Travaux De Research Articles

The permanent adjustment process: A theoretical approach to structural change in commercial ports from the nineteenth century onwards

This article proposes a theoretical approach to the development of Western commercial ports from the Industrial Revolution onwards. It is based both on a bibliographical corpus devoted to port history and on personal research into the main French ports of the nineteenth century. This work was based on two main sources: firstly, the Annales des Ponts et Chaussées, which recorded the experiments and theoretical work carried out by the engineers of this government body; and secondly, the Actes législatifs et Dépenses concernant les Travaux de Navigation Intérieure et Maritime de 1814 à 1900, a document published by the Ministry of Public Works which provides information on the budgets allocated to the main French ports. This reflection shows that since the nineteenth century the development of ports has been subject to a permanent adjustment process, with four main characteristics: disruptive innovation, spatial adaptation, selective adaptation and one-way adaptation.

Simon, maître d'école par Alain Gaba

Reviewed by: Simon, maître d'école par Alain Gaba Kate M. Bonin Gaba, Alain. Simon, maître d'école. L'Harmattan, 2022. ISBN 978-2-14-027334-6. Pp. 139. This novel begins with interesting themes of homecoming and loss. The year is 1947: the hero, seven-year-old, Parisian-born Simon, has just lost his mother to illness, and his Jewish grandparents to Auschwitz. His grandfather refused to go into hiding, instead putting his trust in French values: "[Il] ne pouvait pas penser que son pays d'adoption, la France, le pays des Droits de l'Homme, ne les protegérait pas" (14). Simon, in contrast, survived the war by being fostered among a family of Catholic farmers in rural Touraine. Post-war, Simon's father, the newly-widowed Robert, returns from harrowing imprisonment (POW? STO?) to admit he is unprepared to parent the son he has never even met. Simon is re-placed back on the farm with his foster family. The subsequent years he passes among them are figured as hardworking but idyllic—although Simon maintains almost no contact with his Jewish family and is bewildered at a cousin's bar mitzvah. "Un vrai petit goy, en fait", the cousin concludes disdainfully (42). Readers might expect the novel to center around issues of belonging and estrangement, as Simon grows up in the long shadow of World War II. Will Simon and his traumatized father reunite? Will Simon reconnect with his Jewish heritage, or remain committed to a laicized, republican "Frenchness"? Readers who find these questions compelling will be disappointed. What began as a postwar Bildungsroman turns into a roman à thèse focusing entirely on issues of pedagogy, as Simon fulfills his childhood promise to become an instituteur. Whole chapters are dedicated to the elaboration of revolutionary teaching theories which decenter textbooks and rote memorization in favor of more experimental, self-guided learning. Moreover, the revolution which Simon embraces is not just pedagogic, but also plays out "sur un front politique et social pour la défense des libertés démocratiques" (90). The consumerism and rural exodus of the Trente Glorieuses are challenged as May 68 looms on the horizon. However, fictional Simon's friends and family—even Simon himself—become overshadowed within the novel by a laundry list of real-life international teachers and innovators whom Simon admires, including Paulo Freire, Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, and Melvil Dewey (inventor of the Dewey Decimal system; this last inclusion might raise readers' eyebrows, due to his well-documented anti-Semitism, which the novel does not address). The last words of the novel belong not to Simon, but to the pop singer Léo Ferré. Simon's own final intervention is a poem written in honor of his upbringing "dans une ferme du beau pays de France," praising his foster parents, and declaring "Les travaux de la ferme se sont inscrits en moi" (127). Readers may well feel sympathetic towards pedagogic innovations that seek to decolonize the curriculum, shaking up prescriptive norms that maintain the socioeconomic status quo. That said, it is disappointing that the values inscribed in the protagonist's deepest sense of selfhood appear to be an unacknowledged palimpsest, subsuming (effacing?) his connection to anything other than a narrowly framed French universalism. [End Page 235] Kate M. Bonin Arcadia University (PA) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Peer Review Statement

All papers published in this volume have been reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.• Type of peer review: Undefined• Conference submission management system: Morressier• Number of submissions received: 34• Number of submissions sent for review: 33• Number of submissions accepted: 29• Acceptance Rate (Submissions Accepted / Submissions Received × 100): 85.3• Average number of reviews per paper: 1.32• Total number of reviewers involved: 15• Contact person for queries: Name: BOUTOUIL Email: mohamed.boutouil@esitc-caen.fr Affiliation: École Supérieure d’Ingénieurs des Travaux de la Construction - Research laboratory

