De La Concorde Research Articles

Simplified approach for quantitative inspections of concrete structures using digital image correlation

Periodic visual inspections are typically the primary means by which the existing condition of most infrastructure assets is assessed. The results of these inspections are inherently qualitative and subjective, and unfortunately, the recent catastrophic collapse of structures such as De La Concorde overpass in Canada have underscored the need for quantitative assessment tools to monitor crack growth and deformations over time. Conventional measurement methods present several limitations, including cost, need for a priori knowledge of critical crack locations and orientation, and exposure of sensors to harsh environmental conditions. Digital image correlation (DIC) is an optical full-field non-contact measurement technique that has been shown to be highly accurate for laboratory studies under controlled conditions and has also been successfully used for short term field tests of bridges and other structures. In this study, a simple low-cost approach is proposed to supplement periodic visual inspections with quantitative measurements using images from a handheld digital camera processed with a free DIC software. A method is introduced to correct measurement errors associated with the inevitable camera movements between photographs taken during different inspections. The approach was validated by tracking the shear crack kinematics of seven push-off specimens tested in the laboratory. After correcting for errors due to movement of the handheld camera, 98% of the 462 measurements made during the tests were within the selected tolerance limit of ± 0.1 mm compared with reference measurements made with a stationary camera equipped with a long focal length lens. These results represent a first step towards the use of the DIC technique for quantitative structural inspections for improved infrastructure management.

Parisian Genius Loci: one of the ways to attract students

The article deals with the analysis of didactic potential of advertising as an authentic material used in the study of foreign languages. The systematic use of this material in particular enables to reconstruct such a complex phenomenon as the Parisian Genius Loci. The idea of N. Antsiferov, a prominent Russian researcher, who was born in Ukraine, is the tool that gives a holistic and multifaceted notion of the city in all aspects of its existence – historical, cultural, artistic, economic, sociological, etc. The concept of Genius Loci can be considered effective in teaching foreign languages as it enables to grasp, distinguish, takes into account, describe and represent numerous elements that shape the Paris phenomenon in the educational context. By analyzing a great number of advertisements in the French press, element categories that make up the Parisian Genius Loci as it is embodied in advertising have been identified. First, they are landmarks which are immediately associated with the city (la Tour Eiffel, la Place de la Concorde, le Palais Royal, le pont Alexandre III, etc.). Other elements also play a great role in the formation of Genius Loci, which, unlike the previous ones, are not “rare specimens”, but they create the city’s unique atmosphere (standards of mass architecture, street equipment, plants, some features of conventional lifestyle, ethnic and sociocultural composition, etc.). Toponyms constitute the last category least-featured by advertising. These categories relate to the tasks and techniques that meet the specifics. When the focus is on the landmarks of Paris, exercises to learn vocabulary and develop all language competences are used. The ‘impregnation & awareness’ effect corresponds with less striking, more hidden elements of Parisian Genius Loci. The ways of teaching how to use toponyms should be inductive, i.e. searchable. Students will not receive information passively. On the contrary, confronted with a certain phenomenon, they are able to grasp it, analyzing the circumstances with the teacher’s help.

