1,059 research outputs found

    L'évolution des messages publicitaires des entreprises financières installées en Equateur : un indicateur de la mondialisation de la communication (1960-1991)

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    L'analyse des messages publicitaires insérés dans la presse écrite et télévisée par les institutions financières de 1960 à 1991 permet d'approcher l'influence socio-culturelle de ce secteur de l'économie sur les modes de vie des strates aisées et moyennes de la population équatorienne à partir de l'exemple quiténien. Si le message a vu son support évoluer depuis trois décennies (dessin dans les années soixante, photographie durant les années soixante-dix puis images de synthèse au cours des années quatre-vingt), son image projetée se caractérise par une relative continuité thématique. Toutefois, il semble que les campagnes publicitaires financières délaissent progressivement les éléments importés et intègrent ("récupèrent"?) des caractères régionaux ou nationaux. Enfin, si dans les années soixante le système financier avait recours à un langage spécifique, il s'oriente aujourd'hui vers l'utilisation de symboles et d'éléments écrits ou visuels qui sont tout à fait intégrés à la mondialisation de la communication. (Résumé d'auteur

    Towards the noise reduction of piezoelectrical-driven synthetic jet actuators

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    This paper details an experimental investigation aimed at reducing the noise output of piezoelectrical-driven synthetic jet actuators without compromising peak jet velocity. Specifically, the study considers double-chamber ('back-to-back') actuators for anti-phase noise suppression and corrugated-lobed orifices as a method to enhance turbulent mixing of the jets to suppress jet noise. The study involved the design, manufacture and bench test of interchangeable actuator hardware. Hot-wire anemometry and microphone recordings were employed to acquire velocity and noise measurements respectively for each chamber configuration and orifice plate across a range of excitation frequencies and for a fixed input voltage. The data analysis indicated a 32% noise reduction (20 dBA) from operating a singlechamber, circular orifice SJA to a double-chamber, corrugated-lobed orifice SJA at the Helmholtz resonant frequency. Results also showed there was a small reduction in peak jet velocity of 7% (~3 m/s) between these two cases based on orifices of the same discharge area. Finally, the electrical-to-fluidic power conversion efficiency of the double-chamber actuator was found to be 15% across all orifice designs at the resonant frequency; approximately double the efficiency of a single-chamber actuator. This work has thus demonstrated feasible gains in noise reduction and power efficiency through synthetic jet actuator design

    OH+ in astrophysical media: state-to-state formation rates, Einstein coefficients and inelastic collision rates with He

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    The rate constants required to model the OH+^+ observations in different regions of the interstellar medium have been determined using state of the art quantum methods. First, state-to-state rate constants for the H2(v=0,J=0,1)_2(v=0,J=0,1)+ O+^+(4S^4S) \rightarrow H + OH+(X3Σ,v,N)^+(X ^3\Sigma^-, v', N) reaction have been obtained using a quantum wave packet method. The calculations have been compared with time-independent results to asses the accuracy of reaction probabilities at collision energies of about 1 meV. The good agreement between the simulations and the existing experimental cross sections in the 0.010.01-1 eV energy range shows the quality of the results. The calculated state-to-state rate constants have been fitted to an analytical form. Second, the Einstein coefficients of OH+^+ have been obtained for all astronomically significant ro-vibrational bands involving the X3ΣX^3\Sigma^- and/or A3ΠA^3\Pi electronic states. For this purpose the potential energy curves and electric dipole transition moments for seven electronic states of OH+^+ are calculated with {\it ab initio} methods at the highest level and including spin-orbit terms, and the rovibrational levels have been calculated including the empirical spin-rotation and spin-spin terms. Third, the state-to-state rate constants for inelastic collisions between He and OH+(X3Σ)^+(X ^3\Sigma^-) have been calculated using a time-independent close coupling method on a new potential energy surface. All these rates have been implemented in detailed chemical and radiative transfer models. Applications of these models to various astronomical sources show that inelastic collisions dominate the excitation of the rotational levels of OH+^+. In the models considered the excitation resulting from the chemical formation of OH+^+ increases the line fluxes by about 10 % or less depending on the density of the gas

    Étude du comportement rhéologique et des propriétés mécaniques de composites sciures de bois-polyéthylène haute densité