Gascon et français chez les Israélites d’Aquitaine: Documents et inventaire lexical by Peter Nahon

Reviewed by: Gascon et français chez les Israélites d’Aquitaine: Documents et inventaire lexical by Peter Nahon Thomas Field Nahon, Peter. Gascon et français chez les Israélites d’Aquitaine: Documents et inventaire lexical. Travaux de lexicographie, 2. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2018. 441 pp. ISBN 978–2–406–07296–6. 43 € The so-called Portuguese Jews of Aquitaine are familiar to students of French history, but the specific characteristics of their language and culture are not. Arriving on the Aquitainian coast from Spain and Portugal as early as the sixteenth century, nearly all of the ancestors of this community came as nominally Christianized conversos. By the late seventeenth century, however, many had gradually reverted to the overt practice of Judaism. While it is clear that the members of this group, frequently merchants in the early generations, lived in a number of different towns in the area, they eventually gravitated to Bordeaux and Bayonne. In fact, by 1861 Bordeaux held the largest Jewish community in France after Paris, its members proud to claim their distinctive “Iberian” version of Judaism. As the author of this thoroughly engrossing book points out, the overall linguistic history of the Aquitainian Jews has never been treated in a satisfactory manner. Nahon aims to provide a study of “un particularisme envisagé dans la longue durée” (365). With a full grasp of the historical contexts within which this community evolved, he is able to bring together etymological evidence of the speech variety’s development and textual representations of it from the early nineteenth century to the present, along with judgments of native speakers today (not always factually accurate, but significant because of their relevance for language attitudes). The result is a masterpiece of historical sociolinguistics. Past research on the language of the “Israélites d’Aquitaine” was generally based on the assumption that this community had shifted over time from Spanish to French (31). Such work was often conducted with a view toward finding as many Hebrew lexical items as possible (89) or toward ferreting out all the bits of Spanish that had been retained (87). In the nineteenth century, as French made its definitive entry into the speech repertory of the region, the members of this group were still being described by Parisian [End Page 127] historians as speaking bad Spanish. However, Nahon points out that, beyond the first generation, Spanish served primarily as a religious and administrative language, and he shows that many of the Spanish and Portuguese loanwords in the dialect are actually late borrowings. More importantly, he demonstrates that there can be no doubt that in the early nineteenth century the Aquitainian Jews were actually speaking their own form of Gascon, which, very early on, must have become their usual vernacular. Nahon provides a series of texts dating from the nineteenth century that show fascinating code-switching between Gascon and French, a kind of discourse exemplary for the period in which the latter was gradually swamping the former. These texts—for example, satirical anecdotes in a Bayonne weekly publication—would not have been understandable to a monolingual French speaker, and even a Gascon speaker from outside Bayonne would have wondered about some of the Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew loan words. The most astonishing part of this study is the evidence that Nahon has extracted from 18 living informants from Bordeaux and Bayonne who still have some familiarity with the peculiar “ways with words” that once characterized their community. Some maintained this register solely within the family or in commerce, where it allowed them to exclude customers, at least partially, from what was going on behind the scenes. Others had particularly strong connections with the synagogue. Unsurprisingly, Nahon points out that those who grew up in more modest families have retained the strongest skills. Still, most of these speakers can best be described as “rememberers” rather than as fluent speakers, although Nahon discovers that the variety was still in use in at least one Bordeaux shop until 2015 (94). It is interesting to discover that Nahon’s informants frequently think that the Gascon elements in their language are of Iberian or Hebrew origin and are specifically Jewish in nature. In other...

Dejerine: The concept of peripheral neuropathy

Dejerine: The concept of peripheral neuropathy

Des dalles ornées durant le Campaniforme et l’âge du Bronze ancien en Bretagne : mythe ou réalité ?

