An Optimized Monetary Policy Rule for ToTEM

The authors propose a monetary policy rule for the Terms-of-Trade Economic Model (ToTEM), the Bank of Canada's new projection and policy-analysis model for the Canadian economy. They consider simple instrument rules such as Taylor-type and inflation-forecast-based rules. The proposed rule minimizes a loss function that reflects the assumed preferences of the monetary authority over inflation and output, as well as over the variability of its instrument. The authors also investigate how robust the proposed rule is with respect to a particular realization of shocks that differs from the historical distribution used to find the optimized rule.Economic models; Monetary policy framework; Transmission of monetary policy

A new critical study of photon production in hadronic collisions

In the light of the new prompt photon data collected by PHENIX at RHIC and by D0 at the run II of the Tevatron, we revisit the world prompt photon data, both inclusive and isolated, in hadronic collisions, and compare them with the NLO QCD calculations implemented in the Monte Carlo programme JETPHOX.Comment: 19 pages; 12 figure

Hydrodynamic simulations of metal ablation by femtosecond laser irradiation

Ablation of Cu and Al targets has been performed with 170 fs laser pulses in the intensity range of 10^12-10^14 W/cm^2. We compare the measured removal depth with 1D hydrodynamic simulations. The electron-ion temperature decoupling is taken into account using the standard "two-temperature model". The influence of the early heat transfer by electronic thermal conduction on hydrodynamic material expansion and mechanical behavior is investigated. A good agreement between experimental and numerical matter ablation rates shows the importance of including solid-to-vapor evolution of the metal in the current modeling of the laser matter interaction

Variational assimilation for xenon dynamical forecasts in neutronic using advanced background error covariance matrix modelling

Data assimilation method consists in combining all available pieces of information about a system to obtain optimal estimates of initial states. The different sources of information are weighted according to their accuracy by the means of error covariance matrices. Our purpose here is to evaluate the efficiency of variational data assimilation for the xenon induced oscillations forecasts in nuclear cores. In this paper we focus on the comparison between 3DVAR schemes with optimised background error covariance matrix B and a 4DVAR scheme. Tests were made in twin experiments using a simulation code which implements a mono-dimensional coupled model of xenon dynamics, thermal, and thermal–hydraulic processes. We enlighten the very good efficiency of the 4DVAR scheme as well as good results with the 3DVAR one using a careful multivariate modelling of B

Caractérisation des propriétés acoustiques et élastiques des os en croissance chez l'enfant par méthode ultrasonore

Ce travail a pour objectif de mettre au point une mesure des caractéristiques élastiques de l'os enfant par méthode ultrasonore. Dans la littérature, très peu d'auteurs ont étudié ces caractéristiques sur l'os enfant. Le but de cette étude est de déterminer les paramètres acoustiques des ondes (vitesses et atténuations) et les propriétés élastiques (matrice de rigidité) . Un système de contrôle ultrasonore adapté aux échantillons a été développé. Le dispositif dispose de trois degrés de libertés permettant, via une électronique spécifique, de caractériser les échantillons suivant plusieurs incidences