External Accountability: The Limited Influence of Oversight Bodies on the Governance of Police Stops

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Les années Johnson : ruptures, continuités et héritage

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Taking Titan’s Boreal Pole Temperature: Evidence for Evaporative Cooling in Ligeia Mare

International audienceFrom 2004 to 2017, the Cassini RADAR recorded the 2.2 cm thermal emission from Titan's surface in its passive (radiometry) mode of operation. We use this data set to investigate the seasonal evolution of the effective temperature sensed by the microwave radiometer in two regions in the northern pole of the satellite: the sea Ligeia Mare, and its nearby solid terrains. We find that despite the arrival of summer at the end of the mission, the effective temperature of Ligeia Mare decreased by almost 1 K, while that of the solid region slowly increased until 2017 by 1.4 ± 0.3 K. These observations, as well as the lag in summer warming observed by Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer, can be explained by evaporative cooling in both the solid and liquid surfaces after the vernal equinox. It therefore supports the idea that the northern polar terrains are wet. Using an ocean circulation model, we show that the cooling of the sea surface should initiate convection in the sea's interior, ultimately cooling the whole liquid column sensed by the Cassini radiometer and thus decreasing the temperature at depths even long after the evaporation period has ceased. Overall, this work highlights the key role of methane hydrology in controlling the surface and submarine temperatures in the boreal polar regions of Titan

Bottom-water hypoxia in the Paracas Bay (Peru, 13.8°S) associated with seasonal and synoptic time scale variability of winds and water stratification

International audienceCoastal hypoxia can occur naturally in inshore areas of the Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems, influenced by the nutrient-rich and low-oxygen upwelling waters. This study aims to explore the influence of water stratification and winds on bottom-water hypoxia of the Paracas Bay, an area subjected to the most intense alongshore winds and active coastal upwelling in the Peruvian coast. Monitoring data of the Pisco-Paracas water properties (dissolved oxygen, temperature, salinity and estimated stratification), the Pisco River flow, and the intensities of surface winds of the outside upwelling area, and of the local area, were analysed for the period 2006 to 2015. Bottom waters deeper than 8 m in the bay were shown undergoing a hypoxic regime (oxygen <1.4 mL L−1) that becomes more frequent towards austral summer and less frequent towards winter. This seasonal difference was associated with changes in the oxygen content of incoming upwelling waters and changes in the intensity of both local and upwelling winds that drive the hydrodynamics of the bay. High frequency data analysis revealed that synoptic time-scale fluctuations of the upwelling-favourable and local winds modulate the intra-seasonal variability of hypoxia. Fluctuations of the former drive the inshore expansion of mixed and less hypoxic upwelling waters during June–September, whereas fluctuations of the latter during December–April drive the entrance and circulation of more hypoxic upwelling waters, and the development of stratification events that contribute to the persistence of bottom hypoxia

ARES VI: Are 1D retrieval models accurate enough to characterize exo-atmospheres with transmission spectroscopy in the era of JWST and Ariel?

International audienceThe observed exoplanets transit spectra are usually retrieved using one-dimensional models to determine atmospheric composition. However, planetary atmospheres are three-dimensional. With the new state-of-the-art James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and future space telescopes such as Ariel (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey), we will be able to obtain increasingly accurate transit spectra. The 3D effects on the spectra will be visible, and we can expect biases in the 1D extractions. In order to elucidate these biases, we have built theoretical observations of transit spectra, from 3D atmospheric modeling through transit modeling to instrument modeling. For that purpose, we used a Global Climate Model (GCM) to simulate the atmosphere, a 3D-radiative transfer model to calculate theoretical transmission spectra, and adapted instrument software from JWST and Ariel to reproduce telescope noise. Next, we used a 1D-radiative transfer inversion model to retrieve the known input atmosphere and disentangle any biases that might be observed. The study has been done from warm planets to ultra-hot planets to assess biases as a function of average planet temperature. Three-dimensional effects are observed to be strongly non-linear from the coldest to the hottest planets. These effects also depend on the planet's metallicity and gravity. Considering equilibrium chemistry, 3D effects are observed through very strong variations for certain features of the molecule, or very small variations over the whole spectrum. We conclude that we cannot rely on the uncertainty of retrievals at all pressures, and that we must be cautious about the results of retrievals at the top of the atmosphere. However the results are still fairly close to the truth at mid altitudes (those probed). We also need to be careful about the chemical models used for planetary atmosphere. If the chemistry of one molecule is not correctly described, this will bias all the others, as well as the retrieved temperature. Finally, although fitting a wider wavelength range and higher resolution has been shown to increase retrievals accuracy, we show that this could depend on the wavelength range chosen, due to the accuracy on modeling the different features. In any case, 1D retrievals are still correct for the detection of molecules, even in the event of an erroneous abundance retrieval

Association between transportation noise exposure ans hypertension risk in the french E3N cohort

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Evapotranspiration partitioning based on underlying conductance in a complex tree-grass orchard ecosystem in the humid area of southern China

International audienc

Determination of the X-Auger electron spectroscopy evolution of indium in InSb by linear and nonlinear least squares approaches

International audienceX-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is a major and valuable chemical analysis technique that can bring a wide range of information if one takes time to carefully interpret the spectra. In particular, many metrological developments deal with the modeling of photoelectron peaks while X-Auger transitions still remain hardly exploited. Here, an innovative approach examining these spectral features in a complementary way is presented and illustrated on a concrete case dealing with chemical changes of indium in the InSb semiconductor during its air aging. Indium contains an extensive range of photopeaks along the energy scale, meaning electrons emitted from different escape depths are present on the same widescan spectrum, and, thus, information from different depths is accessible. Specifically, this study focuses on indium’s X-Auger electron spectroscopy (X-AES) transitions and decomposition to track the outer surface chemistry evolution of the InSb semiconductor. To this end, we compared linear and nonlinear least-squares approaches to decompose In M4,5N4,5N4,5 X-AES transition and demonstrate oxide growth progression. For both approaches, we applied the vectorial method (also known as the informed amorphous sample model) to retrieve the different chemical environments present during air aging. Linear and nonlinear least-squares approaches were both found to yield comparable results, with a comparative error of less than 10%. Over time, a progressive growth of the oxide layer was demonstrated, ranging from 0.3 ± 0.2 to 2.9 ± 0.2 nm using the X-AES transitions. Additionally, decomposition of the In 3d and In 4d photoelectron peaks showed a lower thickness of oxide with time due to the lesser surface sensitivity of these peaks

Le travail des gens de théâtre

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