Law and the practise of principle in diverse societies

Projecte de recerca elaborat a partir d’una estada a la London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom, entre 2007 i 2009. L’objecte principal del projecte ha estat analitzar les implicacions jurídico-polítiques i institucionals d’una teoria de la justícia i la igualtat liberals aplicada a societats multiculturals amb un marcat predomini de la diversitat cultural. L’anàlisi desenvolupa una línia d'investigació interdisciplinar - entre el dret i la teoria política - iniciada en una tesis doctoral sobre multiculturalisme i drets de les minories culturals (UPF, 2000) que va culminar en la publicació de Group Rights as Human Rights (Springer, 2006). La recerca adopta com a punt de partida les conclusions de l'esmentada obra, en especial, la rellevància del reconeixement de drets col•lectius; tanmateix, el tipus de qüestions plantejades, l’enfoc i la metodologia emprades són substancialment diferents. En concret, s'adrecen preguntes específiques sobre el model i aspiracions del constitucionalisme democràtic i el paper del dret en contextos multiculturals. També s’atorga un pes central a la dimensió institucional dels models de gestió de la diversitat que s’analitzen, prioritzant un enfocament comparatiu a partir de l’estudi de controvèrsies concretes. L’objectiu és superar algunes limitacions importants de la literatura actual, com ara la tendència a examinar en abstracte la compatibilitat de determinades demandes amb el constitucionalisme democràtic, sense abordar el funcionament d'estratègies de gestió de la diversitat cultural emprades en contextos concrets. Els treballs producte d'aquest projecte articulen les línies bàsiques d’un model pluralista, basat en principis més que en regles, que desafia els plantejaments dominants actualment. Aquest model es caracteritza pel compromís amb la legitimitat i igualtat comparatives, rebutjant el paternalisme i les visions liberals típiques sobre el paper de la regulació. La presumpció de l’“standing” moral dels grups identitaris és fonamental per tal de considerar-los interlocutors vàlids amb interessos genuïns. També s’argumenta que la integració social en contextos multiculturals no depèn tant de l’eliminació del conflicte sinó, sobre tot, d’una gestió eficient que eviti abusos de poder sistemàtics. El model defensa el rol del dret en la institucionalització del diàleg intercultural, però admet que el diàleg no necessàriament condueix a l’acord o a una estructura reguladora coherent i uniforme. Les aspiracions del ordre jurídic pluralista són més modestes: afavorir la negociació i resolució en cada conflicte, malgrat la persistència de la fragmentació i la provisionalitat dels acords. La manca d'un marc regulador comú esdevé una virtut en la mesura que permet la interacció de diferents subordres; una interacció governada per una multiplicitat de regles no necessàriament harmòniques. Els avantatges i problemes d’aquest model s'analitzen a partir de l'anàlisi de l’estructura fragmentària de l'ordre jurídic internacional i del règim Europeu de drets humans.

A Happy and a Healthy 2012

Many of us start the New Year with the best of intentions to lose weight, get fitter and eat well. It's that sense of new possibilities and fresh beginnings that can also help motivate changes in lifestyle. The Public Health Agency advises that making small changes to your own and your family's lifestyle can have a significant impact on improving overall health. Taking time to reflect, and making a plan, can all help. Choosing healthier food and increasing your physical activity will help maintain a healthy weight and prevent unwanted weight gain, which can have serious implications for a person's physical and mental health as it is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, respiratory problems, joint pain and depression.What can I do to improve my health?Make 1 or 2 small changes at a time - don't try to change your lifestyle radically or all at once as you're more likely to fail. Small changes in what you eat, or how active you are, are easier to make and more likely to be maintained.Mary Black, Assistant Director of Health and Wellbeing Improvement, PHA, said: "The New Year brings a time when many people reflect on their lives and very often eating more healthily is one of things they identify for change. I recommend setting a couple of small, achievable targets that can then be continued in the long term, for example:Eat breakfast everyday;Eat an extra portion of vegetables every day;Swap deep fried chips for oven chips;Choose fruit for between-meal snacks instead of a biscuit or bun;Begin to enjoy a hot drink on its own without feeling the need to have something sweet at the same time.Be active. Any sort of activity will be good for you. Think about how you can be more active each day. This doesn't have to involve running a marathon or joining a gym. Some suggestions include:· Go for walks with the children/family or friends. It's free! Walk on your lunch break;· Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator;· Park further away and walk to work/school;· Get off the bus a stop earlier and walk the rest;· Minimise the amount of time you are sitting down - take breaks from the computer at work or watching TV at home and walk around;· Children and adults can build up to the recommended daily activity levels in 10 minute sessions rather than doing it all in one session.Adults need at least 30 minutes, five days a week of moderate physical activity and children need 60 minutes of physical activity every day.Mary continued "It's easy for people to get into the habit of spending their spare time sitting down - watching TV, playing computer games, listening to their MP3 players - but being active will help you maintain a healthy weight and generally make you feel better. It can also improve your mood, reduce anxiety and protect against depression."It is what you do most of the time that really matters, so if you eat too much or don't exercise on any one day, don't worry too much - just accept it and get back to your new way of eating and being more active as soon as possible.