VISUALIZATION OF POLITICAL RELATIONS BY THE MEANS OF ARCHITECTURE

Problem setting. The architecture has the powerful potential of impact on political consciousness of citizens. This role is reinforced due to the development of high technologies, growing data streams, etc. The policy of national memory in Ukraine is the testimony of this phenomenon.Recent research and publications analysis. The researches, devoted to the relations between the architecture and politics, including the problem of human rights, are spread recently. The studying of architecture impact on formation of symbolic policy, are spread within Urban Studies. O. Hatherley, S. Low et al. study the impact of city squares on political communications. The significant contribution into study on impact of architecture on social relations was made by neuropsychologist C. Ellard. Some researchers have analyzed the political the political aspects of the government institutions architecture. N. Khoma develops the theoretical principles for political Urban Studies in Ukraine. However, there are the contradictions in national researches; they often pay attention only to reflection of tendencies for political development in architecture.Paper objective. The paper objective is to analyze the mutual impact of architecture and social political relations, in particular, architecture ability not only to reflect the tendencies in social political development but to impact on them.Paper main body. A symbol not only represents the social actuality, it is such actuality and it forms it within dynamic aspect. This stipulates not only the propagandist but social organizing functions of architecture. Hereby, the architectural objects produce the senses, which their creators have not anticipated. Moreover, they can change the symbolic load with time. The mechanism to form the actuality through symbolization is the embodiment of new sense into symbolic object by its consumer, and the discrepancies in perception relate to different social positioning of consumers. The theoretical substantiation of these phenomena is the concept by M. McLuhan, in particular, his principle according to which the medium is the message the medium is amputated from its creator. As a result of this, the architecture can refer to other actuality, namely to society with its range of persuasions, emotions, etc.The history of president’s residencies in Turkey is analyzed in the paper as the example for impact of form on development of political relations. Moving of the President to the new residence was preceded to constitutional implementation of president’s government. Place de la Concorde and Vendome Column in Paris were chosen as the example for change in information content of architectural objects. The authors explain the discrepancies in shapes for T. Shevchenko monuments in Ukraine with discrepancies in concepts of nation, which are defended by different regional communities in Ukraine.Conclusions of the research. The authors refer the perspectives for researches on role of architecture in formation ofpolitical relations to accumulation of actual material both as to symbolization of certain architectural elements and mechanisms to form the senses of architectural spaces.

René Laennec: no going back

January, 1793, Louis XVI is executed in Place de la Concorde, Paris, France. 2 months later, the Revolutionary Tribunal is inaugurated. Now for the Terror. In Nantes, there would be mayhem. At the behest of the psychopathic revolutionary Jean-Baptiste Carrier (1756–94), thousands of people would be thrown into the River Loire to drown. In March, a guillotine was set up in Place Bouffay. The Laennec house, where René-Théophile-Hyacinthe (1781–1826) lived with his uncle Guillaume (1748–1822), was situated behind the deadly apparatus. From there, the family would have a clear view of the executions. They could watch the crowd slowly disperse, its thirst for blood barely quenched, as the gore of the condemned started to congeal in the sun. Guillaume decided to move house.

El obelisco de Ramsés II en Francia. Un ensayo sobre el patrimonio cultural de la humanidad

El obelisco que actualmente se encuentra en la Plaza de la Concordia de París, fue mandado erigir por Ramsés II y es el gemelo del que aún se encuentra frente a la fachada del templo de Luxor, en Egipto. El gobernador durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX, Mohammed Ali, lo ofreció a Francia por medio de Champollion. Pero ¿quién debería poseer el bien cultural en cuestión?. A lo largo de este ensayo intentaremos encontrar respuestas a ésta y otras cuestiones que nos surgen sobre este bien, su conservación y su titularidad, algunas de ellas complejas pues entran en juego diferentes perspectivas que no aúnan una única posible solución.

A Cacophony of Dissonance

A Cacophony of Dissonance

“Of Gods and Men”: Selected Print Media Coverage of Natural Disasters and Industrial Failures in Three Westminster Countries

This article examines selected print media coverage of a domestic natural disaster and domestic industrial failure in each of three Westminster countries: Australia, Canada, and the UK. It studies this coverage from several perspectives: the volume of coverage; the rate at which the articles were published; the tone of the headlines; and a content analysis of the perceived performance of key public and private institutions during and following the events. Its initial findings reveal that the natural disasters received more coverage than the industrial failures in each of the newspapers considered. There was also no significant difference in the publication rate across event type or newspaper. In each case, government was assessed at least as frequently and negatively as non-government actors, particularly during and following industrial failures. The manner in which government and non-government actors were assessed following these events suggests that, contrary to government claims that owners and operators of critical infrastructure (CI) are responsible for its successful operation, government in fact is “in the frame” as frequently as the industry owners and operators are. In addition, the negative assessments of governments following industrial failures in particular may prompt over-reaction by policy makers to industrial failures and under-reaction to natural disasters. This inconsistency is indeed ironic because the latter occur more often and cost more, both financially and socially. We reviewed 340 newspaper articles from three different newspapers: The Australian ’s coverage of the Canberra bushfires and the Waterfall train accident, The Globe and Mail ’s (Canada) coverage of Hurricane Juan and the de la Concorde overpass collapse, and The Daily Telegraph ’s (UK) coverage of the 2007 floods and the Potters Bar train wreck. Our sample size is small; our ability to compare across newspapers and countries limited. Further research is warranted.

