Poésie, peinture : abstraction et approche de l’immédiat chez Yves Bonnefoy

Depuis ses premiers écrits, Yves Bonnefoy n'a cessé de s'inspirer du travail des peintres afin de mieux comprendre et de mieux définir sa propre démarche poétique. Le présent article tente d'élucider le rapport que Bonnefoy entretient, d'une part, avec le langage et son pouvoir d'abstraction, qui nous détourne d'une expérience vécue dans l'immédiat ; et, d'autre part, avec la peinture moderne, où intervient aussi, mais dans un contexte tout à fait différent, l'abstraction. Souvent coupée de tout lien mimétique avec les choses et les êtres de la réalité sensible, la peinture moderne ne peut qu'interroger Bonnefoy, pour qui la poésie, " c'est ce qui vise un objet - cet être-ci, en son absolu, ou l'être même, la présence du monde, en son unité ". La question qu'il faut dès lors se poser est de savoir comment Bonnefoy, par un travail de description (notamment sur le Nuage rouge de Mondrian), va réussir à démontrer que certaines images que l'on pourrait croire abstraites révèlent au contraire " l'attention " que les artistes portent " à la terre ".Ever since his early writings, Yves Bonnefoy has kept on being inspired by the work of painters so as to better understand and define his own poetical approach. This paper will try to elucidate the relation entertained by Bonnefoy on the one hand with the langage and its power of abstraction, which diverts us from an experience lived in the immediate present, and, on the other hand, with modern painting in which abstraction intervenes but in a wholly different context. Often cut off from any connection with the objects and beings of the tangible world, modern painting cannot but question Bonnefoy for whom poetry, " (our translation) it is what aimed at an object - this being, in its absolute, or the very being, the presence of the world, in its unity ". The question that we therefore ask ourselves is to understand how Bonnefoy, through a descriptive work, most notably on le Nuage rouge by Mondrian, will succeed to demonstrate that some images we could deem abstract reveal, on the contrary, the " attention " artists devote to the concrete reality

Le passeur d'images : transferts poétiques et picturaux dans l'oeuvre d'Yves Bonnefoy

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

New Trends in Biologically-Inspired Audio Coding

This book chapter deals with the generation of auditory-inspired spectro-temporal features aimed at audio coding. To do so, we first generate sparse audio representations we call spikegrams, using projections on gammatone or gammachirp kernels that generate neural spikes. Unlike Fourier-based representations, these representations are powerful at identifying auditory events, such as onsets, offsets, transients and harmonic structures. We show that the introduction of adaptiveness in the selection of gammachirp kernels enhances the compression rate compared to the case where the kernels are non-adaptive. We also integrate a masking model that helps reduce bitrate without loss of perceptible audio quality. We then quantize coding values using the genetic algorithm that is more optimal than uniform quantization for this framework. We finally propose a method to extract frequent auditory objects (patterns) in the aforementioned sparse representations. The extracted frequency-domain patterns (auditory objects) help us address spikes (auditory events) collectively rather than individually. When audio compression is needed, the different patterns are stored in a small codebook that can be used to efficiently encode audio materials in a lossless way. The approach is applied to different audio signals and results are discussed and compared. This work is a first step towards the design of a high-quality auditory-inspired \"object-based\" audio coder

Prevalence of respiratory symptoms in an athlete population

AbstractThis study aimed to look at the prevalence and type of respiratory symptoms experienced by athletes and to assess the possible influence on the perception of symptoms of training duration and environment. A group of 698 athletes (107 with diagnosed or self-reported asthma) filled out a questionnaire on their respiratory condition. They exercised either in cold air (n=176), dry air (n=384), humid air (n=95) or mixed dry and humid air (n=43). Past exercise-related symptoms reported by athletes were breathlessness (48.7%), phlegm production (22.8%), wheezing (15.6%), cough (15.2%), and chest tightness (7.4%). Only 25% of asthmatic athletes reported having current exercise-induced symptoms of breathlessness, 21.7%, wheezing and 17.4%, chest tightness; current exercise-induced symptoms of breathlessness, wheezing or chest tightness were also reported, respectively, in 38.9%, 3.6% and 2.7% of athletes without a diagnosis of asthma. The perception of exercise-induced symptoms was not influenced by the duration of training or environment. In conclusion, (1) a minority of asthmatic athletes report troublesome respiratory symptoms with exercise, (2) breathlessness is not more frequently reported in asthmatic athletes than in those without such diagnosis while cough and wheezing are more common in asthmatic subjects and (3) the prevalence of respiratory symptoms is independent of training environment and duration of training

