Sustaining power through economic growth : A Régulation theory of growth dependence

Altres ajuts: acords transformatius de la UABUnidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MEconomic growth is both essential and detrimental to modern Global North societies. When growth disappears, or becomes negative, debt overhang, unemployment, impoverishment destabilise societies. But ecological fallout from growth can also undermine societies in the long term. So why and how are economies and societies dependent on growth? Many scholars have conceptualised growth dependence as the need to achieve growth to serve general wellbeing and economic functioning. In this article, we take a different view considering growth as a part of social reproduction, arguing that growth dependence emerges when growth is needed to reproduce a stable regime of power relations. We operationalise this approach using Régulation Theory, a political economy framework anchored in but expanding Marxist political economy, and aimed at explaining how capitalism manages to reproduce itself despite its contradictions. We show that economic institutions and institutional systems (in the language of Régulation theory, structural forms and modes of regulation) depend on growth because they crystallise certain balances of power within so-called "institutionalised compromises". An economic institution may require varying levels of growth to reproduce itself, depending on the type of compromises it embeds. We propose that, in a given national economy, combinations and interactions between such institutions shape the overall character of growth dependence. Régulation Theory enables us to build a bottom-up analysis - from institutions to the national economy - of growth dependence. This novel conceptualisation opens new and fruitful research opportunities for understanding growth dependence

Étude bactériologique comparative des fromages frais marocains commercialisés (Mahlabats) et des fromages fabriqués au laboratoire

Vingt échantillons de fromage frais traditionnel marocain (jben) fabriqué à partir du lait cru, prélevés de cinq laiteries traditionnelles (Mahlabats) de la ville de Kenitra ;ont été soumis à des analyses microbiologiques, à fin de mettre en évidence leur qualité bactériologique et de les comparer avec le fromage contrôlé préparé au laboratoire . Les résultats obtenus montrent que le pH moyen de ces échantillons commercialisés est de 4,25 et l'acidité moyenne est de 87,4D°. Ces valeurs sont respectivement de l’ordre de 4,18 et 83D au niveau des fromages contrôlés (10 échantillons). La charge microbienne aérobie totale est en moyenne de 1,14 107UFC/g, alors que pour les fromages contrôlés les valeurs oscillent entre 3 et 9.106UFC/g. La flore d'origine fécale (coliformes totaux et fécaux) est plus importante dans les fromages commercialisés et en moyenne respectives de 1,04.103 UFC/g et 5,7.104 UFC/g. Les fromages contrôlés sont dépourvus de toute contamination d’origine fécale. Nous avons souligné également l’absence totale des Staphylocoques, Salmonelles et clolésstriduims dans tous les échantillons analysés.Mots-clés : fromage frais, qualité bactériologique

Problème de déploiement de ressources dans le cas des feux de forêts majeurs : opérations aériennes

Chaque année le feu brûle quelques dizaines de milliers d’hectares de forêts québécoises. Le coût annuel de prévention et de lutte contre les feux de forêts au Québec est de l’ordre de plusieurs dizaines de millions de dollars. Le présent travail contribue à la réduction de ces coûts à travers l’automatisation du processus de planification des opérations de suppression des feux de forêts majeurs. Pour ce faire, un modèle mathématique linéaire en nombres entiers a été élaboré, résolu et testé; introduisant un nouveau cas particulier à la littérature des Problèmes de Tournées de Véhicules (VRP). Ce modèle mathématique concerne le déploiement aérien des ressources disponibles pour l’extinction des incendies. Le modèle élaboré a été testé avec CPLEX sur des cas tirés de données réelles. Il a permis de réduire le temps de planification des opérations d’extinction des feux de forêts majeurs de 75% dans les situations courantes.Each year, the fire burns large areas of forests in the province of Quebec. The annual costs of prevention and firefighting in Quebec may attain tens of millions of dollars. This project contributes to the decreasing of those costs through the computerization of the transportation planning process of material and human resources during major forest fires extinguishing. In order to achieve that, the resource transportation process was mathematically modeled. The integer linear mathematical model developed in this project has been resolved and tested; it introduces a new case to the literature of Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). The model developed was tested with CPLEX based on data from real cases. It has reduced the planning time of extinguishing operations by 75%

