Inflammatory bowel disease encompasses a variety of heterogeneous chronic inflammatory diseases that affect the gastrointestinal tract, where Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the principal examples. The etiology of these, and many other complex human diseases, remain largely unknown and therefore pose relevant targets for novel research strategies. One such strategy is the in silico application of network theory derived methods to data sourced from publicly available repositories of e.g. gene expression data. Specifically, methods generating graphs of interconnected elements enriched by differentially expressed genes—disease modules—were inferred with data available through the Gene Expression Omnibus. Based on a previous method, the current project aimed to evaluate disease modules, combined from stand-alone inferential methods, in disease consensus modules: representing pathophenotypical motifs for the diseases of interest. The modules found to be significantly enriched by genome-wide association study inferred single-nucleotide polymorphisms, as validated using the Pathway Scoring Algorithm, were subsequently subjects for further analysis using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes-pathway enrichment, and literature searches. The results of this study adheres to previous findings relating to the employed method, but lack any novelty pertaining the diseases of interest. However, the results substantiate the preceding methods’ conclusion by including parameters that increase statistical validity. In addition, the study contributed to peripheral results concerning both the methodology of consensus module methods, and the elucidation of inflammatory bowel disease etiology and disease subtype differentiation, that pose interesting subjects for future investigation.

Cette thèse cherche à identifier les conditions de possibilité de modification des curricula au regard des pressions sociales. Pour cela, elle s’appuie sur un contenu d’enseignement précis : le fait colonial qui, entre les années 1980 et aujourd’hui, interroge de plus en plus le consensus national-républicain au fur et à mesure qu’il se connecte avec la question de l’immigration postcoloniale. Cette thèse s’appuie aussi sur un matériau empirique varié : des discours politiques et médiatiques construisant l’enseignement du fait colonial comme un problème public ; des archives de l’Éducation nationale, des rapports officiels, ainsi que des entretiens. Nos pistes de travail consistaient alors à identifier la configuration de réseaux d’acteurs susceptibles de procéder à une mise en compatibilité des questions scientifiquement et politiquement débattues avec les attendus du curriculum d’histoire, afin d’en faciliter la traduction. Il apparaît que chaque moment de débat mémoriel sur le passé colonial rejoue des tiraillements propres à l’école républicaine et à l’enseignement de l’histoire : la dialectique entre la pluralité culturelle et l’universalisme, celle entre l’égalité et l’identité, ou encore entre les logiques de reconnaissance et les logiques civiques. On trouve des injonctions de différents niveaux et parfois contradictoires, des décalages entre les agendas des débats publics et l’agenda scolaire, de sorte que la porosité entre les débats sociaux et les curricula d’histoire ne s’avère pas naturelle. / This thesis seeks to identify the conditions of possibility for variations and amendments in the curricula, given social pressures. For this purpose, it is founded on a precise content of teaching : the events of colonialism that, from the 1980’s to the Present, have questioned more and more the national and republican consensus, as it connects to the issue of post-colonial immigration.This thesis is also founded on firsthand empirical material : political and media discourses constructing the teaching of the events of colonialism as a public matter ; archives of National Education ; official reports ; and many interviews.Our lines of inquiry consisted then in identifying the establishment of networks of social actors likely to make compatible scientifically and politically debated issues with the expectations of the history curriculum, and to facilitate its translation.Our inquiry reveals that every occurrence of the memorial debate on the colonial past restages specific stinging and pulling in the republican school systen and in the teaching of history : the dialectic between cultural plurality and universalism, the one between equality and identity, or even the one between logics of acknowledgment and civic logics. Many injunctions are to be found, at different levels, sometimes contradictory, many discrepancies between the agendas of public debates and the timescale of school, so that the concordance between the social discourse and the history curricula does not turn out to be innate or natural.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T17:27:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Pedro Rodolfo Fernandes da Silva.pdf: 484288 bytes, checksum: 5b611bbfb825a2dfd7ec0cc8ca353b80 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-02-25 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This work presents a reading of the Scito Te Ipsum of Peter Abelard (1079- 1142), focusing the core of morality: the intentio. In Abelard s conception, moral acts are in themselves indifferent. Morality abide exclusively in agent s consent and in the intention that precedes action. When the agent consents, consciously, in the contempt of God, commits sin, although he doesn t execute the action. Sin is not, therefore, in vice, neither in bad will. These, would be better called, a disease of the soul that push man and against which he has to fight to deserve glory s crown / Este trabalho apresenta uma leitura do Scito Te Ipsum de Pedro Abelardo (1079-1142), enfocando o cerne da moralidade: a intentio. Na concepção de Abelardo, os atos morais são em si mesmos indiferentes. A moralidade reside exclusivamente no consentimento do agente e na intenção que precede a ação. Quando o agente consente, conscientemente, no desprezo de Deus, comete o pecado, ainda que não execute a ação. O pecado não está, portanto, no vício, tampouco na má vontade. Estes, melhor se denominariam, uma enfermidade da alma que arrasta o homem e contra a qual se deve lutar para merecer a coroa de glória

