[Review] ‘Every Moving Thing Shall Be Meat for You.’ A review of David Brooks. Animal Dreams. Animal Publics series, Sydney University Press, 2021. 290 pp.

[Review] ‘Every Moving Thing Shall Be Meat for You.’ A review of David Brooks. Animal Dreams. Animal Publics series, Sydney University Press, 2021. 290 pp. Animal Dreams is David Brooks’s third book assailing the vast edifice of the human-animal’s obdurate refusal to rethink its relationship with other animals. It is an erudite and searching contribution to the field of animal studies, and a passionate, persuasive appeal to the mind, heart and senses to change the way of human being-in-the-world that is pushing so many species to extinction and exploiting and truncating the lives of individual animals. Brooks is ‘on the side of the animal’, but experience and insight into the workings of the human animal leads him to argue not just for and on behalf of nonhuman animals, but that human animals too will benefit from ceasing to abuse other animals. In this vein, Brooks argues that the human animal is wounded in a primal, yet repressed manner by its complicity and active role in causing the ‘tide of suffering’ of other animals. This is an idea explored in the opening essay ‘The Smoking Vegetarian’ and drilled to the quick in a later essay on Derrida, ‘The Wound’. Given the human propensity for self-centredness, this is a strategy in the defence of animals, rather than a display of empathy for the human animal. It is Brooks’s steady gaze into the heart of darkness, combined with the unflinching pen, that makes Animal Dreams so eloquent a critique of the human animal and so eloquent and urgent a defence of animals

State of The Art on the Current Research Lines in Speaker Recognition Based on Clustering Methods

The objective of this overview is to summarize some of the well-known algorithms already studied and tested for the task of speaker recognition during the recent years. First, we give an overview of speaker recognition, then we present the development and understanding of its state of the art by highlighting the contribution from the latest developed techniques in general, followed by the inclusion of the state of the art part in speaker recognition based on clustering techniques. Again, a special emphasis on the current research lines is given in order to know the new approaches of speaker recognition. Thus, an introduction on speaker recognition and a summary on the state of the art related to clustering methods are offered and discussed

Exploring the capabilities of the Anti-Coincidence Shield of the INTEGRAL spectrometer to study solar flares

INTEGRAL is a hard X-ray/gamma-ray observatory for astrophysics (ESA) covering photon energies from 15 keV to 10 MeV. It was launched in 2002 and since then the BGO detectors of the Anti-Coincidence shield (ACS) of the SPI spectrometer have detected many hard X-ray (HXR) bursts from the Sun, producing lightcurves at photon energies above ~ 100 keV. The spacecraft has a highly elliptical orbit, providing a long uninterrupted observing time (about 90% of the orbital period) with nearly constant background due to the reduction of the crossing time of the Earth's radiation belts. However, due to technical constraints, INTEGRAL cannot point to the Sun and high-energy solar photons are always detected in non-standard observation conditions. To make the data useful for solar studies, we have undertaken a major effort to specify the observing conditions through Monte-Carlo simulations of the response of ACS for several selected flares. We check the performance of the model employed for the Monte-Carlo simulations using RHESSI observations for the same sample of solar flares. We conclude that, despite the fact that INTEGRAL was not designed to perform solar observations, ACS is a useful instrument in solar flare research. In particular, its relatively large effective area allows the determination of good-quality HXR/gamma-ray lightcurves for X- and M-class solar flares and, in some cases, probably also for C-class flares.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures; Solar Physics 201

Fuel gallery residence time & heat transfer experimental technique development for gas turbine fuel injectors

Two experimental techniques are presented in this paper looking at flows in complicated passages such as those of internal fuel galleries in modern fuel spray nozzles. The first relates to residence time measurement using a dye wash-out technique and the second to surface heat transfer measurement using thermochromic liquid crystals. Dye concentration can be sufficiently calibrated making this technique easily and successfully applicable to residence time measurement within the chosen geometry. This experiment highlighted areas within the geometry where fuel is likely to become trapped in a recirculation and so leading to high residence times. The liquid crystal method proved more challenging due to the susceptibility of the crystals to fail under water. One set of measurements was gathered and showed that areas of high fuel residence time also correspond to low heat transfer coefficient. Small volumes of slow or stagnant fuel will be susceptible to soaking more heat increasing the risk of coke formation

