Intellectuels, représentation et vérité. Essai de sociologie des intellectuels

L’objectif de cet article consiste à réévaluer les applications possibles de la notion de représentation culturelle dans la perspective de la sociologie des intellectuels. Premièrement, on portera un regard critique sur les outils théoriques et méthodologiques que la sociologie des intellectuels a développés au fil des années, se retrouvant implicitement à faire la promotion d’un groupe d’intellectuels qui assumerait collectivement une fonction de représentant culturel. Deuxièmement, au terme d’une analyse d’un texte de Michel Foucault, on proposera de décollectiviser le rôle de l’intellectuel et sa fonction de représentant culturel afin de mieux comprendre comment il peut concrètement parvenir à l’assumer au sein du dispositif de vérité/pouvoir des sociétés postmodernes. En dernier lieu, on tentera d’appliquer ce cadre d’analyse au cas d’un collectif de trois intellectuels québécois qui fait présentement l’objet d’une poursuite judiciaire par deux entreprises minières canadiennes, pour avoir tenu responsables de crimes et de malversations en Afrique dans un ouvrage publié en 2008.The aim of this article is to re-evaluate the possible applications of the notion of cultural representation from the perspective of the sociology of the intellectual. First, we cast a critical regard over the theoretical and methodological tools developed over the years by the sociology of the intellectual with the implicit aim of promoting a group of intellectuals who would assume the collective function as representatives of culture. Second, after an analysis of a text of Michel Foucault, we propose a decollectivisation of the role of the intellectual and the function of a cultural representative in order to better comprehend how the intellectual can come concretely to enter into the system of truth/power in postmodern societies. Last of all, we attempt to apply this analytical framework to the case of a collective of three Québécois intellectuals who are currently the object of a judicial prosecution by two Canadian mining companies for having accused them, in a work published in 2008, of crimes and embezzlement in Africa.El objetivo de este artículo consiste en reevaluar las posibles aplicaciones de la noción de representación cultural en la perspectiva de la sociología de los intelectuales. En primer lugar, damos una mirada crítica a las herramientas teóricas y metodológicas que la sociología de los intelectuales ha desarrollado a lo largo de los años, que implícitamente realiza la promoción de un grupo de intelectuales quienes, colectivamente, asumirían la función de representantes culturales. En segundo lugar, partiendo del análisis de un texto de Michel Foucault, proponemos descolectivizar el papel del intelectual y su función de representante cultural con el fin de comprender más profundamente cómo éste puede llegar a asumirlo concretamente en el seno del dispositivo verdad-poder de las sociedades posmodernas. Por último, intentamos aplicar este marco analítico al caso de un grupo de tres intelectuales quebequenses, quienes actualmente son objeto de un proceso judicial emprendido por dos compañías mineras canadienses, por el hecho de haberlas responsabilizado de crímenes y de malversación en África, en un libro publicado en 2008

Doctoral dissertations in logistics and supply chain management: a review of Nordic contributions from 2009 to 2014

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze Nordic doctoral dissertations in logistics and supply chain management (SCM) published from the years 2009-2014. The paper is based on a detailed review of 150 doctoral dissertations. Compared with previous studies, this paper identifies a trend toward: more dissertations based on a collection of articles than monographs; more dissertations focusing on inter-organizational SCM issues; a shift from a focal company perspective to functional aspects and supply chain-related research; and finally, a continued decreased focus on the philosophy of science. A score for measuring the significance of article-based dissertations is also proposed

Development of CRISPR-Cas9 for in vivo medical applications

Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and its CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins have revolutionized genetic engineering. Since its discovery, it has supplanted previous methods of gene editing with its versatility and ease-of-use. Furthermore, the possibility of developing CRISPR-Cas9-based treatment plans for genetic therapy has piqued the interest of scientists. Much research has been done to evaluate its potential for use in medicine as well as the obstacles that prevent it from clinical applications. Although CRISPR-Cas9 can be effective at inducing double strand breaks in DNA, its overall template insertion efficiency is often not sufficient. By default, somatic cells repair damage to their DNA by undergoing nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ), which is not compatible with precise gene insertion. For a desired sequence to be inserted at the break site, homology directed repair (HDR) is required. Several methods of NHEJ inhibition and HDR stimulation have been evaluated and were effective at increasing HDR efficiency in vitro, but these results cannot be generalized for in vivo environments. Accordingly, results from CRISPR-Cas9 research have shown more promise for hematological diseases than for others. In order to address this disparity, additional work on its efficacy in vivo must be done. CRISPR-Cas9 has the potential to become the basis of future treatments for genetic disorders. Prior to this, treatments will need to account for the complex nature of in vivo processes. This thesis examines the current literature to gauge how far CRISPR-Cas9 technology is from use on human patients

