The geopolitical significance of Pakistan in the Global War on Terror has led to multiple instances of the US acting in an extra-territorial manner. Repeated territorial intrusion by the US strains US-Pakistan relations because extra-territoriality is viewed as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. This study analyzes Pakistani-English political cartoons to examine the ways the US extra-territoriality is represented. Approximately 2940 political cartoons are collected from four Pakistani-English newspapers: Dawn, The Express Tribune, The Nation, and The News. Wallerstein’s world-system theory provides the theoretical backdrop to demonstrate the explicit (military) and implicit (economic, cultural, and political/diplomatic) means a hegemonic-core power can act extra-territorially towards a state in the periphery. A combination of content analysis and social semiotic analysis methodologies is used. Content analysis reveals a total of 323 US-related political cartoons that are classified into themes of economic, cultural, military, and political/diplomatic depictions in political cartoons. A visual social semiotic analysis deconstructs the visual rhetoric of extra-territoriality as expressed in the various themed political cartoons. The outcome of these two methodologies provides a holistic illustration of the ways US extra-territoriality in a sovereign but periphery state like Pakistan is viewed.

Les maladies cardiovasculaires sont de nos jours un problème de santé majeur. L'amélioration des méthodes liées au diagnostic de ces maladies représente donc un réel enjeu en cardiologie. Le coeur étant un organe en perpétuel mouvement, l'analyse du mouvement cardiaque est un élément clé pour le diagnostic. Par conséquent, les méthodes dédiées à l'estimation du mouvement cardiaque à partir d'images médicales, plus particulièrement en échocardiographie, font l'objet de nombreux travaux de recherches. Cependant, plusieurs difficultés liées à la complexité du mouvement du coeur ainsi qu'à la qualité des images échographiques restent à surmonter afin d'améliorer la qualité et la précision des estimations. Dans le domaine du traitement d'images, les méthodes basées sur l'apprentissage suscitent de plus en plus d'intérêt. Plus particulièrement, les représentations parcimonieuses et l'apprentissage de dictionnaires ont démontré leur efficacité pour la régularisation de divers problèmes inverses. Cette thèse a ainsi pour but d'explorer l'apport de ces méthodes, qui allient parcimonie et apprentissage, pour l'estimation du mouvement cardiaque. Trois principales contributions sont présentées, chacune traitant différents aspects et problématiques rencontrées dans le cadre de l'estimation du mouvement en échocardiographie. Dans un premier temps, une méthode d'estimation du mouvement cardiaque se basant sur une régularisation parcimonieuse est proposée. Le problème d'estimation du mouvement est formulé dans le cadre d'une minimisation d'énergie, dont le terme d'attache aux données est construit avec l'hypothèse d'un bruit de Rayleigh multiplicatif. Une étape d'apprentissage de dictionnaire permet une régularisation exploitant les propriétés parcimonieuses du mouvement cardiaque, combinée à un terme classique de lissage spatial. Dans un second temps, une méthode robuste de flux optique est présentée. L'objectif de cette approche est de robustifier la méthode d'estimation développée au premier chapitre de manière à la rendre moins sensible aux éléments aberrants. Deux régularisations sont mises en oeuvre, imposant d'une part un lissage spatial et de l'autre la parcimonie des champs de mouvements dans un dictionnaire approprié. Afin d'assurer la robustesse de la méthode vis-à-vis des anomalies, une stratégie de minimisation récursivement pondérée est proposée. Plus précisément, les fonctions employées pour cette pondération sont basées sur la théorie des M-estimateurs. Le dernier travail présenté dans cette thèse, explore une méthode d'estimation du mouvement cardiaque exploitant une régularisation parcimonieuse combinée à un lissage à la fois dans les domaines spatial et temporel. Le problème est formulé dans un cadre général d'estimation de flux optique. La