Implementation of the IFIP Digital Library in the HAL open publication repository

International audienceInria, the French National Institute for computer science and applied mathematics has been involved for more than 10 years in defining policies and services related to Open Access to scientific information. In 2014, Inria became a partner of the French national infrastructure CCSD, which, together with CNRS and the University of Lyon, develops repository and editorial services for the higher education and research domain. In particular, the HAL publication repository has become a reference platform for the national open access landscape (https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr).The International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) has partnered with Inria to manage their Digital Library on HAL as a corpus of open access papers in information and communication technologies. The IFIP DL is organized as a series of collections (proceedings, books, journals), including embargoed material initially published by commercial publishers such as Springer, ACM or IEEE, as well as publications issued in conjunction to IFIP events (workshops and conferences).IFIP and Inria have designed a comprehensive workflow to integrate legacy and new content to the digital library by means of a series of validation and transformation processes of XML based description of the metadata associated to each document. Such information comprises a variety of precise descriptors related to bibliography, affiliation and technical descriptions. At the end of the complete process it is eventually transformed into a representation compliant to the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) guidelines. The use of a TEI based representation anticipates further management of scholarly content a (XML based) full text with the prospect of re-publishing capacities in additional formats (e.g. ePub)..The integration workflow for IFIP content is based upon a two-step process:- The validation and enrichment of the data delivered by the publisher, where pdf and Springer meta-data are grouped together and further information related to IFIP technical committees is being added;.- The ingestion proper within HAL, by means of an XSLT transform from the enriched Springer format into the standard TEI-based HAL back-office format followed by an upload through a SWORD interface..Furthermore, various additional processes (generation of tables of content, thematic collection management, de-duplication of content when some documents already exist in HAL) and actuated on the fly during the integration of each volume. Such processes rely in particular upon the rich API available on HAL..An important step in the integration of IFIP content on HAL is to check all affiliation information (Institutions, laboratories and research teams) against the integrated authorities database associated to HAL: AuréHAL (https://aurehal.archives-ouvertes.fr). This facilitates the production of precise indicators for the digital library (e.g. co-authorship patterns) and ensures the precise monitoring of further usage statistics.Finally each volume of IFIP DL is a HAL collection with personal design (html pages written manually with a tool provided by HAL) and offer some metrics like number of hits and downloads..The current IFIP DL is visible under: https://hal.inria.fr//IFIP, all disembargoed documents being available under a CC-BY licence

Mise à disposition d'un espace Gitlab et Jupyter pour les apprenants du Mooc "Recherche Reproductible"

Ces développements ont été implémentés dans le cadre du Mooc “Recherche reproductible : principes méthodologiques pour une science transparente” : https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/course-v1:inria+41016+session01bis/aboutCe rapport a pour objectif de décrire l'architecture et le déploiement d'un environement de travail pour éditer et historiser des notebooks dans le cadre du Mooc "Recherche reproductible : principes méthodologiques pour une science transparente". Nous aborderons le sujet avec une vue assez haut-niveau pour avoir un aperçu des contraintes techniques et comment les différents services ont été mis en place. Le principal enjeu étant d'utiliser le protocole LTI pour permettre une authentification unique pour l'apprenant à partir de son compte FUN. Nous décrirons comment nous avons su adapter des solutions open-sources tel que Jupyterhub et Gitlab pour répondre à ces besoins et à ces contraintes

The coin beneath the crust : a pilot study of coins from the Mediterranean coast of Israel

We describe the application of synchrotron X-ray diffraction and neutron micro-tomography to three ancient bronze coins from the Mediterranean coast of Israel. Key questions are whether neutron tomography can contribute to the reading of features on corroded coins by allowing the corrosion crust to be stripped away in cyber-space using surface and volume rendering techniques, and to what extent this type of non-destructive measurement can inform possible conservation action. In addition, the X-ray diffraction experiments allow the main composition of the varicoloured surface corrosion to be deduced. We show that both X-ray and neutron data are of considerable help to numismatic study of the coins

One-Loop Quantum Energy Densities of Domain Wall Field Configurations

We discuss a simple procedure for computing one-loop quantum energies of any static field configuration that depends non-trivially on only a single spatial coordinate. We specifically focus on domain wall-type field configurations that connect two distinct minima of the effective potential, and may or may not be the solutions of classical field equations. We avoid the conventional summation of zero-point energies, and instead exploit the relation between functional determinants and solutions of associated differential equations. This approach allows ultraviolet divergences to be easily isolated and extracted using any convenient regularization scheme. Two examples are considered: two-dimensional $\phi^4$ theory, and three-dimensional scalar electrodynamics with spontaneous symmetry breaking at the one-loop level.Comment: RevTex, 29 pages, 1 figure, minor corrections, references adde

Peut-on former les enseignant·e·s en un rien de temps ?

National audienceIn France, we recently realized that it is urgent to stop waiting to start teaching our girls and boys bases of computer science, to master digital technology, and the Digital Science and Technology (SNT) topic is now offered in Year 11 (classe de 2nd), starting at the 2019 school year. All highschool students are concerned. But how to train teachers? It is a challenge and it should be done in almost no time. By using quantitative data about the Class'Code training program and putting the methodological elements developed and experimented in perspective, we report here what did work and, more interesting, where we stumbled in order to set the limits of the approach and show the importance of a greater place regarding these formations.En France, on a récemment compris qu'il est urgent de ne plus attendre pour initier nos filles et nos garçons à l'informatique pour maîtriser le numérique : l'enseignement de Sciences Numériques et Technologie (SNT) va, en classe de seconde à la rentrée 2019, concerner tou·te·s les lycéen·ne·s. Mais comment former les enseignant·e·s ? C'est un défi qu'il faudrait relever en peu de temps. En utilisant des données quantitatives sur les formations Class´Code et en prenant du recul sur les éléments méthodologiques développés et expérimentés, nous faisons ici un retour d'expérience sur ce qui a pu marcher et, plus intéressant encore, là où nous avons buté afin de poser les limites de l'approche et montrer la nécessité d'une place plus grande pour ce type de formations

Can the Universe Create Itself?

The question of first-cause has troubled philosophers and cosmologists alike. Now that it is apparent that our universe began in a Big Bang explosion, the question of what happened before the Big Bang arises. Inflation seems like a very promising answer, but as Borde and Vilenkin have shown, the inflationary state preceding the Big Bang must have had a beginning also. Ultimately, the difficult question seems to be how to make something out of nothing. This paper explores the idea that this is the wrong question --- that that is not how the Universe got here. Instead, we explore the idea of whether there is anything in the laws of physics that would prevent the Universe from creating itself. Because spacetimes can be curved and multiply connected, general relativity allows for the possibility of closed timelike curves (CTCs). Thus, tracing backwards in time through the original inflationary state we may eventually encounter a region of CTCs giving no first-cause. This region of CTCs, may well be over by now (being bounded toward the future by a Cauchy horizon). We illustrate that such models --- with CTCs --- are not necessarily inconsistent by demonstrating self-consistent vacuums for Misner space and a multiply connected de Sitter space in which the renormalized energy-momentum tensor does not diverge as one approaches the Cauchy horizon and solves Einstein's equations. We show such a Universe can be classically stable and self-consistent if and only if the potentials are retarded, giving a natural explanation of the arrow of time. Some specific scenarios (out of many possible ones) for this type of model are described. For example: an inflationary universe gives rise to baby universes, one of which turns out to be itself. Interestingly, the laws of physics may allow the Universe to be its own mother.Comment: 48 pages, 8 figure