Despite the recent progress in the description of the molecular mechanisms of proliferation and differentiation controls in vitro, the regulation of the homeostasis of normal stratified epithelia remains unclear in vivo. Computer simulation represents a powerful tool to investigate the complex field of cell proliferation regulation networks. It provides huge computation capabilities to test, in a dynamic in silico context, hypotheses about the many pathways and feedback loops involved in cell growth and proliferation controls.Our approach combines a model of cell (...) proliferation and a spatial representation of cells in 2D using the Voronoi graph. The cell proliferation model includes intracellular (cyclins, Cyclin Dependent Kinases - CDKs, Retinoblastoma protein - Rb, CDK inhibitors) and extracellular controls (growth and differentiation factors, integrins). The Voronoi graph associates a polygon with every cell and the set of these polygons defines the tissue architecture. Thus, the model provides a quantitative model of extracellular signals and cell motility as a function of the neighborhood during time dependent simulations. (shrink)

Fruit d’une collaboration entre deux spécialistes de l’histoire de la naissance et de l’enfance, pour le Moyen Âge et l’époque moderne, ce livre doit à Caroline Lefebvre une très belle iconographie. L’allaitement : une scène, des gestes dont les représentations sont nombreuses et variées à travers le temps, comme le montre cet ouvrage de belle facture qui s’organise en cinq chapitres. On y découvre la richesse et la diversité des images autour d’une pratique universelle qui s’inscrit dans l’h...

This paper first investigates logical characterizations of different structures of opposition that extend the square of opposition in a way or in another. Blanché’s hexagon of opposition is based on three disjoint sets. There are at least two meaningful cubes of opposition, proposed respectively by two of the authors and by Moretti, and pioneered by philosophers such as J. N. Keynes, W. E. Johnson, for the former, and H. Reichenbach for the latter. These cubes exhibit four and six squares of (...) opposition respectively. We clarify the differences between these two cubes, and discuss their gradual extensions, as well as the one of the hexagon when vertices are no longer two-valued. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the use of these structures of opposition for discussing the comparison of two items. Comparing two items usually involves a set of relevant attributes whose values are compared, and may be expressed in terms of different modalities such as identity, similarity, difference, opposition, analogy. Recently, J.-Y. Béziau has proposed an “analogical hexagon” that organizes the relations linking these modalities. Elementary comparisons may be a matter of degree, attributes may not have the same importance. The paper studies in which ways the structure of the hexagon may be preserved in such gradual extensions. As another illustration of the graded hexagon, we start with the hexagon of equality and inequality due to R. Blanché and extend it with fuzzy equality and fuzzy inequality. Besides, the cube induced by a tetra-partition can account for the comparison of two items in terms of preference, reversed preference, indifference and non-comparability even if these notions are a matter of degree. The other cube, which organizes the relations between the different weighted qualitative aggregation modes, is more relevant for the attribute-based comparison of items in terms of similarity. (shrink)

L’Agence universitaire de la Francophonie est un réseau mondial au service de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche. Ce texte résume son histoire depuis sa création en 1961 en s’arrêtant sur les différentes phases de son évolution. D’un réseau purement coopératif durant trente ans, l’Agence est devenu un opérateur de la Francophonie institutionnelle implanté sur les cinq continents et réputé pour sa capacité d’innovation. Celle-ci s’illustre notamment par la création d’une cinquantaine de Campus numériques francophones animant une communauté de plusieurs (...) milliers d’acteurs agissant dans la recherche sur les TICE et en tant que concepteurs de nouvelles formes de transmission des savoirs.The French-speaking universities agency is a global network serving the higher education and research. This text summarizes its history since its inception in 1961, stopping at different stages of its evolution. From a purely cooperative network for 30 years, the Agency has become an operator of the institutional “Francophonie” located on five continents and with a reputation for innovation. This is illustrated in particular by setting up francophone dig- ital campuses leading a community of thousands of players involved in research on ICT and as developers of new forms of knowledge transmission. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the issue of the processes potentially underlying the emergence of emotional consciousness in the light of theoretical considerations and empirical evidence. First, we argue that componential emotion models, and specifically the Component Process Model , may be better able to account for the emergence of feelings than basic emotion or dimensional models. Second, we advance the hypothesis that consciousness of emotional reactions emerges when lower levels of processing are not sufficient to cope with the event (...) and regulate the emotional process, particularly when the degree of synchronization between the components reaches a critical level and duration. Third, we review recent neuroscience evidence that bolsters our claim of the central importance of the synchronization of neuronal assemblies at different levels of processing. (shrink)

