Paroles profanes exposées en public : Une voie de politisation originale des affects en situation sensible

Comment se comporte le lien social quand une communauté est soumise à l’épreuve d’un risque ou d’une catastrophe ? Peut-on échapper à l’alternative entre un principe de solidarité naturelle qui s’imposerait face au danger et une logique de repli sur soi où chacun prendrait soin de son espace privé ? Les exemples présentés montrent comment des dispositifs rendant publique l’expression personnelle de citoyens ordinaires peuvent générer des formes inédites d’espace public lié à la situation affectante. Les singularités n’y sont pas gommées comme dans les logiques d’action publique. L’affectivité y gagne une dimension collective.What happens to the social links, when the members of a community are affected by a risk or a disaster ? Is it possible to escape from the alternative between a principle of natural solidarity to face the danger and a logic of self protection ? Different forms of dispositions admit personal expressions in public and generate new forms of public space bounded with the affective situation. Singularities are not hidden as they are in the logics of public action. Affectivity becomes collective

The analysis of radiation-induced micronuclei in peripheral blood lymphocytes for purpose of biological dosimetry

In the investigation of radiation accidents, it is of great importance to estimate the dose absorbed by exposed persons in order to plan their therapy. Although occasionally in these situations physical dose measurements are possible, most often biological methods are required for dose estimation. The aim of this investigation was to assess the suitability of the cytokinesis blocked (CB) micronucleus assay as a biodosimetric method using lymphocytes irradiated in vivo. The approach adopted to achieve this was to estimate whole body doses by relating micronuclei yields in patients undergoing radiotherapy treatment with an in vitro radiation dose-response curve. These biologically derived estimates were then compared with the corresponding doses obtained by physical measurement and calculation. As a first approach a study was performed of the in vitro dose-response of gamma-ray induced micronuclei following cytokinesis-block in the lymphocytes of peripheral blood samples obtained from 4 healthy donors. The results indicated that the distribution of the induced micronuclei were overdispersed. Furthermore, a linear dose-response relationship was established when a curve was fitted to the data by an iteratively reweighted least squares method. By means of an analysis of covariance it was demonstrated that this result is in agreement with the dose-response relationships found by various other workers (Fenech et al., 1985; Fenech et al., 1986; Fenech et al., 1989; Balasem et al., 1992, and Slabbert, 1993). To assess the suitability and accuracy of dose assessment using the CB micronucleus assay for in vivo exposure of lymphocytes, blood samples obtained from 8 patients undergoing radiotherapy before, during and after treatment were examined. The physical doses of these patients were determined according to conventional radiation treatment plans and cumulative dose-volume histograms. The dose-volume histograms permitted calculation of integral doses and subsequently the estimate of equivalent whole-body doses. The results of the CB micronucleus assay applied to peripheral blood lymphocytes of 6 patients undergoing fractionated partial-body irradiation showed a dose-related increase in micronucleus frequency in each of the patients studied. This demonstrated that micronuclei analysis may serve as a quantitative biological measure of such exposures. The pooled data of these patients compared to the pooled data of the healthy donors show that there was no statistically significant difference between in vitro and in vivo results, however a slightly lower induced micronuclei frequency was observed after in vivo exposure. When the biological dose estimates for equivalent whole-body doses obtained from the in vitro dose response curve were compared with calculated physical doses, it was found that: biologically estimated dose = 0.936 physical dose. However, there was inadequate statistical evidence to discard the hypothesis that the gradient of the equation was equal to one. Therefore, the analysis of micronuclei induced in lymphocytes in vivo yields highly quantitative information on the equivalent whole-body dose. The negative binomial method was used for analysing the micronucleus data from two patients who received single, relatively larger tumour doses of 10 Gy each, with the objective to obtain estimates of the exposed body fraction and the dose to this fraction. The dose estimates to the irradiated volume were found to be within 30% of the physical tumour dose. The irradiated volume estimates seemed to be higher than the physically calculated volumes but by discarding the correction for the loss of cells due to interphase death the agreement was good between the physically and biologically determined integral doses. This study has revealed that the CB micronucleus assay appears to offer a reliable, consistent and relatively rapid biological method of whole body dose estimation. It is recognised that further corroborative work using the techniques described in this thesis is required for estimating localized exposure

Light scattering from cold rolled aluminum surfaces

We present experimental light scattering measurements from aluminum surfaces obtained by cold rolling. We show that our results are consistent with a scale invariant description of the roughness of these surfaces. The roughness parameters that we obtain from the light scattering experiment are consistent with those obtained from Atomic Force Microscopy measurements

