International promotion of japanese new no-agestatement Whiskies: exploring swiss consumers’ perception

Japanese Whisky has seen a tremendous jump in popularity in the recent years. Collecting numerous rewards in the first years of the new century, made the spirit coming from the country of the rising sun extremely sought after. So much so that the distilleries in Japan could not keep up with the fast-growing demand coming from outside of the land. Being between a rock and a hard place, they had to make a decision quickly, so they decided to get to the root of the problem, aged Whiskies. Indeed, until now, Japan was known for its excellent aged spirits. However, companies decided to do the unthinkable, since they were not able to produce enough aged bottles they decided to discontinue some and launch the new no-age-statement Whiskies, NAS for short. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that “age is just a number” and that good quality Whisky can be found in these new NAS bottles and, that they actually can surpass the competition coming from the aged ones. We will focus on the Swiss market since we have access more easily to primary data coming from both the demand and the supply side. The discontinuation of the popular aged Whiskies, such as the Hibiki brand, was and still is considered a bold move, especially in a market where “age equals quality”, it was seen crucial to have aged bottles coming from these distilleries, but the results of this paper show the opposite. We can see that the imports of Japanese Whiskies have been increasing tremendously compared to the competition. Furthermore, NAS bottles did better than the aged ones in the different tests we made. According to the surveys conducted with suppliers and distributors of Whisky in Switzerland and the International Trade Centre tools. The demand for Japanese spirit keeps rising even after the decision of stopping the productions of its flagship’s bottles. The future of the Japanese spirit in Switzerland is bright. Thanks to the very unique or luxurious bottle design, people tend to forget the age and simply choose the most appealing bottle of the lot. Therefore, NAS bottles were able to obtain such good results in the tests and, of course, thanks the quality of the spirit itself. People were not able to tell the difference between the aged bottles and the no-age-statement ones

Contribution of ambient vibration recordings (Free-field and buildings) for post-seismic analysis: the case of the Mw 7.3 MARTINIQUE (French lesser ANTILLES) earthquake, november 29, 2007

Following the Mw 7.3 Martinique earthquake, November 29th, 2007, a post-seismic survey was conducted by the Bureau Central Sismologique Français (BCSF) for macroseismic intensities assessment. In addition to the inventories, ambient vibration recordings were performed close to the particularly damaged zones in the free-field and the buildings. The objective of the paper is to show the relevancy of performing ambient vibration recordings for post-earthquake surveys. The analyses of the recordings aim at explaining the variability of the damages through site effects, structure vulnerability or resonance phenomena and to help the characterization of the post-seismic building integrity. In three sites prone to site effects, we suspect damage to be related to a concordance between soil fundamental frequency and building resonance frequency. Besides, the recordings of ambient vibrations at La Trinité hospital before and after the earthquake allow us to quantify the damage due to earthquake in terms of stiffness loss

Aquatic carbon fluxes dampen the overall variation of net ecosystem productivity in the Amazon basin: An analysis of the interannual variability in the boundless carbon cycle

International audienc

Historical and future contributions of inland waters to the Congo Basin carbon balance

International audienceAs the second largest area of contiguous tropical rainforest and second largest river basin in the world, the Congo Basin has a significant role to play in the global carbon (C) cycle. For the present day, it has been shown that a significant proportion of global terrestrial net primary productivity (NPP) is transferred laterally to the land-ocean aquatic continuum (LOAC) as dissolved CO 2 , dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and particulate organic carbon (POC). Whilst the importance of LOAC fluxes in the Congo Basin has been demonstrated for the present day, it is not known to what extent these fluxes have been perturbed historically, how they are likely to change under future climate change and land use scenarios, and in turn what impact these changes might have on the overall C cycle of the basin. Here we apply the ORCHILEAK model to the Congo Basin and estimate that 4 % of terrestrial NPP (NPP = 5800 ± 166 Tg C yr −1) is currently exported from soils and vegetation to inland waters. Further, our results suggest that aquatic C fluxes may have undergone considerable perturbation since 1861 to the present day, with aquatic CO 2 evasion and C export to the coast increasing by 26 % (186±41 to 235 ± 54 Tg C yr −1) and 25 % (12 ± 3 to 15 ± 4 Tg C yr −1), respectively, largely because of rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations. Moreover, under climate scenario RCP6.0 we predict that this perturbation could continue; over the full simulation period (1861-2099), we estimate that aquatic CO 2 evasion and C export to the coast could increase by 79 % and 67 %, respectively. Finally, we show that the proportion of terrestrial NPP lost to the LOAC could increase from approximately 3 % to 5 % from 1861-2099 as a result of increasing atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and climate change. However, our future projections of the Congo Basin C fluxes in particular need to be interpreted with some caution due to model limitations. We discuss these limitations, including the wider challenges associated with applying the current generation of land surface models which ignore nutrient dynamics to make future projections of the tropical C cycle, along with potential next steps

