Centre National De Recherche Scientifique Research Articles

Effect of Rapid Maxillary Expansion on Glenoid Fossa and Condyle-Fossa Relationship in Growing Patients (MEGP): Study Protocol for a Controlled Clinical Trial.

Aims and Objectives:Rapid maxillary expansion (RME) is an orthodontic nonsurgical procedure aiming at increasing the width of the maxilla by opening mainly the intermaxillary suture in patients presenting a transverse maxillary skeletal deficiency. The objectives of the current prospective controlled clinical and radiographic study are to evaluate the hypothesis that RME in growing patients will result in radiographic changes at the level of interglenoid fossa distance, condyle-fossa relationship, and nasal cavity widths compared to the group who received no treatment initially and served as untreated control.Materials and Methods:In this prospective controlled clinical and radiographic study, forty healthy growing patients selected from a school-based population following a large screening campaign, ranging in age between 8 and 13 years, presenting a maxillary constriction with bilateral crossbite, and candidates for RME are being recruited. The first group will include participants willing to undergo treatment (n = 25) and the other group will include those inclined to postpone (n = 15).Results:The primary outcome is to compare radiologically the interglenoid fossa distance and the condyle-fossa relationship; nasal cavity width will be a secondary outcome. A multivariable analysis of Covariance model will be used, with the assessment of the time by group interaction, using age as covariate. The project protocol was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Lebanese University, National Institute in Lebanon (CUEMB process number 31/04/2015). The study is funded by the Lebanese University and Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Lebanon (Number: 652 on 14/04/2016).Conclusion:This prospective controlled clinical trial will give information about the effect of RME on the glenoid fossa and condyle-fossa relationship and its impact on the nasal cavity width.Trial Registration:Retrospectively registered in BioMed Central (DOI10.1186/ISRCTN77788053).

Vietnam. Ancient Vietnam: History, art and archaeology. By Anne-Valérie Schweyer. Bangkok: River Books, 2011. 428 pp. Illustrations, Maps.

Ancient Vietnam: History, art and archaeology By ANNE-VALERIE SCHWEYER Bangkok: River Books, 2011. 428 pp. Illustrations, Maps. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000520 Vietnam is among the most attractive tourist destinations in the world and Vietnamese studies are an essential field of scholarship. Bangkok-based River Books and its publisher Narisa Chakrabongse have produced a highly valuable, well-illustrated colour guidebook about the ancient civilisations of Vietnam written by a renowned French historian and epigrapher, Anne-Valerie Schweyer from the Centre national de recherche scientifique (CNRS). The volume is enriched by Paisarn Piemettawat's beautiful colour illustrations. As a guidebook, this monograph has its own beauty: limited texts with many brilliant images of Vietnamese art on every page; detailed sections which can be read separately, and simplified spelling of Vietnamese, Sanskrit and Cham names and terms. Readers who wish to broaden their knowledge of Vietnamese history and art will find this here. Ancient Vietnam consists of four independent parts. The first deals with history; the second describes the religion, art and architecture of Champa--a common name of ancient kingdoms which flourished in Central Vietnam from the fifth to the fifteenth century CE. The third part describes religion, architecture and monuments of the 'Viet Land', i.e. the Red River Valley or Northern Vietnam. The fourth and final part gives a brief account of five principal museums in Vietnam. For the convenience of readers the monograph contains a glossary of Sanskrit names and terms, a brief bibliography, an index and a reference list of Vietnamese, Sanskrit, and Cham spellings. It also includes many maps and plans of archaeological sites throughout, including maps of Vietnam (p. 9), of 'major trade routes between India and Southeast Asia between the 10th-15th centuries' (p. 10), of Champa (p. 58), of 'the main Viet sites around Hanoi' (p. 252), of Hanoi (p. 263), and many others. Meanwhile, Schweyer offers a fresh look at Vietnam's history. While traditional scholarship has concentrated on the history of the Vietnamese as in The birth of Vietnam by Keith W. Taylor (University of California Press, 1983), or on the history of Champa as in George Maspero's Le royaume de Champa (Les Editions G. Van Oest, 1928), Schweyer incorporates Champa and its culture within the ancient history of Vietnam: a historical sketch begins with Champa and then gives parallel developments in Champa and in the Viet Land. Ancient Vietnam covers a long timespan from the first millennium BCE to the end of the fifteenth century CE when the Champa kingdom of Vijaya was conquered by the Dai Viet emperor Le Thanh Tong in 1471. Schweyer synthesises contemporary historical research on Champa and describes its polities as trade-oriented and the Viet Land as agricultural. She believes Champa never was 'a centralised territory under the rule of a king' (p. 9). The Chams, an Austronesian group, adopted Indic, not Sinicised, cultural traits, including Sanskrit, because China 'had imperialistic desires incompatible with the independent spirit of the Chams' and 'the Chams saw in India, social and political structures to which they could relate; they were, thus, seduced by a script which could also be used to record their own language, something that was not possible using Chinese ideograms' (p. 13). I wonder why and how the Chams could adopt an Indic writing due to their 'independent spirit'; this vague concept can hardly be verified by the available sources. How can this factor explain the adoption of Hinduism or Buddhism? I suppose the spread of a religious system, like Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, or Islam has required propagation of its main ideas by its exponents; therefore, the adoption of Indic religious systems in Champa and the Viet Land was possible due to the activities of many Buddhists or Hindus who propagated these systems; they could have been from India proper. …