Contacts de langues et/ou de cultures dans les contes populaires écrits en langue française

Les contes populaires publiés en français offrent un terrain particulier de contacts de langues. Ceux étudiés ici constituent un bilinguisme de contes proche de celui littéraire, tout en s’en distinguant des points de vue de l’énonciation, de la composition discursive, des référents socioculturels et folkloriques, etc. Les enjeux de ces contacts, ici liés à la réception, sont sociodidactiques.Popular tales published in French provide a particular ground for language contacts. Those studied here constitute a bilingualism of tales close to the literary one, while distinguishing themselves from the points of view of enunciation, discursive composition, socio-cultural and folkloric references, etc. The stakes of these contacts, here related to the reception, are sociodidactic

The Galactic Bulge: A Review

The Milky Way is the only galaxy for which we can resolve individual stars at all evolutionary phases, from the Galactic center to the outskirt. The last decade, thanks to the advent of near IR detectors and 8 meter class telescopes, has seen a great progress in the understanding of the Milky Way central region: the bulge. Here we review the most recent results regarding the bulge structure, age, kinematics and chemical composition. These results have profound implications for the formation and evolution of the Milky Way and of galaxies in general. This paper provides a summary on our current understanding of the Milky Way bulge, intended mainly for workers on other fields.Comment: 10 pages, 8 Postscript figures, uses iaus.cls To appear in Proceedings of IAU Symp. 245 on "Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Bulges", (held at Oxford, July 16-20 2007), Eds. Martin Bureau, Lia Athanassoula, and Beatriz Barbu

Microlensing optical depth as a function of source apparent magnitude

Measurements of the microlensing optical depth, tau, towards the Galactic bulge appear to depend on the method used to obtain them. Those values based on the lensing of red clump giants (RCGs) appear to be significantly lower than those based on the lensing of all stars along the line of sight. This discrepancy is still not understood. Through Monte Carlo simulations, it is found that the discrepancy cannot be explained by a dependance on the flux limits of the two methods. The optical depth is expected to be generally constant as a function of source apparent magnitude for I_0 >~ 13.0, except in the range 13.5 <~ I_0 <~ 15.5. Here many RCGs are detected, causing a significant oscillation in tau. The amplitude of this oscillation is a function of the inclination angle of the Galactic bar, theta_bar, which may thus be constrained. A further constraint comes from a similar dependance of tau with theta_bar: combining the predicted trends with the measured values provides 1-sigma upper limits, which exclude the large bar angles recently reported by the GLIMPSE and EROS surveys. The latest survey data from EROS-2 appear to show the predicted tau oscillation, though currently at a low significance. However, a further sign comes from EROS-2 event counts, which show a clear skew towards fainter magnitudes.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, to be published in MNRA

THE HYDROCHLORIC ACID EFFECTS ON MODIFIED CEMENT WITH NEW COMBINATIONS BASED ON CALCINED DAM’S MUD AND NATURAL POUZZOLANA

Reducing the amount of clinker in cement industry using Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCMs) is one of the solutions developed by researchers in our field trying to respect environmental requirements, in the same context the present work aim to test the feasibility of new combinations using two sorts of Algerian SCMs and to evaluate their behavior while exposed to hydrochloric acid. To concretize this objective we fabricated a control mortar (based on cement CEMI) and nine other mortars containing modified cements, by a binary and ternary mixtures of Portland Cement CEMI, Calcined Mud (Wastes) of Chofa Dam (CW) and Natural Pouzzolana (NP), all these mixtures were tested at fresh state for consistency and setting time of pastes, and at hardened state for apparent density measure, water absorption and compressive strength of mortars. After that the ten of them were immersed in hydrochloric acid (HCL) 5% during fifteen weeks (105 days), Then they were examined for mass loss, volume loss, density decrease (apparent density) and the visual appearance. The results obtained in the majority of tests showed that the mixtures containing SCMs especially the ternary mixtures are realizable and more advantageous than others and characterized by a higher water demand and a better behavior after both compressive and HCL attack

Effect of the aggressive environment on the damage of a glass polyester composite developed by hand layup process

