-4.3)/year and was significantly higher than the corresponding rates measured for MRCS 0% (0-1.7) /year and MFMtotal 0% (0-2.0) /year (p = 0.000). On the basis of these results, we suggested that muscle MRI and more particularly the MPItotal index could be used as a reliable biomarker and outcome measure of disease progression. In slowly progressive myopathies such as FSHD, the MPItotal index might reveal subclinical changes, which could not be evidenced using clinical scales over a short period of time

The SPIRAL2 Control System Status Just Before the First Beam

International audienceThe SPIRAL2 Facility at GANIL is based on the construction of a superconducting LINAC (up to 5 mA - 40 MeV deuteron beams and up to 1 mA - 14.5 MeV/u heavy ion beams) with two experimental areas called S3 and NFS [1, 2]. At the end of this year, we will reach an important milestone with the first beam accelerated by the superconducting LINAC. The control system of the new facility relies on EPICS and PLC technologies. This paper will focus on the latest validated systems: machine protection system, the LINAC cryogenic system and the radio frequency system of the superconducting cavities. The validation requested a huge effort from all the teams but allow the project to be ready for this important moment