The 1941 miners' strike in northern France: from a dispute over soap to armed resistance

In Northern France in 1941, while under German military occupation, 100,000 miners went on strike from the 27th May to the 9th June. This strike not only cost the German war machine half a million tonnes of coal, but also had long-term consequences for the development of the Resistance in the area. Starting from a dispute with their employers over working conditions, the reality of living under Nazi occupation soon gave the struggle a political dimension, convincing the miners that their social aspirations were inextricably linked to the outcome of the war, thereby preparing the ground for what was to arguably become the most active underground resistance movement in wartime France. In organising a strike to resist the employers' offensive in the mines, rather as they might have done in times of peace, the miners showed everyone, themselves included, that the defeat of Nazi Germany was an essential prerequisite for any social progress. They thereby started a process that built a Resistance movement in the region that everyone had to recognise as second to none. Given the overwhelming level of collaboration amongst the French employing class and the way they used the German authorities to repress their employees, rather in the same way as other groups of employers elsewhere used their own native fascist organisations, the social question cannot be disentangled from the national question. Those who would keep the analysis of the Second World War restricted to a conventional war between two rival power blocks have only understood half the problem. The question of democracy and the struggle against fascism cannot be forgotten as a Nazi German victory would have meant the smashing of all working class organisation and this gave workers on the continent another motivation to resist and also gives the analysis of the war another complication. The collaboration of the employing class gave the Second World War an element of civil war which many commentators wish to forget. The strike gives valuable insights into the process whereby workers in struggle under repressive regimes move from industrial action to the armed struggle and parallels miners' actions in the Ludlow and Harlan County strikes in the USA, the Asturian Miners in 1934 and the Bolivian miners in the 1950s

Disorder-induced melting of the charge order in thin films of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3

We have studied the magnetic-field-induced melting of the charge order in thin films of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 (PCMO) films on SrTiO3 (STO) by X-ray diffraction, magnetization and transport measurement. At small thickness (25 nm) the films are under tensile strain and the low-temperature melting fields are of the order of 20 T or more, comparable to the bulk value. With increasing film thickness the strain relaxes, which leads to a strong decrease of the melting fields. For a film of 150 nm, with in-plane and out-of-plane lattice parameters closer to the bulk value, the melting field has reduced to 4 T at 50 K, with a strong increase in the hysteretic behavior and also an increasing fraction of ferromagnetic material. Strain relaxation by growth on a template of YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) or by post-annealing yields similar results with an even stronger reduction of the melting field. Apparently, strained films behave bulk-like. Relaxation leads to increasing suppression of the CO state, presumably due to atomic scale disorder produced by the relaxation process.Comment: 7 pages, 4 fig

Intense Source of Slow Positrons

We describe a novel design for an intense source of slow positrons based on pair production with a beam of electrons from a 10 MeV accelerator hitting a thin target at a low incidence angle. The positrons are collected with a set of coils adapted to the large production angle. The collection system is designed to inject the positrons in a Greaves-Surko trap [1]. Such a source could be the basis for a series of experiments in fundamental and applied research and would also be a prototype source for industrial applications which concern the field of defect characterization in the nanometer scale.Comment: submitted to N.I.M.

Evaluation of glucocorticoid sensitivity in 697 pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells after overexpression or silencing of MAP Kinase Phosphotase-1

PURPOSE: To determine the effect of reducing MAP kinase phosphatase-1 (MKP-1) levels on cell death induced by glucocorticoid (GC) or hydroxyurea (HU) treatment in the human pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line 697. METHODS: Stable MKP-1 overexpressing transformants of the 697 pre-B ALL cell line were created and tested for sensitivity to the GC triamcinolone acetonide (TA) and HU, and compared to a control 697 cell line containing normal MKP-1 expression levels. Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) were designed to inhibit MKP-1 expression and evaluated for their effect on GC-mediated cell death. RESULTS: MKP-1 overexpression caused a phenotype of partial resistance to HU-induced apoptosis but not to GC-induced apoptosis. Electroporation of siRNAs effectively silenced MKP-1 expression, and increased sensitivity to TA by 9.6±1.9%. CONCLUSIONS: Because MKP-1 protects certain tumor cells from chemotherapy-induced apoptosis, its inhibition is being considered as a possible strategy for combination cancer therapy. However, this study suggests that while MKP-1 inhibition may improve the efficacy of DNA damaging agents, it may have only limited utility in combination with glucocorticoids

Reply to the Comment on "Optimal working conditions for thermoelectric generators with realistic thermal coupling" by S. Su et al

We reply to the comment made by Su et al. on "Optimal working conditions for thermoelectric generators with realistic thermal coupling". In particular we justify the efficiency definition used in the main paper.Comment: 2 page

Estimation de l’incertitude du montant de provisions pour sinisitre a payer: Modele de mack «cas de la saa»

Dans le cadre de l’application de la nouvelle réforme réglementaire de l’assurance «solvabilité II», les organismes assureurs ne peuvent plus se contenter des estimations déterministes des montants de provisions inscrits au passif. Il est aujourd’hui en effet indispensable d’évaluer l’incertitude de ces estimations et ainsi de quantifier le risque lié à celles-ci. Ces nouvelles exigences impliquent la mise en place de modèles de provisionnement stochastiques.L’objectif de cet article est de mettre en avant les modèles d’évaluation du montant de provisions pour sinistre à payer, et d’expliquer l’efficacité des modèles stochastiques, et voir dans quelle mesure l’application de ces méthodes par les « compagnies algériennes d’assurance» pourrait apporter plus de précision sur l’estimation de ses provisions.Mots-clés: Bootstrap, Chain-Ladder, Mack, Modèles linéaires généralisés (GLM), Provisions sinistres à payer (PSAP), « Solvabilité II », Triangle de liquidatio