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L’élevage rend de nombreux services dans les territoires dans lesquels il est implanté et il est intéressant de pouvoir les appréhender dans leur globalité. L’objectif de cette étude est de réaliser une qualification du bouquet de services rendus par les systèmes de production de foie gras agroforestiers en prenant comme exemple l’association oies / noyers en Périgord. Le cadre conceptuel utilisé a été adapté de Ryschawy et al (2015). Les données proviennent 1) de mesures biologiques (croissance des arbres ou production de fruit, comportement des animaux, biodiversité) ou pédologiques (fertilité des sols) réalisées sur des oies adultes élevées sur des parcours contenant des noyers âgés de 7 à 11 ans et 2) des données de la littérature pour les autres dimensions. Notre analyse montre que l’élevage des oies pour la production de foie gras sur des parcours implantés de noyers est à bénéfices réciproques puisque l’ombre apportée par les noyers est très appréciée des animaux, et que les déjections des oies fertilisent les arbres ce qui augmente leur croissance et leur production de fruits sans altérer leur qualité sanitaire. Cette association rend des services i) d’approvisionnement par la fourniture en quantité relative modérée de foie gras, de viande d’oie, de bois de noyers, de noix et de coproduits (duvets et graisse d’oie, coques et brou de noix) ; ii) de préservation de la qualité environnementale en valorisants des coproduits dans l’alimentation des animaux (77 t/an) et en préservant la fertilité du sol ; iii) patrimoniaux et de qualité de vie par le biais de produits labellisés et à haute valeur ajoutée (AOC Noix du Périgord, marque Oie du Périgord) et le maintien du patrimoine culturel et gastronomique; et iv) de vitalité territoriale par la création d’emplois et la contribution à l’agrotourisme. Il a aussi des externalités négatives (impacts environnementaux, acceptabilité sociale du gavage et risques sanitaires). Ce travail permet de montrer que les bénéfices de l’association oies/noyers sont beaucoup plus larges que les intérêts techniques et économiques qui les ont justifiés.

International audience; The Polarized Instrument for Long-wavelength Observation of the Tenuous interstellar medium (PILOT) is a balloon-borne experiment that aims to measure the polarized emission of thermal dust at a wavelength of 240 µm (1.2 THz). A first PILOT flight of the experiment took place from Timmins, Ontario, Canada, in September 2015 and a second flight took place from Alice Springs, Australia in April 2017. In this paper, we present the inflight performance of the instrument. Here we concentrate on the instrument performance as measured during the second flight, but refer to the performance observed during the first flight, if it was significantly different. We present a short description of the instrument and the flights. We measure the time constants of the detectors using the decay of the observed signal during flight following high energy particle impacts (glitches) and switching off the instrument's internal calibration source. We use these time constants to deconvolve the timelines and analyze the optical quality of the instrument as measured on planets. We then analyze the structure and polarization of the instrumental background. We measure the detector response flat field and its time variations using the signal from the residual atmosphere and from the internal calibration source. Finally, we analyze the spectral and temporal properties of the detector noise. The inflight performance is found to be satisfactory and globally in line with expectations from ground calibrations. We conclude by assessing the expected inflight sensitivity of the instrument in light of the measured inflight performance.

The aim of this trial was to study the effects of dietary protein content during the rearing period on the performance of mule ducks, according to age at overfeeding (O). Ducks (n = 612) were divided into four groups differing in the protein content in the diet offered during the starting period (S, 0-20 days; Sl vs. Sh : 150 vs. 175 g/kg crude protein (CP)) and growing-finishing period (GF; 21-67 or 81 days, depending on age at O; GFl vs. GFh : 133 vs. 152 g/kg CP). The relative weight of pectoral muscle was lower when ducks were fed a low protein diet during S (-5%, P

PILOT (Polarized Instrument for Long wavelength Observations of the Tenuous interstellar medium) is a balloonborne astronomy experiment designed to study the polarization of dust emission in the diffuse interstellar medium in our Galaxy. The PILOT instrument allows observations at wavelengths 240 μm (1.2THz) with an angular resolution about two arc-minutes. The observations performed during the first flight in September 2015 at Timmins, Ontario Canada, have demonstrated the optical performances of the instrument.

International audience; The aim of this trial was to study the influence of choice feeding and cereal type (corn or triticale) during the finishing period on performance of ducks. In total, 624 one-day-old male mule ducks (Cairina moschata x Anas platyrhynchos) were divided into 3 groups differing in the diet they received between 56 and 84 d of age: a commercial complete pelleted diet (control group; AME(n) 12.1 MJ/kg, CP 15%), or corn whole seeds (AME(n) 14.4 MJ/kg, CP 7.3%) and protein-rich pellets (AME(n) 9.9 MJ/kg, CP 22.7%) in 2 separated feeders [choice feeding with corn (CFC) group]; or triticale whole seeds (AME(n) 13.0 MJ/kg, CP 10.5%) and protein-rich pellets (AME(n) 11.2 MJ/kg, CP 19.5%) in 2 separated feeders [choice feeding with triticale (CFT) group]. From 85 to 96 d, 96 birds/group were overfed with corn. Feed intake (complete pellets or cereal and protein-rich pellets) per pen was measured at 60, 62, 65, 69, 78, and 84 d of age. Body weight and body traits were measured at 56 to 84 d of age. Over the entire period, from 56 to 84 d, the feed intake of the CFC group was 7% lower than the control group, and 5% lower than that in the CFT group (P = 0.002). Whatever the diet tested, at 56 and 84 d of age, the BW (4,099 and 4,779 g, P = 0.42 and P = 0.35, respectively) and the carcass traits (P > 0.05) of ducks were similar in the 3 groups. During and after overfeeding, the performances of the ducks were also similar (P > 0.05). The present results suggest that CFC during the finishing period is a solution to reduce the cost of diet destined to ducks. Indeed, using locally grown grains could reduce the economic and environmental impacts of duck feeding, reducing the transportation and crushing processes.

Cet article présente le déroulement d’une démarche d’éco-conception pour proposer des innovations permettant de réduire les impacts environnementaux de la production de foie gras d’oie. Une Analyse de Cycle de Vie portant sur l’itinéraire standard de production du foie gras d’oie français a permis de montrer que l’alimentation explique la majeure partie des impacts environnementaux de ce produit (plus de 50% en moyenne) et qu’elle représente donc le levier d’action le plus pertinent. Plusieurs expérimentations ont été réalisées afin d’évaluer les possibilités d’utilisation du sorgho, la réponse du système biologique par rapport à l’utilisation du maïs, et les conséquences sur la durabilité environnementale à l’échelle du cycle de vie du produit jusqu’à la sortie de l’abattoir et sur la durabilité économique et sociale à l’échelle de l’exploitation, d’une substitution du maïs par du sorgho dans la ration alimentaire des oies. Les travaux montrent qu’une substitution totale du maïs par du sorgho dans la ration alimentaire est techniquement possible. Elle réduit la plupart des impacts environnementaux de la fabrication d’1 kg de foie gras (potentiel de réchauffement climatique : - 18%, potentiel d’acidification : -12%, utilisation d’énergie primaire : - 23%, utilisation de la ressource en eau : - 62%) et améliore de nombreux indicateurs de performances de durabilité économique, tel que l’indice de consommation (- 9,4%) ou le poids de foie (+ 13%). Cependant certains indicateurs économiques et sociaux sont dégradés, tels que l’intention de consommer à nouveau le produit (- 17 pts) en raison d’un foie de couleur plus pâle, et l’augmentation de la mortalité en gavage (+ 4,6 pts). L’ensemble des résultats suggère que l'utilisation du sorgho dans l’alimentation des oies peut améliorer la durabilité de la production de foie gras. Plusieurs ajustements dans l’itinéraire de production sont nécessaires pour optimiser l’utilisation de cette matière première.

