La substitution du Dasein chez Levinas

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Design as Symbolic Violence. Design for Social Justice.

Design embeds ideas in communication and artefacts in subtle and psychologically powerful ways. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu coined the term ‘symbolic violence’ to describe how powerful ideologies, priorities, values and even sensibilities are constructed and reproduced through cultural institutions, processes and practices. Through symbolic violence, individuals learn to consider unjust conditions as natural and even come to value customs and ideas that are oppressive. Symbolic violence normalises structural violence and enables real violence to take place, often preceding it and later justifying it. Feminist, class, race and indigenous scholars and activists describe how oppressions (how patriarchy, racism, colonialism, etc.) exist within institutions and structures, and also within cultural practices that embed ideologies into everyday life. The theory of symbolic violence sheds light on how design can function to naturalise oppressions and then obfuscate power relations around this process. Through symbolic violence, design can function as an enabler for the exploitation of certain groups of people and the environment they (and ultimately ‘we’) depend on to live. Design functions as symbolic violence when it is involved with the creation and reproduction of ideas, practices, tools and processes that result in structural and other types of violence (including ecocide). Breaking symbolic violence involves discovering how it works and building capacities to challenge and transform dysfunctional ideologies, structures and institutions. This conversation will give participants an opportunity to discuss, critique and/or develop the theory of design as symbolic violence as a basis for the development of design strategies for social justice.

Total gastrectomy with substitution of stomach by jejunal pouch with and without duodenal passage. Study in rats

A comparison was done between the F. Paulino jejunal pouch (FP) and a jejunal pouch (JP) as esophagusduodenum interpositional graft, for replacing the stomach after total gastrectomy. It was investigated the effect of the two procedures on esophagus histology, nutritional state and serum gastrin in rats. Methods: Male Wistar rats weighing 282±17g were randomly submitted to sham operation (S), FP and JP after total gastrectomy. After eight weeks the rats were killed with overdose of anesthetic and tissue was taken from the distal esophagus for histology. Serum levels of total proteins, albumin, iron, transferring, folate, cobalamine, calcium, as well as serum gastrin were determined. Survival was considered. Results: Fourty six rats were operated and thirty survived for eight weeks. Five (33.3%) died after FP and 11 (52.3%) after JP (p<0.05). Postoperative esophagitis occurred in 6 JP rats. At 8th week, no difference was observed on body weight when compared FP and JP rats (p>0.05). The JP rats had a significant decrease in serum albumin, glucose, transferrin, iron, folate and calcium, compared to sham (p<0.05). Serum gastrin, iron and calcium were significantly higher in JP rats than in FP rats (p<0.05). In FP rats, transferrin and cobalamine showed significant decrease comparing the preoperative with 8th week levels (p<0.05). Conclusion: F. Paulino pouch in rats had lower mortality than JP, and esophagitis was not detected in it. JP rats had serum gastrin, iron and calcium unaffected, possibly because of preservation of duodenal passage

Effet de la réduction et de la substitution du NaCl dans le Camembert sur la croissance de la microflore fongique d'affinage

Santé Canada encourage les transformateurs à réduire le contenu en NaCl dans plusieurs aliments, dont les fromages, puisque sa surconsommation est associée à plusieurs problèmes de santé. L’effet causé par la réduction du NaCl dans le Camembert, ou de sa substitution partielle par du KCl, sur la qualité globale de ce fromage n’est pas connu. Le but du projet visait à étudier la cinétique d’incorporation du sodium et du potassium lors du saumurage d’un Camembert commercial afin de produire des fromages réduits en NaCl et substitués par du KCl. Ces nouvelles conditions ont ensuite permis d’étudier le comportement des ferments fongiques d’affinage Penicillium camemberti et Geotrichum candidum. Les résultats ont démontré une modification du profil de croissance des deux espèces, plus accentuée chez G. candidum, en fonction des modifications salines apportées. L’impact causé par ces changements de comportement doit maintenant être évalué au niveau de l’activité spécifique des deux espèces.