The commentary raises political questions about the ways in which data has been constituted as an object vested with certain powers, influence, and rationalities. We place the emergence and transformation of professional practices such as ‘data science’, ‘data journalism’, ‘data brokerage’, ‘data mining’, ‘data storage’, and ‘data analysis’ as part of the reconfiguration of a series of fields of power and knowledge in the public and private accumulation of data. Data politics asks questions about the ways in which data has (...) become such an object of power and explores how to critically intervene in its deployment as an object of knowledge. It is concerned with the conditions of possibility of data that involve things, language, and people that together create new worlds. We define ‘data politics’ as both the articulation of political questions about these worlds and the ways in which they provoke subjects to govern themselves and others by making rights claims. We contend that without understanding these conditions of possibility – of worlds, subjects and rights – it would be difficult to intervene in or shape data politics if by that it is meant the transformation of data subjects into data citizens. (shrink)

La géométrie souterraine est une science mathématique pratique, qui se développe dans les exploitations minières et dont la diffusion est considérablement modifiée au cours du xviiie siècle. Ce phénomène est lié à l’institutionnalisation graduelle de la discipline, de l’établissement d’un système de compagnonnage à la création d’académies des mines. Progressivement, les pratiques vont faire appel à de nouvelles méthodes et intégrer une solide formation en mathématiques théoriques. La circulation et l’enseignement des connaissances sont dans un premier temps basés sur un (...) système de manuscrits qui sera étudié en détail. L’exemple du Markscheider August Beyer (1677-1753) illustre ce processus collectif de constitution et de transmission de connaissances, dont la diffusion est cependant contrôlée. Nous analysons dans un second temps l’évolution des vecteurs de circulation et son influence sur la discipline, en nous appuyant sur la biographie de deux mathématiciens saxons, J.A. Scheidhauer (1718-1784) et son discipline J.F. Lempe (1757-1801). Leurs parcours croisés symbolisent la transformation de la discipline. Le passage à l’imprimé, la publication d’articles dans des revues spécialisées et la création de chaires académiques font de la géométrie souterraine une science reconnue qui reste cependant en dehors du corpus de connaissances et des débats universitaires. (shrink)

Philosopher, c'est bien faire comprendre ce que l'on pense, mais ce que l'on pense n'est ni sensible, ni audible, ni lisible, mais intelligible, c'est-à-dire saisissable par la seule intelligence. La philosophie, comme éducation du sensible, est donc aussi dissolution des réalités apparentes et congédiement de l'opinion. La réalité n'est donc pas le sensible et l'idée commune de réel est plutôt une représentation. La représentation, en effet, est sans élaboration théorique ; entièrement passive, elle ne saurait être une idée ; mais (...) elle n'est pas non plus une idée du réel, puisqu'elle ne parle, en fait, que du sensible. (shrink)

La justice prédictive qui consiste à évaluer les probabilités de succès des procès par un traitement informatique est une innovation technologique importante. Elle pourrait avoir des effets sur les principes fondamentaux des procès, notamment du procès civil. Le droit au juge et le principe de l’égalité des armes qui protègent les droits des parties risquent d’être affectés. Les principes d’indépendance et d’impartialité du juge pourraient également être perturbés ainsi que l’office du juge. Il convient donc d’être vigilant et de réguler (...) l’activité de justice prédictive. (shrink)

« La forme est sans doute quelque chose de la réalité, mais quelque chose qui se transmet à la faveur d’une relation causale qui met en rapport l’intelligible et le sensible : le premier est la cause du second, qu’il déter­mine comme tel, au moyen de la forme. ». Jean-François Pradeau : « Platon : les formes intelligibles ». Presses Universitaires de France, 2001. P. 53. Transmission, relation causale et mise en rapport qu'il faudrait compléter par dialogue et participation pour (...) planter le dé... (shrink)

In the last lines of Politics VII, 3, Aristotle states that the happy city acts nobly. This implies that the city has a practical life, and that this life has its end in itself. This claim seems to contradict the famous distinction, which has been made elsewhere by Aristotle, between the practical and theoretical lives. It is argued in this paper that there is, here, neither contradiction nor inconsistency in Aristotle’s conception of human action. Some readings, according to which this (...) passage deals with the role of the philosophers in the happy city, are also ruled out. The proposed solution consists in showing that this text refers to a broader conception of action, one that is beyond the sphere of human practical activities: any genuine praxis has its goal in itself, even when it produces external effects. (shrink)

