Marie Lefevre

Does aircraft noise exposure increase the risk of hypertension in the population living near airports in France

Objectives The largest study until now around 6 major European airports, the HYENA (HYpertension and Exposure to Noise near Airports) study, reported an excess risk of hypertension related to long-term aircraft noise exposure. The DEBATS (Discussion on the health effects of aircraft noise) study investigated the relationship between this exposure and the risk of hypertension in men and in women near French airports. Methods Blood pressure of 1244 participants older than 18 years of age was measured. Information about health, socioeconomic and lifestyle factors was collected by means of a face-to-face questionnaire performed at home by an interviewer. Aircraft noise exposure was assessed for each participants home address using noise maps. They were calculated with the Integrated Noise Model with a 1 dB(A)-resolution. The major potential confounders being risk factors for hypertension were included in the logistic regression models: age, occupational activity, body mass index, physical activity and alcohol consumption. Results After adjustment for the main potential confounders, an exposure–response relationship was evidenced between the risk of hypertension and aircraft noise exposure at night for men only. A 10-dB(A) increase in Lnight was associated with an OR of 1.34 (95% CI 1.00 to 1.97). Conclusions These findings contribute to the overall evidence suggesting that aircraft noise exposure at night-time may increase the risk of hypertension in men. Hypertension is a well-known and established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The association reported in the present study between aircraft noise and hypertension implies that aircraft noise might be a risk factor also for cardiovascular disease.

Effects of aircraft noise exposure on saliva cortisol near airports in France

Background Saliva cortisol is a possible marker of noise-induced stress and could then mediate the relation observed between exposure to aircraft or road traffic noise and cardiovascular diseases. However, the association between transportation noise and cortisol levels is still unclear. The objective of the study was to investigate the variability of saliva cortisol concentration as an indicator of disturbed hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis regulation in relation to long-term aircraft noise exposure. Methods Saliva samples were taken when awakening and before going to bed for 1244 participants older than 18 years of age. Information about health, socioeconomic and lifestyle factors was also collected by means of a face-to-face questionnaire performed at home by an interviewer. Aircraft noise exposure was assessed for each participant’s home address using noise maps. Linear regression models were used to evaluate the effects of aircraft noise exposure on the morning and evening cortisol levels and on the daily variation of cortisol per hour. Results This study suggests a modification of the cortisol circadian rhythm in relation to aircraft noise exposure. This exposure was associated with a smaller variation of cortisol levels over the day, with unchanged morning cortisol levels, but higher cortisol levels in the evening. Conclusions These findings provide some support for a psychological stress induced by aircraft noise exposure, resulting in HPA dysregulation and a flattened cortisol rhythm, thus contributing to cardiovascular diseases.

Adding Epiphytic Assistance Systems in Learning Applications Using the SEPIA System

In this paper, we present how the SEPIA system can be used to plug pedagogical and technical assistance systems in applications used by learners in an educational context. The SEPIA system consists in two main tools: an assistance editor that enables assistance designers to specify the assistance they wish for existing applications, and a generic assistance engine that executes the specified assistance in order to provide the application end-users with personalized assistance. We also present an experimentation of an assistance system setup with SEPIA in the context of a bachelor degree.

Knowledge continuous integration process (K-CIP)

Social semantic web creates read/write spaces where users and smart agents collaborate to produce knowledge readable by humans and machines. An important issue concerns the ontology evolution and evaluation in man-machine collaboration. How to perform a change on ontologies in a social semantic space that currently use these ontologies through requests? In this paper, we propose to implement a continuous knowledge integration process named K-CIP. We take advantage of man-machine collaboration to transform feedback of people into tests. This paper presents how K-CIP can be deployed to allow fruitful man-machine collaboration in the context of the Wikitaaable system.

An Authoring Tool for Semi-automatic Generation of Self-assessment Exercises

In this article we propose a semi-automatic generator of self-assessment exercises. This work is part of the CLAIRE project the aim of which is to design a collaborative authoring platform for pedagogic content. The proposed generator of exercises allows the author (usually a teacher) to create a model of exercise according to his/her pedagogic objectives. This model is automatically instantiated to produce several different exercises that evaluate the same skills. The learner’s answer is automatically and instantly evaluated by the system. He/she thus receives immediate feedback on his/her skills. The distinctive feature of this generator is that the proposed types of exercise are independent of the domain, which allows them to be used for many different subjects and levels. In addition, domain knowledge is used to facilitate the author’s task when the model of exercises and the diagnostic are designed.

