Les métamorphoses de la souveraineté

Since Jean Bodin, sovereignty has been theorized as an absolute power belonging to the State and to the royal power. Sovereignty in French law is exercised by the Nation-State, because of the unwavering and historical link between the Nation and the State. Today, this statement is amended, since the exercise of national sovereignty only passes through the sovereignty of the State. The Nation and the State are integrated into a fragmented world, on a background of globalization, economic and environmental problems. The Nation continues to exist, despite crises, tensions and communalism. If internally, it continues to be confronted with challenges, its interest lies on the external sphere, where it is compared to other Nations. The State adapts itself, internally by implementing decentralization to be closer to its citizens, and externally, by participating in the construction of the European Union. The State is forced to accept competition. It is both actor and spectator of the evolution of its sovereignty. The construction of the European Union provides a genuine experimentation of shared sovereignty. It implements a division of sovereign powers between the States and the Union, which over time, has become increasingly important, to the point that it now touches the core of the State\u27s sovereign power. The decentralization process involves a diffusion of power in the State. It does not call into question sovereignty as such, but rather its absolute definition. The concept of sovereignty is therefore more relative, and its relevance is challenged. However, if the characterization of the power of the State can no longer fully enter the absolute criteria identified by J. Bodin, this power continues nevertheless to be specific. For the State, the issue remains the conservation of its place in the world, mainly in terms of democratic power, based on national sovereignty

Ultratransparent glass-ceramics: the structure factor and the quenching of the Rayleigh scattering

Glass-ceramics with nanocrystals present a transparency higher than that expected from the theory of Rayleigh scattering. This ultra-transparency is attributed to the spatial correlation of the nanoparticles. The structure factor is calculated for a simple model system, the random sequential addition of equal spheres, at different volume filling factor. The spatial correlation given by the constraint that particles cannot superimpose produces a diffraction peak with a low $S(q)$ in its low-$q$ tail, which is relevant for light scattering. The physical mechanism producing high transparency in glass-ceramics is demonstrated to be the low density fluctuation in the number of scatterers.Comment: 9 pages, 2 fi

Mental impact of Covid-19 among Spanish healthcare workers. A large longitudinal survey.

Aims Longitudinal data on the mental health impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic in healthcare workers is limited. We estimated prevalence, incidence and persistence of probable mental disorders in a cohort of Spanish healthcare workers (Covid-19 waves 1 and 2) -and identified associated risk factors. Methods 8996 healthcare workers evaluated on 5 May–7 September 2020 (baseline) were invited to a second web-based survey (October–December 2020). Major depressive disorder (PHQ-8 ≥ 10), generalised anxiety disorder (GAD-7 ≥ 10), panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder (PCL-5 ≥ 7), and alcohol use disorder (CAGE-AID ≥ 2) were assessed. Distal (pre-pandemic) and proximal (pandemic) risk factors were included. We estimated the incidence of probable mental disorders (among those without disorders at baseline) and persistence (among those with disorders at baseline). Logistic regression of individual-level [odds ratios (OR)] and population-level (population attributable risk proportions) associations were estimated, adjusting by all distal risk factors, health care centre and time of baseline interview. Results 4809 healthcare workers participated at four months follow-up (cooperation rate = 65.7%; mean = 120 days S.D. = 22 days from baseline assessment). Follow-up prevalence of any disorder was 41.5%, (v. 45.4% at baseline, p < 0.001); incidence, 19.7% (S.E. = 1.6) and persistence, 67.7% (S.E. = 2.3). Proximal factors showing significant bivariate-adjusted associations with incidence included: work-related factors [prioritising Covid-19 patients (OR = 1.62)], stress factors [personal health-related stress (OR = 1.61)], interpersonal stress (OR = 1.53) and financial factors [significant income loss (OR = 1.37)]. Risk factors associated with persistence were largely similar. Conclusions Our study indicates that the prevalence of probable mental disorders among Spanish healthcare workers during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was similarly high to that after the first wave. This was in good part due to the persistence of mental disorders detected at the baseline, but with a relevant incidence of about 1 in 5 of HCWs without mental disorders during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. Health-related factors, work-related factors and interpersonal stress are important risks of persistence of mental disorders and of incidence of mental disorders. Adequately addressing these factors might have prevented a considerable amount of mental health impact of the pandemic among this vulnerable population. Addressing health-related stress, work-related factors and interpersonal stress might reduce the prevalence of these disorders substantially. Study registration number: NCT04556565post-print338 K

A new analysis of the WASP-3 system: no evidence for an additional companion

In this work we investigate the problem concerning the presence of additional bodies gravitationally bounded with the WASP-3 system. We present eight new transits of this planet and analyse all the photometric and radial velocity data published so far. We did not observe significant periodicities in the Fourier spectrum of the observed minus calculated (O-C) transit timing and radial velocity diagrams (the highest peak having false-alarm probabilities of 56 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively) or long-term trends. Combining all the available information, we conclude that the radial velocity and transit timing techniques exclude, at 99 per cent confidence limit, any perturber more massive than M \gtrsim 100 M_Earth with periods up to 10 times the period of the inner planet. We also investigate the possible presence of an exomoon on this system and determined that considering the scatter of the O-C transit timing residuals a coplanar exomoon would likely produce detectable transits. This hypothesis is however apparently ruled out by observations conducted by other researchers. In case the orbit of the moon is not coplanar the accuracy of our transit timing and transit duration measurements prevents any significant statement. Interestingly, on the basis of our reanalysis of SOPHIE data we noted that WASP-3 passed from a less active (log R'_hk=-4.95) to a more active (log R'_hk=-4.8) state during the 3 yr monitoring period spanned by the observations. Despite no clear spot crossing has been reported for this system, this analysis claims for a more intensive monitoring of the activity level of this star in order to understand its impact on photometric and radial velocity measurements.Comment: MNRAS accepted (14/08/2012

Four-month incidence of suicidal thoughts and behaviors among healthcare workers after the first wave of the Spain COVID-19 pandemic.

post-print499 K

How persistent are the impacts of logging roads on Central African forest vegetation?

