Cambodge

As ASEAN Chair in 2022, Cambodia navigated through a complex geopolitical environment, with the heightened rivalry between China and the United States, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Myanmar crisis. While 2022 saw the return of tourists and foreign investors, and the economic outlook looks promising for 2023, there are signs that Cambodia is still recovering from the various effects of the covid-19 pandemic. For most Cambodians, 2022 was dominated by inflationary pressures driven by higher global fuel and fertilizer prices, and economic hardships due to growing risks posed by climate change. These issues work as more or less visible tension lines, and contribute to increasing social and economic inequalities at different scales. Within this context, the Government strengthened state control and stepped up its means of oppression against its critics. Ahead of the national elections in 2023, the ruling party won the local elections in June and endorsed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s eldest son as the next prime ministerial candidate

I'm Transforming! Effects of Visual Transitions to Change of Avatar on the Sense of Embodiment in AR

International audienceVirtual avatars are more and more often featured in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications. When embodying a virtual avatar, one may desire to change of appearance over the course of the embodiment. However, switching suddenly from one appearance to another can break the continuity of the user experience and potentially impact the sense of embodiment (SoE), especially when the new appearance is very different. In this paper, we explore how applying smooth visual transitions at the moment of the change can help to maintain the SoE and benefit the general user experience. To address this, we implemented an AR system allowing users to embody a regular-shaped avatar that can be transformed into a muscular one through a visual effect. The avatar’s transformation can be triggered either by the user through physical action (“active” transition), or automatically launched by the system (“passive” transition). We conducted a user study to evaluate the effects of these two types of transformations on the SoE by comparing them to control conditions where there was no visual feedback of the transformation. Our results show that changing the appearance of one’s avatar with an active transition (with visual feedback), compared to a passive transition, helps to maintain the user’s sense of agency, a component of the SoE. They also partially suggest that the Proteus effects experienced during the embodiment were enhanced by these transitions. Therefore, we conclude that visual effects controlled by the user when changing their avatar’s appearance can benefit their experience by preserving the SoE and intensifying the Proteus effects

Evaluation of cataract formation in fish exposed to environmental radiation at Chernobyl and Fukushima

Recent studies apparently finding deleterious effects of radiation exposure on cataract formation in birds and voles living near Chernobyl represent a major challenge to current radiation protection regulations. This study conducted an integrated assessment of radiation exposure on cataractogenesis using the most advanced technologies available to assess the cataract status of lenses extracted from fish caught at both Chernobyl in Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan. It was hypothesised that these novel data would reveal positive correlations between radiation dose and early indicators of cataract formation.The structure, function and optical properties of lenses were analysed from atomic to millimetre length scales. We measured the short-range order of the lens crystallin proteins using Small Angle X-Ray Scattering (SAXS) at both the SPring-8 and DIAMOND synchrotrons, the profile of the graded refractive index generated by these proteins, the epithelial cell density and organisation and finally the focal length of each lens.The results showed no evidence of a difference between the focal length, the epithelial cell densities, the refractive indices, the interference functions and the short-range order of crystallin proteins (X-ray diffraction patterns) in lens from fish exposed to different radiation doses. It could be argued that animals in the natural environment which developed cataract would be more likely, for example, to suffer predation leading to survivor bias. But the cross-length scale study presented here, by evaluating small scale molecular and cellular changes in the lens (pre-cataract formation) significantly mitigates against this issue

Alibaba, un projet d’avenir pour la Wallonie ?

Dans la matinée du mercredi 5 décembre 2018, le gouvernement fédéral vacille. Le Premier ministre doit prendre la parole devant la Chambre, mais ce matin-là, Charles Michel est à l’aéroport de Liège, pour la signature de l’arrivée du géant chinois du commerce en ligne, Alibaba, via sa filiale Cainiao. « Un jour historique », selon lui

L’Asie du Sud-Est 2023 : bilan, enjeux et perspectives

Chaque année, l’Institut de recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine (IRASEC), basé à Bangkok, mobilise une vingtaine de chercheurs et d’experts pour mieux comprendre l’actualité régionale de ce carrefour économique, culturel et religieux, au cœur de l’Indo-Pacifique. Cette collection permet de suivre au fil des ans l’évolution des grands enjeux contemporains de cette région continentale et archipélagique de plus de 680 millions d’habitants, et d’en comprendre les dynamiques d’intégration régionale et de connectivités avec le reste du monde. L’Asie du Sud-Est 2023 propose une analyse synthétique et détaillée des principaux événements politiques et diplomatiques, ainsi que des évolutions économiques, sociales et environnementales de l’année 2022 dans chacun des onze pays de la région. Ce décryptage est complété pour chaque pays par un focus sur deux personnalités de l’année et une actualité marquante en image. L’ouvrage propose également cinq dossiers thématiques qui abordent des sujets traités à l’échelle régionale sud-est asiatique : les ressorts institutionnels de l’approche de santé intégrée One Health, le vieillissement de la population et sa prise en compte par les politiques publiques, les câbles sous-marins au cœur de la connectivité sud-est asiatique, l’aménagement du bassin du Mékong et ses multiples acteurs, et les enjeux politiques et linguistiques des langues transnationales. Des outils pratiques sont également disponibles : une fiche et une chronologie par pays et un cahier des principaux indicateurs démographiques, sociaux, économiques et environnementaux