Understanding the statistics of non-isotropic scattering multipath channels that fade randomly with respect to time, frequency, and space in a mobile environment is very crucial for the accurate detection of received signals in wireless and cellular communication systems. In this paper, we derive stochastic models for the probability density function (PDF) of the shift in the carrier frequency caused by the Doppler Effect on the received illuminating signal in the presence of a dominant line of sight. Our derivation is based on a generalized Clarke’s and a two-wave partially developed scattering models, where the statistical distribution of the frequency shift is shown to be consistent with the power spectral density of the Doppler shifted signal., {"references":["R. Prasad and L. Munoz, WLANs and WPANs Towards 4G Wireless, Artech House, MA, 2003.","T. Rappaport, Wireless Communications, Prentice Hall. NY, 1996.","D. Snyder and M. Miller, Random Point Processes in Time and Space, NY: Springer-Verlag, 2002.","J. Daba and P. Jreije, \"Advanced Stochastic Models for Partially Developed Speckle,\" International Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 183-187, 2009.","J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a Small Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 773-783, August 1995.","A. Abdi, S. Nader-Esfahani, J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Comments on Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a Small Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 844-845, May 2000.","J. Daba, \"Advanced Models for Partial-Speckle Noise,\" 5th International Conference on Computer, Electrical, and Systems Science, and Engineering (CESSE 2008), organized by the World Congress on Science, Engineering, and Technology, Vienna, Austria, August 2008.","J. Daba, \"Poisson Modulated Stochastic Model for Partially Developed Multi-Look Speckle,\" American Conference on Applied Mathematics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 2008.","J. Daba, \"Scattering Statistics of Doppler Faded Acoustic Signals Using Speckle Noise Models,\" IEEE International Conference on Direct and Inverse Problems of Electromagnetic and Acoustic Wave Theory, Lviv, Ukraine, Sept. 2003.\n[10]\tJ. Daba and M R. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a Collection of Constant Amplitude Scatterers with Random Phase,\" West Lafayette, IN, Purdue University, School of Electrical Engineering Technical Report, TR-EE 94-25, July 1994.\n[11]\tJ. Daba, Detection and Estimation in Speckled Images Based on Marked Point Process Speckle Noise Models, Ph.D Dissertation, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA, August 1994. Published by University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.\n[12]\tJ. S. Daba, J. P. Dubois, \"Statistical Modeling of Local Area Fading Channels Based on Triply Stochastic Filtered Marked Poisson Point Processes,\" International Journal of Electrical, Computer, Energetic, Electronic and Communication Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 7, pp. 652-657, 2015.\n[13]\tR. H. Clarke, \"A statistical theory of mobile radio reception,\" Bell System Technical Journal, 47, No. 6, July-August 1968, pp. 957-1000.\n[14]\tA. Abdi, J. Barger, and M. Kaveh, \"A Parametric Model for the Distribution of the Angle of Arrival and the Associated Correlation Function and Power Spectrum at the Mobile Station,\" IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol. 51, No. 3, May, 2002.\n[15]\tG. D. Durgin, T. S. Rappaport, and D. A. de Wolf, \"New Analytical Models and Probability Density Functions for Fading in Wireless Communications,\" IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 50, no. 6, pp. 1005-1015, June 2002."]}