régularisation temporelle proposée impose des trajectoires de mouvement lisses entre images consécutives. De plus, une méthode itérative d'estimation permet d'incorporer les trois termes de régularisations, tout en rendant possible le traitement simultané d'un ensemble d'images. Dans cette thèse, les contributions proposées sont validées en employant des images synthétiques et des simulations réalistes d'images ultrasonores. Ces données avec vérité terrain permettent d'évaluer la précision des approches considérées, et de souligner leur compétitivité par rapport à des méthodes de l'état-del'art. Pour démontrer la faisabilité clinique, des images in vivo de patients sains ou atteints de pathologies sont également considérées pour les deux premières méthodes. Pour la dernière contribution de cette thèse, i.e., exploitant un lissage temporel, une étude préliminaire est menée en utilisant des données de simulation. / Cardiovascular diseases have become a major healthcare issue. Improving the diagnosis and analysis of these diseases have thus become a primary concern in cardiology. The heart is a moving organ that undergoes complex deformations. Therefore, the quantification of cardiac motion from medical images, particularly ultrasound, is a key part of the techniques used for diagnosis in clinical practice. Thus, significant research efforts have been directed toward developing new cardiac motion estimation methods. These methods aim at improving the quality and accuracy of the estimated motions. However, they are still facing many challenges due to the complexity of cardiac motion and the quality of ultrasound images. Recently, learning-based techniques have received a growing interest in the field of image processing. More specifically, sparse representations and dictionary learning strategies have shown their efficiency in regularizing different ill-posed inverse problems. This thesis investigates the benefits that such sparsity and learning-based techniques can bring to cardiac motion estimation. Three main contributions are presented, investigating different aspects and challenges that arise in echocardiography. Firstly, a method for cardiac motion estimation using a sparsity-based regularization is introduced. The motion estimation problem is formulated as an energy minimization, whose data fidelity term is built using the assumption that the images are corrupted by multiplicative Rayleigh noise. In addition to a classical spatial smoothness constraint, the proposed method exploits the sparse properties of the cardiac motion to regularize the solution via an appropriate dictionary learning step. Secondly, a fully robust optical flow method is proposed. The aim of this work is to take into account the limitations of ultrasound imaging and the violations of the regularization constraints. In this work, two regularization terms imposing spatial smoothness and sparsity of the motion field in an appropriate cardiac motion dictionary are also exploited. In order to ensure robustness to outliers, an iteratively re-weighted minimization strategy is proposed using weighting functions based on M-estimators. As a last contribution, we investigate a cardiac motion estimation method using a combination of sparse, spatial and temporal regularizations. The problem is formulated within a general optical flow framework. The proposed temporal regularization enforces smoothness of the motion trajectories between consecutive images. Furthermore, an iterative groupewise motion estimation allows us to incorporate the three regularization terms, while enabling the processing of the image sequence as a whole. Throughout this thesis, the proposed contributions are validated using synthetic and realistic simulated cardiac ultrasound images. These datasets with available groundtruth are used to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed approaches and show their competitiveness with state-of-the-art algorithms. In order to demonstrate clinical feasibility, in vivo sequences of healthy and pathological subjects are considered for the first two methods. A preliminary investigation is conducted for the last contribution, i.e., exploiting temporal smoothness, using simulated data.

