A fifteenth-century fencing tournament in Strasburg

An undated paper from the archives of Strasburg contains a set of rules approved by fencing masters for a fencing tournament. The dating of this document is uncertain but could be established around 1470-71. A complete and unpublished transcription will be supplied and completed with a detailed study of the final set of rules but also the subset which received some modifications. Even if some key points remains obscure, it’s possible to find some comparison between this text and the contemporary knightly tournaments or the German Fechtschulen

Organization and Regulation of Fencing in the Realm of France in the Renaissance

During the nineteenth century, many sources were published about the regulation of fencing in Renaissance France. Comparing those sources shows significant though incomplete uniformity in the formalities observed in the training of students of fencing, particularly in the process followed by the neophyte in his passage to mastery of the art of defence

The French staff material from Johann Georg Pasch

Johann Georg Pasch was a very prolific author who published a large number of books during the third quarter of the seventeenth century. Some of these included physical exercises with a long staff and presented by Pasch himself as coming from France. Among all the known editions, four different versions can be isolated; this offers the possibility to study the filiation of the edition process. This study is combined with a textual criticism of the material, beginning with a comprehensive biography from the author and finishing with the questioning of the French origin

A new manuscript of Joachim Meyer (1561)

The manuscript of Joachim Meyer dated 1561 kept in the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, was ignored by specialised bibliographical works on fencing and absent of the secondary literature about fight books. This re-discovery sheds a new light on the story of the composition of the treatise printed in 1570 by this same author. This Research Note briefly presents the manuscript and the perspectives it opens up pending a larger scientific investigation. It contains a description of the manuscript and its content, as well as new findings regarding biographical information on the author. The manuscript images are available as downloadable dataset attached to the article for research purposes, with the kind permission of the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (licensed material). We thank the French Federation for Historical European Martial Arts (FFAMHE) for the financial support

Le Jeu de la Hache: A Critical edition and dating discussion

Twenty-six years after the first edition and translation by Sydney Anglo in 1991 of the anonymous manuscript Le Jeu de la hache , many elements can still be significantly improved. This paper offers a completely new critical edition of the text, and a major revision of the translation. This article includes a detailed glossary as well as notes to discuss the many ambiguous passages in the original text. Finally, the studies of the language, the vocabulary, the dialect, the writing style and the physical document make it possible to refine the dating of the manuscript to the third quarter of the fifteenth century, between 1460 and 1485, and its origin, probably Flanders or Wallonia in the entourage of the dukes of Burgundy

Quantum criticality at the superconductor to insulator transition revealed by specific heat measurements

The superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) is considered an excellent example of a quantum phase transition which is driven by quantum fluctuations at zero temperature. The quantum critical point is characterized by a diverging correlation length and a vanishing energy scale. Low energy fluctuations near quantum criticality may be experimentally detected by specific heat, $c_{\rm p}$, measurements. Here, we use a unique highly sensitive experiment to measure $c_{\rm p}$ of two-dimensional granular Pb films through the SIT. The specific heat shows the usual jump at the mean field superconducting transition temperature $T_{\rm c}^{\rm {mf}}$ marking the onset of Cooper pairs formation. As the film thickness is tuned toward the SIT, $T_{\rm c}^{\rm {mf}}$ is relatively unchanged, while the magnitude of the jump and low temperature specific heat increase significantly. This behaviour is taken as the thermodynamic fingerprint of quantum criticality in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Shear layers in two-stage compound channels investigated with LS-PIV

Flow experiments are conducted in a two-stage compound open-channel, with varying intensity of the velocity difference between the main channel (deep part) and the floodplain (shallower part), using a large-scale free surface PIV technique (LS-PIV). For all investigated flows, a shear layer develops at the interface between main channel and floodplain, characterised by a peak of turbulent shear stress. Yet, two different kinds of shear layer could be identified. The first kind is characterised by the presence of large-scale quasi-periodic structures of Kelvin-Helmholtz type which are growing in downstream direction, whereas the second kind is characterised by smaller-scale vortical structures without quasi-periodicity and which do not grow in downstream direction. The shear parameter λ=(U$_2$−U$_1$)/(U$_2$+U$_1$), where U$_1$ and U$_2$ are defined as the velocities outside the shear layer, is identified as a key parameter to distinguish between these two types of shear layers, supporting a result from Proust et al. (Water Resour Res 53: 3387–3406, 2017). A physical interpretation of the λ-criterion is proposed, based on the inhibiting effect of ambient turbulence (the turbulence level outside the shear layer) on the emergence of Kelvin-Helmholtz structures. Accordingly, the threshold value of λ, above which large-scale structures can develop, is dependent on the level of the ambient turbulence. Despite their very different behaviours, the two types of shear layer have the same efficiency to generate turbulent shear stress for a given velocity difference across the shear layer, except for λ-values close to the threshold value

Interaction between a rough bed and an adjacent smooth bed in open-channel flow

Experiments are conducted in an open-channel flow where half of the section is smooth and the other half consists of an array of cubes, which are either submerged or emergent. A shear layer featuring large-scale Kelvin–Helmholtz structures develops between the two subsections. The flows are first analysed in the framework of the double-averaging method (averaging of the flow both in time and space). Double averaging could be performed thanks to an experimental set-up (three-dimensional, two-component telecentric scanning particle image velocimetry) that allows to measure the velocity field in a large volume, including the interstices between the cubes. A momentum balance performed on the smooth subsection indicates that the loss of momentum towards the rough subsection has the same order of magnitude than the momentum loss through bed friction. This lateral momentum flux occurs nearly exclusively through turbulent shear stress, whereas secondary currents plays a minor role and dispersive shear stress is negligible. A pattern recognition technique is then applied to investigate statistically the large-scale Kelvin–Helmholtz structures that develop in the shear layer. The structures appear to be coherent over the water depth and to be strongly inclined in the vertical, the top part being ahead. The educed coherent structure is responsible by itself for the shape of the velocity profile across the shear layer and for a large part of the turbulence (up to 60 % for the turbulent shear stress). Finally, a coupling is identified between the passage of the Kelvin–Helmholtz structures and the instantaneous wake flow around the cubes at the interface

Status and performance of the THD2 bench in multi-deformable mirror configuration

The architecture of exoplanetary systems is relatively well known inward to 1 AU thanks to indirect techniques, which have allowed characterization of thousands of exoplanet orbits, masses and sometimes radii. The next step is the characterization of exoplanet atmospheres at long period, which requires direct imaging capability. While the characterization of a handful of young giant planets is feasible with dedicated instruments like SPHERE/VLT, GPI/Gemini, SCExAO/Subaru and soon with the coronagraphic capabilities aboard JWST, the spectroscopic study of mature giant planets and lower mass planets (Neptune-like, Super Earths) requires the achievement of better coronagraphic performance. While space-based coronagraph on WFIRST-AFTA might start this study at low spectroscopic resolution, dedicated projects on large space telescope and on the ELT will be required for a more complete spectroscopic study of these faint planets. To prepare these future instruments, we developed a high contrast imaging bench called THD, then THD2 for the upgraded version using multi-DM configuration. The THD2 bench is designed to test and compare coronagraphs as well as focal plane wavefront sensors and wavefront control techniques. It can simulate the beam provided by a space telescope and soon the first stage of adaptive optics behind a ground-based telescope. In this article, we describe in details the THD2 bench and give the results of a recent comparison study of the chromatic behavior for several coronagraph on the THD2.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 Table, AO4ELT 2017 conference proceedin