SPEED BUMP DETECTION FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES USING SIGNAL-PROCESSING TECHNIQUES

Autonomous vehicle (AV) is one of the emerging technologies that have far-reaching applications and implications in smart cities. Among the current challenges of the Smart City, Traffic management is of utmost importance. AV technologies can decrease transportation cost and can be used for efficient management and control of traffic flows. Traffic management strongly depends on the road surface condition. Abnormalities in the road, such as manholes and potholes, can cause accidents when not identified by the drivers. Furthermore, human-induced abnormalities, such as speed bumps, could also cause accidents. Detecting road abnormalities provide safety to human and vehicles. Current researches on speed bump detection are based on using sensors, accelerometer and GPS. This makes them vulnerable to GPS error, network overload, delay and battery draining. To overcome these problems, we propose a novel method for speed bump detection that combines both image and signal processing techniques. The advantage of the proposed approach consists in detecting speed bumps accurately without using any special sensors, hardware, Smartphone and GPS

CORPS DE FEMME, REFLET D\u27UNE VILLE DETRUITE DANS LA MALEDICTION DE HYAM YARED / 2012

La malédiction a novel by hyam Yared, tells the story of Hala, a Lebanese catholic, who will fight until the last moment in a male society under the Syrian tutelage for her freedom and the recognition of her femininity. Hala, with her suffering resembles Lebanon, which in turn demands its freedom; each of them is convicted to pain, violence and humiliation. Hala, in this novel, is the reflection of image of Beirut the victim of the usurpation, and the only solution is the self-destruction. As a result of the similarity between Hala and Beirut which was destroyed by the civil war, how was shown in this novel the hate of women in a society caught in a culture that decomposes inequality in its texts and laws and make rape of women\u27s rights a legitimate rule. So, we will study the religion\u27s look and the society for women first, and the similarity between the occupied country and the women\u27s body second, and finally Beirut\u27s image, the usurped city, as a reflection of battered women. Finally, this novel invites the Lebanese reader who knows about the proximity of his homeland conflicts, to be aware of the injustice prevalent in society, and the sexual discrimination legislator in the laws and women\u27s preference. And this novel invites the reader to wonder about the violence of society and politics, which even in times of peace, makes violence an essential element of the system\u27s implementation in society and encourages silence, ignorance and forgetfulness

Élucidation du rôle de nouveaux acteurs de la biosynthèse de Q8 chez Escherichia coli et caractérisation du complexe protéique de biosynthèse de Q8.

Ubiquinone (Q) is a lipophilic compound that plays an important role in electron and proton transport in the respiratory chains of Escherichia coli. Besides this important role in energy production, Q also functions as a membrane soluble antioxidant. The biosynthesis of Q8 requires eight reactions and involves at least nine proteins (UbiA-UbiH and UbiX) in Escherichia coli. Three of these reactions are hydroxylations resulting in the introduction of a hydroxyl group on carbon atoms at position 1, 5 and 6 of the aromatic ring. The C1 and C6 hydroxylation are well characterized whereas the C5 hydroxylation has been proposed to involve UbiB, a protein kinase without any sequence homology with monooxygenase. In this work, by genetic and biochemical methods we provide evidence that VisC which we renamed UbiI, displays sequence homology with monooxygenases and catalyzes the C5 hydroxylation, not UbiB. We have identified two new genes, yqiC and yigP (renammed UbiJ and UbiK) which are required only for Q8 biosynthesis in aerobic conditions. The exact role of the corresponding proteins, renamed UbiJ and UbiK, remains unknown. These proteins are able to interact with other Ubi proteins to be able to produce Q supporting the protein complex hypothesis. Our progress on the characterization of an Ubi-complex regrouping several Ubi proteins suggest that UbiJ and UbiK may fulfill functions related to the Ubi-complex stability. Mutants affected in hydroxylation steps are deficient for Q8 in aerobic conditions but recover a wild type Q8 content when grown in anaerobic conditions. This intriguing observation supports the existence of an alternative hydroxylation system independent from dioxygen which has not been characterized so far. By phylogenetic studies, we have identified a new gene in which the deletion affect the biosynthesis of Q only in anaerobic conditions suggesting a reorganization of Q biosynthesis in these two conditions. Our results has improved our knowledge of the prokaryotic Q biosynthetic pathway through the discovery of new genes involved in this process and through the identification of the molecular function of some proteins.Le coenzyme Q est une molécule lipophile rédox rencontrée chez les eucaryotes et chez la plupart des procaryotes. La structure de Q correspond à une benzoquinone substituée par une chaîne polyisoprényle dont la longueur varie selon les organismes. Q joue le rôle de transporteur d'électrons dans les chaînes respiratoires d'où provient la plupart de l'énergie de la cellule. La biosynthèse de Q chez la bactérie Escherichia coli comporte huit étapes et implique au moins neuf protéines (UbiA-UbiH et UbiX). Trois réactions d'hydroxylation sont nécessaires pour la biosynthèse de Q8 en conditions aérobies. Alors que les protéines UbiH et UbiF présentent des homologies de séquence avec des monooxygénases à flavine connues pour catalyser des réactions d'hydroxylation, UbiB qui a été proposée comme étant la troisième hydroxylase, présente uniquement une homologie de séquence avec des kinases. Nous rapportons dans ce travail que la protéine VisC, renommée UbiI, catalyse la réaction d'hydroxylation auparavant attribuée à UbiB. Nous avons également identifié deux nouvelles protéines (YigP et YqiC, renommées respectivement UbiJ et UbiK) importantes pour le métabolisme de Q chez Escherichia coli puisque leur mutation diminue fortement le contenu en Q des souches mutantes. Ces protéines interagissent avec la plupart des protéines connues pour participer à la biosynthèse de Q ce qui implique l'existence d'un complexe de biosynthèse de Q. En utilisant des approches biochimiques et protéomiques, nous avons pu mettre en évidence un complexe impliquant plusieurs protéines Ubi et notamment UbiJ et UbiK. Ces deux protéines semblent avoir un rôle dans l'assemblage et/ou la stabilisation de ce complexe multiprotéique. Enfin, nous nous sommes intéressés à la biosynthèse de Q dans des conditions de cultures anaérobies. Nos résultats montrent l'existence « d'hydroxylases anaérobies », inconnues à ce jour, qui remplaçent les hydroxylases aérobies UbiH, UbiI et UbiF. Grâce à une approche phylogénétique, nous identifions un gène important pour la biosynthèse de Q uniquement en conditions anaérobies suggérant une réorganisation de la biosynthèse de Q entre ces deux environnements fréquemment rencontrés par E. coli. L'ensemble de nos résultats a permis d'améliorer notre connaissance de la voie de biosynthèse procaryote de Q grâce à la découverte de nouveaux gènes impliqués dans ce processus et grâce à l'identification de la fonction moléculaire de certaines protéines