How Can Nanotechnology Help to Repair the Body? Advances in Cardiac, Skin, Bone, Cartilage and Nerve Tissue Regeneration

Nanotechnologists have become involved in regenerative medicine via creation of biomaterials and nanostructures with potential clinical implications. Their aim is to develop systems that can mimic, reinforce or even create in vivo tissue repair strategies. In fact, in the last decade, important advances in the field of tissue engineering, cell therapy and cell delivery have already been achieved. In this review, we will delve into the latest research advances and discuss whether cell and/or tissue repair devices are a possibility. Focusing on the application of nanotechnology in tissue engineering research, this review highlights recent advances in the application of nano-engineered scaffolds designed to replace or restore the followed tissues: (i) skin; (ii) cartilage; (iii) bone; (iv) nerve; and (v) cardiac.

How to prevent overdiagnosis

Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of an abnormality that is not associated with a substantial health hazard and that patients have no benefit to be aware of. It is neither a misdiagnosis (diagnostic error), nor a false positive result (positive test in the absence of a real abnormality). It mainly results from screening, use of increasingly sensitive diagnostic tests, incidental findings on routine examinations, and widening diagnostic criteria to define a condition requiring an intervention. The blurring boundaries between risk and disease, physicians' fear of missing a diagnosis and patients' need for reassurance are further causes of overdiagnosis. Overdiagnosis often implies procedures to confirm or exclude the presence of the condition and is by definition associated with useless treatments and interventions, generating harm and costs without any benefit. Overdiagnosis also diverts healthcare professionals from caring about other health issues. Preventing overdiagnosis requires increasing awareness of healthcare professionals and patients about its occurrence, the avoidance of unnecessary and untargeted diagnostic tests, and the avoidance of screening without demonstrated benefits. Furthermore, accounting systematically for the harms and benefits of screening and diagnostic tests and determining risk factor thresholds based on the expected absolute risk reduction would also help prevent overdiagnosis.

The evolution of unicoloniality in ant societies : recognition, dispersal and population genetic structure

