Managing Intra-Party Democracy: Comparing the French Socialist and British Labour Party Conferences

The French Socialists and British Labour consider intra-party democracy as a central tenet of their philosophies. It is a core value that orientates their political attitudes and defines their identity. Traditionally, they have privileged a particular type of decision-making, based on the sovereignty of the party conference. However, at the beginning of the 1990s, these meetings projected a damaging image of division and chaos. Confronted with the intense scrutiny of their internal debates by the media, the two parties had to find a better balance between their culture and practices, and the need to promote an image of unity and efficiency. They introduced a number of reforms that, they claim, have expanded the possibilities for individual members to participate while at the same time giving the two leaderships a firmer grip on decision-making. Based on qualitative research conducted over many years, this paper explores the parties' new attitudes to internal democracy and analyses the process of power redistribution within the organizations

Proposal to Search for Heavy Neutral Leptons at the SPS

A new fixed-target experiment at the CERN SPS accelerator is proposed that will use decays of charm mesons to search for Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs), which are right-handed partners of the Standard Model neutrinos. The existence of such particles is strongly motivated by theory, as they can simultaneously explain the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, account for the pattern of neutrino masses and oscillations and provide a Dark Matter candidate. Cosmological constraints on the properties of HNLs now indicate that the majority of the interesting parameter space for such particles was beyond the reach of the previous searches at the PS191, BEBC, CHARM, CCFR and NuTeV experiments. For HNLs with mass below 2 GeV, the proposed experiment will improve on the sensitivity of previous searches by four orders of magnitude and will cover a major fraction of the parameter space favoured by theoretical models. The experiment requires a 400 GeV proton beam from the SPS with a total of 2x10^20 protons on target, achievable within five years of data taking. The proposed detector will reconstruct exclusive HNL decays and measure the HNL mass. The apparatus is based on existing technologies and consists of a target, a hadron absorber, a muon shield, a decay volume and two magnetic spectrometers, each of which has a 0.5 Tm magnet, a calorimeter and a muon detector. The detector has a total length of about 100 m with a 5 m diameter. The complete experimental set-up could be accommodated in CERN's North Area. The discovery of a HNL would have a great impact on our understanding of nature and open a new area for future research

Speech in the mirror? Neurobiological correlates of self speech perception

International audienceSelf-awareness and self-recognition during action observation may partly result from a functional matching between action and perception systems. This perception-action interaction enhances the integration between sensory inputs and our own sensory-motor knowledge. We present combined EEG and fMRI studies examining the impact of self-knowledge on multisensory integration mechanisms. More precisely, we investigated this impact during auditory, visual and audio-visual speech perception. Our hypothesis was that hearing and/or viewing oneself talk would facilitate the bimodal integration process and activate sensory-motor maps to a greater extent than observing others. In both studies, half of the stimuli presented the participants’ own productions (self condition) and the other half presented an unknown speaker (other condition). For the “self” condition, we recorded videos of each participant producing/pa/, /ta/ and /ka/ syllables. In the “other” condition, we recorded videos of a speaker the participants had never met producing the same syllables. These recordings were then presented in different modalities: auditory only (A), visual only (V), audio-visual (AV) and incongruent audiovisual (AVi – incongruency referred to different speakers for the audio and video components). In the EEG experiment, 18 participants had to categorize the syllables. In the fMRI experiment, 12 participants had listen to and/or view passively the syllables.In the EEG session, audiovisual interactions were estimated by comparing auditory N1/P2 ERPs during bimodal responses (AV) with the sum of the responses in A and V only conditions (A+V). The amplitude of P2 ERPs was lower for AV than A+V. Importantly, latencies for N1 ERPs were shorter for the “Visual-self” condition than the “Visual-other”, regardless of signal type. In the fMRI session, the presentation modality had an impact on brain activation: activation was stronger for audio or audiovisual stimuli in the superior temporal auditory regions (A= AV=AVi> V), and for video or audiovisual stimuli in MT/V5 and in the premotor cortices (V=AV=AVi> A). In addition, brain activity was stronger in the “self” than the “other” condition both at the left posterior inferior frontal gyrus and cerebellum (lobules I-IV). In line with previous studies on multimodal speech perception, our results point to the existence of integration mechanisms of auditory and visual speech signals. Critically, they further demonstrate a processing advantage when the perceptual situation involves our own speech production. In addition, hearing and/or viewing oneself talk increased activation in the left posterior IFG and cerebellum. These regions are generally responsible for predicting sensory outcomes of action generation. Altogether, these results suggest that viewing our own utterances leads to a temporal facilitation of auditory and visual speech integration. Moreover, processing afferent and efferent signals in sensory-motor areas leads to self -awareness during speech perception

