Is Law an Economic Contest? French Reactions to the Doing Business World Bank Reports and Economic Analysis of the Law

The economic analysis of law has provoked strong reactions among French academics, in particular since 2004 when the first of the Doing Business reports was published. French jurists have joined forces to expose the methodological limits inherent to these reports, which rated France a long way behind other legal systems allegedly more able to facilitate business. In its first part, this article examines the various reactions to these reports, almost all of which were published in French only. In the second part, the focus is on the position of economic analysis in French law, its role, and, in particular, the impact of the Law and Economics school on comparative law in France. It also takes a look at the studies that followed, especially the legal origins thesis. The article shows that the various approaches are complementary and that economic analysis, without supplanting the traditional comparative approach, has considerable use. At a time when the globalization of business relationships is leading more than ever to a competition between the various national laws, comparatists should include more of this dimension into their field of study. Comparatists can also take a cue from economists on how to improve the relevance and the influence of their research in the public debate

The VODKA sensor: a bio-inspired hyperacute optical position sensing device

International audienceWe have designed and built a simple optical sensor called Vibrating Optical Device for the Kontrol of Autonomous robots (VODKA), that was inspired by the "tremor" eye movements observed in many vertebrate and invertebrate animals. In the initial version presented here, the sensor relies on the repetitive micro-translation of a pair of photoreceptors set behind a small lens, and on the processing designed to locate a target from the two photoreceptor signals. The VODKA sensor, in which retinal micro-scanning movements are performed via a small piezo-bender actuator driven at a frequency of 40Hz, was found to be able to locate a contrasting edge with an outstandingly high resolution 900-fold greater than its static resolution (which is constrained by the interreceptor angle), regardless of the scanning law imposed on the retina. Hyperacuity is thus obtained at a very low cost, thus opening new vistas for the accurate visuo-motor control of robotic platforms. As an example, the sensor was mounted onto a miniature aerial robot that became able to track a moving target accurately by exploiting the robot's uncontrolled random vibrations as the source of its ocular microscanning movement. The simplicity, small size, low mass and low power consumption of this optical sensor make it highly suitable for many applications in the fields of metrology, astronomy, robotics, automotive, and aerospace engineering. The basic operating principle may also shed new light on the whys and wherefores of the tremor eye movements occurring in both animals and humans

A sighted aerial robot with fast gaze and heading stabilization

International audienceAutonomous guidance of Micro-Air Vehicles (MAVs) in unknown environments is a challenging task because these artificial creatures have small aeromechanical time constants, which make them prone to be disturbed by gusts of wind. Flying insects are subject to quite similar kinds of disturbances, yet they navigate swiftly and deftly. Flying insects display highperformance visuo-motor control systems that have stood the test of time. They can therefore teach us how vision can be used for immediate and vital actions. We built a 50-gram tethered aerial demonstrator, called OSCAR II, which manages to keep its gaze steadily fixating a target (a dark edge), in spite of nasty thumps that we deliberately gave to its body with a custom-made "slapping machine". The robot's agile yaw reactions are based on: - a mechanical decoupling of the eye from the body - an active coupling of the robot's heading with its gaze - a Visual Fixation Reflex (VFR) - a Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex (VOR) - an accurate and fast actuator (Voice Coil Motor, VCM) The actuator is a 2.4-gram voice coil motor that is able to rotate the eye with a rise time as small as 12ms, that is, much shorter than the rise time of human oculo-motor saccades. In connection with a micro-rate gyro, this actuator endows the robot with a high performance "vestibulo ocular reflex" that keeps the gaze locked onto the target whatever perturbations in yaw affect the robot's body. Whenever the robot is destabilized (e.g., by a slap applied on one side), the gaze keeps fixating the target, while being the reference to which the robot's heading is servoed. It then takes the robot only 0:6s to realign its heading with its gaze

Steering by Gazing: An Efficient Biomimetic Control Strategy for Visually-guided Micro-Air Vehicles

International audienceOSCAR 2 is a twin-engine aerial demonstrator equipped with a monocular visual system, which manages to keep its gaze and its heading steadily fixed on a target (a dark edge or a bar) in spite of the severe random perturbations applied to its body via a ducted fan. The tethered robot stabilizes its gaze on the basis of two Oculomotor Reflexes (ORs) inspired by studies on animals: - a Visual Fixation Reflex (VFR) - a Vestibulo-ocular Reflex (VOR) One of the key features of this robot is the fact that the eye is decoupled mechanically from the body about the vertical (yaw) axis. To meet the conflicting requirements of high accuracy and fast ocular responses, a miniature (2.4-gram) Voice Coil Motor (VCM) was used, which enables the eye to make a change of orientation within an unusually short rise time (19ms). The robot, which was equipped with a high bandwidth (7Hz) "Vestibulo-Ocular Reflex (VOR)" based on an inertial micro-rate gyro, is capable of accurate visual fixation as long as there is light. The robot is also able to pursue a moving target in the presence of erratic gusts of wind. Here we present the two interdependent control schemes driving the eye in the robot and the robot in space without any knowledge of the robot's angular position. This "steering by gazing" control strategy implemented on this lightweight (100-gram) miniature aerial robot demonstrates the effectiveness of this biomimetic visual/inertial heading control strategy

Insect inspired visual motion sensing and flying robots

International audienceFlying insects excellently master visual motion sensing techniques. They use dedicated motion processing circuits at a low energy and computational costs. Thanks to observations obtained on insect visual guidance, we developed visual motion sensors and bio-inspired autopilots dedicated to flying robots. Optic flow-based visuomotor control systems have been implemented on an increasingly large number of sighted autonomous robots. In this chapter, we present how we designed and constructed local motion sensors and how we implemented bio-inspired visual guidance scheme on-board several micro-aerial vehicles. An hyperacurate sensor in which retinal micro-scanning movements are performed via a small piezo-bender actuator was mounted onto a miniature aerial robot. The OSCAR II robot is able to track a moving target accurately by exploiting the microscan-ning movement imposed to its eye's retina. We also present two interdependent control schemes driving the eye in robot angular position and the robot's body angular position with respect to a visual target but without any knowledge of the robot's orientation in the global frame. This "steering-by-gazing" control strategy, which is implemented on this lightweight (100 g) miniature sighted aerial robot, demonstrates the effectiveness of this biomimetic visual/inertial heading control strategy

Prepare your indicators: Economics imperialism on the shores of law and development

This article explores the influence of economics on the demand for, and deployment of, indicators in the context of the World Bank's investment climate campaign. This campaign is characterised by an emphasis on marketisation, mathematisation and quantification, which are respectively the normative, analytical and empirical approaches of choice in mainstream economics. The article concludes that economics generally, and indicators in particular, have brought a certain discipline and energy to the field of law and development. But this ‘progress’ has often been at the expense of non-economic values and interests, and even of our ability to mourn their loss

A922 Sequential measurement of 1 hour creatinine clearance (1-CRCL) in critically ill patients at risk of acute kidney injury (AKI)

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L'argent dans la tradition catholique

Kerhuel Antoine. L'argent dans la tradition catholique. In: Autres Temps. Cahiers d'éthique sociale et politique. N°75, 2002. pp. 65-71