Introduction Societies of ants, bees, wasps and termites dominate many terrestrial ecosystems (Wilson 1971). Their evolutionary and ecological success is based upon the regulation of internal conflicts (e.g. Ratnieks et al. 2006), control of diseases (e.g. Schmid-Hempel 1998) and individual skills and collective intelligence in resource acquisition, nest building and defence (e.g. Camazine 2001). Individuals in social species can pass on their genes not only directly trough their own offspring, but also indirectly by favouring the reproduction of relatives. The inclusive fitness theory of Hamilton (1963; 1964) provides a powerful explanation for the evolution of reproductive altruism and cooperation in groups with related individuals. The same theory also led to the realization that insect societies are subject to internal conflicts over reproduction. Relatedness of less-than-one is not sufficient to eliminate all incentive for individual selfishness. This would indeed require a relatedness of one, as found among cells of an organism (Hardin 1968; Keller 1999). The challenge for evolutionary biology is to understand how groups can prevent or reduce the selfish exploitation of resources by group members, and how societies with low relatedness are maintained. In social insects the evolutionary shift from single- to multiple queens colonies modified the relatedness structure, the dispersal, and the mode of colony founding (e.g. (Crozier & Pamilo 1996). In ants, the most common, and presumably ancestral mode of reproduction is the emission of winged males and females, which found a new colony independently after mating and dispersal flights (Hölldobler & Wilson 1990). The alternative reproductive tactic for ant queens in multiple-queen colonies (polygyne) is to seek to be re-accepted in their natal colonies, where they may remain as additional reproductives or subsequently disperse on foot with part of the colony (budding) (Bourke & Franks 1995; Crozier & Pamilo 1996; Hölldobler & Wilson 1990). Such ant colonies can contain up to several hundred reproductive queens with an even more numerous workforce (Cherix 1980; Cherix 1983). As a consequence in polygynous ants the relatedness among nestmates is very low, and workers raise brood of queens to which they are only distantly related (Crozier & Pamilo 1996; Queller & Strassmann 1998). Therefore workers could increase their inclusive fitness by preferentially caring for their closest relatives and discriminate against less related or foreign individuals (Keller 1997; Queller & Strassmann 2002; Tarpy et al. 2004). However, the bulk of the evidence suggests that social insects do not behave nepotistically, probably because of the costs entailed by decreased colony efficiency or discrimination errors (Keller 1997). Recently, the consensus that nepotistic behaviour does not occur in insect colonies was challenged by a study in the ant Formica fusca (Hannonen & Sundström 2003b) showing that the reproductive share of queens more closely related to workers increases during brood development. However, this pattern can be explained either by nepotism with workers preferentially rearing the brood of more closely related queens or intrinsic differences in the viability of eggs laid by queens. In the first chapter, we designed an experiment to disentangle nepotism and differences in brood viability. We tested if workers prefer to rear their kin when given the choice between highly related and unrelated brood in the ant F. exsecta. We also looked for differences in egg viability among queens and simulated if such differences in egg viability may mistakenly lead to the conclusion that workers behave nepotistically. The acceptance of queens in polygnous ants raises the question whether the varying degree of relatedness affects their share in reproduction. In such colonies workers should favour nestmate queens over foreign queens. Numerous studies have investigated reproductive skew and partitioning of reproduction among queens (Bourke et al. 1997; Fournier et al. 2004; Fournier & Keller 2001; Hammond et al. 2006; Hannonen & Sundström 2003a; Heinze et al. 2001; Kümmerli & Keller 2007; Langer et al. 2004; Pamilo & Seppä 1994; Ross 1988; Ross 1993; Rüppell et al. 2002), yet almost no information is available on whether differences among queens in their relatedness to other colony members affects their share in reproduction. Such data are necessary to compare the relative reproductive success of dispersing and non-dispersing individuals. Moreover, information on whether there is a difference in reproductive success between resident and dispersing queens is also important for our understanding of the genetic structure of ant colonies and the dynamics of within group conflicts. In chapter two, we created single-queen colonies and then introduced a foreign queens originating from another colony kept under similar conditions in order to estimate the rate of queen acceptance into foreign established colonies, and to quantify the reproductive share of resident and introduced queens. An increasing number of studies have investigated the discrimination ability between ant workers (e.g. Holzer et al. 2006; Pedersen et al. 2006), but few have addressed the recognition and discrimination behaviour of workers towards reproductive individuals entering colonies (Bennett 1988; Brown et al. 2003; Evans 1996; Fortelius et al. 1993; Kikuchi et al. 2007; Rosengren & Pamilo 1986; Stuart et al. 1993; Sundström 1997; Vásquez & Silverman in press). These studies are important, because accepting new queens will generally have a large impact on colony kin structure and inclusive fitness of workers (Heinze & Keller 2000). In chapter three, we examined whether resident workers reject young foreign queens that enter into their nest. We introduced mated queens into their natal nest, a foreign-female producing nest, or a foreign male-producing nest and measured their survival. In addition, we also introduced young virgin and mated queens into their natal nest to examine whether the mating status of the queens influences their survival and acceptance by workers. On top of polgyny, some ant species have evolved an extraordinary social organization called 'unicoloniality' (Hölldobler & Wilson 1977; Pedersen et al. 2006). In unicolonial ants, intercolony borders are absent and workers and queens mix among the physically separated nests, such that nests form one large supercolony. Super-colonies can become very large, so that direct cooperative interactions are impossible between individuals of distant nests. Unicoloniality is an evolutionary paradox and a potential problem for kin selection theory because the mixing of queens and workers between nests leads to extremely low relatedness among nestmates (Bourke & Franks 1995; Crozier & Pamilo 1996; Keller 1995). A better understanding of the evolution and maintenance of unicoloniality requests detailed information on the discrimination behavior, dispersal, population structure, and the scale of competition. Cryptic genetic population structure may provide important information on the relevant scale to be considered when measuring relatedness and the role of kin selection. Theoretical studies have shown that relatedness should be measured at the level of the `economic neighborhood', which is the scale at which intraspecific competition generally takes place (Griffin & West 2002; Kelly 1994; Queller 1994; Taylor 1992). In chapter four, we conducted alarge-scale study to determine whether the unicolonial ant Formica paralugubris forms populations that are organised in discrete supercolonies or whether there is a continuous gradation in the level of aggression that may correlate with genetic isolation by distance and/or spatial distance between nests. In chapter five, we investigated the fine-scale population structure in three populations of F. paralugubris. We have developed mitochondria) markers, which together with the nuclear markers allowed us to detect cryptic genetic clusters of nests, to obtain more precise information on the genetic differentiation within populations, and to separate male and female gene flow. These new data provide important information on the scale to be considered when measuring relatedness in native unicolonial populations.

The underestimation of compliance to direct help requests explained by adaptive sampling

