Résumé : From the PNCR, GAP MPs free to vote conscience on gay rights bill By Johann Earle Stabroek News June 11, 2003 The PNCR will allow its members to vote their conscience on the controversial Constitution (Amendment) Act of 2001 which seeks to prevent discrimination against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation and other grounds. A number of religious organisations are opposed to the passage of the bill because it includes sexual orientation as one of the grounds. They are concerned that it could lead to a legalisation of homosexual relations and demands for recognition of gay marriages among other things. PNCR Member of Parliament (MP) Vincent Alexander told a forum at the National Library on Saturday, that the Bill did not seek to legalise homosexuality, but to ensure that persons would not be discriminated against based on their sexual preferences. He was one of two parliamentarians who showed up - the other being PNCR member, Myrna Peterkin. The forum was organised by Students Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), a group comprising fifteen students from the University of Guyana which was formed about two weeks ago. Alexander expects the vote on the bill to come up before the National Assembly in a matter of months. Paul Hardy, Leader of the Guyana Action Party (GAP), told Stabroek News that his party would not be using the so-called parliamentary whip. He added that GAP took a decision that every member should vote according to his or her own conscience. “We have no right to deny the rights of others based on sexual orientation. [The Bill] will guarantee rights to the homosexual.” GAP is in Parliament as part of an alliance with the Working People’s Alliance. GAP/WPA has two MPs. The bill was met with rejection from some members of the religious community in 2001 and as a result of this, the President did not assent to it. In a statement on Monday, the Central Islamic Organisa-tion of Guyana (CIOG) said that it stood in firm opposition to the Bill. The CIOG says the general purpose of the bill may be commendable and that the organisation’s objection is not based on a willingness to promote discrimination. Rather, the CIOG said, it was based on the fact that specific legal protection on the basis of sexual orientation without definition or qualification gives tacit legitimacy to practices which are considered criminal in Islam. “It is foreseeable that such a legal nod of approval (subtle as it may be) of these practices may pave the way for greater social (or even legal) acceptability in the future which, from the perspective of all Muslims including those in Guyana, is an undesirable and sinful outcome,” the CIOG statement said. At Saturday’s event, Muslim teacher Moulana Mohamed Ali Zenjibari spoke of instances of abuse, discrimination and harsh penalties meted out to gay and lesbian persons in countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia and noted that the Quran did not sanction such punishments for homosexual behaviour. President of the CIOG, Fazeel Ferouz told Stabroek News that a meeting to discuss a strategy with regards to the bill was planned for tomorrow with various religious groups. Stabroek News tried to get a comment on the issue from the PPP/C but to no avail. ROAR leader, Ravi Dev said that his party was now having discussions on the issue. ROAR feels that it is an important question which has to do with morality and should be discussed across the country. He added legislators had to be in tune with their constituents on the issue. SASOD is lobbying for the legislation through the sensitisation of MPs. Keimo Benjamin, a law student at UG, gave a presentation based on the jurisprudential aspects of the discussion on sexual orientation. He argued that morality should not be the only guiding principle on which to base the laws. Sexual activities between two consenting male adults in private could not be equated with a violation of a person’s rights, he said, making the point that the thrust of his presentation was not whether homosexuality was wrong, but whether it violated the rights of others. He said that the attitudes of some towards this subject were based on preconceived notions and prejudices. He cited studies to show that the suppression of certain perceived deviant sexual impulses in persons might do more harm than good. One Harvard University study of teens who said they were gay indicated that those teens were three times more likely to commit suicide. Vidyaratha Kissoon, of Help and Shelter, in his contribution on Saturday, expressed his displeasure at the low turnout at the forum and urged the parliamentarians who showed up to take the message to their colleagues. He noted that because of homophobia, the numerical minority was terrified of speaking out against instances of discrimination. Gays and lesbians in Guyana were subjected to ridicule and abuse, and walk the streets at night not looking for sex necessarily, but for the companionship of persons who empathise with them. During his presentation, Joel Simpson, another member of SASOD, outlined a number of changes made within national jurisdictions that had international implications. One such crucial change was South Africa’s 1996 adoption of a new constitution, making that country the first in the world to expressly include sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination. It was the first time a developing country had taken the lead with respect to the rights of sexual minorities. He also said that according to Douglas Sanders, a Canadian jurist, the rights of homosexual, bisexual or transsexual men and women had never been officially recognised by the United Nations, despite the fact that international laws on the issue began to emerge at the close of the Second World War. Simpson said that under Article 170 (5), as amended by Section 8 of the Constitution (Amendment) (No. 4) Act 2000, the President is required to assent to any bill which is returned by the National Assembly unaltered after a two-thirds majority within 90 days of its presentation to him. To the parliamentarians present, Simpson stressed that the onus was now on them to adequately represent their constituents which include lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual Guyanese. http://www.landofsixpeoples.com/news301/ns306115.htm and Vote on sexual orientation should be a matter of conscience - MP Alexander By Esther Elijah Guyana Chronicle June 8, 2003 PEOPLE’S National Congress (PNC/R) Member of Parliament Mr. Vincent Alexander, said the Opposition will vote on “conscience” when the piece of legislation on sexual orientation is again brought before the National Assembly. “With specific reference to my party, when this Bill gets back to the Parliament in the spirit of the arguments here, we will not use the `whip’. Our party will not say we have to vote for the provision (in the Sexual Orientation Bill). We will allow our members to vote as a matter of conscience,” he told participants gathered in the Conference Room of the National Library. “We feel this is a matter of conscience. You may end up with a collective position but you have to deal with us