Speech in the mirror? Neurobiological correlates of self speech perception

International audienceSelf-awareness and self-recognition during action observation may partly result from a functional matching between action and perception systems. This perception-action interaction enhances the integration between sensory inputs and our own sensory-motor knowledge. We present combined EEG and fMRI studies examining the impact of self-knowledge on multisensory integration mechanisms. More precisely, we investigated this impact during auditory, visual and audio-visual speech perception. Our hypothesis was that hearing and/or viewing oneself talk would facilitate the bimodal integration process and activate sensory-motor maps to a greater extent than observing others. In both studies, half of the stimuli presented the participants’ own productions (self condition) and the other half presented an unknown speaker (other condition). For the “self” condition, we recorded videos of each participant producing/pa/, /ta/ and /ka/ syllables. In the “other” condition, we recorded videos of a speaker the participants had never met producing the same syllables. These recordings were then presented in different modalities: auditory only (A), visual only (V), audio-visual (AV) and incongruent audiovisual (AVi – incongruency referred to different speakers for the audio and video components). In the EEG experiment, 18 participants had to categorize the syllables. In the fMRI experiment, 12 participants had listen to and/or view passively the syllables.In the EEG session, audiovisual interactions were estimated by comparing auditory N1/P2 ERPs during bimodal responses (AV) with the sum of the responses in A and V only conditions (A+V). The amplitude of P2 ERPs was lower for AV than A+V. Importantly, latencies for N1 ERPs were shorter for the “Visual-self” condition than the “Visual-other”, regardless of signal type. In the fMRI session, the presentation modality had an impact on brain activation: activation was stronger for audio or audiovisual stimuli in the superior temporal auditory regions (A= AV=AVi> V), and for video or audiovisual stimuli in MT/V5 and in the premotor cortices (V=AV=AVi> A). In addition, brain activity was stronger in the “self” than the “other” condition both at the left posterior inferior frontal gyrus and cerebellum (lobules I-IV). In line with previous studies on multimodal speech perception, our results point to the existence of integration mechanisms of auditory and visual speech signals. Critically, they further demonstrate a processing advantage when the perceptual situation involves our own speech production. In addition, hearing and/or viewing oneself talk increased activation in the left posterior IFG and cerebellum. These regions are generally responsible for predicting sensory outcomes of action generation. Altogether, these results suggest that viewing our own utterances leads to a temporal facilitation of auditory and visual speech integration. Moreover, processing afferent and efferent signals in sensory-motor areas leads to self -awareness during speech perception

Une minute pour convaincre. L’expression politique à l’épreuve des débats télévisés des primaires de 2016-2017

Le contrôle très strict de l’organisation des débats télévisés des primaires par LR et le PS en 2016 et 2017 – 1 minute par intervention et 15 minutes par candidat – résume l’ambiguïté de cette configuration médiatique et politique inédite qui doit à la fois départager et unir. L’énonciation de petites phrases s’est inscrite dans des stratégies politiques de rassemblement et d’évitement des faux pas, laissant majoritairement aux outsiders l’usage des formules polémiques.The very strictly controlled organization of the televised debates during the primaries of the French parties Les Républicains and the Parti socialiste in 2016 and 2017 –1 minute per intervention and 15 minutes per candidate– summarizes the ambiguity of this new media and political configuration which must both decide and reunite. The utterance of soundbites was part of political strategies of bringing people together and avoiding missteps, leaving mostly to outsiders the use of polemical formulas.El control muy estricto de la organización de los debates televisados de las primarias por LR y el PS de 2016 y 2017 –1 minuto por intervención y 15 minutos por candidato– resume la ambigüedad de esta nueva configuración mediática y política que debe a la vez decidir y reunir. La formulación de frases cortas formaba parte de estrategias políticas de recopilación y evitación de errores, dejando a los outsiders el uso de fórmulas polémicas

Supersymmetry with R-Parity Breaking: Contact Interactions and Resonance Formation in Leptonic Processes at LEP2

In supersymmetric theories with R-parity breaking, trilinear couplings of two leptons to scalar sleptons are possible. In electron-positron collisions such interactions would manifest themselves through contact terms in Bhabha scattering and in annihilation to mu or tau pair Interpreting the high x, high Q2 DIS HERA events as charm squark production with squark masses of order 200 GeV, the formation of tau sneutrinos with a mass in the range close to the LEP2 energy or even in reach, is an exciting speculation which can be investigated in the coming LEP2 runs with energies close to 200 GeV.Comment: 13 pages, LaTex file with 3 figures, uses axodraw.sty (included). References updated / limits from rare B decays on Yukawa couplings updated, favoring tau-sneutrinos over mu-sneutrinos/ numerical results unchange