With the exponential growth of cellular users, a new generation of cellular networks is needed to enhance the required peak data rates. The co-channel interference between neighboring base stations inhibits peak data rate increase. To overcome this interference, multi-cell cooperation known as coordinated multipoint transmission is proposed. Such a solution makes use of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems under two different structures: Micro- and macro-diversity. In this paper, we study the capacity and bit error rate in cellular networks using MIMO technology. We analyse both micro- and macro-diversity schemes and develop a hybrid model that switches between macro- and micro-diversity in the case of hard handoff based on a cut-off range of signal-to-noise ratio values. We conclude that our hybrid switched micro-macro MIMO system outperforms classical MIMO systems at the cost of increased hardware and software complexity., {"references":["C. B. Chae, S. Kim, and R. W. Heath Jr., \"Network Coordinated Beamforming for Cell-boundary Users: Linear and Non-linear Approaches,\" IEEE Journal on Sel. Topics in Sig. Proc, Vol. 3, No. 6, pp. 1094-1105, Dec. 2009.","J. Zhang, J. G. Andrews, A. Ghosh, and R. W. Heath, Jr., \"Networked MIMO with Clustered Linear Precoding,\" IEEE Trans. On Wireless, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 1910-1921, April 2009.","R. W. Heath Jr., T. Wu, and A. C. K. Soong, \"MIMO Spatial Mode Adaptation at the Cell Edge Using Interferer Spatial Correlation,\" Proc. of the IEEE Vehicular Tech. Conf., Barcelona, Spain, pp. 1-6, Apr. 26-29, 2009.","S. Shim, J. S. Kwak, R. W. Heath Jr., and J. G. Andrews, \"Block Diagonalization for Multi-User MIMO with Other-Cell Interference,\" IEEE Trans. On Wireless, Vol. 7, No. 7, pp. 2671-2681, July 2008.","I. Oucachani, P. Duhamel, K. Gosse, and S. Rouquette-Leveil, \"Macro-diversity Versus Micro-Diversity System Capacity with Realistic Receiver RFFE Model,\" IEEE 6th Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, pp. 865-869, 2005.","D. A. Basnayaka, P. J. Smith, and P. A. Martin, \"Ergodic Sum Capacity of Macrodiversity MIMO Systems in Fat Rayleigh Fading,\" Information Theory Proceedings, pp. 2171-2175, 2012.","L. Sun, Z. Ye and Z. Zhang, \"Base Station Coordinated Multi-user Detection in Multi-cell MIMO Cellular Systems,\" Information Technology Journal, pp. 134-139, 2011.","W. Choi and J. G. Andrews, \"The Capacity Gain from Intercell Scheduling in Multi-Antenna Systems,\" IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 7, No. 2, Feb. 2008.","J. Dubois, R. Minkara, and R. Ayoubi, \"Generalized Maximum Ratio Combining as a Supra-optimal Receiver Diversity Scheme\", Journal of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 4, No. 8, pp. 907-911, 2010.\n[10]\tR. Ayoubi, J. Dubois, and R. Minkara, \"FPGA Implementation of Generalized Maximum Ratio Combining Receiver Diversity\", Journal of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 4, No. 8, pp. 912-916, 2010.\n[11]\tR. Minkara and J. Dubois, \"Improved Root-Mean-Square-Gain-Combining for SIMO Channels,\" International Journal of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 179-182, 2009.\n[12]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Synthetic-Aperture-Radar Surface Reflectivity Estimation Using a Marked Point-Process Speckle Model,\" Optical Engineering, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp.211-227, January 2003. \n[13]\tJ. Daba, J. P. Dubois, and P. Jreije, \"A Novel Receiver Diversity Combining Technique for Internet-Based 4G Wireless Communication\", Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Signal Processing, Robotics and Automation (ISPRA'10), University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, pp. 127-132, February, 2010. \n[14]\tJ. Dubois and O. Abdul-Latif, \"Novel Diversity Combining in OFDM-Based MIMO Systems,\" Proceedings of the American Conference on Applied Mathematics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp. 189-194, 2008. \n[15]\tR. Ayoubi, J. Dubois and O. Abdul-latif, \"FPGA Implementation of a Novel Receiver Diversity Combining Technique,\" Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications, Dubai, pp. 37-40, Nov. 2007. \n[16]\tO. Abdul-Latif and J. Dubois, \"LS-SVM Detector for RMSGC Diversity in SIMO Channels,\" Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Information Sciences, Signal Processing and its Applications, Dubai, pp. 1-4, Feb. 2007.\n[17]\tJ. Dubois, \"Estimation of the SNR for Wireless Systems in a Local Fading Environment with Multi-Element Antennas,\" Proceedings of the 13th EURASIP International Conference on Signal Processing, Turkey, Sept. 2005.\n[18]\t\tJ. Dubois, \"Estimation Algorithms for Quantitative Tissue Characterization in Ultrasound Images Using Doubly Stochastic Translated Point Processes,\" Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Advances on Medical Signal and Information Processing (MEDSIP 2004), Valleta, Malta, Sept. 2004.\n[19]\tJ. Dubois, \"Traffic Estimation in Wireless Networks Using Filtered Doubly Stochastic Point Processes\", Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering, Cairo, Egypt, pp. 116-119, September 2004. \n[20]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Estimation of the Surface Reflectivity of SAR Images Based on a Marked Poisson Point Process Model,\" Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Signals, Systems, and Electronics, San Francisco, USA, pp. 183-186, October 25, 1995.\n[21]\tJ. S. Daba, \"Statistical Modeling of Local Area Fading Channels Based on Triply Stochastic Filtered Marked Poisson Point Processes,\" International Journal of Electrical, Computer, Energetic, Electronic and Communication Engineering, Vol. 9, No. 7, pp. 726-731, 2015.\n[22]\tJ. Daba and P. Jreije, \"Advanced Stochastic Models for Partially Developed Speckle,\" International Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 183-187, 2009.\n[23]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Segmentation of Speckled Images Using a Likelihood Random Field Model,\" Optical Engineering, Vol. 47, No. 1, pp. 017005-1 to 017005-20, Jan. 2008.\n[24]\tJ. Daba, \"Improved Segmentation of Speckled Images Using an Arithmetic-to-Geometric Mean Ratio Kernel\", International Journal of Electrical, Robotics, Electronics and Communications Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 10, pp.1454-1457, 2007. \n[25]\tJ. Dubois and O. Abdul-Latif, \"Detection of Ultrasonic Images in the Presence of a Random Number of Scatterers: A Statistical Learning Approach,\" Journal of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 1, No. 12, pp. 542-545, 2007.\n[26]\tJ. Dubois and O. Abdul-Latif, \"SVM-Based Detection of SAR Images in Partially Developed Speckle Noise,\" Journal of the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, Vol. 1, No. 12, pp. 546-550, 2007.\n[27]\tA. Abdi, S. Nader-Esfahani, J. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Comments on Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a Small Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 48, No. 5, pp. 844-845, May 2000. \n[28]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a Small Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 43, No. 8, pp. 773-783, August 1995. \n[29]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Object Discrimination and Orientation-Determination in Speckled Images,\" Optical Engineering, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 1287-1302, April 1994. \n[30]\tJ. Daba and P. Jreije, \"Probability Distributions for Multiplicative Noise in Internet Associated Wireless Cells and in Speckled Images,\" Proceedings of the Conference on Applied Mathematical Problems, Ukrainian Math. Congress, Kiev, Ukraine, pp. 246-253, Aug. 2009. \n[31]\tO. Abdul-Latif and J. Dubois, \"Performance of UWB System in a Partially Developed Fading Channel with CCI,\" Proceedings of the IEEE 5th GCC Communication and Signal Processing Conference, Kuwait, pp. 1-5, March 2009.\n[32]\tJ. Dubois, \"Poisson Modulated Stochastic Model for Partially Developed Multi-Look Speckle,\" Proceedings of the American Conference on Applied Mathematics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp. 209-213, 2008. \n[33]\tJ. Dubois, \"Scattering Statistics of Doppler Faded Acoustic Signals Using Speckle Noise Models,\" Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Direct and Inverse Problems of Electromagnetic and Acoustic Wave Theory, Lviv, Ukraine, pp. 185-189, Sept. 2003.\n[34]\tJ. Dubois, \"Segmentation of Speckled Ultrasound Images Based on a Statistical Model,\" Proceedings of the 16th EURASIP International Conference (Biosignal'2002), Brno, Czech Republic, Vol. 16, pp. 377-380, June 2002.\n[35]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Statistical Distributions of Partially Developed Speckle Based on a Small Number of Constant Scatterers with Random Phase,\" Proceedings of the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, Vol. 4, pp. 2338 - 2341, August 8-12, 1994.\n[36]\tJ. S. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Object Discrimination and Orientation-Determination in Synthetic Aperture Radar Images,\" Proceedings of the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, NASA, Houston, TX, USA, Vol. 2, pp. 877-880, May 23-29, 1992."]}

PILOT is a balloon-borne astronomy experiment designed to study the polarization of dust emission in the diffuse interstellar medium in our Galaxy at wavelengths 240 and 550 µm with an angular resolution of about two arc-min. PILOT optics is composed of an off-axis Gregorian telescope and a refractive re-imager system. All these optical elements, except the primary mirror, are in a cryostat cooled to 3K. We used optical and 3D measurements combined with thermo-elastic modeling to perform the optical alignment. This paper describes the system analysis, the alignment procedure, and finally the performances obtained during the first flight in September 2015

International audience; The Polarized Instrument for Long‐wavelength Observation of the Tenuous interstellar medium (PILOT) is a balloon‐borne astronomy experiment designed to study the linear polarization of thermal dust emission in two photometric bands centred at wavelengths 240 mu m (1.2 THz) and 550 mu m (545 GHz), with an angular resolution of a few arcminutes. Several end‐to‐end tests of the instrument were performed on the ground between 2012 and 2014, in order to prepare for the first scientific flight of the experiment that took place in September 2015 from Timmins, Ontario, Canada. This paper presents the results of those tests, focussing on an evaluation of the instrument's optical performance. We quantify image quality across the extent of the focal plane, and describe the tests that we conducted to determine the focal plane geometry, the optimal focus position, and sources of internal straylight. We present estimates of the detector response, obtained using an internal calibration source, and estimates of the background intensity and background polarization.

National audience; The feeding schedule of geese for the production of “foie gras” requires many changes of ingestion rhythms and the nature of food. The aim of this review was, after presenting the anatomy, nutritional requirements, growth and dietary behavior of the animals, to identify the causes and possible solutions needed for the overfeeding period. Indeed, in order to prepare the geese to receive a large amount of food in a short period (overfeeding period), the geese are subjected throughout their life to different feed changes and access time to feeders in order to increase their intake capacity. At each transition phase, reductions in consumption are frequently observed, which leads to a heterogeneity between batches and to reduced animal performance. The management of these transitions has to confront the behavioral and digestive adaptation capacities of the animals when they are faced with changes in sensory and physico-chemical characteristics of food: color, texture, particle size, water retention, nutrient composition, nature of starch (amylopectin / amylose). The management of these transitions consists in finding a compromise between the food preferences of animals and their preparation for the overfeeding period for “foie gras” production.; Le mode de conduite alimentaire des oies destinées à la production de foie gras nécessite de nombreux changements de rythme d’ingestion et de nature d’aliments. L’objectif de cette synthèse est, après avoir présenté l’anatomie, les besoins nutritionnels, la croissance et la conduite alimentaire, d’identifier les causes et les solutions envisageables pour affronter ces périodes sensibles. En effet, afin de préparer les oies à recevoir une forte quantité d’aliments dans une période courte (gavage), les oies sont soumises tout au long de leur vie à des changements d’aliments et de rythmes d’accès aux mangeoires afin d’augmenter leur capacité d’ingestion. Lors de chacune de ces phases de transitions, on observe fréquemment des baisses de consommation, ce qui entraine une hétérogénéité entre les lots et une réduction des performances des animaux. La gestion de ces transitions vient se confronter aux capacités d’adaptation comportementale et digestive des animaux face à des modifications des caractéristiques sensorielles et physico-chimiques des aliments : couleur, texture, taille des particules, capacité de rétention hydrique, composition nutritionnelle dont la nature de l’amidon (ratio amylopectine/amylose). La gestion de ces transitions consiste à trouver un compromis entre les préférences alimentaires des animaux et leur préparation à la période de gavage pour la production de foie gras.

