La recherche en sciences sociales au Dahomey et au Bénin depuis les années 1970 : L'hégémonie du paradigme développementiste

Ce texte était à l'origine prévu comme partie de l'introduction au dossier sur "Le Bénin" qui était piloté par les deux auteurs pour la revue "Politique Africaine" (n°59, octobre 1995). Vu l'épaisseur du dossier qui dépassait de loin les normes de la revue, il a été décidé d'enlever cette partie. Comme il nous semble que la situation que nous décrivons pour le Bénin est largement comparable à celle d'autres pays africains, nous reproduisons ce texte ici ‑ dans l'espoir ainsi de motiver une ré..

Nano-porosity in GaSb induced by swift heavy ion irradiation

Nano-porous structures form in GaSb after ion irradiation with 185 MeV Au ions. The porous layer formation is governed by the dominant electronic energy loss at this energy regime. The porous layer morphology differs significantly from that previously reported for low-energy, ion-irradiated GaSb. Prior to the onset of porosity, positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy indicates the formation of small vacancy clusters in single ion impacts, while transmission electron microscopy reveals fragmentation of the GaSb into nanocrystallites embedded in an amorphous matrix. Following this fragmentation process, macroscopic porosity forms, presumably within the amorphous phase.The authors thank the Australian Research Council for support and the staff at the ANU Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility for their continued technical assistance. R.C.E. acknowledges the support from the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. DOE (Grant No. DE-FG02-97ER45656)

An efficient algorithm to calculate intrinsic thermoelectric parameters based on Landauer approach

The Landauer approach provides a conceptually simple way to calculate the intrinsic thermoelectric (TE) parameters of materials from the ballistic to the diffusive transport regime. This method relies on the calculation of the number of propagating modes and the scattering rate for each mode. The modes are calculated from the energy dispersion (E(k)) of the materials which require heavy computation and often supply energy relation on sparse momentum (k) grids. Here an efficient method to calculate the distribution of modes (DOM) from a given E(k) relationship is presented. The main features of this algorithm are, (i) its ability to work on sparse dispersion data, and (ii) creation of an energy grid for the DOM that is almost independent of the dispersion data therefore allowing for efficient and fast calculation of TE parameters. The inclusion of scattering effects is also straight forward. The effect of k-grid sparsity on the compute time for DOM and on the sensitivity of the calculated TE results are provided. The algorithm calculates the TE parameters within 5% accuracy when the K-grid sparsity is increased up to 60% for all the dimensions (3D, 2D and 1D). The time taken for the DOM calculation is strongly influenced by the transverse K density (K perpendicular to transport direction) but is almost independent of the transport K density (along the transport direction). The DOM and TE results from the algorithm are bench-marked with, (i) analytical calculations for parabolic bands, and (ii) realistic electronic and phonon results for $Bi_{2}Te_{3}$.Comment: 16 Figures, 3 Tables, submitted to Journal of Computational electronic

Особенности фразеологического варианта в английском, немецком и шведском языках

Объект исследования – фразеология английского, немецкого и шведского языков, предмет изучения – характер вариантности ФЕ, цель исследования – выявление изоморфизма структурной организации германской фразеологии и вариантности посредством выполнения задач сопоставительного анализа, позволяющего выделить различные типы вариантов ФЕ в каждом из рассматриваемых германских языков

Genome-Wide Identification of Ampicillin Resistance Determinants in Enterococcus faecium

Enterococcus faecium has become a nosocomial pathogen of major importance, causing infections that are difficult to treat owing to its multi-drug resistance. In particular, resistance to the β-lactam antibiotic ampicillin has become ubiquitous among clinical isolates. Mutations in the low-affinity penicillin binding protein PBP5 have previously been shown to be important for ampicillin resistance in E. faecium, but the existence of additional resistance determinants has been suggested. Here, we constructed a high-density transposon mutant library in E. faecium and developed a transposon mutant tracking approach termed Microarray-based Transposon Mapping (M-TraM), leading to the identification of a compendium of E. faecium genes that contribute to ampicillin resistance. These genes are part of the core genome of E. faecium, indicating a high potential for E. faecium to evolve towards β-lactam resistance. To validate the M-TraM results, we adapted a Cre-lox recombination system to construct targeted, markerless mutants in E. faecium. We confirmed the role of four genes in ampicillin resistance by the generation of targeted mutants and further characterized these mutants regarding their resistance to lysozyme. The results revealed that ddcP, a gene predicted to encode a low-molecular-weight penicillin binding protein with D-alanyl-D-alanine carboxypeptidase activity, was essential for high-level ampicillin resistance. Furthermore, deletion of ddcP sensitized E. faecium to lysozyme and abolished membrane-associated D,D-carboxypeptidase activity. This study has led to the development of a broadly applicable platform for functional genomic-based studies in E. faecium, and it provides a new perspective on the genetic basis of ampicillin resistance in this organism

Fit between humanitarian professionals and project requirements: hybrid group decision procedure to reduce uncertainty in decision-making

Choosing the right professional that has to meet indeterminate requirements is a critical aspect in humanitarian development and implementation projects. This paper proposes a hybrid evaluation methodology for some non-governmental organizations enabling them to select the most competent expert who can properly and adequately develop and implement humanitarian projects. This methodology accommodates various stakeholders’ perspectives in satisfying the unique requirements of humanitarian projects that are capable of handling a range of uncertain issues from both stakeholders and project requirements. The criteria weights are calculated using a two-step multi-criteria decision-making method: (1) Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process for the evaluation of the decision maker weights coupled with (2) Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank the alternatives which provide the ability to take into account both quantitative and qualitative evaluations. Sensitivity analysis have been developed and discussed by means of a real case of expert selection problem for a non-profit organisation. The results show that the approach allows a decrease in the uncertainty associated with decision-making, which proves that the approach provides robust solutions in terms of sensitivity analysis