Technical advances in the generation of transgenic animals and in their applications. Nantes, France, June 7th 2013

On June 7 2013 was held in Nantes, France, the international meeting ‘‘Technical advances in the generation of transgenic animals and in their applications’’ (www.trm.nantes.inserm.fr/index.php). This biennial meeting is the fourth one of its kind to be organized by the Transgenic Rats Nantes facility (http:// www.tgr.nantes.inserm.fr/). The meeting was supported by private companies (Charles River, genOway, Lonza, Sigma-Aldrich and TaconicArtemis GmbH) and by public institutions (University of Nantes, INSERM UMR 1064, SFR Francois Bonamy, CNRS, Region Pays de la Loire, Biogenouest, IBiSA and IHUCESTI). This meeting received support and co-sponsorhip from the International Society for Transgenic Technology. Around 100 participants, from France but also from different European countries and USA, attended the meeting and registration prices were kept as low as possible to facilitate the participation of students. The meeting aimed to provide an update on recent technical developments in the generation of transgenic animals and in their applications. It was intended for Master, PhD and medical students as well as for researchers with a background in molecular biology and genetics as an introduction to future work in these rapidly developing areas of research. Bruce Whitelaw (The Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK) gave an overview on the advances and new trends in the generation of genetically engineered animals (GE) particularly in livestock. GE animals have existed for over 30 years (Clark and Whitelaw 2003). Throughout this time the tools available for transferring genetic change into the genome have evolved to the current position where we have both efficient and precise methods. There are two general approaches to GE; either delivery to the zygote or to introducing engineered cells into the early embryo. Both approaches can now be combined with the exciting new editor technologies to enable precise genome editing which in some cases does not involve the incorporation of a transgene. Depending on the species working with—that include rodents, rabbits, fish, birds and livestock—the different GE strategies offer advantages. For example, transgene delivery by lentivirus vectors is attractive for livestock and birds but of lesser importance for mice; in livestock where gestation and breeding times are long, this method dramatically reduces the time to proof-of-concept for a S. Menoret L. Tesson S. Remy R. Thinard C. Usal L.-H. Ouisse V. Thepenier I. Anegon Transgenic Rats Nantes, INSERM, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, 44093 Nantes, France

AD 5 The illusion of seeing

J Kevin O9Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Institut Paris Descartes de Neurosciences et Cognition, 45, rue des Saints Peres, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France. I am director of the Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, which specialises in human visual and auditory perception both in babies and adults. Thanks to my co-directors Jacqueline Fagard and Andrei Gorea, and also thanks to the team leaders and technical and administrative staff, we manage to effectively run our rather large lab: it has about 80 members, of which 25 are permanent researchers, 7 are technical and administrative personnel, plus about 45 doctoral and postdoctoral students and visitors. The lab occupies about 800 m 2 at the Institute of Neuroscience and Cognition of Paris Descartes University, at the Saints Peres Biomedical Center. The lab also has space at the Departement d9Etudes Cognitives of Ecole Normale Superieure. It is co-financed by the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique and Universite Paris Descartes. Change blindness is a much studied phenomenon in experimental psychology where under certain conditions an observer will not see a very large change that occurs in a scene, in an image or in a movie. Inattentional blindness is another phenomenon which is at the root of “looked but failed to see” traffic accidents, where for example a driver is looking directly at a motorcycle driving across his field of view, but still crashes into it. I shall provide demonstrations of these phenomena and show how they can be explained by assuming that our impression of a complete, rich, detailed outside visual world is actually in some sense an “illusion”, caused by the fact that any information we wish to obtain is immediately attainable through a flick of the eye or of attention. Developing this idea further has led me to a theory of visual consciousness, and indeed consciousness in general, that I have described in a recent book (“Why red doesn9t sound like a bell: Understanding the feel of consciousness”, OUP 2011).