The Student Aerospace Challenge: a european multidisciplinary contest and tertiary educational programme

Inspired by the first successful tests of a private manned spaceplane in 2004, the Student Aerospace Challenge was created in 2006 by the European Astronaut Club and its partners - Dassault Aviation, the European Space Agency, the International Astronautical Federation, Safran and Thales at the time - to allow European university students to explore some aspects of manned suborbital vehicles. Until 2020, the Challenge focused on a local reusable vehicle reaching Mach 3.5 and an altitude of 100 km. Since the 15th edition, to better respond to the evolution of the sector, a second vehicle is proposed: a hypersonic vehicle dedicated to point-to-point transportation taking, for example, less than two hours to travel from Barcelona to Tokyo. Each year, the Steering Committee defines several work packages corresponding to a large variety of study domains realistically related to this type of innovative vehicles like aerodynamic and flight control, structure, reusable propulsion, airworthiness, promotion, market analysis, legal frame & medicine. The introduction of a second vehicle having a quite different mission led the Committee to introduce dedicated topics. In addition, for the current edition, a new work package was proposed to cover potential applications of suborbital flights other than carrying passengers. In function of their background and interest, European University students have the opportunity to work, during several months, on a topic related to one of the work packages and to explore new solutions. Proposed projects should be technically realistic, economically viable and environmentally friendly. Reports and posters issued by student teams are evaluated by the Steering Committee some weeks before the “Suborbital Day”, a dedicated event organised like a mini-symposium, usually on-site where students present orally their projects and meet representatives of the different partners. The best-quoted projects are rewarded with prizes, among them, the ESA Grand Prize offering the winner team the unique opportunity to present their project in an appropriate European space-related event. To date, 216 teams and 998 University students coming from all over Europe already took part in the Student Aerospace Challenge, a motivating and ambitious multidisciplinary educational programme. Their participation allowed them to complement their knowledge, learn new skills and enlarge their network in the space secto

Micro-factory for submerged assembly : Interests and Architectures.

International audienceThe development of new hybrid microsystems needs new technologies which are able to perform assembly of small micro-objects. Now, the current micromanipulation technologies are still unreliable for micro-objects which typical size is down to hundred micrometers. Consequently, the study and the development of innovative artificial micro-object manipulation strategies in these dimensions are particularly relevant. As presented in the literature, micromanipulations are perturbed by the adhesion and surface forces which depend on surrounding mediums. We propose to perform micro-assembly tasks in liquid medium, because adhesion and surface forces applied on submerged microobjects are less important than in air. An overview of the microforces in air and in liquid is presented in this paper. This paper focuses on the architecture of a submerged assembly cell including the definition of stocks, conveyance systems and workstations. Defining the architecture of the submerged assembly cell is indeed a keypoint of the cell design. The stocks and workstations could be for example place in a large unique liquid medium or in a collection of droplets. Transfers of micro-objects in the submerged assembly cell may be obtained by: (i) moving the micro-objects in an unique liquid medium; (ii) moving the micro-objects through the air from one to another liquid medium; (iii) transfert of micro-objects by movement of the liquid bowl. The analysis of the combination of different transfer types allows the construction of the typical architectures of assembly cell for submerged medium