individually,” Alexander said at a poorly attended public consultation aimed at gaining support for sexual orientation to be considered a fundamental right in Guyana. Alexander, one of the main persons who sat on the Constitutional Reform Commission that addressed this controversial clause, said the legislation was not meant to legalise homosexual activities in Guyana. “It was intended to ensure that persons who have an orientation - a way of thinking - which may or may not lead to a certain activity, to not be discriminated against, in terms of their rights,” he explained. Alexander noted that very often, discussions on the sexual orientation provision in the Bill have led to seepages into other areas where debates centre on the “right to be homosexual.” “I am saying the Bill does not comment on that… However, law is peculiar, especially in a Common Law system. Once you venture out and change the law, very often you open other windows which we cannot definitively say exist or does not exist in advance,” he said. “The fear of some people is that the legislators might say one thing and the Courts will eventually say something else. While some people can’t argue against the law, per say, they will say this has opened a window of opportunity not meant to be opened. So, it is better to stay without a window than open it and then have a possibility of something you didn’t intend to happen - happening sometime in the future.” Alexander added: “I want to say I’ve found this activity to have been rich from the perspective of the amount of research which was done by student (speakers). Without any comment as to whether I agree with the arguments, I would wish that much more research on other issues be done by students, and that at the University (of Guyana) students would find it convenient to have forums on other issues, with the same depth of research for their own intellectual development.” Alexander and other Opposition M.P, Lurlene Nestor were the only three Parliamentarians in attendance at the session organised by the recently formed `Students Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination’ (SASOD), a group that has a membership of 15 mostly University of Guyana (UG) students from various faculties. SASOD was established two weeks ago. With the exception of members of the press, the consultation only managed to attract 11 persons, a handful of who were SASOD members. While congratulating the students for an “insightful” presentation, Nestor pointed out that whether or not she chooses to agree with their position is “another issue” and she is entitled to her “own view”. “The issue of sexual orientation is very `toucheous’ …while we agree with the human rights provisions and all that as a society, we must also revert to our own society. Some of the very critical questions that I would want to ask is whether or not at the society (level) we are ready for that kind of thing,” she remarked. “We cannot, at (any) time, ignore the religious groups in our society. If we look at statistics going back to 1992 from a survey done by the Bureau of Statistics, we would see that a small section of the Guyanese population might be considered as people who do not subscribe to a religious view. While the laws are not necessarily based on moral values, we must acknowledge the fact that we might want to revert to many of the cases that (concern) laws that protect public morality.” Nestor told the speakers at the consultation these were some of the issues that they needed to deal with. She highlighted, too, that what must be examined is the effects of same-sex marriages on society and how this issue must be tackled. “These are some of the things we should consider and I don’t think you dealt with that in the presentations,” Nestor stated, adding that the issues must be addressed “frontally.” “Do we think that with the coming to being of this Bill that there might be quite a number of challenges to the Constitution in relation to the same issue of a man marrying a man? What do we do at the society (level)? Do we recognise that?” were the questions directed at the five speakers at the session. Nestor continued: “There is some argument that says, `Oh the Bill does not promote homosexuality or does not encourage a man to marry (another) man, but if you look at Section (15) that talks about `non-discrimination’ then how can we not, with the passage of this Bill, allow a man not to marry (another) man.” According to Nestor, matters of this nature constitute some of the “inconsistencies” of the Bill. On the argument raised by presenters at the session on who determines what is morality, Nestor said in the concept of democracy it is the people who are the determinants based on a “line of thinking.” She also rebutted on grounds that put the spotlight on teachers who may have been caught “interfering” with their young students and who may subsequently be dismissed from their jobs. “Could you imagine such a person interfering with a boy below age 10 - and by virtue of the fact that the Bill is there, the judges (in the case) will have to use their discretion in terms of what happens. We will have more Constitutional changes and problems (arising with the passage of the Bill).” SASOD member and law student, Joel Simpson, in reply, said he doesn’t think any homosexual in Guyana wants to “run into a church and ask that people marry them or anything of that sort.” At one point likening the church to a “club”, Simpson claimed the church has the right to exclude whomever it wants. He further stated that in accordance with the Constitution, people of the same sex do not currently have the right to marry, and will also not be able to do such an act with the passage of the Bill. However, Simpson said it is possible that the law, with the passage of the Bill, would have to recognise same-sex domestic partnerships in relation to employment benefits, sharing of properties, etc. Simpson said he believes there should be a realm of “public” and “private” morality between consenting adults, and implied that the Bill did not fully give “rights” to homosexuals. But, Nestor interjected: “I am informing you further…that the Sexual Orientation provision has, in fact, in some way recognised the rights of homosexuals and we must accept that.” Meanwhile, there was no vocal Christian representative(s) at the consultation and apart from the two Opposition representatives none other participant gave comments or directed questions at the presenters. Other speakers in support of the sexual orientation clause were: Moulana Mohammed Ali Zenjiban, Assistant Director of the International Islamic College; Denuka Radzik from Red Thread, Keimo Benjamin, UG law student and Vidyartha Kissoon from Help & Shelter. The Sunday Chronicle has been reliably informed that the Georgetown Ministers Fellowship, representing groups of Christian leaders staunchly against sexual orientation as a right in Guyana, have recently prepared a detailed 16-page document outlining issues arising from research to further boost their argument against the inclusion of the clause. The document is yet to be made public. http://www.landofsixpeoples.com/news301/nc306083.htm

