Unconventional methods of strategic distribution of the incertitude

The incertitude became a phenomenon in itself, and it can be due both to the theoretical errors of the deciding factor, and to the imprecision and lack of informational wholeness. In order to reduce the incertitude, one has crystallized several directions of strategic management, through which the managers could manifest a logically structured attitude in limit situations. Practically, we cannot speak about the exclusive use of a specific category of methods and techniques, as their combination is realized by referring to concrete decisional situations. A group of these methods according to their nature might be the following: technocratic methods, political methods, structural methods and methods of strategic redistribution of the incertitude. The last one which suppose the absorption of the incertitude, through less conventional instruments, different from those previously presented. In this paperwork, our purpose is to bring into focus several instruments, which allow the participants to the economical activities to be able to approach the incertitude in this field.uncertainty, strategic management, technocratic methods, political methods, structural methods , methods of strategic redistribution of the incertitude

Technology assessment between risk, uncertainty and ignorance

The use of most if not all technologies is accompanied by negative side effects, While we may profit from today’s technologies, it is most often future generations who bear most risks. Risk analysis therefore becomes a delicate issue, because future risks often cannot be assigned a meaningful occurance probability. This paper argues that technology assessement most often deal with uncertainty and ignorance rather than risk when we include future generations into our ethical, political or juridal thinking. This has serious implications as probabilistic decision approaches are not applicable anymore. I contend that a virtue ethical approach in which dianoetic virtues play a central role may supplement a welfare based ethics in order to overcome the difficulties in dealing with uncertainty and ignorance in technology assessement

What are the strategies and steps to build-up a dairy system in a harsh environment? The case of smallholder dairy farmers of Unaí - Brazil.

In the district of Unaí (Minas Gerais, Brazil), smallholder farmers face numerous challenges such as restricted access to land, capital and labor, weak collective organization and climatic constraints. Yet, they are eager to access local markets to sustain their livelihoods and are ready to adapt their production systems in different ways to overcome the above constraints and achieve their place in existing productive supply chains. The dairy sector offers them a unique opportunity to achieve their goals. To understand how small holder farmers in Unaí took their place themselves in the dairy sector, we interviewed 24 smallholder farmers that deliver milk for the local cooperative. Our aim was to analyze the trajectories they followed from installation up to now in order to build specialized dairy production systems. Trajectories differ in terms of the feeding strategies and sources of feed for cows in the dry periods; of the breeds used for milk production; of the sources of financial resources for investment in the production system; of the relative synchronization of milk production in dry and wet periods, among others. This variability is related to how much smallholder farmers try to provide security to their systems, and in doing so, decrease its vulnerability both to internal and external events. (Résumé d'auteur

Archéologie et incertitude

National audienceQue pouvons-nous établir avec certitude lorsque nous faisons de l’archéologie et quel est le périmètre de cette pratique de nos jours ? En nous restreignant à l’opération de démontage d’agrégats d’un type particulier présents dans le sous-sol – ce que l’on appelle couramment des « sites archéologiques » –, on peut scinder la première interrogation en deux questions : d’une ontologie de la substance (« qu’y-a-t-il ici ? »), on embraye vers une ontologie du temps (« que s’est-il passé ici ? »), laquelle doit également supposer des individus et des collectifs susceptibles d’actions, ceux-ci et celles-là demeurant largement indéfinies. Outre le caractère lacunaire des données archéologiques, il faut également compter sur le découplage entre l’espace et le temps, source de nombreuses indéterminations. En dépit de ces incertitudes, une « bonne fouille ne saurait mentir » car aucun point de vue ne se manifeste dans un agrégat, à la différence des textes et des images principalement étudiés par les historiens

Dynamics of the magnetic and structural a -> e phase transition in Iron

We have studied the high-pressure iron bcc to hcp phase transition by simultaneous X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism (XMCD) and X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) with an X-ray dispersive spectrometer. The combination of the two techniques allows us to obtain simultaneously information on both the structure and the magnetic state of Iron under pressure. The magnetic and structural transitions simultaneously observed are sharp. Both are of first order in agreement with theoretical prediction. The pressure domain of the transition observed (2.4 $\pm$ 0.2 GPa) is narrower than that usually cited in the literature (8 GPa). Our data indicate that the magnetic transition slightly precedes the structural one, suggesting that the origin of the instability of the bcc phase in iron with increasing pressure is to be attributed to the effect of pressure on magnetism as predicted by spin-polarized full potential total energy calculations

Challenges for the Adoption of Model-Driven Web Engineering Approaches in Industry

Model-driven web engineering approaches have become an attractive research and technology solution for Web application development. However, after 20 years of development, they have attracted little attention from the Industry due to the mismatch between technical versus research requirements. In this joint work between academia and industry, the authors present the current problems of using these approaches in scale and provide guidelines to convert them into viable industry solutions.Ministerio de ciencia e Innovación TIN2016-76956-C3-2-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Local and Global relations between the number of contacts and density in monodisperse sphere packs

The topological structure resulting from the network of contacts between grains (\emph{contact network}) is studied for large samples of monosized spheres with densities (fraction of volume occupied by the spheres) ranging from 0.59 to 0.64. We retrieve the coordinates of each bead in the pack and we calculate the average coordination number by using three different methods. We show that, in the range of density investigated, the coordination number is larger than 4 and it increases with the packing fraction. At local level we also observe a positive correlation between local packing fraction and number of neighbors. We discover a dependence between the local densities of configurations with few neighbors in contact and the global sample-denities. This might indicate that local configurations with small number of neighbors are able to deform plastically when the sample is compactifying. PACS: 45.70.-n, Granular Systems; 45.70.Cc, Static sandpiles; Granular Compaction.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Stochastic analysis of the time evolution of Laminar-Turbulent bands of plane Couette flow

This article is concerned with the time evolution of the oblique laminar-turbulent bands of transitional plane Couette flow under the influence of turbulent noise. Our study is focused on the amplitude of modulation of turbulence. In order to guide the numerical study of the flow, we first perform an analytical and numerical analysis of a Stochastic Ginzburg-Landau equation for a complex order parameter. The modulus of this order parameter models the amplitude of modulation of turbulence. Firstly, we compute the autocorrelation function of said modulus once the band is established. Secondly, we perform a calculation of average and fluctuations around the exponential growth of the order parameter. This type of analysis is similar to the Stochastic Structural Stability Theory. We then perform numerical simulations of the Navier-Stokes equations in order to confront these predictions with the actual behaviour of the bands. Computation of the autocorrelation function of the modulation of turbulence shows quantitative agreement with the model: in the established band regime, the amplitude of modulation follows an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. In order to test the S3T predictions, we perform quench experiments, sudden decreases of the Reynolds number from uniform turbulence, in which modulation appears. We compute the average evolution of the amplitude of modulation and the fluctuations around it. We find good agreement between numerics and modeling. The average trajectory grows exponentially, at a rate clearly smaller than that of the formation of laminar holes. The actual time evolution remains in a flaring envelope, centred on the average, and expanding at the same rate. These results provide further validation of the stochastic modeling for the time evolution of the bands for further studies. They stress on the difference between the oblique band formation and the formation of laminar holes.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures. Followed by a Graphical abstract summarising the article. Accepted for publication in Eur. Phys. J E (last submitted version