Pourquoi l’économie monétaire arabe n’a pas débouché sur le capitalisme? Une perspective wébérienne

Cet article discute des thèses wébériennes sur les causes de l’apparition du capitalisme uniquement en Occident et pas ailleurs. Au début, Max Weber a insisté sur l’interrelation entre la religion et la stratification sociale. Mais en plus de l’éthique prostestante qui a donné à ses adhérents une nouvelle perspective sur Dieu et sur la vie, Weber a mis de l’avant certains éléments qui ont contribué à la formation d’une pensée rationnelle et d’un comportement socio-économique rationnel. En dépit de sa grande expansion dans la période classique (VIIe-Xe siècle), l’économie monétaire arabe a commencé à s’effriter dès la deuxième moitié du Xe siècle, empêchant ainsi le développement du capitalisme au Machrek arabe. Pour sa part, Weber a essayé d’expliquer ce phénomène dans le cadre de son travail d’étude comparative sur les grandes religions du monde. Mais les thèses wébériennes concernant l’essor du capitalisme s’appliquent-elles adéquatement à l’évolution historique de cette région?This article discusses the Weberian theses on why capitalist forms emerged only in the West and not elsewhere. At first, Max Weber stressed the importance of the interrelation between religion and social stratification. But in addition to the Protestant ethic that gave its adherents a whole new perspective on both God and Life, Weber did put forward a few other elements that contributed to the formation of rational thinking and rational socio-economic behavior. Despite its great expansion in the classical period (7th-10th century), the Arab monetary economy began to crumble in the second half of the 10th century, thus preventing capitalism from taking roots in the Arab Mashreq. On his part, Weber tried to explain this phenomenon in accordance with his comparative work on major religions. But do Weber's theses on the growth capitalism adequately apply to the historical evolution of this region

A trigonometric interpolation approach to mixed-type boundary problems associated with permeameter shape factors

[1] Hydraulic conductivity is a fundamental hydrogeological parameter, whose in situ measurement at a local scale is principally performed through injection tests from screened probes or using impermeable packers in screened wells. The shape factor F [L] is a proportionality constant required to estimate conductivity from observed flow rate to injection head ratios, and it depends on the geometric properties of the flow field. Existing approaches for determination of F are either based on geometric or mathematical simplifications and are limited to particular assumptions about the flow domain's external boundaries. The present work presents a general semianalytical solution to steady state axisymmetric flow problems, where external boundaries may be nearby and of arbitrary combinations of impermeable and constant head type. The inner boundary along the probe or well may consist of an arbitrary number of impermeable and constant head intervals resulting in a mixed-type boundary value problem, for which a novel and direct solution method based on trigonometric interpolation is presented. The approach is applied to generate practical nondimensional charts of F for different field and laboratory situations. Results show that F is affected by less than 5% if a minimum distance of 10 probe or well diameters is kept between the injection screen and a nearby boundary. Similarly, minimum packer lengths of two well diameters are required to avoid increasing F by more than 10%. Furthermore, F is determined for laboratory barrel experiments giving guidelines for achieving equal shape factors as in field situations without nearby boundaries. F for the theoretical case of infinitely short packers is shown to be infinitely large

Automotive Sunscreens

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2008Design an SMA activated automatic sunscreen to deploy in the rear windshield of a 2006 Cadillac CTS.General Motorshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58697/1/me450w08project04_report.pd

An Optimized Lentiviral Vector Efficiently Corrects the Human Sickle Cell Disease Phenotype

Autologous transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells transduced with a lentiviral vector (LV) expressing an anti-sickling HBB variant is a potential treatment for sickle cell disease (SCD). With a clinical trial as our ultimate goal, we generated LV constructs containing an anti-sickling HBB transgene (HBBAS3), a minimal HBB promoter, and different combinations of DNase I hypersensitive sites (HSs) from the locus control region (LCR). Hematopoietic stem progenitor cells (HSPCs) from SCD patients were transduced with LVs containing either HS2 and HS3 (\u3b2-AS3) or HS2, HS3, and HS4 (\u3b2-AS3 HS4). The inclusion of the HS4 element drastically reduced vector titer and infectivity in HSPCs, with negligible improvement of transgene expression. Conversely, the LV containing only HS2 and HS3 was able to efficiently transduce SCD bone marrow and Plerixafor-mobilized HSPCs, with anti-sickling HBB representing up to 3c60% of the total HBB-like chains. The expression of the anti-sickling HBB and the reduced incorporation of the \u3b2S-chain in hemoglobin tetramers allowed up to 50% reduction in the frequency of RBC sickling under hypoxic conditions. Together, these results demonstrate the ability of a high-titer LV to express elevated levels of a potent anti-sickling HBB transgene ameliorating the SCD cell phenotype