La vie en groupe représente de nombreux défis pour les animaux et l’un d’entre eux est le maintien de la cohésion groupe. Comment les animaux décident collectivement vers où et quand se déplacer,se nourrir, se reposer alors qu’ils n’ont pas les mêmes motivations ou besoins ? Dans ce travail de thèse je me suis intéressée aux mécanismes qui sous-tendent les décisions collectives lors des déplacements chez le cheval domestique et notamment le poids des différences interindividuelles et des relations sociales sur ces mécanismes. Pour cela, j’ai étudié quatre groupes de chevaux contenant uniquement des juments ou des groupes familiaux contenant un étalon et des juments.J’ai pu mettre en évidence 1) l’absence de leader et l’existence de décision partagée par l’ensemble du groupe, 2) l’importance de la personnalité et des relations sociales sur les décisions, 3) l’impact de la période précédant le départ sur la rapidité du consensus et 4) la coexistence de mécanismes auto-organisés et individualisés. Enfin en étudiant plus précisément les étalons, j’ai pu montrer quecontrairement à l’idée populaire, ils ne sont pas les leaders de leur groupe. Leur rôle s’apparente plus à celui d’un surveillant et ils sont parfois un des catalyseurs du phénomène. Ces résultats suggèrent que les chevaux vivent au sein d’un système hybride ou décisions partagée et non partagée coexistent. / Living in groups is challenging on many levels for animals and one of this challenge is the maintenance of group cohesion. How animals that do not share the same motives or needs, decide collectively where and when to go, to rest or to eat? In this work, I studied the mechanisms underlying collective decision during group movements in domestic horses, and notably the weight of interindividual differences and social relationships on those mechanisms. In order to achieve thatgoal, I studied four groups of domestic horses containing only females or one male and several females (i.e. natural group organisation). I was able to show that in horses 1) there is no leader and the decision is shared among group members, 2) personality and social relationships play a key role on the individual decisions, 3) the period before departure is crucial in determining the speed of the consensus, 4) both individualized and self-organised mechanisms underlie collective decisions. Finally by studying thoroughly the behaviour of stallions, I was able to debunk the myth that stallionsare the leader of their group. Their role is closer to that of a supervisor and sometimes of a catalyseras they can push females forward. Overall these results suggest that horses live in a hybrid system where shared and unshared decision coexist.

Ces dernières années, l’émergence des nouvelles technologies tels que la miniaturisation des composants, les dispositifs de communication sans fils, l’augmentation de la taille de stockage et les capacités de calcul, a permis la conception de systèmes multi-agents coopératifs de plus en plus complexes. L’un des plus grands axes de recherche dans cette thématique concerne la commande en formation de flottes de véhicules autonomes. Un grand nombre d’applications et de missions, civiles et militaires, telles que l’exploration, la surveillance, et la maintenance, ont alors été développées et réalisées dans des milieux variés (terre, air, eau). Durant l’exécution de ces tâches, les véhicules doivent interagir avec leur environnement et entre eux pour se coordonner. Les outils de communication disponibles disposent souvent d’une portée limitée. La préservation de la connexion au sein du groupe devient alors un des objectifs à satisfaire pour que la tâche puisse être accomplie avec succès. Une des possibilités pour garantir cette contrainte est le déplacement en formation permettant de préserver les distances et la structure géométrique du groupe. Il est toutefois nécessaire de disposer d’outils et de méthodes d’analyse et de commande de ces types de systèmes afin d’exploiter au maximum leurs potentiels. Cette thèse s’inscrit dans cette direction de recherche en présentant une synthèse et une analyse des systèmes dynamiques multi-agents et plus particulièrement la commande en formation de véhicules autonomes. Les lois de commande développées dans la littérature pour la commande en formation permettent d’accomplir un grand nombre de missions avec un niveau de performance élevé. Toutefois, si un défaut/défaillant apparaît dans la formation, ces lois de commandes peuvent s’avérer très limitées, engendrant un comportement instable du système. Le développement de commandes tolérantes aux défauts devient alors primordial pour maintenir les performances de commande en présence de défauts. Cette problématique sera traitée dans ce mémoire de thèse et concernera le développement et la conception de commandes en formation tolérantes au défaut dévolu à une flotte de véhicules autonomes suivant différente configuration/structuration / In recent years, the emergence of new technologies such as miniaturization of components, wireless communication devices, increased storage size and computing capabilities have allowed the design of increasingly complex cooperative multi-agent systems. One of the main research axes in this topic concerns the formation control of fleets of autonomous vehicles. Many applications and missions, civilian and military, such as exploration, surveillance, and maintenance, were developed and carried out in various environments. During the execution of these tasks, the vehicles must interact with their environment and among themselves to coordinate. The available communication tools are often limited in scope. The preservation of the connection within the group then becomes one of the objectives to be satisfied in order to carry out the task successfully. One of the possibilities to guarantee this constraint is the training displacement, which makes it possible to preserve the distances and the geometrical structure of the group. However, it is necessary to have tools and methods for analyzing and controlling these types of systems in order to make the most of their potential. This thesis is part of this research direction by presenting a synthesis and analysis of multi-agent dynamical systems and more particularly the formation control of autonomous vehicles. The control laws developed in the literature for formation control allow to carry out a large number of missions with a high level of performance. However, if a fault/failure occurs in the training, these control laws can be very limited, resulting in unstable system behavior. The development of fault tolerant controls becomes paramount to maintaining control performance in the presence of faults. This problem will be dealt with in more detail in this thesis and will concern the development and design of Fault tolerant controls devolved to a fleet of autonomous vehicles according to different configuration/structuring