Orages, Littérature et culture 1760-1830. Nº; 10: L'Œil de la police (review)

Reviewed by: Orages, Littérature et culture 1760-1830. Nº; 10: L'Œil de la police Daniel Ridge Flávio Borda d'Água , ed. Orages, Littérature et culture 1760-1830. Nº; 10: L'Œil de la police. Paris: Atlande, 2011. Pp. 275. ISBN: 978-2-35030-160-0 If the symbol of the eye has in the twentieth century been largely associated with the omnipresent State—think George Orwell's 1984—it was in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century closely associated with the Police. The image of the eye which graces the cover of Orages: l'Œil de la police does well to remind us that although they are closely associated, the Police and the State are two separate entities, particularly where politics are concerned. The institutional reforms that occurred in France around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth century not only established the modern police system we recognize today, but also set in motion a way of conceptualizing the police within the popular imagination. The eight essays which compose the dossier paint an in-depth and complicated picture of an institution largely associated with surveillance and law enforcement. One quickly concludes, however, that this institution is foremost an urban organizational force whose relationship to the prevailing political system, as well as to the public, is often times uneasy. As Vincent Milliot notes in his contribution Catastrophe de la police et police de la catastrophe, "[L]a police doit savoir se mettre au service des citoyens pour renforcer sa légitimité; elle n'est pas qu'une force coercitive au service du souverain" (53). This careful balancing act between the state and the people is built into the very DNA of the police and is explored in various aspects throughout the collected work. The collected essays are organized chronologically from approximately 1760 to 1830 and take a global approach to the basic questions that open up Flávio Borda d'Agua's introduction: Who/what are the police? Where do they come from and what do they do? And lastly, what do we know about the police as an institution? The responses are markedly historical, literary and judicial, and draw upon police reports, newspaper articles, memoirs, literary sources, and verbal trials of censorship. Appropriately, the first two essays treat the police of the Ancien Régime. Catherine Deny focuses on the [End Page 155] ways that police preparation for urban fires in the city of Lille helped reinforce and structure the greater institution. She notes that police archives "di[sent] beaucoup de choses, moins sur son objet que sur elle-même, sur ses pratiques, son organisation, ses transformations" (18). Such preparations required the mobilization of an entire series of professions outside of the police, particularly those related to construction and transportation. In this way, the police are essentially an organizational force. Vincent Milliot, in his essay, uses the catastrophe of 1770, in which 132 people were crushed to death during a public celebration for the marriage of Marie Antoinette and the future Louis XVI at Place de la Concorde, to outline the process of reform that resulted. This event deeply humiliated the police and not only launched vociferous debates and accusations in the press, but led to a Parliamentary inquiry. The gross result was the enunciation of the principle that police authority needed to be exercised uniformly and centrally. The next three articles address the philosophical questions and very real concerns of police surveillance. Christophe Cave, in his article "L"œil' observé: critique du contrôle et de la surveillance chez Louis Sébastien Mercier et dans les Mémoires secrets", explores the double-edged sword of police power in relation to public security. On the one hand, Cave notes that Mercier celebrates the global project of police surveillance which helps ensure public safety and order, arguing that the ends justify the means when it comes to public safety. On the other hand, the authors of Les Mémoires secrets underscore the very real possibility of despotism in which the authorities are "prêts à écraser leurs concitoyens dans des temps d'alarmes et de troubles" (64). Cave notes that although control is political and that...