Richard MH Lee1, Vincent DJP Dubois1, Ioannis Mavrikakis1, Salim Okera1, Gerard Ainsworth1, Sarah Vickers1, Christopher SC Liu1,21Department of Ophthalmology, Sussex Eye Hospital, Brighton, UK; 2Tongdean Eye Clinic, Hove, UKPurpose: To report the use of opaque intraocular devices in three patients with complex neuro-ophthalmic symptoms.Methods: A case series of three patients with neuro-ophthalmic symptoms requiring occlusion of one eye when alternative methods had failed to control symptoms. Morcher (Stuttgart, Germany) opaque intraocular implants were used in all patients.Results: All three patients observed an improvement in symptoms following opaque intraocular device implantation. One patient (Case 2) required multiple devices for symptom relief.Conclusion: Opaque intraocular occlusive devices are an increasingly popular choice for clinicians in patients with intractable diplopia but we highlight their use in patients with other complex neuro-ophthalmic symptoms. We learned a number of useful lessons in these patients as summarized in this case series.Keywords: intraocular lens, opaque IOL, occlusive IOL, occlusive intraocular lens, diplopia implantA Letter to the Editor has been received and published for this article.

International audience; The aim of this trial was to study the influence of feed form on the performance, gizzard development and carcass traits of growing geese. Between 42 and 98 days of age, 360 geese (type Maxipalm R ) were fed a diet containing 500 g sorghum/kg (nitrogen-corrected apparent metabolizable energy 12.6 MJ/kg, 15.1 g/kg CP). Birds were divided into three groups differing in feed form: complete pellets (Control group, n5120); a coarse-ground meal (CG group, n5120); or a mixture containing protein-rich pellets and sorghum whole grains (M group, n5120). Feed intake per pen (40 birds/pen) was measured weekly between 42 and 98 days of age, and individual live weight (LW) was measured every 2 weeks. At 84 and 98 days of age, 12 birds were slaughtered in each group to measure the gizzard development and body traits. Irrespective of the goose sex, LW at 98 days was lower for theCG group than for the Control group (5555 v. 5888 g, P,0.05 for males and 5039 v. 5215 g, P,0.05 for females). The feed intake over the entire period was 5.5% higher in the M group ( P,0.05) than in the Control and CG groups but the feed conversion ratio (6.91, P.0.05) was similar in the three groups. The gizzard development (as % of LW) was higher in birds of the CG group than those of the Control and M groups at 84 days of age (113.98% and 113.51%, respectively; P,0.05) but was similar in all three groups at 98 days of age (4.01%, P.0.05). The relative liver development was lower in the birds of the CG group than those of the other two groups at 84 and 98 days of age (220%, P,0.001 and 210%, P,0.05, respectively). The other body traits were similar in the three groups at both 84 and 98 days of age. The present results suggest that a simplified diet presented in the formof a mixture of sorghum whole grains and protein-rich pellets did not reduce the performance of growing geese.

PILOT is a stratospheric experiment designed to measure the polarization of dust FIR emission, towards the diffuse interstellar medium. The first PILOT flight was carried out from Timmins in Ontario-Canada on September 20th 2015. The flight has been part of a launch campaign operated by the CNES, which has allowed to launch 4 experiments, including PILOT. The purpose of this paper is to describe the performance of the instrument in flight and to perform a first comparison with those achieved during ground tests. The analysis of the flight data is on-going, in particular the identification of instrumental systematic effects, the minimization of their impact and the quantification of their remaining effect on the polarization data. At the end of this paper, we shortly illustrate the quality of the scientific observations obtained during this first flight, at the current stage of systematic effect removal.

The feeding of waterfowl for fatty liver production is largely based on the use of completely pelleted feed. To reduce both the economic and environmental costs caused by transport and processing of feed and to respond to consumer demands for natural feeding systems, the use of whole grains has increased recently. The aim of this trial was to study the influence of 1) sequential feeding based on cereal grain and 2) cereal type (corn or triticale) during the finishing period on performance traits in male mule ducks. Present results suggest that a sequential feeding system modifies feeding behavior, growth, and body traits, and reduces feed intake during the finishing period (−6 and −10% for corn and triticale, respectively), but has no effect on performance during the overfeeding period. This system offers interesting prospects for a more sustainable rearing method, and the use of locally grown grains could reduce both the economic and environmental impacts of duck feeding.

Future cosmology space missions will concentrate on measuring the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which potentially carries invaluable information about the earliest phases of the evolution of our universe. Such ambitious projects will ultimately be limited by the sensitivity of the instrument and by the accuracy at which polarized foreground emission from our own Galaxy can be subtracted out. We present the PILOT balloon project, which aims at characterizing one of these foreground sources, the polarized continuum emission by dust in the diffuse interstellar medium. The PILOT experiment also constitutes a test-bed for using multiplexed bolometer arrays for polarization measurements. This paper presents the instrument and its expected performances. Performance measured during ground calibrations of the instrument and in flight will be described in a forthcoming paper.

Ajouter clé UT WOS; International audience; The aim of this trial was to study the effects of replacing yellow corn (C) with condensed tannin-free sorghum (S) during the finishing period (F period; age 53 to 79 d) and/or overfeeding period (O period; age 80 to 91 d) on the performance of overfed mule ducks. 192 ducks were divided into 4 groups (48 in each) differing in the cereal (yellow corn or sorghum) included in the diet given during the F and/or the O periods, using a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments : SS, SC, CS, CC. At the end of the O period, the birds were slaughtered after 10 h of fasting to measure foie gras and magret qualities. Mortality (1%; P > 0.05) and weight gain (2,030 g; P > 0.05) during the O period were similar in the 4 groups. At the end of the O period, birds overfed with sorghum had foie gras that was heavier (723 vs. 694 g in CS+SS vs. CC+SC, respectively; P < 0.05) and less yellow (24.40 vs. 38.59 for b* in CS+SS vs. CC+SC, respectively; P < 0.001) than birds overfed with corn. Fat loss during foie gras cooking was similar in the 4 groups (18%; P > 0.05), but the foie gras was less yellow in birds overfed with sorghum (14.84 vs. 26.01 for b* in CS+SS vs. CC+SC, respectively; P < 0.001). Weight of magret was similar in the 4 groups (491 g, P > 0.05) but the color of the breast muscle and skin of magret was less yellow in birds overfed with sorghum compared with corn (12.26 vs. 12.92 and 13.84 vs. 18.30 in CS+SS vs. CC+SC, respectively; P < 0.001). In conclusion, the replacement of yellow corn with sorghum during finishing and/or overfeeding is possible and useful in a mule duck foie gras production system because it increases foie gras weight without decreasing the weight of magret. However, it changes the quality of the products, mainly their color.

