The tooth of the hoe

Publication of text attesting phrase "(good for) the tooth of the hoe" (a rare qualification of housing property)

Predicting leakage of the VERCORS mock-up and concrete containment buildings - a digital twin approach

EDF operates a nuclear power generation fleet made up of 56 reactors. This fleet contains 24 reactors designed as double-walled concrete containment building. The inner concrete containment vessel has no metallic liner and is a prestressed reinforced concrete building. The inner concrete containment vessel is designed to withstand a severe accident, in terms of mechanical and sealing behaviour. The tightness of the containment is tested every 10 years, by carrying out a pressurization test and by measuring the leak rate. The leak rate is required to be below a regulatory threshold to continue operation of the concrete containment building for the next ten years. Ageing of concrete due to drying, creep and shrinkage leads to increase prestress loss and then leak rate with time. For some containment buildings, the leak rate gets closer to the regulatory threshold with time, so important coating programs are planned to mitigate and limit the leak rate under the regulatory threshold. Therefore, it is very important for EDF to have a concrete containment building leak rate prediction tool. To address this issue, an important research program around a 1/3 scale concrete containment building mock-up called "VERCORS" have been launched at EDF. The mock-up is heavily instrumented, and its materials (concrete, prestressing cables) have been widely characterized and studied. An important numerical effort has also been made to implement structural computations of the mock-up and to capitalize these computations as well as their post-processing (so as to compare automatically with the monitoring data) in what can be called a digital twin of the mock-up. This digital twin is now used to predict the leakage of VERCORS mock-up before yearly pressure test, and also to optimize the repair programs on the real containments

Optimal Unemployment Insurance for Older Workers

This paper shows that optimal unemployment insurance contracts are age-dependent. Older workers have only a few years left on the labor market prior to retirement. This short horizon implies a more digressive replacement ratio. However, there is a sufficiently short distance to retirement for which flat unemployment benefits can be the optimal contract as the nearly retired unemployed workers rationally expect never to suffer from the punishment. This is why imposing a tax on the future job is particularly efficient in the context of older workers because the agency can now reward the job search by present employment subsidies. Moreover, we propose adopting a global approach to unemployment insurance by determining an optimal contract that integrates unemployment insurance and retirement pension systems.unemployment insurance, retirement, recursive contracts, moral hazard

L’alimentation au Proche-Orient ancien : les sources et leur exploitation

International audienceIn order to recreate the diet of the Ancient Near Eastern people, researchers use archaeological remains, images and texts. These, quite numerous, refer first the table of the elites and the rations distributed to workers. Archaeological remains are often rubbish (fragments of common pots), culinary facilities (millstone, oven, silos) and funerary deposits. These various sources seem to deal with different aspects of food. But, Near Eastern archaeology developed these last decades, new methods providing new data on food: archaeobotanic and archaeozoology for example, for the study of plant and animal remains. It is now possible to cross archaeological data with texts and images. Three samples dedicated to oil, beveled rim bowls and pigs are analyzed.Pour reconstituer l'alimentation des habitants du Proche-Orient ancien, les chercheurs disposent de sources archéologiques, iconographiques et textuelles. Ces dernières, abondantes, concernent en priorité la table des élites et les rations allouées aux travailleurs. Les vestiges archéologiques sont souvent des objets mis au rebut (tessons de vaisselle commune), des installations culinaires (meules, fours, silos), ainsi que des dépôts funéraires. Ces différents types de sources semblent, a priori, documenter des aspects différents de l'alimentation des anciens. Néanmoins, l'archéologie orientale a développé de nouvelles méthodes, depuis une vingtaine d'années, permettant de multiplier les informations sur les aliments : archéobotanique et archéozoologie, par exemple pour l'étude des restes végétaux et animaux. Il est donc possible de confronter les données archéologiques à celles fournies par les textes et les images. Trois exemples consacrés à l'huile, aux bols à forme tronconique et aux suidés sont présentés en détail

Chapitre 5. Les cercles humanistes : médecins et juristes

Si les littératures biblique et patristique occupent l’essentiel de l’activité du Soleil d’Or, elles ne constituent pas pour autant l’intégralité de sa production. Les éditions juridiques ou médicales tiennent également une place importante dans le catalogue de Charlotte Guillard. Il convient donc d’examiner les relations que l’atelier a pu entretenir avec les milieux robins et médicaux, afin de mieux comprendre leur place dans la politique éditoriale du Soleil d’Or. Pour ce faire, nous nous ..

