37 research outputs found
Jean-Baptiste BĂ©langer, hydraulic engineer, researcher and academic
Jean-Baptiste BĂLANGER (1790-1874) worked as a hydraulic engineer at the beginning of his career. He developed the backwater equation to calculate gradually-varied open channel flow properties for steady flow conditions. Later, as an academic at the leading French engineering schools (Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, Ecole des Ponts et ChaussĂ©es, and Ecole Polytechnique), he developed a new university curriculum in mechanics and several textbooks including a seminal text in hydraulic engineering. His influence on his contemporaries was considerable, and his name is written on the border of one of the four facades of the Eiffel Tower. BĂLANGER's leading role demonstrated the dynamism of practicing engineers at the time, and his contributions paved the way to many significant works in hydraulics
Modeling the Past: The Paleoethnological Evidence
This chapter considers the earliest Paleolithic, Oldowan (Mode 1), and Acheulean (Mode 2)
cultures of the Old Continent and the traces left by the earliest hominids since their departure
from Africa. According to the most recent archaeological data, they seem to have followed two
main dispersal routes across the Arabian Peninsula toward the Levant, to the north, and the Indian
subcontinent, to the east. According to recent discoveries at Dmanisi in the Caucasus, the first
Paleolithic settlement of Europe is dated to some 1.75 Myr ago, which indicates that the first âout of
Africaâ took place at least slightly before this date. The data available for Western Europe show
that the first Paleolithic sites can be attributed to the period slightly before 1.0 Myr ago. The first
well-defined âstructural remainsâ so far discovered in Europe are those of Isernia La Pineta in
Southern Italy, where a semicircular artificial platform made of stone boulders and animal bones
has been excavated. The first hand-thrown hunting weapons come from the site of Schošningen in
north Germany, where the first occurrence of wooden spears, more than 2 m long, has been
recorded from a site attributed to some 0.37 Myr ago. Slightly later began the regular control of
fire. Although most of the archaeological finds of these ages consist of chipped stone artifacts,
indications of art seem to be already present in the Acheulean of Africa and the Indian
subcontinent