History, Memory, and Instantaneity in Edgar Degas's Place de la Concorde

In Degas's Place de la Concorde (ca. 1875), an urban genre portrait of Viscount Lepic and his daughters proves to be layered with political signification, making it an eloquent visual account of the vexed nature of early Third Republican democracy. Most prominent among its signs is the erasure of the sculpture Strasbourg behind Lepic's hat, creating an absence evocative of France's territorial loss. Degas's protomodernist vocabulary—fragmentation, cropping—also appears in the popular imagery expressing the contradictions of the Third Republic's contested early history. Ultimately, Place de la Concorde emerges as a careful record of the ideologies of Impressionism's formal language.

Viaje póstumo a París del Faraón Ramsés II

Por primera vez en la historia, un faraón egipcio viaja al extranjero. Su momia, fue trasladada a París, para «curarla» de las múltiples invasiones de bacterias, insectos necrófagos, microbios y hongos de los que estaba invadido, además de múltiples fracturas. E igualmente, para diagnosticar las causas de su muerte. El traslado de El Cairo a París y regreso, se realizó con un avión militar francés. Egipto, notificó a Israel este vuelo extraordinario, para evitar cualquier problema que pudiera surgir, en aquella zona tan conflictiva de Oriente Medio. En cuanto el avión penetro en el espacio aéreo francés, dos reactores militares le dieron escolta hasta el aeropuerto de Le Bourget-París, donde se le rindieron honores de Jefe de Estado. Toda Francia se puso a disposición de Ramsés el Grande. Mme. Desroches- Noblecourt, Inspectora General a Perpetuidad de los Museos Estatales de Francia, no lo abandonó ni un momento y voló con él desde Heliopolis hasta París y su posterior regreso a El Cairo.When French scientists informed Mme. Desroches-Noblecourt, Inspector General of National Museums, of the poor state of preservation of the mummy of pharaoh Ramesses II (he suffered from bacteria, necrophagus insects, fungus, etc.), she immediately informed the President of France, who made a quick trip to inform the Egyptian President about the news. Giscard d’Estaing suggested taking the mummy to Paris in a special plane. Due to the political situation of the time and because Ramesses II would be travelling in a military plane, Egypt informed Israel about the special conditions surrounding this extraordinary flight. This was to be the first time in History that an Egyptian pharaoh «travelled» to a foreign country. The plane departed from Cairo’s Heliopolis Airport where the royal passenger was treated to the honours of a living king. The date was September 26th, 1976. The moment the plane entered French air space; two air force fighters escorted the late pharaoh to Paris. Upon his arrival at the military airport of Le Bourget- Paris, the mummy was received with all the honours of a ruling president. After the formal reception and following the personal wish of the French President, the mortuary car went to the «Place de la Concorde» so that Ramesses II could again «see» his obelisk of Luxor temple. At the Musée de l’Homme everything was ready in two large rooms: one was the laboratory and the other was where the pharaoh would rest at night, always protected by policemen. For the next eight months, the scientists examined the mummy to determine the exact causes of the damage. Ramesses II was very ‘ill’, and everything was to be done to spare him a second death. There was no limit in means or efforts. All France was at Ramesses the Great’s disposal. For the first time ever, they performed a biostereometry on a human body that made it possible to accurately reconstruct the pharaoh’s original features. Whwn he was «healed» of his multiple ailments, he was carefully packed in a very special (fireproof, waterproof, shockproof and floatable) coffin. On May 10th, 1977, and with the same ceremonial protocol, the royal mummy returned to his country of origin. Mme. Desroches-Noblecourt was with him permanently; since his departure from Cairo until his return back to Egypt.

Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, 1780–1945 by Richard D. E. Burton (review)

978 Reviews intellectual mapping which will continue to aid, to fascinate, and to challenge scholars for many years to come. University of Kent Philip Robinson Blood in the City: Violence and Revelation in Paris, iy8g-ig4^. By Richard D. E. Burton. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 2001. xv + 395 pp. $36.50. Revisiting Paris with Richard D. E. Burton is an exhilarating experience. In an immensely well-informed study ofwhat might be called 'monumentalites', he interprets the major tourist sights as historical sites, illuminating every scene in the flickering glare of violence. His route takes him from the Bastille to the Place de la Concorde, from the Place Vendome and the Invalides to the Hotel de Ville, from Pere Lachaise to Notre-Dame (with Claudel finding his faith again), and from the Sacre-Cceur, the Tour EifTel, and the Champs de Mars to the Vel' d'Hiv' and the poky courtroom where Petain was convicted. Whether even Marian manifestations endow the Rue du Bac with similarly resonant significance might be questioned, but the account of the episode contributes to the overall picture. It is of a city perennially in turmoil, bathed in blood, inflamed by symbols and memories as much as by intellectual ideals or palpable injustices. Atrocity was all the more sinister because it assumed a sacrificial aspect. Beneath the dreams and nightmares of a century and a half Burton sees 'the seemingly irresistible spread of a secular worldview' (p. 265). Perhaps there is an alternative argument. Catholicism in France showed even greater powers of survival than monarchical principles that have manifested their attractions, albeit in quite a variety of forms, through a succession of republics. The consequence was a polarization in attitudes that has militated against gradual development; the norm, as Burton shows so vividly, has been bitter contestation rather than mutually tolerant consensus. Much of the interest of Burton's study, like a good deal of the force of his rhetoric, derives from his concentration on Paris as the cockpit of France, but perspective might come from comparisons with neighbouring states. Burton writes in an engaging style, generously sharing a rich store of information and the reflections of a particularly lively mind. The way some of the evidence is handled may, however, raise doubts. At the end of an account of the killing of the vicomte de Launay after the fall of the Bastille, Burton records how the pastry cook Desnot, who had been assaulted by him, was invited to cut off the head of the corpse. Unable to handle a sabre, he used a kitchen knife he happened to be carrying. As ifthe detail were not gruesome enough in itself and sufficientlyeloquent in its own way, Desnot's knife is described as 'phallic' (p. 33). Beguiling though anthropological interpretations are, the phallus is not an organ with a cutting edge. It is also noted that Louis XVI, for his part, was beheaded by an executioner who had inherited his position and was himself the leading representative of a particular caste. The circumstance is, for Burton, 'a parodic replica ofthe Bourbon dynasty' (p. 44). Point taken, but irony is diminished by the recollection that the transmission of offices down generations was a general characteristic of the ancien regime. Sympathetic on more than one occasion to the unfortunate women whose heads were shaved at the Liberation, Burton is not above inviting sniggers at Louis XVI's phimosis (p. 42). Identifying the Sacred Heart as 'strawberry-like' (p. 179) is not much help in understanding a major force in religious life. It would be easy to go on, for Burton aims hardly less to provoke than to inform in a richly allusive history that has the breath of life and controversy. The publishers MLR, 97.4, 2002 979 are mean with illustrations, the maps of Paris are poor, and the heavy grotesque type for the initial letter of the firstword in each chapter is disfiguring. University of East Anglia, Norwich Christopher Smith L'Expression du sentimentdans I'ceuvre de Benjamin Constant. By Victor Kocay. (Studies in French Literature, 48) Lewiston, Queenston, and Lampeter: Mellen. 2001. viii + 342pp. ?59.95; $99-95This work grew out of an earlier project...

Promenades d'Anglais sur la place Louis XV ou les aperçus critiques d'un mode d'embellissement «à la française»

British visitors to the place Louis XV or critical appraisals of French town planning. The recently-inaugurated place Louis XV (now place de la Concorde), designed by Jacques-Ange Gabriel, at the heart of the promenade from the Tuileries to the Champs-Elysées, rarely failed to impress the numerous British travellers to Paris between 1763 and 1815. More than sixty authors from diverse social backgrounds, keen to mix in high society or take exercise, or drawn by the symbolic aura of this historic space, lingered here and wrote their impressions in their travel accounts. While most of them hardly paid attention to the central equestrian statue of Louis XV, Bouchardon's masterpiece, finished by Pigalle and destroyed in 1792, they were all struck by the open vista provided by this huge oval crossroads which they were reluctant to call a "square". The British travellers, observing the spectacular perspective and views of the town, the way it was integrated into its natural environment and turned its back on the closed public square, realised that the place Louis XV was part of a new conception of the town.