Helping behavior is any intentional behavior that benefits another living being or group (Hogg & Vaughan, 2010). People tend to underestimate the probability that others will comply with their direct requests for help (Flynn & Lake, 2008). This implies that when they need help, they will assess the probability of getting it (De Paulo, 1982, cited in Flynn & Lake, 2008) and then they will tend to estimate one that is actually lower than the real chance, so they may not even consider worth asking for it. Existing explanations for this phenomenon attribute it to a mistaken cost computation by the help seeker, who will emphasize the instrumental cost of “saying yes”, ignoring that the potential helper also needs to take into account the social cost of saying “no”. And the truth is that, especially in face-to-face interactions, the discomfort caused by refusing to help can be very high. In short, help seekers tend to fail to realize that it might be more costly to refuse to comply with a help request rather than accepting. A similar effect has been observed when estimating trustworthiness of people. Fetchenhauer and Dunning (2010) showed that people also tend to underestimate it. This bias is reduced when, instead of asymmetric feedback (getting feedback only when deciding to trust the other person), symmetric feedback (always given) was provided. This cause could as well be applicable to help seeking as people only receive feedback when they actually make their request but not otherwise. Fazio, Shook, and Eiser (2004) studied something that could be reinforcing these outcomes: Learning asymmetries. By means of a computer game called BeanFest, they showed that people learn better about negatively valenced objects (beans in this case) than about positively valenced ones. This learning asymmetry esteemed from “information gain being contingent on approach behavior” (p. 293), which could be identified with what Fetchenhauer and Dunning mention as ‘asymmetric feedback’, and hence also with help requests. Fazio et al. also found a generalization asymmetry in favor of negative attitudes versus positive ones. They attributed it to a negativity bias that “weights resemblance to a known negative more heavily than resemblance to a positive” (p. 300). Applied to help seeking scenarios, this would mean that when facing an unknown situation, people would tend to generalize and infer that is more likely that they get a negative rather than a positive outcome from it, so, along with what it was said before, people will be more inclined to think that they will get a “no” when requesting help. Denrell and Le Mens (2011) present a different perspective when trying to explain judgment biases in general. They deviate from the classical inappropriate information processing (depicted among other by Fiske & Taylor, 2007, and Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) and explain this in terms of ‘adaptive sampling’. Adaptive sampling is a sampling mechanism in which the selection of sample items is conditioned by the values of the variable of interest previously observed (Thompson, 2011). Sampling adaptively allows individuals to safeguard themselves from experiences they went through once and turned out to lay negative outcomes. However, it also prevents them from giving a second chance to those experiences to get an updated outcome that could maybe turn into a positive one, a more positive one, or just one that regresses to the mean, whatever direction that implies. That, as Denrell and Le Mens (2011) explained, makes sense: If you go to a restaurant, and you did not like the food, you do not choose that restaurant again. This is what we think could be happening when asking for help: When we get a “no”, we stop asking. And here, we want to provide a complementary explanation for the underestimation of the probability that others comply with our direct help requests based on adaptive sampling. First, we will develop and explain a model that represents the theory. Later on, we will test it empirically by means of experiments, and will elaborate on the analysis of its results.

Once and for all - How people change strategy to ignore irrelevant information in visual tasks

Ignoring irrelevant visual information aids efficient interaction with task environments. We studied how people, after practice, start to ignore the irrelevant aspects of stimuli. For this we focused on how information reduction transfers to rarely practised and novel stimuli. In Experiment 1, we compared competing mathematical models on how people cease to fixate on irrelevant parts of stimuli. Information reduction occurred at the same rate for frequent, infrequent, and novel stimuli. Once acquired with some stimuli, it was applied to all. In Experiment 2, simplification of task processing also occurred in a once-for-all manner when spatial regularities were ruled out so that people could not rely on learning which screen position is irrelevant. Apparently, changes in eye movements were an effect of a once-for-all strategy change rather than a cause of it. Overall, the results suggest that participants incidentally acquired knowledge about regularities in the task material and then decided to voluntarily apply it for efficient task processing. Such decisions should be incorporated into accounts of information reduction and other theories of strategy change in skill acquisition.

Sex ratio bias, male aggression, and population collapse in lizards.

The adult sex ratio (ASR) is a key parameter of the demography of human and other animal populations, yet the causes of variation in ASR, how individuals respond to this variation, and how their response feeds back into population dynamics remain poorly understood. A prevalent hypothesis is that ASR is regulated by intrasexual competition, which would cause more mortality or emigration in the sex of increasing frequency. Our experimental manipulation of populations of the common lizard (Lacerta vivipara) shows the opposite effect. Male mortality and emigration are not higher under male-biased ASR. Rather, an excess of adult males begets aggression toward adult females, whose survival and fecundity drop, along with their emigration rate. The ensuing prediction that adult male skew should be amplified and total population size should decline is supported by long-term data. Numerical projections show that this amplifying effect causes a major risk of population extinction. In general, such an "evolutionary trap" toward extinction threatens populations in which there is a substantial mating cost for females, and environmental changes or management practices skew the ASR toward males.

How to get rid of a pathobiontic bacterium from the stomach mucosa : role of inflammatory monocytes and IL-22 in the vaccine-induced reduction of helicobacter infection

