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Batched Ranged Random Integer Generation
Full text linkPseudorandom values are often generated as 64-bit binary words. These random words need to be converted into ranged values without statistical bias. We present an efficient algorithm to generate multiple independent uniformly-random bounded integers from a single uniformly-random binary word, without any bias. In the common case, our method uses one multiplication and no division operations per value produced. In practice, our algorithm can more than double the speed of unbiased random shuffling for small to moderately large arrays
A comparison of the next eigenvalue sufficiency test to other stopping rules for the number of factors in factor analysis
Full text linkA plethora of techniques exist to determine the number of factors to retain in exploratory factor analysis. A recent and promising technique is the Next Eigenvalue Sufficiency Test (NEST), but has not been systematically compared with well-established stopping rules. The present study proposes a simulation with synthetic factor structures to compare NEST, parallel analysis, sequential x2 test, Hull method, and the empirical Kaiser criterion. The structures were based on 24 variables containing one to eight factors, loadings ranged from .40 to .80, inter-factor correlations ranged from .00 to .30, and three sample sizes were used. In total, 360 scenarios were replicated 1,000 times. Performance was evaluated in terms of accuracy (correct identification of dimensionality) and bias (tendency to over- or underestimate dimensionality). Overall, NEST showed the best overall performances, especially in hard conditions where it had to detect small but meaningful factors. It had a tendency to underextract, but to a lesser extent than other methods. The second best method was parallel analysis by being more liberal in harder cases. The three other stopping rules had pitfalls: sequential x2 test and Hull method even in some easy conditions; the empirical Kaiser criterion in hard conditions
Histoire de la Faculté de pharmacie de l'Université Laval: 1924-2024
Full text linkDepuis le 9 juin 2024, l’Université Laval peut s’enorgueillir de compter en son sein une Faculté de pharmacie héritière d’une tradition centenaire. Voilà en effet un siècle que le docteur Edwin Turcot, professeur de matière médicale et de thérapeutique et ex-doyen de la Faculté de médecine de l’Université Laval, a proposé au conseil universitaire la création d’une école de pharmacie. D’abord placée sous l’égide de Faculté des arts – qualifiée de « saladier » où l’on entassait tout ce qui ne touche pas à la médecine, au droit, à la théologie et à la philosophie – l’École obtient le statut de faculté en 1997. Dans ce livre commémoratif richement ornementé d’images d’archives, d’encadrés contenant des faits historiques connexes et de reproductions d’œuvres et de documents, les pharmaciens et auteurs Gilles Barbeau et Marthe Huot relatent les moments clés de cette évolution
Comment peut-on justifier le passage de l'orthopédagogie de rattrapage à celle de soulagement?
Full text linkPourquoi tout ce bruit autour de la valeur p ? Quelques pistes de compréhension pour le non-expert
No full textLa valeur p (p-value) fait l’objet de vifs débats dans la communauté scientifique et influence l’évaluation que les intervenants font des recherches dans leur domaine de pratique. Certains souhaitent la proscrire, alors que d’autres veulent continuer à l’utiliser. Cet article présente des éléments de réflexion concernant les écarts entre sa réelle signification et l’usage commun qui en est fait. Il discute des définitions ou interprétations erronées qui lui sont associées, notamment par rapport aux seuils de la valeur p. Enfin, il présente des alternatives ou compléments à cette statistique. Son objectif est d’identifier et de proposer aux chercheurs en sciences sociales, humaines et de la santé les meilleures pratiques de l’analyse des données quantitatives et de développer en même temps une réflexion critique à l’égard de leurs résultats basés sur cette statistique, laquelle continue à attiser bien des passions
Différences dans les déterminants de la pratique d’activité physique entre les femmes enceintes en santé et celles ayant du diabète gestationnel
Full text linkDérives lors d’innovations statistiques