Avec l’évolution du Consensus de Washington comme fil conducteur, nous montrons que la gouvernance est partie à la reconquête de son caractère politique, caractère que les tenants du « tout marché » lui avaient retiré. Une fois le constat établi d’une gouvernance désormais démocratique, nous analysons les indicateurs produits pour la quantifier. Ces indicateurs sont en majorité des indices de perceptions, ils demeurent imparfaits, parfois biaisés.En nous intéressant à la mesure de la corruption, nous avons mis à jour l’existence d’un biais que nous qualifions de réflectif ou médiatique. La liberté de la presse joue un rôle important sur les perceptions. Nous suggérons que l’indice de perception de la corruption produit par Transparency International pénalise les jeunes démocraties. L’ouverture des médias et une liberté de la presse grandissante, en mettant à jour les actes de corruption jusqu’alors non révélés, influencent les experts de Transparency International qui ont tendance à dégrader leur notation.Récemment, un nouvel outil est apparu pour mesurer la qualité institutionnelle. Si les enquêtes menées auprès des ménages ne sont pas nouvelles en tant que telles, leur systématisation ouvre de nombreuses perspectives. En utilisant le Gallup World Poll nous avons été en mesure d’observer le ressenti des populations concernant la corruption, et ce, à une échelle encore inédite. Nous avons alors été en mesure de comparer les perceptions des ménages à celles des experts. Nous avons alors identifié les déterminants de ces écarts et montré l’influence de facteurs comme la liberté de la presse, la nature du régime politique ou encore la confiance envers les gouvernements. / With Washington Consensus as leit motiv, we show that governance ultimately reaffirmed its political nature which “whole market” supporters tried to eradicate. Once established the now democratic nature of governance, we study the indicators produced to evaluate it. These indexes are mostly perceptions indicators. Thus, they remain unperfected, sometimes biased.Focusing on corruption measurement, we uncovered a media or reflective bias. Press freedom plays an important role on perceptions. We suggest that the Corruption Perception Index, provided by Transparency International (TI) penalizes young democracies. Media aperture, broadcasting corruption deeds so far unrevealed, likely influences TI experts that consequently deteriorate their notations.Recently, a new tool appears to assess institutional quality. If household surveys are not brand new, their systematization opens new perspectives. Using Gallup Worl Poll, we were able to observe population’s feeling towards corruption at a global scale. Thus, we were able to compare population’s and expert’s perceptions. We then identified this gap determinants and put the light on the influence of press freedom, political organization or leadership approval.

