Dispositif mono bain pour le developpement electro-chimique a partir d'une source de tension de 220 V, 50 Hz

A simple and practical method for electro-chemical etching is described. The equipment is made out of a single bath cell associated with the direct electric supply (220 V, 50 Hz).This apparatus is used to develop fission tracks at various temperatures in Makrofol foils. The treeing phenomena observed up to 40 V leads us to consider the upper limit of the detector thickness usable with this setup around 350 μm.     

ECOCLIMAP-II: An ecosystem classification and land surface parameters database of Western Africa at 1 km resolution for the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) project

This work is devoted to a presentation of the ECOCLIMAP-II database for Western Africa, which is an upgrade for this region of the former initiative, ECOCLIMAP-I, implemented at global scale. ECOCLIMAP-II is a dual database at 1-km resolution that comprises an ecosystem classification and a coherent set of land surface parameters. This new physiographic information (e.g. leaf area index, fractional vegetation cover, albedo and land cover classification), was especially developed in the framework of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) programme in order to support the modelling of land-atmosphere interactions, which stresses the importance of the present study. Criteria for coherence between prevalent land cover classifications and the analysis of time series of the satellite leaf area index (LAI) between 2000 and 2007 constitute the analysis tools for setting up ECOCLIMAP-II. The LAI and inferred fraction of vegetation cover are spatially distributed per land cover unit. The fraction of vegetation cover is handled to split the land surface albedo into vegetation and bare soil albedo components, as is required for a large number of applications. The new ECOCLIMAP-II land cover product is improved with regard to the spatial coherence compared to former version. The reliability of the physiographic details is also confirmed through verification with land cover products at higher resolution.     

Evaluation of thermal and moisture management properties on knitted fabrics and comparison with a physiological model in warm conditions

This study reports on an experimental investigation of physical properties on the textile thermal comfort. Textile properties, such as thickness, relative porosity, air permeability, moisture regain, thermal conductivity, drying time and water-vapour transmission rate have been considered and correlated to the thermal and vapour resistance, permeability index, thermal effusivity and moisture management capability in order to determine the overall comfort performance of underwear fabrics. The results suggested that the fibre type, together with moisture regain and knitted structure characteristics appeared to affect some comfort-related properties of the fabrics. Additionally, thermal sensations, temperature and skin wetness predicted by Caseto^® software for three distinct activity levels were investigated. Results show that the data obtained from this model in transient state are correlated to the thermal conductivity for the temperature and to Ret, moisture regain and drying time for the skin wetness. This provides potential information to determine the end uses of these fabrics according to the selected activity level.     

Ecosystem mapping at the African continent scale using a hybrid clustering approach based on 1-km resolution multi-annual data from SPOT/VEGETATION

The goal of this study is to propose a new classification of African ecosystems based on an 8-year analysis of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data sets from SPOT/VEGETATION. We develop two methods of classification. The first method is obtained from a k-nearest neighbour (k-NN) classifier, which represents a simple machine learning algorithm in pattern recognition. The second method is hybrid in that it combines k-NN clustering, hierarchical principles and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The nomenclature of the two classifications relies on three levels of vegetation structural categories based on the Land Cover Classification System (LCCS). The two main outcomes are: (i) The delineation of the spatial distribution of ecosystems into five bioclimatic ecoregions at the African continental scale; (ii) Two ecosystem maps were made sequentially: an initial map with 92 ecosystems from the k-NN, plus a deduced hybrid classification with 73 classes, which better reflects the bio-geographical patterns. The inclusion of bioclimatic information and successive k-NN clustering elements helps to enhance the discrimination of ecosystems. Adopting this hybrid approach makes the ecosystem identification and labelling more flexible and more accurate in comparison to straightforward methods of classification. The validation of the hybrid classification, conducted by crossing-comparisons with validated continental maps, displayed a mapping accuracy of 54% to 61%.     

