'The creation of the Monnet Plan, 1945-46: a critical re-evaluation'

Drawing on an extensive range of French archival sources as well as Jean Monnet’s papers, this article challenges several commonly-held views regarding the establishment of the Monnet Plan by re-examining the domestic political context in post-war France. It reveals that the distinctive ‘supra-ministerial’ structure of the Monnet Plan was developed only after, and in direct response to, the October 1945 legislative elections in which the French Communist Party won the most seats and subsequently gained control of France’s main economic ministries. Furthermore, Monnet managed to convince Communist ministers to surrender important powers from their ministries to Monnet’s nascent planning office on false premises, a finding that challenges the usual depiction of Monnet as an open and honest broker

TRIZ, ASIT, CK Connections and Disconnections between Three Major Theoretical Frameworks on Creativity

This paper intend to propose a comparative analysis of three major theoretical framework engineers and creative companies frequently use. All of them propose to help users to break psychological walls hiding creative solutions. Beyond the individual preferences and the mimesis effect, studying what is the DNA, often fruit of the History of Europe, behind these theories and analyzing how they are or not connected allows us to understand how we come to the future society of knowledge

Climat organisationnel et efficacité de sept polyvalentes au Québec en milieu métropolitain

Le but de cette recherche est de découvrir, dans certaines écoles polyvalentes de la région de Montréal, les types de climat organisationnel qui semblent associés à une plus grande et à une moins grande efficacité organisationnelle; celle-ci a été mesurée à partir des résultats scolaires des élèves de 5e secondaire aux examens du ministère de l'Éducation de juin 1986, en français, en anglais et en mathématiques. Le personnel enseignant de sept écoles polyvalentes de la région de Montréal a participé à cette étude. De façon générale, les résultats indiquent que le climat organisationnel des écoles jugées plus efficaces semble plus consultatif que celui des écoles jugées moins efficaces

A uniform isotopic and chemical signature of dust exported from Patagonia: Rock sources and occurrence in southern environments

Patagonia is considered to be the most important source of dust from South America that is deposited in surrounding areas, and we present here a systematic Sr and Nd isotopic study of sediment currently being exported. Eolian and suspended riverine sediments from Patagonia have a homogeneous chemical and isotopic composition that results from the mixing of by-products from explosive Andean volcanism, derived from the extensive Jurassic silicic Province of Chon Aike and pyroclastic materials from the basic to intermediate southern Andean Quaternary arc, which are easily denudated and dispersed. The main Andean uplift and the glaciations that began in the Late Tertiary account for the extensive distribution of these sediments in the extra-Andean region. The present geochemical signature of Patagonian sediments was produced during the Pleistocene, along with the onset of the southern Andean explosive arc volcanism. Previously published compositions of sediments from other southern South American source regions, assumed to be representative of Patagonia, are distinct from our data. Considering the alleged importance of Patagonia as a dust source for different depositional environments in southern latitudes, it is surprising to verify that the chemical and isotopic signatures of Patagonian-sourced sediments are different from those of sediments from the Southern Ocean, the Pampean Region or the Antarctic ice. Sediments from these areas have a crustal-like geochemical signature reflecting a mixed origin with sediment from other southern South American sources, whereas Patagonian sediments likely represent the basic to intermediate end-member composition

d13C tracing of dissolved inorganic carbon sources in Patagonian rivers (Argentina)

The main Patagonian rivers (Colorado, Negro, Chubut, Deseado, Coyle, Chico, Santa Cruz and Gallegos) were sampled between September 1995 and November 1998 to determine their chemical and isotopic compositions, the origins of the suspended and dissolved river loads and their inputs to the South Atlantic Ocean. This paper focuses on the dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) transport and its υ13C isotopic signature. The υ13CDIC values vary between 12Ð8 and 1Ð8‰ and allow one to distinguish two river groups: (i) the Colorado, Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz, which display the highest values and the lowest seasonal variations; (ii) the Deseado, Coyle, Chico and Gallegos, which show the lowest values and the highest seasonal variations. For the first group, υ13CDIC is mainly controlled by important exchanges between the river waters and atmospheric CO2, due to the presence of lakes and dams. For the second group, υ13CDIC also appears to be controlled by the oxidation of organic carbon, showing a negative relationship between υ13CDIC and the dissolved organic carbon. These biogeochemical processes interfere with the contribution of carbonate and silicate weathering to the riverine DIC and do not allow use of υ13CDIC alone to distinguish these contributions. The annual DIC flux exported by Patagonian Rivers to the South Atlantic Ocean averages 621 ð 109 g. of C, i.e. a specific yield of 2Ð7 g m2 year1. The mean υ13CDIC can be estimated to 4Ð9‰, which is high compared with other rivers of the world

Consensus-based auctions for decentralized task assignment

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2008.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-147).This thesis addresses the decentralized task assignment problem in cooperative autonomous search and track missions by presenting the Consensus-Based class of assignment algorithms. These algorithm make use of information consensus routines to converge on the assignment rather than the situational awareness of the fleet. A market-based approach is used as the mechanism for task selection, while the novel consensus stage of the algorithms allow for fast distributed conflict resolution. Three separate algorithms belonging to the Consensus-Based class of assignment strategies will be presented. The first is the Consensus-Based Auction Algorithm (CBAA), which is a single assignment auction strategy that is shown to be bounded within 50% of the optimal solution, while an upper-bound on convergence is presented. Two multi-assignment algorithms are then presented as extensions of the CBAA. The iterative CBAA executes the single assignment algorithm multiple times in order to build an assignment with multiple tasks. The second algorithm is the more general Consensus-Based Bundle Algorithm (CBBA) in which agents build a candidate bundle of tasks and bid on each task individually based on the improvement in score achieved by adding it to the bundle. Both algorithms are shown to be lower bounded by 50% optimality, while convergence bounds are derived based on the network topology. Numerical results show that the bundle algorithm performs much better than the iterative approach while providing faster convergence times. It is also compared with the Prim Allocation (PA) auction algorithm where it is shown to exhibit much faster convergence times and give better assignments. The CBBA is also implemented in the CSAT simulation test-bed developed by Aurora Flight Sciences in conjunction with MIT, and shown to produce faster response times and better tracking performance than the currently used RDTA algorithm.by Luc Brunet.S.M

The new industrial order: Vichy, steel, and the origins of the Monnet Plan, 1940-1946

Following the Fall of France in 1940, the nation’s industry was fundamentally reorganised under the Vichy regime. This thesis traces the history of the keystones of this New Industrial Order, the Organisation Committees, by focusing on the organisation of the French steel industry between the end of the Third Republic in 1940 and the establishment of the Fourth Republic in 1946. It challenges traditional views by showing that the Committees were created largely to facilitate economic collaboration with Nazi Germany. It also demonstrates that these institutions were run by a new group of technocratic managers from French industry and that they willingly oversaw production for the Third Reich insofar as it remained advantageous to French steel firms. By extending the period of study beyond the end of the Vichy regime, this thesis casts light on why the leaders of the Resistance decided to maintain these problematic institutions and provides the first detailed account of how the bodies were reformed following the Liberation of France. Finally, it reveals that although the Organisation Committees were formally abolished in 1946, Jean Monnet created parallel bodies, named Modernisation Commissions, which took over the functions and carried on the work of Vichy’s Committees under the auspices of the Monnet Plan. By demonstrating the continuities of institutions and individuals in French industrial organisation from 1940 to 1946, or l’entre-deux-républiques, this thesis contributes to the history of Vichy and post-war France and re-evaluates the origins of the Monnet Plan and of the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner to today’s European Union