Memory and the Cult of Revolution in the 1871 Paris Commune

Memory and the Cult of Revolution in the 1871 Paris Commune Martin P. Johnson At the beginning of the civil war between the Paris Commune and the National Assembly in early April 1871, a crowd of women gathered on the Place de la Concorde for a march on the government at Versailles. "There were between seven and eight hundred women," one of the participants , Beatrix Excoffon, later recalled. "Some talked about explaining to Versailles what Paris wanted; others talked about how things were a hundred years ago, when the women of Paris had once before gone to Versailles to carry off the baker and the baker's wife and the baker's little boy, as they said then."1 This demonstration, the largest by women during the Commune, was founded upon a collective memory of the October Days of 1789, when revolutionary women and National Guards forced the royal family to return to Paris. It was only one of many instances in which the collective memory of the revolutionary tradition was expressed during the Commune; indeed, 1870-1871 witnessed a near obsession with the Great Revolution. Yet while men and women elaborated and acted upon the memory of the revolutionary past, the congruences and divergences in the ways they interpreted that tradition have not been sufficiently explored. This neglect mirrors a larger omission, for gender remains virtually invisible in the substantial body of scholarship created by ethnologists , historians, and sociologists in the last 10 years concerning collective memory, traditions, and commemorations.2 Where women do appear in such studies they are generally symbolic figures, such as the republican icon of "Marianne" in nineteenth-century France.3 Representations and images of women reveal much about the cultures that formed them, but the question of precisely how collective memory shapes historical action by both women and men requires greater attention. French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs initiated the modern study of collective memory with his insight that "social frameworks" shape memory and in turn memory shapes social behavior.4 There has been, however, profound disagreement about whether gender should be included in this analysis. Sylvie Vandecastle-Schweitzer and Daniele Voldman have argued that memory is not related to one's sex but to the "events of the individual's life," and warn against constructing a "feminine historical object" after having demolished a "masculinized historical object."5 While James Fentress and Chris Wickham do not deny the possibility of a "women's memory," they argue that the main barrier to identifying it is © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 No. ι (Spring) 40 Journal of Women's History Spring "hegemony." In other words, the language, commemorative occasions, and narrative process are so deeply dominated by male voices and actors as to render the discovery of an independent women's historical consciousness nearly impossible.6 Catherine R. Stimpson has evoked the same concept of hegemony, finding that "the powerful erase other groups" in their quest to forge the collective memory in their own likeness .7 Yet folklorists and ethnologists, who have generally preceded historians in exploring these issues, have often found clear differences in the ways men and women recount the past, implying that gender is a significant category of difference in regard to collective memory and traditions.8 Historians must do more to take up the point Natalie Zemon Davis and Randolf Starn make. "Whenever memory is invoked we should be asking ourselves: by whom, where, in which context, against what?"9 The Commune is an ideal vehicle for exploring the intersection of collective memory and gender difference because its origins and key features were shaped by the memory of the French revolutionary tradition and women were remarkably active in the movement.10 The very term "Commune" was derived from the Great Revolution; Communards read newspapers named after and imitating the popular press of the Revolution, and a Committee of Public Safety was instituted following the model of 1793. Against this background, women in 1871 fought on barricades, spoke in clubs, and worked to reshape society through producer cooperatives and other institutions in ways unprecedented even in 1793 and 1848.11 For these reasons the content and meaning of the historical memory has long...

