Syndicalisme et délitement du salariat artistique : la CGT et les groupes mobilisés autour du régime de l’intermittence

In a context of strong growth and intense social struggles related to the employment conditions of media industry worker on short-term contracts in France, attention is drawn to the difficulties that the Confédération générale du travail (CGT) has had organizing performers and stage hands in show business (cinema, theater, etc.). This labor union must deal with a large number of young professionals who pay no mind to the rules and norms related to wage-earning and no longer consider them to be a common good. Working in small groups that produce shows, these professionals regard their occupation as a vocation, value the hyperflexibility of their working conditions, pay scant attention to the distinction between employer and employees, and tend to deny the specific characteristics of their jobs and skills while referring, instead, to a blurry set of qualifications.     

Exploring the moral experiences of Anishinaabeg children in Rapid Lake,Quebec

This study was developed to guard against the imposition of settler-based colonial ethnocentric conceptions of moral development by exploring the everyday moral experiences of children in an Anishinaabeg community. A focused ethnography of 33 children over 3.5 months was conducted, which included participant observation, group activities and individual and group interviews. Drawing on their unique cultural and social background, children showed they had rich moral understandings and acted as moral agents in matters that affected them. These results help advance our understanding of what is morally significant to Anishinaabeg children in their daily experiences, in line with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action.     

A nonparametric procedure for the analysis of balanced crossover designs

The authors propose nonparametric tests for the hypothesis of no direct treatment effects, as well as for the hypothesis of no carryover effects, for balanced crossover designs in which the number of treatments equals the number of periods p, where p ≥ 3. They suppose that the design consists of n replications of balanced crossover designs, each formed by m Latin squares of order p. Their tests are permutation tests which are based on the n vectors of least squares estimators of the parameters of interest obtained from the n replications of the experiment. They obtain both the exact and limiting distribution of the test statistics, and they show that the tests have, asymptotically, the same power as the F‐ratio test.     

Predictive Inference from a Two-Parameter Rayleigh Life Model Given a Doubly Censored Sample

This article is concerned with making predictive inference on the basis of a doubly censored sample from a two-parameter Rayleigh life model. We derive the predictive distributions for a single future response, the ith future response, and several future responses. We use the Bayesian approach in conjunction with an improper flat prior for the location parameter and an independent proper conjugate prior for the scale parameter to derive the predictive distributions. We conclude with a numerical example in which the effect of the hyperparameters on the mean and standard deviation of the predictive density is assessed.     

Physiologically-Based Pharmacokinetic Modeling of a Mixture of Toluene and Xylene in Humans

A physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for a mixture of toluene (TOL) and xylene (XYL), developed and validated in the rat, was used to predict the uptake and disposition kinetics of TOL/XYL mixture in humans. This was accomplished by substituting the rat physiological parameters and the blood:air partition coefficient with those of humans, scaling the maximal velocity for hepatic metabolism on the basis of body weight^0.75, and keeping all other model parameters species-invariant. The human TOL/XYL mixture PBPK model, developed based on the quantitative biochemical mechanism of interaction elucidated in the rat (i.e., competitive metabolic inhibition), simulated adequately the kinetics of TOL and XYL during combined exposures in humans. The simulations with this PBPK model indicate that an eight hour co-exposure to concentrations that remain within the current threshold limit values of TOL (50 ppm) and XYL (100 ppm) would not result in significant pharmacokinetic interferences, thus implying that data on biological monitoring of worker exposure to these solvents would be unaffected during co-exposures.     

Does the transtheoretical model predict attrition in domestic violence treatment programs?

Attrition in intervention programs for domestically violent men is considered to be a serious and enduring problem. Researchers have found a number of sociodemographic variables that partially explain this phenomenon; however, models based on these variables have a limited predictive power. Scott (2004) argues that a firm theoretical base is needed in future investigations of the problem and suggests the use of the transtheoretical model of behavior change (TTM), which was found to predict dropout with accuracy in other areas of behavioral change. This study investigated the relationship between four TTM constructs (Stages of Change, Decisional Balance, Self-Efficacy, and Processes of Change) and premature termination with a sample of Canadian French-speaking men (N = 302) in five domestic violence treatment programs. Contrary to the initial hypotheses, the TTM constructs did not predict dropout. Discussion investigates how social desirability bias affects results being obtained by current TTM measures and whether more motivation to change at intake necessarily relates to involvement in treatment for longer periods of time.     

Evaluation of hip abductor and adductor strength in the elderly: a reliability study

Background

In elderly individuals an increased muscle strength contributes to the diminution of the falls risk and associated adverse events. An increasing interest in lateral control exists due to the fatal consequences of postero-lateral falls. Therefore a proper assessment of frontal plane hip muscle strength in elderly is important but remains challenging.Therefore we aimed to investigate the feasibility and repeatability of a hip abductor and adductor maximum voluntary isometric strength (MVIS) and rate of force generation (RFG) test in elderly. This represents an initial step in the development process of a new and clinically relevant test that could lead to more specific treatment protocols for this population.

Methods

In this measurement focused study hip abduction (ABD) and adduction (ADD) MVIS and RFG were tested twice within one to three hours with a dynamometer fixed to a custom made frame in a geriatric population including fallers and non-fallers. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC_agreement), standard error of measurement (SEM), and smallest detectable difference (SDD) were determined.

Results

All recruited persons (N?=?76; mean age (SD) 80.46 (7.05) years old) completed the tests. The average time needed to complete the strength tests was 10.58 min. (1.56) per muscle group. The reliability of the hip ABD and ADD was high with ICC’s_agreement ranging from 0.83 to 0.97. The SDD varied between 18.1 and 81.8% depending on the muscle group and type of strength that was evaluated.

Conclusion

Hip abductor and adductor strength measures in older person are feasible and reliable. However, the significance of moderate changes in these measurements may be limited by the large SDD and SEM. Therefore, physical therapist should be careful when using this measure for assessing the progress of an individual person in a daily clinical use.

     

The Marshall-Olkin logistic-exponential distribution

We introduce a three-parameter extension of the exponential distribution which contains as sub-models the exponential, logistic-exponential and Marshall-Olkin exponential distributions. The new model is very flexible and its associated density function can be decreasing or unimodal. Further, it can produce all of the four major shapes of the hazard rate, that is, increasing, decreasing, bathtub and upside-down bathtub. Given that closed-form expressions are available for the survival and hazard rate functions, the new distribution is quite tractable. It can be used to analyze various types of observations including censored data. Computable representations of the quantile function, ordinary and incomplete moments, generating function and probability density function of order statistics are obtained. The maximum likelihood method is utilized to estimate the model parameters. A simulation study is carried out to assess the performance of the maximum likelihood estimators. Two actual data sets are used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model.     

Distribution approximation and modelling via orthogonal polynomial sequences

A general methodology is developed for approximating the distribution of a random variable on the basis of its exact moments. More specifically, a probability density function is approximated by the product of a suitable weight function and a linear combination of its associated orthogonal polynomials. A technique for generating a sequence of orthogonal polynomials from a given weight function is provided and the coefficients of the linear combination are explicitly expressed in terms of the moments of the target distribution. On applying this approach to several test statistics, we observed that the resulting percentiles are consistently in excellent agreement with the tabulated values. As well, it is explained that the same moment-matching technique can be utilized to produce density estimates on the basis of the sample moments obtained from a given set of observations. An example involving a well-known data set illustrates the density estimation methodology advocated herein.