La place répond à la représentation – consciente ou inconsciente selon les temps et les lieux – que chaque groupe d’hommes se fait de sa ville. Devenue forme urbaine prestigieuse, la place est donc d’abord une idée, née à l’époque moderne d’une construction intellectuelle et culturelle. Partant de ce postulat, la thèse vise à comprendre le statut de la place parisienne à travers ses représentations. Afin de mieux décrypter les changements comme les permanences, d’interroger sa valeur archétypale ou paradigmatique, la place est observée à travers un corpus de textes de statuts différents (de la théorie architecturale au guide de voyage). Cette recherche explore dans deux périodes - l’une de construction d’une pensée sur la ville (1690-1844), l’autre de relecture et de recherche de modèles dans son passé (1889-1975), si et comment la place participe de la notion d’embellissement née au siècle des Lumières, mais aussi le rôle que les auteurs lui attribuent dans la structuration de la ville (centralité, extension) ou encore dans sa mise en valeur, voire dans la survivance de son mythe comme ville la « plus belle de l’univers ». Par delà l’annexion de 1860, ces textes interrogent les temps de la ville, ses limites, ses pratiques, sa symbolique. Quel que soit le moment, la place raconte une certaine idée de l’espace urbain et inversement, par anticipation ou rétroaction. C’est donc dans ce rapport dialectique que cette thèse s’inscrit et tente de comprendre ce qui est dit du fait urbain à travers cette forme urbaine à part, qui est d’abord une idée puissante, symbole d’une urbanité toujours à redéfinir. / The square is part of the representation of the city that each human group develops during a specific time in a specific place. It became a prestigious urban form under the influence of an intellectual and cultural idea which took shape in the high spheres of society during the modern era. Stemming from this premise, this thesis aims to understand what the square, as reflected in its representations, stood for from the second half of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century. The corpus is based on texts which vary from architectural theory to visitors’ guides. In order to better decipher changes as well as permanencies and to question their archetypal or paradigmatic value, the Parisian square is observed through texts published during two moments of expectations, interrogations and urban projections: 1740-1840 and 1890-1920, two moments which border a short and intense time of structural transformations. This research aims to explore whether and how the square participated in the notion of embellishment in the sense used since the 18th century. Another aim is to measure the role the authors give to the square in the restructuring of the city and in its valorisation, the extreme form being the survival of the myth of Paris as “the most beautiful city of the Universe”. These multiples narratives reflect the image of a polysemic square which underwent different kinds of transformations. At each moment, the square tells a specific idea of urban space related to anticipation or reactive action. Thus, this thesis takes into account this dialectic relation and hopes to help understanding how the discourse on the square is a commentary on urban being at large.

[pt] O abuso sexual praticado contra crianças é um crime hediondo que nos remete a uma história de dominação e poder do mais forte contra o mais fraco, e do adulto contra a criança, sejam eles familiares ou estranhos. Atualmente essa questão vem mobilizando autoridades governamentais, profissionais de saúde, de educação e a sociedade, através da mídia, da criação de leis, de campanhas educativas e da academia. Muitos embates têm sido travados visando encontrar as melhores alternativas para o enfrentamento do problema. Com base na noção de que a representação social contém um caráter prático e operacional, voltado para a ação, o presente estudo teve dois objetivos centrais: primeiro, identificar as representações sociais dos responsáveis por crianças vítimas de abuso sexual acerca dos agressores, dos profissionais e dos serviços de atenção à criança vítima de abuso sexual; e segundo, entender como essas representações influenciam a resolutividade dos casos atendidos.Conclui-se que a adesão ao tratamento, primeira condição para a resolutividade, é fortemente influenciada pelas representações sociais dos responsáveis, em particular aquelas relativas à função desempenhada pelas autoridades e à figura do autor do abuso sexual. O estudo mostra ainda que os responsáveis fazem circular essas representações, mas se ressentem do fato de nem sempre elas serem ouvidas, o que demonstra a necessidade de estabelecer uma escuta diferenciada que valorize e compreenda suas representações sociais como fatores determinantes no sucesso do acompanhamento e adesão ao tratamento. Apoiar, sustentar e valorizar a fala dos responsáveis, dar voz a estas representações e frustrações, é pois fundamental para construir ações efetivas na trajetória de enfrentamento da questão de modo a contribuir na resolutividade dos casos de abuso sexual. / [en] Sexual abuse practised against children is a hideous crime which reminds us to a history of domination from the strongest to the weakest, from adults against children; being their relatives or unknown people. Nowadays, this question has been mobilizing governmental authorities, educational and health professionals and society as a whole through educational marketing campaigns, academic institutions, and also the criation of new legislation. Battles have been battled in order to find better alternatives to face this problem.Based on the idea that social representation contains a practical and operational character, which is focused on the action, this study had two principal objectives: Firstly, to identify the social representations from people who are in charge for children who are victms of sexual abuse, in relation to the their aggressors; representations from all the professionals involved and also from children protection programs. Secondly, to understand how these social representations influence the sexual abuse cases solutions.We conclude that the treatment adherence, which is the first condition towards the solution, is strongly influenced by parent social representations. Particularly, those ones related to the function represented by authorities and by the sexual abuse author figure. The study still shows that responsibles make to circulate these representations, although they feel resentful about the fact they are not always listened to. It demonstrates the necessity of establishing a differencial listening service, which understands and makes valuable their social representations as determining facts for the treatment adherence, its accompanying and success. Supporting and sustaining in order to become worthy these responsible clamours, as well as giving the right importance to their representations and frustrations. Therefore, these attitudes are fundamental to build effective actions during the jouney to face this question, in order to contribute to the sexual abuse cases solutions.