International audience; Within the CEOS.fr national research project, several experiments on massive concrete structures were conducted to improve the knowledge on the cracking phenomenon. In this paper, experiments where deformations at early age are restrained are presented. Testing bodies are I-shaped and two largely dimensioned steel struts are placed laterally between the two transverse heads to prevent almost any shrinkage. Three testing bodies were realized: RG8, the reference one; RG9, with a reduced reinforcement and RG10, with an increased cover. A full set of measurement was used for auscultation of these beams during early age. Optical long base fibres gave information on the relative displacement of the central part of the beam. Local measurements of strains in concrete were given thanks to Vibrating Wire Extensometers. Gauges on rebars produced data of the strain on the first reinforcement layer, and the force in struts was monitored. With this, the force and stresses in concrete and rebars could be deduced. This huge amount of data allows verifying the phenomenology of the concrete. Various hypotheses were analysed to explain the strain measured and the corresponding forces in each component during specific period of early age. A first analysis of the cracking process shows that the cracks could appear for stresses below the tensile strength.

Fading noise degrades the performance of cellular communication, most notably in femto- and pico-cells in 3G and 4G systems. When the wireless channel consists of a small number of scattering paths, the statistics of fading noise is not analytically tractable and poses a serious challenge to developing closed canonical forms that can be analysed and used in the design of efficient and optimal receivers. In this context, noise is multiplicative and is referred to as stochastically local fading. In many analytical investigation of multiplicative noise, the exponential or Gamma statistics are invoked. More recent advances by the author of this paper utilized a Poisson modulated-weighted generalized Laguerre polynomials with controlling parameters and uncorrelated noise assumptions. In this paper, we investigate the statistics of multidiversity stochastically local area fading channel when the channel consists of randomly distributed Rayleigh and Rician scattering centers with a coherent Nakagami-distributed line of sight component and an underlying doubly stochastic Poisson process driven by a lognormal intensity. These combined statistics form a unifying triply stochastic filtered marked Poisson point process model., {"references":["R. Prasad and L. Munoz, WLANs and WPANs Towards 4G Wireless,\nArtech House, MA, 2003.","L. C. Godara, \"Applications of Antenna Arrays to Mobile\nCommunications, Part I: Performance, Improvement, Feasibility, and\nSystem Considerations,\" Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 85, no. 7, pp.\n1031-1060, July 1997.","J. H. Winters, \"Smart Antennas for Wireless Systems,\" IEEE Personal\nCommunications, vol. 1, pp. 23-27, Feb. 1998.","T. S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice,\nPrentice Hall Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2nd edition, 2002.","W. R. Braun and U. Dersh, \"A Physical Mobile Radio Channel,\" IEEE\nTransactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 472-482,\nMay 1991.","S. O. Rice, \"Statistical Properties of a Sine Wave Plus Random Noise,\"\nBell System Technical Journal, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 109-157, Jan. 1948.","J. Daba and P. Jreije, \"Advanced Stochastic Models for Partially\nDeveloped Speckle,\" International Journal of Electrical and\nElectronics Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 183-187, 2009.","J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Segmentation of Speckled Images Using a\nLikelihood Random Field Model,\" Optical Engineering, vol. 47, no. 1,\npp. 017005-1 to 017005-20, January 2008.","J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Object Discrimination and Orientation-\nDetermination in Speckled Images,\" Optical Engineering, vol. 33, no. 4,\npp. 1287-1302, April 1994.\n[10] J. Daba and O. Abdul-Latif, \"Detection of Ultrasonic Images in the\nPresence of a Random Number of Scatterers: A Statistical Learning\nApproach,\" Transactions on Engineering, Computing, and Technology,\nISSN 1305-5313, vol. 7, pp. 326-329, 2005.\n[11] J. Daba and O. Abdul-Latif, \"SVM-Based Detection of SAR Images in\nPartially Developed Speckle Noise,\" Transactions on Engineering,\nComputing, and Technology, ISSN 1305-5313, vol. 7, pp. 321-325,\n2005.\n[12] J. Daba, \"Improved Segmentation of Speckled Images Using an\nArithmetic-to-Geometric Mean Ratio Kernel\", International Journal of\nComputer, Information, and Systems Science, and Engineering, vol. 1,\nno. 4, pp.218-221, 2007.\n[13] J. Daba, \"Segmentation of Speckled Ultrasound Images Based on a\nStatistical Model,\" Proceedings of the 16th International EURASIP\nConference BIOSIGNAL 2002, vol. 16, Brno, Czech Republic, June\n2002.\n[14] J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Object Discrimination and Orientation-\nDetermination in Synthetic Aperture Radar Images,\" IEEE International\nGeoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, NASA, Houston, TX,\nUSA, May 23-29, 1992.\n[15] D. Snyder and M. Miller, Random Point Processes in Time and Space,\nNY: Springer-Verlag, 2002.\n[16] J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Synthetic-Aperture-Radar Surface Reflectivity\nEstimation Using a Marked Point-Process Speckle Model,\" Optical\nEngineering, vol. 42, no. 1, pp.211-227, January 2003.\n[17] J. Daba, \"Estimation of the SNR for Wireless Systems in a Local Fading\nEnvironment with Multi-Element Antennas,\" EURASIP - 13th European\nSignal Processing Conference, Turkey, Sept. 2005.\n[18] J. Daba, \"Estimation Algorithms for Quantitative Tissue\nCharacterization in Ultrasound Images Using Doubly Stochastic\nTranslated Point Processes\", Proceedings of the IEE Medical Signal\nand Information Processing Conference – MEDSIP 2004, Malta, Sept.\n2004.\n[19] J. Daba, \"Traffic Estimation in Wireless Networks Using Filtered\nDoubly Stochastic Point Processes\", IEEE Conference on Electrical,\nElectronic, and Computer Engineering, Cairo, Egypt, September 2004.\n[20] J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Estimation of the Surface Reflectivity of SAR\nImages Based on a Marked Poisson Point Process Model,\" IEEE\nInternational Symposium on Signals, Systems, and Electronics, San\nFrancisco, USA, October 25, 1995.\n[21] F. Oberhettinger, Tables of Bessel Transforms, Berlin, Germany:\nSpringer, 1972.\n[22] J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a\nSmall Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas\nand Propagation, vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 773-783, August 1995.\n[23] A. Abdi, S. Nader-Esfahani, J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Comments on\nStatistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a Small Number of Random\nScatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 48,\nno. 5, pp. 844-845, May 2000.\n[24] O. Abdul-Latif and J. Daba, \"Performance of a UWB System in a\nPartially Developed Fading Channel with CCI,\" 5th IEEE GCC\nCommunication and Signal Processing Conference, Kuwait, March\n2009.\n[25] J. Daba and P. Jreije, \"Advanced Stochastic Models for Partially\nDeveloped Speckle,\" 5th International Conference on Computer,\nElectrical, and Systems Science, and Engineering (CESSE 2008),\norganized by the World Congress on Science, Engineering, and\nTechnology, Vienna, Austria, August 2008.\n[26] J. Daba, \"Poisson Modulated Stochastic Model for Partially Developed\nMulti-Look Speckle,\" American Conference on Applied Mathematics,\nHarvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA, March 2008.\n[27] J. Daba, \"Scattering Statistics of Doppler Faded Acoustic Signals Using\nSpeckle Noise Models,\" IEEE International Conference on Direct and\nInverse Problems of Electromagnetic and Acoustic Wave Theory, Lviv,\nUkraine, Sept. 2003.\n[28] J. Daba and M. R. Bell, \"Object Discrimination and Orientation-\nDetermination in Synthetic Aperture Radar Images,\" West Lafayette, IN,\nPurdue University, School of Electrical Engineering Technical Report,\nJuly 1994.\n[29] J. Daba and M R. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a\nCollection of Constant Amplitude Scatterers with Random Phase,\" West\nLafayette, IN, Purdue University, School of Electrical Engineering\nTechnical Report, TR-EE 94-25, July 1994.\n[30] J. Daba, Detection and Estimation in Speckled Images Based on\nMarked Point Process Speckle Noise Models, Ph.D Dissertation, Purdue\nUniversity, West Lafayette, IN, USA, August 1994. Published by\nUniversity Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.\n[31] J. Daba, \"Burstiness Reduction of Uniform Activity Video Sources\nUsing a Doubly Stochastic AR Model,\" International Journal of\nComputer, Information, and Systems Science, and Engineering, ISSN\n1307-2331, vol. 1, no. 4, pp.226-230, 2007.\n[32] J. Daba, \"Statistical Multiplexing of Non Uniform Activity Video\nSources Using ARMA Models,\" International Journal of Computer,\nInformation, and Systems Science, and Engineering, ISSN 1307-2331,\nvol. 1, no. 4, pp.231-237, 2007.\n[33] R. M. Cramblitt and M. R. Bell, \"Marked Regularity Models,\" IEEE\nTransactions on Ultrasonics, Ferromagnetics, and Frequency Control.\nVol. 46, No. 1, January 1999, pp. 24 – 34.\n[34] J. W. Goodman, \"Some effects of target-induced scintillation on optical\nradar performance,\" Proeedings of the IEEE, Vol. 53, Issue 11, Nov.\n1965, pp.1688 – 1700."]}