Overhead Management Strategies for Internet of Things Devices

Overhead (time and energy) management is paramount for IoT edge devices considering their typically resource-constrained nature. In this thesis we present two contributions for lowering resource consumption of IoT devices. The first contribution is minimizing the overhead of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) authentication protocol in the context of IoT networks by selecting a lightweight cipher suite configuration. TLS is the de facto authentication protocol for secure communication in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. However, the processing and energy demands of this protocol are the two essential parameters that must be taken into account with respect to the resource-constraint nature of IoT devices. For the first contribution, we study these parameters using a testbed in which an IoT board (Cypress CYW43907) communicates with a server over an 802.11 wireless link. Although TLS supports a wide-array of cipher suites, in this paper we focus on DHE RSA, ECDHE RSA, and ECDHE ECDSA, which are among the most popular ciphers used due to their robustness. Our studies show that ciphers using Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman (ECDHE) key exchange are considerably more efficient than ciphers using Diffie Hellman (DHE). Furthermore, ECDSA signature verification consumes more time and energy than RSA signature verification for ECDHE key exchange. This study helps IoT designers choose an appropriate TLS cipher suite based on application demands, computational capabilities, and energy resources available. The second contribution of this thesis is deploying supervised machine learning anomaly detection algorithms on an IoT edge device to reduce data transmission overhead and cloud storage requirements. With continuous monitoring and sensing, millions of Internet of Things sensors all over the world generate tremendous amounts of data every minute. As a result, recent studies start to raise the question as whether to send all the sensing data directly to the cloud (i.e., direct transmission), or to preprocess such data at the network edge and only send necessary data to the cloud (i.e., preprocessing at the edge). Anomaly detection is particularly useful as an edge mining technique to reduce the transmission overhead in such a context when the frequently monitored activities contain only a sparse set of anomalies. This paper analyzes the potential overhead-savings of machine learning based anomaly detection models on the edge in three different IoT scenarios. Our experimental results prove that by choosing the appropriate anomaly detection models, we are able to effectively reduce the total amount of transmission energy as well as minimize required cloud storage. We prove that Random Forest, Multilayer Perceptron, and Discriminant Analysis models can viably save time and energy on the edge device during data transmission. K-Nearest Neighbors, although reliable in terms of prediction accuracy, demands exorbitant overhead and results in net time and energy loss on the edge device. In addition to presenting our model results for the different IoT scenarios, we provide guidelines for potential model selections through analysis of involved tradeoffs such as training overhead, prediction overhead, and classification accuracy

Overnight Rice Fermentation: An Analysis of the Physicochemical Changes in White, Brown, and Enriched Rice Varieties

Fermentation refers to the activity of microorganisms breaking down substrates, resulting in changes to a food product. One fermented food practice from the Indian subcontinent is overnight fermented rice. The traditional preparation consists of covering cooled cooked rice in water and leaving it at room temperature to ferment overnight. The objective of this project was to investigate overnight rice fermentation through quantifying its physicochemical changes. The study utilized three types of rice: white, enriched white, and brown. Mixtures of cooked rice and water at a 1 gram: 2 milliliter ratio were fermented at 29 degrees Celsius and 60% humidity for a duration of 24 hours. Samples were collected every 6 hours. The samples were measured for pH, titratable acidity, mineral contents, free amino acids, reducing sugars, soluble protein, and antioxidant content. The fermentation resulted in decreases in pH and increases in titratable acidity. Mineral content was higher in enriched and brown rice compared to white rice. Varied trends were exhibited for soluble protein and amino acid content, similar trends were observed in reducing sugars and antioxidant activity across fermentation time. This study revealed the chemical changes that occurred during the overnight fermentation of three rice varieties. The results of this study offer insights to the potential health benefits of fermentation, through changes in nutritional composition. Future research can evaluate further fermentation conditions, identify the specific microbes involved, and conduct clinical studies on the perceived health benefits of overnight fermented rice