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    National audienceLes propriétés rhéologiques dynamiques à l'état fondu et les propriétés mécaniques en traction simple de composites constitués de sciures de bois dans une matrice de polyéthylène haute densité (PEHD) ont été mesurées. Six concentrations massiques (0, 20, 30, 40, 50 et 60%) et trois granulométries ont été étudiées en présence d'un agent couplant (polyéthylène greffé anhydride maléique, PE-g-MA). La présence de sciures augmente les valeurs du module de stockage et du module de perte : ces modules sont des fonctions croissantes de la teneur en sciures. Les pulsations de croisement (G' = G'') diminuent avec l'augmentation de la teneur en sciures et augmentent pour une granulométrie croissante. La viscosité complexe augmente fortement en présence des sciures. Pour chaque granulométrie, on peut tracer une courbe maîtresse en normalisant viscosité et taux de cisaillement par un facteur de glissement, fonction de la concentration. En exprimant les facteurs de glissement par des lois de type Krieger-Dougherty, on peut ainsi obtenir une courbe de viscosité "universelle", de type Carreau ou Carreau-Yasuda, pour laquelle la granulométrie apparaît au travers des paramètres de la loi de Krieger-Dougherty, en particulier la concentration maximale. La présence de sciures de bois dans la matrice polymérique modifie considérablement la réponse en traction. Le composite perd beaucoup en ductilité et en ténacité, mais sa rigidité augmente sensiblement (facteur 1,12 à 2,04). La résistance à la traction et la limite d'élasticité sont généralement moindres que celles obtenues avec le polymère seul. Les meilleures propriétés mécaniques ont été obtenues avec la sciure la plus fine qui peut être assimilée à une farine de bois. C'est pour une teneur de 30% que la résistance à la traction la plus élevée a été observée et pour une teneur de 60% que le module d'Young maximum a été enregistré. L'efficacité de l'agent couplant sur le lien polymère - bois a été mise en évidence en comparant les résultats de traction d'éprouvettes à 40% de sciures avec et sans PE-g-MA. Pour les trois granulométries, la rigidité, la ténacité, la limite d'élasticité et la résistance à la traction ont été considérablement augmentées en présence d'agent couplant

    A milestone toward understanding PDR properties in the extreme environment of LMC-30Dor

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    More complete knowledge of galaxy evolution requires understanding the process of star formation and interaction between the interstellar radiation field and the interstellar medium in galactic environments traversing a wide range of physical parameter space. Here we focus on the impact of massive star formation on the surrounding low metallicity ISM in 30 Doradus in the Large Magellanic Cloud. A low metal abundance, as is the case of some galaxies of the early universe, results in less ultra-violet shielding for the formation of the molecular gas necessary for star formation to proceed. The half-solar metallicity gas in this region is strongly irradiated by the super star cluster R136, making it an ideal laboratory to study the structure of the ISM in an extreme environment. Our spatially resolved study investigates the gas heating and cooling mechanisms, particularly in the photo-dissociation regions where the chemistry and thermal balance are regulated by far-ultraviolet photons (6 eV< h\nu <13.6 eV). We present Herschel observations of far-infrared fine-structure lines obtained with PACS and SPIRE/FTS. We have combined atomic fine-structure lines from Herschel and Spitzer observations with ground-based CO data to provide diagnostics on the properties and the structure of the gas by modeling it with the Meudon PDR code. We derive the spatial distribution of the radiation field, the pressure, the size, and the filling factor of the photodissociated gas and molecular clouds. We find a range of pressure of ~ 10^5 - 1.7x10^6 cm^{-3} K and a range of incident radiation field G_UV ~ 10^2 - 2.5x10^4 through PDR modeling. Assuming a plane-parallel geometry and a uniform medium, we find a total extinction of 1-3 mag , which correspond to a PDR cloud size of 0.2 to 3pc, with small CO depth scale of 0.06 to 0.5pc. We also determine the three dimensional structure of the gas. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 23 figures, accepted in A&

    Low-velocity shocks: signatures of turbulent dissipation in diffuse irradiated gas

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    Context. Large-scale motions in galaxies (supernovae explosions, galaxy collisions, galactic shear etc.) generate turbulence, which allows a fraction of the available kinetic energy to cascade down to small scales before it is dissipated. Aims. We establish and quantify the diagnostics of turbulent dissipation in mildly irradiated diffuse gas in the specific context of shock structures. Methods. We incorporated the basic physics of photon-dominated regions into a state-of-the-art steady-state shock code. We examined the chemical and emission properties of mildly irradiated (G_0 = 1) magnetised shocks in diffuse media (n_H = 10^2 to 10^4 cm^(-3)) at low- to moderate velocities (from 3 to 40 km s^(-1)). Results. The formation of some molecules relies on endoergic reactions. Their abundances in J-type shocks are enhanced by several orders of magnitude for shock velocities as low as 7 km s^(-1). Otherwise most chemical properties of J-type shocks vary over less than an order of magnitude between velocities from about 7 to about 30 km s^(-1), where H_2 dissociation sets in. C-type shocks display a more gradual molecular enhancement with increasing shock velocity. We quantified the energy flux budget (fluxes of kinetic, radiated and magnetic energies) with emphasis on the main cooling lines of the cold interstellar medium. Their sensitivity to shock velocity is such that it allows observations to constrain statistical distributions of shock velocities. We fitted various probability distribution functions (PDFs) of shock velocities to spectroscopic observations of the galaxy-wide shock in Stephan’s Quintet and of a Galactic line of sight which samples diffuse molecular gas in Chamaeleon. In both cases, low velocities bear the greatest statistical weight and the PDF is consistent with a bimodal distribution. In the very low velocity shocks (below 5 km s^(-1)), dissipation is due to ion-neutral friction and it powers H_2 low-energy transitions and atomic lines. In moderate velocity shocks (20 km s^(-1) and above), the dissipation is due to viscous heating and accounts for most of the molecular emission. In our interpretation a significant fraction of the gas in the line of sight is shocked (from 4% to 66%). For example, C^+ emission may trace shocks in UV irradiated gas where C^+ is the dominant carbon species. Conclusions. Low- and moderate velocity shocks are important in shaping the chemical composition and excitation state of the interstellar gas. This allows one to probe the statistical distribution of shock velocities in interstellar turbulence

