Navigating the Livestock Sector: The Political Economy of Livestock Policy in Burkina Faso

This paper presents a case study of how livestock policies are made and implemented in a national context, and how they can be improved to better serve the interests of the poor. The government estimates that nearly 85 percent of Burkinabè households rely upon livestock for some portion of their income. Furthermore, livestock accounts for approximately 25 percent of the country's exports. Socially, livestock provides a way for young adults to learn the responsibilities of adulthood, a method for family members to fulfill social obligations, and a means for women to support their families. Considering its social and economic significance, livestock must take center stage in efforts to improve Burkinabè livelihoods. The study used the key informant method supplemented with official documents, newspaper sources and recently published research on the livestock sector. Interviews helped reveal policymakers' concerns, whereas field trips allowed the researcher to talk to farmers and learn their perspectives from the bottom. Newspapers and published research analyzed various political, institutional and technical aspects of policymaking in the sector. The author highlights three potential constraints - weak livestock producer organizations, poor animal health service provision, and commercial weaknesses - on the potential contribution of the livestock sector to improving poor people's livelihoods and recommends strategic actions for overcoming each of them.Livestock Production/Industries, Political Economy,

Nihilisme identitaire dans Lord of the Flies de William Golding et A Slight Ache de Harold Pinter

Two works of the mid-twentieth-century British literature form the corpus of this study, namely Lord of the Flies (1954) by the English William Golding and A Slight Ache (1961) by his contemporary and compatriot Harold Pinter. Based on the issue of nihilism as defined by Nietzsche and on the poststructuralist theory of the death of the subject, it aims to analyze how the two postmodern writers, Golding and Pinter, stress the emptiness of the human identity resulting from the collapse of the Western culture. The analysis shows that, in order to reveal this identity vacuity, the two authors make use of strategies at first sight different, but that prove to be basically similar. This identity emptiness is beforehand expressed by the emptiness of the fiction space, the isolation of characters and the justified absence of traditional points of reference that could constitute the base of the societies they attempt to form. The predictable collapse of these societies discloses the strange face of the individual behind it, and unveils the kingdom of nothingness foregrounded, in both works, by the image of darkness and chaos

A Box Particle Filter for Stochastic and Set-theoretic Measurements with Association Uncertainty

This work develops a novel estimation approach for nonlinear dynamic stochastic systems by combining the sequential Monte Carlo method with interval analysis. Unlike the common pointwise measurements, the proposed solution is for problems with interval measurements with association uncertainty. The optimal theoretical solution can be formulated in the framework of random set theory as the Bernoulli filter for interval measurements. The straightforward particle filter implementation of the Bernoulli filter typically requires a huge number of particles since the posterior probability density function occupies a significant portion of the state space. In order to reduce the number of particles, without necessarily sacrificing estimation accuracy, the paper investigates an implementation based on box particles. A box particle occupies a small and controllable rectangular region of non-zero volume in the target state space. The numerical results demonstrate that the filter performs remarkably well: both target state and target presence are estimated reliably using a very small number of box particles

Properties evolution of flax/epoxy composites under fatigue loading

The tension–tension fatigue behaviour of flax fibre reinforced epoxy matrix composites have been investigated for specimens having [0]12, [90]12, [0/90]3S and [±45]3S lay-ups. The Probabilized Stress–Number of cycles (P-S–N) curves have been determined for each laminate type. The measured stress and strain data allowed to quantify the evolution of the mechanical properties, i.e. stiffness, damping and permanent strain as a function of imposed cycles. Especially, the stiffening phenomenon of flax reinforcements oriented parallel to the loading direction has been confirmed. However, due to the competition between damage development and the fibre stiffening, the increase in the longitudinal Young’s modulus was noticed on the composites depending on the ratio of fibres parallel to load direction.Région Bourgogn

Modernité, Postmodernité Et Impérialisme Occidental

The objective of this study is to underscore the close link between modernity and postmodernity, two ideologies that are, quite often, opposed. Based on history, geopolitics, interculturality and the views of thoerists and critics of these thoughts, mainly those of Lyotard, Derrida, Foucautlt and the marxists, this paper attempts to demonstrate that the opposition between the two ideologies is only formal. They have the same purpose, namely to fulfil an imperialist task. If modernity is the thought of colonialist Europe at the time of the industrial revolution, postmodernity is that of neocolonialist America in the age of globalization. Both are carriers of universal chaos