Origin, colonization, adaptive radiation, intrainsular evolution snd species substitution processes in the fossil and living lizards of the Canary Islands

[EN] The Canary lsland lizards constitute a monophyletic group which separated from the rest of the family shortly after the first islands of the archipelago emerged. Five living and at least one recently extinct species belong to the genus Gallotia. In addition, two of the living species, Gallotia simonyi and Gallotia stehlini have become extinct on Gomera and Tenerife, respectively. Juveniles of all species present tricuspid teeth. This character is preserved in the adults with changes to one degree or another in G. galloti, G. caesaris, G. simonyi and G. goliath. In G. atlantica there are only two cuspids and G. stehlini has 4 or more.

Sneakerheads and Custom Kicks: Insights into Symbolic Mass Customization

This chapter presents an exploratory study involving a group of athletic shoe enthusiasts and their feelings towards customized footwear. These "sneakerheads" demonstrate their infatuation with sneakers via activities ranging from creating catalogs of custom shoes to buying and selling rare athletic footwear online. The key characteristic these individuals share is that, for them, athletic shoes are a fundamental fashion accessory stepped in symbolism and meaning. A series of in-depth interviews utilizing the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) provide a better understanding of how issues such as art, self-expression, exclusivity, peer recognition, and counterfeit goods interact with the mass customization of symbolic products by category experts.

Evaluating functions using tail recursion and parameter substitution

This article shows a general way to implement recursive functions calculation by linear tail recursion. It emphasizes the use of tail recursion to perform computations efficiently.

FRAMEWORK SYNTHESIS FOR SYMBOLIC EXECUTION OF EVENT-DRIVEN FRAMEWORKS

Symbolic execution is a powerful program analysis technique, but it is very challenging to apply to programs built using event-driven frameworks, such as Android. The main reason is that the framework code itself is too complex to symbolically execute. The standard solution is to manually create a framework model that is simpler and more amenable to symbolic execution. However, developing and maintaining such a model by hand is difficult and error-prone. We claim that we can leverage program synthesis to introduce a high-degree of automation to the process of framework modeling. To support this thesis, we present three pieces of work. First, we introduced SymDroid, a symbolic executor for Android. While Android apps are written in Java, they are compiled to Dalvik bytecode format. Instead of analyzing an app’s Java source, which may not be available, or decompiling from Dalvik back to Java, which requires significant engineering effort and introduces yet another source of potential bugs in an analysis, SymDroid works directly on Dalvik bytecode. Second, we introduced Pasket, a new system that takes a first step toward automatically generating Java framework models to support symbolic execution. Pasket takes as input the framework API and tutorial programs that exercise the framework. From these artifacts and Pasket's internal knowledge of design patterns, Pasket synthesizes an executable framework model by instantiating design patterns, such that the behavior of a synthesized model on the tutorial programs matches that of the original framework. Lastly, in order to scale program synthesis to framework models, we devised adaptive concretization, a novel program synthesis algorithm that combines the best of the two major synthesis strategies: symbolic search, i.e., using SAT or SMT solvers, and explicit search, e.g., stochastic enumeration of possible solutions. Adaptive concretization parallelizes multiple sub-synthesis problems by partially concretizing highly influential unknowns in the original synthesis problem. Thanks to adaptive concretization, Pasket can generate a large-scale model, e.g., thousands lines of code. In addition, we have used an Android model synthesized by Pasket and found that the model is sufficient to allow SymDroid to execute a range of apps.

Non-Symbolic Fragmentation

This paper reports on the use of non-symbolic fragmentation of data for securing communications. Non-symbolic fragmentation, or NSF, relies on breaking up data into non-symbolic fragments, which are (usually irregularly-sized) chunks whose boundaries do not necessarily coincide with the boundaries of the symbols making up the data. For example, ASCII data is broken up into fragments which may include 8-bit fragments but also include many other sized fragments. Fragments are then separated with a form of path diversity. The secrecy of the transmission relies on the secrecy of one or more of a number of things: the ordering of the fragments, the sizes of the fragments, and the use of path diversity. Once NSF is in place, it can help secure many forms of communication, and is useful for exchanging sensitive information, and for commercial transactions. A sample implementation is described with an evaluation of the technology.

