Towards generic satellite payloads: software radio

Satellite payloads are becoming much more complex with the evolution towards multimedia applications. Moreover satellite lifetime increases while standard and services evolve faster, necessitating a hardware platform that can evolves for not developing new systems on each change. The same problem occurs in terrestrial systems like mobile networks and a foreseen solution is the software defined radio technology. In this paper we describe a way of introducing this concept at satellite level to offer to operators the required flexibility in the system. The digital functions enabling this technology, the hardware components implementing the functions and the reconfiguration processes are detailed. We show that elements of the software radio for satellites exist and that this concept is feasible

Application de la théorie des indices de sélection à des caractères répétés. Exemple de la sélection sur la prolificité chez le porc

International audienc

Continuous Solar Simulator for Concentrator Photovoltaic Systems

A continuous solar simulator for measuring performance of concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems is presented. The illumination system is based on a Xenon lamp, a homogenizer rod, shaping optics and a 30cm diameter collimator. The design optimises the reproduction of the characteristics of direct solar illumination: 32’ divergence, high spatial homogeneity, sun-like spectral distribution, with a maximum intensity of 250W/m². It accommodates pass-band and attenuation filters to tune the beam output. It operates in continuous mode, allowing to investigate CPV thermal aspects as well. The present paper addresses the concept design of the solar simulator and associated performance results

Phenomenology, socio-demographic factors and outcome upon discharge of manic and mixed episodes in hospitalized adolescents

Background: The existence of bipolar disorder type I (BD-I) during adolescence is now clearly established whereas there are still some controversies on BD-II and BD-NOS diagnosis, mainly in Europe (O'Dowd in Br Med J 29, 2006). Little is known on the phenomenology and potential short-term prognosis factors of bipolar episodes in this age population. In particular, very few studies examine this issue on inpatients in the European context of free access to care. Objective: To describe the phenomenology of acute manic and mixed episodes in hospitalized adolescents and to analyse potential predictive factors associated with clinical improvement at discharge and length of hospitalization. Methods: A total of 80 subjects, aged 12–20 years, consecutively hospitalized for a manic or mixed episode. Socio-demographic and clinical data were extracted by reviewing patients' charts. We used a multivariate analysis to evaluate short-term outcome predictors. Results: The sample was characterized by severe impairment, high rates of psychotic features (N = 50, 62.5%), a long duration of stay (mean 80.4 days), and an overall good improvement (86% very much or much improved). Thirty-three (41.3 %) patients had a history of depressive episodes, 13 (16.3%) had manic or brief psychotic episodes but only 3 (3.7%) had a history of attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorders. More manic episodes than mixed episodes were identified in subjects with mental retardation (MR) and in subjects from migrant and/or low socio-economic families. Overall severity and female gender predicted better improvement in GAF scores. Poor insight and the existence of psychotic features predicted longer duration of stay. Conclusion: These results suggest that severe manic and mixed episodes in adolescents with BD-I need prolonged inpatient care to improve and that socio-cultural factors and MR should be examined more closely in youth with BD

An empirical resource for discovering cognitive principles of discourse organisation: the ANNODIS corpus

International audienceThis paper describes the ANNODIS resource, a discourse-level annotated corpus for French. The corpus combines two perspectives on discourse: a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach. The bottom-up view incrementally builds a structure from elementary discourse units, while the top-down view focuses on the selective annotation of multi-level discourse structures. The corpus is composed of texts that are diversified with respect to genre, length and type of discursive organisation. The methodology followed here involves an iterative design of annotation guidelines in order to reach satisfactory inter-annotator agreement levels. This allows us to raise a few issues relevant for the comparison of such complex objects as discourse structures. The corpus also serves as a source of empirical evidence for discourse theories. We present here two first analyses taking advantage of this new annotated corpus --one that tested hypotheses on constraints governing discourse structure, and another that studied the variations in composition and signalling of multi-level discourse structures

Circulating Secretory Phospholipase A2 Activity Predicts Recurrent Events in Patients With Severe Acute Coronary Syndromes

ObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to determine the prognostic value of circulating secretory phospholipase A2 (sPLA2) activity in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS).BackgroundThe plasma level of type IIA sPLA2 is a risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD) and is associated with adverse outcomes in patients with stable CAD. The prognostic impact of sPLA2 in patients with ACS is unknown.MethodsSecretory phospholipase A2 antigen levels and activity were measured in plasma samples of 446 patients with ACS, obtained at the time of enrollment.ResultsBaseline sPLA2 activity was associated with the risk of death and myocardial infarction (MI). The unadjusted rate of death and MI increased in a stepwise fashion with increasing tertiles of sPLA2 activity (p < 0.0001). The association remained significant in the subgroup of patients who had MI with ST-segment elevation (p = 0.014) and the subgroup of patients who had unstable angina or non–ST-segment elevation MI (p < 0.002). After adjustment for clinical and biological variables, the hazard ratios for the combined end point of death or MI in the third tertile of sPLA2 compared with the first and second tertiles was 3.08 (95% confidence interval, 1.37 to 6.91, p = 0.006).ConclusionsA single measurement of plasma sPLA2 activity at the time of enrollment provides strong independent information to predict recurrent events in patients with ACS

ANNODIS : une approche outillée de l'annotation de structures discursives

International audienceThe ANNODIS project has two interconnected objectives: to produce a corpus of texts annotated at discourse-level, and to develop tools for corpus annotation and exploitation. Two sets of annotations are proposed, representing two complementary perspectives on discourse organisation: a bottom-up approach starting from minimal discourse units and building complex structures via a set of discourse relations; a top-down approach envisaging the text as a whole and using pre-identified cues to detect discourse macro-structures. The construction of the corpus goes hand in hand with the development of two interfaces: the first one supports manual annotation of discourse structures, and allows different views of the texts using NLP-based pre-processing; another interface will support the exploitation of the annotations. We present the discourse models and annotation protocols, and the interface which embodies them.Le projet ANNODIS vise la construction d'un corpus de textes annotés au niveau discursif ainsi que le développement d'outils pour l'annotation et l'exploitation de corpus. Les annotations adoptent deux points de vue complémentaires : une perspective ascendante part d'unités de discours minimales pour construire des structures complexes via un jeu de relations de discours ; une perspective descendante aborde le texte dans son entier et se base sur des indices pré-identifiés pour détecter des structures discursives de haut niveau. La construction du corpus est associée à la création de deux interfaces : la première assiste l'annotation manuelle des relations et structures discursives en permettant une visualisation du marquage issu des prétraitements ; une seconde sera destinée à l'exploitation des annotations. Nous présentons les modèles et protocoles d'annotation élaborés pour mettre en œuvre, au travers de l'interface dédiée, la campagne d'annotation