Control of tank atmospheres on oil tankers

This dissertation is a study and analysis of the control of tank atmospheres in oil tankers. It reveals the various aspects of hazards and points out the required prevention for each possible problem related to them. In the introduction, the dissertation outlines its aim, scope, reasons and basic concepts. A study is made on static electricity within cargo tanks, examining how the electrostatic charges are generated and what are the necessary precautions to be taken for safe operations. The origin of mineral oil, its chemical structure and physical properties are described. Then, the different types of tank atmospheres, control of same and safe tanker operations for each situation, including tank-cleaning, gas-freeing and ventilation, are also covered. Flammability hazards, inert gas operations and the control of environmental pollution are also described. Finally, some suggestions on the control of vapour emissions and ventilation of double hull spaces have been given. It is hoped that this dissertation will be of benefit to practising ship officers of oil tankers and lecturers on oil tanker courses in MET institutions, as it explains in a simplified way the problems, hazards and control of tank atmospheres on oil tankers

Parallelized Particle and Gaussian Sum Particle Filters for Large Scale Freeway Traffic Systems

Large scale traffic systems require techniques able to: 1) deal with high amounts of data and heterogenous data coming from different types of sensors, 2) provide robustness in the presence of sparse sensor data, 3) incorporate different models that can deal with various traffic regimes, 4) cope with multimodal conditional probability density functions for the states. Often centralized architectures face challenges due to high communication demands. This paper develops new estimation techniques able to cope with these problems of large traffic network systems. These are Parallelized Particle Filters (PPFs) and a Parallelized Gaussian Sum Particle Filter (PGSPF) that are suitable for on-line traffic management. We show how complex probability density functions of the high dimensional trafc state can be decomposed into functions with simpler forms and the whole estimation problem solved in an efcient way. The proposed approach is general, with limited interactions which reduces the computational time and provides high estimation accuracy. The efciency of the PPFs and PGSPFs is evaluated in terms of accuracy, complexity and communication demands and compared with the case where all processing is centralized

Du jeu de l’inclusion et de l’exclusion dans De purs hommes de Mbougar Sarr et Femme nue, femme noire de Calixthe Beyala

Ce travail est une réflexion sur le jeu complexe d’inclusion et d’exclusion que charrie le conflit entre le discours culturel africain local et le discours transculturel ou universel dans De purs hommes de l’écrivain sénégalais, Mbougar Sarr, et Femme nue, femme noire de la franco-camerounaise Calixthe Beyala. Il s’appuie sur la théorie de la transculturalité pour mettre la lumière sur les dimensions inclusive et exclusive labyrinthiques de cette confrontation idéologique. L’article démontre aussi que les deux textes littéraires peuvent se lire comme deux discours idéologiques similaires structurés autour de la défense des valeurs transculturelles dans une Afrique restée dogmatique. Sarr et Beyala plaident ainsi en faveur d’une meilleure inclusion, dans la société africaine, des marginalisés, de ceux qui subissent le diktat de l’ordre moral rigide. Cette inclusion n’est possible que si l’Afrique se libère de ses dogmes culturels en s’ouvrant davantage au monde. Il s’agit ainsi pour ces écrivains de repositionner l’Afrique dans le concert de l’humanité auquel elle semble vouloir se soustraire par un mode de pensée et de vie singulier, en rupture avec l’épistémè contemporaine universelle. Autrement dit, c’est au prix de sa perte d’identité originelle, de la "mort" de ses valeurs traditionnelles que Sarr et Beyala envisagent une meilleure intégration de l’Afrique dans le monde transculturel.   This work is a reflection on the complex game of inclusion and exclusion that arises from the conflict between local African cultural discourse and transcultural or universal discourse in De purs hommes by the Senegalese writer, Mbougar Sarr, and Femme nu, femme noire by the Franco-Cameroonian Calixthe Beyala. It draws on the theory of transculturality to shed light on the labyrinthine inclusive and exclusive dimensions of this ideological confrontation. The article also demonstrates that the two literary texts can be read as two similar ideological discourses structured around the defense of transcultural values in an Africa that has remained dogmatic. Sarr and Beyala thus plead in favor of better inclusion, in African society, of the marginalized, of those who suffer the diktat of the rigid moral order. This inclusion is only possible if Africa frees itself from its cultural dogmas by opening up more to the world. For these writers, it is a question of repositioning Africa in the concert of humanity from which it seems to want to escape through a singular way of thinking and living, breaking with the universal contemporary episteme. In other words, it is at the cost of its loss of original identity, of the "death" of its traditional values that Sarr and Beyala envisage a better integration of Africa into the transcultural world

