Indigeneity, decolonization and the “politics of common destiny” in New Caledonia

New Caledonia has been a French colony since 1853 – now a sui generis overseas ‘collectivity’ – and is currently engaged in a process of ‘decolonization’ following the signature of the Accord de Nouméa on the 5th of May 1998 (cf. point 4 of the preamble). This process of decolonization, as we argue in this article, is counteracted by a political strategy, which we will refer to as the “politics of a common destiny”. This strategy aims at creating a feeling of citizenship by fostering reconciliation between peoples and communities living in New Caledonia. To achieve this, history is reinterpreted and reinvented by emphasizing togetherness and shared destiny. By way of illustration, two examples are examined: first, the celebration of the citizenship; second, Mathieu Kassovitz’s movie L’ordre et la morale [Rebellion in English]. Next, acknowledging that this strategy goes beyond symbolism and spreads through the political economy of New Caledonia, we examine how, in a background of social inequalities, the Kanak People’s labour struggle becomes subsumed in a vast program of Social Dialogue that is part of the overall framework of social partnership

Independence, dependencies and inter-dependencies: contextualizing labour voice in the French Pacific territories

This seminar aims at critically examining the nature and determinants of labour voices in the French Pacific Territories, i.e. New Caledonia and Polynesia. Although under the same colonial ruler, both regions have shaped their own path to autonomy in quite distinctive ways, between independence and dependencies and in the management of economic, geo-political and ethnic interdependences. We will thus insist on the need to provide a 'contextualised comparison': 'The Curse of Wealth' (New Caledonia) and 'The Cage of Beauty' (Polynesia). We will also discuss the complex duality of colonial and anti-colonial voices within the labour movement and further, in labour politics. The seminar will finally focus on New Caledonia, including the legal and socio-political forces and narratives at play in the lead-up to next year 2014 referendum on the roadmap to decolonization. This is a highly contested terrain in a context where French Authorities have been engaging in a far ranging program of reconciliation and social partnership – the 'Common Destiny'. Special attention to industrial relations is particularly relevant for two reasons: first, historically, the split of Indigenous activists from the mainstream union gave the impetus to the formation of the Kanak People liberation movement; second, the issue of independence is quite a divisive issue between Indigenous and French led unions, in a context where industrial relations find themselves engulfed in the frame of social partnership

The Imaging and Cognition Genetics Conference 2011, ICG 2011: A Meeting of Minds

In June 2011, 70 researchers from the disciplines of cognitive science, genetics, psychology, psychiatry, neurobiology, and computer science gathered in Os, Norway, for the first Imaging and Cognition Genetics meeting. The aim of the conference was to discuss progress, enhance collaboration, and maximize the sharing of resources within this new field. In this Perspective, we summarize the major themes that emerged from ICG 2011. The first is the importance of defining cognitive and imaging phenotypes and endophenotypes suitable for genetic analysis. These can come from differential psychology, cognitive science, structural MRI, tractography, and functional imaging. The second theme is the emergence of new methods for the analysis of complex traits. These include advanced computational and statistical techniques for analyzing complex datasets, and new ways of interpreting data from genome-wide association studies, such as jointly evaluating the contribution of SNPs in specific genes and pathways rather than considering single SNPs in isolation. The final theme is the importance of establishing functional correlates of newly identified genetic variants

Learning from both experts and data

In this work we study the problem of inferring a discrete probability distribution using both expert knowledge and empirical data. This is an important issue for many applications where the scarcity of data prevents a purely empirical approach. In this context, it is common to rely first on an initial domain knowledge a priori before proceeding to an online data acquisition. We are particularly interested in the intermediate regime where we do not have enough data to do without the initial expert a priori of the experts, but enough to correct it if necessary. We present here a novel way to tackle this issue with a method providing an objective way to choose the weight to be given to experts compared to data. We show, both empirically and theoretically, that our proposed estimator is always more efficient than the best of the two models (expert or data) within a constant

Fast iterative boundary element methods for high-frequency scattering problems in 3D elastodynamics

International audienceThe fast multipole method is an efficient technique to accelerate the solution of large scale 3D scattering problems with boundary integral equations. However, the fast multipole accelerated boundary element method (FM-BEM) is intrinsically based on an iterative solver. It has been shown that the number of iterations can significantly hinder the overall efficiency of the FM-BEM. The derivation of robust preconditioners for FM-BEM is now inevitable to increase the size of the problems that can be considered. The main constraint in the context of the FM-BEM is that the complete system is not assembled to reduce computational times and memory requirements. Analytic preconditioners offer a very interesting strategy by improving the spectral properties of the boundary integral equations ahead from the discretization. The main contribution of this paper is to combine an approximate adjoint Dirichlet to Neumann (DtN) map as an analytic preconditioner with a FM-BEM solver to treat Dirichlet exterior scattering problems in 3D elasticity. The approximations of the adjoint DtN map are derived using tools proposed in [40]. The resulting boundary integral equations are preconditioned Combined Field Integral Equations (CFIEs). We provide various numerical illustrations of the efficiency of the method for different smooth and non smooth geometries. In particular, the number of iterations is shown to be completely independent of the number of degrees of freedom and of the frequency for convex obstacles

Computing an optimized trajectory between Earth and an EML2 halo orbit

According to the Global Exploration Roadmap, which reflects the international effort to define feasible and sustainable exploration pathways to the Moon, near-Earth asteroids and Mars, the next step for manned space exploration is the Moon as second home in the Solar System. In that perspective, the Earth-Moon Libration points (EML points) have been a topic of great interest in recent years since EML1 and EML2 were suggested as advantageous locations of space hubs in the Moon neighborhood. To materialize this vision, detailed studies are needed to investigate transfers between Earth and the vicinity of EML2 and the strategies to reduce associated maneuver costs. This work is framed within the perspective of a future deep space habitat in halo orbit around EML2, and this paper intends to provide quantitative results so as to select the best deployment scenario of the station. The main purpose is to determine the best transfer trajectory between a low-Earth orbit and a halo orbit around EML2 in terms of cost and duration. Two different kinds of attractive transfer strategies have been identied. Station deployment and cargo missions would use Weak Stability Boundary (WSB) trajectories whereas manned flights would exploit a fly-by strategy as it shows an advantageous compromise between short trip duration and efficiency