Historiography in French Theory

This thesis examines historical writing by drawing on the works of historians, philosophers, theorists and intellectuals, from antiquity to the contemporary moment. In order to answer the demand for scholarship that assembles insights of the Annales historians with other French intellectuals, I treat historians as theorists and theorists as historians. Through the course of my analysis, I examine issues of historical writing such as the scope of historical research and the historian’s task and place; I treat theoretical questions of constructivism, potentiality, agency, causality, teleology, and politics. In order to consolidate these issues into a single analysis, my research spans across disciplinary boundaries. Through an engagement with the methodological and political criticisms of Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière, I argue in favor of an archival research method that avoids the pitfalls of positivistic analysis and the excesses of procedural refinement, which often serve to narrow the scope of historical research

Cracked mercury dental amalgam as a possible cause of fever of unknown origin: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Sudden fever of unknown origin is quite a common emergency and may lead to hospitalization. A rise in body temperature can be caused by infectious diseases and by other types of medical condition. This case report is of a woman who had fever at night for several days and other clinical signs which were likely related to cracked dental mercury amalgam.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A healthy women developed fever many days after had cracked a mercury dental amalgam filling. Blood tests evidenced increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate, anemia and elevated white cell count; symptoms were headache and palpitations. Blood tests and symptoms normalized within three weeks of removal of the dental amalgam.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This case highlights the possible link between mercury vapor exposure from cracked dental amalgam and early activation of the immune system leading to fever of unknown origin.</p

Optical spin injection and spin lifetime in Ge heterostructures

We demonstrate optical orientation in Ge/SiGe quantum wells and study their spin properties. The ultrafast electron transfer from the center of the Brillouin zone to its edge allows us to achieve high spin-polarization efficiencies and to resolve the spin dynamics of holes and electrons. The circular polarization degree of the direct-gap photoluminescence exceeds the theoretical bulk limit, yielding ~37% and ~85% for transitions with heavy and light holes states, respectively. The spin lifetime of holes at the top of the valence band is found to be ~0.5 ps and it is governed by transitions between heavy and light hole states. Electrons at the bottom of the conduction band, on the other hand, have a spin lifetime that exceeds 5 ns below 150 K. Theoretical analysis of the electrons spin relaxation indicates that phonon-induced intervalley scattering dictates the spin lifetime.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The Planck-LFI flight model composite waveguides

The Low Frequency Instrument on board the PLANCK satellite is designed to give the most accurate map ever of the CMB anisotropy of the whole sky over a broad frequency band spanning 27 to 77 GHz. It is made of an array of 22 pseudo-correlation radiometers, composed of 11 actively cooled (20 K) Front End Modules (FEMs), and 11 Back End Modules (BEMs) at 300K. The connection between the two parts is made with rectangular Wave Guides. Considerations of different nature (thermal, electromagnetic and mechanical), imposed stringent requirements on the WGs characteristics and drove their design. From the thermal point of view, the WG should guarantee good insulation between the FEM and the BEM sections to avoid overloading the cryocooler. On the other hand it is essential that the signals do not undergo excessive attenuation through the WG. Finally, given the different positions of the FEM modules behind the focal surface and the mechanical constraints given by the surrounding structures, different mechanical designs were necessary. A composite configuration of Stainless Steel and Copper was selected to satisfy all the requirements. Given the complex shape and the considerable length (about 1.5-2 m), manufacturing and testing the WGs was a challenge. This work deals with the development of the LFI WGs, including the choice of the final configuration and of the fabrication process. It also describes the testing procedure adopted to fully characterize these components from the electromagnetic point of view and the space qualification process they underwent. Results obtained during the test campaign are reported and compared with the stringent requirements. The performance of the LFI WGs is in line with requirements, and the WGs were successfully space qualified.Comment: this paper is part of the Prelaunch status LFI papers published on JINST: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.proc5/jins

General-mass treatment for deep inelastic scattering at two-loop accuracy

We present a next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) realization of a general quark mass scheme (S-ACOT-$\chi$) in deep inelastic scattering and explore the impact of NNLO terms on heavy-quark structure functions $F_{2,L}^{c}(x,Q)$. An amended QCD factorization theorem for DIS is discussed that validates the S-ACOT-$\chi$ scheme to all orders in the QCD coupling strength. As a new feature, kinematical constraints on collinear production of heavy quarks that are crucial near the heavy-quark threshold are included in the amended factorization theorem. An algorithmic procedure is outlined for implementing this scheme at NNLO by using mass-dependent and massless results from literature. At two loops in QCD cut diagrams, the S-ACOT-$\chi$ scheme reduces scale dependence of heavy-quark DIS cross sections as compared to the fixed-flavor number scheme.Comment: 32 pages, 9 figures; final PRD version, added references, extended discussion of several massive flavors, extended comparison to other GM scheme

Fully Onboard AI-Powered Human-Drone Pose Estimation on Ultralow-Power Autonomous Flying Nano-UAVs

Many emerging applications of nano-sized unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), with a few cm(2) form-factor, revolve around safely interacting with humans in complex scenarios, for example, monitoring their activities or looking after people needing care. Such sophisticated autonomous functionality must be achieved while dealing with severe constraints in payload, battery, and power budget (similar to 100 mW). In this work, we attack a complex task going from perception to control: to estimate and maintain the nano-UAV's relative 3-D pose with respect to a person while they freely move in the environment-a task that, to the best of our knowledge, has never previously been targeted with fully onboard computation on a nano-sized UAV. Our approach is centered around a novel vision-based deep neural network (DNN), called Frontnet, designed for deployment on top of a parallel ultra-low power (PULP) processor aboard a nano-UAV. We present a vertically integrated approach starting from the DNN model design, training, and dataset augmentation down to 8-bit quantization and deployment in-field. PULP-Frontnet can operate in real-time (up to 135 frame/s), consuming less than 87 mW for processing at peak throughput and down to 0.43 mJ/frame in the most energy-efficient operating point. Field experiments demonstrate a closed-loop top-notch autonomous navigation capability, with a tiny 27-g Crazyflie 2.1 nano-UAV. Compared against an ideal sensing setup, onboard pose inference yields excellent drone behavior in terms of median absolute errors, such as positional (onboard: 41 cm, ideal: 26 cm) and angular (onboard: 3.7 degrees, ideal: 4.1 degrees). We publicly release videos and the source code of our work