Par rapport à la multiplication des départements de français dans l’enseignement supérieur chinois, la discipline FLE se développe lentement dans des universités pluridisciplinaires. La dynamique du développement durable manque dans ces terrains, que ce soit en ce qui concerne les motivations d’apprentissage des étudiants, d’enseignement et de recherche des enseignants, ou des soutiens des responsables au niveau universitaire.Eu égard à cette situation, pris pour terrain l’Université Renmin de Chine, notre travail cherche à étudier les représentations disciplinaires du FLE des acteurs du terrain. Nous arrivons à repérer les facteurs qui pèsent sur la disciplinarisation du FLE tels que les représentations disciplinaires, la conception de la langue, le statut disciplinaire du FLE, les politiques institutionnelles, ainsi que le niveau général de la discipline FLE en milieu supérieur chinois. À la lumière de la « pensée complexe » d’Edgar Morin, nous procédons à un retour sur le modèle de construction disciplinaire du FLE dans cette université pluridisciplinaire axée sur la recherche et expliquons la nécessité d’une pensée complexe pour la construction disciplinaire. Nous présentons des solutions provisoires et des pratiques didactiques en vue de remédier à la construction disciplinaire du FLE selon les conditions actuelles. / Compared to the multiplication of French departments in Chinese higher education, the FLE discipline is developing slowly in comprehensive universities. The dynamics of sustainable development are lacking in these areas, whether in terms of students’ learning motivation, teachers’ teaching and research impetus, or the support of responsible at university level.Given this situation, taken for the field Renmin University of China (RUC), this thesis seeks to study the disciplinary representations of the FLE discipline of the participants (students, teachers and responsibles) in the field. We find out the factors that influence the FLE discipline construction, such as the disciplinary representations, the conception of the language, the disciplinary status of the FLE discipline, the institutional policies, as well as the general level of the FLE discipline in upper Chinese environment. In the light of Edgar Morin’s “complex thinking”, we return to the FLE disciplinary construction model in this comprehensive and research-oriented university and explain the need for complex thinking for disciplinary construction. We present tentative solutions and didactic practices in order to remedy the disciplinary construction of the FLE under current conditions in RUC.

A Dinastia de Avis organizou, desde seus primórdios, um discurso legitimador baseado na ideia de família exemplar, essencial para assegurar o direito de sua linhagem ao trono. Este discurso foi baseado em uma série de suportes, como obras moralizantes e narrativas cronísticas. Nossa pesquisa volta-se para as representações da morte. Os estudos sobre a morte no período medieval geralmente se restrigem a uma abordagem meramente religiosa, voltada apenas para a salvação da alma. Entretanto, verificamos que as práticas mortuárias das monarquias estão inseridas não só em uma perspectiva religiosa, mas também em uma lógica de poder e memória. Desse modo, investigamos nesse trabalho de que maneira a Dinastia de Avis, fruto do processo político oriundo da crise sucessória de 1383, mobiliza um Ideário Fúnebre em prol da perpetuação de sua memória, enquanto mecanismo de legitimação dinástica. Para isso, analisamos os testamentos, cerimoniais fúnebres descritos nas crônicas oficiais e outros documentos, referentes aos reis D. João I, D. Duarte, D. Afonso V e D. João II, como, por exemplo, o Leal Conselheiro e o Esquema de sermão feito por D. Duarte para pregação nas exéquias de seu pai. Por intermédio de uma análise comparativa, confirmamos nossa hipótese de que há o planejamento de um Ideário Fúnebre pelos quatro primeiros reis da dinastia, por meio da organização de uma memória litúrgica mortuária. / The Avis Dynasty organized, from its earliest days, a legitimizing discourse based on the idea of exemplary family, essential to secure the right to the throne of its lineage. This discourse was based on a series of supports, such as moralizing books and chronicle narratives. Our research studies the representations of death. Studies of death in the medieval period generally restrict themselves to a purely religious approach, aimed only at the salvation of the soul. However, we realize that the mortuary practices of monarchies are inserted not only in a religious perspective, but also in a logic of power and memory. Therefore, we investigate in this research how the Avis Dynasty, fruit of the political process originated by the crisis of succession of 1383, mobilizes a set of ideal preparations for death for the perpetuation of its memory, as mechanism of dynastic legitimation. For this reason, we analyze the testaments, funeral ceremonials described in the official chronicles and other documents, such as the Loyal Counselor and the Sermon Scheme that D. Duarte wrote for preaching in the requiem masses of his father, referring to the kings D. João I, D. Duarte, D. Afonso V and D. João II. Through a comparative analysis, we confirm our hypothesis that there is a planning of a set of ideal preparations for death by the four first kings of the dynasty, through the organization of a mortuary liturgical memory.