Droits : All rights reserved by the source institution.
http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00014700/00001

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD IEEE
Résumé : International audience
Recent works display that large scale image classification problems rule out computationally demanding methods. On such problems, simple approaches like k-NN are affordable contenders, with still room space for statistical improvements under the algorithmic constraints. A recent work showed how to leverage k-NN to yield a formal boosting algorithm. This method, however, has numerical issues that make it not suited for large scale problems. We propose here an Adaptive Newton-Raphson scheme to leverage k-NN, N³, which does not suffer these issues. We show that it is a boosting algorithm, with several key algorithmic and statistical properties. In particular, it may be sufficient to boost a subsample to reach desired bounds for the loss at hand in the boosting framework. Experiments are provided on the SUN, and Caltech databases. They confirm that boosting a subsample -- sometimes containing few examples only -- is sufficient to reach the convergence regime of N³. Under such conditions, N³ challenges the accuracy of contenders with lower computational cost and lower memory requirement.
IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing
Southampton, United Kingdom

hal-00959125
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00959125
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00959125/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00959125/file/BNNB_mlsp2013.pdf

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Voting rules relying on k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) are an effective tool in countless many machine learning techniques. Thanks to its simplicity, k-NN classification is very attractive to practitioners, as it enables very good performances in several practical applications. However, it suffers from various drawbacks, like sensitivity to "noisy" instances and poor generalization properties when dealing with sparse high-dimensional data. In this paper, we tackle the k-NN classification problem at its core by providing a novel k-NN boosting approach. Namely, we propose a supervised learning algorithm, called Universal Nearest Neighbors (UNN), that induces a leveraged k-NN rule by globally minimizing a surrogate risk upper bounding the empirical misclassification rate over training data. Interestingly, this surrogate risk can be arbitrary chosen from a class of Bregman loss functions, including the familiar exponential, logistic and squared losses. Furthermore, we show that UNN allows to efficiently filter a dataset of instances by keeping only a small fraction of data. Experimental results on the synthetic Ripley's dataset show that such a filtering strategy is able to reject "noisy" examples, and yields a classification error close to the optimal Bayes error. Experiments on standard UCI datasets show significant improvements over the current state of the art.
ISSN: 0925-2312