Efficacy of the anti-VZV (anti-HSV3) vaccine in HSV1 and HSV2 recurrent herpes simplex disease: a prospective study

Efficacy of the anti-VZV (anti-HSV3) vaccine in HSV1 and HSV2 recurrent herpes simplex disease: a prospective study Jacqueline Le Goaster,1 Sylvie Gonzalo,2 Patrice Bourée,1 Frederic Tangy,3 Anne-Lise Haenni41Department of Tropical Diseases, Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire (CHU), University of Paris XI, Le Kremlin Bicêtre, 2Biomnis Laboratory, Ivry-sur-Seine, 3Retro-Virology, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Pasteur Institute, Paris; 4Jacques Monod Institute, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), University of Paris VII, Paris, FranceBackground: The aim of this study was to evaluate the possibility of using the anti-varicella zoster virus (anti-VZV, also known as anti-HSV3) vaccine against orobuccal herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV1) and genital herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV2). This was suggested by study of the phylogenetic tree of members of the herpes virus family, which showed a close relationship between VZV (HSV3) and the HSV1 and HSV2 herpes viruses.Methods: The present prospective study was conducted from January 2005 through January 2011. Twenty-four patients afflicted with HSV1 and HSV2 herpes recurrences over a period of years, numbering 6–8 and more recurrences per year, agreed to receive the anti-VZV vaccine. They were compared with 26 nonvaccinated patients presenting with herpes simplex diseases 2–5 times a year. All 50 patients were documented with anti-HSV1, anti-HSV2, and anti-VZV antibody serological testing.Results: From 2005 through 2011, for the 24 anti-VZV vaccinated patients, the average number of herpes relapses decreased to 0, correlated with an increased anti-VZV antibody level and clinical recovery of all patients, whereas no improvement was observed for the 26 nonvaccinated herpes patients.Conclusion: Data for the anti-VZV serological antibody levels tested before and after anti-VZV vaccination showed a significant (P < 0.001) increase among vaccinated patients. This suggests defective anti-VZV immune power in these patients. After 6 years of positive results for anti-VZV vaccine, this is a logical and fair hypothesis. We can now undertake a randomized study to confirm these findings.Keywords: HSV1/HSV2 herpes prevention, anti-VZV (HSV3) vaccine, anti-VZV vaccine therapy

L’université, une chance pour la France by Louis Vogel

VOGEL, LOUIS. L’université, une chance pour la France. Paris: PUF, 2010. ISBN 978-2-1305826 -8. Pp. 93. 10 a. President of the University Paris II-Panthéon-Assas, President since 2010 of the Conférence des Présidents d’universités, Louis Vogel herein offers suggestions for improving conditions in the university system of France. The President of Paris IV-Sorbonne, Jean-Robert Pitte, published Jeunes, on vous ment! reconstruire l’université (Fayard, 2006) in which he called for selective admissions in many disciplines and also for substantially higher tuition and even for the possibility of the privatization of the university system. He subsequently lost in his bid for reelection as President of the Sorbonne. University presidents who present their views on transforming the French university system do so at their peril! Vogel begins his brief and concise work with a litany of the problems facing the university: dilapidated buildings in dire need of renovation, unmotivated students rejected from the selective sector of higher education, professors distressed by low pay and poor working conditions, and resistance to reform. At the same time, he applauds parts of the recent Loi sur la liberté et la responsabilité des universités (LRU) of 2007 which will provide much more funding. He also criticizes the government for failing to discuss provisions of the law sufficiently in advance with faculty and for diminishing collegiality in the university by granting too much power to university presidents. Vogel calls in particular for bringing the grandes écoles into the university; no longer should the brightest students in France be outside the university system. Declaring that students choose to enroll in the grandes écoles for the social status that they confer, not for the education they receive, Vogel characterizes the teaching found there as “un type d’enseignement inadapté aux défis de la compétition internationale” (49) given the relative absence of research and “transversalité” necessary in today’s international competition. He also advocates bringing the institutes of research, including the Centre national de recherche scientifique, into the university system; the CNRS should become a funding agency working with university laboratories similar to the NIH or NSF, rather than a home for researchers often separate from the university . Vogel, as Pitte, argues for a sliding scale of tuition based on family income , yet, unlike Pitte, he argues against any form of selective admission to the university, stating that France has a lower percentage of university-educated persons in the population compared to other advanced nations. Vogel’s most interesting proposals relate to the teaching and pedagogy in the university. The tradition of a professor lecturing to an amphitheater full of students cannot continue to be the foundation of university teaching; such lecture courses should be distributed online to students before class and small groups should have interactive discussion based on the lecture. The cours magistral is totally outdated in his opinion. “Les études sont tristes en France, et il est vital que cela change” (74). He advocates delaying disciplinary concentration until the Masters level. French students do not have enough general culture courses during the licence: “La transmission prématurée de savoirs très spécialisés, peu attrayante pour les étudiants, est généralement peu efficace” (72). Vogel would reduce the high failure rate among first-year students through better orientation and better support services for those most in need. He is enthusiastic for regrouping universities into the PRES, Pôles de recherche et d’enseignement supérieur. As an example, Paris II-Panthéon-Assas, Paris IVSorbonne , and Paris VI-Pierre et Marie Curie have joined forces to form Sorbonne Universités. These universities will undoubtedly have a more respectable showing 576 FRENCH REVIEW 85.3 in international rankings since publications from all three universities will henceforth be attributed to Sorbonne Universités. Vogel remains quite optimistic in the possibilities of renovating the French university system, given his experiences at Paris II-Assas and the major increase of financial resources provided by the Loi LRU. Davidson College (NC) Homer Sutton WILSON, SARAH. The Visual World of French Theory: Figurations. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2010. ISBN 978-0-300-16281-3. Pp...