Il est plus ou moins acquis depuis les travaux de P. Du Chatellier qu’il existe une forme d’art à l’âge du Bronze ancien en Bretagne dont les représentations se limiteraient à quelques dalles ornées de cupules et autres motifs simples, opinion défendue par J. Briard mais combattue par C. Burgess. Afin d’y voir plus clair, nous avons repris cette question sans a priori en nous limitant géographiquement à la Bretagne. En premier lieu, nous avons réuni le corpus des dalles ornées découvertes en contexte campaniforme ou Bronze et avons intégré celles issues de contextes probables et possibles. La moisson est plutôt maigre puisque ce sont seulement douze sépultures et un habitat qui ont livré des dalles en contexte certain du Campaniforme ou de l’âge du Bronze ancien, auxquels s’ajoutent onze cas plus incertains. Ces dalles ornées (à cupules ou à représentations figuratives) sont toutes en situation de réemploi selon des modalités variées. Les surfaces gravées sont généralement tournées vers l’extérieur mais aussi cachées vers l’intérieur des sépultures. Ces pierres décorées peuvent être réutilisées telles quelles, cassées ou réaménagées. En second lieu, la confrontation avec le corpus des dalles à cupules des sépultures néolithiques ne permet pas de dégager des types ou des agencements de cupules propres à l’âge du Bronze. On peut donc difficilement soutenir l’idée d’un développement de l’art des cupules à cette période en Bretagne ; ce qu’infirme d’ailleurs le nombre écrasant de dalles à cupules en contexte néolithique. Une large part de ces pierres ornées réutilisées dans les sépultures de l’âge du Bronze pourrait bien provenir d’affleurement à cupules ou de monuments néolithiques, comme l’attestent par ailleurs le réemploi de certaines représentations clairement néolithiques (figures anthropomorphes, haches emmanchées). Cependant, un lot de quatre dalles à cupules se distingue par leur perforation, inédite dans l’art mégalithique néolithique, et des figurations de cupules et de formes géométriques reliées entre elles, alors que les signes gravés néolithiques sont généralement placés côte à côte. Les auteurs proposent d’attribuer ce petit ensemble à l’âge du Bronze ancien, voire au Néolithique final. À cela s’ajoutent six petites dalles à cupules, découvertes sur l’habitat de Beg ar Loued comme dans le tumulus de Cruguel ; leur support modeste paraît être une originalité de l’âge du Bronze.

Travaux de recherche au cours de l’internat de pédiatrie : apprendre à publier tôt

Travaux de recherche au cours de l’internat de pédiatrie : apprendre à publier tôt

Recommandations pour la conduite et la publication de travaux de recherche en pédiatrie. Application aux Archives de Pédiatrie

Recommandations pour la conduite et la publication de travaux de recherche en pédiatrie. Application aux Archives de Pédiatrie

Rabelais’s Radical Farce: Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais by E. Bruce Hayes

more illuminating than littérature-monde en français. David Murphy compares and contrasts the manifesto with other recent French postcolonial manifestoes. The second section provides further contextualization. Forsdick and Lydie Moudileno separately place the manifesto in the context of debates on transnational/ postcolonial issues, French/Francophone studies, and local/global politics. Chris Bongie and Dominic Thomas each move outward from the manifesto to address two other debates that partially overlap with the littérature-monde one, Haitian/ Caribbean politics and French identity politics around writer Marie NDiaye. Thomas Spear argues that littérature-monde is a new concept only in the very small world of top Parisian publishing houses. Jane Hiddleston establishes that the manifesto’s humanistic ethos was articulated earlier and with much more sophistication by Césaire, Fanon, and Said, whom the authors of the manifesto ignore. The third and final section expands the contextualizing goal of the entire volume. Jean-Xavier Ridon links issues raised in the manifesto with earlier debates around exotic and travel literature. Jacqueline Dutton seeks to develop concrete criteria for what kinds of texts would fit the littérature-monde nomenclature through a case study of ‘migrant’ French works taking place in Australia, which she terms French-Australian literature. Jeanne Garane and Laura Reeck separately point out that the manifesto effectively excludes what would seem to be the most obvious example of littérature-monde, that is, banlieue or migrant literature. Michelle Keown demonstrates that the manifesto’s globalized French model is not relevant to Pacific Islander writers, whose Indigenist liberation politics align them more with Anglophone Pacific Islander writers than with French-language proponents of littérature-monde en français. For Keown, littératuremonde is more relevant to white (settler) writers, a point confirmed by Dutton in the Australian context. Both Garane and Keown point to the importance and complexity of the issue of translation in debates on littérature-monde. Michael Syrotinski contrasts the utopian tone of the manifesto with the pessimism of contemporary male African writers. Hiddleston and Syrotinski both favor the embodied texts of the authors they discuss over the idealism of the manifesto and call for ethical and dissident reading practices. Finally, Emily Apter argues in her afterword for the value of attending to untranslatability in literature and philosophy. Contributors to the volume include major voices in the field of Francophone postcolonial studies today, especially those based in North America and the United Kingdom. The book is presented as being the first in a new series, Francophone Postcolonial Studies, whose editorial board includes many of the contributors. This well-conceived volume augurs well for the series. San Diego State University Anne Donadey HAYES, E. BRUCE. Rabelais’s Radical Farce: Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7546-6518-2. Pp. 188. $99.95. On peut s’étonner qu’il n’y ait jamais encore eu d’enquête approfondie sur la nature et la fonction de la farce dans l’œuvre de Rabelais. Sans doute, au début du vingtième siècle, des érudits comme Gustave Cohen et Emmanuel Philipot s’étaientils penchés sur la présence importante du théâtre comique médiéval chez notre Reviews 571 Chinonais. Mais, encore récemment, Michel Jeanneret attirait notre attention sur cette curieuse carence alors que plusieurs centaines de farces existaient à l’époque. Nous avons maintenant réparé cet oubli grâce à ce nouvel ouvrage qui vient redonner à la farce sa place centrale dans les ‘mythologies pantagruéliques’. Comme l’indique Hayes dans son introduction, le but qu’il se propose n’est pas d’identifier les allusions au corpus farcesque médiéval mais plutôt d’examiner dans quelle mesure Rabelais a pu structurer son œuvre à partir des éléments pertinents qui définissent ce genre traditionnel. Tout en reconnaissant à quel point les travaux de Bakhtine ont transformé les études rabelaisiennes, Hayes prend ses distances par rapport à la théorie du ‘monde à l’envers’ et rejette l’idée de la farce comme ‘soupape de sécurité’ essentielle dans une société fortement hiérarchisée et étroitement soumise à l’autorité du sceptre et...

