Les rituels, ça ose tout

Image d’ouverture « Bridge Closed » – Last Rites for a Bridge. Raleigh News and Observer, 1981 Archives de l’État de Caroline du Nord, Raleigh (Creative Commons) Le volume que vous tenez entre les mains – sans autre forme de procès peut-être, sans chichi, sans peut-être vous être préparé un café ou un thé, sans avoir allumé la lampe, remis le fauteuil un rien à sa place, le guéridon, sans vraiment avoir médité vos gestes, en somme sans vous être livré à votre « rituel » de lecteur matutin – ..

from new space to big space how commercial space dream is becoming a reality

Abstract New space is a misleading expression. Many new trends steer the evolution of space activities. Development of commercial space, with start-ups and space ventures, is one of the most visible trends in space. Stimulated by the first initiatives related to space tourism, access to space and the growing use of small satellites, space activities have attracted new entrepreneurs, both start-ups and big web actors with substantial investment capacity. This revolution started in the Silicon Valley and spread worldwide. Start-ups have attracted around $21.8 billion of investment from 2000 to 2018. It is far below the annual institutional budgets but the pace gained momentum since 2006 and specially 2012. Between teenage crisis and age of reason, New space is now old: the first start-ups shall confirm their promises, while new players pop up and try to find their way. It shakes the legacy players but they demonstrate resilience and adaptation capacity. It is now the right time to take stock of the first lessons learnt. Start-ups disrupt the established industry? Instead of a simplistic shortcut, this paper reports an "organisational ecology" study. With a deliberate industrial viewpoint, its ambition is to help understanding complex evolutions in the space ecosystem. The first part of the paper introduces the current ecosystem, its actors, the key trends and the main types of activities. Through facts and figures on technology, investments and markets, the second part reviews how "new space" trends is preparing the advent of big space. The third part summarises lessons from other industries and typical disruption scenarios that could affect space activities. The drivers of New space are discussed in section four. The last part is a foresight exercise, discussing possible evolutions and impacts, threats and opportunities. The decisive role of institutional actors and the « new New space » with more and more space-faring nations is also highlighted. Something big is happening in space. While it is too early to depict the new landscape, this study shows that the future picture will not be black and white but more colourful. The size and the age of the company are less important than agility, mindset, ability to manage risks and to cooperate. A big vision for the future, from entrepreneurs or from nations, is also needed

I remember emotional content better, but I'm struggling to remember who said it!

The joint impact of emotion and production on conversational memory was examined in two experiments where pairs of participants took turns producing verbal information. They were instructed to produce out loud sentences based on either neutral or emotional (Experiment 1: negative; Experiment 2: positive) words. Each participant was then asked to recall as many words as possible (content memory) and to indicate who had produced each word (reality monitoring). The analyses showed that both self-production and emotion boost content memory, although emotion also impairs reality monitoring. This study sheds light on how both factors (emotion and production) may constrain language interaction memory through information saliency

Time, Emotion and the Embodiment of Timing

The past few decades have seen an explosion in studies exploring the effects of emotion on time judgments. The aim of this review is to describe the results of these studies and to look at how they try to explain the time distortions produced by emotion. We begin by examining the findings on time judgments in affective disorders, which allow us to make a clear distinction between the feelings of time distortion that originate from introspection onto subjective personal experience, and the effects of emotion on the basic mechanisms involved in time perception. We then report the results of behavioral studies that have tested the effects of emotions on time perceptions and the temporal processing of different emotional stimuli (e.g. facial expressions, affective pictures or sounds). Finally, we describe our own studies of the embodiment of timing.Overall, the different results on time and emotion suggest that temporal distortions are an indicator of how our brain and body adapt to the dynamic structure of our environment

Electroactive biofilms: new means for electrochemistry

This work demonstrates that electrochemical reactions can be catalysed by the natural biofilms that form on electrode surfaces dipping into drinking water or compost. In drinking water, oxygen reduction was monitored with stainless steel ultra-microelectrodes under constant potential electrolysis at )0.30 V/SCE for 13 days. 16 independent experiments were conducted in drinking water, either pure or with the addition of acetate or dextrose. In most cases, the current increased and reached 1.5–9.5 times the initial current. The current increase was attributed to biofilm forming on the electrode in a similar way to that has been observed in seawater. Epifluorescence microscopy showed that the bacteria size and the biofilm morphology depended on the nutrients added, but no quantitative correlation between biofilm morphology and current was established. In compost, the oxidation process was investigated using a titanium based electrode under constant polarisation in the range 0.10–0.70 V/SCE. It was demonstrated that the indigenous micro-organisms were responsible for the current increase observed after a few days, up to 60 mA m)2. Adding 10 mM acetate to the compost amplified the current density to 145 mA m)2 at 0.50 V/SCE. The study suggests that many natural environments, other than marine sediments, waste waters and seawaters that have been predominantly investigated until now, may be able to produce electrochemically active biofilm