Paleontology in France: 200 years in the footsteps of Cuvier and Lamarck

Due to its richness in fossil localities and Fossil-Lagerstatten, France played a major role in the 18th and 19th centuries in establishing paleontology and biostratigraphy as scientific disciplines. The French naturalist and zoologist Cuvier (1769-1832) established the fields of comparative anatomy and paleontology, and proposed the concept of 'catastrophism' in geology. The naturalist Lamarck (1744-1829) is considered the founder of invertebrate paleontology and biostratigraphy and an early pioneer in the studies of evolution, developing the idea of 'transformism' and creating the word 'fossil', while his successor Blainville (1777-1850) was the first to use the word 'paleontology'. Based on this rich heritage, numerous French scientists strengthened paleontology as an important discipline during the 19th and 20th centuries. Paleontology was present at the universities of most major French cities, as documented by the rich collections in over 50 natural history museums and university collections. The most significant paleontological collection is that housed in the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) at Paris that currently hosts the largest research unit in paleontology of France with over 100 scientists, curators and technicians. The second largest collection (and the largest in terms of invertebrate fossils) is housed at the University of Lyon1, where the most important university paleontology research team is present. About 250 professional paleontologists are currently working in research units that are mostly affiliated to the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), in public or private museums, or in the numerous natural parcs. A significant generation change took place in the early 2000s, with the retirement of the paleontologists recruited in the 1960s and 1970s, that were often specialized in alpha-taxonomy and stratigraphy, and the arrival of a young generation of scientists that attempts to answer more 'modern' questions, such as global (climate) change, biodiversity, or evolution. This new generation of paleontologists faces modified funding schemes with project-based supporting structures in a more and more competitive environment. In the present paper we attempt to summarize the current situation of paleontology as a discipline in the very complex academic and scientific context of France. After a short overview on the history of French paleontology in the last centuries, a synopsis on institutions and funding agencies is presented briefly. The major research departments and their research themes are then described, together with the most important collections, the paleontological associations, journals, and databases, etc. Paleontological training possibilities and job opportunities, in particular in academia, are next documented, concluding with a summary of the prospects of the discipline.

The appearance and use of Bragg scattering effects when sound is perpendicularly incident on a periodic structure

In the study of diffraction spectra for sound incident on periodic structures, it has often been thought that different diffraction orders can be observed and studied separately. This assumption was probably a result of geometrical considerations where a bounded beam, incident and diffracted, is considered as a straight line. It has been widely used to study different phenomena such as surface wave generation and its physical relation to Wood anomalies. In this paper, we develop a geometrical study based on the finite beam width of transducer. The study reveals that measurement of the zero order reflected beam is always accompanied by the back-scattered beams of higher (Bragg) diffraction orders. Extensive measurements have been performed that precisely show the appearance of such waves in the diffraction spectra. Furthermore, the study reveals how the presence of such waves can be used for nondestructive characterization of corrugated surfaces, a technique much easier to interpret than earlier techniques based on Wood anomalies physically caused by surface wave generation. The most important feature is that the introduced technique can be applied for normal incidence and not necessarily in situations where surface waves can be physically generated. [Thanks to the French Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)and the Conseil Rgional de Lorraine (CRL) for their financial support.]

Thyroid hormone signalling in early amphibian development

Event Abstract Back to Event Thyroid hormone signalling in early amphibian development Barbara A. Demeneix1* 1 Museum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle/ Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Dept Regulations and Development, France The roles of thyroid hormones in postembryonic vertebrate development are amply characterized. Metamorphosis in anuran amphibians is one of the most striking examples of thyroid hormone effects in development, closely paralleled by similar thyroid hormone-dependent developmental transitions in other vertebrates, including the perinatal period in mammals. Gudernatsch’s observations on thyroid gland activation of metamorphosis were carried out in Prague in 1911 and published in 1912. Intriguingly, it was also in Prague in 1912 that Kafka's first version of his novel 'Metamorphosis' was edited. More than fifty years later in 1977, Leloup and Buscaglia working in the Natural history Museum in Paris, demonstrated the key role of T3 in amphibian metamorphosis. However, the actions of thyroid hormones in early, embryonic development are still a matter of debate. Recent data show numerous components of thyroid hormone signaling to be present in eggs and embryos of many species, raising the possibilities that either thyroid hormones functionally regulate target genes and key processes in early development. Using the free-living Xenopus embryo we have shown that not only thyroid hormone receptors (TRs) and the thyroid hormones, T4 and T3, but also deiodinases are found during early embryogenesis, well before the formation of the larval thyroid gland. These observations argue for ligand-dependent and/or ligand-independent actions of TRs during this period. To examine the effects of thyroid hormones in govering different processes in early development we took a candidate gene approach, identifying a number of genes regulated by thyroid hormone in embryos, notably in the brain. Given these arguments for active, endogenous T3 signaling in early embryonic brain, we next investigated the actions of the flame retardant TBBPA, known to alter TH signaling in other systems, on gene expression in early amphibian development. We conclude first, that TH signalling is functional during organogenesis, and second, that early neurogenesis in amphibians is a potential window for endocrine disruption. Acknowledgements Acknowledgments: Supported by EU projects Cascade, Crescendo Keywords: endocrine disruption, metamorphosis, Neurogenesis, thyroid Conference: ISAREN 2011: 7th International Symposium on Amphibian and Reptilian Endocrinology and Neurobiology, Ann Arbor, United States, 11 Jul - 13 Jul, 2011. Presentation Type: Plenary Topic: Hormones and development Citation: Demeneix BA (2011). Thyroid hormone signalling in early amphibian development. Front. Endocrinol. Conference Abstract: ISAREN 2011: 7th International Symposium on Amphibian and Reptilian Endocrinology and Neurobiology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fendo.2011.03.00009 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 29 Jul 2011; Published Online: 09 Aug 2011. * Correspondence: Prof. Barbara A Demeneix, Museum Nationale d'Histoire Naturelle/ Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Dept Regulations and Development, Paris, 75321 cedex 5, France, bdem@mnhn.fr Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Barbara A Demeneix Google Barbara A Demeneix Google Scholar Barbara A Demeneix PubMed Barbara A Demeneix Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