Full text linkLes effets pervers de la course aux publications sont nombreux : dégradation de la qualité des recherches, augmentation de publications prédatrices, fraude et mauvaise conduite scientifique, stress et épuisement professionnel, et fragmentation des recherches pour augmenter le nombre de publications. Un autre effet pervers invalidant souvent les résultats obtenus consiste à proposer à tout prix des innovations statistiques, sans considérer si cela est pertinent. Exemples tirés de la littérature scientifique :
1) Mauvaise utilisation de la Théorie de la Réponse à l’Item
a. Non-vérification des conditions d’application : unidimensionnalité et indépendance locale
b. Mauvais choix de modèle (modèle dichotomique vs données catégorielles)
c. Critères non pertinents dans l’identification des items problématiques
2) Pas de vérification que les données sont Missing Completely At Random avant le traitement de données manquantes
3) Changement de philosophie sur la dimensionnalité en équations structurelles
a. Au lieu de vérifier l’ajustement du modèle aux données, choix d’un modèle pour y forcer les données
b. Ne pas effectuer d’analyses factorielles exploratoires. Utiliser celles confirmatoires en imposant des contraintes sur les saturations pour s’assurer d’obtenir les résultats escomptés
c. Utilisation d’un modèle unidimensionnel (Bifacteur) avec des données multidimensionnelles
i. Non-vérification de la présence d’un facteur dominant
ii. Remplacement des facteurs de groupe par des facteurs communs
iii. Surchargé de saturations (Bifacteur-ESEM, Bifacteur-SET, Bifacteur J-1) ce modèle qui reproduit presque parfaitement les corrélations (saturé)
4) Surreprésenter l’importance des résultats obtenus
a. Mettre l’accent, dans la discussion, sur la contribution d’une variable dans un modèle de prédiction, alors que la saturation est faible (<,10), voire marginale
b. Ajouter une variable fortement corrélée avec la variable dépendante afin d’obtenir un pourcentage de variance expliquée élevée
La présente communication s’inscrit dans un processus de réflexion critique sur les dérives statistiques afin de promouvoir des pratiques rigoureuses et éthiques
Distribution of Tunisian beet wild relatives (Beta sp.) according to morphological characteristics and eco-geographical origin
Full text linkBeta vulgaris subsp. maritima (L.) Arcang. and Beta macrocarpa Guss. are crop wild relative taxa belonging to the primary gene pool. They constitute a crucial gene reserve for enhancing cultivated Beta species (B. vulgaris subsp. vulgaris L.). Climate change poses a significant threat to genetic reservoir in Tunisia. We evaluated the morphological diversity of ten populations of B. vulgaris subsp. maritima and five populations of B. macrocarpa growing in different Tunisian bioclimatic and ecological areas using a set of 9 quantitative and 14 qualitative traits to promote the preservation and exploration of this germplasm. Variance component analysis of the quantitative data showed an important spectrum of variability, both within and between populations. The principal component analysis (PCA) allocated this wild Beta collection into three groups. G1 included the populations of B. macrocarpa that were characterized by the largest glomerules and heaviest seeds, while G2 included all B. vulgaris subsp. maritima populations except one, i.e., N1015 that clustered into G3, which was characterized by the highest values of leaf characters. Similarly, qualitative traits exhibited a high diversity level (H'index ≥0.6) for almost all characters. The PCA divided these 15 populations into three groups as well: G′1 concerned the island B. vulgaris subsp. maritima populations, characterized by prostrate growth habit and red inflorescences; G′2 included all B. macrocarpa populations characterized by erect-procumbent growth habit and very synchronous flowering pattern; and G′3 was formed by the mainland B. vulgaris subsp. maritima populations, characterized by erect growth habit and hairy, curly leaves. The observed eco-geographic distribution patterns suggest that these wild relatives are highly adaptable to diverse and even extreme conditions (salinity, heat, and drought), highlighting their potential as resilient gene sources for beet breeding under the challenges of accelerating climate change
Shadowing Electronic Music DJs at Night : Ethical and Embodied Challenges
No full textThis paper proposes nocturnal shadowing as a multimodal, feminist and sensorial method to access embodied knowledge in high-intensity research contexts. Drawing on our ethnographic study of women* and non-binary DJs in Montreal’s nightlife scene, we explore how interviewing and observing at night calls for a profound methodological reconfiguration—one that takes seriously affect, embodiment, and the complex atmospheres of nocturnal cultural labor.
