Analyzing Small and Medium-Sized towns in the light of their constraints and opportunities - the case of Nevers (Burgundy - France)

While small and medium-sized towns are profoundly rooted in the national territorial narrative (Delpirou, 2013), their role and position in France are not clearly identified, either in terms of territorial planning policy or in the field of academic research. And yet these "intermediate" spaces (Larmagnac, George-Marcepoil, Aubert, 2012) or spaces of "intermediation" (De Roo, 2005) have specific characteristics that set them apart from the territories that polarize the current prevailing rhetoric, which tends to be focused on either the future of metropolitan spaces or the fate of rural areas. This relative absence of small and medium-sized towns in action and analysis frameworks is in part linked to the difficulty these communities have in establishing a role for themselves. As things stand, the territorial development policies that are implemented in these towns often seek inspiration from those of metropolitan areas: they feature objectives such as establishing a presence in major trade flows and on the globalization stage. And yet these towns are places that are dependent on the historic relationships established with their rural hinterlands, particularly in terms of the range of services they provide, and at the same time embedded in polycentric networks that link them to both small towns and regional centres (with which they enjoy close links) alike. Divided as they are between these diverse, even opposing, dynamics, and between objectives that favour economic efficiency on the one hand and social or territorial equity on the other, small and medium-sized towns struggle to formulate coherent strategies. How can the various imperatives at play be reconciled? This question is all the more pressing in view of the recent economic ups and downs, which have revealed the vulnerabilities of intermediate spaces (Davezies, 2012). The weaknesses of the production sector and more or less latent political and social tensions have come to the fore with vigour, forcing small and medium-sized towns to profoundly redefine their role within economic systems, together with their local policies and development strategies. Against this backdrop, we propose to analyse the ways in which the different tensions evoked manifest themselves in a specific context, namely that of the built-up area of Nevers (60,000 inhabitants) in the west of Burgundy. Following two years of field studies, we have been able to identify the unique and emblematic characteristics of this urban area. Our paper will aim to explain the contradictory forces and the constraints that hinder the formalization and implementation of a territorial development strategy. It will shed light on the obstacles that prevent the urban area from asserting its centrality of the urban area and maintaining its role as the driving force of local dynamics. In parallel, we shall underline the singular opportunities and assets that Nevers offers, and which are likely to encourage the emergence of its own specific mode of development and governance

A multi-formalism approach for model-based dynamic distribution of user interfaces of critical interactive systems.

International audienceEvolution in the context of use requires evolutions in the user interfaces even when they are currently used by operators. User Centered Development promotes reactive answers to this kind of evolutions either by software evolutions through iterative development approaches or at runtime by providing additional information to the operators such as contextual help for instance. This paper proposes a model-based approach to support proactive management of context of use evolutions. By proactive management we mean mechanisms in place to plan and implement evolutions and adaptations of the entire user interface (including behaviour) in a generic way. The approach proposed handles both concentration and distribution of user interfaces requiring both fusion of information into a single UI or fission of information into several ones. This generic model-based approach is exemplified on a safety critical system from space domain. It presents how the new user interfaces can be generated at runtime to provide a new user interface gathering in a single place all the information required to perform the task. These user interfaces have to be generated at runtime as new procedures (i.e. sequences of operations to be executed in a semi-autonomous way) can be defined by operators at any time in order to react to adverse events and to keep the space system in operation. Such contextual, activity-related user interfaces complement the original user interfaces designed for operating the command and control system. The resulting user interface thus corresponds to a distribution of user interfaces in a focus+context way improving usability by increasing both efficiency and effectiveness

Improving modularity of interactive software with the MDPC Architecture

International audienceThe "Model - Display view - Picking view - Controller" model is a refinement of the MVC architecture. It introduces the "Picking View" component, which offloads the need from the controller to analytically compute the picked element. We describe how using the MPDC architecture leads to benefits in terms of modularity and descriptive ability when implementing interactive components. We report on the use of the MDPC architecture in a real application : we effectively measured gains in controller code, which is simpler and more focused

Rapid Task-Models Development Using Sub-models, Sub-routines and Generic Components

International audienceWhilst task models are perceived as critical artifacts within User Centered Design methods, task models development is often considered as a resource and time consuming activity. Structuring techniques can support handling issues such as reuse and scalability and can improve analysts’ productivity and the overall quality of models. In this paper we propose (based on the notation of the HAMSTERS project) several means to structure task models and present how they can be used in order to increase reusability and scalability in task models. Besides sub-models and sub-routines, generic components are described. These mechanisms are duly illustrated within a project for the ground segments of satellite missions. This paper shows, by example, how such elements look like and how both readability and quality of models is improved by their use