ESTUDIO DE LA VARIACIÓN ESTACIONAL DE LA COLUMNA VERTICAL DE NO2 y O3 ATMOSFÉRICO EN RÍO GALLEGOS, MEDIANTE UN ESPECTRÓMETRO DE LA RED SAOZ STUDY OF THE ATMOSPHERIC NO2 AND O3 VERTICAL COLUMN SEASONAL VARIABILITY AT RÍO GALLEGOS, BY MEANS OF A SAOZ SPECTROMETER.

The stratospheric ozone (O3) is one of the most important gases in our atmosphere due to its capacity to absorb biologically harmful solar radiation (called UV-B) that would otherwise arrive to the terrestrial surface producing dangerous effects on different organisms. On the other hand, the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a key trace gas in the ozone photochemical. The systematic sensing of the concentration of NO2 and other minority gases is essential in order to understand the stratospheric ozone destruction and formation processes. In this work we present the study carried out on the seasonal variation of the atmospheric O3 and NO2 vertical column concentration, using a SAOZ spectrometer (System d' Analyse par Observation Zenitale) belonging to the Service d'Aéronomie (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, France), located in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz province (51º 36’ S, 69º 19’ W), in the CEILAP-RG remote sensing station. We analyze the correlation between the O3 and NO2 concentration and study the behavior of these gases in ozone hole situation. Likewise, we compare the ground-based measurement with those coming from the OMI/AURA (Ozone Monitoring Instrument, AURA satellite)

In Memoriam, Françoise Ozanne-Rivierre, 1941–2007

Francoise Ozanne-Rivierre was born at St. Julien-sur-Calonne in the departement of Calvados in Normandy, France, on January 2, 1941. She passed away at her home in Montreuil, Paris, on November 11, 2007 after a long illness. She will be deeply missed by friends and colleagues alike. Francoise was a distinguished French linguist and a key member of the Laboratoire de Langues et Civilisations a Tradition Orale (LACITO), situated at Villejuif in Paris. LACITO is itself a unit within the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the French national center for scientific research. She completed her doctorate in linguistics in 1973, her dissertation titled Le iaai, langue melanesienne d'Ouvea (Nouvelle-Caledonie), at Universite Paris III. She formally became a member of CNRS in 1972 where she remained throughout her career until her retirement in 2006. Francoise continued to play an active role right up until the time of her death. Her research on Oceanic languages began in 1972 under Andre-Georges Haudricourt (Ethnohistory of the Pacific Program), and continued from 1976 onwards as a member of LACITO, directed initially by Jacqueline M. C. Thomas. However, the association of the Rivierre family with New Caledonia goes back to 1965, when Francoise's husband Jean-Claude undertook his first fieldwork in Melanesia, under the aegis and guidance of Andre-Georges Haudricourt, who launched them into what was to become a lifelong preoccupation with the languages of New Caledonia. Coincidentally, the first time that I met Francoise and Jean-Claude and their two then small children, Nicolas and David, was at the South Pacific Commission in Noumea in 1965, upon their return from fieldwork in northern New Caledonia. We immediately became close friends and colleagues, working together in the field of Oceanic linguistics for the next forty years. It is not surprising, therefore, that the passing of Francoise continues to weigh heavily on me particularly, and on the linguistics community in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, with whom the members of LACITO have long enjoyed a fruitful collaborative relationship. While she accompanied Jean-Claude on his first fieldwork trip to Melanesia in 1965, Francoise undertook her first solo field research in New Caledonia from July to October 1971, when she conducted research into Iaai, spoken on Ouvea in the Loyalty Islands to the northeast of the New Caledonian mainland. After that period, she was a constant visitor to many areas in the north of the mainland, with fieldwork in New Caledonia in 1973, 1976, 1978, and several further field trips in the period 1986-92. Her final period of fieldwork in New Caledonia was conducted in 1997, when she completed her earlier work on two northern languages, Pwaamei and Pwapwa. This intensive field research resulted in the publication of the following major works: Le iaai (1976); Textes nemi (1979); Les langues melanesiennes de Nouvelle-Caledonie (1979), with Andre-Georges Haudricourt, Jean-Claude Rivierre, Claire Moyse-Faurie, and Jacqueline de La Fontinelle; Mythes et contes de la Grande Terre et des Iles Loyaute (Nouvelle-Caledonie) (1980), with Claire Moyse-Faurie and Jean-Claude Rivierre; Dictionnaire thematique des langues de la region de Hienghene (Nouvelle-Caledonie): Pije-fwai-nemi-jawe (1982), with Andre-Georges Haudricourt; Dictionnaire iaai-francais (1984); De Muna Fagauvea, I: Dictionnaire fagauvea-francais (1987), with K. J. Hollyman; Le nyelayu de Balade (Nouvelle-Caledonie) (1998); and Complex predicates in Oceanic languages (2004), co-edited with Isabelle Bril. At the time of her death, she had just completed the first draft of a thematic dictionary of Pwaamei and Pwapwa, spoken on the northwest of the New Caledonian mainland. Francoise enjoyed a high degree of respect internationally in the field of Austronesian comparative linguistics, particularly through her publications and international conference presentations on the languages of New Caledonia. …