Our project combines shadowing (Aumais & Vásquez, 2023), reflexive interviews (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2009), and affective fieldnotes documented on-the-go in loud, dark, and fluid environments such as nightclubs, festivals, and informal gatherings. Influenced by feminist epistemologies (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004), sensual ethnography (Warren, 2008, 2012), and affective methodologies (Gherardi, 2023; Pors, 2021), we reflect on the researcher’s entanglement with the field. We investigate how the body becomes both a research instrument and a site of knowledge production, and how senses—touch, hearing, smell, sight—are constantly mobilized and overstimulated.
In these contexts, interviewing extends beyond verbal exchange: consent is dynamic, embodied, and fragile; data includes sound, light, crowd affect, and intoxication; relationships with participants are relationally immersive and often blur the lines between researcher and friend. Moments of dancing, hugging, or simply being-there (O’Grady, 2013) become part of a multimodal archive of the field, where vulnerability, fatigue, and emotional resonance shape what can be known and how it is known.
We show how DJs manage sound, emotion, and flow as part of their performance of care, and how gendered power dynamics shape their artistic and social navigation. Simultaneously, we reflect on our own methodological negotiations: how to move unnoticed through a crowd, how to write fieldnotes in motion, how to interpret the researcher’s shifting role in emotionally charged environments.
By incorporating post-qualitative approaches and focusing on embodied, affective, and non-verbal forms of data, our contribution resonates with the call of this special issue. We argue that nocturnal shadowing offers a valuable lens to study how knowledge emerges from bodies in motion and atmospheres in flux. It pushes interviewing into a space where words are not primary, and where sensemaking is necessarily multimodal, temporal, and felt.
In doing so, we advocate for a feminist methodology that does not sanitize the research process but acknowledges its messiness, partiality, and intensity. Our work not only highlights the strategies of resistance and solidarity developed by minoritized DJs, but also calls for research practices that embrace the co-presence of affect, risk, and relation in the generation of situated, sensual knowledge
Balancing between Books and Milk Bottles : Academic Mothers’ Colliding identities
No full textThis is the beginning
Of the rest of my life
Writing or washing
Reading or tidying
Emailing or baking
Torn apart
Between guilt and career
Between motherhood and everyday life
Dedication or sacrifice
Hard work or laziness
Cooking or ordering
I must teach
I must create
Through the pores of my brain
I exist
I breathe
For her, my child
And for me
This poem, written by one of the co-authors (Joëlle), illustrates the inner struggles of a young mother returning to work as a university professor after a year's maternity leave. Writing was an inevitable way of making sense of the identity shift that was taking place within her. How to integrate this new role – being a mother – into her identity? How to reconcile this new role with the demanding role of a university professor? She was joined by Coline, the other co-author, who realized she was going through this identity struggle as well. What began as two personal journeys gradually evolved into a research enquiry as we discovered that we were not alone in the endeavor of reconciling these two demanding roles and, more profoundly, these (in)compatible identities.
Navigating the complex terrain of being an academic mother
The complicated journey of academic mothers – or those on the cusp of motherhood – unfolds as a compelling, and often misunderstood, narrative within academia. The blog “Mama is an Academic” curated by Leventon et al. (2019), sheds light on the hurdles these women face as they strive to balance their career ambitions with the responsibilities of parenthood. This online platform serves as a tribute to the diverse array of experiences that encapsulate the triumphs, challenges, and struggles of academic motherhood.
The evolution of parental identity among academics, as articulated by Van Engen et al. (2021), represents a particularly multifaceted journey for women . Balancing between this dual existence is not simply a matter of juggling responsibilities but involves a profound negotiation of self-identity and professional identity. Despite acknowledging the central role of fathers in caregiving (Allen et al., 2012), our focus remains on mothers, highlighting the unequal burden of caregiving responsibilities that disproportionately affects women, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds in academia (LGBTQ+, BIPOC, etc.).
Academic mothers struggle with disparities in workload distribution compared to men. Babcock et al. (2022) suggest that women are significantly overburdened with non-promotable work: they are 44% more likely to be assigned this work than men, and 50% more likely to accept it. This can lead to delayed progress in securing tenured positions, despite having commendable publication rates and producing highly quality work (Le Feuvre et al., 2019).