Water clustering in polychloroprene

Water sorption has been studied gravimetrically for polychloroprene rubber samples, first at a fixed hygrometric ratio (98% HR) and several temperatures (25, 40, 60 and 80 °C) for samples of 1.8 and 3.8 mm thickness (Constant Temperature and Hygrometry, CTH experiments), then at fixed temperature (40 °C) and several hygrometric ratios ranging from 0 to 95% HR on samples of 0.1 mm thickness (DVS experiments). CTH experiments reveal an abnormal sorption behavior: after an apparently fickian transient period, the water absorption continues at almost constant rate, no equilibrium is observed after more than 2500 h, whatever the temperature. DVS experiments reveal a very low Henry's solubility but the formation of clusters at water activities higher than 40%. The water diffusivity is almost independent of activity below 50% HR and decreases rapidly when activity increases above 50%. Contrary to CTH experiments, equilibrium is reached in DVS and the difference is not simply linked to the well-known effect of sample thickness on diffusion rate. The results allow hypotheses such as hydrolysis or osmotic cracking to explain the abnormal sorption phenomenon to be rejected. It is suggested that clusters could be polymer-water complexes having a linear/branched structure able to grow without phase separation that could explain the reversibility of sorption-desorption cycles. The difference of behavior between thin 0.1 mm and thicker 1.8 or 3.8 mm samples could be due to an effect of swelling stresses

Oxidation of unvulcanized, unstabilized polychloroprene: A kinetic study

Thermal oxidation in air at atmospheric pressure, in the 80-140 °C temperature range and in oxygen at 100 °C in the 0.02-3 MPa pressure range, of unvulcanized, unstabilized, unfilled polychloroprene (CR) has been characterized using FTIR and chlorine concentration measurement. The kinetic analysis was focused on double bond consumption. A mechanistic scheme involving unimolecular and bimolecular hydroperoxide decomposition, oxygen addition to alkyl radicals, hydrogen abstraction on allylic methylenes, alkyl and peroxyl additions to double bonds and terminations involving alkyl and peroxy radicals was elaborated. The corresponding rate constants were partly extracted from the literature and partly determined from experimental data using the kinetic model derived from the mechanistic scheme in an inverse approach. Among the specificities of polychloroprene, the following were revealed: The rate of double bond consumption is a hyperbolic function of oxygen pressure that allows a law previously established for the oxidation of saturated substrates to be generalized. CR oxidation is characterized by the absence of an induction period that reveals the instability of hydroperoxides. The kinetic analysis also reveals that peroxyl addition is faster than hydrogen abstraction but slower in CR than in common hydrocarbon polydienes

A physically-based parsimonious hydrological model for flash floods in Mediterranean catchments

A spatially distributed hydrological model, dedicated to flood simulation, is developed on the basis of physical process representation (infiltration, overland flow, channel routing). Estimation of model parameters requires data concerning topography, soil properties, vegetation and land use. Four parameters are calibrated for the entire catchment using one flood event. Model sensitivity to individual parameters is assessed using Monte-Carlo simulations. Results of this sensitivity analysis with a criterion based on the Nash efficiency coefficient and the error of peak time and runoff are used to calibrate the model. This procedure is tested on the Gardon d'Anduze catchment, located in the Mediterranean zone of southern France. A first validation is conducted using three flood events with different hydrometeorological characteristics. This sensitivity analysis along with validation tests illustrates the predictive capability of the model and points out the possible improvements on the model's structure and parameterization for flash flood forecasting, especially in ungauged basins. Concerning the model structure, results show that water transfer through the subsurface zone also contributes to the hydrograph response to an extreme event, especially during the recession period. Maps of soil saturation emphasize the impact of rainfall and soil properties variability on these dynamics. Adding a subsurface flow component in the simulation also greatly impacts the spatial distribution of soil saturation and shows the importance of the drainage network. Measures of such distributed variables would help discriminating between different possible model structures

Role of strain induced crystallization and oxidative crosslinking in fracture properties of rubbers

Tensile properties and crack propagation properties, especially critical strain energy release rate in mode I, GIC, have been used to investigate fracture properties of elastomers and their relationships with microstructure. These investigations were mainly based on a series of comparisons: first, the behaviour of polychloroprene rubber (CR), undergoing stress hardening due to strain induced crystallization (SIC) and oxidative crosslinking (OCL) was compared with that of chlorinated polyethylene (CPE), which undergoes SIC but not OCL, and with a polyurethane based on hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (PU) which undergoes OCL but not SIC. Comparisons were also made on CR between fracture behaviour at ambient temperature, where SIC occurs and at 100°C where there is no SIC. Finally, oxidative crosslinking was used to vary in a continuous way the crosslink density in CR and PU, in order to evaluate the role of crosslinking in fracture behaviour. The results reveal the strong contribution of SIC to fracture strength. Crosslinking, even at low conversion, inhibits SIC which explains the sharp decrease of CR toughness in the early period of exposure to oxidation. When SIC has disappeared, it is possible to appreciate the effect of crosslinking on fracture behaviour. This effect, as evaluated from the density of deformation energy at rupture in tension or from GIC value, is almost negligible while the sample modulus increases regularly as a consequence of crosslinking. It appears that the toughness remains almost constant because it is under the influence of two contradictory phenomena: the negative effect of a reduction of ultimate elongation and the positive effect of a modulus increase. Such behaviour can be explained in terms of heterogeneous distribution of the lengths of elastically active chains. After long exposure, the sample behaviour becomes brittle, very high modulus values indicate that the samples approach, presumably in a heterogeneous way, the glassy state