Partnering in science information: Necessities of change

Bernard Dumouchel of the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI)3 gave a welcoming address outlining the unique position of ICSTI since its members are a broad church, representing scientific users, publishers, national scientific and technical information (STI) centers, international unions and so on. He thanked CSA4 and the US Geological Survey National Biological Information Infrastructure (USGS NBII)5 for hosting the meeting and NLM for the use of the Lister Hill Auditorium. NERAC6 and the Library of Congress7 also sponsored the meeting. Don Lindberg, Director of NLM, made some opening remarks. There has been a revolution in the way research results are published and shared. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) have stated that research that they fund should be made publicly available in PubMed Central8 but so far this has been a request, not a mandate. Lindberg thinks that Congress will mandate it fairly soon. Only 10–15% of currently published papers directly credit NIH research support, and hence would be required to submit full text to PubMedCentral. The Howard Hughes Institute and the Wellcome Foundation have mandated open access to the results of research they fund, as have the Max Planck Institutes, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and others.

Truth Is What Works : Francisco J. Varela on Cognitive Science, Buddhism, the Inseparability of Subject and Object, and the Exaggerations of Constructivism--A Conversation

Francisco J. Varela (1946-2001) studied biology in Santiago de Chile, obtained his doctorate 1970 at Harvard University with a dissertation on the insect eye, and worked there for some time in the laboratory of Torsten Wiesel, the later Nobel Laureate for medicine. From his scientific beginnings as a researcher in biology, he not only studied and practiced biology but, resisting the dominating mainstream, pursued a research program that ignored and broke down traditional disciplinary boundaries. This research program is best characterized as experimental epistemology, a concept introduced by the neuropsychiatrist and cybernetician Warren S. McCulloch. Francisco J. Varela's great aspiration was to examine and answer the philosophical ur-question of cognition with scientific precision and with the help of the best possible theoretical framework. [End Page 35] Having obtained his doctorate, he went back to Chile to work as a professor of biology together with Humberto R. Maturana. He contributed to the writing of the theory of autopoiesis, which was to cause a furor in the world of science as a universally applicable explanatory model. After the overthrow of Allende and the installation of the dictatorship by the putsch general Pinochet, Francisco J. Varela first escaped to Costa Rica, then became a professor at the American University of Colorado and University of New York, and finally returned in 1980 to the University of Chile in Santiago for five years. Temporary positions as guest professor for neurobiology, philosophy, and cognitive science in Germany, Switzerland, and France led him to Paris in the end, where he worked as research director of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique until his death on May 28, 2001. In his research work embracing cognitive science, evolutionary theory, and immunology, Francisco J. Varela, constantly inspired by his fundamental interest in the key questions of epistemology, gave the epistemological debate a new orientation. In his thinking he refuses to accept the strict separation of subject and object, of knower and known, which as a rule unites realists and constructivists alike. Francisco J. Varela rejects the fundamental dualism dividing mind and world, which had shaped Western philosophy from its earliest beginnings. He does not subscribe to the idea that human individuals can invent their own realities—blindly and arbitrarily, and without experiencing any resistance from the external world and all other things given. He equally distances himself, however, from the diametrically opposite position that overstates the eigenpower of the world of objects. The external world and all other things given cannot determine what happens in an organism. Varela's claim is that individual and world create each other. The Computational Model of the Mind Poerksen: The ancient key questions of philosophy are at the center of modern cognitive science. What is the essence of the mind? Do our conceptions represent a given world, which is independent from our minds? What is the formative power of external objects over our perceptions? How does cognition function? The search for an adequate answer and an improved understanding of the human mind has led many cognitive scientists to entertain the assumption that the brain is actually a kind of computer. Memory is taken to be a store. Thinking and perceiving are understood as data processing in the sense that an independent external world is computationally transformed into symbols and represented in the organism in this manner. You are very critical of this view. Why? Varela: If the brain is considered as a kind of computer, then cognitive research is limited to discovering certain self-sufficient shapes—the symbols—together with the rules [End Page 36] governing them—the programs. But this search for symbols and programs will never be profitable because it...