Model Checking Cyber-Physical Systems

2017 - 2018Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) are integrations of computation with physical processes. Applications of CPS arguably have the potential to overshadow the 20-th century IT revolution. Nowadays, CPSs application to many sectors like Smart Grids, Transportation, and Health help us run our lives and businesses smoothly, successfully and safely. Since malfunctions in these CPSs can have serious, expensive, sometimes fatal consequences, Simulation-based Veri cation (SBV) tools are vital to minimize the probability of errors occurring during the development process and beyond. Their applicability is supported by the increasingly widespread use of Model Based Design (MBD) tools. MBD enables the simulation of CPS models in order to check for their correct behaviour from the very initial design phase. The disadvantage is that SBV for complex CPSs is an extremely resources and time-consuming process, which typically requires several months of simulation. Current SBV tools are aimed at accelerating the veri cation process with mul- tiple simulators working simultaneously. To this end, they compute all the scenarios in advance in such a way as to split and simulate them in parallel. Nevertheless, there are still limitations that prevent a more widespread adop- tion of SBV tools. To this end, we present a MBD methodology aiming the acausual modeling and veri cation via formal-methods, speci cally the model checking techniques, the system under veri cation (SUV). Our approach relies basically on: Firstly, the analysis of the steady-states of the CPS and the bound- ing technique of the system's state in parallel with the simulation in order to identify the state space of the system simulating it only once, then represent it as a Finite State Machine (FSM). Secondly, exhaustively verify the resulted FSM using a symbolic model checker and express the desired properties in classical temporal logic. The application to a power management system is presented as a case study. [edited by Author]XXX cicl

Local Model Reconstruction Attacks in Federated Learning and their Uses

In this paper, we initiate the study of local model reconstruction attacks for federated learning, where a honest-but-curious adversary eavesdrops the messages exchanged between a targeted client and the server, and then reconstructs the local/personalized model of the victim. The local model reconstruction attack allows the adversary to trigger other classical attacks in a more effective way, since the local model only depends on the client's data and can leak more private information than the global model learned by the server. Additionally, we propose a novel model-based attribute inference attack in federated learning leveraging the local model reconstruction attack. We provide an analytical lower-bound for this attribute inference attack. Empirical results using real world datasets confirm that our local reconstruction attack works well for both regression and classification tasks. Moreover, we benchmark our novel attribute inference attack against the state-of-the-art attacks in federated learning. Our attack results in higher reconstruction accuracy especially when the clients' datasets are heterogeneous. Our work provides a new angle for designing powerful and explainable attacks to effectively quantify the privacy risk in FL

Plant Immunity is compartimentalized and specialized in roots

International audienc

Preparation of the starter Trial production of cheese (Jben) and Klila at laboratory scale

Samples of bulk milk collection center in the municpality of Mograne have been selected to prepare the mesophilic and thermophilic lactic yeast. Two types of yeast (mesophilic and thermophilic) have been selected for their acidifying power, the speed of coagulation and aromatic aspect to produce two types of cheese, fresh cheese (Jben) and Klila. Physicochemical and microbiological tests were conducted for four by-products Jben and Klila prepared by the traditional method and Jben and Klila at laboratory scale. The analysis included five samples of each coproduit. The pH of the samples vary between 3.62 and 3,92 while the acidity is between 66 and 95 °D. Clotting time of milk is too fast for thermophilic starters (3,50 - 4 hours cons to 11, 50 -10, 50 for mesophilic starters).   The microbiological analysis have highlighted a complete absence of coliforms, and staphylococci, especially for controlled products.  The finished product obtained had a considerable consistency and texture besides a very satisfactory organoleptic and hygienic quality according to the physicochemical and microbiological analysis carried. Keywords: starter, thermophilic, mesophilic, Jben, Klil