Weather and Climate Research at the Kentucky Climate Center based on Mesonet Observations

The Kentucky Mesonet is a great asset for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in a multitude of ways, from real-time storm monitoring to building a detailed climate record. A detailed climate record is essential as causality between observations and extreme weather can be identified, making it a great tool in an evolving climate system. The climate record being developed at the 75+ Kentucky Mesonet observation stations consists of approximately 75 indices that reflect frequency, extremes, range, duration, trends of precipitation, droughts, and extreme temperatures. Calculations are done for daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, bi-annual, and annual aggregation periods. Tools will also be developed based on interactions with policymakers and stakeholders as they will be making decisions today that impact the region’s main economic sectors (e.g., water, energy, transportation, etc.) as infrastructure erected today will likely be in place when the climate is different than at present. We will present the list of indices and explain how they add to our understating of Kentucky’s evolving, yet distinct, climate systems (e.g., Appalachia in the east, the Southern Mississippi River Valley in the west, subtropical in the south and continental humid in the north). Additionally, a discussion on the use of real-time weather observation from the Kentucky Mesonet on traffic accident location, causality, and severity will be addressed. This will aid in the future development of infrastructure under an evolving climate. To accomplish the objectives, the unstructured grid established by the ~80 Mesonet sites across the state are interpolated to a 500-meter cartesian grid using physical principles and remotely sensed data (e.g., elevation, surface roughness, and albedo). This new data set will then provide accurate details on weather conditions and the time and location of an accident. Results will be provided for 11 major interstates across the Commonwealth

Optimization of star research algorithm for esmo star tracker

This paper explains in detail the design and the development of a software research star algorithm, embedded on a star tracker, by the ISAE/SUPAERO team. This research algorithm is inspired by musical techniques. This work will be carried out as part of the ESMO (European Student Moon Orbiter) project by different teams of students and professors from ISAE/SUPAERO (Institut Supe ́rieur de l’Ae ́ronautique et de l’Espace). Till today, the system engineering studies have been completed and the work that will be presented will concern the algorithmic and the embedded software development. The physical architecture of the sensor relies on APS 750 developed by the CIMI laboratory of ISAE/SUPAERO. First, a star research algorithm based on the image acquired in lost-in-space mode (one of the star tracker opera- tional modes) will be presented; it is inspired by techniques of musical recognition with the help of the correlation of digital signature (hash) with those stored in databases. The musical recognition principle is based on finger- printing, i.e. the extraction of points of interest in the studied signal. In the musical context, the signal spectrogram is used to identify these points. Applying this technique in image processing domain requires an equivalent tool to spectrogram. Those points of interest create a hash and are used to efficiently search within the database pre- viously sorted in order to be compared. The main goals of this research algorithm are to minimise the number of steps in the computations in order to deliver information at a higher frequency and to increase the computation robustness against the different possible disturbances

Une Esthétique de la complexité

L’auteur se propose d’utiliser la catégorie esthétique du kitsch pour rendre compte du style d’écriture des auteurs rattachés à la complexité, en l’occurrence Edgar Morin et Jean-Louis Le Moigne. Le constat se prolonge en analyse quand il s’agit d’en envisager les répercussions sur la teneur philosophique des systèmes conceptuels proposés.The author uses the aesthetic category of « kitsch » in order to exhibit the writing style of authors belonging to the wave of complexity, especially Edgar Morin and Jean-Louis Le Moigne. This statement turns into analyse as we take the consequences on philosophical content of these conceptual systems into account

Du management.

Le management constituerait-il un nouveau mode de la sécularisation occidentale ? Voilà une thèse pour le moins surprenante : que les concepts politiques soient un héritage désacralisé de catégories théologiques, nos modernes oreilles ont pu s’y accoutumer ; mais le management ! C’est pourtant bien la thèse que prétend explorer et approfondir le présent article, en partant du concept d’organisation, indissociable des pratiques de management, pour remonter à l’interprétation théologique qu’en donne Norbert Wiener, le fondateur de la cybernétique.Is management a new method of western secularization? What an amazing argument: we already knew that political concepts are theological categories that lost their sacred aura; but management! This, however, is the thesis this paper explores in depth, starting from the very concept of organization, which is bound with management practices, then working back to its theological interpretation by Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics

Introduction: penser le management ?

En 1911, dans ses Principes du Management Scientifique, Frederick Winslow Taylor notait que toutes les activités humaines pouvaient se prêter au management . Max Weber observait, quant à lui, que la « cage de fer » bureaucratique concerne tout autant les entreprises privées que l’armée, les hôpitaux et les partis politiques . Ce qu’annonçaient le fondateur du management et le sociologue au début du xxe siècle, se réalise et même s’accomplit sous nos yeux, un siècle plus tard : la révolution m..