Differential study of substituted and unsubstituted cobalt phthalocyanines for gas sensor applications

The conductivity of CoPc (cobalt phthalocyanine) and Co[(SO₃Na)_2,3Pc] was measured under a flow of two different gases (NH₃ and O₃), during exposure/recovery cycles. It appears that the relative responses are linearly related to the concentration, in the 20-200 ppb range for O₃ and in the 20-200 ppm range for NH₃. Observed during time, the sensing parameters allow a qualitative understanding of the kinetics. The comparative study of those products under both different gases gave interesting results for sensor applications. Whereas CoPc is sensitive to both gases, its sulfonated counterpart is only sensitive to NH₃.     

Maleic anhydride-grafted polypropylene: FTIR study of a model polymer grafted by ene-reaction

Ene-grafting of maleic anhydride on polypropylene previously enriched in double bonds by β-scission was promoted in order to obtain model grafted polypropylene. Ene-grafting was carried out in the presence of a radical-scavenger in order to limit at a minimum side-grafting and in presence of catalyst (SnCl₂) in order to maximise the ene-grafting. Nevertheless, it does not lead to high grafting content.Ene-grafted PP confirms the single end-grafted succinic anhydride FTIR assignment at 1792 cm⁻¹ (CO symmetric stretching) while a disubstitution is also observed leading to a shift to a 1784 cm⁻¹ absorption band. This latter band was more generally assigned to interacting anhydride (CO) instead of an assignment to the particular polyanhydride species (as previously assigned by our team [De Roover B, Sclavons M, Carlier V, Devaux J, Legras R, Momtaz A. J Polym Sci, Part A: Polym Chem 1995;33:829. [14]]).     

Procedure and outcome effects on reactions to adjudicated resolution of conflicts of interest.

Examined the effects of outcome on reactions to an adjudication procedure and the effects of procedures on reactions to an adjudication outcome. 111 male undergraduates were led to believe they had been charged with wrongdoing of which they knew they were innocent. The charge was tried, and the Ss outcomes were determined using procedures (adversary or nonadversary) high or low in perceived procedural justice. Ss were then told that they had been found innocent or guilty. Perceptions of the trial process were assessed either before or after the verdict was announced. After the verdict, additional questionnaires assessed perceptions of the verdict and overall perceptions of procedural and distributive fairness. Results show that disputants saw the adversary procedure as fairer than the nonadversary and that they saw the verdict as more fair and satisfying, and as more accurate and unbiased, when it followed an adversary trial. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Event‐switched control design with guaranteed performances

In this paper, a new event‐switched control method is presented for controlling discrete‐time linear systems subject to bounded disturbances. The main advantage of the proposed method is that the nominal performance of the controlled system with periodic control updates is kept in a framework that do not require to periodically update the control law. The feedback control loop can be opened as long a state‐dependent event condition is satisfied. This condition is obtained using set theory approaches. In particular, the concept of robustly positively invariant sets is used to calculate the nominal performance and the event condition. The simulation presented in this paper confirms the efficiency of the present approach. A reduction of the numerical complexity of the approach is also proposed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visual mining of time series using a tubular visualization

In this paper, we study the visual mining of time series, and we contribute to the study and evaluation of 3D tubular visualizations. We describe the state of the art in the visual mining of time-dependent data, and we concentrate on visualizations that use a tubular shape to represent data. After analyzing the motivations for studying such a representation, we present an extended tubular visualization. We propose new visual encodings of the time and data, new interactions for knowledge discovery, and the use of rearrangement clustering. We show how this visualization can be used in several real-world domains and that it can address large datasets. We present a comparative user study. We conclude with the advantages and the drawbacks of our method (especially the tubular shape).     

Solving RCPSP/max by lazy clause generation

We present a generic exact method for minimizing the project duration of the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with generalized precedence relations (Rcpsp/max). This is a very general scheduling model with applications areas such as project management and production planning. Our method uses lazy clause generation, i.e., a hybrid of finite domain and Boolean satisfiability solving, in order to apply no-good learning and conflict-driven search to the solution generation. Our experiments show the benefit of lazy clause generation for finding an optimal solution and proving its optimality in comparison to other state-of-the-art exact and non-exact methods. In comparison to other methods, our method is able to find better solutions faster on the Rcpsp/max benchmarks. Indeed, our method closes 573 open problem instances and generates better solutions in most of the remaining instances. Surprisingly, although ours is an exact method, it outperforms the published non-exact methods on these benchmarks in terms of the quality of solutions.