Le roman vietnamien francophone: orientalisme, occidentalisme et hybridité by Ching Selao

Roy shares Girard’s belief in the explanatory power of the concept of mimetic desire or mediated desire: we learn what to want by observing what others prize, as do the male victims of Freud’s Oedipus complex who desire their mother because they see their father desiring her (today, the increasing numbers of LGBT parents successfully raising ‘normal’ children who experience heterosexual desire suggest that both Freud’s and Girard’s views must be qualified). Of course, Girard’s concept of desire extends far beyond sexuality to other worldly goods such as wealth, power, and social status, as Pierre Bourdieu’s classic Distinction suggests. But Girard believes fictional characters can become free only through a religious revelation. Dostoevsky, his starting point, provides him with many apposite examples. Roy eventually finds Girard ‘too clear’ (41–75)–—in a word, reductive. He rereads Girard’s main proof texts—Don Quixote, Balzac, Flaubert’s three bourgeois novels, Proust, and the apparent counter-example of Valéry’s Monsieur Teste—to counterbalance Girard both with Mikhaïl Bakhtine, who emphasizes the freedom and indeterminacy of fictional characters, and also with a nuanced view of Henri Bergson’s theory of the comic. Roy explains that Bergson’s definition of comedy as ‘a mechanism stuck onto a living person’ works to explain why we laugh only because we perceive incongruity: the fool’s incorrigible repetition of a dysfunctional behavior together with the fool’s humanity. Roy’s ultimate model for understanding fiction is Milan Kundera, an excellent choice of a great writer who is also a great critic. One cannot begin to do justice to Roy’s judicious, wide-ranging, and incisive study in a brief review. Nearly every analysis of a critical or fictional work rewards the reader (he does not show us much new concerning Flaubert). His clear style makes him agreeable to read; his frequent teacherly recapitulations make his arguments easy to follow. His powers of synthesis are noteworthy, and he skillfully unfolds an ever-widening vision that begins by his appearing to be a disciple of Girard, and ends with his realization that the history of the novel is not a road toward a destination determined in advance, but a wandering path. In conclusion, he offers us a two-fold view. First he returns to Don Quixote to demonstrate how, despite Don Quixote’s deathbed conversion to common sense, Cervantes preserves the ambiguity that preserves the novel’s refreshing humor even long after his satiric targets—the knight-errant and Romances of Chivalry— have disappeared from our culture. Then Roy slyly concludes that the problem of excessive clarity is not peculiar to Girard, but to the genre of the essay in general: “On ne peut manier des concepts sans chercher à dissoudre des contradictions, et dès lors se voir obligé, face à celles qui résistent [... à] en être réduit à osciller soim ême entre les deux termes qui les constituent et, par ce mouvement même, à tourner sans cesse le dos à l’humour” (270). Michigan State University Laurence M. Porter SELAO, CHING. Le roman vietnamien francophone: orientalisme, occidentalisme et hybridité. Montréal: PU de Montréal, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7606-2222-7. Pp. 215. $34,95 Can. Née vers 1910, la littérature vietnamienne francophone demeure méconnue, malgré la présence de Franco-Vietnamiennes (Lefèvre, Lê, Moï) sur la scène 1274 FRENCH REVIEW 86.6 littéraire contemporaine. Depuis les travaux de Yaeger, pionnier des années 80, peu de chercheurs se sont penchés dessus. Notons plusieurs lignes directrices au travail de Selao. Elle se concentre sur l’étude de romans qui traitent du choc des cultures mais sont écrits par des auteurs vietnamiens, et non européens. Si elle reconnaît que les formations discursives sont liées à des contextes de colonisation, décolonisation et postcolonisation, pour elle, l’orientalisme et l’occidentalisme sont deux types de discours pétrifiants: elle remet en question les binarismes des discours successifs sur l’Autre, les oppositions qui “hantent toutes les visions du monde” (16). Ses analyses de romans démontrent que l’évolution des discours sur l’orientalisme , l’occidentalisme et l’hybridité n’est pas forc...

