GEOS RR Lyr survey: FM Del is indeed a cepheid

Though FM Del has been considered as a RR Lyr star by Preston et al. in 1959 (following discovery by Huth, 1957), Huth (1960) eventually changed his mind by showing that it is in fact a cepheid of W Vir type of period of 3.95452 days. Various authors since then have considered it as a cepheid indeed, with the exception of Wils et al. (2006) who list this star in their RR Lyr catalog with a period of 0.79688 days. On this basis, FM Del was added to Tarot RR Lyr program. We present here these observations which confirm the cepheid type.Comment: Published in the GEOS circulars (Groupe Europeen d'Observations Stellaires, http://geos.upv.es/

Protocols for Robotic Telescope Networks

Autonomous robotic observatories can use modern communications to receive pertinent information from institutes that generate events to observe (e.g., supernovae, near-earth asteroids, gravitational lensings, and gamma-ray bursts). This paper is addressed to astronomers who are not specialists in computer science. We give explanations of some basic and advanced protocols to receive events and how to implement them in a robotic observatory software. We describe messages such as GCN notices, VOEvents or RTML, and protocols such as CGI, HTTP, SOAP, RSS, and XMPP

The star RR Lyr and the Cepheid variables in the era of the space photometry revolution

The long-term behaviours of the pulsation and Blazhko periods of RR Lyr are investigated by means of Kepler and ground-based observations. The difficulties in detecting additional modes in the Cepheids monitored with CoRoT are discussed.Comment: Conference Proceedings - CoRoT3-KASC7 The Space Photometry Revolution, Toulouse, France, July 6-11 2014. Paper on CoRoT Cepheids submitted to MNRA

Cool carbon stars in the halo and in dwarf galaxies: Halpha, colours, and variabiity

The population of cool carbon (C) stars located far from the galactic plane is probably made of debris of small galaxies such as the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy (Sgr), which are disrupted by the gravitational field of the Galaxy. We aim to know this population better through spectroscopy, 2MASS photometric colours, and variability data. When possible, we compared the halo results to C star populations in the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy, Sgr, and the solar neighbourhood. We first present a few new discoveries of C stars in the halo and in Fornax. The number of spectra of halo C stars is now 125. Forty percent show Halpha in emission. The narrow location in the JHK diagram of the halo C stars is found to differ from that of similar C stars in the above galaxies. The light curves of the Catalina and LINEAR variability databases were exploited to derive the pulsation periods of 66 halo C stars. A few supplementary periods were obtained with the TAROT telescopes. We confirm that the period distribution of the halo strongly resembles that of Fornax, and we found that is it very different from the C stars in the solar neighbourhood. There is a larger proportion of short period Mira/SRa variables in the halo than in Sgr, but the survey for C stars in this dwarf galaxy is not complete, and the study of their variability needs to be continued to investigate the link between Sgr and the cool halo C stars.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures + one appendix of 26 pages; accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Dispositif de contrôle de l'articulation d'une orthèse ou prothèse de membre supérieur ou inférieur

L'invention concerne un mécanisme d'articulation de deux éléments (1,4) d'une orthèse ou d'une prothèse, l'un des éléments (1) étant solidaire de la cuisse d'un sujet, l'autre (4) étant solidaire de ou appartenant à la jambe de ce dernier, caractérisé en ce que qu'il comprend une bague intérieure (6) portée par l'un (1) des éléments et une bague extérieure (2) portée par l'autre élément (4), les bagues étant accouplées à rotation par l'intermédiaire d'un embrayage (7,8,8a) à coincement intercalé entre elles et pourvu d'un moyen de neutralisation (9,10,11) de l'accouplement des deux bagues comportant une roue (9) de commande coopérant par enroulement sans glissement avec au moins un lien (12) d'indexation de la roue dans l'une ou l'autre de deux positions de celle-ci par rapport à l'embrayage