European IODP Consortium Created

A protocol officially creating the consortium that will represent the European participation in the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) was signed 15 December in Paris at the headquarters of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).The European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) represents the scientific agencies of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and 10 other European countries.

Kinetics and mechanisms of the oxidation of oxygenated organic compounds in the gas phase.

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVArticleNEXTKinetics and Mechanisms of the Oxidation of Oxygenated Organic Compounds in the Gas PhaseA. Mellouki, G. Le Bras, and H. SidebottomView Author Information Laboratoire de Combustion et Systèmes Réactifs, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, 1C Avenue de la recherche scientifique, 45071 Orléans Cedex 02, France, and University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland Cite this: Chem. Rev. 2003, 103, 12, 5077–5096Publication Date (Web):October 28, 2003Publication History Received4 June 2003Published online28 October 2003Published inissue 1 December 2003https://doi.org/10.1021/cr020526xCopyright © 2003 American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONSArticle Views2182Altmetric-Citations248LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit Read OnlinePDF (239 KB) Get e-AlertsSUBJECTS:Chemical reactions,Ethers,Kinetic parameters,Organic compounds,Oxidation Get e-Alerts

GEOTRACES: Studying the global marine biogeochemistry of trace elements and isotopes

There is a growing international interest among geochemists and oceanographers in building a coordinated global study of the marine biogeochemical cycles of selected trace elements and isotopic tracers. This is reflected by the increasing numbers of contributions to corresponding special sessions at meetings such as the 2001 AGU Fall Meeting, the 2002 Goldschmidt Meeting, and the 2003 European Geophysical Union Annual Meeting. With support from the U.S. National Science Foundation's Chemical Oceanography program, the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in France, the University Paul Sabatier, and the Observatoire Midi‐Pyrénées, an international planning workshop was recently held to define the scientific goals for such a global study.Eighty‐five scientists from 15 nations representing fields as diverse as physical oceanography, dynamic and biogeochemical ocean modeling, ocean geochemistry, and paleoceanography attended the workshop. There was a broad consensus recognizing the need for a coordinated research effort in the spirit of the 1970s Geochemical Ocean Sections Study (GEOSECS) program, which led to fundamental advances in the understanding of ocean circulation and biogeochemical cycles. Dramatic advances have been made in a nalytical techniques, chemical sensors, and modeling since the days of GEOSECS, but progress in understanding the global biogeochemical cycles of trace elements and their isotopes has been limited by the lack of a large‐scale coordinated effort. Workshop participants enthusiastically endorsed the development of such a program, for which the name GEOTRACES was adopted.

PRONAOS : a two meter submillimeter balloon borne telescope

PRONAOS 3 3 PRONAOS was built as a national cooperation involving the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). is a French balloon borne 2 meter sub-millimeter telescope for astronomy. Developed and operated from 1986 to 1999, it has been a precursor for the two European space missions to be launched in 2007: FIRST and Planck-Surveyor. PRONAOS has been built as a light and autonomous space platform able to resist the very hostile environment at the altitude of 40 kilometers. It has thus driven many technological developments such as a light carbon-fiber active optics, a daylight star-tracker, high sensitivity 300 mK bolometers and a pointing system with a 5 arc-seconds accuracy. With three successful stratospheric flights the major scientific contributions of PRONAOS have been : 1) The first measurement of the positive part of the spectral distortion of the Cosmic Microwave Background toward a cluster of galaxies. 2) The discovery of a cold dust phase in the Galactic interstellar medium, with temperatures ranging from 12 to 15 K, and evidence for new dust emissivity properties.

Steel detritiation, optimization of a process

In the framework of waste management for the ITER reactor, steel detritiation is an important challenge since nuclear waste storage already assigns and plans limited tritium contents. A study has been initiated to determine a detritiation process drawing on a melting process currently used on a semi-industrial scale at the CEA/DAM (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique/Dı́rection des Applications Militaires). The first part of the project consists in characterizing these ingots. The measurements performed at the CNRS ORSAY (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), permit to assess, by autoradiography, tritium distribution in two directions (longitudinal and transverse) and to measure tritium desorption using an original β counting device. The second part of the project should allow us to assess the possibility of improving the process in terms of detritiation rates using bubbling argon and hydrogen during melting to improve mixing, and thus facilitate the removal of tritium.