Été 70: The Plein-Air Exhibitions of Supports-Surfaces

In the summer of 1970, artists of the collective Supports-Surfaces installed ephemeral works across the French Mediterranean coastline, a prelude to their first Paris exhi-bition as a named group. Curated by Claude Viallat and Jacques Lepage, and entitled Intérieur/Extérieur, artworks were situated on beaches, hill towns, riverbeds and landscapes in the lower Alps. This article examines how this peripatetic exhibi-tion, and its subsequent re-installation in Travaux de l’Été 70 (1971) at the Jean Fournier Gallery, interrogated the conventional practice of painting by dismantling its material components, challenging its social and political ideology, and sanction-ing artistic autonomy.

Between Theory and Post-Theory; or, Slavoj Žižek in Film Studies and Out

Par une lecture minutieuse de son livre, The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski Between Theory and Post-Theory (2001), cet article défend la pertinence des travaux de Slavoj Žižek pour les études cinématographiques. Dans ce livre, Žižek, répond aux critiques adressées à la théorie du cinéma, particulièrement celles qu’on retrouve dans l’ouvrage dirigé par David Bordwell et Noël Carroll, Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996). En procédant de cette façon, Žižek contribue de façon significative à la théorie du cinéma en identifiant les erreurs des premières théories psychanalytiques du cinéma et en les corrigeant de façon à insister davantage sur les questions d’idéologie ou d’identité. La première partie de cet article montre comment une interprétation psychanalytique du cinéma peut ajouter à la théorie de l’idéologie et de la subjectivité alors que la seconde partie se concentre sur l’interprétation que Žižek fait des films de Kieslowsky qui sert de moyens pour défendre la Théorie (avec un T) contre la post-théorie. Pour Žižek, la scission des études cinématographiques est le symptôme d’une lutte des classes au sein même du discours intellectuel à propos de la question de l’idéologie.

