Search

This paper introduces a new method for the digital and computational analysis of historical and contemporary parliamentary proceedings. It addresses the dichotomy in the utilization of these resources between historians and other disciplines, and emphasizes the significance of continuity in studying long-term phenomena. The paper presents an XML-TEI model specifically designed for encoding parliamentary documents from diverse temporal and regional contexts. This model is exemplified through the analysis of parliamentary debates from the French Chamber of Deputies (1889-1893). The first part of the paper discusses the motivations behind the model's development. The second part outlines the methodological choices in constructing the model and the need for schema adaptation. We subsequently detail our method for automatic encoding of such extensive corpora. Finally, we propose an approach to annotate parliamentary debates using natural language processing analyses, focusing on topic modeling. This study aims to enhance computational research in humanities, especially historical and political studies, by providing an efficient tool to harness the potential of the massive digitized parliamentary data.

International audience; The AGODA project is one of five pilot projects supported by the DataLab of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It aims to create an online platform facilitating the exploration and use of the parliamentary debates of the Chamber of Deputies published in the Journal officiel from 1881 to 1940. In the framework of the DataLab, we are working on a test subcorpus, namely the parliamentary cycle from 1889 to 1893, to test our hypotheses on a smaller dataset. Over the past sixty years, a great deal of work has been done on parliamentary debates. It is indeed a valuable sourcefor historians, political scientists, sociologists or linguists. Access to digitised and ocerised debates thus seems to have a positive effect on the number of historical works using these documents. The same effect can be observed for other disciplines using contemporary debates. AGODAis thus part of a wider movement to facilitate the use and analysis of parliamentary data, following the example of ParlaClarin and ParlaMint, which propose to produce comparable and multilingual Parliamentary Proceedings Corpora according to the XML-TEI standard. Naomi Truan has also produced a corpus of parliamentary debates encoded in XML-TEI.The production of this type of resource facilitates the publication of works exploiting this data to better understand French political discourse. Between 1881 and 1899, 2596 issues of the Journal Officiel were published (50791 JPG images). The debates are also in TXT format but put online without extensive post-correction: the quality of the OCR is not sufficient to provide a satisfactory online browsing experience, and it could have a negative impact on the analyses performed on these texts. Therefore, we chose to ocerise the text, to obtain a better-quality result. We use the PERO OCR based solution developed by the SODUCO project . Ocerised texts are obtained in JSON format; we are developing Python scripts to convert this output into an XML file corresponding to the chosen TEI model. This model is formalised with an adapted XML schema, created using an ODD. We chose to use the ODD created by ParlaClarin which can be easily adapted to annotate historical parliamentary debates. In the case of France, the rules for transcribing debates were set in the 19th century; thus, the recordings of today's debates are very similar to those produced during the Third Republic. The TEI-encoded corpus will be stored in an eXist-db database, and it will be visualised using the TEI Publisher application, which can transform the source data into HTML web pages. The parliamentary debates will thus be made available to online users as a digital edition and integrated into an application context.We will also present the first analyses we have carried out on this corpus with "bag-of-words" techniques - these being not too sensitive to the quality of the OCR. We first used topic modelling, an unsupervised learning method that allows us to discover the latent semantic structures of a corpus of texts, without using semantic and lexical resources. This method is well suited to study parliamentary debates. Alternatively, we can use word embeddings to reduce the dimension of the original space from several tens of thousands of forms to a hundred axes, and then apply classical data science tools such as clustering or correlation analysis on the reduced space. Word embedding has thus shown its interest in the studyof parliamentary debates. We used a continuous bag-of-words model for dimension reduction and an unsupervised classification algorithm - in this case DBSCAN - to group words into clusters.

International audience; We present the AGODA (Analyse sémantique et Graphes relationnels pour l'Ouverture des Débats à l'Assemblée nationale) project, which aims to create a platform for consulting and exploring digitised French parliamentary debates (1881-1940) available in the digital library of the National Library of France. This project brings together historians and NLP specialists: parliamentary debates are indeed an essential source for French history of the contemporary period, but also for linguistics. This project therefore aims to produce a corpus of texts that can be easily exploited with computational methods, and that respect the TEI standard. Ancient parliamentary debates are also an excellent case study for the development and application of tools for publishing and exploring large historical corpora. In this paper, we present the steps necessary to produce such a corpus. We detail the processing and publication chain of these documents, in particular by mentioning the problems linked to the extraction of texts from digitised images. We also introduce the first analyses that we have carried out on this corpus with "bag-of-words" techniques not too sensitive to OCR quality (namely topic modelling and word embedding).

International audience

We will present the first results of the project "AGODA : Analyse sémantique et Graphes relationnels pour l'Ouverture des Débats à l'Assemblée nationale (1889-1893)” which aims to create a platform for consulting and exploring digitized French parliamentary debates (1881-1940) available on the digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In a "proof of concept" perspective, we are working on a limited part of the corpus, namely the period 1889-1893.