From a Customizable ITS to an Adaptive ITS

The personalization of learning remains a major challenge for research in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). We report in this article how we used the Adapte tool to make AMBRE-add adaptive. AMBRE-add is an ITS designed to teach a problem solving method. This ITS includes a module that analyzes the learner’s activity traces in order to compute a learner profile. Furthermore a problem generator enables us to specify activities proposed to the student. In order to design an automated process of personalizing activities according to the learner profile, we used the Adapte system. This is a generic system enabling the definition of a personalization strategy and its application to an external ITS. In this article we present how this tool provides real assistance to an ITS designer wishing to make his/her system adaptive.

Collecting interaction traces in distributed semantic wikis

In the Kolflow project, our general objective is to develop an assistance engine suitable for distributed applications. In order to provide contextualized and relevant assistance, we feed the assistance engine with interaction traces. Interaction traces record events occurring while users are interacting with applications. These traces become containers of valuable knowledge to providing assistance. Collecting interaction traces is a challenging issue that has been thoroughly studied in the context of local applications. In contrast, few approaches focus on collecting interaction traces in distributed applications. Yet, when applications are distributed, collecting interaction traces is even more challenging because new difficulties arise, such as data synchronization and multi-synchronous collaboration. In this paper, we propose a model and a tool for collecting traces in a distributed environment. The originality of the model is that it is tailored to fit distributed applications. We implemented the model in Collectra, a tool to collect interaction traces in distributed web applications. Collectra collects interaction traces and stores them in a dedicated trace-base management system. We report on the experiments we have conducted in order to evaluate performances of Collectra (both response time and memory space). Results of the experiments show that Collectra performs well and that it can be used to support the assistance tasks carried out by the assistance engine.

User assistance for collaborative knowledge construction

In this paper, we study tools for providing assistance to users in distributed spaces. More precisely, we focus on the activity of collaborative construction of knowledge, supported by a network of distributed semantic wikis. Assisting the users in such an activity is made necessary mainly by two factors: the inherent complexity of the tools supporting that activity, and the collaborative nature of the activity, involving many interactions between users. In this paper we focus on the second aspect. For this, we propose to build an assistance tool based on users interaction traces. This tool will provide a contextualized assistance by leveraging the valuable knowledge contained in traces. We discuss the issue of assistance in our context and we show the different types of assistance that we intend to provide through three scenarios. We highlight research questions raised by this preliminary study.

Aircraft Noise Exposure and Subjective Sleep Quality: The Results of the DEBATS Study in France

ABSTRACT Background: Exposure to aircraft noise has been shown to have adverse effects on health, particularly on sleep. Exposure to nighttime aircraft noise clearly affects sleep architecture, as well as subjective sleep quality. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between aircraft noise exposure and subjective sleep quality in the population living near airports in France. Methods: A total of 1,244 individuals older than 18 and living near three French airports (Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Lyon-Saint-Exupéry, and Toulouse-Blagnac) were randomly selected to participate in the study. Information on sleep as well as health, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors was collected by means of a face-to-face questionnaire performed at their place of residence by an interviewer. For each participant, aircraft noise exposure was estimated at home using noise maps. Logistic regression models were used with adjustment for potential confounders. Results: Aircraft noise exposure was significantly associated with a short total sleep time (TST; ≤ 6 h) and with the feeling of tiredness while awakening in the morning. An increase of 10 dB(A) in aircraft noise level at night was associated with an OR of 1.63 (95% CI: 1.15–2.32) for a short TST and an OR of 1.23 (95% CI: 1.00–1.54) for the feeling of tiredness while awakening in the morning. Conclusions: These findings contribute to the overall evidence suggesting that aircraft noise exposure at nighttime may decrease the subjective amount and quality of sleep.

Towards a Capitalization of Processes Analyzing Learning Interaction Traces

Analyzing data coming from e-learning environments can produce knowledge and potentially improve pedagogical efficiency. Nevertheless, TEL community faces heterogeneity concerning e-learning traces, analysis processes and tools leading these analyses. Therefore, analysis processes have to be redefined when their implementation context changes: they cannot be reused, shared nor easily improved. There is no capitalization and we consider this drawback as an obstacle for the whole community. In this paper, we propose an independent formalism to describe analysis processes of e-learning interaction traces, in order to capitalize them and avoid these technical dependencies. We discuss both this capitalization and its place and effects in the iterative learning analysis procedure.