Caractérisation d'un courant de bord Ouest au nord-est de la Nouvelle-Calédonie

L'étude de l'océan Pacifique Sud-Ouest est un élément important de la compréhension de la variabilité climatique décennale et interannuelle à l'échelle globale. La circulation se présente sous forme de jets zonaux en direction de l'Australie. La Nouvelle-Calédonie constituant un obstacle au Courant Equatorial Sud voit passer le long de ses côtes un fort courant dirigé vers le nord alimentant le Jet Nord Calédonien. La circulation longeant la côte Est calédonienne est étudiée ici. (D'après résumé d'auteur

Mitigating demand-capacity unbalances through interairline slot trading

When airspace capacity is reduced, some flights may be delayed through the allocation of air traffic flow management slots, in accordance with the FPFS rule. Although this reassignment seems the natural way to handle such a situation, the fact that different flights have generally different economical values suggests that other reallocation mechanisms may provide more convenient solutions from the airlines’ cost perspective. For instance, each airline could propose a set of slot swap offers, with the Network Manager (NM) playing the role of the mediator and deciding which offers to match. However, this mechanism requires a huge effort from the airlines to evaluate all possible offer combinations, a number which is exponentially growing with the size of their fleet. In addition, all airlines make their offers simply relying on their flights and their current schedule, without the possibility to fully exploit what is available on the market, as they have no information regarding other airlines’ offers. With our Inter-airline Slot Swap Offer Provider model, we aim to invert this process: we allow airlines to assign preferences to their flights and let the NM instead to play the role of the airlines’ broker, who, based on the preferences and ensuring no negative impact to all airlines, provides a set of ready-made offers that each airline can decide either to accept or refuse. Hence, a slot trade is represented by the matching of several offers of different airlines; if all the offers defining a trade are accepted then the corresponding slot swap eventually takes place, otherwise all the flights involved in the trade keep their initial position in the schedule

The Southwest Pacific Ocean circulation and climate experiment (SPICE) : report to CLIVAR SSG

The Southwest Pacific Ocean Circulation and Climate Experiment (SPICE) is an international research program under the auspices of CLIVAR. The key objectives are to understand the Southwest Pacific Ocean circulation and the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ) dynamics, as well as their influence on regional and basin-scale climate patterns. South Pacific thermocline waters are transported in the westward flowing South Equatorial Current (SEC) toward Australia and Papua-New Guinea. On its way, the SEC encounters the numerous islands and straits of the Southwest Pacific and forms boundary currents and jets that eventually redistribute water to the equator and high latitudes. The transit in the Coral, Solomon, and Tasman Seas is of great importance to the climate system because changes in either the temperature or the amount of water arriving at the equator have the capability to modulate the El Nino-Southern Oscillation, while the southward transports influence the climate and biodiversity in the Tasman Sea. After 7 years of substantial in situ oceanic observational and modeling efforts, our understanding of the region has much improved. We have a refined description of the SPCZ behavior, boundary currents, pathways, and water mass transformation, including the previously undocumented Solomon Sea. The transports are large and vary substantially in a counter-intuitive way, with asymmetries and gating effects that depend on time scales. This paper provides a review of recent advancements and discusses our current knowledge gaps and important emerging research directions

Wolfram Syndrome: New Mutations, Different Phenotype

BACKGROUND: Wolfram Syndrome (WS) is an autosomal recessive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by Diabetes Insipidus, Diabetes Mellitus, Optic Atrophy, and Deafness identified by the acronym "DIDMOAD". The WS gene, WFS1, encodes a transmembrane protein called Wolframin, which recent evidence suggests may serve as a novel endoplasmic reticulum calcium channel in pancreatic β-cells and neurons. WS is a rare disease, with an estimated prevalence of 1/550.000 children, with a carrier frequency of 1/354. The aim of our study was to determine the genotype of WS patients in order to establish a genotype/phenotype correlation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We clinically evaluated 9 young patients from 9 unrelated families (6 males, 3 females). Basic criteria for WS clinical diagnosis were coexistence of insulin-treated diabetes mellitus and optic atrophy occurring before 15 years of age. Genetic analysis for WFS1 was performed by direct sequencing. Molecular sequencing revealed 5 heterozygous compound and 3 homozygous mutations. All of them were located in exon 8, except one in exon 4. In one proband only an heterozygous mutation (A684V) was found. Two new variants c.2663 C>A and c.1381 A>C were detected. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our study increases the spectrum of WFS1 mutations with two novel variants. The male patient carrying the compound mutation [c.1060_1062delTTC]+[c.2663 C>A] showed the most severe phenotype: diabetes mellitus, optic atrophy (visual acuity 5/10), deafness with deep auditory bilaterally 8000 Hz, diabetes insipidus associated to reduced volume of posterior pituitary and pons. He died in bed at the age of 13 years. The other patient carrying the compound mutation [c.409_424dup16]+[c.1381 A>C] showed a less severe phenotype (DM, OA)