We have entered a new era of nature. What remains of the frontiers of modern thought that divided the living from the inert, subjectivity from objectivity, the apparent from the real, value from fact, and the human from the nonhuman? Can the great oppositions that presided over the modern invention of nature still claim any cogency? In _Nature as Event_, Didier Debaise shows how new narratives and cosmologies are necessary to rearticulate that which until now had been separated. Following (...) William James and Alfred North Whitehead, Debaise presents a pluralistic approach to nature. What would happen if we attributed subjectivity and potential to all beings, human and nonhuman? Why should we not consider aesthetics and affect as the fabric that binds all existence? And what if the senses of importance and value were no longer understood to be exclusively limited to the human? (shrink)

Entre Nietzsche et le Saint-Suaire, qu'y a t-il de commun? Une ville : Turin. C'est là que le philosophe a passé les mois qui ont précédé son effondrement dans la démence, en mai 1888, tout près de la chapelle qui conserve le Suaire. Faut-il n'y voir qu'une coïncidence? Né de l'étonnement devant l'ignorance qui entoure ce dernier moment de la vie lucide de Nietzsche, ce livre nous fait découvrir le combat spirituel que le philosophe mène avec le Christ. Il commence (...) par une enquête historique à nouveaux frais et révèle des épisodes méconnus - voire encore inconnus - de la vie de Nietzsche à Turin. La figure de l'homme y apparaît sous un jour bien différent de la légende attachée à son nom. Puis Didier Rance présente le face à face entre celui qui s'était autoproclamé Antichrist et Jésus Christ. Les attaques de Nietzsche à l'endroit du christianisme et de son fondateur sont connues ; on les dit décisives. A travers la voix des papes contemporains qui ont tous médité devant le Suaire, il est possible de pressentir la réponse que le Crucifié apporte à la critique nietzschéenne. Une réponse fondée sur la miséricorde qui éclaire en profondeur le sens du nihilisme dont Nietzsche a voulu être le prophète, et dans lequel se trouve plongé notre monde. (shrink)

The processing of emotional nonlinguistic information in speech is defined as emotional prosody. This auditory nonlinguistic information is essential in the decoding of social interactions and in our capacity to adapt and react adequately by taking into account contextual information. An integrated model is proposed at the functional and brain levels, encompassing 5 main systems that involve cortical and subcortical neural networks relevant for the processing of emotional prosody in its major dimensions, including perception and sound organization; related action tendencies; (...) and associated values that integrate complex social contexts and ambiguous situations. (shrink)

When he died in 1984, Michel Foucault was widely regarded as one of the most powerful minds of this century. Hailed by historians and lionized in America, he continues to provoke lively debate. This meticulously documented narrative debunks the many myths and rumors surrounding the brilliant philosopher to consider that all Foucault's books are "fragments of an autobiography".

In France, some institutions seem to call for the engineer’s sense of social responsibility. However, this call is scarcely heard. Still, engineering students have been given the opportunity to gain a general education through courses in literature, law, economics, since the nineteenth century. But, such courses have long been offered only in the top ranked engineering schools. In this paper, we intend to show that the wish to increase engineering students’ social responsibility is an old concern. We also aim at (...) highlighting some macro social factors which shaped the answer to the call for social responsibility in the French engineering “Grandes Ecoles”. In the first part, we provide an overview of the scarce attention given to the engineering curriculum in the scholarly literature in France. In the second part, we analyse one century of discourses about the definition of the “complete engineer” and the consequent role of non technical education. In the third part, we focus on the characteristics of the corpus which has been institutionalized. Our main finding is that despite the many changes which occurred in engineering education during one century, the “other formation” remains grounded on a non academic “way of knowing”, and aims at increasing the reputation of the schools, more than enhancing engineering students’ social awareness. (shrink)

On décèle une tension entre deux tendances dans la philosophie aristotélicienne de la praxis : d’une part; une insistance claire sur la spécificité de l’action humaine par rapport à la conduite animale ; d’autre part; la volonté de définir un genre commun pour les différents types d’activités; humaines et animales. Si cette tension peut être surmontée; c’est sans doute en distinguant les différents registres (axiologique; psychologique; éthologique) du discours aristotélicien. C’est aussi en précisant le type de ressemblance qui; à la (...) fois; rapproche et distingue l’homme de l’animal : si la conduite humaine et la conduite animale appartiennent à un genre commun; elles demeurent distinguées par un rapport d’analogie; c’est-à-dire par une différence irréductible. L’analyse éthologique d’Aristote; loin de conduire à une naturalisation du comportement humain; conduit à sa spécification. (shrink)