E062 Remote fitting assistance with Neurelec Digisonic SP cochlear implant

E062 Remote fitting assistance with Neurelec Digisonic SP cochlear implant

Pierre Corneille: Le Cid ed. by Myrna Bell Rochester, Eileen M. Angelini

Touchant, ce récit a posteriori a fait l’objet d’un formidable travail de compilations de documents, témoignages et photos. Il est suivi de notes et illustrations, et offre même quelques sujets de discussions pour des travaux de classe. Pourtant, cette succession d’épreuves humaines douloureuses et pleines de courage aurait pu faire l’objet d’une narration plus détaillée, d’un commentaire plus développé. L’histoire d’amour inconditionnel qui unit Paul et Trudy, sur fond de guerre et de génocide, séduit avidement le lecteur... qui en redemande! Bucknell University (PA) Candice Nicolas ROCHESTER, MYRNA BELL, and EILEEN M. ANGELINI, eds. Pierre Corneille: Le Cid. Newburyport: Focus Student Edition, 2010. ISBN 978-1-58510-296-9. Pp. 191. $14.95. This volume is the fifth in a series of texts for French language students. It is written entirely in French, and just like its predecessors, it offers simple, yet well organized and very clear information. The introduction elaborates upon the author’s life and his work, gives a summary of each scene of Le Cid, and mentions the sources that inspired the play. The introduction also discusses the famous “Querelle du Cid” and consequently touches upon the rules of unités and bienséances of seventeenth-century theater. Finally it provides clues to identify the Cornelian hero and heroine, and seventeenth-century morality. Following the introduction, the Notes stylistiques present: (1) the alexandrine verse; (2) a few seventeenth-century usages including examples of classic theater vocabulary, tutoiement and vouvoiement, and the placement of object pronouns and negation; (3) a clarification on what figure de style is, including a list of such stylistic tools necessary to analyze Le Cid and an activity to practice what students have just learned; and (4) the indispensable lesson on the imperfect and pluperfect of the subjunctive. All of these sections incorporate specific examples from the actual play studied. The last two elements of notes before the play starts are a map of eleventh-century Spain and a historical timeline of the seventeenth century, placing the play in French and European history, in the history of French literature, and the literature of other European countries, as well as in Corneille’s life. Le Cid is then presented in its integrality, and is accompanied by excellent French-to-French linguistic and cultural notes. They enable the readers to understand a vocabulary that can be outdated, without having to refer to a FrenchEnglish dictionary and consequently having to leave the French immersion that this text offers. The cultural notes allow not only for the understanding of the text, but also of the time and culture in which it was written. The Examen du Cid in which Corneille defends the “irregularities” of his play can be found right after the end of the play. A number of activities are subsequently suggested: warm-up questions consisting of general questions allowing students to think of particular themes related to the play (What is courage? How can you create the portrait of someone who does not brag or brags very little? etc.), multiple choice questions , with the answers given in the back of the book, reading comprehension and essay/discussion questions, and further exploration questions allowing the understanding of Corneille’s message(s) to the reader and the application of the themes found in Le Cid to our society and culture. Reviews 635 A selected bibliography and filmography is also supplied, listing for example the reference editions of Corneille’s work, a selection of books and articles about Corneille and his work, works on the seventeenth century, works on French literature in general, possible sources for the play, other important authors and their works of the seventeenth century, as well as a list of films and recordings of Corneille’s plays and other works, including operas and dance, which deal with seventeenth-century France, the addresses of companies that sell these recordings in the USA, and finally a few Web sites concerned with seventeenth century French theater, Corneille, his life, and his work. To conclude, the volume ends with a list of useful vocabulary to talk about theater plays, pictorial credits, acknowledgments, and...

Mapping rework causes and effects using artificial neural networks

Rework can have adverse effects on the performance and productivity of construction projects. Techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN) are widely used for prediction and classification problems and thus can be used to map the causes and effects of rework. The traditional back propagation neural network and general regression neural network data from 112 Hong Kong construction projects are used to examine the influence of rework causes on the various project performance indicators such as cost overrun, time overrun, and contractual claims. The results from this research could be used to develop forecasting systems and appropriate intelligent decision support frameworks for enhancing performance in construction projects. Furthermore, analysis of the neural network results indicates that the general regression neural network architecture is better suited for modelling rework causes and their impacts on project performance. Les travaux de reprise peuvent avoir des effets néfastes sur les performances et la productivité dans les projets de construction. Des techniques comme les réseaux neuronaux artificiels (AAN) sont largement utilisés pour résoudre les problèmes de prévision et de classification et peuvent donc servir à cartographier les causes et les effets des travaux de reprise. Les données de réseaux neuronaux classiques à rétropropagation et les données de réseaux neuronaux à régression générale provenant de 112 projets de construction à Hong Kong sont utilisées pour examiner l'influence des travaux de reprise sur les divers indicateurs de performances de projets, comme les dépassements de coûts, les dépassements de délais et les réclamations contractuelles. Les résultats de cette recherche pourraient servir à développer des systèmes de prévision et des cadres appropriés et intelligents de soutien à la décision pour améliorer les performances de projets de construction. En outre, l'analyse des résultats de réseaux neuronaux indique que l'architecture du réseau neuronal à régression générale convient mieux à la modélisation des causes des travaux de reprise et à leurs conséquences sur les performances des projets. Mots cle´s: projet de construction, dépassement des coûts, productivité, performances de projets, travaux de reprise, dépassement des délais

Acoustic characteristics of Swedish dorsal fricatives

The identity of [“hooktop heng”], the “voiceless dorso-palatal/velar fricative” or “simultaneous” [“esh”] and [x], is controversial (IPA 2009: 140, 203). The present study attempts to acoustically differentiate [“esh”], [x], and (non-labialized) [“hooktop heng”]. A female speaker of Stockholm Swedish produced VCV nonsense words with balanced V and alternating C. Windowed spectra were obtained and averaged at various locations in the fricatives. [“esh”] can be reliably differentiated from [x] and [“hooktop heng”] based on center of gravity measures in the middle of the fricative. However, center of gravity differences between [x] and [“hooktop heng”] are not revealing, confirming Lindblad's x-ray tracings (1980: 89). The most robust acoustic difference between the two dorsal fricatives is the presence of erratic, high-amplitude disturbances during [x]. These may be attributed to sudden explosions of saliva and ephemeral contact with the uvula, more likely for slightly-retracted [x] than for [“hooktop heng”]. It seems unlikely that [“hooktop heng”] is produced with a second simultaneous constriction that is of acoustic relevance. International Phonetic Association. 1999. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lindblad, P. 1980. Svenskans sje- och tje-ljud i ett Allmänfonetisk perspektiv. Travaux de l'Institut de linguistique de Lund 16. Lund: LiberLäromedel/Gleerup.