The Public Nature of Women's Work: Definitions and Debates during the Revolution of 1848

On 21 May 1848 the revolutionary government held a festival in Paris to celebrate the Republic and to gather French citizens in a display of harmony and unity. Known as the Fete de la Concorde, the event took place on the Champs de Mars, which had been prepared by men employed in the National Workshops and was decorated with the results of competitions held among the nation's artists by the Bureau des Beaux Arts. Statues five meters in height representing Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity populated one end of the field, while allegories of France, Italy, and Germany, with arms extended in friendship, occupied the other. A reviewing stand held the National Assembly and other dignitaries who presided over a parade with thousands of participants: delegations of officials from the departements, the national guards of Paris and the provinces, and artisan corporations, as well as floats and choirs. A major feature of the parade was a band of five hundred young girls, dressed in white and crowned with oak leaves, who sang the Hymn of the Girondins. The presence of these working-class girls received considerable attention in press accounts and memoirs of the event, especially given both the circumscribed role they played in the overall festivities and the participation of other groups of women. Some accounts were favorable in their discussion of the girls; most were not. Commentators used gendered terms; their praise or criticism reflected their awareness of

La France pour tous?—The French Presidential Elections of 23 April and 7 May 1995

JACQUES CHIRAC WAS ELECTED FIFTH PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH Fifth Republic on 7 May 1995. After 21 years, a politician claiming the Gaullist mantle is once again the occupant of the Elysée Palace. The spontaneous demonstration of countless thousands of Chirac supporters in the Place de la Concorde on the evening of the 7 May was sweet revenge for a candidate who had previously failed on two occasions to secure election, in 1981 and 1988 against the Socialist François Mitterrand. Like the former President, Chirac was elected on his third attempt. Like Mitterrand, President Chirac possesses the necessary presidential attributes of perseverance in adversity, a willingness to learn from past mistakes, and the support of a powerful political party.

La conservation de la pierre monumentale en France

This is the second title of the collection Conservation du Patrimoine coedited by CNRS-Editions and the Research and Technology task force of the Ministere de la Culture. This text deals with the conservation of stone monuments in France and presents an update of research on deterioration of stone and its mechanisms as well as methods and products available for a better and longer-lasting protection of the cultural heritage. It offers a multidisciplinary approach with more than 20 authors involved including restorers, conservators, and architects. The work is divided into four parts: 1) a review of stone as a material with petrography and geology basic notions; 2) an update on stone deterioration and its mechanisms; 3) a review on methods, products, and techniques used for cleaning, consolidation, and protection of stone; and finally, 4) the main section presenting concrete examples of restoration. Depicts restorations carried out in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc and his successors and evaluates the progress that has taken place since then. These examples illustrate cleaning, consolidation, and restoration processes from the most traditional to the more recent ones and their specific applications, the impact of the environment of the monuments, and the architectural views of those in charge of the cultural heritage. The cases of buildings such as the Château de Gaillon, the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are presented as well as some religious buildings such as Saint-Trophime in Arles, the cathedrals Notre-Dame la Grande in Poitiers, Notre-Dame in Paris, Bourges, Reims, Saint-Denis, the Cloister of Elne, the Abbey of Moissac, but also statuary kept in museums as well as many other monuments.

The Public Memorial and Godefroy's Battle Monument

THE PUBLIC MEMORIAL as we know it is essentially a creation of the Revolutionary age in France.1 Indeed, the first American-made war memorial, Maximilian Godefroy's Battle Monument (Fig. 1) in Baltimore, built 1815-25, might have been erected in Paris more than a decade earlier. The allegorical temper of that age was especially amenable to symbolic architecture having a relationship between subject matter and function usually ignored today. Edme' Bouchardon's equestrian portrait of Louis XV (Fig. 2) was set up in what is now the Place de la Concorde in 1762 about half a century before Godefroy designed the Battle Monument. The distance separating these two, however, was not simply a matter of space and time. Profound changes, philosophical, political and artistic, set these two monuments worlds apart. The portrait statue, consecrated to the dynastic ruler, gave way to the commemorative monument, more abstract in its form as the object of dedication became more general, more democratic and more popular. There is no need to detail the events that elevated the

