Extractive Industries and the Social Dimension of Sustainable Development: Reflection on the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline

With the elaboration and diffusion of the concept of sustainable development, various projects have been defined as ‘sustainable’, even though they do not necessarily differ from what they would have been otherwise. Even extractive industries' activities, traditionally considered as both environmentally and socially harmful, have endorsed the sustainable development idea. We discuss the reasons why the Chad–Cameroon pipeline project, which aimed at being a ‘model’ project, did not meet the expectations in terms of sustainable development, putting the emphasis on its social dimension. Focusing on the World Bank, which played a key role in the implementation of the project, we critically examine the adoption of preventive measures, the identification of vulnerable populations and the level of participation of local populations. We argue that economic objectives still prevail over other considerations, and we question the very nature of the project as a (sustainable) development project. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environmen

The emergence of the Cabibbo angle in non-degenerate coupled systems of fermions

Investigating, in direct continuation of our previous paper hep-ph/0606303 the implications of the non-unitarity of mixing matrices for non-degenerate coupled systems that we demonstrated there, we examine more accurately the vicinity of Cabibbo-like mixing in quantum field theory. We show that it is possible to preserve one of its main features, namely that, in the space of mass eigenstates, the two requirements -- of universality for weak diagonal currents and -- of the absence of their non-diagonal counterparts, although not fulfilled separately any more, can however reduce to a single condition for a unique mixing angle theta\_c. This leads to tan (2 theta\_c)=+/- 1/2, or cos theta\_c \approx 0.9732, only 7/10000 away from experimental results. No mass ratio appears in the argumentation.Comment: This is a different version of hep-ph/0607193, with a simplified argumentation, a clearer connection with hep-ph/0606303. The solution for the Cabibbo angle is also expressed in terms of the golden number. To appear in Phys. Lett.

Mixing angles of quarks and leptons as an outcome of SU(2) horizontal symmetries

We show that all mixing angles are determined, within experimental uncertainty, by a product of SU(2) horizontal symmetries intimately linked to the algebra of weak neutral currents. This concerns: on one hand, the three quark mixing angles; on the other hand, a neutrino-like pattern in which theta_{23} is maximal and tan (2 theta_{12}) = 2. The latter turns out to exactly satisfy the ``quark-lepton complementarity condition'' theta_c + theta_{12} = pi/4. Moreover, among all solutions, two values for the third neutrino mixing angle arise, which satisfy the bound sin^2(theta_{13}) \leq 0.1: theta_{13} = +/- 5.7 10^{-3} and theta_{13} = +/- 0.2717.Comment: While calculations are unchanged w.r.t. arXiv:0705.1237, the horizontal symmetries controlling the mixing angles have been uncovered, motivating a change of title and a new entry in the arXiv. A new point of view about which angles are measured has also been adopte

The Cabibbo angle : an algebraic calculation

We show that the Cabibbo angle theta\_c satisfies the relation tan(2 theta\_c)=-+/- 1/2 when universality for diagonal neutral currents of mass eigenstates is satisfied at the same level of accuracy as the absence of their off-diagonal counterparts. The predicted value is cos theta\_c \approx 0.9732, only 7/10000 away from experimental results. No mass ratio appears in the calculation. theta\_c occurs a priori for both quark species, and, showing that one recovers the standard dependence of leptonic and semi-leptonic decays of pseudoscalar mesons, we advocate, like for neutrinos and charged leptons, for a symmetrical treatment of u and d-type quarks.Comment: The Cabibbo angle can be positive or negative, which was overlooked in the first version. Minor addend

Les suffrages « Front national », reflets d’identités blessées

Les individus votant extrême droite sont souvent donnés pour des personnalités autoritaires qui se nourrissent d’exclusion et de rejet. Des portraits sociologiques de cette enquête de terrain montrent différentes formes de construction d’identité politique liées à un manque de reconnaissance familiale et professionnelle. Le vote est alors perçu comme une forme de réhabilitation de soi, une manière de se reprendre en main tout en cherchant à préserver le lien social.Individuals who vote for the far right are often considered to have authoritarian personalities nurtured by exclusion and rejection. Sociological profiles constructed out of empirical analysis reveal different forms of political identity construction, related to a lack of recognition within the family and at work. Voting is then perceived as a means of rehabilitating oneself, a way to take oneself in hand while preserving a social tie

Quark Lagrangian diagonalization versus non-diagonal kinetic terms

Loop corrections induce a dependence on the momentum squared of the coefficients of the Standard Model Lagrangian, making highly non-trivial (or even impossible) the diagonalization of its quadratic part. Fortunately, the introduction of appropriate counterterms solves this puzzle.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figur

Currency Risk Management under Floating Rates

As for the research into this subject, we find, therefore, that one of the most important indicators that quantify the international competitiveness is the exchange rate, together with other fundamental macroeconomic variables such as the size of the potential GDP, the equilibrium real exchange rate, gives a certain insight into the functioning of the fundamental macroeconomic mechanisms and their regulation. Commercial and financial operations imply relationships between partners from different currency countries or areas that involve conversion operations, of replacement of a currency to another. Exchange rate fluctuations of one currency create currency risk, to the extent that it is used to carry out international transactions. These operations are subjected to currency risk as exchange rates change frequently from one period to another and, on the other hand, speculations in the forex market influence the exchange rate by the interventions of those who perform them