Original sin: divine and symbolic violence in the turn to the Apostle Paul

When we take a step back from the imposing figure of physical violence, it becomes possible to examine other structurally violent forces that constantly shape our cultural and political landscapes. One of the driving interests in the “turn to Paul” in recent continental philosophy stems from wrestling with questions about the real nature of contemporary violence. Paul is positioned as a thinker whose messianic experience began to cut through the violent masquerade of the existing order. The crucifixion and resurrection of the Messiah (a slave and a God co-existing in one body) exposed the empty grounding upon which power resided. The Christ-event signifies a moment of violent interruption in the existing order which Paul enjoins the Gentiles to participate in through a dedication of love for the neighbour. This divine violence aims to reveal and subvert the “powers,” epitomised in the Roman Empire, in order to fulfil the labour of the Messianic now-time which had arrived. The impetus behind this research comes from a typically enigmatic and provocative section of text by the Slovene philosopher, cultural critic, and Christian atheist Slavoj Žižek. He claims that 'the notion of love should be given here all its Paulinian weight: the domain of pure violence… is the domain of love' (2008a, 173). In this move he links Paul’s idea of love to that of Walter Benjamin’s divine violence; the sublime and the cataclysmic come together in this seemingly perverse notion. At stake here is the way in which uncovering violent forces in the “zero-level” of our narrative worldviews aids the diagnosis of contemporary political and ethical issues. It is not enough to imagine Paul’s encounter with the Christ-event as non-violent. This Jewish apocalyptic movement was engaged in a violent struggle within an existing order that God’s wrath will soon dismantle. Paul’s weak violence, inspired by his fidelity to the Christ-event, places all responsibility over creation in the role of the individual within the collective body. The centre piece of this re-imagined construction of the Pauline narrative comes in Romans 13: the violent dedication to love understood in the radical nature of the now-time. 3 This research examines the role that narratives play in the creation and diagnosis of these violent forces. In order to construct a new genealogy of violence in Christianity it is crucial to understand the role of the slave of Christ (the revolutionary messianic subject). This turn in the Symbolic is examined through creating a literary structure in which we can approach a radical Nietzschean shift in Pauline thought. The claim here, a claim which is also central to Paul’s letters, is that when the symbolic violence which manipulates our worldviews is undone by a divine violence, if even for a moment, new possibilities are created in the opening for a transvaluation of values. Through this we uncover the nature of original sin: the consequences of the interconnected reality of our actions. The role of literature is vital in the construction of this narrative; starting with Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, and continuing through works such as Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, this thesis draws upon the power of literature in the shaping of our narrative worlds. Typical of the continental philosophy at the heart of this work, a diverse range of illustrations and inspirations from fiction is pulled into its narrative to reflect the symbolic universe that this work was forged through. What this work attempts to do is give this theory a greater grounding in Paul’s letters by demonstrating this radical kenotic power at the heart of the Christ-event. Romans 13 reveals, in a way that has not yet been picked up by Critchley, Žižek, and others, that Paul opposed the biopolitical power of the Roman Empire through the weak violence of love that is the labour of the slaves of Christ on the “now-time” that had arrived.

Total gastrectomy with substitution of stomach by jejunal pouch with and without duodenal passage. Study in rats

A comparison was done between the F. Paulino jejunal pouch (FP) and a jejunal pouch (JP) as esophagusduodenum interpositional graft, for replacing the stomach after total gastrectomy. It was investigated the effect of the two procedures on esophagus histology, nutritional state and serum gastrin in rats. Methods: Male Wistar rats weighing 282±17g were randomly submitted to sham operation (S), FP and JP after total gastrectomy. After eight weeks the rats were killed with overdose of anesthetic and tissue was taken from the distal esophagus for histology. Serum levels of total proteins, albumin, iron, transferring, folate, cobalamine, calcium, as well as serum gastrin were determined. Survival was considered. Results: Fourty six rats were operated and thirty survived for eight weeks. Five (33.3%) died after FP and 11 (52.3%) after JP (p<0.05). Postoperative esophagitis occurred in 6 JP rats. At 8th week, no difference was observed on body weight when compared FP and JP rats (p>0.05). The JP rats had a significant decrease in serum albumin, glucose, transferrin, iron, folate and calcium, compared to sham (p<0.05). Serum gastrin, iron and calcium were significantly higher in JP rats than in FP rats (p<0.05). In FP rats, transferrin and cobalamine showed significant decrease comparing the preoperative with 8th week levels (p<0.05). Conclusion: F. Paulino pouch in rats had lower mortality than JP, and esophagitis was not detected in it. JP rats had serum gastrin, iron and calcium unaffected, possibly because of preservation of duodenal passage