Non Parametric Distributed Inference in Sensor Networks Using Box Particles Messages

This paper deals with the problem of inference in distributed systems where the probability model is stored in a distributed fashion. Graphical models provide powerful tools for modeling this kind of problems. Inspired by the box particle filter which combines interval analysis with particle filtering to solve temporal inference problems, this paper introduces a belief propagation-like message-passing algorithm that uses bounded error methods to solve the inference problem defined on an arbitrary graphical model. We show the theoretic derivation of the novel algorithm and we test its performance on the problem of calibration in wireless sensor networks. That is the positioning of a number of randomly deployed sensors, according to some reference defined by a set of anchor nodes for which the positions are known a priori. The new algorithm, while achieving a better or similar performance, offers impressive reduction of the information circulating in the network and the needed computation times

Du Jeu de l’Inclusion et de l’Exclusion dans De purs hommes de Mbougar Sarr et Femme nue, femme noire de Calixthe Beyala

Ce travail est une réflexion sur le jeu complexe d’inclusion et d’exclusion que charrie le conflit entre le discours culturel africain local et le discours transculturel ou universel dans De purs hommes de l’écrivain sénégalais, Mbougar Sarr, et Femme nue, femme noire de la franco-camerounaise Calixthe Beyala. Il s’appuie sur la théorie de la transculturalité pour mettre la lumière sur les dimensions inclusive et exclusive labyrinthiques de cette confrontation idéologique. L’article démontre aussi que les deux textes littéraires peuvent se lire comme deux discours idéologiques similaires structurés autour de la défense des valeurs transculturelles dans une Afrique restée dogmatique. Sarr et Beyala plaident ainsi en faveur d’une meilleure inclusion, dans la société africaine, des marginalisés, de ceux qui subissent le diktat de l’ordre moral rigide. Cette inclusion n’est possible que si l’Afrique se libère de ses dogmes culturels en s’ouvrant davantage au monde. Il s’agit ainsi pour ces écrivains de repositionner l’Afrique dans le concert de l’humanité auquel elle semble vouloir se soustraire par un mode de pensée et de vie singulier, en rupture avec l’épistémè contemporaine universelle. Autrement dit, c’est au prix de sa perte d’identité originelle, de la "mort" de ses valeurs traditionnelles que Sarr et Beyala envisagent une meilleure intégration de l’Afrique dans le monde transculturel.   This work is a reflection on the complex game of inclusion and exclusion that arises from the conflict between local African cultural discourse and transcultural or universal discourse in De purs hommes by the Senegalese writer, Mbougar Sarr, and Femme nu, femme noire by the Franco-Cameroonian Calixthe Beyala. It draws on the theory of transculturality to shed light on the labyrinthine inclusive and exclusive dimensions of this ideological confrontation. The article also demonstrates that the two literary texts can be read as two similar ideological discourses structured around the defense of transcultural values ​​in an Africa that has remained dogmatic. Sarr and Beyala thus plead in favor of better inclusion, in African society, of the marginalized, of those who suffer the diktat of the rigid moral order. This inclusion is only possible if Africa frees itself from its cultural dogmas by opening up more to the world. For these writers, it is a question of repositioning Africa in the concert of humanity from which it seems to want to escape through a singular way of thinking and living, breaking with the universal contemporary episteme. In other words, it is at the cost of its loss of original identity, of the "death" of its traditional values ​​that Sarr and Beyala envisage a better integration of Africa into the transcultural world