Urban growth effects on rural population, export and service employment: evidence from eastern France

This paper examines how the spatial pattern of urban growth in functional economic regions influences the interplay of rural export employment, rural services employment, and population change in rural areas. Using an extension of the Boarnet’s model (Papers in Regional Science 73:135–153, 1994), we find that urban spread effects to rural areas in France are more likely than urban backwash effects, and that spatial urban (both dynamic and static) externalities affect rural population and employment growth. In the functional economic regions where the urban core is declining and the urban fringe is expanding, urban population growth involves an increase in rural export employment, and larger change in service employment favors rural population growth. However, urban export job growth reduces the growth in rural service jobs and expanding urban service jobs reduce rural export jobs, suggesting that expanding urban employment opportunities draws employees away from proximate rural communities. Conversely, where both urban core and fringe are growing, we observe an urban spread effect from the urban export sector to rural services—an export base multiplier effect with a spatial dimension—and from urban population growth to rural service employment.

Quantity and Quality of Free Oil Recovered from Enzymatically Disrupted Soybean Oleosomes

The operational variables impacting the quantity and quality of free oil recovered from isolated soybean oleosomes by enzymatic extraction were evaluated to optimize this process. Those variables were: protease concentration (0–2.5%), protease hydrolysis time (3 vs. 18 h), and slurry destabilization time (30 min vs. 3 h). Analysis of interactions between these variables and the yield of free oil revealed that the protease concentration was the most significant variable. The quantity of free oil extracted by using 3 h of oleosomes hydrolysis and 30 min of slurry destabilization was not significantly different from that using 18 h of oleosomes hydrolysis and 3 h of slurry destabilization. The optimum conditions, 0.5% Protex 6L, 3 h of hydrolysis, and 30 min of destabilization, resulted in 90% free oil. Oils extracted by the aqueous process had a fatty acid composition similar to conventional hexane-based process with oxidative stability indices ranging from 9 to 12 h. Enzyme assisted aqueous extraction resulted in a high quality oil which has 88% less free fatty acids than hexane-extracted oil. The optimal conditions generated 85.5% soybean storage proteins in skim with peptides smaller than 6.5 kDa and the degree of hydrolysis of 19.5%. The present study demonstrates that oil can be extracted from soybeans efficiently without hexane or other petroleum solvents.     

Modelling of fluid flow and heat transfer to assess the geothermal potential of a flooded coal mine in Lorraine,France

The flooding of the Lorraine coal mines (France), representing a huge reservoir of about 154 × 10⁶ m³, began in June 2006. After attaining thermal equilibrium with the surrounding rocks, the water temperature in the deepest parts is expected to reach 55 °C, giving the opportunity for the extraction of low-enthalpy geothermal waters that may be suitable for district heating purposes. We present some numerical modelling results of the thermally driven convective flow in an open vertical shaft and in the entire mine reservoir. A dual permeability/porosity approach was used in the reservoir model, which includes open galleries and vertical shafts, coal panels backfilled with sand, and intact rock masses. Two scenarios of heat extraction with different flow regimes were investigated. A sensitivity analysis shows that the temperature decline in the production zone is highly dependent on the permeability of the surrounding porous rocks. Larger permeabilities result in higher water temperatures at the production shaft due to greater inflows of warm water from those rock masses.     

Lack of flexibility in visual grouping in patients with schizophrenia.

The study attempted to distinguish automatic grouping processes from top-down processes in a visual perceptual task in 30 patients with schizophrenia and 30 matched controls. Participants decided whether 7 figures were all different or whether 2 adjacent figures were identical. The distance between figures was manipulated to produce 3 separated pairs of figures, the targets belonging to either the same pair (within-group trials) or different pairs (between-groups trials). As controls, patients benefited from proximity for grouping. Top-down processes were explored by manipulating the proportion of within-group and between-groups trials in 3 experimental blocks. In patients, response times (RTs) decreased for within-group trials when within-group trials were more frequent, indicating that performance was correctly adapted to the type of block. Unlike controls, however, this RT decrease was not accompanied by a cost for between-groups trials. Ocular movement recordings revealed that controls were able to focus on between-groups regions selectively when between-groups trials were more frequent, whereas patients were unable to do so. The authors suggest that top-down processes allowing the construction of a selective representation of between-groups regions are impaired in patients with schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electrodeposition and characterization of silane thin films from 3-(aminopropyl)triethoxysilane

3-(aminopropyl)triethoxysilane based films have been electrodeposited directly on polycrystalline gold and gold (111) electrodes in aqueous 3-(aminopropyl)triethoxysilane based electrolyte and in tetrahydrofurane based electrolyte. These films were characterized by means of IR-ATR and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopies. The film morphology was investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy while the film growth was observed by ellipsometry measurements. The vibrationnal and X-ray photoelectron analysis suggest that the chemical composition of the electrodeposited films either in liquid tetrahydrofurane or in liquid 3-(aminopropyl)triethoxysilane is identical. The resulting coating thickness is different for the same biasing time in the two liquid media. The gold surface is coated irreversibly by an amino terminated film of great interest for sensor applications which was used as the functionalized part of a surface plasmon resonance biosensor to monitor α-lactalbumin graft.     

Linear programming with interval right hand sides

In this paper, we study general linear programs in which right hand sides are interval numbers. This model is relevant when uncertain and inaccurate factors make difficult the assignment of a single value to each right hand side. When objective function coefficients are interval numbers in a linear program, classical criteria coming from decision theory (like the worst case criterion) are usually applied to determine robust solutions. When the set of feasible solutions is uncertain, we identify a class of linear programs for which these classical approaches are no longer relevant. However, it is possible to compute the worst optimum solution. We study the complexity of this optimization problem when each right hand side is an interval number. Then, we exhibit some duality relationships between the worst optimum solution problem and the best optimum solution to the dual problem.     

A framework for the design of knowledge management systems in eco-design

Eco-design is becoming a crucial challenge for many companies. The effective integration of environmental concerns into design is linked to the development of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). In this context, this paper proposes a framework to support the design of KMS for eco-design. This framework consists of two complementary parts linked to the main knowledge management strategies that KMS generally support. The first part of the framework concerns codification strategy and relies on an eco-design process reference model and the related adaptation of the GAMETH^® method used to locate and evaluate crucial knowledge systematically. The second part of the framework concerns the personalisation strategy. In this paper we propose to exploit the community of practice (CoP) theory by: (1) proposing guidelines defining the structural features of CoPs and (2) adapting a tool landscape providing insight on CoP instrumentation. Both guidelines support the setting up of a specific CoP. The exploitation of the framework is illustrated on a real case study.