premiers resultats de cnd sous sodium liquide pour l'inspection des reacteurs nucleaires de 4ieme generation

National audienceCet article presente les premiers resultats d'essais CND obtenus avec des transducteurs ultrasonores TUCSS sous sodium liquide a 200C. Les resultats obtenus ont ete tres positifs et indiquent que cette technologie de transducteur peut avoir des performances suffisantes pour effectuer des examens non destructifs simples dans cet environnement severe

A capacity building approach to increase sports participation in disadvantaged urban communities: a multilevel analysis

Recent evidence showed that community capacity building is one of the key methods to reach health improvements within disadvantaged communities. Physical activity and sports participation are important means to reach health improvements. This study investigates a capacity building method which aims at increasing sports participation in the community, especially for individuals at higher risk of sports deprivation. The main aims of the present study, are the following: (1) to examine differences in sports participation between individuals living in communities implementing a sports-based capacity building program and individuals living in communities without such capacity building program and (2) to investigate if the community sports program reaches the individuals known to experience higher barriers to engage in sports. In Flanders, Belgium, five disadvantaged urban communities implementing the community capacity building program (program communities) and four without (control communities) were selected based on similarity of sociodemographic and environmental characteristics. Two hundred adults (aged 18-56 years) per community were randomly selected and visited at home to fill out a questionnaire on sociodemographics, sports participation, and the community sports program. A sample of 414 adults participated in the study. Results showed that adults from program communities reported on average 96 min/week more participation in sports than their counterparts living in control communities. Furthermore, 61.3 % of the individuals of program communities indicated to engage in sports, whereas in control communities, this was only 42.4 %. Respondents at higher risk of sports deprivation also engaged in significantly more sports participation in program communities than those in control communities. This difference was also noted for groups that are not related with sports deprivation. These results are promising and plead for a community capacity building approach to increase sports participation in disadvantaged communities

Air quality and human health improvements from reductions in deforestation-related fire in Brazil

Roughly 15% of the Brazilian Amazon was deforested between 1976 and 2010. Fire is the dominant method through which forests and vegetation are cleared. Fires emit large quantities of particulate matter into the atmosphere, which degrades air quality and affects human health. Since 2004, Brazil has achieved substantial reductions in deforestation rates and associated deforestation fires. Here we assess the impact of this reduction on air quality and human health during non-drought years between 2001 and 2012. We analyse aerosol optical depth measurements obtained with satellite and ground-based sensors over southwest Brazil and Bolivia for the dry season, from August to October. We find that observed dry season aerosol optical depths are more than a factor of two lower in years with low deforestation rates in Brazil. We used a global aerosol model to show that reductions in fires associated with deforestation have caused mean surface particulate matter concentrations to decline by ~30% during the dry season in the region. Using particulate matter concentration response functions from the epidemiological literature, we estimate that this reduction in particulate matter may be preventing roughly 400 to 1,700 premature adult deaths annually across South America