Los sistemas políticos democráticos están atravesando un período de fuertes convulsiones. A partir del análisis de dos casos de estudio de Comunidades de Creación Online (CCOs), como formas pensadas e implementadas en y desde Internet, el artículo presenta algunas conclusiones sobre las características específicas de la participación y la agencia política que puedan resultar generalizables en un proceso de transformación profunda de la democracia contemporánea. Los casos de estudio son el proyecto de memoria viva del Foro Social Europeo y Wikipedia.

L'étude des piliers érigés au Sud de la terrasse d'Attale Ier à Delphes a amené les auteurs à s'interroger sur une partie des restitutions de la publication de G. Roux (FD II, La Terrasse d'Attale /). D'autres restitutions sont donc proposées et justifiées notamment par des dessins montrant les superpositions de blocs et les coïncidences de scellements. Après une première partie consacrée à l'étude architecturale, est proposée une interprétation de la consécration attalide comme téménos de Néoptolème, le père de l'éponyme (...) Pergamos, réaménagé par le roi de Pergame en manifestation d'évergétisme envers Delphes, l'Amphictionie et ses alliés éto- liens. L'article aborde enfin les modifications apportées par la construction du second pilier et les transformations de l'ensemble à l'époque paléochrétienne. (shrink)

En prenant comme point de départ la proposition d’André Breton d’une « physique de la poésie », nous analyserons ici les conditions de surgissement de diverses variations qui pris forme dans la pratique surréaliste de l’objet surréaliste, depuis la Boule suspendue (1930) de Giacometti aux sculptures crées par Miró dans les années cinquante, en prenant compte de la construction des objets à fonctionnements symboliques de Dalí, à l’« Équation de l’objet trouvé», écrit fondamental de Breton, et à la célébration, en (...) 1936, de l’exposition fondationale à la Galerie Charles Ratton. (shrink)

Nietzsche a été continuellement malade. Or, si la maladie n'est pas l'inspiratrice de l'œuvre de Nietzsche, elle est source continuelle de réflexions et enrichit les perspectives de Nietzsche sur la santé. Les oppositions affirmatif -réactif, grégaire - solitaire, noble-vulgaire se ramènent à cette opposition santé-maladie (c'est le vécu de la maladie qui a appris à Nietzsche à se faire un point de vue sur sa santé et vice-versa). La maladie est même devenue source du renversement des valeurs et d'affirmation de (...) sa grande santé. C'est pourquoi ces expériences de la maladie qui ponctuent toute la vie de Nietzsche ont une telle importance dans la genèse et l'approfondissement de sa pensée. (shrink)

A phenomenological approach to questions of the body, ego, temporality and intersubjective relations with the 'other' by a leading French thinker and Husserl scholar.

Nous avons dans cet article tenté d’assumer pleinement la revendication métaphysique qui anime la pensée de Tarde, à savoir l’idée que le réel ne serait fait ni de substances statiques ni de représentations, mais de sujets véritables, humains et non-humains. L’extension inédite qu’opère Tarde de la notion de sujet à tous les aspects de la réalité trouve, selon nous, aujourd’hui une nouvelle actualité dans les articulations entre nature et subjectivités. La nature ne serait pas une réalité matérielle face à des (...) sujets qui se la représenteraient et y projetteraient leurs valeurs, leurs dimensions esthétiques et leurs représentations ; elle devient, par Tarde, le foyer d’innombrables activités subjectives, reliées les unes aux autres. (shrink)

