In Trusts We Trust: Pension Funds Between Social Protection and Financial Speculation.

les réformes européennes des retraites ont pris pour référence le système américain. cet article propose de comprendre les origines d'une telle croyance persistante dans les vertus des fonds de pension. l'analyse met en évidence le rôle joué par leur structure juridique, le trust, dans la légitimation de la "pension industry".Recent reforms of European pension schemes have largely taken the American system as a reference.The remarks which follow are aimed at understanding the origins of such a persistent belief in the virtues of the pension funds. The analysis brings out the role played by their legal structure, the trust, in the legitimisation of the ‘pension industryFonds de pension; Trust;

Studies on the biology and ecology of the cabbage moth, Mamestra brassicae L. (Lepidoptera :Noctuidae)

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Faith-based voluntary action: a case study of a French charity

Following legal changes in the 1980s, the Voluntary and Community sector/économie sociale in France has become culturally diverse as faith-based organisations serving minority ethnic communities have developed, including charities inspired by religious and cultural principles of charitable giving. In this article, we use a case study of a social welfare charity established in a Parisian suburb with a culturally diverse population. Worldwide social welfare work is a priority; the charity responds to disasters, but it prioritises long-term development actions, encouraging the direct involvement of local communities. In recent years, its work has also embraced distressed communities within France

Localized structures in coupled Ginzburg-Landau equations

Coupled Complex Ginzburg-Landau equations describe generic features of the dynamics of coupled fields when they are close to a Hopf bifurcation leading to nonlinear oscillations. We study numerically this set of equations and find, within a particular range of parameters, the presence of uniformly propagating localized objects behaving as coherent structures. Some of these localized objects are interpreted in terms of exact analytical solutions.Comment: 7 pages, 3 postscript figures, uses the elsart style files. Related material availeble from http://www.imedea.uib.es/Nonlinea

Numerical Study of a Lyapunov Functional for the Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation

We numerically study in the one-dimensional case the validity of the functional calculated by Graham and coworkers as a Lyapunov potential for the Complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. In non-chaotic regions of parameter space the functional decreases monotonically in time towards the plane wave attractors, as expected for a Lyapunov functional, provided that no phase singularities are encountered. In the phase turbulence region the potential relaxes towards a value characteristic of the phase turbulent attractor, and the dynamics there approximately preserves a constant value. There are however very small but systematic deviations from the theoretical predictions, that increase when going deeper in the phase turbulence region. In more disordered chaotic regimes characterized by the presence of phase singularities the functional is ill-defined and then not a correct Lyapunov potential.Comment: 20 pages,LaTeX, Postcript version with figures included available at http://formentor.uib.es/~montagne/textos/nep