The Impact of Natural Resources on Civil Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has grappled with persistent conflict throughout its history, with recent outbreaks highlighting the need for a solution. This paper investigates the greed hypothesis, which holds that armed non-state actors are motivated by the profitability of natural resources to launch uprisings against the state. Utilizing regression analysis, we investigate the correlation between the prices of various rare metals, in relation to deaths due to armed conflict. Our findings reveal a statistically significant positive correlation between the price of gold and armed conflict-related deaths, particularly in the Kivu provinces and post-2003. Conversely, we observe a decline in conflict-related deaths outside of the Kivu provinces in response to increases in copper prices prior to 1997. The implications of this result are aligned with the greed theory, suggesting that non-state actors are, at least in part, motivated by the profitability of natural resources. The findings have significant implications for policy interventions, highlighting the need for more specialized and informed approaches

Fyn kinase regulates microglial neuroinflammatory responses in cell culture and animal models of parkinson’s disease

Sustained neuroinflammation mediated by resident microglia is recognized as a key pathophysiological contributor to many neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease (PD), but the key molecular signaling events regulating persistent microglial activation have yet to be clearly defined. In the present study, we examined the role of Fyn, a non-receptor tyrosine kinase, in microglial activation and neuroinflammatory mechanisms in cell culture and animal models of PD. The well-characterized inflammogens LPS and TNFɑ rapidly activated Fyn kinase in microglia. Immunocytochemical studies revealed that activated Fyn preferentially localized to the microglial plasma membrane periphery and the nucleus. Furthermore, activated Fyn phosphorylated PKCδ at tyrosine residue 311, contributing to an inflammogen-induced increase in its kinase activity. Notably, the Fyn-PKCδ signaling axis further activated the LPSand TNFɑ-induced MAP kinase phosphorylation and activation of the NFB pathway, implying that Fyn is a major upstream regulator of proinflammatory signaling. Functional studies in microglia isolated from wild-type (Fyn) and Fyn knock-out (Fyn) mice revealed that Fyn is required for proinflammatory responses, including cytokine release as well as iNOS activation. Interestingly, a prolonged inflammatory insult induced Fyn transcript and protein expression, indicating that Fyn is upregulated during chronic inflammatory conditions. Importantly, in vivo studies using MPTP, LPS, or 6-OHDA models revealed a greater attenuation of neuroinflammatory responses in Fyn and PKCδ mice compared with wild-type mice. Collectively, our data demonstrate that Fyn is a major upstream signaling mediator of microglial neuroinflammatory processes in PD

TERJADINYA INGKAR JANJI (WANPRESTASI) DALAM PERJANJIAN FINANCIAL LEASE SERTA PELAKSANAAN HUKUMNYA

Tujuan dilakukannya penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana Perjanjian Financial Lease Sebagai Salah Satu Bentuk Kontrak, hal-hal apa yang dapat mengakibatkan terjadinya wanprestasi dalam perjanjian Financial Lease dan bagaimana Pelaksanaan Hukum Dalam Hal Terjadi Ingkar Janji (Wanprestasi) yang dengan meode penelitian hukum normatif disimpulkan: 1. Financial lease merupakan suatu alternatif pembiayaan perusahaan, seperti halnya peminjaman uang lewat perusahaan, seperti halnya peminjaman uang lewat kredit bank ataupun lembaga keuangan bukan bank. Pengertian pembiayaan alternatif berarti bahwa dalam peninjauan terhadap pengambilan suatu keputusan, apakah suatu perusahaan dalam usahanya untuk menambah perluasan usahanya akan menggunkana bank, lembaga keuangan bukan bank atau perusahaan leasing. 2. Dalam hal adanya wanprestasi tentu akan mengakibatkan salah satu pihak menderita kerugian, sebab ada pihak yang dirugikan, maka pihak yang menimbulkan kerugian itu harus bertanggung jawab. Seorang debitur yang melakukan wanprestasi akan dikenakan sanksi atau hukuman. 3. Dalam hal sudah ada gejala-gejala lessee akan melakukan wanprestasi ataupun apabila lessee telah jelas-jelas melakukan wanprestasi, maka lessor dapat menuntut apa yang merupakan haknya atas jaminan tersebut. Untuk memperoleh kedudukan hukum yang kuat, maka seluruh jenis jaminan dalam suatu perjanjian leasing seharusnya dibuat dalam akta otentik atau notarial.Kata kunci: wanprestasi; financial lease;