Etudier et discuter des possibilités de traitement de situations impliquant incertitude et prévisibilité, tel était le but que s'étaient fixés les participants au colloque international des 8 et 9 juin 2007 qui s'est tenu à la Maison de la Recherche en Sciences Humaines de l'Université de Caen Basse-Normandie. B. Cadet, G. Chasseigne et G. Foliot ont réuni ici le fruit des travaux menés durant ces deux jours. Les contributions rassemblées dans cet ouvrage ont pour caractéristique commune l'étude de situations quotidiennes ou exceptionnelles où coexistent information et incertitude, et qui requièrent la mise en œuvre de fonctions cognitives de haut niveau (jugement, évaluation, estimation, prédiction, décision, langage, raisonnement, etc.). Avec la thématique "Cognition, incertitude et prévisibilité" comme référence commune, les auteurs, relevant de disciplines différentes (linguistique, sciences de gestion, économie, microbiologie, épistémologie, robotique, sciences de l'éducation, psychologie, etc.) présentent et analysent des modes de traitement sensiblement différents qu'une perspective pluridisciplinaire propre au lecteur permet ensuite de dépasser et de synthétiser. Une telle approche permet de dégager des repères conceptuels fondamentaux comme l'existence de différentes formes d'incertitude, leurs dénominations, leurs traitements écologiques par des modèles, des procédures cognitives et / ou statistiques applicables à de tels contextes, leurs effets sur les conduites individuelles ou collectives, etc. Rédigé dans un style très clair sans pour autant sacrifier à la précision de l'analyse, l'ouvrage s'adresse aux lecteurs intéressés, aux professionnels, aux étudiants et aux chercheurs souhaitant acquérir une plus grande pertinence dans le traitement des nombreuses situations présentant incertitude et prévisibilité. Il constitue à ce jour un bilan original très actuel sur cette question.

This book summarizes the methods and concepts of Statistical Implicative Analysis (SIA), created by Régis Gras in the 1980s to study, in a new way, the behavioural responses of French pupils to mathematics tests. Using a multidimensional, non-symmetrical data analysis method, SIA crosses a set of subjects or objects with a set of variables. It effectively complements traditional correlational and psychometric methods. SIA, through its various extensions, is today presented as a broad Artificial Intelligence method aimed at extracting trends and possible causalities in the form of rules, from a set of variables. It is based on the unlikeliness of the existence of these relationships, i.e. on the relative weakness of their counter-examples compared to what chance alone would produce. It establishes a dual topological relationship between the set of subjects and the set of variables. Many applications of this approach, driving forces or crucibles for the development of SIA, have concerned and still concern various fields such as didactics, evaluation and assessment, psychology, sociology, medicine, biology, economics, art history, and others. Key Features: Presents the foundations and representations of SIA. Provides extensions of variable sets and subjects. Includes a bonus exercise.

This volume of the Encyclopaedia offers a systematic introduction and a comprehensive survey of the theory of complex spaces. It covers topics like semi-normal complex spaces, cohomology, the Levi problem, q-convexity and q-concavity. It is the first survey of this kind. The authors are internationally known outstanding experts who developed substantial parts of the field. The book contains seven chapters and an introduction written by Remmert, describing the history of the subject. The book will be very useful to graduate students and researchers in complex analysis, algebraic geometry and differential geometry. Another group of readers will consist of mathematical physicists who apply results from these fields.

Le terme promotion de la santé en Afrique, près de 30 ans après l'adoption de la Charte d'Ottawa, continue d'avoir des connotations complètement hors du sens que lui confère cette charte. Cela n'est pas étonnant quand on sait que la notion de santé dans ce contexte africain équivaut à la lutte contre la maladie à travers les soins de santé dispensés par des professionnels de la santé dans des formations sanitaires et les hôpitaux. L'évolution que connait le continent depuis quelques décennies est de donner un peu plus de place à la communauté à travers les relais communautaires dans une participation communautaire vidée de son contenu, car le pouvoir n'est jamais passé entre les mains des communautés.C'est au vu de tout ceci que le présent ouvrage à sa raison d'être pour expliquer les fondements de l'autonomisation communautaire et de la promotion de la santé avec leur importance pour la région africaine en proie aux mauvais indicateurs de santé comparativement aux autres régions du monde.

Over the past two decades theorists and researchers have given increasing attention to the effects, both beneficial and harmful, of various control related motivations and beliefs. People's notions of how much personal control they have or desire to have over important events in their lives have been used to explain a host of performance and adaptational outcomes, including motivational and performance deficits associated with learned helplessness (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) and depression (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989), adaptation to aging (Baltes & Baltes, 1986; Rodin, 1986), cardiovascular disease (Matthews, 1982), cancer (Sklar & Anisman, 1979), increased reports of physical symptoms (Pennebaker, 1982), enhanced learning (Savage, Perlmutter, & Monty, 1979), achievement-related behaviors (Dweck & Licht, 1980; Ryckman, 1979), and post abortion adjustment (Mueller & Major, 1989). The notion that control motivation plays a fundamental role in a variety of basic, social psychological processes also has a long historical tradition. A number of theorists (Heider, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967), for example, have suggested that causal inferences arise from a desire to render the social world predictable and controllable. Similarly, control has been implicated as an important mediator of cognitive dissonance (Wicklund & Brehm, 1976) and attitude phenomena (Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Kiesler, Collins, & Miller, 1969). Despite the apparent centrality of control motivation to a variety of social psychological phenomena, until recently there has been relatively little research explicitly concerned with the effects of control motivation on the cognitive processes underlying such phenomena (cf.

"Written by the founders of The Difficult Airway Course: Anesthesia and utilizing an instructive case-based approach, this text/DVD presents all of the leading-edge principles, tools, and procedures of airway assessment and management. The scope of the book encompasses the many airway devices that have been developed since the publication of the first edition, many of which have the potential to markedly enhance airway management. Extensively revised and updated, the second edition of Management of the Difficult and Failed Airway emphasizes how airway management is context-sensitive: included are strategies for treating patients in a range of settings, from prehospital care to the ER, as well as proven techniques for special patient populations. In addition, new chapters have been added to further refresh the book's content and provide you with a solid grasp of the most critical topics in this fast-evolving area. The book's effective organization has been maintained, beginning with the first section's focus on the basic foundations of difficult and failed airway management. The second section reviews must-know airway devices and techniques, while the third part of the text introduces case studies that thoroughly examine the application of these techniques in complex clinical situations. A final section covers the practical considerations, such as difficult airway carts and teaching and simulation in airway management."--Publisher description

Spatial disorientation is of key relevance to our globalized world, eliciting complex questions about our relationship with technology and the last remaining vestiges of our animal nature. Viewed more broadly, disorientation is a profoundly geographical theme that concerns our relationship with space, places, the body, emotions, and time, as well as being a powerful and frequently recurring metaphor in art, philosophy, and literature. Using multiple perspectives, lenses, methodological tools, and scales, Geographies of Disorientation addresses questions such as: How do we orient ourselves? What are the cognitive and cultural instruments that we use to move through space? Why do we get lost? Two main threads run through the book: getting lost as a practice, explored within a post-phenomenological framework in relation to direct and indirect observation, wayfinding performances, and the various methods and tools used to find our position in space; and disorientation as a metaphor for the contemporary era, used in a broad range of contexts to express the difficulty of finding points of reference in the world we live in. Drawing on a wide range of literature, Geographies of Disorientation is a highly original and intruiging read which will be of interest to scholars of human geography, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, cognitive science, information technology, and the communication sciences.