    A Very Low Resource Language Speech Corpus for Computational Language Documentation Experiments

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    Most speech and language technologies are trained with massive amounts of speech and text information. However, most of the world languages do not have such resources or stable orthography. Systems constructed under these almost zero resource conditions are not only promising for speech technology but also for computational language documentation. The goal of computational language documentation is to help field linguists to (semi-)automatically analyze and annotate audio recordings of endangered and unwritten languages. Example tasks are automatic phoneme discovery or lexicon discovery from the speech signal. This paper presents a speech corpus collected during a realistic language documentation process. It is made up of 5k speech utterances in Mboshi (Bantu C25) aligned to French text translations. Speech transcriptions are also made available: they correspond to a non-standard graphemic form close to the language phonology. We present how the data was collected, cleaned and processed and we illustrate its use through a zero-resource task: spoken term discovery. The dataset is made available to the community for reproducible computational language documentation experiments and their evaluation.Comment: accepted to LREC 201

    Interleukin-4 (IL-4), but not IL-10, regulates the synthesis of IL-6, IL-8 and leukemia inhibitory factor by human bone marrow stromal cells

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    AbstractLeukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), interleukin 6 (IL-6) and IL-8 are important regulators of inflammation and hematopoiesis. Human bone marrow stromal cells regulate marrow hematopoiesis by secreting cytokines. By using reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), we demonstrate that human bone marrow stromal cells constitutively express LIF, IL-6 and IL-8 transcripts. By using specific ELISAs, we found that their spontaneous productions of LIF, IL-6 and IL-8 are elevated in response to serum and after stimulation with the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1α and TNF-α. The anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-4 reduces their serum- and cytokine-induced LIF secretion. By contrast, IL-4 stimulates their serum- and IL-1α-induced IL-6 synthesis. IL-4 has no effect on the serum-induced IL-8 synthesis by marrow stromal cells, but stimulates their cytokine-induced IL-8 production. The anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-10 has no effect on the serum- and cytokine-induced LIF, IL-6 and IL-8 synthesis by bone marrow stromal cells. RT-PCR experiments reveal the presence of IL-4 receptor α-chain mRNA and IL-10 receptor mRNA in cultured bone marrow stromal cells. The differential regulation by IL-4 of two related cytokines, such as LIF and IL-6, and the enhanced effect of this ‘anti-inflammatory’ cytokine on IL-6 and IL-8 synthesis highlight the tightly controlled regulation and the complexity of the cytokine production within the human bone marrow

    PLIF Measurements of Nitric Oxide and Hydroxyl Radicals Distributions in Swirled Stratified Premixed Flames

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    Environmental and economic concerns have pushed aeronautical authorities to set stringent environmental regulations on fuel consumption, noise production, and pollutant emission. Engine manufacturers are developing novel staged injection concepts to ensure their respect. The injection staging creates a fuel-air mixture stratification involving new combustion processes not fully understood. This paper presents the experimental investigation of NO production for known swirled and / or stratified lean premixed flames. The fuel staging parameter defined as the stratification ratio is studied for values of 1, 2, and 3, while the swirl fractions are 0, 25 and 33%, changing the flowfield from non-swirling cond itions to high swirl numbers (up to 0.55). The implementation of simultaneous OH- and NOPLIF imaging techniques is achieved using high energy pulsed laser systems, able, for instance, to deliver 30 mJ/ pulse around the 226-nm UV wavelength for NO excitation. OH-PLIF is used to characterize the flame structure through the commonly extracted curvature, and also through the measurement of the flame thickness. These results show to be more accurate than thickness obtained from temperature profiles measured by Raman/ Rayleigh laser diagnostics. NO-PLIF is used to quantify the pollutant concentration. To this end, preliminary work was done to select the Q1 (29.5) transition as it the least temperature dependent excitation scheme with high fluorescence levels. After realizing a specific calibration of the NO-PLIF technique, the stud ied flames presented concentrations ranging from traces (20 ppm) to high levels (230 ppm). Further analysis of these results reveals that for high stratification ratios the prompt NO is favored and is responsible for the elevated level of NO pollutant
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