Sociétés de géographie et impérialisme suisse au 19e siècle: un tour d’horizon et deux exemples représentatifs

In the second half of the 19th century, the world is explored and mapped by European colonial powers bent on expanding their political and economic influence overseas. At the heart of such «geographical» activities there are geographical societies, also known as private clubs, where businessmen, politicians, military officers and intellectuals get together to discuss official or unofficial possibilities for national expansion. Despite the lack of a colonial empire, Switzerland is among the first countries in the world to found geographical societies. In what ways do these societies allow us to identify the presence of Swiss imperialism? This issue is discussed in this article

Geografia associativa e imperialismo svizzero. Il caso di Ginevra (1858-1914)

ASSOCIATIVE GEOGRAPHY AND SWISS IMPERIALISM. THE EXAMPLE OF GENEVA (1858-1914) − This article is about geographical society of Geneva and its involvement in the 19th century colonial imperialism. Through this society, Swiss bourgeoisie takes part in the exploration and colonization of the world. Is this participation a sign of Swiss imperialism? This issue will be at the heart of this study

Current Localization, Non-Uniform Heating, and Failures of ZnO Varistors

Metal oxide varistors have highly nonlinear electrical characteristics and are widely used as devices for over-voltage protection. Varistor applications range from the use of small varistors to protect delicate electronic components to the use of much larger varistors for the protection of electrical-power-distribution systems. Non-uniform heating of ZnO varistors by electrical pulses occurs on three different spatial scales: (1) microscopic (sub-micron), (2) intermediate (sub-millimeter), and (3) macroscopic (of order of millimeters or centimeters). Heating on these scales has different origins and different consequences for device failure in large and small varistors. On the microscopic scale, the heating localizes in strings of tiny hot spots. They occur at the grain boundaries in a conducting path where the potential is dropped across Schottky-type barriers. These observations are interpreted by applying transport theory and using computer simulations. It is shown that the heat transfer on a scale of the grain size is too fast to permit temperature differences that could cause a varistor failure. On an intermediate size scale, the heating is most intense along localized electrical paths. The high electrical conductivity of these paths has microstructural origin, i.e., it derives from the statistical fluctuations of grain sizes and grain boundary properties. Current localization on the intermediate size scale appears to be significant only in small varistors. On the macroscopic scale, current localization in large blocks can be attributed to inhomogeneities in the electrical properties which originate during ceramic processing. The resulting non-uniform heating is shown to cause destructive failures of large varistor blocks

Vortex methods for incompressible flow simulations on the GPU

We present a remeshed vortex particle method for incompressible flow simulations on GPUs. The particles are convected in a Lagrangian frame and are periodically reinitialized on a regular grid. The grid is used in addition to solve for the velocity-vorticity Poisson equation and for the computation of the diffusion operators. In the present GPU implementation of particle methods, the remeshing and the solution of the Poisson equation rely on fast and efficient mesh-particle interpolations. We demonstrate that particle remeshing introduces minimal artificial dissipation, enables a faster computation of differential operators on particles over grid-free techniques and can be efficiently implemented on GPUs. The results demonstrate that, contrary to common practice in particle simulations, it is necessary to remesh the (vortex) particle locations in order to solve accurately the equations they discretize, without compromising the speed of the method. The present method leads to simulations of incompressible vortical flows on GPUs with unprecedented accuracy and efficienc

La philanthropie coloniale des sociétés suisses de géographie au Congo (1876–1908)

Leopold II, King of the Belgians, founded the Congo Free State in 1885 after almost ten years of political preparations in Europe and explorations in Central Africa. Swiss bourgeoisie took part in the creation of the then-to-be Belgian colony by the participation of national geographical societies in the International African Association (founded in 1876). Although Swiss partnership to Leopold II’s project pretended to help the fight against slavery, quite different were actually the reasons for the Swiss bourgeoisie to support the Belgian King financially, legally and intellectually. This article analyses the origins and the challenges of colonial philanthropy applied by Swiss geographical societies during Congo’s Leopoldian colonization

Les origines coloniales de l’Association des sociétés suisses de géographie (1870-1880)

(English) The international development of the geographical science in the 19th century accompanied the expansionist ambitions of the European bourgeoisie. In all this, Switzerland was no exception. This article reconstructs the origins of the Association of Swiss Geographical Societies (1881) showing their links with the colonial imperialism. (Deutsch) Auf die Expansionsbestrebungen der europäischen Bourgeoisie folgt im 19. Jahrhundert die internationale Entwicklung der geografischen Wissenschaften. Die Schweiz ist in diesem Zusammenhang keine Ausnahme. Der vorliegende Artikel rekonstruiert die Ursprünge des Verbandes Schweizerischer Geografischer Gesellschaften (1881) und zeigt deren Verknüpfung mit dem kolonialen Imperialismus auf

Une enquête historique sur "L'Afrique explorée et civilisée" (1879- 1894), la revue de Gustave Moynier

L'article se penche sur l'histoire de L'Afrique explorée et civilisée, revue internationale de géographie coloniale fondée à Genève par Gustave Moynier, à la lumière des dernières découvertes archivistiques. Une attention particulière sera portée sur les origines de la revue, reliées au projet colonial de Léopold II, roi des Belges, en Afrique centrale, mais aussi sur d'autres aspects, comme l'analyse allégorique de son image de couverture. The article examines the history of "L'Afrique explorée et civilisée", an international journal of colonial geography founded in Geneva by Gustave Moynier, in the light of the latest archival discoveries. Particular attention will be given to the origins of the journal, linked to the colonial project of Leopold II, King of the Belgians, in Central Africa, but also to other aspects, including the allegorical analysis of its cover image

Quantifying invasion risk: the relationship between establishment probability and founding population size

1. Invasive species usually start out as small colonizing populations that are prone to extinction through demographic stochasticity and Allee effects, leading to a positive relationship between establishment probability and founding population size. However, establishment success also depends on the environment to which species are introduced: for a given species, some locations will be more favourable for establishment than others.2. We present equations for modelling the expected relationship between establishment probability and founding population size when demographic stochasticity, Allee effects and, for the first time, environmental heterogeneity are operating.3. We show that heterogeneity in environmental conditions can change the shape of the relationship between establishment probability and founding population size through a disproportionate decline in the probability of establishment in larger populations, the opposite of an Allee effect. This outcome is likely in most empirical data sets relating founding population size to establishment probability, and highlights that unfavourable environments are often the major cause of establishment failures. It also emphasizes the insights that can be gained from applying models with a theoretical underpinning

Fake News, Immigration, and Opinion Polarization

Nowadays, it is hard to venture online without coming across a heated discussion over “Fake News”; as a result, people are finding hardE times moving through an entirely new distorted era of misinfor-mation and biased news. In this paper, we investigate the effect of fake news on people’s opinion polarization on a hot topic – such as immigration – through an experiment. We show that “Backfire Effect” and a cognitive bias we named “Validation Myopia” occur when people read Fake news in-dependently if they believe them or not. In addition, we show how Fake news affect opinion polariza-tion and we provide evidence that the Backfire Effect has a higher magnitude than its counterpart (i.e. validation myopia). Finally we show that the emotion-driven effect of fake news can be neutralized thanks to ex-ante signaling of the inaccuracy of fake news