hal-00664462
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00664462

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins
Résumé : International audience
The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of first-line combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) regimen on the course of CD8 + T-cell counts in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients. A retrospective observational study conducted on the French DAT'AIDS Cohort of HIV-infected patients. We selected 605 patients initiating a first-line cART between 2002 and 2009, and which achieved a sustained undetectable HIV plasma viral load (pVL) for at least 12 months without cART modification. The evolution of CD8 + T-cell counts according to cART regimen was assessed. CD8 + T-cell counts were assessed in 572 patients treated with 2NRTIs+1PI/r (n= 297), 2NRTIs+1NNRTI (n= 207) and 3NRTIs (n= 68). In multivariate analysis, after 12 months of follow-up, the 3NRTIs regimen was associated with a significantly smaller decrease of CD8 + T-cell count compared with NNRTI-containing regimens (–10.2 cells/mL in 3NRTIs vs –105.1 cells/mL; P=0.02) but not compared with PI-containing regimens (10.2 vs –60.9 cells/mL; P=0.21). After 24 months, the 3NRTIs regimen was associated with a smaller decrease of CD8 + T-cell count and % compared with PI/r-and NNRTI-containing regimens (0.2 in 3NRTIs vs –9.9 with PI/r-regimens, P=0.001, and vs –11.1 with NNRTI-regimens, p < 0.0001). A focus analysis on 11 patients treated with an INSTI-containing cART regimen during the study period showed after 12 months of follow-up, a median decrease of CD8 + T-cell count of –155 [inter quartile range: –302; –22] cells/mL. Our data highlight the fact that cART regimens have differential effects on CD8 pool down regulation. Abbreviations: cART = combined antiretroviral therapy, HIV = human immunodeficiency virus, INSTI = integrase strand transfer inhibitor, NNRTI = non-nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor, NRTI = nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitor, PI/r = Ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitor, pVL = plasma viral load.
ISSN: 0025-7974

inserm-01408002
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-01408002
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-01408002/document
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-01408002/file/2016%2C%20Poizot-Martin%20-%20First-line%20cART%20regimen%20impacts%20the%20course%20of%20CD8%2B%20T-cell%20counts%20in%20HIV-infected%20patients.pdf
DOI : 10.1097/MD.0000000000005087

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Oxford University Press (OUP)
Résumé : International audience
OBJECTIVES: To compare virological effectiveness in patients who continued on a virologically successful first-line boosted protease inhibitor (PI)-containing combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) regimen or who switched to a PI-free cART including efavirenz, nevirapine or abacavir. METHODS: From the French Hospital Database on HIV, we selected 439 patients with undetectable viral load (VL) on a first-line boosted PI-containing cART regimen who switched to a PI-free combination including efavirenz, nevirapine or abacavir. Each of these patients was matched with three patients who continued to take their first-line cART regimen, on the basis of gender, age, CD4 cell count, VL, date of cART initiation and the duration of VL undetectability. Time to virological failure (VF) was analysed with Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox models. RESULTS: The 12 month probabilities of VF were 3.7% and 5.7% in non-switch and switch patients, respectively, and 3.9%, 7.2% and 9.0% in patients switching to efavirenz-, nevirapine- and abacavir-containing cART, respectively. After adjustment, only patients switching to abacavir-containing cART had a higher risk of VF than non-switch patients (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.99; 95% confidence interval, 1.05-3.79). CONCLUSIONS: Switching from a virologically successful first-line boosted PI-containing cART regimen to a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-containing cART regimen containing either efavirenz or nevirapine is virologically safe, while switching to abacavir-containing cART should be avoided.
ISSN: 0305-7453

hal-00875284
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00875284
DOI : 10.1093/jac/dkr208
PUBMED : 21636583

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
It is an admitted fact that mainstream boosting algorithms like AdaBoost do not perform well to estimate class conditional probabilities. In this paper, we analyze, in the light of this problem, a recent algorithm, unn, which leverages nearest neighbors while minimizing a convex loss. Our contribution is threefold. First, we show that there exists a subclass of surrogate losses, elsewhere called balanced, whose minimization brings simple and statistically efficient estimators for Bayes posteriors. Second, we show explicit convergence rates towards these estimators for unn, for any such surrogate loss, under a Weak Learning Assumption which parallels that of classical boosting results. Third and last, we provide experiments and comparisons on synthetic and real datasets, including the challenging SUN computer vision database. Results clearly display that boosting nearest neighbors may provide highly accurate estimators, sometimes more than a hundred times more accurate than those of other contenders like support vector machines.
European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD)
Bristol, United Kingdom

hal-00702771
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00702771
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00702771/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00702771/file/ecml12-dnbnb-sub.pdf

