The Gaia satellite: a tool for Emission Line Stars and Hot Stars

The Gaia satellite will be launched at the end of 2011. It will observe at least 1 billion stars, and among them several million emission line stars and hot stars. Gaia will provide parallaxes for each star and spectra for stars till V magnitude equal to 17. After a general description of Gaia, we present the codes and methods, which are currently developed by our team. They will provide automatically the astrophysical parameters and spectral classification for the hot and emission line stars in the Milky Way and other close Local Group galaxies such as the Magellanic Clouds.Comment: SF2A2008, session GAIA, invited tal

4DHumanOutfit: a multi-subject 4D dataset of human motion sequences in varying outfits exhibiting large displacements

This work presents 4DHumanOutfit, a new dataset of densely sampled spatio-temporal 4D human motion data of different actors, outfits and motions. The dataset is designed to contain different actors wearing different outfits while performing different motions in each outfit. In this way, the dataset can be seen as a cube of data containing 4D motion sequences along 3 axes with identity, outfit and motion. This rich dataset has numerous potential applications for the processing and creation of digital humans, e.g. augmented reality, avatar creation and virtual try on. 4DHumanOutfit is released for research purposes at https://kinovis.inria.fr/4dhumanoutfit/. In addition to image data and 4D reconstructions, the dataset includes reference solutions for each axis. We present independent baselines along each axis that demonstrate the value of these reference solutions for evaluation tasks

Profile sellers of bushmeat and evaluation of biomass sold in municipal markets of Brazzaville, Congo

peer reviewedThe consumption of wildlife meat is an important source of animal protein for rural and urban population in Congo. A survey on bushmeat trade was undertaken in 21 municipal markets during four weeks, in Brazzaville. The objective of this study was to define the traders’ profile and to evaluate the quantities of games and meat merchandised on the municipal markets. The study methodology combined two approaches: a quantitative one using a questionnaire as principal tool for collecting data, and a qualitative one associating informal survey methods via individual or group interviews. The results showed that women were the most involved in this trade (52%). Markets trader’s monthly income was estimated at 210,428 (US$420) ± 49,128 (US$98,256) FCFA. On average, the bushmeat traders’ were 39 ± 10 years old and 69% of them attended the two levels of secondary education. During four weeks, 3,711 animal carcasses were recorded on the 21 surveyed markets, representing almost 35,790 kg of biomass. Overall, 35 animal species were identified, including 9 the hunting of which was prohibited. The mammals constituted 93.8% of total number of hunted animals, with three dominant orders as the artiodactyls (49.2%), the rodents (22.6%) and the primates (17.7%), of which the Cephalophus, the Potamochoerus, the Atherurus and the Cercopithecus were the most represented. It was also noticed that trapping, an activity which leads to great losses, becomes very important, followed by be helpful alternatives to meet Congolese demand for bushmeat. For a sustainable management of the Congo’s faunic resources, this study suggests the introduction gun-hunting. The Congo-Ocean Railway and the National Road n°2 were used regularly in the transportation of game, to a 72% level. The district of Niari, Lekoumou, Sangha and Pool were the main sources of supply. At the present time, the meat quantities offered in Brazzaville markets don’t seem to be reduced because hunting areas extend always further, often to the detriment of protected areas. Despite the fact that such business squarely growths and shows evidence of overexploitation, activities promoting game farming and breeding of domestic species, in Brazzaville suburbs, are needed to mitigate the impact of bushmeat trade

GeneFarm, structural and functional annotation of Arabidopsis gene and protein families by a network of experts

Genomic projects heavily depend on genome annotations and are limited by the current deficiencies in the published predictions of gene structure and function. It follows that, improved annotation will allow better data mining of genomes, and more secure planning and design of experiments. The purpose of the GeneFarm project is to obtain homogeneous, reliable, documented and traceable annotations for Arabidopsis nuclear genes and gene products, and to enter them into an added-value database. This re-annotation project is being performed exhaustively on every member of each gene family. Performing a family-wide annotation makes the task easier and more efficient than a gene-by-gene approach since many features obtained for one gene can be extrapolated to some or all the other genes of a family. A complete annotation procedure based on the most efficient prediction tools available is being used by 16 partner laboratories, each contributing annotated families from its field of expertise. A database, named GeneFarm, and an associated user-friendly interface to query the annotations have been developed. More than 3000 genes distributed over 300 families have been annotated and are available at http://genoplante-info.infobiogen.fr/Genefarm/. Furthermore, collaboration with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is underway to integrate the GeneFarm data into the protein knowledgebase Swiss-Pro

GeneFarm, structural and functional annotation of Arabidopsis gene and protein families by a network of experts

Genomic projects heavily depend on genome annotations and are limited by the current deficiencies in the published predictions of gene structure and function. It follows that, improved annotation will allow better data mining of genomes, and more secure planning and design of experiments. The purpose of the GeneFarm project is to obtain homogeneous, reliable, documented and traceable annotations for Arabidopsis nuclear genes and gene products, and to enter them into an added-value database. This re-annotation project is being performed exhaustively on every member of each gene family. Performing a family-wide annotation makes the task easier and more efficient than a gene-by-gene approach since many features obtained for one gene can be extrapolated to some or all the other genes of a family. A complete annotation procedure based on the most efficient prediction tools available is being used by 16 partner laboratories, each contributing annotated families from its field of expertise. A database, named GeneFarm, and an associated user-friendly interface to query the annotations have been developed. More than 3000 genes distributed over 300 families have been annotated and are available at http://genoplante-info.infobiogen.fr/Genefarm/. Furthermore, collaboration with the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is underway to integrate the GeneFarm data into the protein knowledgebase Swiss-Prot