Helicobacter pylori is a bacterium colonizing the human stomach. To prevent or cure this potentially detrimental infection, vaccination might be a suitable alternative to antibiotic therapies. Recently, a study has demonstrated that a vaccine efficiently prevented H pylori infection in human. However, the mechanisms leading to protection remain elusive. In mice, the vaccine-induced protective response relies on CD4+ T cells and especially on Thl7 response. Nevertheless, the factors mediating the reduction of H pylori infection are not fully characterized. Hence, the aim of my thesis was to characterize the factors associated with the Thl7 response. In the context of the vaccine-induced reduction of Helicobacter infection, I first focused on the role of inflammatory monocytes. I showed that CDllb+Ly6CLOW inflammatory monocytes accumulated in the stomach of vaccinated mice in association with the reduction of Helicobacter infection. Remarkably, the depletion of inflammatory monocytes delayed the vaccine-induced protective response. Concerning the role of these cells, I demonstrated that inflammatory monocytes extracted from the stomach of vaccinated mice produced iNOS and killed H pylori in vitro. In a next step, I evaluated the role of IL-22 during the vaccine-induced response. IL-22, which is linked to the Thl7 response, increases innate defense mechanisms of epithelial cells. I demonstrated that IL-22 produced by antigen- specific Thl7 was increased in the stomach of vaccinated mice during the protective response. Interestingly, neutralization of IL-22 was associated with an impaired vaccine-induced protective response. Then, I demonstrated that IL-22 induced antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) secretion by epithelial cells. These AMPs killed H pylori in vitro. In conclusion, I showed that both inflammatory monocytes and IL-22 participated to the vaccine induced reduction of Helicobacter infection. In addition, I demonstrated that the epithelium along with inflammation induced by Thl7 response is a critical factor mediating reduction of Helicobacter infection.

Managing the crises : how did local governments react to the financial crisis in 2008 and what explains the differences ? The case of Swiss municipalities

Swiss municipalities are, to a large extent, responsible for their financial resources. Since these resources primarily depend on income and property taxes from individuals and enterprises, municipality budgets are likely to be directly affected by the current crisis in the financial sector and the economy. This article investigates how municipalities perceived this threat and how they reacted to it. In a nationwide survey conducted at the end of 2009 in all 2596 Swiss municipalities, we asked local secretaries which measures had been launched in order to cope with expected losses in tax income and a possible increase in welfare spending. Did the municipalities rely on Keynesian measures increasing public spending and accepting greater deficits, or did they try to avoid further deficits by using austerity measures and a withdrawal of planned investments? Our results show that only a few municipalities - mainly the bigger ones - expected to be greatly affected by the crisis. Their reactions, however, did not reveal any clear patterns that theory would lead one to expect. Preferences for austerity measures and deficit spending become visible but many municipalities took measures from both theories. The strongest explanatory factors for determining how/why municipalities react are: the municipality's level of affectedness followed by whether or not the municipality belongs to the French-speaking part of the country. Size also has an impact, whereas the strength of the Social Democrat party is negligible. Explaining what kind of measures municipalities are likely to take is more difficult. However, the more a municipality is affected, the more likely it is to stick to austerity measures.

Nichesourcing The Uralic Languages For The Benefit Of Linguistic Research And Lingual Societies