The neoliberal academic landscape further exacerbates these challenges, demanding relentless productivity while often lacking the necessary support structures—such as adequate childcare services and job security—to achieve work-life equilibrium, especially amid societal expectations and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic (Blithe, 2022; Davies & Petersen, 2005; Yerkes et al., 2022). As a result, women are often torn between pursuing an academic career and starting a family, often choosing to delay motherhood in order to stabilize their careers, with some ultimately remaining childless (Hewlett, 2002; Lorenti et al., 2024; Mendez & Watson, 2024). This dilemma underscores the sacrifices women may have to make when choosing between academic advancement and motherhood. This highlights the need for supportive narratives that promote the viability of academic motherhood.
Focus on the identity of the academic mother
Both academia and motherhood are greedy institutions that require unwavering commitment, ceaseless effort, and deep dedication. Ward and Wolf-Wendel (2012) describe how academic mothers often practice “satisficing”—a series of compromises essential to synchronizing their roles as academics and mothers, managing the intricate balance between books and milk bottles, and between university and home. Both identities can be thought of as “performance,” which means performing consistently under the scrutiny by others. For example, mothers feel the pressure to be “flawless,” or to maintain a certain way of presenting themselves in public and private spaces. As they navigate between these pressures, they must also perform figures of authority and power as academics, although having feelings of inadequacy, such as the pervasive imposter syndrome (Bostock, 2014). This highlights the intersection of personal and professional identities that is often overlooked in traditional research – as Miller (2007) suggests by the title of her article: “Is this what motherhood all about?”
Research tends to focus more on structural and practical challenges rather than the development of identity itself. However, academic mothering often means experiencing significant changes in one’s sense of self, which becomes a crucial shift in one’s form of self-understanding. In the intricate dance of academic life and motherhood, they have to reset their life priorities in order to maintain their mental health (Delgado-Herrera et al., 2024). This demonstrates the importance of understanding the “self-as-mother” as an evolving one, which often involves going through crisis and tensions in daily life as academia demands a culture of performance.
Therefore, this research, through an autoethnographic approach, examines how academic moms shape, constitute, and transform their identities. What does it mean to be a mother and an academic? By focusing on the constitutive process of their complex identity journey, this research seeks to uncover the richness and complexity of academic motherhood, and provide insights into how these academic women “make sense of motherhood,” as Miller (2005) calls it, and by doing so constitute academia as a better context for being a mother as well as a professor.
A CCO account for collective autoethnography
Inspired by our previous personal writings and joint discussions, we are conducting a collaborative autoethnography that explores how we, as academic mothers, make sense ofour lives through the lenses of their different identities, and how these identities collide in everyday situations. This autoethnographic approach is coupled with the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) to better understand how people constitute and redefine their identities in the interactions, with themselves or with others, depending on what they experience as struggles or challenges (Chaput & Basque, 2022), what Delamont (2009) calls their “small crises.”
Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that uses data, in the form of a personal narrative that can take many shapes, about self and context. However, if this self-centered approach has been criticized, it is also acknowledged that personal experience can provide a new and unique vantage point from which to contribute to science. But if autoethnography is considered in its interpretive dimensions—as acts of meaning for the self (Bochner, 2012; Denzin, 2014)—it has “tremendous potential for building knowledge.” Coupled with a CCO approach, it provides the theoretical distance that can lead to renewed understanding of the constitutive dimension of identity struggles.
From a research standpoint, collaborative (auto)ethnography involves an iterative and reflective process in which participants gain an understanding of the connection between self and other through discussions (Allen et al., 2012). This methodology facilitates an in-depth exploration of participants’ personal and professional experiences, thereby fostering a more nuanced understanding of identity-related challenges. Particularly, collective biography can “make visible, palpable and hearable the constitutive effect of dominant discourses…and open both ourselves and discourse to the possibility of change” (Davies & Gannon, 2006, 5).
Furthermore, the CCO approach emphasizes how communication activities materialize identities and shape identification processes, which in turn recursively affects the organization’s constitution as a coherent and structured “actor” of coordinated action (Chaput & Basque, 2022). In particular, this approach facilitates a recursive loop of sharing experience through (auto)ethnography. As Bencherki & Matte (2019) highlight, the aim is to focus on and learn from researchers' communicative practices as they are recursively influenced by the situations they both create and bring to life through their research narratives