Masters of Art / Intimate partner violence (IPV) has reached epidemic proportions in South Africa, prompting the government to pass the Domestic Violence Act 116 (1998). However, numerous scholars still believe that legislation is lacking due to inadequate implementation of protocol in the healthcare sector. In the healthcare setting, nurses are usually the first people that abused women make contact with and so they are in an excellent position to identify IPV victims and prevent further abuse. Routine universal screening in the healthcare setting is recommended as a means to identify women who suffer in abusive relationships. However, several problems have been encountered with the attempts to implement screening practices. In this study the various perceived barriers to IPV screening among nursing students were examined by use of a descriptive survey approach. The research participants were 103 nursing students from the University of the Western Cape. Data were collected by means of a selfadministered questionnaire and analysed using descriptive as a means to uncover the relationship between perceived barriers and the screening practices of the participants. The aim of this study was to identify the barriers that will discourage a nurse from routinely screening for intimate partner violence in a healthcare practice. The present study’s results indicated that the majority of variance in routinely screening for IPV can be explained by barriers related to HCP knowledge of managing IPV disclosure; the perceived responses of patients to screening; the privatisation of abuse; and whether HCP regard IPV as a healthcare issue. Information, regarding the beliefs of healthcare providers (HCP) with regard to IPV as well as the barriers they perceive toward screening, will be helpful in designing curricula that will successfully teach HCP how to screen for IPV and it will also be useful in making positive changes to the screening conditions in healthcare settings.

Les Megavirales appartiennent à des familles de virus géants infectant un grand nombre d'hôtes eucaryotes. Leurs génomes ont des tailles variant de 100 kb to 2.5 mb et leur composition a montré des caractéristiques surprenantes qui ont soulevées diverses questions sur l’origine et l’évolution de ces virus. Les études de métagénomique environnementale ont montré qu’il existe une «matière noire», composée de séquences reliées à aucun organisme connu. Cependant, l'identification des séquences a été principalement réalisée en utilisant les séquences ADN ribosomal (ADNr), ce qui conduit à ignorer les virus. D’autres gènes informationnels « cœur », incluant la DNA-dependant RNA polymerase (RNAP) constituent d'autres marqueurs qui apparaissent comme plus appropriés pour une classification plus exhaustive des séquences, puisqu’ils apparaissent conservés dans les organismes cellulaires ainsi que les mégavirus. Nous avons utilisé un petit ensemble de gènes universels conservés incluant la RNAP et avons reconstruit des séquences ancestrales pour rechercher des séquences reliées aux mégavirus dans les bases de données. Cela a permis d’identifier trois nouvelles séquences de megavirus qui avaient été mal annotées comme correspondant à des organismes cellulaires, ainsi que de nouveaux clades viraux dans les bases métagénomiques environnementales. De plus, nous avons montré que l’ordre Megavirales constituait une quatrième branche monophylogénétique ou « TRUC » (pour Things Resisting Uncompleted Classification). Nos analyses montrent également que la RNAP ainsi que quelques autres gènes utilisés dans nos études permettent de considérer un répertoire plus complet d’organismes que l’ADNr. / Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs), or representatives of order Megavirales, belong to families of giant viruses that infect a large number of eukaryotic hosts. These viruses genomes size ranges from 100 kb to 2.5 mb and compose surprising features, which raised various questions about their origin and evolution. Environmental metagenomic studies showed that there is a “dark matter”, composed of sequences not linked to any known organism. However sequence identification was mainly determined using ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequences, which led therefore to ignore viruses, because they are devoid of such genes. Informational genes, including DNA-dependant RNA polymerase (RNAP), are other markers that appear as more appropriate for a comprehensive classification as they are conserved in cellular organisms (Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya) and in Megavirales. We used a small set of universally conserved genes that included RNAP and reconstructed ancestral sequences to search for megavirus relatives in sequence databases and to perform phylogeny reconstructions. This allowed identified three megaviral sequences that were misannotated as cellular orgainsms, and new viral clades in environmental databases. In addition, we delineated Megavirales as a fourth monophylogenetic TRUC (things resisting uncompleted classification) aside cellular organisms. Moreover, we classified by phylogenetic and phyletic analyses based on informational genes new giant viruses as new bona fide members of the fourth TRUC. Our analyses shows that RNAP as well as a few other genes used in our studies allow a more comprehensive overview and classification of the biological diversity than rDNA.