Margarita de Sossa, Sixteenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain (Mexico)

Margarita de Sossa’s freedom journey was defiant and entrepreneurial. In her early twenties, still enslaved in Portugal, she took possession of her body; after refusing to endure her owner’s sexual demands, he sold her, and she was transported to Mexico. There, she purchased her freedom with money earned as a healer and then conducted an enviable business as an innkeeper. Sossa’s biography provides striking insights into how she conceptualized freedom in terms that included – but was not limited to – legal manumission. Her transatlantic biography offers a rare insight into the life of a free black woman (and former slave) in late sixteenth-century Puebla, who sought to establish various degrees of freedom for herself. Whether she was refusing to acquiesce to an abusive owner, embracing entrepreneurship, marrying, purchasing her own slave property, or later using the courts to petition for divorce. Sossa continued to advocate on her own behalf. Her biography shows that obtaining legal manumission was not always equivalent to independence and autonomy, particularly if married to an abusive husband, or if financial successes inspired the envy of neighbors

Karine Meslin, Les réfugiés du Mékong. Cambodgiens, Laotiens et Vietnamiens en France

Comblant une lacune des études migratoires, la sociologue Karine Meslin explore l’histoire collective des ressortissants d’Asie du Sud-Est en France. Dans la lignée de son travail de thèse mené auprès de réfugiés cambodgiens des Pays-de-la-Loire, elle propose plus précisément de revisiter la situation des individus poussés à l’exil par le contexte politique de leurs pays d’origine – réunification du Vietnam, arrivée au pouvoir du Pathet Lao au Laos et des Khmers rouges au Cambodge. En dévoila..

Incarner un Avatar en Réalité Augmentée : Revue de la Littérature

En raison de la situation sanitaire actuelle (Covid-19), WACAI est reporté du 02 au 04/06/2021International audienceL’objectif de cet article est de passer en revue la littérature ayant pour sujet l’incarnation en réalité augmentée et les systèmes permettant de l’expérimenter. Il commence par préciser ce qu’est un “avatar” dans ce contexte et introduit les principaux concepts de la notion d’incarnation. Il décrit ensuite les travaux de recherche qui ont contribué à mieux la comprendre et à la mettre en place au sein d’un environnement réel. Dans cette partie, les connaissances sur les composantes du sentiment d’incarnation et sur les facteurs techniques qui l’affectent sont exposées ainsi que les technologies et modes de visualisation utilisés pour l’étudier. Pour terminer, cet article résume et discute de ces résultats afin d’offrir des perspectives de recherches

Being an Avatar "for Real": a Survey on Virtual Embodiment in Augmented Reality

International audienceVirtual self-avatars have been increasingly used in Augmented Reality (AR) where one can see virtual content embedded into physical space. However, little is known about the perception of self-avatars in such a context. The possibility that their embodiment could be achieved in a similar way as in Virtual Reality opens the door to numerous applications in education, communication, entertainment, or the medical field. This article aims to review the literature covering the embodiment of virtual self-avatars in AR. Our goal is (i) to guide readers through the different options and challenges linked to the implementation of AR embodiment systems, (ii) to provide a better understanding of AR embodiment perception by classifying the existing knowledge, and (iii) to offer insight on future research topics and trends for AR and avatar research. To do so, we introduce a taxonomy of virtual embodiment experiences by defining a "body avatarization" continuum. The presented knowledge suggests that the sense of embodiment evolves in the same way in AR as in other settings, but this possibility has yet to be fully investigated. We suggest that, whilst it is yet to be well understood, the embodiment of avatars has a promising future in AR and conclude by discussing possible directions for research

Virtual, Real or Mixed: How Surrounding Objects Influence the Sense of Embodiment in Optical See-Through Experiences?

International audienceThis paper studies the sense of embodiment of virtual avatars in Mixed Reality (MR) environments visualized with an Optical See-Through display. We investigated whether the content of the surrounding environment could impact the user’s perception of their avatar, when embodied from a first-person perspective. To do so, we conducted a user study comparing the sense of embodiment toward virtual robot hands in three environment contexts which included progressive quantities of virtual content: real content only, mixed virtual/real content, and virtual content only. Taken together, our results suggest that users tend to accept virtual hands as their own more easily when the environment contains both virtual and real objects (mixed context), allowing them to better merge the two “worlds”. We discuss these results and raise research questions for future work to consider