La population d’ecrevisses signal arrivees en 1976 dans le Leman continue son expansion le long de la zone littorale a l’ouest de Thonon-les-Bains. En 2001, la population s’etendait jusqu’a Sechex avec une forte densite (82 indiv./nasse) de Thonon a Anthy. En 2005, les ecrevisses se rencontrent jusqu’a Yvoire, avec une densite maximum a Excenevex (78 indiv./nasse). Le long de la zone littorale, la vitesse de colonisation est de 500-1 000 m/ an. Du fait, d’une part, de leur croissance rapide dans les milieux nouvellement colonises et, d’autre part, de la pression exercee par la peche professionnelle dans les milieux anciennement colonises, la taille moyenne des individus exploitables augmente de la region d’origine jusqu’a proximite du front de colonisation, comme cela a ete mis en evidence en 2004 entre Thonon (89,5 mm) et Excenevex (108,3 mm). L’effet de la peche sur la reduction de la taille des ecrevisses est important : a Sciez, avec l’arret de la peche des la fin 2004, la taille moyenne est passee de 105,1 a 108,5 mm entre 2004 et 2005. L’impact des ecrevisses sur le milieu est discute, notamment sur les herbiers a macrophytes et sur les limnees vecteurs de la forme larvaire de Trichobilharzia sp. , entrainant une forte diminution des cas de dermatite du baigneur dans les zones colonisees par les ecrevisses.

International audience; The aim of this work was to study the effects of incorporating sugar beet pulp (SBP) into the diet on the development of the crop and performance of geese. A total of 480 1-day-old ganders were divided into three groups differing in the composition and mode of distribution of the diet offered from day 56 to 89. The following two diets were used: a standard diet (nitrogen-corrected apparent metabolizable energy, AME(n) 11.44 MJ/kg; 160 g/kg CP) or a diet containing 10% of SBP (SBP diet AME(n) 11.47 MJ/kg; 160 g/kg CP). The swelling capacity (SC) hydration was higher for SBP than for the standard diet (3.62 v. 2.72 ml of H2O/g of dry matter at 60 min; P 0.05). At day 89, the volume of the crop tended to be higher in the SBPt compared with the Control group (52.8 v. 48.8 ml/kg of LW; P = 0.101). After overfeeding, feed intake (12 922 g), weight gain (2412 g), LW (8170 g), fatly liver weight (875 g) and commercial grading of the fatly liver were similar (P > 0.1) for all the three groups. Therefore, SBP could help adapt the digestive tract of waterfowl to high feed intake through an increase in the crop volume, but its method of use that is, level of incorporation and mode of distribution should continue to be investigated.

Given below are examples of clinical scenarios that I have encountered since starting my position as a consultant in March 2012. These scenarios aim to show that the use of cheaper generic preparations may not automatically lead to a cost-saving owing to a requirement for more outpatient appointments. Latanoprost is being cited as an example because of its widespread use. Scenario 1. A patient stops using the generic latanoprost, as the bottle looks different from their usual Xalatan, but does not tell anyone until they come for their follow-up appointment. Consequence: the patient's condition has been untreated for some weeks/months with an unquantifiable effect on disease progression. The outpatient appointment is wasted, as without applanation tonometry representing a treatment state the clinician cannot make a clinical decision as to whether the treatment is effective. There are cost implications of a clinic appointment to consider (which is charged to the commissioner, who also pays for the latanoprost) along with a wasted clinic slot that may have been better utilised. Scenario 2. A patient is unable to use the generic latanoprost because of not being to hold/squeeze the bottle properly, owing to the shape of the bottle being different from usual. Consequence: as above. Scenario 3. A patient is unable to use generic latanoprost, as the bottle does not fit the compliance aid issued with the original Xalatan. Consequence: as above. Scenario 4. A patient uses too much generic latanoprost because of the bottle releasing too much medication, and the medication runs out before the repeat prescription is due. Consequence: extra costs are incurred owing to (previously unnecessary) interim prescriptions. One patient was unable to obtain extra eye drops, as their family doctor refused to provide an interim prescription. Scenario 5. A patient receives a different generic product from 1 month to the next, thereby compounding scenarios 1–4 with the same results. Patients become confused with and wary of their family doctors/pharmacists as a result of changes in packaging. Scenario 6. Generic preparations do not all have the same storage instructions. Patients who are used to storing their Xalatan at room temperature—once opened—may be incorrectly assuming that this applies to all versions of generic latanoprost. Consequence: the patient may not have been treating their glaucoma with as much active agent as usual. Scenario 7. A previously well-controlled patient on Xalatan is now switched onto generic latanoprost and is no longer controlled despite good reported compliance, adequate supply, and a suitable storage environment. Possible reasons for this loss of control include a natural decline in the patient's condition, or the generic latanoprost is not as effective as Xalatan. It is impossible to tell the cause of the patient's loss of control, although I have experienced an improvement in patients' control following a switch to a branded alternative. Whether this is due to a compliance issue or a more efficacious product is impossible to ascertain. An extra outpatient appointment has to happen to make this otherwise unnecessary change, wasting resources. Scenario 8. Dispensing errors: I have now seen two patients who were both prescribed latanoprost on a repeat basis by their family physician; both were using fixed-combination generic latanoprost and timolol and both were experiencing side effects from the use of beta-blockers; both of these cases were due to dispensing errors made by different pharmacists in different pharmacies. Both drug boxes were clearly labelled with latanoprost only. See Figure 1. Figure 1 An example of a dispensing error.