This work treats the behavior of a glass fibre/unsaturated polyester (UP) composite with structural deffects subjected to the attack of two corrosive solutions: H2SO4 and NaOH. The gravimetric analysis, the uptake mass of the resin, and the interfaces in the composite are established according to the proportion of the matrix/composite. The obtained results showed that, in the acidic solution, the glass fibre and the fibre/matrix interface absorption share is more significant than the alkaline solution. While the Fourier transform infrared analysis (FT-IR) of the UP resin revealed the presence of chemical degradation phenomenon (hydrolysis), the fibre corrosion was characterized by the atomic absorption analysis (AAS). The fibres/matrix interfaces degradation was confrmed by microscopic observations (SEM). The difusion kinetics of the both acid and alkaline solutions and chemical and mechanical degradation are afected by the presence of the pores in elaborated materia

Détermination des besoins pour l'élaboration d'une stratégie de maintenance des équipements automatisés du réseau aérien de distribution d'électricité à moyenne tension

L'optimisation de l'exploitation de l'ensemble des actifs est la première préoccupation des gestionnaires des services de maintenance. Le choix de la stratégie de maintenance est un facteur clé dans l'optimisation du rendement et la fiabilité des équipements, qui dépendent forcément des outils utilisés et des informations recueillies afin de prendre des décisions pertinentes et économiquement rentables. Ce mémoire porte sur la détermination des besoins pour l'élaboration d'une stratégie de maintenance des équipements automatisés du réseau aérien de distribution, d'analyser les paramètres pertinents à considérer pour un équipement afin d'en faire un usage efficace dans l'élaboration des procédures et des méthodes de travail. Partant de la synthèse des stratégies de maintenance existantes et l'avancée technologique de la télémaintenance dans le domaine de la gestion des réseaux de distribution, une analyse sera effectuée sur le disjoncteur réenclencheur comme exemple d'équipement automatise du réseau aérien de distribution moyenne tension. Une analyse des principaux modes de défaillance du disjoncteur récnclencheur sera effectuée en détails dans le but d'identifier les principaux paramètres à surveiller en continue et qui sont susceptibles de déterminer les conditions d'exploitation de l'appareil, selon les données enregistrées dans le temps. L'analyse de ces données permettra d'élaborer une stratégie de maintenance préventive conditionnelle et prévoir les défaillances qui peuvent avoir lieu avant leur apparition, afin d'optimiser le fonctionnement du disjoncteur et prolonger sa durée de vie. Différentes études se sont penchées sur la nécessite d'une surveillance continue des équipements automatisés afin d'améliorer le rendement des réseaux de distribution et de faciliter la maintenance prévenfive. Le but de ce projet est de fournir une étude détaillée sous forme d'une AMDEC (analyse des modes de défaillance, de leurs effets et leur crhicité). La consuhation d'experts du domaine et l'acquisition de données d'exploitation du réseau de distribution ont permis d'estimer les différents paramètres du modèle et d'aboutir à des résultats plus concrets et plus significatifs reflétant la réalité telle que vécue par l'industrie des réseaux de distribution de l'énergie électrique. Le réseau de distribution d'Hydro-Québec constitue l'un des plus grands réseaux dans le monde, les technologies et les techniques d'exploitation utilisées sont panni les plus avancées dans le domaine; les données recueillies sont très significatives et constituent une référence de taille pour l'industrie des réseaux moyenne tension de distribution de l'énergie électrique. Suite à l'étude et à l'analyse de l'AMDEC, l'analyse du risque, des paramètres et des composants du disjoncteur ont été choisis en vue d'une surveillance continue pour chaque mode de défaillance. Ce choix a été justifié par une analyse de coût-bénéfice qui a démontré les économies qu'on enregistre en surveillant ces paramètres. À la fin, des exemples d'application ont été présentés, ce qui constitue des options technologiques pouvant être implantées sur les disjoncteurs installés dans le réseau. Une telle expérience pourrait être possible, entre autres, avec la technologie de la compagnie Coopcr. Power System, qui détient la solution de la surveillance visuelle des actifs présentée à titre d'illustration. Une autre option pourrait être celle d'Hydro-Québec production, soit le système de surveillance en continu (SSC) qui a été expérimenté sur des équipements de production