La politique et la question du voile en Iran et en Afghanistan

International audience« Notre objectif dans cet article est de montrer que le voile n'est pas qu'un enjeu central pour les droits et la condition des femmes iraniennes et afghanes. Il s'agit aussi d'un moyen de protestation utilisé par les femmes à l'encontre du gouvernement et pour montrer leur opposition aux obligations auxquelles entend les soumettre l'autorité patriarcale, au nom de la tradition.Deux événements historiques viennent à l'appui de ce constat : les tentatives d''enlèvement du voile en 1926 en Afghanistan et en 1936 en Iran, sous l'ordre de Reza Pahlavi, le shah d'Iran. Ensuite l'obligation du port du voile, en Iran, dans les années 1980 à la suitede la Révolution de 1979, ainsi que depuis 2001, en Afghanistan, pour des raisons liées à la sécurité. Dans cet article nous allons analyser et comparer des événements consécutifs à des réformes politiques qui ont provoqué la mobilisation des femmes pour leurs droits, au moyen du voile »

Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Small Nebraska Mechanical Water Resource Recovery Facilities: Impacts of Construction and Operations

Many small, rural communities struggle with aging or inadequate water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs), and face challenges in constructing and operating such systems. Although existing literature has provided insight into the environmental sustainability of large systems including both the construction and operational phases, these studies have not examined small systems in adequate depth or breadth. The environmental impacts associated with construction may be notable for small WRRFs since the initial construction can be a larger share of the total life cycle environmental impact. The goal of this work is to provide the environmental sustainability profiles of 12 mechanical WRRFs in Nebraska using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. A detailed inventory of the construction and operational data was developed. Foreground data was collected from site visits, regulators, consulting engineers, and online databases. Background data was collected via the Ecoinvent database. The environmental profiles were created using SimaPro and the TRACI impact assessment method. Both the construction and the operational phases should be considered when evaluating the environmental sustainability of a small WRRF. For a majority of the impact categories, the individual contribution of the construction phase and operational phase to the overall environmental burden is higher than 5%. Variability among the 12 profiles was observed. Key factors influencing this variability include operational energy, construction materials, and overdesign of a facility. It was found that high operating energy impacts are associated with operational issues at a facility, and high construction impacts are associated with auxiliary materials. WRRFs that are overdesigned typically possess high environmental impacts due to high operational energy usage and/or overdesigned infrastructure. Three scenario sensitivity analyses were performed to evaluate factors that influence the environmental sustainability profile of a plant. These analyses evaluated design life, alternative energy sources, and end-of-life impacts. The results of this study have been compiled into a summary table, which may be especially useful for key stakeholders during the initial planning and design phase of small WRRFs. Advisor: Bruce I. Dvora

A novel technique for load frequency control of multi-area power systems

In this paper, an adaptive type-2 fuzzy controller is proposed to control the load frequency of a two-area power system based on descending gradient training and error back-propagation. The dynamics of the system are completely uncertain. The multilayer perceptron (MLP) artificial neural network structure is used to extract Jacobian and estimate the system model, and then, the estimated model is applied to the controller, online. A proportional–derivative (PD) controller is added to the type-2 fuzzy controller, which increases the stability and robustness of the system against disturbances. The adaptation, being real-time and independency of the system parameters are new features of the proposed controller. Carrying out simulations on New England 39-bus power system, the performance of the proposed controller is compared with the conventional PI, PID and internal model control based on PID (IMC-PID) controllers. Simulation results indicate that our proposed controller method outperforms the conventional controllers in terms of transient response and stability

Seed quality and crop establishment in wheat.