Logging roads can trigger tropical forest degradation by reducing the integrity of the ecosystem and providing access for encroachment. Therefore, road management is crucial in reconciling selective logging and biodiversity conservation. Most logging roads are abandoned after timber harvesting; however, little is known about their long-term impacts on forest vegetation and accessibility, especially in Central Africa. In 11 logging concessions in the Congo Basin, we field-sampled a chronosequence of roads that, judging from satellite images, had been abandoned between 1985 and 2015. We assessed recovery of timber resources, tree diversity and above-ground biomass in three zones: the road track, the road edge (where forest had been cleared during road construction) and the adjacent logged forest. The density of commercial timber species <15 cm d.b.h. was almost three times higher in the road track (321 individuals ha−1) and edge (267) than in the logged adjacent forest (97). Over time, tree species diversity converged to a comparable level between roads and adjacent forests, along with an increase in canopy closure. The average width of forest clearing for road construction was 20 m, covering a total 0·76% of the forest area inside concessions. After 15 years following abandonment, road tracks had recovered 24 Mg ha−1 of above-ground woody biomass, which was 6% of that in the adjacent forest, while road edges had accumulated 167 Mg ha−1 (42%). Ten years after abandonment, roads were no longer penetrable by poachers on motorcycles. An exotic herb species was fully replaced by dominant Marantaceae that have even higher abundance in the adjacent forest. • Synthesis and applications. Our evidence of vegetation recovery suggests that logging roads are mostly transient elements in the forest landscapes. However, given the slow recovery of biomass on abandoned road tracks, we advocate both reducing the width of forest clearing for road construction and reopening old logging roads for future harvests, rather than building new roads in intact forests. Road edges seem suitable for post-logging silviculture which needs to be assisted by removing dominant herbs during the early years after abandonment while the road track is still accessible. (Résumé d'auteur

Orbital and physical properties of planets and their hosts: new insights on planet formation and evolution

We explore the relations between physical and orbital properties of planets and properties of their host stars to identify the main observable signatures of the formation and evolution processes of planetary systems. We use a large sample of FGK dwarf planet hosts with stellar parameters derived in a homogeneous way from the SWEET-Cat database to study the relation between stellar metallicity and position of planets in the period-mass diagram. In the second part we use all the RV-detected planets orbiting FGK stars to explore the role of planet-disk and planet-planet interaction on the evolution of orbital properties of planets with masses above 1MJup. We show that planets orbiting metal-poor stars have longer periods than those in metal-rich systems. This trend is valid for masses at least from 10MEarth to 4MJup. Earth-like planets orbiting metal-rich stars always show shorter periods (fewer than 20 days) than those orbiting metal-poor stars. We also found statistically significant evidence that very high mass giants have on average more eccentric orbits than giant planets with lower mass.Finally, we show that the eccentricity of planets with masses higher than 4MJup tends to be lower for planets with shorter periods. Our results suggest that the planets in the P-MP diagram are evolving differently because of a mechanism that operates over a wide range of planetary masses. This mechanism is stronger or weaker depending on the metallicity of the respective system. One possibility is that planets in metal-poor disks form farther out from their central star and/or they form later and do not have time to migrate as far as the planets in metal-rich systems. The trends and dependencies obtained for very high mass planetary systems suggest that planet-disk interaction is a very important and orbit-shaping mechanism for planets in the high-mass domain. Shortened.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures and 1 table. Accepted for publication in A&

FLICK: developing and running application-specific network services

Data centre networks are increasingly programmable, with application-specific network services proliferating, from custom load-balancers to middleboxes providing caching and aggregation. Developers must currently implement these services using traditional low-level APIs, which neither support natural operations on application data nor provide efficient performance isolation. We describe FLICK, a framework for the programming and execution of application-specific network services on multi-core CPUs. Developers write network services in the FLICK language, which offers high-level processing constructs and application-relevant data types. FLICK programs are translated automatically to efficient, parallel task graphs, implemented in C++ on top of a user-space TCP stack. Task graphs have bounded resource usage at runtime, which means that the graphs of multiple services can execute concurrently without interference using cooperative scheduling. We evaluate FLICK with several services (an HTTP load-balancer, a Memcached router and a Hadoop data aggregator), showing that it achieves good performance while reducing development effort

Constraining planet structure from stellar chemistry: the cases of CoRoT-7, Kepler-10, and Kepler-93

We explore the possibility that the stellar relative abundances of different species can be used to constrain the bulk abundances of known transiting rocky planets. We use high resolution spectra to derive stellar parameters and chemical abundances for Fe, Si, Mg, O, and C in three stars hosting low mass, rocky planets: CoRoT-7, Kepler-10, and Kepler-93. These planets follow the same line along the mass-radius diagram, pointing toward a similar composition. The derived abundance ratios are compared with the solar values. With a simple stoichiometric model, we estimate the iron mass fraction in each planet, assuming stellar composition. We show that in all cases, the iron mass fraction inferred from the mass-radius relationship seems to be in good agreement with the iron abundance derived from the host star's photospheric composition. The results suggest that stellar abundances can be used to add constraints on the composition of orbiting rocky planets.Comment: A&A Letters, in pres