Algorithme, management, crise : le triptyque cybernétique du gouvernement de l’exception permanente

Michel Foucault a montré comment la compréhension du pouvoir et de ses mécanismes ne pouvait se limiter à la seule souveraineté ; c’est la raison pour laquelle il introduisit la notion de biopouvoir, dans sa double dimension de discipline et de biopolitique. Agamben s’inscrit dans les pas du philosophe français mais opère un retournement : il montre en effet que la gouvernementalité repose moins sur la norme que sur l’exception. Notre article vise à poursuivre cet effort en établissant que la cybernétique constitue la matrice du gouvernement contemporain de l’exception permanente. Sont alors passées en revue les trois modalités de ce nouveau pouvoir : le gouvernement algorithmique, le gouvernement managérial, le gouvernement critique.Michel Foucault showed that the understanding of power and of its mechanisms cannot be restricted to sovereignty; that’s why he introduced the notion of biopower, in its double dimension of discipline and biopolitcs. Agamben continues the French philoso-pher’s work, but proceeds to a turnaround: indeed, he establishes that governmentality is less based on norms than on exception. Our article aims at comple-ting this effort by showing that cybernetics constitutes the matrix of contemporary government of permanent exception. We then go through the three forms of that new power: algorithmic government, managerial government and critical government

D’univocité en rétroaction : la critique de la cybernétique dans la pensée de Heidegger

Le concept d’information occupe une place importante dans l’œuvre du philosophe Martin Heidegger ; il s’agit alors pour nous de saisir cette opportunité pour mieux comprendre le mouvement de dé-médiation lié à l’expansion de la logique algorithmique. Nous observerons comment les fondements logiques de l’information liés à l’idéal d’univocité se trouvent convertis en boucle de rétroaction par la cybernétique : alors la régulation et le pilotage peuvent se substituer à l’institution comme nouvelle forme de gouvernementalité.The concept of information is central to philosopher Martin Heidegger’s work; we take advantage of this opportunity in order to better understand the movement of demediation in relation to the expansion of algorithmic logic. We observe how the logical foundations of information and the desire for unambiguous meaning are converted into the feedback loop by cybernetics, allowing regulation and management to replace institutions as a new form of governmentality.El concepto de información ocupa un lugar fundamental en la obra del filósofo Martin Heidegger. Esto permite interpretar mejor el movimiento de de-mediación que la expansión de la lógica algorítmica implica. Se investiga el proceso a través del cual los fundamentos lógicos de la información relacionados con el ideal de univocidad se convierten en un bucle de retroalimentación cibernético: de esta forma, la regulación y la dirección pueden sustituir a la institución como una nueva forma de gobernanza

Le mouvement panorganisationnel : une métaphysique du Management

Le mouvement panorganisationnel traduit le destin de notre monde dans le chiasme du devenir-monde des organisations et du devenir-organisation du monde. Il consacre la domination de l’époque historiale de la cybernétique qui fut précisément le lieu de thématisation de la catégorie de l’organisation. Sans que nous n’y prenions garde, la clôture de la métaphysique s’opère sous nos yeux dans le management.The panorganizational move means the fate of our world in the chiasmus of the global future of the organizations and the future organization of the globe. It sanctifies the domination of the historial epoch of cybernetics that elaborates the category of organization. We don’t paysage enough heed to it, but metaphysics comes currently to its end in management

The formation of passive margins: constraints from the crustal structure and segmentation of the deep Galicia margin, Spain

The crustal structure of the Mesozoic deep Galicia margin and adjacent ocean-continent boundary (OCB) was investigated by seismic reflection (including pre-stack depth migration and attenuation of seismic waves with time). The seismic data were calibrated using numerous geological samples recovered by drilling and/or by diving with submersible. The N-S trending margin and OCB are divided in two distinct segments by NE-SW synrift transverse faults locally reactivated and inverted by Cenozoic tectonics. The transverse faulting and OCB segmentation result from crustal stretching probably in a NE-SW direction during the rifting stage of the margin in early Cretaceous times. The Cenozoic tectonics are related to Iberia-Eurasia convergence in Palaeogene times (Pyrenean event). In both segments of the deep margin, the seismic crust is made of four horizontal layers: (1) two sedimentary layers corresponding to post- and syn-rift sequences, where velocity ranges from 1.9 to 3.5 km s−1, and where the Q factor is low, the two sedimentary layers being separated by a strong reflector marking the break-up unconformity; (2) a faulted layer, where velocity ranges from 4.0 to 5.2 km s−1, and where the Q factor is high. This layer corresponds to the margin tilted blocks, where continental basement and lithified pre-rift sediments were sampled; (3) the lower seismic crust, where the velocity (7 km s−1 and more) and the Q factor are the highest. This layer, probably made of partly serpentinized peridotite, is roofed by a strong S-S’ seismic reflector, and resting on a scattering, poorly reflective Moho. A composite model, based both on analogue modelling of lithosphere stretching and on available structural data, accounts for the present structure of the margin and OCB. Stretching and thinning of the lithosphere are accommodated by boudinage of the brittle levels (upper crust and uppermost mantle) and by simple shear in the ductile levels (lower crust and upper lithospheric mantle). Two main conjugate shear zones may account for the observations and seismic data: one (SZ1), located in the lower ductile continental crust, is synthetic to the tilting sense of the margin crustal blocks; another (SZ2), located in the ductile mantle, accounts for the deformation of mantle terranes and their final unroofing and exposure at the continental rift axis (now the OCB). The S-S′ reflector is interpreted as the seismic signature of the tectonic contact between crustal terranes and mantle rocks partly transformed into serpentinite by syn-rift hydrothermal activity. It is probably related to both shear zones SZ1 and SZ2. The seismic Moho is lower within the lithosphere, at the fresh-serpentinized peridotite boundary