Quelques aspects méconnus de la personne et de l'œuvre de Charles Gerhardt (1816-1856)

Charles Gerhardt's life and work is rather well-known thanks to Grimaux and Tiffeneau. His reform of the equivalents, his classification, his obtention of organic acid anhydrids and his famous Treatise of Organic Chemistry. His active collaboration to the Revue scientifique et industrielle du Docteur Quesneville, the creation of his Comptes-Rendus des Travaux de Chimie. Are not so often quoted. Thanks to his translations and reviews, German chemical advancements became well known in France Gerhardt was Liebig's translator for almost all his life, even through the fluctuations of their personal relation. He was the representative of German chemistry in France. With Auguste Laurent, with whom he is constantly associated, things need to be examined precisely. Laurent and Gerhardt, friends at a moment, cannot be confounded. Though they worked together for some years, they were not engaged in a similar project. Besides an experimentalist, Laurent was essentially a theorician of chemistry, whereas Gerhardt refused to think about atoms and arrangements. Formulas have to describe relations between facts, in no case anything about arrangements. For posterity however, Gerhardt will be, on the same level as Laurent, the creator of modern chemistry doctrines.

Multimedia interactive services automation based on content indexing

On fixed or mobile television (TV), interactive services embedded in multimedia are key technologies as they forge links among the media, telecom, and services worlds. In a context where content evolves rapidly, the challenge is to be able to propose value-added services on live programs in real time. In this paper, we propose a solution that automates the generation of interactive TV applications, providing TV viewers with additional content in context with the original TV program. The proposed architecture is based on plug-in multimedia analyzers which generate a contextual description of the media and on an interactive scene generator to dynamically create related interactive scenes. Principles, architecture, implementation, and experiments are described; they are based on an application case related to interactive services added to a session of a French parliament TV program like “Les travaux de l'Assemblée Nationale” on the French television channel La Chaine Parlementaire (LCP).

Agentivité : se vivre ou se juger agent ?

Composante du self, l’agentivité se définit par le fait de se vivre auteur de nos propres actions. Dans la schizophrénie, les idées d’influence, l’automatisme mental et les hallucinations acoustico-verbales seraient dus à un défaut d’agentivité. Frith a suggéré que l’agentivité reposait sur le système automatique de contrôle de l’action (modèles internes). Selon lui, une mauvaise prédiction de celle-ci, ne correspondant pas à l’action désirée, pourrait être à l’origine d’un trouble de l’agentivité. Les travaux de l’équipe de Jeannerod sur les jugements d’attribution ont nuancé cette théorie en avançant que l’agentivité impliquait également des processus conscients. Dernièrement, les travaux de l’équipe de Frith ont fait suggérer que ce serait l’atténuation du ressenti sensoriel, spécifique de nos propres actions, qui rendrait leur vécu différent de celles d’autrui. Le traitement du contexte social et des conséquences sensorielles secondaires à l’action serait également impliqué. L’évolution du concept d’agentivité s’explique par les différentes méthodologies employées. Deux éléments, en lien avec l’utilisation expérimentale de jugements d’attribution, sont source d’ambiguïtés: la définition même de l’agentivité et l’absence de réfutation des théories alternatives. Des études, permettant de préciser et d’explorer ces deux points, seraient nécessaires pour une meilleure compréhension de la physiopathologie de la schizophrénie. Experiencing oneself as the author of an action defines the sense of agency, which is a component of the self. A deficit affecting this process is thought to cause the principle symptoms characterizing schizophrenia - e.g. delusions of control and auditive hallucinations would exist because patients do not experience themselves as the author of their own actions. To explore this specific problem of the sense of agency in schizophrenia, Frith et al. collected a serie of experimental data that lead them to propose that the sense of agency relied on the automatic motor system, processes that enable the predictive adjustment of action. An impairment in these processes (called « internal models » in the literature) would lead to the problem of dissociation between our own actions and those performed by others. More specifically, the problem would lay in the comparison between the predicted state and the desired state (figure 1) . Jeannerod et al. from Lyon used attribution judgements that suggested that the sense of agency would not depend uniquely on the motor mechanisms but would also involve conscious processes. Recently, Frith et al. have published new data that integrates both preceding models. According to this theory, the sense of agency would depend on the processes involved in the predictive control of action but at a conscious level : the attenuation of the sensory feedback, specific of our own actions. This attenuation would depend on the accuracy of comparison between the predicted state and the actual state. Moreover, the sense of agency would also imply the management of social frame, which normally gives the means to cope with human interaction. The conception of the sense of agency has greatly evolved over the years, mainly because of the various experimental methods employed. The consequences of this are the various theoretical interpretations given to the characteristics of the sense of agency. They can be explained in two main points : a non-unified definition of the sense of agency and an absence of experimental data testing alternative interpretations. First, protocols using attribution judgements have proven to be useful to gain better understanding of the attribution mechanism in schizophrenia. However, findings obtained with these judgments have often been used to conclude on deficits of the sense of agency in schizophrenia, whereas the sense of agency is only a sub component of these judgements. More work must be conducted in order to show that generalization from judgements to self-agency is possible. Secondly, data have not been collected in order to go against the accepted proposition that the sense of agency (1) implies conscious processes, comes (2) secondary to action execution because based on sensory attenuation and (3) has subjective consequences only. Further studies would be useful to explore these points, so as to improve our understanding of the physiopathologyogy of schizophrenia.

