Altered Images: A Comparative Study of Medical Portraits by Henry Tonks and Raphaël Freida in the Great War

Doctoral thesis (2023)

Students’ perspectives on their academic achievement during the Covid-19 pandemic: learner autonomy, school satisfaction and adult support

in Social Sciences and Humanities Open (2023), 7

Distance education, used to contain the spread of Covid-19 in 2020, radically altered adolescents’ learning experiences and affected their academic achievements. Based on a survey with adolescents aged 12 ... [more ▼]

Distance education, used to contain the spread of Covid-19 in 2020, radically altered adolescents’ learning experiences and affected their academic achievements. Based on a survey with adolescents aged 12-16 in Luxembourg, this study investigates the differences the 332 adolescents perceived in schoolwork when learning at school and from home during the pandemic in 2021, as well as predictors of their reported academic achievement. The findings show that the participants perceived their work as less interesting or useful and more difficult while learning from home and that the main predictors of their academic achievements were school achievements before the pandemic, school satisfaction, learner autonomy, and the ways that adults listen to them. Teacher and parent support played a subordinate role. [less ▲]

Choosing Women in Postwar Elections: Exposure to War Violence, Ideology, and Voters’ Gender Bias

in Politics and Gender (2023), First View

The level of women’s parliamentary representation often increases after armed conflict, but do voters in postwar societies actually prefer female electoral candidates? We answer this question by analyzing ... [more ▼]

The level of women’s parliamentary representation often increases after armed conflict, but do voters in postwar societies actually prefer female electoral candidates? We answer this question by analyzing a unique data set containing information on nearly 7,000 candidates running in three elections with preferential voting in postwar Croatia. Our analysis demonstrates that voters’ gender bias is conditional on the local electorate’s ideology and exposure to war violence, with voters of right-wing parties and voters in areas more affected by war violence being more biased against female candidates. These effects of ideology and exposure to war violence also exhibit a strong interactive relationship, suggesting that bias against women is strongest among right-wing voters in areas exposed to war violence and reversed among left-wing voters in areas exposed to war violence. Our findings highlight the need to better understand the relationship between gender, ideology, and violence in postconflict societies. [less ▲]

Expériences d’apprentissages-enseignements des stagiaires infirmiers bacheliers en relation avec le prendre soin humaniste-caring

Scientific Conference (2023, February 09)

DECIPHERING THE ROLE OF CELL-CELL COMMUNICATION IN HEALTH AND DISEASE - USING SYSTEMS BIOLOGY BASED COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING

Doctoral thesis (2023)

Cell-cell communication plays a significant role in shaping the functionality of the cells. Communication between the cells is also responsible for maintaining the physiological state of the cells and the ... [more ▼]

Cell-cell communication plays a significant role in shaping the functionality of the cells. Communication between the cells is also responsible for maintaining the physiological state of the cells and the tissue. Therefore, it is important to study the different ways by which cell-cell communication impacts the functional state of cells. Alterations in cell-cell communication can contribute to the development of disease conditions. In this thesis, we present two computational tools and a study to explore the different aspects of cell-cell communication. In the first manuscript, FunRes was developed to leverage the cell-cell communication model to investigate functional heterogeneity in cell types and characterize cell states based on the integration of interand intra-cellular signalling. This tool utilizes a combination of receptors and transcription factors (TFs) based on the reconstructed cell-cell communication network to split the cell types into functional states. The tool was applied to the TabulaMurisSenis atlas to discover functional cell states in both young and old mouse datasets. In addition, we compared our tool with state-of-the-art tools and validated the cell states using available markers from the literature. Secondly, we studied the evolution of gene expression in developing astrocytes under normal and inflammatory conditions. We characterized these cells using both transcriptional and chromatin accessibility data which were integrated to reconstruct the gene regulatory networks (GRNs) specific to the condition and timepoints. The GRNs were then topologically analyzed to identify key regulators of the developmental process under both normal and inflammatory conditions. In the final manuscript, we developed a computational tool that identified regulators of allergy and tolerance in a mouse model. The tool works by first reconstructing the cell-cell communication network and then analyzing the network for feedback loops. These feedback loops are important as they contribute to the sustenance of the tissue’s state. Identification of the feedback loops allows for the discovery of important molecules by comparative analysis of these feedback loops between various conditions. In summary, this thesis encompasses various ways of cellular regulation using cell-cell communication in a tissue. These studies contribute to a better understanding of the role cell-cell communication plays in health and disease along with the identification of therapeutic targets to design novel strategies against diseases [less ▲]

Learning private equity recommitment strategies for institutional investors

in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence in Finance (2023)

Keeping strategic allocations at target level to maintain high exposure to private equity is a complex but essential task for investors who need to balance against the risk of default. Illiquidity and ... [more ▼]

Keeping strategic allocations at target level to maintain high exposure to private equity is a complex but essential task for investors who need to balance against the risk of default. Illiquidity and cashflow uncertainty are critical challenges especially when commitments are irrevocable. In this work, we propose to use a trustworthy and explainable A.I. approach to design recommitment strategies. Using intensive portfolios simulations and evolutionary computing, we show that efficient and dynamic recommitment strategies can be brought forth automatically. [less ▲]

Steering self-organisation through confinement

in Soft Matter (2023)

Self-organisation is the spontaneous emergence of spatio-temporal structures and patterns from the interaction of smaller individual units. Examples are found across many scales in very different systems ... [more ▼]

Self-organisation is the spontaneous emergence of spatio-temporal structures and patterns from the interaction of smaller individual units. Examples are found across many scales in very different systems and scientific disciplines, from physics, materials science and robotics to biology, geophysics and astronomy. Recent research has highlighted how self-organisation can be both mediated and controlled by confinement. Confinement is an action over a system that limits its units’ translational and rotational degrees of freedom, thus also influencing the system’s phase space probability density; it can function as either a catalyst or inhibitor of self-organisation. Confinement can then become a means to actively steer the emergence or suppression of collective phenomena in space and time. Here, to provide a common framework and perspective for future research, we examine the role of confinement in the self-organisation of soft-matter systems and identify overarching scientific challenges that need to be addressed to harness its full scientific and technological potential in soft matter and related fields. By drawing analogies with other disciplines, this framework will accelerate a common deeper understanding of self-organisation and trigger the development of innovative strategies to steer it using confinement, with impact on, e.g., the design of smarter materials, tissue engineering for biomedicine and in guiding active matter. [less ▲]

Les Italiens dans le Luxembourg des migrations (3e partie)

Article for general public (2023)

The Fundamental Value of Art NFTs

E-print/Working paper (2023)

Art-related non-fungible tokens (NFTs) took the digital art space by storm in 2021, generating massive amounts of volume and attracting a large number of users to a previously obscure part of blockchain ... [more ▼]

Art-related non-fungible tokens (NFTs) took the digital art space by storm in 2021, generating massive amounts of volume and attracting a large number of users to a previously obscure part of blockchain technology. Still, very little is known about the attributes that influence the price of these digital assets. This paper attempts to evaluate the level of speculation associated with art NFTs, comprehend the characteristics that confer value on them and design a profitable trading strategy based on our findings. We analyze 860,067 art NFTs that have been deployed on the Ethereum blockchain and have been involved in 317,950 sales using machine learning methods to forecast the probability of sale, the trade frequency and the average price. We find that NFTs are highly speculative assets and that their price and recurrence of sale are heavily determined by the floor and the last sale prices, independent of any fundamental value. [less ▲]

Teachers´ stereotypical beliefs and expectations: A systematic review of studies focusing on intersectionality of students’ gender and ethnicity

Scientific Conference (2023, February 01)