"Migrants, States, and EU Citizenship's Unfulfilled Promise"

A constant aim of EU citizenship, and indeed the entire project of European integration, has always been to lower barriers and create a common space. If the complete elimination of national borders remains elusive, their importance has been diminished in striking ways by the development of EU citizenship and the ban against nationality based discrimination. Yet the barriers to free movement have been lowered in differential ways. Most citizens of EU member states now enjoy residence, employment and other rights throughout Europe. The extension of some rights to some categories of citizens of some new member states is admittedly sometimes subject to transition periods, but these expire. By contrast, third country nationals -- individuals who do not hold citizenship of one of the member states, even though they may have resided for many years, or even been born in Europe -- remain largely excluded from the benefits of EU citizenship. Various initiatives over the years have opened up limited rights for third country nationals. But the difficulty of enacting these rights, and current moves to more restrictive immigration and naturalization policies, highlight the continuing exclusivity of EU citizenship: immigrants migrate to national polities, and they become European only by virtue of incorporation into national states. This means that EU citizenship's transformative potential remains unrealized.Glendon College (York University

Newborns modulate their crawling in response to their native language but not another language

Human newborns can propel themselves to their mother's breast when positioned skin to skin on her abdomen just after birth. For decades, researchers have considered this primitive crawling behavior a spinal reflex, immune to supra spinal control. However, recent research suggests that neonatal crawling is already responsive to visual and olfactory stimuli processed at a supra spinal level. Here we report that a few hours post birth, French newborns can also modulate their crawling in response to their native language – a source of information that is processed supra-spinally. The crawling patterns of 23 French-born newborns were recorded on video and via an infrared motion capture system during two randomly ordered 2-min trials. The newborns were secured on a mini skateboard to facilitate arm and leg movements during their crawling propulsion. They heard a repetitive sequence of the same sentences either in French, their native language, or in English, a rhythmically different and hence discriminable unfamiliar language, on each trial. In French, compared to English, crawling was enhanced, with significantly more arm and leg steps and significantly more and larger trunk rotations in the cephalo-caudal axis. Moreover, newborns rotated their heads and trunk toward the appropriate loud speaker when hearing French but not English. These preliminary findings suggest that newborn crawling is not a simple stereotyped reflex under spinal control, but a complex pattern that can be modulated in response to higher-order, supra-spinally processed stimuli. The findings open fascinating questions about the range of stimuli to which newborn crawling is responsive

Very high frequency probes for atomic force microscopy with silicon optomechanics

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been constantly supporting nanosciences and nanotechnologies for over 30 years, being present in many fields from condensed matter physics to biology. It enables measuring very weak forces at the nanoscale, thus elucidating interactions at play in fundamental processes. Here we leverage the combined benefits of micro/nanoelectromechanical systems and cavity optomechanics to fabricate a sensor for dynamic mode AFM at a frequency above 100 MHz. This is two decades above the fastest commercial AFM probes, suggesting opportunity for measuring forces at timescales unexplored so far. The fabrication is achieved using very-large scale integration technologies inherited from photonic silicon circuits. The probe’s ring optomechanical cavity is coupled to a 1.55 um laser light and features a 130 MHz mechanical resonance mode with a quality factor of 900 in air. A limit of detection in displacement of 3.10-16 m/sqrt(Hz) is obtained, enabling the detection of the Brownian motion of the probe and paving the way for force sensing experiments in the dynamic mode with a working vibration amplitude in the picometer range. Inserted in a custom AFM instrument embodiment, this optomechanical sensor demonstrates the capacity to perform force-distance measurements and to maintain a constant interaction strength between tip and sample, an essential requirement for AFM applications. Experiments show indeed a stable closed-loop operation with a setpoint of 4 nN/nm for an unprecedented sub-picometer vibration amplitude, where the tip-sample interaction is mediated by a stretched water meniscus

Powering a Commercial Datalogger by Energy Harvesting from Generated Aeroacoustic Noise Powering a Commercial Datalogger by Energy Harvesting from Generated Aeroacoustic Noise

International audienceThis paper reports the experimental demonstration of a wireless sensor node only powered by an aeroacoustic energy harvesting device, meant to be installed on an aircraft outside skin. New results related to the physical characterization of the energy conversion process are presented. Optimized interface electronics has been designed, which allows demonstrating aeroacoustic power generation by supplying a commercial wireless datalogger in conditions representative of an actual flight