Apport actuel des neurosciences à travers une nouvelle lecture clinique du trouble obsessionnel compulsif

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), that affects 2 to 3% of the general population, is characterized by recurrent intrusive thoughts and repetitive, time-consuming behaviors. It is a severely incapacitating mental illness that causes profound impairment in psychosocial functioning and quality of life. Although the physiopathology of OCD is still far from resolved, the existence of a biological basis for OCD is now clearly established and should be interpreted from phenomenological considerations, on the one hand, and in the light of our increasing knowledge of the physiology of cortico-subcortical functional loops, on the other. In a phenomenological view, the heart of the obsessional process is the subject's underlying impression that "something is wrong". In other words, obsessions may be thought of as the permanent perception of a mistake and/or error in certain behavioral situations. Compulsions occur as behavioral responses aimed at relieving the tensions or anxiety generated by the situation. If obtained, this relief may be felt to be a form of reward. Nevertheless, it is only transient, thereby creating a feeling of considerable anxiety. This contributes to immediately reproducing the behavior in a cyclic manner, on the basis of an internal motivational state through an expectation of the reward. Therefore, it can be assumed that several malfunctioning processes are altered within the OCD: 1) error recognition; and, 2) emotion and motivation. This suggests that there is a dysfunction of the brain regions mediating these cognitive and emotional functions. Experimental neurophysiology in laboratory animals indicates the central role of the fronto-subcortical circuits originating in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, respectively. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventromedial areas are involved in appraisal of the emotional and motivational values of environmental information, and in integrating the subject's prior experience, which is crucial in decision-making. The OFC also contributes to the selection, comparison and judgment of stimuli and error detection. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is comprised of 1) a ventral or affective region that could keep attention on the internal emotional and motivational status and regulation of autonomic responses, and 2) a dorsal and cognitive region that serves a wide range of functions including attention, working memory, error detection, conflict monitoring, response selection, and anticipation of incoming information. Ventral striatum, that is intimately connected to the OFC and ACC, participates in the preparation, initiation and execution of behavioral responses oriented toward reward delivery following the cognitive and emotional integration of behaviorally relevant information at the cortical level. Functional imaging research in humans has shown an increased functional activity in the OFC, ACC, head of the caudate nucleus and thalamus in OCD patients. These functional abnormalities have been found in basal conditions and during provocation tests. Moreover, the therapeutic efficacy of antidepressants with preponderant serotonin-reuptake inhibiting properties and cognitive-behavioral therapies seems to be associated with a progressive reduction in activity of the OFC, ACC and the caudate nucleus. Therefore, these observations are suggestive of the responsibility of 5HT neurotransmission in the dysfunction of the frontal-subcortical loops that emanate from the OFC and ACC. However, several lines of research suggest that the dopamine system, with which 5HT interacts, may play a major role in the expression of OC symptoms. In conclusion, it seems that in OCD there is a dysfunction of the brain regions that belong to the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate loops in view of evidence obtained from separate and complementary approaches.