Bridging the Gap between a Behavioural Formal Description Technique and User Interface description language: Enhancing ICO with a Graphical User Interface markup language

International audienceIn the last years, User Interface Description Languages (UIDLs) appeared as a suitable solution for developing interactive systems. In order to implement reliable and efficient applications, we propose to employ a formal description technique called ICO (Interactive Cooperative Object) that has been developed to cope with complex behaviours of interactive systems including event-based and multimodal interactions. So far, ICO is able to describe most of the parts of an interactive system, from functional core concerns to fine grain interaction techniques, but, even if it addresses parts of the rendering, it still not has means to describe the effective rendering of such interactive system. This paper presents a solution to overcome this gap using markup languages. A first technique is based on the Java technology called JavaFX and a second technique is based on the emergent UsiXML language for describing user interface components for multi-target platforms. The proposed approach offers a bridge between markup language based descriptions of the user interface components and a robust technique for describing behaviour using ICO modelling. Furthermore, this paper highlights how it is possible to take advantage from both behavioural and markup language description techniques to propose a new model-based approach for prototyping interactive systems. The proposed approach is fully illustrated by a case study using an interactive application embedded into interactive aircraft cockpits

Medial prefrontal cortex neuronal activation and synaptic alterations after stress-induced reinstatement of palatable food seeking: a study using c-fos-GFP transgenic female rats

Relapse to maladaptive eating habits during dieting is often provoked by stress and there is evidence for a role of ovarian hormones in stress responses and feeding. We studied the role of these hormones in stress-induced reinstatement of food seeking and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) neuronal activation in c-fos-GFP transgenic female rats, which express GFP in strongly activated neurons. Food-restricted ovariectomized or sham-operated c-fos-GFP rats were trained to lever-press for palatable food pellets. Subsequently, lever-pressing was extinguished and reinstatement of food seeking and mPFC neuronal activation was assessed after injections of the pharmacological stressor yohimbine (0.5-2 mg/kg) or pellet priming (1-4 noncontingent pellets). Estrous cycle effects on reinstatement were also assessed in wild-type rats. Yohimbine- and pellet-priming-induced reinstatement was associated with Fos and GFP induction in mPFC; both reinstatement and neuronal activation were minimally affected by ovarian hormones in both c-fos-GFP and wild-type rats. c-fos-GFP transgenic rats were then used to assess glutamatergic synaptic alterations within activated GFP-positive and nonactivated GFP-negative mPFC neurons following yohimbine-induced reinstatement of food seeking. This reinstatement was associated with reduced AMPA receptor/NMDA receptor current ratios and increased paired-pulse facilitation in activated GFP-positive but not GFP-negative neurons. While ovarian hormones do not appear to play a role in stress-induced relapse of food seeking in our rat model, this reinstatement was associated with unique synaptic alterations in strongly activated mPFC neurons. Our paper introduces the c-fos-GFP transgenic rat as a new tool to study unique synaptic changes in activated neurons during behavio

Systematic automation of scenario-based testing of user interfaces

Ensuring the effectiveness factor of usability consists in ensuring that the application allows users to reach their goals and perform their tasks. One of the few means for reaching this goal relies on task analysis and proving the compatibility between the interactive application and its task models. Synergistic execution enables the validation of a system against its task model by co-executing the system and the task model and comparing the behavior of the system against what is prescribed in the model. This allows a tester to explore scenarios in order to detect deviations between the two behaviors. Manual exploration of scenarios does not guarantee a good coverage of the analysis. To address this, we resort to model-based testing (MBT) techniques to automatically generate scenarios for automated synergistic execution. To achieve this, we generate, from the task model, scenarios to be co-executed over the task model and the system. During this generation step we explore the possibility of including considerations about user error in the analysis. The automation of the execution of the scenarios closes the process. We illustrate the approach with an example.José Campos acknowledges support from project "NORTE01-0145-FEDER-000016", financed by the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF

Anchoring of proteins to lactic acid bacteria

The anchoring of proteins to the cell surface of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) using genetic techniques is an exciting and emerging research area that holds great promise for a wide variety of biotechnological applications. This paper reviews five different types of anchoring domains that have been explored for their efficiency in attaching hybrid proteins to the cell membrane or cell wall of LAB. The most exploited anchoring regions are those with the LPXTG box that bind the proteins in a covalent way to the cell wall. In recent years, two new modes of cell wall protein anchoring have been studied and these may provide new approaches in surface display. The important progress that is being made with cell surface display of chimaeric proteins in the areas of vaccine development and enzyme- or whole-cell immobilisation is highlighted.