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Wiley
Résumé : International audience
ObjectivesTo compare the efficacy, in current clinical practice, of ă first regimens containing abacavir with lamivudine (ABC/3TC) or ă tenofovir with emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) in patients with baseline viral ă load 100000 HIV-1 RNA copies/mL. ă MethodsUsing a prospective cohort, we selected all patients starting a ă first HIV regimen based either on ABC/3TC or on TDF/FTC. The propensity ă score (PS) method was used to limit the indication bias due to the ă observational nature of the data. Adjusting and weighting methods via PS ă were used to compare the effectiveness of a first regimen containing ă ABC/3TC or TDF/FTC. The primary outcome was treatment failure by month ă 12 (M12). ă ResultsOverall, 2781 patients started an antiretroviral (ARV) regimen ă with ABC/3TC or TDF/FTC each in combination with efavirenz, boosted ă atazanavir or boosted darunavir. Among the 2472 uncensored patients ă before M12, 962 (39%) had a baseline viral load 100000 copies/mL of ă whom 294 were in treatment failure at or before M12. Our analyses showed ă no difference between ABC/3TC and TDF/FTC in the risk of treatment ă failure at M12 in patients starting an ARV regimen with a high viral ă load (100000 copies/mL). ă ConclusionsUsing a large prospectively collected cohort of patients ă seeking care in France, we found no evidence that ABC/3TC based regimens ă led to more failures than TDF/FTC based ones in patients with high ă baseline viral loads.
ISSN: 1464-2662

hal-01482656
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01482656
DOI : 10.1111/hiv.12306

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Résumé : International audience
Tailoring nearest neighbors algorithms to boosting is an important problem. Recent papers study an approach, UNN, which provably minimizes particular convex surrogates under weak assumptions. However, numerical issues make it necessary to experimentally tweak parts of the UNN algorithm, at the possible expense of the algorithm's convergence and performance. In this paper, we propose a lightweight alternative algorithm optimizing proper scoring rules from a very broad set, and establish formal convergence rates under the boosting framework that surprisingly compete with those known for UNN. It is an adaptive Newton-Raphson algorithm, which belongs to the same lineage as the popular Gentle Adaboost. To the best of our knowledge, no such boosting-compliant convergence rates were previously known for these algorithms. We provide experiments on a dozen domains, including the challenging Caltech and SUN computer vision databases. They display that GNNB significantly outperforms UNN, both in terms of convergence rate and quality of the solution obtained, and GNNB provides a simple and efficient contender to techniques that can be used on very large domains, like stochastic gradient descent -- for which little is known to date. Experiments include a divide-and-conquer improvement of GNNB which exploits the link with proper scoring rules optimization.
ISSN: 0162-8828

hal-00958809
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00958809
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00958809/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00958809/file/PAMI.pdf
DOI : 10.1109/TPAMI.2014.2307877

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : International audience
The k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) classification rule is still an essential tool for computer vision applications, such as scene recognition. However, k-NN still features some major drawbacks, which mainly reside in the uniform voting among the nearest prototypes in the feature space. In this paper, we propose a new method that is able to learn the "relevance" of prototypes, thus classifying test data using a weighted k-NN rule. In particular, our algorithm, called Multi-class Leveraged k-nearest neighbor (MLNN), learns the prototype weights in a boosting framework, by minimizing a surrogate exponential risk over training data. We propose two main contributions for improving computational speed and accuracy. On the one hand, we implement learning in an inherently multiclass way, thus providing significant computation time reduction over one-versus-all approaches. Furthermore, the leveraging weights enable effective data selection, thus reducing the cost of k-NN search at classification time. On the other hand, we propose a kernel generalization of our approach to take into account real-valued similarities between data in the feature space, thus enabling more accurate estimation of the local class density. We tested MLNN on three datasets of natural images. Results show that MLNN significantly outperforms classic k-NN and weighted k-NN voting. Furthermore, using an adaptive Gaussian kernel provides significant performance improvement. Finally, the best results are obtained when using MLNN with an appropriate learned metric distance.
Proceedings of the 10th Asian Conference on Computer Vision, ACCV 2010, November 8-12, 2010, Queenstown, New Zealand
Queenstown, New Zealand

hal-00664606
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00664606
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00664606/document
https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00664606/file/mlnn_accvfinal.pdf

Éditeur(s) : Edp Sciences S A
Résumé : Moored FADs (MFADs) have been a key area for development in Guadeloupe (Lesser Antilles) since the late 1980's. The main objectives underpinning the development of MFADs were to (i) reduce fishing pressure on coastal fishing resources; (ii) boost fishermen's incomes; and (iii) increase local consumption of locally generated fishery products as a proportion of overall consumption. This paper gives an overview of the current structure of Guadeloupe's fishing fleet and fisheries, with a specific focus on MFAD fleets in a relatively unstructured environment with regard to regulation, and so how these fleets operate in a context of unrestricted development of private MFADs. In addressing the following key issues, this paper aims to: assess the economic performance of fleets operating on MFADs, understand why the MFAD fishing activity has not developed more than it has, and suggest how better MFAD management could improve the situation. Socio-economic information on a trip and fleet level basis were collected and stored on a fisheries information system to analyse the relative attractiveness of MFAD fishing and assess the overall economic performance of MFAD fleets as compared to other non-MFAD fleets. Non-monetary variables were also tested to explain the degree of dependence on MFADs. In 2008, economic returns from FADs were relatively low, both in terms of wages for the crews and in terms of profit for vessel owners. Earnings were higher than coastal fishing activities, but seem to have been very sensitive to the indicators used in our analysis. MFADs are expected to become much more attractive as a result of MFAD regulation, especially through the establishment of collective MFADs.
Aquatic Living Resources (0990-7440) (Edp Sciences S A), 2013-01 , Vol. 26 , N. 1 , P. 97-105