Cette thèse considère principalement trois problèmes dans le domaine du contrôle distribué coopératif des systèmes multi-agents(SMA): le consensus, la navigation en formation et le maintien en formation d’un groupe d’agents lorsqu’un agent disparait. Nous proposons 3 algorithmes pour résoudre le problème du calcul distribué d’un consensus à partir de l’approche leadeur-suiveur dans le contexte SMA à dynamique non-linéaire. La référence est définie comme un leader virtuel dont on n’obtient, localement, que les données de position et de vitesse. Pour résoudre le problème du suivi par consensus pour les SMA à dynamique non-linéaire, nous considérons le suivi par consensus pour SMA de premier ordre. On propose des résultats permettant aux suiveurs de suivre le leadeur virtuel en temps fini en ne considérant que les positions des agents. Ensuite, nous considérons le suivi par consensus de SMA de second. Dans le cas de la planification de trajectoire et la commande du mouvement de la formation multi-agents. L’idée est d’amener la formation, dont la dynamique est supposée être en 3D, d’une configuration initiale vers une configuration finale (trouver un chemin faisable en position et orientation) en maintenant sa forme tout le long du chemin en évitant les obstacles. La stratégie proposée se décompose en 3 étapes. Le problème du Closing-Rank se traduit par la réparation d’une formation rigide multi-agents "endommagée" par la perte de l'un de ses agents. Nous proposons 2 algorithmes d’autoréparation systématique pour récupérer la rigidité en cas de perte d'un agent. Ces réparations s’effectuent de manière décentralisée et distribuée n’utilisant que des informations de voisinage / This dissertation focuses on distributed cooperative control of multi-agent systems. First, the leader-following consensus for multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics is investigated. Three consensus algorithms are proposed and some sufficient conditions are obtained for the states of followers converging to the state of virtual leader globally exponentially. Second, the consensus tracking for multi-agent systems with nonlinear dynamics is investigated. Some consensus tracking algorithms are developed, and some sufficient conditions are obtained. Based on these consensus tracking algorithms and sufficient conditions, it is shown that in first-order multi-agent systems all followers can track the virtual leader in finite time, and in second-order multi-agent systems the consensus tracking can be achieved at least globally exponentially. Third, the path planning and motion control of multi-agent formation is studied, where a practical framework is provided. In order to find a collision-free and deadlock-free feasible path for the whole formation, an optimizing algorithm is given to optimize the path generated by A* search algorithm. In order to realize the cohesive motion of a persistent formation in 3-dimensional space, a set of decentralized control laws is designed. Finally, the formation keeping problem is studied. We mainly focus on the closing ranks problem, which deals with the addition of links to a rigid multi-agent formation that is “damaged" by losing one of its agents, in order to recover rigidity. Some graph theoretical results are obtained, and some systematic ’self-repair’ operations are proposed to recover the rigidity in case of agent removals

<p>Autonomous agent systems are systems in which many simple entities, called “agents”, interact with each other. The behaviour resulting from such interactions can be much more complex than that of the individual agents. A group of interacting agents can for example accomplish tasks that no single agent could.</p> <p>Nature provides several examples of autonomous agent systems, such as flocks of birds and insects, schools of fish, and anthills. Progresses in robotics, electronics and telecommunications make it now also possible to design such systems in order to accomplish particular tasks, such as the surveillance or exploration of areas, or the maintenance of some environments.</p> <p>In this thesis, we analyze two issues related to autonomous agent systems, and more precisely, to the influence of the inter-agent communication network on the system behaviour. In a first part, we consider the problem of preserving the shape of a multi-agent formation by explicitly maintaining the distances between some agents constant. We study the case of distance constraints that are unilateral, that is, constraints for which the responsibility is given to a one of the two agents concerned. This leads to the notions of persistence and constraint consistence. The second part is devoted to the consensus problems: agents have a value which they update by averaging that of other agents. Eventually, all agents may obtain a common value, in which case we say that the system reaches a consensus. One major difficulty in the study of such system is the possible dependence of the interaction and communication topology on the values of the agents. We study two paradigmatic systems in which this dependence can be taken into account, and obtain results on their convergence and on the stability of their equlibria.</p>

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

This study looks at the National Citizens' Technology Forum (NCTF), a modified version of the consensus conference, which took place in March, 2008 in six cities across the U.S. to understand how inclusive these methods of public participation are in practice. The research focused on two of these sites. Inclusion of participants was defined in terms of presence, voice and being heard. Transcripts of the audio-visual recordings of the proceedings were the main data of analysis. By focusing on the talk within these deliberative forums, the study looked at how the rules of engagement and status (ascribed and achieved) differences between participants can affect inclusion. The analysis did not reveal any substantial effects of ascribed characteristics on deliberation. Facilitation and the presence of expertise among the participants were found to influence inclusion and equality among participants. These findings suggest that organizers and facilitators of deliberative exercises have to be reflexive of their role as well as aware of the group dynamics. The results also address the larger questions within science and technology policy like the role of expertise and the public in decision making, the institutional design of participatory exercises, and their relation to the political culture and the policy process.