A Sense of Proportion and a Sense of Priorities: Reflections on the Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity

The elegantly written Report of the Task Force on Canadian Unity is the most recent product of our constitutional reform industry. In many respects it is the most impressive. It deserves attention if for no other reason than the make-up of the group which produced it. The Task Force was composed of both men and women, politicians and scholars, persons with experience in the business community and in the union movement, and representatives of each of our far-flung regions. Its co-chairmen, Jean-Luc Pepin and John Robarts, are two of the most experienced and respected public figures in Canada. The Commissioners toured the entire country. They listened patiently to often vehement expressions of opinion about Canadian federalism. At the end of that exercise in constitutional consciousness-raising intrinsically valuable in its own right-they emerged with a unanimous Report

Demodulation of Spatial Carrier Images: Performance Analysis of Several Algorithms Using a Single Image

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11340-013-9741-6#Optical full-field techniques have a great importance in modern experimental mechanics. Even if they are reasonably spread among the university laboratories, their diffusion in industrial companies remains very narrow for several reasons, especially a lack of metrological performance assessment. A full-field measurement can be characterized by its resolution, bias, measuring range, and by a specific quantity, the spatial resolution. The present paper proposes an original procedure to estimate in one single step the resolution, bias and spatial resolution for a given operator (decoding algorithms such as image correlation, low-pass filters, derivation tools ...). This procedure is based on the construction of a particular multi-frequential field, and a Bode diagram representation of the results. This analysis is applied to various phase demodulating algorithms suited to estimate in-plane displacements.GDR CNRS 2519 “Mesures de Champs et Identification en Mécanique des Solide

Changes in seabed morphology, mud temperature and free gas venting at the H ̊akon Mosby mud volcano, offshore northern Norway, over the time period 2003-2006

The HAyenkon Mosby mud volcano is a 1.5-km-diameter geological structure located on the Southwest Barents Sea slope at a water depth of 1,270 m. High-definition seabed mapping of the mud volcano has been carried out in 2003 and 2006. A comparative analysis of the bathymetry and backscatter maps produced from the two surveys shows subtle morphological changes over the entire crater of the mud volcano, interpreted to be the consequence of mud eruption events. Mud temperature measurements point to a persistently warm mud at shallow depth in the crater. This is explained by upward fluid advection, rather than conductive cooling of mud flows. The small-scale spatial variability in the temperature distribution may be related to mud outflows or changes in the fluid flow regime. Furthermore, the locations of free gas venting observed in 2006 were found to differ from those of 2003. Our observations of overall similar topographic profiles across the mud volcano in 2003 and 2006 suggest that eruption events would have been modest. Nevertheless, the data bring evidence of significant change in activity even over short time intervals of only 3 years. This may be a characteristic shared by other submarine mud volcanoes, notably those considered to be in a quiescent stage

Epistemic policy networks in the European Union’s CBRN risk mitigation policy

This paper offers insights into an innovative and currently flagship approach of the European Union (EU) to the mitigation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) risks. Building on its long-time experience in the CBRN field, the EU has incorporated methods familiar to the students of international security governance: it is establishing regional networks of experts and expertise. CBRN Centers of Excellence, as they are officially called, aim to contribute to the security and safety culture in different parts of Africa, the Middle East, South East Asia, and South East Europe, in the broadly construed CBRN area. These regional networks represent a modern form of security cooperation, which can be conceptualized as an epistemic policy networks approach. It offers flexibility to the participating states, which have different incentives to get involved. At the same, however, the paper identifies potential limitations and challenges of epistemic policy networks in this form

Grounding knowledge and normative valuation in agent-based action and scientific commitment

Philosophical investigation in synthetic biology has focused on the knowledge-seeking questions pursued, the kind of engineering techniques used, and on the ethical impact of the products produced. However, little work has been done to investigate the processes by which these epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical forms of inquiry arise in the course of synthetic biology research. An attempt at this work relying on a particular area of synthetic biology will be the aim of this chapter. I focus on the reengineering of metabolic pathways through the manipulation and construction of small DNA-based devices and systems synthetic biology. Rather than focusing on the engineered products or ethical principles that result, I will investigate the processes by which these arise. As such, the attention will be directed to the activities of practitioners, their manipulation of tools, and the use they make of techniques to construct new metabolic devices. Using a science-in-practice approach, I investigate problems at the intersection of science, philosophy of science, and sociology of science. I consider how practitioners within this area of synthetic biology reconfigure biological understanding and ethical categories through active modelling and manipulation of known functional parts, biological pathways for use in the design of microbial machines to solve problems in medicine, technology, and the environment. We might describe this kind of problem-solving as relying on what Helen Longino referred to as “social cognition” or the type of scientific work done within what Hasok Chang calls “systems of practice”. My aim in this chapter will be to investigate the relationship that holds between systems of practice within metabolic engineering research and social cognition. I will attempt to show how knowledge and normative valuation are generated from this particular network of practitioners. In doing so, I suggest that the social nature of scientific inquiry is ineliminable to both knowledge acquisition and ethical evaluations

Dewetting of thin polymer films near the glass transition

Dewetting of ultra-thin polymer films near the glass transition exhibits unexpected front morphologies [G. Reiter, Phys. Rev. Lett., 87, 186101 (2001)]. We present here the first theoretical attempt to understand these features, focusing on the shear-thinning behaviour of these films. We analyse the profile of the dewetting film, and characterize the time evolution of the dry region radius, $R_{d}(t)$, and of the rim height, $h_{m}(t)$. After a transient time depending on the initial thickness, $h_{m}(t)$ grows like $\sqrt{t}$ while $R_{d}(t)$ increases like $\exp{(\sqrt{t})}$. Different regimes of growth are expected, depending on the initial film thickness and experimental time range.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures Revised version, published in Physical Review Letters: F. Saulnier, E. Raphael and P.-G. de Gennes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 196101 (2002

NUV/Blue spectral observations of sprites in the 320-460 nm region: N2{\mathrm N_2} (2PG) Emissions

A near-ultraviolet (NUV) spectrograph (320-460 nm) was flown on the EXL98 aircraft sprite observation campaign during July 1998. In this wavelength range video rate (60 fields/sec) spectrographic observations found the NUV/blue emissions to be predominantly N2 (2PG). The negligible level of N2+ (1NG) present in the spectrum is confirmed by observations of a co-aligned, narrowly filtered 427.8 nm imager and is in agreement with previous ground-based filtered photometer observations. The synthetic spectral fit to the observations indicates a characteristic energy of ~1.8 eV, in agreement with our other NUV observations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 1 table, JGR Space Physics "Effects of Thunderstorms and Lightning in the Upper Atmosphere" Special Sectio

A Pluralistic Theory of Wordhood

What are words and how should we individuate them? There are two main answers on the philosophical market. For some, words are bundles of structural-functional features defining a unique performance profile. For others, words are non-eternal continuants individuated by their causal-historical ancestry. These conceptions offer competing views of the nature of words, and it seems natural to assume that at most one of them can capture the essence of wordhood. This paper makes a case for pluralism about wordhood: the view that there is a plurality of acceptable conceptions of the nature of words, none of which is uniquely entitled to inform us as to what wordhood consists in