Le concept de stress s’est imposé comme un objet de la pensée scientifique, qui connaît depuis de nombreuses années un grand succès de vulgarisation auprès du grand public, devenant ainsi un objet de la pensée du sens commun. C’est cet objet dans le cadre du travail, que nous avons étudier dans une recherche exploratoire, à l’aide d’un questionnaire que nous avons élaboré, dans une approche psychosociale et des représentations sociales, dont le but est d’explorer l’existence de représentations sociales du stress au travail dans l’entreprise, de ses variations en fonction du sexe, à la fois dans et par la dynamique des relations hiérarchiques qui structurent l’entreprise (comparaison ascendante et horizontale) dans un contexte normal et de substitution, également d’explorer l’existence de valeurs sociales du stress au travail ainsi que des pratiques considérées comme pouvant être les plus efficaces pour faire face au stress au travail, et également des effets psychologiques en fonction des dimensions au MBI. Les résultats que nous présentons ici laisseraient apparaître l’existence d’un champ organisé de représentations du stress au travail et également de l’existence de rapports symboliques entre les statuts hiérarchiques et entre hommes et femmes. / The concept of stress has become an object of scientific thought, which for many years has been a popular success with the general public. So stress has become an object of common sense thinking. It is this object within the framework of the work, that we have studied in an exploratory research using a questionnaire that we have elaborated, in a psychosocial approach and Social Representations which purpose is to explore the existence of Social Representations of workplace stress in the workplace, of its variations according to sex, both in and part of the dynamics of the hierarchical relations that structure the company (upward and horizontal comparison) in a normal and substitution context, also to explore the existence of social values of work stress as well as practices considered to be most effective in coping with work-related stress, and also psychological effects according to MBI dimensions. The results we present here would reveal the existence of an organized field of representations of stress at work and also the existence of symbolic relationships between hierarchical statuses and between men and women.