Manthia Diawara's Rouch in Reverse: An interstitial perspective

MORE THAN FORTY years ago Jean Rouch more or less initiated a form of ethnographic cinematography called cinema verite whose goal was to let the cinematic subjects of ethnographic films speak for themselves. He wanted to make films about Africans in which the filmmaker would yield the control over what would go into the film to the Africans he was filming. They would not just collaborate with him, they would take over the direction of what would be filmed and spoken. Rouch saw himself as a kind of griot or medium who would enter into the spirit of the culture--in the event, that of the Songhai in Niger--and allow the culture to speak. At the limit, he would let the state of trance he was filming inhabit the act of filming. This, in any event, was the ideal. To accomplish these goals, Rouch had to cease being an outsider and become accepted as one of the community. He had to learn not only to speak Songhai, but to accept Songhai religious beliefs and cultural practices as valid. And he had to convince the Songhai with whom he was working that this was the case. In short, Rouch had to `go native'. This, Paul Stoller (1992) tells us, Rouch succeeded in doing amazingly well, better than many an anthropologist who followed him. However, despite Rouch's success in acquiring the status of an outsider, a number of his best films, including the famous Les Maitres fous (1953-54), Moi un noir (1957), Afrique sur Seine 91969), and Cocorico, M. Poulet (1974), turn on what would fascinate Europeans, what might justly be termed the exotic, including religious practices, i.e. witchcraft, (1) and the life in the native quartier, i.e., slumming. (2) To be sure, Rouch entered into deep and lasting friendships with the people who came to be the subjects of his films, and some of them were to become well-known as filmmakers themselves, most notably Oumarou Ganda and Safi Faye. Nonetheless, trancing and sacrifice, common enough in traditional African settings, are given prominence in Rouch's work, and are central to his most controversial film, Les Maitres fous. Images of religious, ecstatically charged states often are presented as holding the central significance of the films. Perennially enthusiastic over `real' African culture, like Yambo Ouologuem's caricature of Vrobenius in Le Devoir de violence (1968), Rouch would always seem to have retained enough of the Westerner's fascination with the `strongest' images of Africa, those most striking to one outside the culture who seems to understand it and mediate that understanding to other outsiders. One not bothered by the label ethnographer. One not in dialogue with V.Y. Mudimbe (1988). After an exciting detour from his studies in 1946-7, during which Rouch, Ponty and Sauvy travelled down the Niger to its headwaters (3), Rouch returned to Europe to become a researcher in the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique), and began to study ethnography under Marcel Griaule. For these serious scholars of the CNRS, Africa was a land of truth, and it is no surprise that Rouch's cinematography should be identified by the same term that signifies an unmediated essence, a purity associated with origins and identities. Like Griaule, Rouch set out to record and document that truth about Africa by gaining access to the knowledge available to the insiders, especially those insiders initiated to the truth. At the 1995 African Studies Association conference in Boston, I shared with Manthia Diawara a panel on African cinema. I remember that in positioning himself in his presentation, Diawara had characterised himself as a modern African. His use of the term `modern' surprised me: the binary modern/traditional had always seemed too reductionist and misleading. Yet, when Diawara used it, it rang true. He was calling attention to the site where his education, his `formation,' had led him, to a world of discourses informed by the modernist project. That project also had its insiders and outsiders, its enticements and its journey down swift currents to the headwaters to Paris, its own exotic glamour. …

Wartime France: Remembering Vichy

Although less publicized, 1990 was a year that brought as many historical anniversaries in France as did 1989. A massive apotheosis held at UNESCO in November commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of de Gaulle's birth-and the twentieth anniversary of his death. As part of that ceremony the founding of the Free French movement fifty years before received attention, although de Gaulle's war years and his act of defiance in 1940 became somewhat lost amid the profusion of testimonials and studies devoted to his later career. In a very different fashion, 1990 also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Vichy government, which was the theme for an international conference devoted to Regime de Vichy et les francais, held under the auspices of the Centre national de recherche scientifique and the Institut d'histoire du temps present in Paris in June. The IHTP conference assembled an international panel of sixty historians to explore recent trends in research on Vichy. The published results of the IHTP conference enables some appreciation of the way a postwar generation of French scholars has confronted a troubling past and has placed the memory of Vichy alongside other traumatic and contested periods of French history. Once neglected, the history of wartime France, particularly the memory of Vichy, has become a central focus for several younger scholars associated with the Institut d'histoire du temps present and its publication, Vingtieme Siecle, and many of them are represented in Vichy et les francais. The conference proceedings mark a milestone along the way back to Vichy, following by twenty years the results of an earlier colloquium on Vichy, organized by Rene Remond and Janine Bourdin, published as Le Gouvernement de Vichy, 1940-1942, and