The Role of Higher Education Institutions: Recruitment of Elites and Economic Growth

The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of recruitment of elites and to investigate the nature of the links between recruitment of elites and economic growth. The main change that occurred in the way the Western world trained its elites is that meritocracy became the basis for their recruitment. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best being chosen, we show that meritocratic recruitment actually leads to class stratification and auto-recruitment. We analyze the consequences of stratification resulting from meritocratic selection for the development of a country, and show that these consequences are dependent upon the type of technological changes occurring in the country.economic growth, education, elites, meritocracy, recruitment, social mobility, stratification

Changes in the Recruitment and Education of the Power Elites in Twentieth Century Western Democracies

The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of recruitment of elites and to investigate the nature of the links between recruitment and training of elites and economic development. We show that there was a key shift at the turn of the nineteenth century in the way the Western world trained its elites, with a second shift taking place after World War II, when meritocracy became the basis for recruitment of elites. Although meritocratic selection should result in the best being chosen, we show that meritocratic recruitment leads to class stratification and auto-recruitment. We analyze whether stratification resulting from meritocratic selection is optimal for the development of a country, and show that it is dependent on the type of technological changes occurring in the country.elite; auto-recruitment; training; education; meritocracy; stratification; economic growth

For England everything centres round India and Arabia » La guerre anglo-allemande dans le golfe Persique : impérialismes, politique tribale et jihad (1914-1915)

Résumé : Plusieurs études ont été consacrées à la grande révolte du Hedjaz contre le joug ottoman durant l’année 1916 ou à celle des tribus d’Irak contre les Britanniques après 1919. Cet article revient sur un épisode trop peu connu de l’histoire de la Première Guerre mondiale au Moyen-Orient : le soulèvement de plusieurs "tribus" de Perse et du Golfe en 1915. Il démontre comment cette révolte fut fortement soutenue par Berlin et l’empereur Guillaume II qui pensaient ainsi déstabiliser la Grande-Bretagne en attaquant sur sa frontière occidentale, le Golfe et ses territoires adjacents, le joyau de l’Empire britannique : les Indes. L’Allemagne cristallisa les peurs et anxiétés coloniales des Britanniques quand plusieurs "tribus" du Golfe et de Perse répondirent à l’appel au jihad lancé par le Sultan ottoman à l’automne 1914 et se mobilisèrent contre la Grande-Bretagne. Surtout, Berlin instrumentalisa, d’une part, les rêves de liberté des Bakhtiares du Zagros, déçus par la première révolution constitutionnelle perse et désireux de renégocier les accords signés avec l’Anglo-Persian Oil Company et, d’autre part, le mécontentement des Tangestanis. Les "tribus" étaient pour Berlin un outil destiné à créer ce grand Moyen-Orient dominé par l’Allemagne et à prendre le contrôle du pétrole découvert à la veille du premier conflit mondial par William Knox d’Arcy

On segments and syllables in the sound structure of language: Curve-based approaches to phonology and the auditory representation of speech.

http://msh.revues.org/document7813.htmlInternational audienceRecent approaches to the syllable reintroduce continuous and mathematical descriptions of sound objects designed as ''curves''. Psycholinguistic research on oral language perception usually refer to symbolic and highly hierarchized approaches to the syllable which strongly differenciate segments (phones) and syllables. Recent work on the auditory bases of speech perception evidence the ability of listeners to extract phonetic information when strong degradations of the speech signal have been produced in the spectro-temporal domain. Implications of these observations for the modelling of syllables in the fields of speech perception and phonology are discussed.Les approches récentes de la syllabe réintroduisent une description continue et descriptible mathématiquement des objets sonores: les courbes. Les recherches psycholinguistiques sur la perception du langage parlé ont plutôt recours à des descriptions symboliques et hautement hiérarchisées de la syllabe dans le cadre desquelles segments (phones) et syllabes sont strictement différenciés. Des travaux récents sur les fondements auditifs de la perception de la parole mettent en évidence la capacité qu'ont les locuteurs à extraire une information phonétique alors même que des dégradations majeures du signal sont effectuées dans le domaine spectro-temporel. Les implications de ces observations pour la conception de la syllabe dans le champ de la perception de la parole et en phonologie sont discutées

L’imaginaire du zèle ligueur: entre conversion et possession

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Determination of physical properties of the asteroid (41) Daphne from interferometric observations in the thermal infrared

We describe interferometric observations of the asteroid (41) Daphne in the thermal infrared obtained with the Mid-Infrared Interferometric Instrument (MIDI) of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). We derived the size and the surface thermal properties of (41) Daphne by means of a thermophysical model (TPM), which is used for the interpretation of interferometric data for the first time. From our TPM analysis, we derived a volume equivalent diameter for (41) Daphne of 189 km, using a non-convex 3-D shape model derived from optical lightcurves and adaptive optics images (B. Carry, private communication). On the other hand, when using the convex shape of Kaasalainen et al. (2002. Icarus 159, 369-395) in our TPM analysis, the resulting volume equivalent diameter of (41) Daphne is between 194 and 209 km, depending on the surface roughness. The shape of the asteroid is used as an a priori information in our TPM analysis. No attempt is made to adjust the shape to the data. Only the size of the asteroid and its thermal parameters (albedo, thermal inertia and roughness) are adjusted to the data. We estimated our model systematic uncertainty to be of 4% and of 7% on the determination of the asteroid volume equivalent diameter depending on whether the non-convex or the convex shape is used, respectively. In terms of thermal properties, we derived a value of the surface thermal inertia smaller than 50 J m-2 s-0.5 K-1 and preferably in the range between 0 and 30 J m-2 s-0.5 K-1. Our TPM analysis also shows that Daphne has a moderate macroscopic surface roughness.Comment: 44 pages, 8 figures, 3 table