Detection limits of several commercial reverse transcriptase enzymes: impact on the low- and high-abundance transcript levels assessed by quantitative RT-PCR

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In functional genomics, transcript measurement is of fundamental importance. Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assays are the most popular technology and depend on the initial molecular step, the reverse transcription (RT). This study provides a complex overview of the influence of elements such as RT systems, amount of background RNA, and transcript abundance on the efficiency of qRT-PCR. Using qRT-PCR, we compared the efficiency of some commonly used RT systems and measured the production of PCR-amplifiable products and the influence of PCR inhibitor contents.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The qRT-PCR assays were conducted using the TaqMan system, although we also tested the SYBR Green I chemistry, which is not compatible with all the RT systems. When dealing with low-abundance transcripts, the SuperScript II system generated more detectable molecules than the four other systems tested: Sensiscript, Omniscript, SuperScript III and PowerScript (<it>P </it>< 0.05). However, the Sensiscript and PowerScript systems were more efficient for detecting high-abundance transcripts in the presence of 1 to 2 μg background RNA (<it>P </it>< 0.05). The most striking aspect was the influence of the dilution of the RT reaction on the subsequent PCR. Indeed, some inhibition was released when diluted RT reactions were used for the quantitative PCR measurements. Furthermore, the amount of background RNA in the RT reaction was also a major component influencing a downstream step in qRT-PCR, the PCR reaction. Whereas Sensiscript was less biased, the other systems contained an important source of PCR inhibitors, interfering as much as 70% with the qRT-PCR.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study provides a complex overview of the influence of elements such as RT systems, qRTPCR chemistry, amount of background RNA, and transcript abundance on the efficiency of qRT-PCR. Whereas the most significant influencing factor is the presence of inhibitors in the RT systems, total background RNA is also a major influencing component that affects the PCR reaction. Whenever the aim of a study is to obtain a precise gene expression measurement or to profile the global transcriptome (e.g. microarray), the RT step is critical and should be examined with care.</p

Quelles dynamiques pour les petites villes en Europe ? Une étude comparée Saxe-Bretagne (1990-2015)

L’article vise à montrer la diversité des facteurs d’évolution des petites villes européennes à partir d’une étude comparée de deux régions périphériques dans leur espace national mais sujettes à des évolutions démographiques opposées : la Saxe et la Bretagne. Après avoir présenté les hypothèses et choix méthodologiques, une typologie des trajectoires démographiques de ces villes de 1990 à 2015 par région est dressée. Les enseignements par rapport à l’état du savoir actuel en sont tirés : loin d’une crise globale, l’évolution des petites localités est très dépendante de leur distance aux agglomérations dynamiques (grandes ou moyennes) et de la santé démographique de leur région. L’économie résidentielle ne suffit cependant pas à leur assurer un avenir, la base économique et leurs fonctions de pôle de service restant des déterminants majeurs.The diversity of the factors commanding the evolution of small European cities is addressed from a comparative analysis of two peripheral regions within their national space but subject to opposite demographic trends: Saxony (Eastern Germany) and Brittany (France). The assumptions and the methodological choices are presented. The population dynamics of the towns from 1990 to 2015 exhibit various types for each region. The results are used to reassess the current state of knowledge: far from a general crisis, the evolution of small cities is very dependent on their distance from dynamic (large or medium) agglomerations and the demographic dynamics of their region

Unsupervised extraction of students navigation patterns on an EPFL MOOC

How do students learn in MOOCs? This project aims at answering this question by analyzing the activities of thousands of students registered on EPFL Scalaa MOOC hosted by Coursera. With the rapid growth of MOOCs, Education Science has entered the Big Data bubble, bringing new opportunities to study and improve learning technologies. We are interested in studying students navigation patterns which are the short sequences of learning activities that a students perform on the MOOC platform. In our case, the learning activities are one of watching a video lecture, reading or posting on the forum and submitting assignments. In this project we use unsupervised machine learning techniques to extract the main navigation patterns of students and gain insights on their behavior. We produce a simple and efficient visualization tool in order to provide feedback to teachers to help them understand the potential difficulties encountered by their students during the course and, if necessary, take actions accordingl