Early seedling vigour of cereal crops is crucial to crop establishment and the achievement of high yields in dryland Mediterranean environments. Early vigour is achieved by sowing high quality seed and good management. Seed quality is a result of genotype and the growing environment of the mother plant from which it came. A series of experiments were conducted to investigate aspects of seed quality. A range of bread wheat genotypes important in South Australia were used for laboratory, greenhouse and field experiments. A durum cultivar, Yallaroi, was also included. A preliminary set of field trials involving seed from eight different sources of each of eleven genotypes were evaluated at eight wheat growing locations in South Australia for two years. Using two dimensional spatial analysis techniques seed source was shown to be an important determinant of grain yield. Thus in genotype evaluation experiments, such as regional trials, where seed of genotypes may be derived from different sources changes in rank due to seed source could occur. These seed source effects and interactions with genotype were more evident during early growth stages. Fanners appreciate the importance of sowing plump seed free of weather damage and disease but they have little knowledge of the physiological quality of that seed. Experiments showed that within genotypes larger seed had larger embryos which, on germinating, produced longer coleoptiles, more vigorous seedlings resulting in higher grain yields. Rate of emergence from normal sowing depths was not affected. There were genotypic differences for both seed and embryo size but the two were not related. It should be possible for breeders to select for embryo size independent of seed size. Large seed, of course, contains more nutrients than small seed with which to nourish the embryo, but, mineral nutrient analyses of different seed sizes indicated that there were differences in nutrient concentration between seed sizes. Again there were genotype differences and the patterns across genotypes varied for different minerals. The quality of seed from different positions on the mother plant was examined for ten genotypes. Genotypes showed different potential for loading nutrients, but generally seeds of the main tiller were heavier and accumulated higher levels of nutrients than those from second tillers. Seeds from the outer florets of the middle spikelets of heads similarly had better quality than seeds from other positions. Wheat cultivar Machete accumulated more nutrients than other genotypes tested. Two nutrients, zinc and manganese, were chosen for more detailed study because deficiencies of these nutrients are widespread in South Australia. High levels of Zn and Mn in seed greatly improved crop growth especially in Zn and Mn deficient soils, in fact, seed high in Mn was more effective than Mn fertiliser in improving early growth and grain yield. Genotypic variability occurred for Zn and Mn efficiency and also for Zn and Mn accumulation in the seed. Yallaroi, the durum, performed poorly in these experiments. These results suggest that farmers would do well to manage their seed crops differently than grain crops especially by attempting to increase the levels of trace elements in the seed. The distribution of mineral nutrients within seed was examined in both high and low Zn content seeds of two genotypes and the remobilisation of nutrients was followed over the first twelve days after germination. Zn and Mn were disproportionately higher relative to other nutrients in the embryo, but this was only a small fraction of the total in the seed. Most of the nutrient was in the seed coat and, under the aseptic conditions of the experiment, apart from potassium, most was never remobilised to the young seedling. It is concluded that sound healthy seed does vary in quality and this affects seedling vigour, crop establishment and grain yield. Seed source can affect genotype performance in evaluation trials. There is genetic variability for embryo size, coleoptile length, nutrient efficiency and nutrient loading in to the seed which can be exploited by breeders. Agronomically, seed quality can be improved by managing seed crops to aid accumulation of mineral nutrients in the seed and then selecting, by grading, only large seed for sowing.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Plant Science, 199

ESL Writing Support

As the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) population at WPI grows, WPI will need an ESL-centric curriculum as well as trainings and workshops for tutors and tutees that address the gaps in ESL education. This paper reviews expert literature on ESL writing support to answer what obstacles ESL students face with writing at the college-level and what sort of help with writing ESL students need. It also reports on existing online writing support at other academic institutions and professional ESL websites, and inventories writing support in various programs at WPI and at the WPI writing center. Drawing on these data sources, this paper provides recommendations on how to improve and expand upon current resources

Polynomial extensions of cP-Baer rings

Birkenmeier and Heider, in [2], say that a ring R is right cP-Baer if the right annihilator of a cyclic projective right R-module in R is generated by an idempotent. These rings are a generalization of the right p.q.-Baer and abelian rings. Generally, a formal power series ring over one indeterminate, wherein its base ring is right p.q.-Baer, is not necessarily right p.q.-Baer. However, according to [2], if the base ring is right cP-Baer then the power series ring over one indeterminate is right cP-Baer. Following [2], we investigate the transfer of the cP-Baer property between a ring R and various extensions (including skew polynomials, skew Laurent polynomials, skew power series, skew inverse Laurent series, and monoid rings). We also answer a question posed by Birkenmeier and Heider [2] and provide examples to illustrate the results.Comment: 20 page

Monte Carlo simulation of size-effects on thermal conductivity in a 2-dimensional Ising system

A model based on microcanonical Monte Carlo method is used to study the application of the temperature gradient along a two-dimensional (2D) Ising system. We estimate the system size effects on thermal conductivity, $K$, for a nano-scale Ising layer with variable size. It is shown that $K$ scales with size as $K=cL^\alpha$ where $\alpha$ varies with temperature. Both the Metropolis and Cruetz algorithms have been used to establish the temperature gradient. Further results show that the average demon energy in the presence of an external magnetic field is zero for low temperatures.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Physica