Droits : EDP Sciences, IFREMER, IRD 2013
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00137/24836/22914.pdf
DOI:10.1051/alr/20013044
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00137/24836/

Éditeur(s) : Université des Antilles Études caribéennes
Résumé : Cet article traite de la spécificité de l’activité touristique à Bali, fondée sur une identité locale forte et un riche patrimoine naturel et culturel mais aussi troublante en raison de l’importance et la complexité des jeux d’acteurs, ou encore des contextes sociaux, religieux et géopolitiques propres à ce territoire insulaire. Nous analyserons les liens pérennes ou non entre patrimoine et développement en focalisant sur ce qui fait l’image de marque de Bali sur les plans touristique et politique : le tourisme culturel. Cette étude de cas illustre les dynamiques d’acteurs dans le cadre de l’île de Bali où l’on constate une forte imbrication entre tourisme international, protection de l’environnement et promotion du patrimoine culturel. Vendue comme un paradis tropical, perçue comme l'île des Dieux, Bali se voit contrainte de mesurer les risques d'un tourisme culturel qui se transformerait trop rapidement en culture touristique. Des pistes seront proposées afin d’encourager l’ensemble des acteurs à œuvrer pour que le « dernier paradis » (last paradise) ne devienne pas un « paradis perdu » (lost paradise).
Since the 1930s, Bali has been generally seen as a traditional tourism destination quite fashionable. Nowadays, a new kind of tourism, rather esoteric if not totally spiritual, is emerging on this small “paradise” often referred as a natural untouched and cultural preserved island. To attire more international tourists, the “Island of Gods”, as the tourism promoters still name this tropical holiday paradise, is now also targeting on the industry of “well-being”. This article deals about the specificity of the local tourism activity which is based on a strong cultural identity and a rich natural and also religious heritage. Uncontrolled development of this predatory industry brings also a lot of new problems, such as pollution or acculturation. Here, our aim is to focus and analyse the real and false ties between heritage, development and tourism, always by keeping in mind that the regional motto about tourism policy still is to encourage “cultural tourism” as a real model (a “brand”, in fact) of success. We especially try to explain, in this current work (still in progress), the touristic situation in the main cultural site located on the island: Ubud. This small city, really boosting during the last decade, is worldwide reputed for the rich cultural performances and seen as “the” artistic capital of Bali. Ubud offers also a perfect example of an intense and dynamic bond between cultural heritage and economic development. Often for the best and sometimes also for the worse. In this rural but international spot, it seems that tourism business allows the local population to live in better ways and, sometimes, even to reborn, culturally speaking! Our case study shows also the big threats behind the current tourism policy: the large scale business occurred by globalization and all the tourism opportunities thus provided cannot hide the real weakness that for sure also concern the balinese way of thinking and living. Cultural tourism could rapidly be transformed in a dangerous kind of tourism of the culture, with all the big (and bad) changes the Balinese don’t want to see happening on their lovely and holy island. So, the present reflection conducts us to think more deeply on some new and alternative ways of developing tourism in Bali. Finally, our aim is to think, first by listening to the desire of the Balinese themselves, in which best manner this “last paradise” will not become a “lost paradise”.
Bali

Droits : info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
urn:doi:10.4000/etudescaribeennes.5385
http://journals.openedition.org/etudescaribeennes/5385

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Nature Publishing Group
Résumé : International audience
Large earthquakes nucleate at tectonic plate boundaries, and their occurrence within a plate's interior remains rare and poorly documented, especially offshore. The two large earthquakes that struck the northeastern Indian Ocean on 11 April 2012 are an exception: they are the largest strike-slip events reported in historical times1, 2 and triggered large aftershocks worldwide3. Yet they occurred within an intra-oceanic setting along the fossil fabric of the extinct Wharton basin, rather than on a discrete plate boundary4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Here we show that the 11 April 2012 twin earthquakes are part of a continuing boost of the intraplate deformation between India and Australia that followed the Aceh 2004 and Nias 2005 megathrust earthquakes, subsequent to a stress transfer process recognized at other subduction zones9, 10. Using Coulomb stress change calculations, we show that the coseismic slips of the Aceh and Nias earthquakes can promote oceanic left-lateral strike-slip earthquakes on pre-existing meridian-aligned fault planes. We further show that persistent viscous relaxation in the asthenospheric mantle several years after the Aceh megathrust explains the time lag between the 2004 megathrust and the 2012 intraplate events. On a short timescale, the 2012 events provide new evidence for the interplay between megathrusts at the subduction interface and intraplate deformation offshore. On a longer geological timescale, the Australian plate, driven by slab-pull forces at the Sunda trench, is detaching from the Indian plate, which is subjected to resisting forces at the Himalayan front6, 8, 11.
ISSN: 0028-0836