The goals of this study were to research the learning difficulties among a group of four pre-university introductory calculus students who were mainly international students studying English as a Second Language (M). The intention was to create a constructivist-style classroom environment in order to determine if it could improve students` knowledge about the use and management of multiple representations (that is, graphical, rum~ symbolic, pictorial, linguistic or diagrammatic approaches for problem representation), increase their classroom communication as a means to improving ability in the modelling of calculus word problems, and to develop, implement and evaluate a teaching package that encouraged the use of multiple representations as a means of improving conceptual understanding. The achievement of these goals was sought by means of the development, implementation and evaluation of a number of calculus extended tasks that encouraged the use of multiple representations. These activities facilitated the compilation of a menu of approaches to the solution of mathematical problems, while the longitudinal nature of the study allowed for the monitoring of student changes in their preferred approach. A traditional calculus curriculum was used for the study, but the instructional emphasis was based more on students' understanding of concepts in a classroom environment utilising a constructivist approach rather than on their memorising computational techniques. Reading, writing, and discussion were emphasised m small group settings to develop language skills and to foster an appreciation of the alternative solution strategies of individual students. / The study was conducted at an International College north of Perth in Western Australia, and the majority of students in the sample were from Non-English-Speaking-Backgrounds (NESB). A range of methods was used to collect qualitative and quantitative data in order to increase the credibility of the research. These methods included audio recordings of structured task-based interviews with each of the four students in the sample; teacher analysis of student worksheets; my classroom observations; the analysis of alternative student conceptions on assessment tasks obtained through post-test interviews, and my personal reflections. Quality controls were employed to ensure the credibility of the data collected. As classroom teacher and principal researcher, it was possible for me to treat each of the four students involved as an individual case study. Descriptive questionnaires were used in order to gain information regarding the course and the use of graphics calculators. The results are applicable to ESL introductory calculus students only, and the nature of the sample implies a number of study limitations detailed in Chapter Five. There was extensive evidence of the benefits of the use of a multi-representational mode and evidence also of the benefits of encouraging the use of a diversity of modes of classroom instruction. Outcomes of the study were qualified by the difficulties ESL students face in coordinating conflicting information and interpreting the language demands of problem presentation. It is expected that this study will assist m extending the knowledge and understanding of the learning difficulties faced by ESL students in the am of pre-university calculus. / Results of this study suggest that instructional material has an important influence on ESL students’ use and management of multiple representations. However, there are often limitations to the influence of the material due to student preferences, mathematical ability and firmly held beliefs as well as on the amount of detail presented in a problem Secondly, small group learning environments based on a constructivist approach were found to influence student ability to model calculus word problems in a positive manner, provided there is teacher support to overcome cognitive obstacles. Finally, it was established that an effective teaching package could be developed to assist ESL students in calculus learning. The teaching package's evaluation highlighted the need for matching language use in problem presentation with the current mathematical language register of each student.

The present study describes the results of a 2 week perturbation experiment where speaker's vocal tract shape was modified due to the presence of an artificial palate. The aim of the work is to investigate whether speakers adapt towards acoustic or articulatory targets. Speakers were recorded regularly over the adaptation time via electromagnetic articulography and acoustics. Immediately after perturbation onset speaker's auditory feedback was masked with white noise in order to investigate speakers' compensatory behavior when auditory feedback was absent.<br />The results of acoustic measurements show that in vowel production speakers compensate very soon. The compensation in fricatives takes longer and is in some cases not completed within the two weeks. Within a session and for each speaker the sounds can be distinguished solely by acoustic parameters. The differences between the session when no auditory feedback was available and the session when auditory feedback was available was greater for vowels with les palatal contact than for vowel with much palatal contact. In consonant production auditory feedback is primarily used in order to adapt sibilant productions. In general, adaptation tries to keep or enlarge the articulatory and acoustic space between the sounds. Over sessions speakers show motor equivalent strategies (lip protrusion vs. tongue back raising) in the production of /u/. Measurements of tangential jerk suggest that after perturbation onset there is an increase in articulatory effort which is followed by a decrease towards the end of the adaptation time.<br />The compensatory abilities of speakers when no auditory feedback is available suggest that speakers dispose of an articulatory representation. The fact that motor equivalent strategies are used by the speakers, however, supports acoustic representations of speech. It is therefore concluded that articulatory representations belong to the speech production tasks. However since they are modified as soon as the acoustic output is not the desired one any more, they rather function in the domain of movement organization and the acoustic representations dominate.

Cette these presente quelques aspects de la theorie des blocs generalises pour les groupes finis. Apres une breve description des theories classique et generalisee, on y etudie les proprietes des blocs generalises de certains groupes. On montre l'existence d'isometries parfaites generalisees dans trois familles de groupes de Lie de rang 1, generalisant ainsi une conjecture de M. Broue. On etudie ensuite le concept de groupe de Cartan generalise, et une formule est donnee pour l'ordre dans le groupe de Cartan des caracteres du groupe symetrique. Enfin, on definit des blocs generalises dans les groupes lineaires finis, et on montre que certaines unions de blocs de caracteres unipotents satisfont un analogue de la Conjecture de Nakayama ainsi qu'un analogue du Deuxieme Theoreme de Brauer.