Distribución espacial a gran escala de la megafauna de aguas profundas en fondos arrastrables del Mediterráneo

The large-scale distribution pattern of megafauna communities along the Mediterranean middle slope was explored. The study was conducted between 500 and 800 m depth where deep-water fishery occurs. Although community studies carried out deeper than 500 m are partly available for some geographic areas, few large-scale comparative studies have been carried out. Within the framework of the MEDITS survey programme, we compared the megafauna community structure in ten geographical sub-areas (GSAs) along the Mediterranean coasts. Additionally, the spatial distribution of fishing was analysed using vessel monitoring by satellite information. Overall, the community showed a significant difference between sub-areas, with a decreasing eastward pattern in abundance and biomass. Longitude was the main factor explaining variation among sub-areas (by generalized additive models). However, we found a region which did not follow the general pattern. GSA 6 (northern Spain) showed significantly lower abundance and a different composition structure to the adjacent areas. The decrease in community descriptors (i.e. abundance and biomass) in this area is probably a symptom of population changes induced by intense fishery exploitation. Overall, a combination of environmental variables and human-induced impacts appears to influence the bentho-pelagic communities along the slope areas of the Mediterranean.En este estudio se describe la estructura y patrones de distribución de la comunidad de megafauna que habita en el margen continental medio a lo largo del Mediterráneo. El estudio se realizó entre los 500 y 800 m, coincidiendo espacialmente con las pesquerías de profundidad. A pesar de que se conoce parcialmente la estructura de las comunidades que habitan por debajo de 500 m, existe la necesidad de estudiar estas comunidades a una escala espacial más amplia. Dentro del marco del proyecto internacional MEDITS, se comparó la estructura de las comunidades en diez sub-áreas geográficas (GSAs) a lo largo de las costas mediterráneas. Además se analizó la distribución espacial del esfuerzo pesquero utilizando la información de los datos de seguimiento de buques. En general los resultados mostraron diferencias significativas entre subáreas mostrando un patrón decreciente en los valores de biomasa hacia el este, siendo la longitud el principal factor explicativo del modelo de distribución (GAMs). Sin embargo, encontramos una subárea que no seguía el patrón general, la GSA6 (norte de España). La GSA6 mostró una biomasa y estructura de la comunidad diferente a las áreas adyacentes. La disminución de la biomasa en esta área parece ser un síntoma de los cambios poblaciones causados por la elevada intensidad de pesca en la zona. Los resultados sugieren que la distribución y estructura de las comunidades bento-pelágicas parecen estar moduladas por la combinación de las variables ambientales y los impactos producidos por la actividad humana

Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Spanish Burnout Inventory Among Professionals Across 17 Countries and Regions

Studies on the prevalence of burnout in professionals in service organizations who work in direct contact with the clients or users of the organization have concluded that burnout is a serious health disorder that has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A significant advantage of the Spanish Burnout Inventory (SBI) over other instruments is that it provides a broader conceptualization of burnout by including feelings of guilt as a dimension of burnout to explain its development. However, the measurement invariance of the SBI across countries has not been investigated. The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance of the SBI among professionals across 17 countries and regions in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and in different languages. All the countries showed a good fit to the four-factor model, except the Indian sample, which was excluded from the measurement invariance study. Using the alignment method, it was possible to verify the scalar measurement invariance of the four SBI factors across 15 countries and one Spanish region (16 samples). The comparison of estimated latent means indicates that France is the country with the lowest scores on the Enthusiasm factor and the highest scores on the negative factors (Exhaustion, Indolence, and Guilt). In contrast, the Andean countries, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador, show the highest latent means on the Enthusiasm factor and the lowest means on the negative factors. These results support the validity of the SBI in the countries and regions in Europe and Latin America included in this study

RENEB accident simulation exercise

Purpose: The RENEB accident exercise was carried out in order to train the RENEB participants in coordinating and managing potentially large data sets that would be generated in case of a major radiological event. Materials and methods: Each participant was offered the possibility to activate the network by sending an alerting email about a simulated radiation emergency. The same participant had to collect, compile and report capacity, triage categorization and exposure scenario results obtained from all other participants. The exercise was performed over 27 weeks and involved the network consisting of 28 institutes: 21 RENEB members, four candidates and three non-RENEB partners. Results: The duration of a single exercise never exceeded 10 days, while the response from the assisting laboratories never came later than within half a day. During each week of the exercise, around 4500 samples were reported by all service laboratories (SL) to be examined and 54 scenarios were coherently estimated by all laboratories (the standard deviation from the mean of all SL answers for a given scenario category and a set of data was not larger than 3 patient codes). Conclusions: Each participant received training in both the role of a reference laboratory (activating the network) and of a service laboratory (responding to an activation request). The procedures in the case of radiological event were successfully established and tested