Le droit au secours dans la province du Québec

Fait unique en Amérique du Nord, la législature québécoise inscrit, en 1975, un droit au secours dans le chapitre des libertés et droits fondamentaux de la Charte des droits et libertés de la personne. Dans ce qui suit, nous analysons en détail la portée générale de ce droit fondamental ainsi que l'obligation qu'il entraîne. Nous soumettrons une façon d'harmoniser l'obligation de porter secours de l'article 2 de la Charte avec la législation existante, notamment avec l'article 1053 C.c. Après étude des carences relevées dans l'obligation de porter secours, nous en proposons des amendements concrets.Abstract: Since 1975, the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains a unique fact in North American legislation: the right to be rescued if one's life is in danger. In what follows, we will provide a detailed analysis of the rights and duties deriving from this legislation. We will submit a way of balancing out the obligation to bring succour (in article 2 of the Charter of rights) with the existing legislation, particularly the article 1053 C.c. After close scrutiny of the shortcomings inventoried in this obligation to bring succour, we propose some concrete amendments

La grossesse contractuelle : aspects juridiques et sociaux

Résumé: Lorsque tous les espoirs de procréer naturellement sont perdus, la grossesse contractuelle semble une alternative plus efficace et plus naturelle que l'adoption pour les couples infertiles. Mais le désir de procréer, de se transmettre à travers ses enfants, nous donne-t-il le droit à l'enfant à tout prix? Cet essai étudie le contrat de grossesse en fonction du droit positif québécois. La validité et les enjeux de tels arrangements à tous les niveaux, y compris les intermédiaires professionnels, sont questionnés. A partir des limites normatives, le gouvernement pourrait établir des limites juridiques à la grossesse contractuelle. Il y va de la dignité de la femme et de l'enfant.||Abstract: When infertile couples have lost any hope of having children, surrogacy may seem a more efficient and natural choice than adoption. What is descendants? the price of wishing to procreate, of desiring Is there a right to a child, at any price? This essay analyses the surrogacy contract according to the Quebec Civil Law. It raises the issues of both the legal validity and the social risks as well as the role of the professional intermediary of such agreements. On the basis of normative principles, the government should legislate to limit surrogacy arrangements. The dignity of children and of women are at stake

Investigating the impact of optical selection effects on observed rest frame prompt GRB properties

Measuring gamma-ray burst (GRB) properties in their rest-frame is crucial to understand the physics at work in gamma-ray bursts. This can only be done for GRBs with known redshift. Since redshifts are usually measured from the optical spectrum of the afterglow, correlations between prompt and afterglow emissions may introduce biases in the distribution of rest-frame properties of the prompt emission. Our analysis is based on a sample of 90 GRBs with good optical follow-up and well measured prompt emission. 76 of them have a measure of redshift and 14 have no redshift. We estimate their optical brightness with their R magnitude measured two hours after the trigger and compare the rest frame prompt properties of different classes of GRB afterglow brightness. We find that the optical brightness of GRBs in our sample is mainly driven by their intrinsic afterglow luminosity. We show that GRBs with low and high afterglow optical fluxes have similar Epi , Eiso , Liso , indicating that the rest-frame distributions computed from GRBs with a redshift are not significantly distorted by optical selection effects. However we found that the rest frame T90 distribution is not immune to optical selection effect, which favor the selection of GRBs with longer durations. Finally, we note that GRBs in the upper part of the Epi-Eiso plane have fainter optical afterglows and we show that optical selection effects strongly favor the detection of GRBs with bright afterglows located close or below the best-fit Epi-Eiso relation, whose redshift is easily measurable.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figures, 7 tables. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1503.0276

Dispositif de contrôle de l'articulation d'une orthèse ou prothèse de membre supérieur ou inférieur

L'invention concerne un mécanisme d'articulation de deux éléments (1,4) d'une orthèse ou d'une prothèse, l'un des éléments (1) étant solidaire de la cuisse d'un sujet, l'autre (4) étant solidaire de ou appartenant à la jambe de ce dernier, caractérisé en ce que qu'il comprend une bague intérieure (6) portée par l'un (1) des éléments et une bague extérieure (2) portée par l'autre élément (4), les bagues étant accouplées à rotation par l'intermédiaire d'un embrayage (7,8,8a) à coincement intercalé entre elles et pourvu d'un moyen de neutralisation (9,10,11) de l'accouplement des deux bagues comportant une roue (9) de commande coopérant par enroulement sans glissement avec au moins un lien (12) d'indexation de la roue dans l'une ou l'autre de deux positions de celle-ci par rapport à l'embrayage