En se fondant sur une enquête documentographique, issue de plusieurs méthodes de commentaire de documents, notamment en géographie, en histoire, en analyse des spectacles, cette thèse vise à explorer les capacités informatives de la carte, objet de contemplation et de fascination, mais aussi de visualisation de territoires. La carte est, en effet, une re-présentation, c'est-à-dire une " mise sous les yeux " iconique d'informations spatialisées, qui bénéficie d'un langage visuel et textuel efficace. L'objectif de cette enquête sur l'élaboration, la production et les usages des cartes, est de définir, du point de vue des Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication, et dans la continuité des travaux de Jean Meyriat, le document carte, et de préciser ce qui relève de ses fabriques infocommunicationnelles, celle par l'intention de son auteur, et celle à réception. La carte est construite et élaborée pour assumer une ou des fonctions, définies par celui qui la fabrique. Mais elle peut être exploitée et interrogée par des utilisateurs, dans d'autres contextes de réception que celui prévu par l'auteur. La carte remplit alors d'autres fonctions et se révèle kaléidoscopique : chacune de ses utilisations crée une autre image, chaque utilisateur fabrique un nouveau document. A travers cette exploitation de la carte, réalisée à partir d'un échantillon du fonds cartographique de l'Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, nous contribuons ainsi, au sein de l'équipe MICS, Médiations en Information-Communication Spécialisées du Laboratoire d'Études et de Recherches Appliquées en Sciences Sociales, LERASS, à l'élaboration collective du concept de document dans ses formes diverses. / Based on a documentographic investigation, following several methods comment of documents, including geography, history, analysis shows, this thesis aims to explore the informative capacity of the map, an object of contemplation and fascination, but also territories visualization. The map is, in fact, a re-presentation, that is to say, an iconic "deposit under the eyes" of spatial information, which has a visual and textual language effectively. The objective of this investigation on the development, production and uses of maps, is to define, in terms of Information and Communication Sciences, and continuity in the work of Jean Meyriat, the document map, and clarify what comes under its infocommunicationals factories, one by the intention of its author, and one upon receipt. The map is built and developed to assume one or more functions defined by the person who makes. But it can be exploited and interrogated by users, in other receptions contexts than that provided by the author. The map then performs other functions and proves kaleidoscopic: each of its use creates another image, each user makes a new document. Through this exploitation of the map, made from a sample of cartographic funds of University of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès, we contribute, within MICS team, Mediations in Specialized Information-Communication Studies, of Laboratory and Applied Research in Social Sciences, LERASS, of the collective concept development document in its various forms.

Introduction: This research investigated the requirements of an HIT solution that is usable and useful to informal caregivers of cancer patients on home palliative care. Methodology: A needs assessment method was used with an exploratory and a confirmatory stage. Eight semi-structured interviews and two focus groups were used for data collection. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse caregiver experiences with both inductive and deductive coding. Results/Discussion: Expressed and unexpressed caregiver needs were extracted into four categories, Implementation, Presentation, Information, and Practical Caregiving, and used to create the application requirements. Five user personas were created based on caregiving intensity and the functional level of the patients, a method of tailoring the application content to the different personas was created, and a low-fidelity prototype of the application was designed. Conclusion: The findings of this research can improve the preparedness and coping of informal caregivers of cancer patients on home palliative care.

