Success in Developing Regions: World Records Evolution through a Geopolitical Prism

A previous analysis of World Records (WR) has revealed the potential limits of human physiology through athletes' personal commitment. The impact of political factors on sports has only been studied through Olympic medals and results. Here we studied 2876 WR from 63 nations in four summer disciplines. We propose three new indicators and show the impact of historical, geographical and economical factors on the regional WR evolution. The south-eastward path of weighted annual barycenter (i.e. the average of country coordinates weighting by the WR number) shows the emergence of East Africa and China in WR archives. Home WR ratio decreased from 79.9% before the second World War to 23.3% in 2008, underlining sports globalization. Annual Cumulative Proportions (ACP, i.e. the cumulative sum of the WR annual rate) highlight the regional rates of progression. For all regions, the mean slope of ACP during the Olympic era is 0.0101, with a maximum between 1950 and 1989 (0.0156). For European countries, this indicator reflects major historical events (slowdown for western countries after 1945, slowdown for eastern countries after 1990). Mean North-American ACP slope is 0.0029 over the century with an acceleration between 1950 and 1989 at 0.0046. Russia takes off in 1935 and slows down in 1988 (0.0038). For Eastern Europe, maximal progression is seen between 1970 and 1989 (0.0045). China starts in 1979 with a maximum between 1990 and 2008 (0.0021), while other regions have largely declined (mean ACP slope for all other countries  = 0.0011). A similar trend is observed for the evolution of the 10 best performers. The national analysis of WR reveals a precise and quantifiable link between the sport performances of a country, its historical or geopolitical context, and its steps of development

Athlete Atypicity on the Edge of Human Achievement: Performances Stagnate after the Last Peak, in 1988

The growth law for the development of top athletes performances remains unknown in quantifiable sport events. Here we present a growth model for 41351 best performers from 70 track and field (T&F) and swimming events and detail their characteristics over the modern Olympic era. We show that 64% of T&F events no longer improved since 1993, while 47% of swimming events stagnated after 1990, prior to a second progression step starting in 2000. Since then, 100% of swimming events continued to progress

Vers une nouvelle érudition : numérisation et recherche en histoire du livre

En décembre 1999, à l\u27Enssib, s’est déroulé le colloque "Vers une nouvelle érudition : numérisation et recherche en histoire du livre", organisé dans le cadre des 12e Entretiens du Centre Jacques Cartier sous la responsabilité de Dominique Varry (enssib), Annie Charon (école nationale des chartes) et Guylaine Baudry (Université de Montréal)

Bilan des performances à Pékin

LA PLACE DE LA FRANCE Avec un total de quarante médailles, la France termine les jeux de Pékin au dixième rang des nations. Mais que représentent cette dixième place et ces quarante médailles, si nous les mettons en corrélation avec l’évolution des Jeux olympiques ? En examinant la progression du classement français au cours de ce siècle, on constate que la dixième place acquise à Pékin est loin d’être notre meilleure performance. Néanmoins, ce résultat se situe à un niveau co..

Space charge behavior in Epoxy laminates under high constant electric field.

The development of space charge in insulating materials is one of the main causes of their electrical ageing. The pulsed electro-acoustic method is often used to determine space charge distribution, but the signal analysis in the case of laminate structures is much more complex to analyse. In this paper the authors describe and use a simulated signal in order to study laminates made of epoxy resin and fibre mat. The relatively large conductivity of the fibres compared with that of the resin seems to produce a rapid charge dissociation and recombination in the fibres. Under voltage the presence of fibres close to an electrode seems to promote charge injection

Combination of standardized ecotoxicological tests and in situ measurements to characterize the effects of an effluent from a bio-refinery on a freshwater ecosystem

The chemical industry is a very important economic sector in France with used especially oil and their derivates. Nevertheless, the growing concern of economic world and population contributed to the development of green chemistry notably based on utilization of the biomass. The development of this new type of industry is mediated through the generation of bio-refinery. These bio-refineries are able to transform the agricultural and forest production to bio-energy and bio-product. The present work aims to better understand the ecological and environmental impact of green chemistry on freshwater ecosystem. In this context, some fish and shellfish were caged during 21 days upstream and downstream a bio-refinery of derived glycerin in order to identify potential immunotoxic and genotoxic effects. In the same way, the environmental impact of bio-refinery effluent was characterized in a regulatory context using standardized ecotoxicity tests (e.g mobility of Daphnia magna, growth of the unicellular green algae Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, reproduction of Ceriodaphnia dubia). The results of this combined approach will be discussed in the poster

Combination of standardized ecotoxicological tests and in situ measurements to characterize the effects of an effluent from a bio-refinery on a freshwater ecosystem

The chemical industry is a very important economic sector in France with used especially oil and their derivates. Nevertheless, the growing concern of economic world and population contributed to the development of green chemistry notably based on utilization of the biomass. The development of this new type of industry is mediated through the generation of bio-refinery. These bio-refineries are able to transform the agricultural and forest production to bio-energy and bio-product. The present work aims to better understand the ecological and environmental impact of green chemistry on freshwater ecosystem. In this context, some fish and shellfish were caged during 21 days upstream and downstream a bio-refinery of derived glycerin in order to identify potential immunotoxic and genotoxic effects. In the same way, the environmental impact of bio-refinery effluent was characterized in a regulatory context using standardized ecotoxicity tests (e.g mobility of Daphnia magna, growth of the unicellular green algae Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, reproduction of Ceriodaphnia dubia). The results of this combined approach will be discussed in the poster

Success and Decline: Top 10 Tennis Players Follow a Biphasic Course

International audienceIntroduction: The victory percentages for tennis players who entered the top 10 women and men rankings show various evolutions related to age and time since 1968.Methods: The study analyzed the careers of all top 10 players: 97 women (50,933 matches) and 144 men (92,450 matches). For each player, we describe a biphasic performance course. Two generations were compared: the first one (G1), including players who started their professional career before 1985, and the second one (G2), with players starting after 1985.Results: The average career length is 16.1 ± 3.8 yr for the top 10 men and 15.8 ± 4.4 yr for women. Compared with G1 players, G2 players begin earlier (women = 1.3 yr, men = 0.8 yr), but career length remains the same. An exponential model describes the time course of the victory percentage with a great similarity for both genders. Using this equation, the peak victory rate reaches 82.5% at 21.5 yr for number 1 (no. 1) women and 78.5% at 23.7 yr for no. 1 men, showing a greater precocity and earlier decline in women. Finally, the area under the curve shows a potential that is 22.8% (men) to 56.8% (women) larger for the no. 1 players as compared with all other numbers 2-10.Conclusions: Tennis players in the top 10 show a biphasic career. Women reach their highest level earlier than men, consistent with their more precocious biological development. For the current generation, the peak performance tends toward a younger age than the first generation. We show how to precisely quantify and compare tennis performances using indicators that follow the trends of development and aging and demonstrate that precocity does not provide a larger victory potential

Exponential growth combined with exponential decline explains lifetime performance evolution in individual and human species

International audienceThe physiological parameters characterizing human capacities (the ability to move, reproduce or perform tasks) evolve with ageing: performance is limited at birth, increases to a maximum and then decreases back to zero at the day of death. Physical and intellectual skills follow such a pattern. Here, we investigate the development of sport and chess performances during the lifetime at two different scales: the individual athletes' careers and the world record by age class in 25 Olympic sports events and in grandmaster chess players. For all data sets, a biphasic development of growth and decline is described by a simple model that accounts for 91.7% of the variance at the individual level and 98.5% of the variance at the species one. The age of performance peak is computed at 26.1 years old for the events studied (26.0 years old for track and field, 21.0 years old for swimming and 31.4 years old for chess). The two processes (growth and decline) are exponential and start at age zero. Both were previously demonstrated to happen in other human and non-human biological functions that evolve with age. They occur at the individual and species levels with a similar pattern, suggesting a scale invariance property

Technology & swimming: 3 steps beyond physiology

International audienceThe science of engineering materials and the development of materials science during human history have strongly evolved over the past two centuries 1,2. Other new technological fields such as particle physics, computer science, nanoscience also flourished 3 , all leading to innovations that impacted sport. Polymers and metal alloys such as carbon fibres are exemplars of materials now widely used in various disciplines 4. In 2008, polyurethane made its first appearance in swimming with the use of a new swimsuit generation. The result was a sudden improvement of performances, allowing athletes to go beyond physiological limits that have been nearly reached 5,6. This study aimed to quantify the gain provided by the three generations of swimsuits introduced in 1999, 2008, 2009 and to estimate the upcoming performance drop in 2010. Using a recently published methodology 7 , we analyzed the single best result each year for the world's top ten swimmers from 1990 to 2009 in order to assess the sudden progression trends and quantify the total performance gain. Materials and methods We collected the best performance of the world's top ten swimmers every year in 34 swimming events from 1963 to 2009 8-10. A total of 6790 individual performances were selected from the data spanning the 1990 – 2009 period as they present a complete measure each year. We focus here on the impact of material science in swimming by measuring the impact of the three successive generations of swimsuits on human performance and estimate the upcoming performance drop consecutive to the decision of the FINA to suspend their use. We investigate the recent evolutions of the best performers over the 1990 – 2009 period and demonstrate that three bursts of performances occurred in 2000, 2008 and 2009. The overall observed gains of these bursts exceed 2.0% for both sexes. The drop in performance that may result from this rule change may return to similar levels as seen in 1999