The emerging technologies have recently challenged the libraries to reconsider their role as a mere mediator between the collections, researchers, and wider audiences (Sula, 2013), and libraries, especially the nationwide institutions like national libraries, haven’t always managed to face the challenge (Nygren et al., 2014). In the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages, the National Library of Finland has become a node that connects the partners to interplay and work for shared goals and objectives. In this paper, I will be drawing a picture of the crowdsourcing methods that have been established during the project to support both linguistic research and lingual diversity. The National Library of Finland has been executing the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages since 2012. The project seeks to digitize and publish approximately 1,200 monograph titles and more than 100 newspapers titles in various, and in some cases endangered Uralic languages. Once the digitization has been completed in 2015, the Fenno-Ugrica online collection will consist of 110,000 monograph pages and around 90,000 newspaper pages to which all users will have open access regardless of their place of residence. The majority of the digitized literature was originally published in the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union, and it was the genesis and consolidation period of literary languages. This was the era when many Uralic languages were converted into media of popular education, enlightenment, and dissemination of information pertinent to the developing political agenda of the Soviet state. The ‘deluge’ of popular literature in the 1920s to 1930s suddenly challenged the lexical orthographic norms of the limited ecclesiastical publications from the 1880s onward. Newspapers were now written in orthographies and in word forms that the locals would understand. Textbooks were written to address the separate needs of both adults and children. New concepts were introduced in the language. This was the beginning of a renaissance and period of enlightenment (Rueter, 2013). The linguistically oriented population can also find writings to their delight, especially lexical items specific to a given publication, and orthographically documented specifics of phonetics. The project is financially supported by the Kone Foundation in Helsinki and is part of the Foundation’s Language Programme. One of the key objectives of the Kone Foundation Language Programme is to support a culture of openness and interaction in linguistic research, but also to promote citizen science as a tool for the participation of the language community in research. In addition to sharing this aspiration, our objective within the Language Programme is to make sure that old and new corpora in Uralic languages are made available for the open and interactive use of the academic community as well as the language societies. Wordlists are available in 17 languages, but without tokenization, lemmatization, and so on. This approach was verified with the scholars, and we consider the wordlists as raw data for linguists. Our data is used for creating the morphological analyzers and online dictionaries at the Helsinki and Tromsø Universities, for instance. In order to reach the targets, we will produce not only the digitized materials but also their development tools for supporting linguistic research and citizen science. The Digitization Project of Kindred Languages is thus linked with the research of language technology. The mission is to improve the usage and usability of digitized content. During the project, we have advanced methods that will refine the raw data for further use, especially in the linguistic research. How does the library meet the objectives, which appears to be beyond its traditional playground? The written materials from this period are a gold mine, so how could we retrieve these hidden treasures of languages out of the stack that contains more than 200,000 pages of literature in various Uralic languages? The problem is that the machined-encoded text (OCR) contains often too many mistakes to be used as such in research. The mistakes in OCRed texts must be corrected. For enhancing the OCRed texts, the National Library of Finland developed an open-source code OCR editor that enabled the editing of machine-encoded text for the benefit of linguistic research. This tool was necessary to implement, since these rare and peripheral prints did often include already perished characters, which are sadly neglected by the modern OCR software developers, but belong to the historical context of kindred languages and thus are an essential part of the linguistic heritage (van Hemel, 2014). Our crowdsourcing tool application is essentially an editor of Alto XML format. It consists of a back-end for managing users, permissions, and files, communicating through a REST API with a front-end interface—that is, the actual editor for correcting the OCRed text. The enhanced XML files can be retrieved from the Fenno-Ugrica collection for further purposes. Could the crowd do this work to support the academic research? The challenge in crowdsourcing lies in its nature. The targets in the traditional crowdsourcing have often been split into several microtasks that do not require any special skills from the anonymous people, a faceless crowd. This way of crowdsourcing may produce quantitative results, but from the research’s point of view, there is a danger that the needs of linguists are not necessarily met. Also, the remarkable downside is the lack of shared goal or the social affinity. There is no reward in the traditional methods of crowdsourcing (de Boer et al., 2012). Also, there has been criticism that digital humanities makes the humanities too data-driven and oriented towards quantitative methods, losing the values of critical qualitative methods (Fish, 2012). And on top of that, the downsides of the traditional crowdsourcing become more imminent when you leave the Anglophone world. Our potential crowd is geographically scattered in Russia. This crowd is linguistically heterogeneous, speaking 17 different languages. In many cases languages are close to extinction or longing for language revitalization, and the native speakers do not always have Internet access, so an open call for crowdsourcing would not have produced appeasing results for linguists. Thus, one has to identify carefully the potential niches to complete the needed tasks. When using the help of a crowd in a project that is aiming to support both linguistic research and survival of endangered languages, the approach has to be a different one. In nichesourcing, the tasks are distributed amongst a small crowd of citizen scientists (communities). Although communities provide smaller pools to draw resources, their specific richness in skill is suited for complex tasks with high-quality product expectations found in nichesourcing. Communities have a purpose and identity, and their regular interaction engenders social trust and reputation. These communities can correspond to research more precisely (de Boer et al., 2012). Instead of repetitive and rather trivial tasks, we are trying to utilize the knowledge and skills of citizen scientists to provide qualitative results. In nichesourcing, we hand in such assignments that would precisely fill the gaps in linguistic research. A typical task would be editing and collecting the words in such fields of vocabularies where the researchers do require more information. For instance, there is lack of Hill Mari words and terminology in anatomy. We have digitized the books in medicine, and we could try to track the words related to human organs by assigning the citizen scientists to edit and collect words with the OCR editor. From the nichesourcing’s perspective, it is essential that altruism play a central role when the language communities are involved. In nichesourcing, our goal is to reach a certain level of interplay, where the language communities would benefit from the results. For instance, the corrected words in Ingrian will be added to an online dictionary, which is made freely available for the public, so the society can benefit, too. This objective of interplay can be understood as an aspiration to support the endangered languages and the maintenance of lingual diversity, but also as a servant of ‘two masters’: research and society.

Transferring Results of Behavioral Research to Industry to Improve Animal Welfare on the Farm, Ranch and the Slaughter Plant

The article focuses on three results of the study: "(1)Communicate your results outside the research. Write articles in popular and industry magazines. Speak at producer meetings and develop websites that can be used to transfer research results into practice. (2) Choose places (e.g. farms or plants) that have managers who believe in your research, and be prepared to spend a lot of time with the first place that uses your findings. (3) to fail. (4) Do not allow your technology to get tied up in patent disputes."

A qualitative study of curriculum and instructional efforts in relation to high stakes federal and district policies in one low-performing elementary school

Les enjeux liés aux politiques éducatives ont considérablement changé au cours des dernières décennies. Ces changements sont liés, entre autres, à l’accroissement de l’imputabilité et de la reddition de compte qui est devenue une caractéristique importante des réformes curriculaires et pédagogiques. Les politiques à enjeux élevés exercent une pression énorme sur les districts et les écoles états-unienne afin qu’ils augmentent le rendement des élèves en utilisant des systèmes de conséquences (Hall & Ryan, 2011; Loeb & Strunk, 2007). Ces politiques envoient de puissants messages sur l'importance de certaines matières scolaires au détriment d'autres - circonscrivant les exigences en termes de compétences et de connaissances. La langue maternelle d’enseignement et les mathématiques sont devenues des mesures centrales sur lesquelles reposent l’évaluation et le degré de performance des districts et des écoles. Conséquemment, les administrateurs de districts et les directions d’écoles ont souvent recours à des réformes curriculaires et pédagogiques comme moyen d'augmenter le rendement des élèves dans les matières scolaires visées par ces politiques. Les politiques contraignent les acteurs scolaires de concentrer les ressources sur les programmes curriculaires et les évaluations, le développement professionnel, et la prise de décision pilotée par les données (Anagnostopoulos & Ruthledge, 2007; Honig & Hatch, 2004; Spillane, Diamond, et al., 2002; Weitz White & Rosenbaum, 2008). Cette thèse examine la manière dont les politiques à enjeux élevés opèrent quotidiennement dans les interactions et les pratiques au sein des écoles. Nous analysons plus particulièrement les différents messages provenant de la politique transmis aux acteurs scolaires sur les manières d'apporter des changements substantiels dans le curriculum et l'enseignement. Nous élargissons l’analyse en prenant en compte le rôle des administrateurs de district ainsi que des partenaires universitaires qui façonnent également la manière dont certains aspects des messages provenant des politiques sont transmis, négociés et/ou débattus et d’autres sont ignorés (Coburn & Woulfin, 2012). En utilisant l’analyse de discours, nous examinons le rôle du langage comme constituant et médiateur des interactions sociales entre les acteurs scolaires et d’autres parties prenantes. De telles analyses impliquent une investigation approfondie d’un nombre d’étude de cas limité. Les données utilisées dans cette thèse ont été colligées dans une école primaire états-unienne du mid-West. Cette étude de cas fait partie d’une étude longitudinale de quatre ans qui comprenait huit écoles dans les milieux urbains entre 1999 et 2003 (Distributed Leadership Studies, http://www.distributedleadership.org). La base de données analysée inclut des observations de réunions formelles et des entrevues auprès des administrateurs du district, des partenaires universitaires, de la direction d’école et des enseignants. En plus de l’introduction et de la problématique (chapitre 1) et de discussion et conclusion (chapitre 5), cette thèse comprend un ensemble de trois articles interdépendants. Dans le premier article (chapitre 2), nous effectuons une recension des écrits portant sur le domaine de l’implantation de politiques (policy implementation) et la complexité des relations locales, nationales et internationales dans les systèmes éducatifs. Pour démystifier cette complexité, nous portons une attention particulière à la construction de sens des acteurs scolaires comme étant une dimension clé du processus de mise en œuvre des réformes. Dans le deuxième article (chapitre 3), nous cherchons à comprendre les processus sociaux qui façonnent les réponses stratégiques des acteurs scolaires à l’égard des politiques du district et de l’état et en lien avec la mise en œuvre d’un curriculum prescrit en mathématiques. Plus particulièrement, nous explorons les différentes situations dans lesquelles les acteurs scolaires argumentent au sujet des changements curriculaires et pédagogiques proposés par les administrateurs de district et des partenaires universitaires afin d’augmenter les résultats scolaires en mathématiques dans une école à faible performance. Dans le troisième article (chapitre 4), nous cherchons à démystifier les complexités liées à l’amélioration de l’enseignement dans un environnement de politiques à enjeux élevés. Pour ce faire, nous utilisons l'interaction entre les notions d'agentivité et la structure afin d'analyser la manière dont les conceptions d’imputabilité et les idées qui découlent de l'environnement politique et les activités quotidiennes jouent dans les interactions entre les acteurs scolaires concernant sur l’enseignement de la langue maternelle. Nous explorons trois objectifs spécifiques : 1) la manière dont les politiques à enjeux élevés façonnent les éléments de l’enseignement qui sont reproduits et ceux qui sont transformés au fil du temps ; 2) la manière dont la compréhension des leaders de l’imputabilité façonne les aspects des messages politiques que les acteurs scolaires remarquent à travers les interactions et les conversations et 3) la manière les acteurs scolaires portent une attention particulière à certaines messages au détriment d’autres. Dans le dernier chapitre de cette thèse, nous discutons les forces et les limites de l’analyse secondaire de données qualitatives, les implications des résultats pour le domaine d’études de l’implantation de politiques et les pistes futures de recherches.

Biogenesis of the C. elegans germline syncytium: from nucleation to maturation

La vie commence par la fusion des gamètes pour générer un zygote, dans lequel les constituants à la fois de l'ovocyte et des spermatozoïdes sont partagés au sein d'un syncytium. Le syncytium consiste en des cellules ou tissus dans lesquels des cellules nucléées individuelles distinctes partagent un cytoplasme commun. Alors que l’avantage du syncytium durant la fécondation est tout à fait évident, les syncytia se produisent également dans de nombreux contextes de développement différents dans les plantes, les champignons et dans le règne animal, des insectes aux humains, pour des raisons qui ne sont pas immédiatement évidentes. Par exemple, la lignée germinale de nombreuses espèces de vertébrés et d'invertébrés, des insectes aux humains, présente une structure syncytiale, suggérant que les syncytia constituent des phases conservées de développement de la lignée germinale. Malgré la prévalence commune des syncytia, ces derniers ont cependant confondu les scientifiques depuis des décennies avec des questions telles que la façon dont ils sont formés et maintenus en concurrence avec leurs homologues diploïdes, et quels sont les avantages et les inconvénients qu'ils apportent. Cette thèse va décrire l'utilisation de la lignée germinale syncytiale de C. elegans afin d'approfondir notre compréhension de l'architecture, la fonction et le mode de formation des tissus syncytiaux. Les cellules germinales (CGs) dans la lignée germinale de C. elegans sont interconnectées les unes aux autres par l'intermédiaire de structures appelées des anneaux de CG. En utilisant l'imagerie des cellules vivantes, nous avons d'abord analysé l'architecture syncytiale de la lignée germinale au long du développement et démontré que la maturation de l'anneau de CG se produit progressivement au cours de la croissance des larves et que les anneaux de CG sont composés de myosine II, de l'anilline canonique ANI-1, et de la courte isoforme d’anilline ANI-2, qui n'a pas les domaines de liaison à l’actine et à la myosine, depuis le premier stade larvaire, L1. Parmi les composants de l'anneau de CG, ANI-2 est exprimé au cours du développement et exclusivement enrichi entre les deux CGs primordiales (CGPs) au cours de l'embryogenèse de C. elegans, indiquant qu’ANI-2 est un composant bona fide des anneaux de CG. Nous avons en outre montré que les anneaux de CG sont largement absents dans les animaux mutants pour ani-2, montrant que leur maintien repose sur l'activité d'ANI-2. Contrairement à cela, nous avons trouvé que la déplétion d’ANI-1 a augmenté à la fois le diamètre des anneaux de CG et la largeur du rachis. Fait intéressant, la déplétion d’ANI-1 dans les mutants d’ani-2 a sauvé les défauts d'anneaux de CG des gonades déficientes en ani-2, ce qui suggère que l'architecture syncytiale de la lignée germinale de C. elegans repose sur un équilibre de l'activité de ces deux protéines Anilline. En outre, nous avons montré que lors de leur entrée à l'âge adulte, les mutants ani-2 présentent de sévères défauts de multinucléation des CGs qui découlent de l'effondrement des membranes de séparation des CGs individuelles. Cette multinucléation a coïncidé avec le début de la diffusion cytoplasmique, dont le blocage réduit la multinucléation des gonades mutantes pour ani-2, suggérant que les anneaux de CG résistent au stress mécanique associé au processus de diffusion cytoplasmique. En accord avec cela, nous avons trouvé aussi que la gonade peut soutenir la déformation élastique en réponse au stress mécanique et que cette propriété repose sur la malléabilité des anneaux de CGs. Dans une étude séparée afin de comprendre le mécanisme de formation du syncytium, nous avons suivi la dynamique de division de la cellule précurseur de la lignée germinale, P4 en deux CGP dans l’embryon de C. elegans. Nous avons démontré que les CGPs commencent la cytocinèse de manière similaire aux cellules somatiques, en formant un sillon de clivage, qui migre correctement et transforme ainsi l'anneau contractile en anneau de « midbody ring » (MBR), une structure qui relie de manière transitoire les cellules en division. Malgré cela, les CGPs, contrairement à leurs homologues somatiques, ne parviennent pas à accomplir la dernière étape de la cytocinèse, qui est la libération abscission-dépendante du MBR. Au lieu de cela, le MBR persiste à la frontière entre les CGPs en division et subit une réorganisation et une maturation pour se transformer finalement en structures en forme d'anneau qui relient les cellules en division. Nous montrons en outre que les composants du MB/MBR; UNC-59Septin, CYK-7, ZEN-4Mklp1, RHO-1RhoA sont localisés à des anneaux de CG au long du développement de la lignée germinale du stade L1 à l'âge adulte, ce qui suggère que les anneaux de CG sont dérivés des MBR. Bien qu'il reste encore beaucoup à faire pour comprendre pleinement le mécanisme précis de la formation du syncytium, le maintien, ainsi que la fonction du syncytium, nos résultats appuient un modèle dans lequel la stabilisation du MBR et la cytocinèse incomplète pourraient être une option conservée dans l’évolution pour la formation du syncytium. En outre, notre travail démontre que les régulateurs de la contractilité peuvent jouer un rôle dans la maturation et l’élasticité de l'anneau de CG au cours du développement de la lignée germinale, fournissant un ajout précieux pour une plus ample compréhension de la syncytiogenèse et de sa fonction.

How do I get Word 2010 table headers to repeat on subsequent pages

When a table crosses on to 2 or more pages it can be very useful to have the headers appear on all subsequent pages. This video shows how.