hal-00767569
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00767569
DOI : 10.1038/nature11520

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Elsevier
Résumé : International audience
Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is the primary cause of nosocomial diarrhoea in industrialised countries, usually occurring as a complication of antibiotic therapy in elderly patients. Landmark events contributed to boosting interest in CDI over the last 10 years, including the emergence of unusually severe and recurrent CDI due to the NAP1/BI/027 strain, as well as reports suggesting that CDI is also significantly encountered in patients previously considered at no risk, such as community-acquired CDI in patients with no recent antibiotic use, or CDI during pregnancy. Despite this growing interest from the medical community, we do not know the real dimensions of the disease for the following reasons: (i) despite comprehensive guidelines published in Europe and in the USA, most laboratories still use diagnostic tests with suboptimal sensitivity as a 'rule-out' test, hence a significant proportion of CDIs remain undiagnosed; (ii) use of PCR as a stand-alone test by others will probably overestimate the real incidence of CDI and jeopardise any comparison between institutions with different diagnostic procedures; and (iii) transversal studies, with optimum design and diagnostic tests, are rapidly outdated due to the dramatic changes in CDI epidemiology that may occur from one year to another. To get an accurate picture of the real dimensions of the CDI issue, we need more systematic use of an adequate and homogeneous diagnostic strategy in the field as well as the implementation of continuous monitoring of CDI incidence through surveillance programmes.
ISSN: 0924-8579

inserm-00863350
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00863350
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00863350/document
http://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00863350/file/Clostridium_difficile_infections._Do_we_know_the_real_dimensionssur the_problem-accepted.pdf
DOI : 10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2013.04.009

Éditeur(s) : Université des Antilles Études caribéennes
Résumé : Dans la période post-abolitionniste - entre 1848 et 1861 - des milliers de Kongos arrivèrent en Guadeloupe avec le statut d’immigrés pour relancer la production sucrière. Méprisés, ils eurent beaucoup de mal à s'intégrer dans la société créole et ne le firent qu'au prix d'un abandon progressif de leurs traditions, de leur langue, de leur culture et de leur identité. La famille Massembo, malgré un coût social et psychologique, avait conservé et perpétué ses traditions culturelles kongos à travers la cérémonie du « grapp a kongo ». Aujourd’hui, elle est quasiment sortie des ténèbres et son identité affirmée et reconnue.
In the post-abolitionist - between 1848 and 1861 - thousands of Kongos arrived in Guadeloupe with the status of immigrants to boost sugar production. Despised, they had great difficulty integrating into society Creole and did not at the cost of a move away from their traditions, language, culture and identity. Massembo family, despite a high social and psychological had preserved and perpetuated cultural traditions Kongos through the ceremony of "cluster has Kongo". Today it is virtually out of the darkness and identity affirmed and recognized.
Guadeloupe
Congo

Droits : info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
urn:doi:10.4000/etudescaribeennes.5795
http://journals.openedition.org/etudescaribeennes/5795

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : under revision for IJCV
International audience
The k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) classification rule has proven extremely successful in countless many computer vision applications. For example, image categorization often relies on uniform voting among the nearest prototypes in the space of descriptors. In spite of its good properties, the classic k-NN rule suffers from high variance when dealing with sparse prototype datasets in high dimensions. A few techniques have been proposed to improve k-NN classification, which rely on either deforming the nearest neighborhood relationship or modifying the input space. In this paper, we propose a novel boosting algorithm, called UNN (Universal Nearest Neighbors), which induces leveraged k-NN, thus generalizing the classic k-NN rule. We redefine the voting rule as a strong classifier that linearly combines predictions from the k closest prototypes. Weak classifiers are learned by UNN so as to minimize a surrogate risk. A major feature of UNN is the ability to learn which prototypes are the most relevant for a given class, thus allowing one for effective data reduction. Experimental results on the synthetic two-class dataset of Ripley show that such a filtering strategy is able to reject "noisy" prototypes. We carried out image categorization experiments on a database containing eight classes of natural scenes. We show that our method outperforms significantly the classic k-NN classification, while enabling significant reduction of the computational cost by means of data filtering.
ISSN: 0920-5691

hal-00481712
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00481712
DOI : 10.1007/s11263-012-0539-2
ARXIV : 1001.1221