L’objet de la thèse est d’analyser la pertinence de la théorie financière, référencée aux modèles théoriques qui servent à la compréhension du comportement financier des entreprises de grande taille, dans l’explication de la spécificité de la structure financière des PME françaises. Plus spécifiquement, il s’agit d’identifier et d’analyser empiriquement les déterminants de la structure du capital (taux d’endettement total) et de la structure de la dette (taux d’endettement à court, moyen et long terme) de ces entreprises qui a fait l’objet d’une large réflexion théorique dont le point de départ est le théorème de Modigliani & Miller(1958). Le chapitre 1 est consacré à la présentation et à la définition de notre cadre d’analyse. Le chapitre 2 expose les besoins et les sources de financement de ces entreprises. Le chapitre 3 examine les décisions d’investissement et de financement en se référant aux enseignements de la théorie du compromis, de la théorie de l’agence, de la théorie du signal, de la théorie du financement hiérarchique et de la théorie du rationnement du crédit ; la prise en compte des conflits d’intérêt et des asymétries d’information donne un pouvoir explicatif de la spécificité de la structure financière des PME. Les deux derniers chapitres (4 et 5) étudient le comportement de financement de 1520 PME françaises sélectionnées dans la base de données DIANE sur la période 2000-2004. Les résultats des régressions statistiquement significatives montrent que le crédit interentreprises joue un rôle de signal pour les créanciers qui ne disposent pas d’une information privée sur l’entreprise ; l’accès à la dette est très dépendant de la capacité de l’entreprise à offrir des garanties ; enfin, les résultats montrent l’existence de contraintes d’accès aux ressources financières pour les entreprises de petite taille ; l’âge de l’entreprise et son secteur d’activité influencent son choix de financement. / This thesis attempts to analyze the relevance of existing financial theory, referenced to the theoretical models that shed light on the financial behaviour of large enterprises, in explaining the specificity of the financial structure of French Small and Middle Enterprises (SMEs).More specifically, it identifies and analyzes empirically the determinants of capital structure (total debt ratio) and debt structure (debt ratio over the short, medium and long term) of these enterprises. There is a large body of literature on this issue the theorem of Modigliani and Miller (1958). The first chapter 1 is devoted to the presentation and definition of ouranalytical framework. Chapter 2 outlines the requirements and sources of financing of French SMEs. Chapter 3 discusses the investment and financing decisions, with reference to the theory of compromise, agency theory, signal theory, pecking order theory, and creditrationing theory ; the specific financial structure of SMEs can be better understood when one takes into account conflicts of interest and information asymmetries. In the last two chapters,we study the behaviour of finance from a sample of 1520 French SMEs released from DIANE dataset over the period from 2000 to 2004. The regression results show that inter-companycredits play a role as signal to creditors, which do not have private information about the company. Access to debt is strongly dependent on the ability of the company to offer guarantees. Finally, our results indicate the existence of constraints on access to finance forsmall businesses and the financing choices are affected by their age and the industry to which they belong.

