Qu’apporte l’étude des town meetings à la quête d’une démocratie plus participative et délibérative?

Comme annoncé dans l’introduction, ce numéro spécial de Participations se clôt sur un entretien collectif, mené par Paula Cossart et Andrea Felicetti, rassemblant certains des plus éminents représentants de la recherche sur les town meetings de Nouvelle-Angleterre. Trois ensembles de questions ont été soumis à chaque interviewé, qui y a répondu individuellement par écrit. Hors corrections mineures, le texte des réponses n’a pas été modifié ; mais il a parfois été segmenté de manière à rendre la lecture plus fluide, et à mettre en évidence les interactions entre les différentes perspectives présentes dans ces lignes. La version finale de ce texte a été éditée et approuvée par les chercheurs interrogés

Spectroscopy of A=12 at High Excitation

Supported by the National Science Foundation and Indiana Universit

An analysis of Australia's carbon pollution reduction scheme

The authors review the decision-making since the Labour Government came into office (November 2007). The Australian Government’s ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme’ White Paper (15 December 2008) proposes that an Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (AETS) be implemented in mid-2010. Acknowledging that the scheme is comprehensive, the paper finds that in many cases, Australia will take a softer approach to climate change through the AETS than the European Union ETS(EUETS). The paper assesses key issues in the White Paper such as emissions reduction targets, GHG coverage, sectoral coverage, inclusion of unlimited quantities of offsets from Kyoto international markets and exclusion of deforestation activities

Two classes of ideals determined by integer-valued polynomials

If D is a domain with quotient field K, let Int(D) = {f(X) ∈ K[X] | f(d) ∈ D for every d ∈ D} be the ring of integer-valued polynomials over D. It is well known that the binomial polynomials GX n H = X(X−1)...(X−n+1) n! form a basis of Int(ZZ) as a free ZZ-module and that for every prime integer p, the Fermat polynomials fp(X) = 1 p (Xp − X) are in Int(ZZ). If the domain D contains ZZ, for each nonnegative integer n, set C(n) = {α ∈ K | α GX n H ∈ Int(D)}, and for every prime integer p, set E(p) = {α ∈ K | α · fp(X) ∈ Int(D)} . Each C(n) and E(p) is an ideal of D which we explicitly determine when D is a Dedekind domain

Combined ion and atom trap for low temperature ion-atom physics

We report an experimental apparatus and technique which simultaneously traps ions and cold atoms with spatial overlap. Such an apparatus is motivated by the study of ion-atom processes at temperatures ranging from hot to ultra-cold. This area is a largely unexplored domain of physics with cold trapped atoms. In this article we discuss the general design considerations for combining these two traps and present our experimental setup. The ion trap and atom traps are characterized independently of each other. The simultaneous operation of both is then described and experimental signatures of the effect of the ions and cold-atoms on each other are presented. In conclusion the use of such an instrument for several problems in physics and chemistry is briefly discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figures. Figures Fixe

Photoassociation spectroscopy of cold calcium atoms

Photoassociation spectroscopy experiments on 40Ca atoms close to the dissociation limit 4s4s 1S0 - 4s4p 1P1 are presented. The vibronic spectrum was measured for detunings of the photoassociation laser ranging from 0.6 GHz to 68 GHz with respect to the atomic resonance. In contrast to previous measurements the rotational splitting of the vibrational lines was fully resolved. Full quantum mechanical numerical simulations of the photoassociation spectrum were performed which allowed us to put constraints on the possible range of the calcium scattering length to between 50 a_0 and 300 a_0

Multilayered feed forward Artificial Neural Network model to predict the average summer-monsoon rainfall in India

In the present research, possibility of predicting average summer-monsoon rainfall over India has been analyzed through Artificial Neural Network models. In formulating the Artificial Neural Network based predictive model, three layered networks have been constructed with sigmoid non-linearity. The models under study are different in the number of hidden neurons. After a thorough training and test procedure, neural net with three nodes in the hidden layer is found to be the best predictive model.Comment: 19 pages, 1 table, 3 figure

Utilization and metabolism of palmityl and oleoyl fatty acids and alcohols in caecal enterocytes of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.)

The substitution of fish oil with wax ester-rich calanoid copepod-derived oil in diets for carnivorous fish, such as Atlantic salmon, has previously indicated a lower lipid digestibility. This suggests that the fatty alcohols (FAlc) present in wax esters may be a poorer substrate for intestinal enzymes than the fatty acids (FA) in triacylglycerol, the major lipid in fish oil. The hypothesis tested was that the possible lower utilization of dietary FAlc by salmon enterocytes is at the level of uptake and that subsequent intracellular metabolism was identical to that of FA. A dual-labelled FAlc-FA metabolism assay was employed to determine simultaneous FAlc and FA uptake and relative utilisation in enterocytes isolated from pyloric caeca of Atlantic salmon fed either a diet supplemented with fish oil or wax ester-rich Calanus oil. The diets were fed for 10 weeks before caecal enterocytes from each dietary group were isolated and incubated with equimolar mixtures of either [1-14C]16:0 FA and [9,10(n)-3H]16:0 FAlc, or [1-14C]18:1n-9 FA and [9,10(n)-3H]18:1n-9 FAlc. Uptake was measured after 2 h with relative utilization of labelled FAlc and FA calculated as a percentage of uptake. Differences in uptake were observed, with FA showing higher uptake than FAlc, and 18:1 chains a higher uptake than 16:0. A proportion of unesterified FAlc was possibly recovered in the cells, but the majority of FALc was recovered in lipid classes such as triacylglycerol and phospholipids indicating substantial conversion of FAlc to FA followed by esterification. However, incorporation of FA and FAlc into esterified lipids was higher when derived from FA than from FAlc. Twenty-five to fifty percentage of the absorbed 16:0 FA was recovered in TAG fraction of the enterocytes compared with fifteen to seventy-five percentage of 18:1 FA. Twenty to thirty percentage of the absorbed 16:0 FA was recovered in the PC fraction of the enterocytes compared with only five to fifteen percentage of the 18:1 FA. Less than 15% of the fatty chains taken up by the cells was used for energy production, with significantly higher oxidation of 18:1 in enterocytes from fish fed the fish oil diet compared to the Calanus oil diet. However, overall, dietary copepod oil had little effect on FAlc and FA metabolism. Metabolic modification by elongation and/or desaturation was generally low at 1-5% of uptake. We conclude that our hypothesis was generally proved in that the uptake of FAlc by salmon enterocytes was lower than the uptake of FA and that subsequent intracellular metabolism of FAlc was similar to that of FA. However, unesterified FAlc was possibly recovered in the cells suggesting that the conversion to FA may not be concomitant with uptake

Combined CI+MBPT calculations of energy levels and transition amplitudes in Be, Mg, Ca, and Sr

Configuration interaction (CI) calculations in atoms with two valence electrons, carried out in the V(N-2) Hartree-Fock potential of the core, are corrected for core-valence interactions using many-body perturbation theory (MBPT). Two variants of the mixed CI+MBPT theory are described and applied to obtain energy levels and transition amplitudes for Be, Mg, Ca, and Sr