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD
Résumé : Food-grade dairy propionibacteria are nutraceutical producers. They release short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), folic acid and cobalamin, which play a role in intestinal physiology. SCFAs induce apoptosis via the mitochondrial death pathway. We investigated the potential of dairy propionibacteria-fermented products to synergize with drugs used in gastric and colorectal cancer.Fermented milk contained high and viable populations of propionibacteria. This product, as well as its cell-free supernatant, were tested in vitro on gastric HGT-1 and colic HT-29 cells with respect to apoptosis and synergy with known anti-cancer molecules, camptothecin and the human cytokine TRAIL (TNF Related Apoptosis Inducing Ligand). Viability was monitored and apoptosis quantified by Hoescht staining, ROS production, mitochondrial membrane potential perturbation and caspases activity assay. A transcriptomic study on genome-wide microarray was performed in collaboration with the company Miltenyi.Fermented milk induced cell death in both gastric and colon cancer cells. Characterization of cells revealed cell cycle arrest, drop in intracellular ATP, depolarization of mitochondria, translocation of key apoptosis proteins, processing of caspases and fragmentation of the nucleus. Interestingly, the fermented milk was shown to potentiate the cytotoxic effect of molecules used in cancer chemotherapy, camptothecin and TRAIL. The observed synergistic pro-apoptotic effect between TRAIL and propionibacterial SCFAs depended on death receptors and on caspases, was more lethal on cancer cells than on normal human intestinal epithelial cells (HIEC), and was inhibited by Bcl-2 expression. Transcriptomics revealed that propionibacterial metabolites boosted TRAIL-induced modulation of gene expression in human colon cancer cells.These results open new perspectives in the field of colon cancer cells prevention and/or treatment. The synergy with pro-apoptotic chemotherapy molecules suggests that such a fermented product, or the propionibacterium alone, may be proposed as a food supplement to enhance the effects of anticancer treatments.
The 2nd International conference on Cell Death In Cancer (CDIC)
La Baule, France

hal-01209622
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01209622
PRODINRA : 261291

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD IEEE
Résumé : Object classification is a challenging task in computer vision. Many approaches have been proposed to extract meaningful descriptors from images and classifying them in a supervised learning framework. In this paper, we revisit the classic k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) classification rule, which has shown to be very effective when dealing with local image descriptors. However, k-NN still features some major drawbacks, mainly due to the uniform voting among the nearest prototypes in the feature space. In this paper, we propose a generalization of the classic k-NN rule in a supervised learning (boosting) framework. Namely, we redefine the voting rule as a strong classifier that linearly combines predictions from the k closest prototypes. To induce this classifier, we propose a novel learning algorithm, MLNN (Multiclass Leveraged Nearest Neighbors), which gives a simple procedure for performing prototype selection very efficiently. We tested our method on 12 categories of objects, and observed significant improvement over classic k-NN in terms of classification performances.
International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services
Desenzano del Garda, Italy

hal-00481725
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00481725
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00481725/document
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00481725/file/pbnn_wiamis_10.pdf

Éditeur(s) : HAL CCSD Springer Verlag
Résumé : International audience
Peel splitting is a major physiological disorder affecting post-harvest banana quality. This phenomenon occurs only 3-6 days after ripening induction in specific cultivars such as cv. 925 when stored in saturating humidity conditions. In these conditions, Cavendish cultivars (Grande Naine, cv. GN) are not susceptible to splitting. Cvs. 925 and GN were thus investigated to detect possible determinants associated with splitting. Splitting intensity was tentatively found to be associated with an inverse water flux at high relative humidity (RH) through an osmotic peel to pulp water flux resulting from the higher sugar content in the pulp than in the peel. Rheological properties were measured, and although the peel resistance and elasticity in cv. 925 were surprisingly higher than in cv. GN, saturating humidity conditions (100 % RH) substantially reduced the peel resistance. However, the peel epicuticular wax in cv. 925 was clearly thinner than that in cv. GN, thus leading to limitation of peel hydration in cv. GN. Peel splitting in cv. 925 was also associated with a boost in respiration, an increase in oxidative stress markers (H2O2), resulting in an increase in cellular damage markers (MDA, PEL). Overall, our results suggest that peel splitting at high RH in cv. 925 is related to fast decrease peel water content and the induction of high oxidative stress damage.
ISSN: 0137-5881

hal-01545907
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01545907
DOI : 10.1007/s11738-016-2253-0