We studied the environmental consequences of cereal choice and form of presentation of the diet given to geese reared for foie gras production. A cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of the production of 1 kg of foie gras was used to examine several feeding strategies for substituting maize by sorghum: during the growing–finishing and/or overfeeding period; in a complete pelleted diet or as whole grains. The data come from in-field management practices on representative French goose farms for the breeding, hatching and slaughtering stages of production, and in vivo experiments for the growing–finishing and overfeeding stages. The impact categories were calculated using the CML2 baseline method. Our data showed that the effects of cereal type on the environmental impact of foie gras were dependent on feed level and stage of inclusion. Birds fed exclusively with sorghum during both the growing–finishing period and the overfeeding period had lower environmental impacts than birds fed with maize, for all the potential impacts calculated (e.g. −17% for global warming potential). A diet presented in a simplified form during the growing–finishing period had no effect on foie gras impacts when the cereal used was maize (difference between groups

International audience; The aim of this trial was to study the influence of loose-mix feeding on behavior, feed intake, and BW of growing geese. In total, 252 one-day-old geese (Anser anser) were divided into 2 groups differing in the form of diet they received between 42 and 98 d of age (AME(n) 11.55 MJ/kg, CP 16%): a complete pelleted diet containing 500 g of sorghum/kg (control group) or a mixture containing 500 g of protein-rich pellets and 500 g of sorghum whole seeds/kg (mixed group). Feed intake was measured daily from 42 to 48 d and every 3 d from 49 to 98 d. Individual BW was measured weekly from 42 to 98 d. Goose behavior was monitored by the scan sampling method throughout the experiment, which was divided into 5 periods according to the timing of access to feed: period 1 from 42 to 55 d (ad libitum feeding access), period 2 from 56 to 62 d (2 + 2 h feeding access), period 3 from 63 to 70 d (2 h feeding access), period 4 from 71 to 94 d (1 h feeding access), and period 5 from 95 to 97 d (3 h feeding access). Over the whole period, the feed intake (13,968 and 14,480 g) and the feed conversion ratio (8.53 and 8.15) were similar in both groups (P = 0.112 and P = 0.168; respectively). Body weight was similar in both groups from 42 to 91 d of age, but at 98 d of age, BW was 3.7% lower in the control than in the mixed group (P = 0.006). Goose behavior was influenced by period, because the percentage of birds feeding increased when the daily access time to the feed decreased (P < 0.001), but not by group (P > 0.05). The results suggest that a loose-mix feeding could be recommended in feeding of growing geese because it weakly influences their feed behavior but slightly increases their weight at the end of the growing period.

International audience; Fluctuations in the number and size of spawning perch (Perca fluviatilis) in Lake Geneva were evaluated and compared each year from 1984 to 2011 in two locations. This evaluation was based on: (1) each mature female lays only one egg strand per year and (2) the number and size of mature females are well correlated with those of their egg strands. Egg strands were counted and measured at two locations in France and in Switzerland. The collection of egg strands from either artificial substrates (France) or by direct sampling of the natural lake bottom by a diver (Switzerland) did not seem to affect the results. In most years the number and mean width of egg strands fluctuated in the same way in both locations. In addition, yearly perch catches were correlated with the number of egg strands at both locations. However, more small egg strands were found in France than in Switzerland, whereas the reverse was true of large egg strands. Fishing pressure concentrated to a greater extent on small perch in France than in Switzerland could explain this difference.

Chantier qualité GA; International audience; The aim of this trial was to study the effects of substitution of yellow corn with sorghum during the growing-finishing (G period), overfeeding (O period), or both periods on magret and foie gras quality in geese. In total, 260 ganders were divided into 4 groups (65 birds in each) differing in the cereal (yellow corn or sorghum) included in the diet given during the G and the O periods, using a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of treatments. The groups differed in the nature of the cereal in the diet offered to birds between 44 and 104 d of age (G period: a diet containing 500 g of sorghum/kg (SS and SC groups) or a diet containing 500 g of yellow corn/kg (CS and CC groups). The groups differed also in the diet offered to birds between 105 and 120 d of age (O period): 967 g of yellow corn/kg (SC and CC groups) or 965 g of sorghum/kg (SS and CS groups). At the end of the O period, the birds were slaughtered after 10 h of fasting to measure foie gras and breast muscle weight, color, and chemical composition. The mortality in the SC group was higher (P < 0.05) than in the other 3 groups (14.29 vs. 3.58%, average of the 3 groups). After overfeeding, birds fed with sorghum had foie gras that were heavier 984 vs. 885 g, in CS+SS vs. CC+SC groups, respectively; P < 0.001) and less yellow (18.03 vs. 23.97 for b*, in CS+SS vs. CC+SC groups, respectively, P < 0.001) than birds fed with corn. The substitution of yellow corn with sorghum during the G and O periods (SS group) increased the weight of the foie gras, but altered its color to a paler yellow. In contrast, a substitution during the G period only (SC group) resulted in increased mortality during the O period.

International audience; Feeding has high economic and environmental costs in poultry production. The feeding of waterfowl for fatty liver production is largely based on the use of maize as an energy source.The aim of this trial was to study the effect of the form of presentation (whole grain or flour) and the amount (40.5, 56, or 100%, depending on the form) of sorghum in the overfeeding diet on the performance of geese. During overfeeding, a diet mainly composed of sorghum reduced the FCR of the geese and increased the weight of fatty liver, but reduced their commercial grading. The use of sorghum during geese overfeeding offers interesting prospects for a more sustainable fatty liver production system. Indeed, it could reduce the environmental effect of goose feeding while improving the flexibility of production systems, making it possible to use a cereal other than maize for overfeeding.

The top soil of a 14.5 km 2 region at la Chaux-de-Fonds in the Swiss Jura is exceptionally rich in cadmium. It contains an average of 1.3 mg per kg of soil. The spatial distribution of the metal has no simple pattern that could be explained by atmospheric deposition or agricultural practices. Thin soil contained most of its Cd at the surface; in thicker soil Cd is mainly concentrated between 60 and 80 cm depth. No specific minerals or soil fractions could account for these accumulation, and the vertical distribution of Cd is best explained by leaching from the topsoil and further adsorption within layers of nearly neutral pH. The local Jurassic sedimentary rocks contained too little Cd to account for the Cd concentrations in the soil. Alpine gravels from glacial till were too sparse in soils to explain such a spreading of Cd. Moreover this origin is contradictory with the fact that Cd is concentrated in the sand fraction of soils. The respective distributions of Fe and Cd in soils, and soil fractions, suggested that the spreading of iron nodules accumulated during the siderolithic period (Eocene) was not the main source of Cd. Atmospheric deposition, and spreading of fertiliser or waste from septic tanks seem the only plausible explanation for the Cd concentrations, but at present few factors allow us to differentiate between them.

International audience; The aim of this trial was to study the effects of cereal (corn or sorghum) and of the presentationof the diet (pelleted diet or a mixture with cereal)on the performance of geese. In total, 480 one-day-oldgeese were divided into 4 groups differing in the dietthey received between 52 and 102 d of age: a pelleteddiet containing 500 g of sorghum/kg (CS group; AMEn11.29 MJ/kg, CP 16.70%); a mixture containing 500g of protein-rich pellets and 500 g of sorghum wholeseeds/kg (MS group; AMEn 11.61 MJ/kg, CP 14.30%);a pelleted diet containing 500 g of corn/kg (group CC;AMEn 11.33 MJ/kg, CP 16.40%); and a mixture containing500 g of protein-rich pellets and 500 g of cornmash/kg (group MC; AMEn 11.48 MJ/kg, CP 14.50%).From 102 to 117 d, 33 birds/sex/group were force-fedwith corn. Between 52 and 102 d of age, individual BWand collective feed intake (40 birds/pen) were measuredweekly. Body traits were measured at 69, 96, and 117d and the volume of the crop was measured at 102 dof age. The cereal had no significant effect on totalfeed intake (15,028 g, NS) or BW (5,811 g, NS) butthe breast development at 102 d was less in birds fedsorghum compared with corn (−4.9%; P < 0.05). Feedintake (+8.4% between 69 and 102 d; P < 0.001), BW(+3.9%; P < 0.001) and gut development (+9.3%; P< 0.001) were higher when the diet was offered as amixture compared with a complete pelleted diet. Thebirds fed the complete pelleted diets had a larger crop(+10.1%; P < 0.05) than others. The cereal and thepresentation of the diet had no effect on the body traitsat the end of the force feeding. The results suggest thatthe use of sorghum whole seeds is interesting for feedinggeese.

