The French public and Eastern Christians, 2014-2018:Public opinion and political representations in the 21st century

Sujet de prédilection historique dans l’imaginaire français, le sort des « chrétiens d’Orient » a connu récemment un regain d’intérêt en France. Nous proposons ici quelques pistes de réflexion quant à la pénétration contemporaine du sujet des « chrétiens d’Orient » dans le débat public en France. Ce bref aperçu vise à présenter un certain nombre d’éléments empiriques à partir de plusieurs séries de données quantitatives et d’une présentation chronologique de l’évolution de ce champ entre 2014 et 2018.The fate of “Eastern Christians”, a subject of predilection in the French political imaginary, has recently experienced a resurgence of interest in France. Here we propose some avenues for reflection on the contemporary penetration of the subject of “Eastern Christians” in the French public sphere. This brief overview aims to present a certain number of empirical elements based on several quantitative dataset and a chronological presentation of the evolution of this field between 2014 and 2018

SOS Christians of the East:SOS chrétiens d’Orient: The revival of French Catholic conservatism through the prism of the Orient

Depuis plusieurs années, le sort des communautés chrétiennes du Proche-Orient suscite l’intérêt de l’opinion publique en France. SOS Chrétiens d’Orient, association fondée en 2013, apparait comme une manifestation concrète de cet intérêt. Cependant, cette association interpelle du fait de son double orientation qui conjugue une action de solidarité internationale avec une démarche politico-sociétale conservatrice en France. Quel sens faut-il alors attribuer à cette double orientation ? Quels idéaux sous-tendent l’association SOS Chrétiens ? Comment l’association prétend-elle mettre en œuvre ces idéaux ? Nous nous proposons ici de répondre à ces questions partir des résultats d’une enquête menée entre juin 2017 et juin 2019.For the past several years, the plight of Christian communities in the Near East has captured the interest of the French public. Emerging from this public interest, SOS Chrétiens d’Orient was founded in 2013. However, this new NGO quickly courted controversy because of its dual orientation, as both an international development organisation and as a hub for conservative socio-political action in France. How should we make sense of this dual identity? What ideals undergird SOS Chrétiens d’Orient? How does the organisation aim to operationalize those ideals? Based on research carried out between June 2017 and June 2019, this articles addresses seeks to answer these questions

Development of a new method to estimate the incident solar flux on central receivers from deteriorated heliostats

This work proposes a new empirical direct methodology to estimate both the solar flux distribution and intensity on the surface of central receivers. In solar power tower plants with deteriorated heliostats, the numerical simulations to estimate the incident solar flux are not precise. Hence the thermal behaviour of the receivers cannot be determined. In those cases, direct measurement or semi-empirical methodologies are required to characterize the radiant power on the receiver. The new methodology proposed, named "Superposition method", consists in the hourly characterization of the reflected solar beam of each individual heliostat by means of a pyrheliometer, a passive screen, a flux sensor, a camera and digital image analysis. According to the aiming strategy used during receiver operation, each individual solar flux distribution and intensity can be gathered to obtain the total incident radiant power on the solar receiver. This non-real-time method has the advantage of reproducing any solar flux distribution on the receiver at present and past time