DOMINIQUE VALÉRIAN (ed.) (Cyrille Aillet, Sophie Gilotte, AnnelieseNef, Christophe Picard, Jean-Pierre Van Staëvel, Élise Voguet):Islamisation et arabisation de l’Occident musulman médiéval (VIIe–XIIesiècle)

This book is the result of a one-year seminar series"Islam médiéval d"Occident (VIIe-XVe)", held at the Colegio de España in Paris in 2006-07 by the Association des doctorants en histoire des mondes musulmans médievaux (Diwan http://diwan.hypotheses.org), and a second volume focusing on Arabization is expected (p. 33). The contributors" experience, alongside their university and research backgrounds, have led to the publication of articles of an outstandingly high level throughout this book. This scholarly achievement is combined with a thought-provoking theoretical framework, where Arabization and Islamization give a common theme to the proceedings, which are developed in four parts.

Informe comparatiu del curs de formació bàsica de la policia a Europa. Els casos d'Anglaterra, Alemanya, Bèlgica, França i Holanda

L’informe que a continuació es presenta és una comparativa del Curs de formació bàsica (CFB) de cinc escoles de policia europees. Per a això hem comptat amb la col·laboració de l’Escola de la Policia Metropolitana de Londres (Anglaterra), la d’Hessen (Alemanya), la de Bèlgica, l’Escola Nacional Superior de la Policia Nacional de França i l’Acadèmia de Policia d’Holanda. Per a l’elaboració de l’informe es va utilitzar la informació de què ja disposava l’Àrea de Recerca i Cooperació Internacional de l’Institut fruit de la seva pròpia activitat i, a més, es va enviar un qüestionari a les diferents escoles.

Studying the micro-angels approach to micro-investment decisions

Purpose: The paper analyzes the micro-angels investment behaviour, looking both to the criteria used in the selection of their investment projects and to the characteristics of their guidance role during the investment period. Design/Methodology/Approach: The paper focuses on a double bottom line movement of French micro-angels clubs that has been operating since 1983. Our primary source of data is an online survey carried out during March 2012, asking members of clubs all over France for different aspects of their procedures. Findings: Our findings suggest that micro-angels are interested in small, socially or environmentally friendly projects having the potential to contribute to the development of their neighbourhood. We find that women are even more interested than men in such projects. Educated micro-angels value entrepreneurial motivation and understanding of the project more than less-educated micro-angels. We also point out the factors that micro-angels consider important in accompanying enterprises. Here we find that gender makes little difference. However, retired micro-angels value financial diagnosis made conjointly with entrepreneurs, while both active micro-angels and educated micro-angels value more the use of their network to help micro-entrepreneurs. Practical/Social Implications: Given the potential benefits of micro-angels investing and guiding the development of micro-enterprises, a social micro-angel investment on a major scale in developing countries could help in tackling some of the problems faced by the development of microfinance, such as the over-indebtedness of micro-entrepreneurs. Practitioners and new initiatives would gain from understanding what adaptations need to be made. Originality/value: We expect to add to the venture capital theory to take into account non-economic motives.

Thermal modeling and management in ultrathin chip stack technology

This paper presents a thermal modeling for power management of a new three-dimensional (3-D) thinned dies stacking process. Besides the high concentration of power dissipating sources, which is the direct consequence of the very interesting integration efficiency increase, this new ultra-compact packaging technology can suffer of the poor thermal conductivity (about 700 times smaller than silicon one) of the benzocyclobutene (BCB) used as both adhesive and planarization layers in each level of the stack. Thermal simulation was conducted using three-dimensional (3-D) FEM tool to analyze the specific behaviors in such stacked structure and to optimize the design rules. This study first describes the heat transfer limitation through the vertical path by examining particularly the case of the high dissipating sources under small area. First results of characterization in transient regime by means of dedicated test device mounted in single level structure are presented. For the design optimization, the thermal draining capabilities of a copper grid or full copper plate embedded in the intermediate layer of stacked structure are evaluated as a function of the technological parameters and the physical properties. It is shown an interest for the transverse heat extraction under the buffer devices dissipating most the power and generally localized in the peripheral zone, and for the temperature uniformization, by heat spreading mechanism, in the localized regions where the attachment of the thin die is altered. Finally, all conclusions of this analysis are used for the quantitative projections of the thermal performance of a first demonstrator based on a three-levels stacking structure for space application.

Self-similarity properties of natural images resemble those of turbulent flows

We show that the statistics of an edge type variable in natural images exhibits self-similarity properties which resemble those of local energy dissipation in turbulent flows. Our results show that self-similarity and extended self-similarity hold remarkably for the statistics of the local edge variance, and that the very same models can be used to predict all of the associated exponents. These results suggest using natural images as a laboratory for testing more elaborate scaling models of interest for the statistical description of turbulent flows. The properties we have exhibited are relevant for the modeling of the early visual system: They should be included in models designed for the prediction of receptive fields.

Bio-inspired Mechanisms for Artificial Self-organised Systems

Self-organization is a growing interdisciplinary field of research about a phenomenon that can be observed in the Universe, in Nature and in social contexts. Research on self-organization tries to describe and explain forms, complex patterns and behaviours that arise from a collection of entities without an external organizer. As researchers in artificial systems, our aim is not to mimic self-organizing phenomena arising in Nature, but to understand and to control underlying mechanisms allowing desired emergence of forms, complex patterns and behaviours. Rather than attempting to eliminate such self-organization in artificial systems, we think that this might be deliberately harnessed in order to reach desirable global properties. In this paper we analyze three forms of self-organization: stigmergy, reinforcement mechanisms and cooperation. The amplification phenomena founded in stigmergic process or in reinforcement process are different forms of positive feedbacks that play a major role in building group activity or social organization. Cooperation is a functional form for self-organization because of its ability to guide local behaviours in order to obtain a relevant collective one. For each forms of self-organisation, we present a case study to show how we transposed it to some artificial systems and then analyse the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach