Body mass index, cigarette smoking, and alcohol consumption and cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx: modeling odds ratios in pooled case-control data.

Odds ratios for head and neck cancer increase with greater cigarette and alcohol use and lower body mass index (BMI; weight (kg)/height(2) (m(2))). Using data from the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology Consortium, the authors conducted a formal analysis of BMI as a modifier of smoking- and alcohol-related effects. Analysis of never and current smokers included 6,333 cases, while analysis of never drinkers and consumers of < or =10 drinks/day included 8,452 cases. There were 8,000 or more controls, depending on the analysis. Odds ratios for all sites increased with lower BMI, greater smoking, and greater drinking. In polytomous regression, odds ratios for BMI (P = 0.65), smoking (P = 0.52), and drinking (P = 0.73) were homogeneous for oral cavity and pharyngeal cancers. Odds ratios for BMI and drinking were greater for oral cavity/pharyngeal cancer (P < 0.01), while smoking odds ratios were greater for laryngeal cancer (P < 0.01). Lower BMI enhanced smoking- and drinking-related odds ratios for oral cavity/pharyngeal cancer (P < 0.01), while BMI did not modify smoking and drinking odds ratios for laryngeal cancer. The increased odds ratios for all sites with low BMI may suggest related carcinogenic mechanisms; however, BMI modification of smoking and drinking odds ratios for cancer of the oral cavity/pharynx but not larynx cancer suggests additional factors specific to oral cavity/pharynx cancer.

La logique déontique : une application de la logique à l'éthique et au discours juridique

Cet ouvrage a été rédigé en LaTeX, ce qui permet d'atteindre directement certaines sections, notes ou références bibliographiques par le biais des hyperliens.

Composition d'oeuvres pour hyper-flûtes et traitement audionumérique interactif

La version intégrale de cette thèse est disponible uniquement pour consultation individuelle à la Bibliothèque de musique de l’Université de Montréal (www.bib.umontreal.ca/MU).

Estudio del sector BPO en Colombia servicios BPO outsourcing & offshoring

Durante la última década hemos presenciado una revolución tecnológica que nos ha llevado a interconectarnos globalmente, desde las redes sociales como mecanismo de unión entre las personas hasta los servicios mercerizados prestados a través de la web que cada día van logrando un tejido empresarial mas informado y en contacto, en donde la información es en tiempo real y de gran ayuda para la toma de decisiones diarias. En el siguiente texto podremos observar de forma más detenida y detallada la forma en que se están generando unidades de negocio estratégicas que surgen a medida que la conectividad comienza a ser prioridad en muchas organizaciones, en donde buscan generar ventajas competitivas por medio de la tercerización de procesos, lo que ha llevado que Colombia quiera ser pionera en dicha materia. Pero para lograr consolidar un aparato productivo que incursione en el mundo digital y preparar la fuerza laboral para que pueda prestar dichos servicios tercer izados el gobierno ha ubicado los puntos críticos en donde se deben focalizar los recursos y los esfuerzos, de esta forma este texto busca aclarar y generar nuevas ideas en torno a la tercerización de los servicios, pasando por los modelos de negocios en la tercerización, los medios y la realidad actual de Colombia en este mercado.

Hacia una visión dinámica de la ‘legalización’ de la política internacional: revisión crítica de la bibliografía

El concepto de legalización fue desarrollado recientemente por el neoliberalismo institucional como una forma especial de institucionalización de las relaciones internacionales. Los autores neoliberales caracterizan la legalización a partir de las categorías utilizadas por H. L. A. Hart para distinguir el derecho de otros mecanismos de control social, como el poder y la moral. En Hart, estas categorías responden a una finalidad normativa: reconstruir teóricamente el derecho como un sistema independiente de la voluntad y de las convicciones de quienes lo interpretan y aplican. Sin embargo, esta separación entre lenguaje y práctica jurídica desconoce importantes contribuciones de la tradición analítica en filosofía del lenguaje, en cuanto a la relación entre lenguaje y realidad. En particular, termina reduciendo el derecho a simples formas y textos vacíos, y con ello desconoce que a través de las prácticas jurídicas se va dando significado a los textos normativos.Adoptar esta visión del derecho al estudio de las relaciones internacionales tiene, al menos, una consecuencia metodológica: el simple análisis formal del texto de los tratados no permite comprender el efecto del derecho internacional en el comportamiento de los Estados. Para entender las relaciones entre el derecho internacional y el comportamiento estatal es necesario describir la manera como se construye el significado de los textos a través de la práctica jurídica de los Estados. En tal sentido, resultaría útil redefinir la agenda de investigación neoliberal en relación con la legalización y enfocarse en la forma como los Estados y los tribunales internacionales construyen el significado de los tratados y demás normas internacionales.-----The concept of legalization was recently developed by neoliberal institutionalism as a special kind of institutionalization of international politics. Neoliberals built the concept of legalization using the analytical tools developed by H. L. A. Hart to distinguish law from other mechanisms of social control, like power and morals. Within Hart’s theory, such tools have a normative function: theoretically rebuilding law as a system of rules that is independent from the will and the beliefs of those who interpret and apply legal rules. However, Hart’s resulting separation of legal texts from legal practice obscures important contributions that the analytical tradition in philosophy of language has made to the understanding of the relation between language and reality. Specifically, such a separation reduces law to simple forms and texts disregarding the extent to which legal practice gives meaning to legal texts.Adapting Hart’s conception of law to International Relations has at least one important methodological consequence: the formal analysis of treaties cannot explain the influence of international law over state behavior. To understand the influence of international law on state behavior, one must previously describe the relation between legal practice and the meaning of legal texts. Thus, a redefinition of neoliberal research agenda on legalization should focus on the way States and international courts construct the meaning of treaties and other international norms.

Efficient biometric and password based mutual authentication for consumer USB mass storage devices

A Universal Serial Bus (USB) Mass Storage Device (MSD), often termed a USB flash drive, is ubiquitously used to store important information in unencrypted binary format. This low cost consumer device is incredibly popular due to its size, large storage capacity and relatively high transfer speed. However, if the device is lost or stolen an unauthorized person can easily retrieve all the information. Therefore, it is advantageous in many applications to provide security protection so that only authorized users can access the stored information. In order to provide security protection for a USB MSD, this paper proposes a session key agreement protocol after secure user authentication. The main aim of this protocol is to establish session key negotiation through which all the information retrieved, stored and transferred to the USB MSD is encrypted. This paper not only contributes an efficient protocol, but also does not suffer from the forgery attack and the password guessing attack as compared to other protocols in the literature. This paper analyses the security of the proposed protocol through a formal analysis which proves that the information is stored confidentially and is protected offering strong resilience to relevant security attacks. The computational cost and communication cost of the proposed scheme is analyzed and compared to related work to show that the proposed scheme has an improved tradeoff for computational cost, communication cost and security.

Anglo-Indians in Hollywood, Bollywood and arthouse cinema

Apart from a few disparaging remarks about offensive stereotypes by Anglo-Indian writers and politicians such as Gloria Jean Moore, Frank Anthony and Gillian Hart, critics have paid very little attention to the representation of “mixed-race” Anglo-Indians in the cinema. Drawing on screen theory and recent theories of cinema spectatorship, this essay provides a comparative analysis of how Hollywood, Bollywood and arthouse films represent Anglo-Indians. More specifically, it analyses three paradigmatic films: Bhowani Junction (1956), Julie (1975), and 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981). Combining formal analysis of narrative structure, mise-en-scegravene and genre with historical analysis, the paper examines the ideological work performed by these texts, which use Anglo-Indians to dramatise specific political conflicts in India such as those generated by the British partition of India in 1947 and the more recent issue of globalisation.

Generality is predictive of prediction accuracy

During knowledge acquisition multiple alternative potential rules all appear equally credible. This paper addresses the dearth of formal analysis about how to select between such alternatives. It presents two hypotheses about the expected impact of selecting between classification rules of differing levels of generality in the absence of other evidence about their likely relative performance on unseen data. It is argued that the accuracy on unseen data of the more general rule will tend to be closer to that of a default rule for the class than will that of the more specific rule. It is also argued that in comparison to the more general rule, the accuracy of the more specific rule on unseen cases will tend to be closer to the accuracy obtained on training data. Experimental evidence is provided in support of these hypotheses. We argue that these hypotheses can be of use in selecting between rules in order to achieve specific knowledge acquisition objectives.

On the maximum throughput of two-hop wireless network coding

Network coding has shown the promise of significant throughput improvement. In this paper, we study the throughput of two-hop wireless network coding and explore how the maximum throughput can be achieved under a random medium access scheme. Unlike previous studies, we consider a more practical network where the structure of overhearing status between the intended receivers and the transmitters is arbitrary. We make a formal analysis on the network throughput using network coding upon the concept of network coding cliques (NCCs). The analysis shows that the maximum normalized throughput, subject to fairness requirement, is n/n+m, where n is the number of transmitters and m is the number of NCCs in a 2-hop wireless network. We have also found that this maximum throughput can be achieved under a random medium access scheme when the medium access priority of the relay node is equal to the number of NCCs in the network. Our theoretical findings have been validated by simulation as well.

On the throughput of two-way relay networks using network coding

 Network coding has shown the promise of significant throughput improvement. In this paper, we study the network throughput using network coding and explore how the maximum throughput can be achieved in a two-way relay wireless network. Unlike previous studies, we consider a more general network with arbitrary structure of overhearing status between receivers and transmitters. To efficiently utilize the coding opportunities, we invent the concept of network coding cliques (NCCs), upon which a formal analysis on the network throughput using network coding is elaborated. In particular, we derive the closed-form expression of the network throughput under certain traffic load in a slotted ALOHA network with basic medium access control. Furthermore, the maximum throughput as well as optimal medium access probability at each node is studied under various network settings. Our theoretical findings have been validated by simulation as well.

Os extremos do ciclo de vida: trabalho infantil e aposentadoria precoce

Este trabalho procura analisar dois problemas bastante graves que afligem a sociedade brasileira. De um lado, a entrada precoce na força de trabalho, que tem sua face mais perversa no trabalho infantil; de outro, a saída também precoce da força de trabalho de adultos em idade ainda produtiva. Ambos fenômenos são empobrecedores para a sociedade e atuam como mecanismo de geração e perpetuação de pobreza. O trabalho infantil, discutido na primeira parte do trabalho, prejudica a educação. A saída precoce da força de trabalho, analisado na segunda parte do trabalho, é um desperdício de recursos. Na terceira parte é desenvolvida uma análise formal que procura mostrar o quanto um sistema de aposentadorias como o sistema previdenciário brasileiro, que garante uma renda por vida às pessoas após um certo anos de trabalho, pode induzir escolhas que embora ótimas do ponto de vista privado são bastante custosas do ponto vista social. Especificamente, procura-se mostrar como esta legislação pode incentivar tanto a entrada quanto a saída precoce do mercado de trabalho.

Abordagens de análise aplicadas ao 1º movimento da sinfonia nº 3, de Gustav Malher

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A poesia, a música e a performance da canção: alma minha gentil - um estudo de caso na obra de Glauco Velásquez

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Rumos da análise musical no Brasil: análise estilística 1919-84

Pós-graduação em Música - IA

Os diálogos interestruturais na obra de Lourenço Mutarelli : hibridismos e experimentações nas fronteiras entre o romance e o romance gráfico

Pós-graduação em Letras - IBILCE