Traduire la religiosité amérindienne

Cet article rend compte de l’épistémè religieux des peuples amérindiens du Nord du Canada en relativisant les concepts les plus fondamentaux de religions plus récentes, telles que le judaïsme, le bouddhisme, le christianisme et l’islam. Cette relativisation est effectuée en contrastant leur conception dualiste du monde avec celle des religions monistes grecque et romaine anciennes. Ce premier examen permet de constater qu’une religion peut parfaitement prôner la non-existence d’un paradis en dehors de l’ici-bas. En comparant ensuite les religions anciennes de la Grèce et de Rome et celles des aborigènes australiens, l’article révèle qu’une conception moniste du monde peut à son tour se concevoir sans l’existence de Dieu, ni même des dieux, demi-dieux et déesses des anciens Grecs. À ce terme, l’article s’ouvre sur une analyse des notions les plus fondamentales de l’épistémè religieux des Athapaskan tutchone du Territoire du Yukon —religion qui, comme celle des Australiens ne reconnaît d’autre monde que l’ici-bas, et aucun dieux ou déesses et encore moins Dieu. Y sont discutées les notions Tutchone d’ombre-âme, de souffle et de yindi’ (intellect), ainsi que leur interaction dans la nature et à travers les rêves — avec les zhäak (puissances, chants guérisseurs) des animaux et de certains phénomènes naturels. La relativité des conceptions religieuses déistes en ressort de façon éclatante.This paper attempts to translate the religious worldview of Northern Canadian First Nation peoples through the relativization of concepts from more recent religions such as Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. These dualist religions are first contrasted with the monistic religious conceptions of the universe found in Ancient Greece and Rome. This initial analysis leads one to recognize that religion may very well proclaim the non-existence of Paradise outside this world. By further comparing the Ancient Greek and Roman monistic religions with those of the Australian Aborigines, this paper argues that a monistic conception of the world may in turn be conceived without the existence of God, gods, goddesses and even half-gods as among the Greeks or the Romans. At this juncture, the paper opens on an analysis of the religious episteme of the Tutchone Athapaskan peoples of the Yukon Territory — a religious episteme which admits the existence of no gods, no goddesses, and a fortiori no God. A discussion is then put forward on Tutchone notions of shadow-souls, breaths, yindi’ (intellect) and the relations of those realities with that of zhäak (powers and healing songs) of animals and other natural phenomena before concluding with a final relativization of religious deistic worldviews.

Developing long-term monitoring of natural areas for a Unesco world heritage site: study case of la Reunion

La Réunion island, in the Mascarenes, has been recognized as a World Heritage site for its Piton, Cirques and Remparts since 2010. The site, coinciding with the core zone of La Réunion National Park, represents 100000 ha, equivalent to 40 % of the island. These dramatic landscapes of rugged terrain, impressive escarpments, forested gorges are dominated by three cliff-rimmed cirques and two volcanoes ― a dormant massif forming the highest peak, Piton des Neiges (3069 m), and in the eastern part of the island lies the very active volcano, the Piton de la Fournaise (2632 m). The island harbours a wide variety of natural habitats (tropical montane cloud forests, subalpine shrublands, lowland forests, dry forest…), now all remnant in the Mascarene archipelago, that host high levels of endemism for both flora and fauna. Thereby, La Réunion is the most significant contributor towards conservation of terrestrial biodiversity in the Mascarene islands. The Divines project (FEDER) aims at developing innovative methods for characterizing and monitoring terrestrial biodiversity in the long term for conservation managers to ensure the protection of this world heritage site. In this poster, a description of the goals, actions and preliminary results of the DIVINES project will be described from gene to ecosystem levels

Dual mode transducers based on cMUTs technology

International audienceMore and more medical ultrasonic applications are strongly interested by the development of dual acoustic sources enable to emit high frequency ultrasound (echographic imaging) and low frequency pressure field (therapeutic ultrasounds). The use of the piezoelectricity to fabricate such device requires overcoming strong technological bottlenecks. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the technology of capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer is able to take up this challenge. To this end a demonstrator was designed and manufactured. The first part of the paper is devoted to the design of the low and high frequency cMUTs. For the low acoustic source, a dedicated time domain model was used, taking into account the nonlinearity of the cMUT. Several simulations were conducted to optimize the emitted pressure field intensity at 1 MHz for a set of diaphragm with different sizes and geometries. The high frequency source was designed on the help of a linear model, where output parameters were central frequency, bandwidth and collapse voltage. The second part of this paper reports a set of characterization results and performances of the fabricated device: electrical impedance, mechanical displacements performed in water and acoustic pressure fields

Superconductivity in TTF[Ni(dmit)2]2 films

We report on the observation of a superconducting transition in a fiber-like film of the TTF[Ni(dmit)2]2 phase electrodeposited on silicon substrates. Superconductivity is evidenced by a broad drop of the resistance below 0.8K under the application of a hydrostatic pressure of 7.7 kbar. Zero resistance is not reached due to the contribution of inter-fiber resistance. Superconductivity is confirmed by the application of a magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the film. The critical field determined on the film is in agreement with that obtained in bulk single crystals

Meningitis Serogroup W135 Outbreak, Burkina Faso, 2002

In 2002, the largest epidemic of Neisseria meningitidis serogroup W135 occurred in Burkina Faso. The highest attack rate was in children <5 years of age. We describe cases from 1 district and evaluate the performance of the Pastorex test, which had good sensitivity (84%) and specificity (89%) compared with culture or PCR