Avec l’arrivée des technologies de l’information, l’explosion de l’information et la recrudescence des supports ont modifié les pratiques des usagers des bibliothèques qui utilisent de plus en plus le numérique et les nouveaux outils de communication. Ces évolutions placées dans le cadre de la formation à l’université nous interrogent sur l’enjeu que peut représenter la formation documentaire dans les besoins et les attentes des utilisateurs pour une meilleure utilisation de l’information. Notre recherche se précise autour des médias socionumériques qui ponctuent le quotidien des étudiants et qui suscitent des interrogations sur leurs impacts dans l’accès à la documentation universitaire. On observe que les compétences à maîtriser par les usagers sont encore occultées dans les formations classiques proposées dans les bibliothèques universitaires alors qu’elles sont nécessaires pour provoquer une meilleure réception des savoirs informationnels et documentaires afin d’interagir sur un enfermement consumériste de l’information.En nous appuyant sur une méthodologie avec des entretiens exploratoires à un questionnaire auprès de professionnels de l’information, de la communication et de la documentation, notre étude montre que c’est dans le cadre d’une convergence numérique qu’un changement peut s’opérer chez les étudiants. Cette convergence s’inscrit dans le cadre de formations qui s’orientent vers les cultures numériques qui allient à la fois l’éducation aux médias déclinant l’esprit critique, l’apprentissage centré apprenant et la culture technique qui doit prendre en compte à la fois la connaissance des outils mais aussi la formation par les outils. C’est cette vision de l’écologie de la formation qui préfigure dans notre analyse et qui s’annonce pour les bibliothèques universitaires comme un axe fort d’ancrage dans l’enseignement supérieur, autour d’une dynamique axée vers une convergence info-documentaire numérique. Ces préconisations sont envisagées dans le cadre d’actions collectives au sein de l’université avec une réelle médiation entre les différents acteurs de l’éducation et de la formation et une place centrale pour la bibliothèque universitaire comme le lieu des transversalités de la formation numérique. / With the advent of information technology, the information explosion and the resurgence of media changed the practices of users of libraries that use more digital and new communication tools. These developments within the University training interrogate us on the issue that may represent the documentary training in the needs and expectations of users for a better use of the information. Our research says around digital social media that punctuate the lives of students and which raise questions on their impacts in access to academic literature. Observed that skills to master by users are still obscured in conventional formations proposed in academic libraries that are necessary to produce a better reception of documentary and informational knowledge to interact a consumerist confinement of information. Based on a methodology with exploratory talks to a questionnaire with information, communication and documentation professionals, our study shows that this is in digital convergence that a change may occur among students. This convergence is part of formations that are moving towards digital cultures combining both education media declining the critical spirit, centered learning and technical culture which must take into account both the knowledge of the tools, but also the training tools. It is this vision of the ecology of the training that foreshadowed in our analysis and looming for academic libraries as a strong axis of anchoring in higher education around a dynamic oriented towards a digital documentary convergence. These recommendations are considered in the context of collective action within the University with real mediation between the different actors of education and training, and a central place for the University Library as the place of training for digital transversalities.

A sumarização multidocumento consiste na produção de um sumário/resumo a partir de uma coleção de textos sobre um mesmo assunto. Devido à grande quantidade de informação disponível na Web, esta tarefa é de grande relevância já que pode facilitar a leitura dos usuários. Os aspectos informativos representam as unidades básicas de informação presentes nos textos. Por exemplo, em textos jornalísticos em que se relata um fato/acontecimento, os aspectos podem representar a seguintes informações: o que aconteceu, onde aconteceu, quando aconteceu, como aconteceu, e por que aconteceu. Conhecendo-se esses aspectos e as estratégias de produção e organização de sumários, é possível automatizar a tarefa de sumarização. No entanto, para o Português do Brasil, não há pesquisa feita sobre sumarização com base em aspectos. Portanto, neste trabalho de mestrado, investigaram-se métodos de sumarização multidocumento com base em aspectos informativos, pertencente à abordagem profunda para a sumarização, em que se busca interpretar o texto para se produzir sumários mais informativos. Em particular, implementaram-se duas etapas relacionadas: (i) identificação automática de aspectos os aspectos informativos e (ii) desenvolvimento e avaliação de dois métodos de sumarização com base em padrões de aspectos (ou templates) em sumários. Na etapa (i), criaram-se classificadores de aspectos com base em anotador de papéis semânticos, reconhecedor de entidades mencionadas, regras manuais e técnicas de aprendizado de máquina. Avaliaram-se os classificadores sobre o córpus CSTNews (Rassi et al., 2013; Felippo et al., 2014). Os resultados foram satisfatórios, demostrando que alguns aspectos podem ser identificados automaticamente em textos jornalísticos com um desempenho razoável. Já na etapa (ii), elaboraram-se dois métodos inéditos de sumarização multidocumento com base em aspectos. Os resultados obtidos mostram que os métodos propostos neste trabalho são competitivos com os métodos da literatura. Salienta-se que esta abordagem para sumarização tem recebido grande destaque ultimamente. Além disso, é inédita nos trabalhos desenvolvidos no Brasil, podendo trazer contribuições importantes para a área. / Multi-document summarization is the task of automatically producing a unique summary from a group of texts on the same topic. With the huge amount of available information in the web, this task is very relevant because it can facilitate the reading of the users. Informative aspects, in particular, represent the basic information units in texts and summaries, e.g., in news texts there should be the following information: what happened, when it happened, where it happened, how it happened and why it happened. Knowing these aspects and the strategies to produce and organize summaries, it is possible to automate the aspect-based summarization. However, there is no research about aspect-based multi-document summarization for Brazilian Portuguese. This research work investigates multi-document summarization methods based on informative aspects, which follows the deep approach for summarization, in which it aims at interpreting the texts to produce more informative summaries. In particular, two main stages are developed: (i) the automatic identification of informative aspects and (ii) and the development and evaluation of two summarization methods based on aspects patterns (or templates). In the step (i) classifiers were created based on semantic role labeling, named entity recognition, handcrafted rules and machine learning techniques. Classifiers were evaluated on the CSTNews annotated corpus (Rassi et al., 2013; Felippo et al., 2014). The results were satisfactory, demonstrating that some aspects can be automatically identified in the news with a reasonable performance. In the step (ii) two novels aspect-based multi-document summarization methods are elaborated. The results show that the proposed methods in this work are competitive with the classical methods. It should be noted that this approach has lately received a lot of attention. Furthermore, it is unprecedented in the summarization task developed in Brazil, with the potential to bring important contributions to the area.