International audience

International audience

Objective Islets secrete neurotransmitters including glutamate which participate in fine regulation of islet function. The excitatory ionotropic glutamate receptor GluK2 of the kainate receptor family is widely expressed in brain and also found in islets, mainly in α and γ cells. α cells co-release glucagon and glutamate and the latter increases glucagon release via ionotropic glutamate receptors. However, neither the precise nature of the ionotropic glutamate receptor involved nor its role in glucose homeostasis is known. As isoform specific pharmacology is not available, we investigated this question in constitutive GluK2 knock-out mice (GluK2−/−) using adult and middle-aged animals to also gain insight in a potential role during aging. Methods We compared wild-type GluK2+/+ and knock-out GluK2−/− mice using adult (14–20 weeks) and middle-aged animals (40–52 weeks). Glucose (oral OGTT and intraperitoneal IPGTT) and insulin tolerance as well as pyruvate challenge tests were performed according to standard procedures. Parasympathetic activity, which stimulates hormones secretion, was measured by electrophysiology in vivo. Isolated islets were used in vitro to determine islet β-cell electrical activity on multi-electrode arrays and dynamic secretion of insulin as well as glucagon was determined by ELISA. Results Adult GluK2−/− mice exhibit an improved glucose tolerance (OGTT and IPGTT), and this was also apparent in middle-aged mice, whereas the outcome of pyruvate challenge was slightly improved only in middle-aged GluK2−/− mice. Similarly, insulin sensitivity was markedly enhanced in middle-aged GluK2−/− animals. Basal and glucose-induced insulin secretion in vivo was slightly lower in GluK2−/− mice, whereas fasting glucagonemia was strongly reduced. In vivo recordings of parasympathetic activity showed an increase in basal activity in GluK2−/− mice which represents most likely an adaptive mechanism to counteract hypoglucagonemia rather than altered neuronal mechanism. In vitro recording demonstrated an improvement of glucose-induced electrical activity of β-cells in islets obtained from GluK2−/− mice at both ages. Finally, glucose-induced insulin secretion in vitro was increased in GluK2−/− islets, whereas glucagon secretion at 2 mmol/l of glucose was considerably reduced. Conclusions These observations indicate a general role for kainate receptors in glucose homeostasis and specifically suggest a negative effect of GluK2 on glucose homeostasis and preservation of islet function during aging. Our observations raise the possibility that blockade of GluK2 may provide benefits in glucose homeostasis especially during aging., Highlights • KO of GluK2 improved glucose tolerance and lowered fasting glucagon levels in vivo. • KO of GluK2 reduced in vitro islet glucagon secretion and increased β-cell activity. • GluK2 contributes to the known impact of aging on glucose homeostasis.

Diabetes is a major health issue of increasing prevalence. ß-cell replacement, by pancreas or islet transplantation, is the only long-term curative option for patients with insulin-dependent diabetes. Despite good functional results, pancreas transplantation remains a major surgery with potentially severe complications. Islet transplantation is a minimally invasive alternative that can widen the indications in view of its lower morbidity. However, the islet isolation procedure disrupts their vasculature and connection to the surrounding extracellular matrix, exposing them to ischemia and anoikis. Implanted islets are also the target of innate and adaptive immune attacks, thus preventing robust engraftment and prolonged full function. Generation of organoids, defined as functional 3D structures assembled with cell types from different sources, is a strategy increasingly used in regenerative medicine for tissue replacement or repair, in a variety of inflammatory or degenerative disorders. Applied to ß-cell replacement, it offers the possibility to control the size and composition of islet-like structures (pseudo-islets), and to include cells with anti-inflammatory or immunomodulatory properties. In this review, we will present approaches to generate islet cell organoids and discuss how these strategies can be applied to the generation of a bioartificial pancreas for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

La greffe d'îlots pancréatiques permet de remplacer les cellules β de manière minimalement invasive1, et d'améliorer significativement la qualité de vie des patients présentant un diabète de type 1. Cependant, ces mini-organes endocriniens, lorsqu'ils sont transplantés après une procédure d'extraction enzymatique du pancréas, se retrouvent déconnectés de leur vascularisation et de leur support fonctionnel. Les îlots doivent de plus faire face aux attaques des systèmes immunitaires inné et adaptatif, ainsi qu'à la récidive de l'auto-immunité. L'utilisation et la création d'organoïdes produisant et sécrétant de l'insuline permettent non seulement de contrôler et d'homogénéiser leur taille, mais également leur composition, avec la possibilité d'ajouter des cellules essentielles à leur survie, telles que des cellules endothéliales ou des cellules possédant des propriétés anti-inflammatoires et immuno-modulatrices. Dans cette revue, nous décrivons les obstacles rencontrés dans la greffe d'îlots et détaillons les bénéfices de l'utilisation d'organoïdes pour les surmonter.