A priori gradient bounds for fully nonlinear parabolic equations and applications to porous medium models

12 pagesWe prove a priori gradient bounds for classical solutions of the fully nonlinear parabolic equation $$u_{t}=F(D^2u ,D u,u,x,t).$$ The domain is the torus {\mathbb{T}}^{d} of dimension $d\ge1$. Up to the price of technicalities, our work can be extended to the case of bounded domains or the case of the whole space ${\mathbb{R}}^d$. Several applications are given, including the standard porous medium equation

Structuration du pool bancaire de la PME : une revue de la littérature

Competition intensification has deeply changed firms’ debt structure by increasing the number of banks from which they borrow at the same time. This paper is a literature review on small businesses banking pool. We examine three questions: What are the characteristics of the pool’s main bank? How many banks must be included in the pool in order to make it more efficient? How the relationships between the main bank and the secondary banks are organized

Importance of the traffic model in the reliability estimation of highway bridges

Road bridges are exposed to stochastic traffic loadings that are not simply determined. The international codes for the design and assessment of highway bridges provide some standard trucks that can be used in the design process. Knowing that the traffic can vary considerably from one bridge to another, standard trucks may lead to poorly estimate the reliability in the assessment process. So, the sensitivity of the reliability indices to the load models will be discussed, on one hand by considering the standard truck given by the French Fascicule 61 and on the other hand by adopting real vehicle data from existing weigh-in-motion station. A set of reinforced concrete bridges will be used for the application

The ubiK protein is an accessory factor necessary for bacterial Ubiquinone (UQ) biosynthesis and forms a complex with the UQ biogenesis factor UbiJ

Ubiquinone (UQ), also referred to as coenzyme Q, is a widespread lipophilic molecule in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes in which it primarily acts as an electron carrier. Eleven proteins are known to participate in UQ biosynthesis in Escherichia coli, and we recently demonstrated that UQ biosynthesis requires additional, nonenzymatic factors, some of which are still unknown. Here, we report on the identification of a bacterial gene, yqiC, which is required for efficient UQ biosynthesis, and which we have renamed ubiK. Using several methods, we demonstrated that the UbiK protein forms a complex with the C-terminal part of UbiJ, another UQ biogenesis factor we previously identified. We found that both proteins are likely to contribute to global UQ biosynthesis rather than to a specific biosynthetic step, because both ubiK and ubiJ mutants accumulated octaprenylphenol, an early intermediate of the UQ biosynthetic pathway. Interestingly, we found that both proteins are dispensable for UQ biosynthesis under anaerobiosis, even though they were expressed in the absence of oxygen. We also provide evidence that the UbiK-UbiJ complex interacts with palmitoleic acid, a major lipid in E. coli. Last, in Salmonella enterica, ubiK was required for proliferation in macrophages and virulence in mice. We conclude that although the role of the UbiK-UbiJ complex remains unknown, our results support the hypothesis that UbiK is an accessory factor of Ubi enzymes and facilitates UQ biosynthesis by acting as an assembly factor, a targeting factor, or both.Agence Nationale de la Recherche ANR-15-CE11-0001-02Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique PICS07279French State Program "Investissements d'Avenir" ANR-11-LABX-001

Assessment of Damage to Nucleic Acids and Repair Machinery in Salmonella typhimurium Exposed to Chlorine

Water disinfection is usually evaluated using mandatory methods based on cell culturability. However, such methods do not consider the potential of cells to recover, which should also be kept as low as possible. In this paper, we hypothesized that a successful disinfection is achieved only when the applied chlorine leads to both intracellular nucleic acid damage and strong alterations of the DNA repair machinery. Monitoring the SOS system responsiveness with a umuC’-‘lacZ reporter fusion, we found that the expression of this important cellular machinery was altered after the beginning of membrane permeabilization but prior to the total decline of both the cell culturability and the nucleic acid integrity as revealed by Sybr-II staining. Rapid measurement of such nucleic acid alterations by fluorochrome-based staining could be used as an alternative method for assessing the effectiveness of disinfection with chlorine