Sphinx

THE problem of publishing results too specialized for such a journal as NATURE and not substantial enough for the proceedings of a learned society, which nevertheless have some permanent value and deserve to be recorded, is difficult. Many a pertinent observation must be buried in field-club notes in the files of local weeklies, and a glance at the pages of Dickson's "History of the Theory of Numbers" will suggest the magnitude of the task of the conscientious historian in any subject in which isolated statements can be significant. These remarks are prompted by the appearance recently in Sphinx, a monthly devoted to mathematical recreations and published privately by M. Kraitchik, Institut des Hautes Etudes de Belgique, 65 rue de la Concorde, Bruxelles, of an article "On Hyper-Exponential Numbers", in which Mr. H. J. Woodall, formerly associated with Lieut.-Colonel Cunningham in a series of extensive computations, discusses some sequences which resemble the sequence of functions forming the exponential scale but replace the e of the analyst by an integer. Mr. Woodall gives specimens of classification, determines a few orders of magnitude, and finds a few inequalities. No better medium of publication exists for such work, but the fact remains that a future investigator is much more likely to repeat Mr. Woodall's calculations than to discover that the work has been done.

Floods on the Continent

WHILE the peak level of the floods in the Thames Valley, reported in last week's issue of NATURE, has apparently been reached and passed, and the river, despite some additional rainfall during the weekend, is subsiding, less satisfactory reports are received from the Continent. Persistent rains all over France are stated to be causing the river discharges to assume alarming proportions, the conditions being unparalleled for a period of a quarter of a century. The Rhône, the Seine and the Loire give particular cause for anxiety. Along the banks of the last-named river, hundreds of dwellings have had to be abandoned under threatening conditions, and in Nantes itself the main railway line has been cut, while whole districts of the town are under water, which has penetrated the main squares of the city, causing business activity to be paralysed. In the Departement of Vienne, “the worst flood for seventy years” has occurred at Poitiers, where many houses have been evacuated. The Rhône Valley is again invaded: both at Lyons, at the confluence with the Saone, and at Avignon, there are extensive flooded areas. From Toulouse, a “catastrophic” situation is reported. At Paris, the Seine has been rising at the rate of eighteen inches in twenty-four hours, and has exceeded danger level. Considerable lengths of quay front are submerged and cargo handling operations are seriously impeded, where not definitely suspended. Water has entered the buildings of the Quai d'Orsay, and the Place de la Concorde is inundated for the first time since 1910. The effects of excessive precipitation are being felt with equal severity in Spain, in the northern provinces of which widespread damage has been caused and the town of Padron isolated; as also in Switzerland, where there have been a number of minor landslips, particularly in the Alps. The railway line to Chamonix has been completely blocked for some days by a mass of rock and stone. The authorities fear intensification of the trouble.

Science News a Century Ago

The Obelisk of Luxor In the Mechanics Magazine of July 12 and 19, 1834, is an interesting account of the arrangements made for the transport to France from Egypt, a country “once great and nourishing, but now desolate and forsaken”, of the famous Obelisk of Luxor. The plans for its transport were entrusted to the distinguished naval engineer, Jean Baptiste Lebas (1797-1873), who had been a student at the Ecole Poly-technique. Under his direction a special vessel was built at Toulon, the crew of which consisted of 120 seamen and 12 artisans. Commanded by Lieut. Vernniac, the vessel sailed from Toulon on April 15, 1831, arrived at Alexandria on May 3 and proceeding up the Nile, reached Luxor on July 12, when her rigging and fittings were removed. With her stern ashore, as the waters subsided she settled in the sand and sand was piled high around her sides. A section of the stern was then removed and an inclined plane was constructed to the Temple 1,500 ft. away. The obelisk was then encased in a wooden shell, one side of which was worked smooth and greased, and by means of a number of tackles and capstans the obelisk, weighing about 240 tons, was slowly lowered and drawn down the inclined plane and placed in the ship. These operations were completed by December 19, when the vessel was released from the sand and re-rigged, and on December 25 proceeded down the river. The obelisk was set up in the Place de la Concorde, Paris, by Lebas in 1836.