No description available.

​Does political information lower the incidence of ethnic voting in Africa? Even though a significant amount of research has been dedicated to African ethnic voting behaviour,​not much capacity has been dedicated to studying the function of ethnic cues as informational shortcuts. Considering voters use cognitive shortcuts like party affiliations or ideology when making decisions, it is also plausible that voters in elections characterized by ethnic voting use demographic cues in lieu of more comprehensive information. The aim of this thesis was therefore to contribute to the existing research on how informational context affects ethnicity as a determinant for voting behaviour, testing a theory developed by Conroy-Krutz suggesting more political information reduces the incidence of ethnic voting. Using Afrobarometer survey data from 2016-2018, regression analysis was conducted measuring the effects of access to and consumption of political information on ethnic voting in Kenya. The results are ambiguous and do not lend support to the theory in its current form, but instead suggests that what kind of political information and how it is perceived might affect the relationship with ethnic voting. Another possibility is that the content of the political information, bringing about factors like media coverage and press freedom, should be accounted into the model. More research is needed to dismiss or develop the theory, and so this thesis opens up for more research to be made concerning our understanding on the effects of political information on ethnic voting behavior.

L’intelligence économique se présente comme une exception conceptuelle francophone issue à la fois de traductions de différents termes anglo-saxons mais également d’une agrégation de fonctions organisationnelles liées à l’information. Ces fondements hétéroclites se conjuguent à une effervescence pratique, l’intelligence économique ne cessant de se développer sous diverses formes dans les organisations. Cette thèse vise à proposer un fondement théorique nouveau à ces expériences en s’appuyant sur les concepts managériaux au travers de l’étude du cas de Gaz de Bordeaux, une entreprise du secteur énergétique. S’inscrivant dans une volonté exploratoire fondée sur une méthodologie qualitative, l’objectif est de proposer une définition s’appuyant sur les théories gestionnaires de l’asymétrie d’information, du système et de la valeur. / "L'intelligence économique" is presented as a French conceptual exception after at a time of translations various English terms but also an aggregation of organizational functions related to information. These heteroclite bases are combined to an effervescent practice, “l’intelligence économique” never ceasing to develop in various forms in organizations. This thesis aims to propose a new theoretical basis for these experiments based on the managerial concepts through a case study of Gaz de Bordeaux, an energy firm. As part of an exploratory will based on a qualitative, the objective is to propose a definition based on the Management Science theories of asymmetric information, system and value.