A memoir and a meditation on individual and class identity, and the forces that keep us locked in political closets. On thinking the matter through, it doesn't seem exaggerated to assert that my coming out of the sexual closet, my desire to assume and assert my homosexuality, coincided within my personal trajectory with my shutting myself up inside what I might call a class closet. —from Returning to Reims After his father dies, Didier Eribon returns to his hometown of (...) Reims and rediscovers the working-class world he had left behind thirty years earlier. For years, Eribon had thought of his father largely in terms of the latter's intolerable homophobia. Yet his father's death provokes new reflection on Eribon's part about how multiple processes of domination intersect in a given life and in a given culture. Eribon sets out to investigate his past, the history of his family, and the trajectory of his own life. His story weaves together a set of remarkable reflections on the class system in France, on the role of the educational system in class identity, on the way both class and sexual identities are formed, and on the recent history of French politics, including the shifting voting patterns of the working classes—reflected by Eribon's own family, which changed its allegiance from the Communist Party to the National Front. Returning to Reims is a remarkable book of sociological inquiry and critical theory, of interest to anyone concerned with the direction of leftist politics in the contemporary world, and to anyone who has ever experienced how sexual identity can clash with other parts of one's identity. A huge success in France since its initial publication in 2009, Returning to Reims received enthusiastic reviews in Le Monde, Libération, L'Express, Les Inrockuptibles, and elsewhere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 39.1 (2005) 77-92 [Access article in PDF] Art and the Teaching of Love Didier Maleuvre Art is rightly thought to be the domain of expression and illusion. It is expression because every work of art, however stone-faced or impersonal in aspect, is the product of human intention. And it is illusion because, however concrete, vivid, or raw, it holds up only images. These (...) two points — that art is expression and fiction — are deeply entrenched in the modern understanding of art. They are the twin pillars of our aesthetics.In the following I wish to argue that this focus on the expressive and the representative eclipse the most important dynamic of art — what I propose to call the communicative and the iconoclastic. By the former, I mean that art is primarily, not a subjectivity giving shape to a private vision, but a form of sanctifying the human conversation, that is, the encounter between subjectivities; by the latter, I mean to suggest that art is an image that paradoxically strives to go beyond the realm of images. On this account we will see that an image is artistic to the extent that it breaks through representation.Briefly put, art has a destination beyond itself. One should not imagine, as postmodernism ruled ex officio, that the essence of art is formal or social self-reflectivity. Certainly, self-mirroring occurs in art, but no more or less than in any act of intelligence. Moreover, it is not enough to affix tokens of self-consciousness onto an object to turn it into art. The aim of art is not art. Its destination is elsewhere; its aim is reality encountered and lived with.And the vehicle by which art travels into reality is not just skill, insight, knowledge, or intelligence. It is love. To defend these two propositions will be the gist of the following essay.The aim of education is rightly thought to be knowledge of the world. Knowledge, however, is of two kinds: one is concerned with storage of facts, the other with modes of relating to the world. The first is a technical pursuit; the second, moral practice. The sort of education fostered by art clearly belongs with the second sort. Art is less concerned with delivering [End Page 77] information about the world than teaching us about how to stand in relation to it, how to find our place in it, and live with it: through art we do not seek to master the world so much as become its denizens. It is a teaching of love. Art, Mind, and Reality Now, the idea that art is religious embrace of reality runs against a powerful philosophic doctrine: the idea, known as subjectivism — that the human mind is kept from reality by its own knowledge of reality. We perceive reality only through mental representations. I see a tree, I hear laughter, I taste tea. When my mind alights on these objects, they have already been retouched and recomposed by my senses. By the time I am aware of them, I have reordered the perceptual datum into the concepts of "tree," "laugher," "tea." So we really deal with conceptual images of things, even when those things fall on our head like rain, or trip us like an untied shoelace.Subjectivism takes art to be proof of its doctrine. No two artists have transposed the same landscape or object in exactly the same hues and forms. Monet may have wanted to put in his paintings only what the retina mirrored; still, in the end he painted like no other before him and an indisputable infusion of the Monet personality stamps his paintings. Likewise there is a Titian "take" on reality that is not Rubens's, a Constable way of painting gray watery skies that is not Corot's, or again a Twombly way of rendering the four seasons that is nothing like Vivaldi's. This, then, should be where art's commitment to reality expires — on the evidence that no two artworks have ever been able to... (shrink)

In the “history of the Aztecs” scholarship, recent debates reveal how work seemingly aligned with anti-colonial and anti-imperialist objectives can nevertheless reproduce the view that western science and technology are the primary means of improving human life. This corresponds to a type of performa- tive postcolonial analysis that remains caught up in the power dynamics it seeks to dismantle. The essay’s goal is to show that in order to understand, compare, and contrast the technological differences between Mesoamericans and early modern (...) Spaniards, it is necessary to attend to the different ontological configura- tions that undergird their respective sociocultural renderings of “nature.”. (shrink)