Inequalities generalizing the second law of thermodynamics for transitions between non-stationary states

We discuss the consequences of a variant of the Hatano-Sasa relation in which a non-stationary distribution is used in place of the usual stationary one. We first show that this non-stationary distribution is related to a difference of traffic between the direct and dual dynamics. With this formalism, we extend the definition of the adiabatic and non-adiabatic entropies introduced by M. Esposito and C. Van den Broeck in Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 090601 (2010) for the stationary case. We also obtain interesting second-law like inequalities for transitions between non-stationary states.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Concevoir en partenariat une EcoViticulture ECOnomiquement viable et ECOlogiquement responsable par rapport aux pesticides (EcoViti)

Initié en 2010, le projet Casdar EcoViti a proposé et testé une démarche s’appuyant sur des connaissances expertes pour la conception de systèmes viticoles innovants à bas intrants phytosanitaires. L’évaluation des performances et le ré-ajustement des prototypes conçus se fait au sein d’un réseau de plateformes d’expérimentation installées dans les grandes régions viticoles françaises. Une méthode et des outils adaptés à la viticulture ont été produits et formalisés. Les premiers résultats d’EcoViti montrent des performances environnementales et économiques satisfaisantes pour encourager l’évolution des systèmes viticoles vers une moindre dépendance aux intrants

Opérationnaliser une action socioprofessionnelle dans un centre de jour

Ce travail traite du rôle, de la mission et de l'opérationnalisation d'une action socioprofessionnelle dans la prestation centre de jour comme elle est décrite dans la loi fédérale sur les institutions destinées à promouvoir l’intégration des personnes invalides. Pour ce faire, j'ai dans un premier temps consulté de nombreux documents qui définissent les centres de jour et permettent d'en retracer leur histoire. Dans un second temps, j'ai sollicité les professionnels qui y travaillent. J'ai ainsi pu recueillir des réponses de vingt professionnels répartis dans quatre institutions à l'aide d'un questionnaire en ligne. Les données recueillies ont été longuement triées, croisées, analysées, pour vous être restituées. Comme vous le verrez, ce travail met en évidence des disparités quant à la mise en oeuvre d’une action socioprofessionnelle dans les centres de jour. Disparités, qui sont ici mises en évidence et qui s’expliquent de différentes manières

{MAHEVE}: An Efficient Reliable Mapping of Asynchronous Iterative Applications on volatile and Heterogeneous Environments

International audienceThe asynchronous iteration model, called AIAC, has been proven to be an efficient solution for heterogeneous and distributed architectures. An efficient mapping of application tasks is essential to reduce their execution time. In this paper we present a new mapping algorithm, called MAHEVE (Mapping Algorithm for HEterogeneous and Volatile Environments) which is efficient on such architectures and integrates a fault tolerance mechanism to resist computing node failures. Our experiments show gains on a typical AIAC application execution time up to 65%, executed on distributed clusters architectures containing more than 400 computing cores with the JaceP2P-V2 environment

Growth rings in tropical trees : role of functional traits, environment, and phylogeny

Acknowledgments Financial support of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (USR 3330), France, and from the Rufford Small Grants Foundation (UK) is acknowledged. We thank the private farmers and coffee plantation companies of Kodagu for providing permissions and logistical support for this project. We are grateful to N. Barathan for assistance with slide preparation and data entry, S. Aravajy for botanical assistance, S. Prasad and G. Orukaimoni for technical inputs, and A. Prathap, S. Shiva, B. Saravana, and P. Shiva for field assistance. The corresponding editor and three anonymous reviewers provided insightful comments that improved the manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin

Adaptation and Evaluation of the Multisplitting-Newton and Waveform Relaxation Methods Over Distributed Volatile Environments

International audienceThis paper presents new adaptations of two methods that solve large differential equations systems, to the grid context. The first method isbased on the Multisplitting concept and the second on the Waveform Relaxation concept. Their adaptations are implemented according to the asynchronous iteration model which is well suited to volatile architectures that suffer from high latency networks. Many experiments were conducted to evaluate and compare the accuracy and performance of both methods while solving the advection-diffusion problem over heterogeneous, distributed and volatile architectures. The JACEP2P-V2 middleware provided the fault tolerant asynchronous environment, required for these experiments

On the asymptotic properties of a canonical diffraction integral.

We introduce and study a new canonical integral, denoted I + - ε , depending on two complex parameters α 1 and α 2. It arises from the problem of wave diffraction by a quarter-plane and is heuristically constructed to capture the complex field near the tip and edges. We establish some region of analyticity of this integral in C 2 , and derive its rich asymptotic behaviour as |α 1 | and |α 2 | tend to infinity. We also study the decay properties of the function obtained from applying a specific double Cauchy integral operator to this integral. These results allow us to show that this integral shares all of the asymptotic properties expected from the key unknown function G +- arising when the quarter-plane diffraction problem is studied via a two-complex-variables Wiener-Hopf technique (see Assier & Abrahams, SIAM J. Appl. Math., in press). As a result, the integral I + - ε can be used to mimic the unknown function G +- and to build an efficient 'educated' approximation to the quarter-plane problem