Université de Sherbrooke

About: Université de Sherbrooke is a education organization based out in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Receptor. The organization has 14922 authors who have published 28783 publications receiving 792511 citations. The organization is also known as: Universite de Sherbrooke & Sherbrooke University.

Country-of-Origin and Brand Effects:

Abstract: The data for this research were collected from 365 male respondents through two separate studies at two different time periods using two different formats. Results indicated that the combined effects of country of design and country of assembly cues has a stronger impact than brand name on consumer evaluation of quality and purchase value of automobiles, VCRs and shoes. Magnitude of a priori cue differentiation played a strong role in product evaluation. Favorableness of a brand or country-of-origin cues is considerably modified when a consumer is provided with additional product-related information.

Psychometric properties of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) in French clinical and nonclinical adults.

Abstract: Background Previous research on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) has five main limitations. First, no study provided evidence of the factorial equivalence of this instrument across samples of depressive and community participants. Second, only one study included systematic tests of measurement invariance based on confirmatory factor analyses (CFA), and this study did not consider the higher-order factor structure of depression, although it is the CES-D global scale score that is most often used in the context of epidemiological studies. Third, few studies investigated the screening properties of the CES-D in non-English-language samples and their results were inconsistent. Fourth, although the French version of the CES-D has been used in several previous studies, it has never been systematically validated among community and/or depressed adults. Finally, very few studies have taken into account the ordered-categorical nature of the CES-D answer scale. The purpose of the study reported herein was therefore to examine the construct validity (i.e., factorial, reliability, measurement invariance, latent mean invariance, convergence, and screening properties) of the CES-D in a French sample of depressed patients and community adults. Methods A total sample of 469 participants, comprising 163 clinically depressed patients and 306 community adults, was involved in this study. The factorial validity, and the measurement and latent mean invariance of the CES-D across gender and clinical status, were verified through CFAs based on ordered-categorical items. Correlation and receiver operator characteristic curves were also used to test the convergent validity and screening properties of the CES-D. Results The present results: (i) provided support for the factor validity and reliability of a second-order measurement model of depression based on responses to the CES-D items; (ii) revealed the full measurement invariance of the first- and second-order measurement models across gender; (iii) showed the partial strict measurement invariance (four uniquenesses had to be freely estimated, but the factor variance–covariance matrix also proved fully invariant) of the first-order factor model and the complete measurement invariance of the second-order model across patients and community adults; (iv) revealed a lack of latent mean invariance across gender and across clinical and community subsamples (with women and patients reporting higher scores on all subscales and on the full scale); (v) confirmed the convergent validity of the CES-D with measures of depression, self-esteem, anxiety, and hopelessness; and (vi) demonstrated the efficacy of the screening properties of this instrument among clinical and nonclinical adults. Conclusion This instrument may be useful for assessing depressive symptoms or for the screening of depressive disorders in the context of epidemiological studies targeting French patients and community men and women with a background similar to those from the present study.

Contributions of white and brown adipose tissues and skeletal muscles to acute cold-induced metabolic responses in healthy men.

Abstract: Key points Both brown adipose tissue (BAT) and skeletal muscle activation contribute to the metabolic response of acute cold exposure in healthy men even under minimal shivering. Activation of adipose tissue intracellular lipolysis is associated with BAT metabolic response upon acute cold exposure in healthy men. Although BAT glucose uptake per volume of tissue is important, the bulk of glucose turnover during cold exposure is mediated by skeletal muscle metabolic activation even when shivering is minimized. Abstract Cold exposure stimulates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), triggering the activation of cold-defence responses and mobilizing substrates to fuel the thermogenic processes. Although these processes have been investigated independently, the physiological interaction and coordinated contribution of the tissues involved in producing heat or mobilizing substrates has never been investigated in humans. Using [U-13C]-palmitate and [3-3H]-glucose tracer methodologies coupled with positron emission tomography using 11C-acetate and 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose, we examined the relationship between whole body sympathetically induced white adipose tissue (WAT) lipolysis and brown adipose tissue (BAT) metabolism and mapped the skeletal muscle shivering and metabolic activation pattern during a mild, acute cold exposure designed to minimize shivering response in 12 lean healthy men. Cold-induced increase in whole-body oxygen consumption was not independently associated with BAT volume of activity, BAT oxidative metabolism, or muscle metabolism or shivering intensity, but depended on the sum of responses of these two metabolic tissues. Cold-induced increase in non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) appearance rate was strongly associated with the volume of metabolically active BAT (r = 0.80, P = 0.005), total BAT oxidative metabolism (r = 0.70, P = 0.004) and BAT glucose uptake (r = 0.80, P = 0.005), but not muscle glucose metabolism. The total glucose uptake was more than one order of magnitude greater in skeletal muscles compared to BAT during cold exposure (674 ± 124 vs. 12 ± 8 μmol min−1, respectively, P < 0.001). Glucose uptake demonstrated that deeper, centrally located muscles of the neck, back and inner thigh were the greatest contributors of muscle glucose uptake during cold exposure due to their more important shivering response. In summary, these results demonstrate for the first time that the increase in plasma NEFA appearance from WAT lipolysis is closely associated with BAT metabolic activation upon acute cold exposure in healthy men. In humans, muscle glucose utilization during shivering contributes to a much greater extent than BAT to systemic glucose utilization during acute cold exposure.

Learning where to attend with deep architectures for image tracking

Abstract: We discuss an attentional model for simultaneous object tracking and recognition that is driven by gaze data. Motivated by theories of perception, the model consists of two interacting pathways, identity and control, intended to mirror the what and where pathways in neuroscience models. The identity pathway models object appearance and performs classification using deep (factored)-restricted Boltzmann machines. At each point in time, the observations consist of foveated images, with decaying resolution toward the periphery of the gaze. The control pathway models the location, orientation, scale, and speed of the attended object. The posterior distribution of these states is estimated with particle filtering. Deeper in the control pathway, we encounter an attentional mechanism that learns to select gazes so as to minimize tracking uncertainty. Unlike in our previous work, we introduce gaze selection strategies that operate in the presence of partial information and on a continuous action space. We show that a straightforward extension of the existing approach to the partial information setting results in poor performance, and we propose an alternative method based on modeling the reward surface as a gaussian process. This approach gives good performance in the presence of partial information and allows us to expand the action space from a small, discrete set of fixation points to a continuous domain.