Sobre la posible secuencia uvas et ficus en un fragmento de cerámica de Gayo Valerio Verdulo hallado en el yacimiento de las Eras de San Martín de Alfaro

Un fragmento de cerámica atribuible a Gayo Valerio Verdulo contiene un texto fragmentario que presenta una probable reminiscencia de Lucilio y concomitancias con otros autores latinos, como Horacio y Marcial.A fragment of ceramics attributable to Gaius Valerius Verdullus contains a fragmentary text that presents Lucilius’ probable reminiscence and concommittances with other Latin authors, as Horace and Martial

Prevalence and association of asthma and allergic sensitization with dietary factors in schoolchildren: data from the french six cities study

International audienceBackground: The prevalence of asthma and allergy has recently risen among children. This increase in prevalence might be related to various factors, particularly diet. The aim of this study is to assess the prevalence and association of asthma and allergic sensitization with dietary factors in the French Six Cities Study. Methods: Cross-sectional studies were performed among 7432 schoolchildren aged 9-11 years in Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Creteil, Marseille, Reims, and Strasbourg. Parental questionnaires, based on the International Study on Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC), were used to collect information on allergic diseases and potential exposure factors including a food frequency questionnaire to evaluate dietary habits. Skin prick testing to common allergens for allergic sensitization and bronchial hyper-responsiveness (BHR) testing to exercise were performed. Confounders control was performed with multiple logistic regressions. Results: Asthma symptoms, asthma and allergic sensitization were more prevalent in boys than in girls and were more prevalent in the South than in the North of France. After adjustment for confounders, fruit juice intake was associated with a low prevalence of lifetime asthma (ORa [95 % CI]; 0.73 [0.56-0.97]), butter intake was positively associated with atopic wheeze (1.48 [1.07-2.05]) and having lunch at the canteen 1-2 times/week compared to never or occasionally was associated with a lower prevalence of past year wheeze (0.71 [0.52-0.96]), lifetime asthma (0.76 [0.60-0.96]) and allergic sensitization (0.80 [0.67-0.95]). Meat intake was inversely related to past year wheeze among atopic children (0.68 [0.50-0.98]) while fast food consumption and butter intake were associated with an increase prevalence of asthma (2.39 [1.47-3.93] and 1.51 [1.17-2.00] respectively). Fish intake was associated with a lower prevalence of asthma among non-atopic children (0.61 [0.43-0.87]. None of the dietary factors was associated with BHR. Conclusions: Diet is associated with wheeze, asthma and allergic sensitization but not with BHR in children. These results provide further evidence that adherence to a healthy diet including fruits, meat and fish seems to have a protective effect on asthma and allergy in childhood. However, prospective and experimental studies are needed to provide causal evidence concerning the effect of diet on asthma and atopy

The Politics of Protest Avoidance: Policy Windows, Labor Mobilization, and Pension Reform in France

According to Paul Pierson and R. Kent Weaver, the "new politics of the welfare state" is about escaping the popular blame generated by cutbacks affecting a significant portion of the population. Although the concept of blame avoidance helps to explain the political logic of welfare state retrenchment, one can argue that a careful analysis of social policy reform should take into account a largely understudied phenomenon: protest avoidance. Especially present in countries with single party governments and politically active labor unions, protest avoidance is analytically distinct from blame avoidance because it occurs when policy-makers, facing direct and nearly inescapable blame, attempt to reduce the scope of social mobilization triggered by unpopular reforms. In recent decades, successive French governments have successfully introduced major--and unpopular--reforms in the field of pensions, despite the difficulties to frame blame avoidance strategies in the context of France's strong concentration of state power. Focusing on the 1993, 1995, and 2003 pension reform episodes, this paper seeks to demonstrate that right wing governments have generally tried to avoid protest rather than escape blame. We claim that the key element has been avoiding disruptive strike activities by the labor movement, which are highly political in France. We argue that right wing governments have attempted to divide the fragmented labor movement and overload the reform agenda while enacting its most controversial reforms during the summer holiday season. Protest avoidance thus represents a key political variable worthy of study in the literature on welfare state retrenchment. In the future, the concept of protest avoidance could be applied to other countries and policy areas in which elected officials attempt to impose unpopular reforms that trigger social mobilization.protest avoidance; pension reform

El viaje botánico de Pierre Edmond Boissier por el sur de España (1837)

El viaje botánico de Pierre Edmond Boissier por el sur de España. Coincidiendo con el 200 aniversario del nacimiento de Pierre-Edmond Boissier (1810-1885), presentamos un análisis de su primer viaje por el Sur de España, realizado en 1837: estudiamos los motivos que le impulsaron a llevarlo a cabo, la información que tuvo disponible, el viaje en sí y la publicación de sus resultados en la más señera de sus obras, el Voyage botanique dans le midi de l’Espagne… (París, 1839-1845)