Summary The provenance of trace metals in soil, whether from the parent material or from pollution, is rarely known with certainty, and the metals' history must usually be pieced together from fragmentary statistical information. This is particularly true in the Swiss Jura where the concentrations of several heavy metals around La Chaux de Fonds exceed the statutory recommended thresholds for safety. The topsoil of the 14.5-km2 region was sampled on a square grid at 250-m intervals with additional nesting with distances of 100 m, 40 m, 16 m and 6 m. The concentrations of seven potentially toxic metals, namely Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn, were measured. Their coregionalization could be represented by a linear model consisting of a nugget component plus two spherical structures with ranges of 0.2 km and 1.3 km. The short-range component dominated the variograms of Cd, Cr, Cu and Pb; the long-range component dominated those of Co and Ni; the variogram of Zn combined the two in approximately equal proportions. The coregionalization matrices contain moderate correlation among the nugget and the short-range components, notably between Cu and Pb, between Cd and Zn, and between Cr, Ni and Zn. The strongest correlations are at the long range between Co, Cr and Ni, and to a somewhat smaller degree between Zn and Co. Analysis of variance showed Co and Ni to be related to geology, and to the Argovian formation in particular. The indicator variogram of this formation has also a short-range component. The analysis also showed Cr and Cu to be related to land use (in different ways). Copper and Pb are strongly correlated to one another and distinct from the five other metals. The long-range structure is almost certainly a geological effect, whereas the one of short range probably results from both the geology and human activities.

The topsoil of a 14.5 km(2) region of the Swiss Jura has been surveyed to identify the distributions of trace metals in it. The soil was sampled at 366 sites selected by combining a square grid and nesting. Concentrations of seven potentially toxic metals, namely Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn, were measured. Land use and geology (stratigraphy) were also recorded. Variograms were bounded in the range from 110 m to 1500 m with contributions to the variance at all distances exceeding 6 m. The variograms of Cd, Cr, Cu and Pb are dominated by short range correlation, those of Co and Ni by correlation of long range, and Zn is intermediate. The concentrations were estimated at the nodes of a fine grid by ordinary block kriging and then contoured to produce maps. The maps of Co and Ni have a coarse patchy pattern similar to that of the geology, suggesting that these metals derive from the bedrock. This is supported by analysing the variance by geology. Copper and Pb have finer patterns of distribution, and are more likely to have been added with fertilizer or manure or domestic waste. Cadmium could originate from human activities, such as smelters or fertilizer spreading, or from specific geological deposits, such as moraine.

Pulse code modulation is a widespread technique in digital communication with significant impact on existing modern and proposed future communication technologies. Its widespread utilization is due to its simplicity and attractive spectral characteristics. In this paper, we present a new approach to the spectral analysis of PCM signals using Riemann-Stieltjes integrals, which is very accurate for high bit rates. This approach can serve as a model for similar spectral analysis of other competing modulation schemes., {"references":["K. C. Pohlmann, Principles of Digital Audio, 2nd edition, Sams/Prentice\nHall Computer Publishing, Carmel, Indiana. 1985.","L. W. Couch II, Digital and Analog Communication Systems, Fifth\nEdition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997.","S. Haykin, Communication Systems, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.","B. Sklar, Digital Communications Fundamentals and Applications,\nPrentice Hall Editions, 2002.","B. P. Lathi, Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems,\nOxford University Press, 2003.","J. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, Communication Systems Engineering,\nPrentice Hall, 1st edition, 1994."]}

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a statistical learning tool developed to a more complex concept of structural risk minimization (SRM). In this paper, SVM is applied to signal detection in communication systems in the presence of channel noise in various environments in the form of Rayleigh fading, additive white Gaussian background noise (AWGN), and interference noise generalized as additive color Gaussian noise (ACGN). The structure and performance of SVM in terms of the bit error rate (BER) metric is derived and simulated for these advanced stochastic noise models and the computational complexity of the implementation, in terms of average computational time per bit, is also presented. The performance of SVM is then compared to conventional binary signaling optimal model-based detector driven by binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. We show that the SVM performance is superior to that of conventional matched filter-, innovation filter-, and Wiener filter-driven detectors, even in the presence of random Doppler carrier deviation, especially for low SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) ranges. For large SNR, the performance of the SVM was similar to that of the classical detectors. However, the convergence between SVM and maximum likelihood detection occurred at a higher SNR as the noise environment became more hostile.

Single side band modulation is a widespread technique in communication with significant impact on communication technologies such as DSL modems and ATSC TV. Its widespread utilization is due to its bandwidth and power saving characteristics. In this paper, we present a new scheme for SSB signal generation which is cost efficient and enjoys superior characteristics in terms of frequency stability, selectivity, and robustness to noise. In the process, we develop novel Hilbert transform properties., {"references":["L. W. Couch II, Digital and Analog Communication Systems, Fifth\nEdition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997.","S. Haykin, Communication Systems, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.","B. Sklar, Digital Communications Fundamentals and Applications,\nPrentice Hall Editions, 2002.","B. P. Lathi, Modern Digital and Analog Communication Systems,\nOxford University Press, 2003.","J. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, Communication Systems Engineering,\nPrentice Hall, 1st edition, 1994."]}

The pharmacokinetics of oxiracetam have been studied in eighteen elderly patients and in six healthy non-geriatric adults. A 800 mg single oral dose was administered in the morning of the first day and repeatedly, every 12 h, from day 2 evening to day 10 morning, to the elderly patients. The healthy non-geriatric adults were given a 800 mg single oral dose of oxiracetam. In healthy non-geriatric subjects after a single oral administration of 800 mg, the normalized plasma levels of oxiracetam for 1 mg/kg dose were similar to those already recorded after a 2000 mg single dose of oxiracetam. Therefore, there was no tendency towards non-linear pharmacokinetics of oxiracetam between 800 and 2000 mg single doses in healthy subjects. After the single oral dose, the mean area under the plasma concentration-time curve of oxiracetam in elderly patients was increased by a factor of two as compared to that observed in non-geriatric healthy subjects whereas the maximum concentration (Cmax) was almost not modified and slightly delayed. This can be explained by a slower absorption and elimination in the elderly patients. The highest oxiracetam levels were predominantly recorded in the oldest patients. The slower elimination (mean T1/2 = 12.3 h in elderly and 7.7 h in healthy subjects) could be attributed to a physiological decrease of the renal function. The volume of distribution was not significantly modified in the elderly patients.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Two healthy male volunteers received 10 mg carbamazepine (CBZ) as a 2-h constant-rate intravenous (i.v.) infusion and 100 mg 15N-labeled CBZ as a 2% oral suspension, concomitantly. The two compounds have identical pharmacokinetics. Their respective concentrations in plasma were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) for 168 h. The comparison of the areas under the plasma curves (AUC) obtained by the two routes of administration, showed the systemic availability of CBZ given as an oral suspension to be equal to its availability when given intravenously. A two-compartment model was estimated: The apparent volume of distribution of CBZ at the steady-state (Vss) was approximately 1 L/kg.

In this paper, a framework is presented trying to make the most secure web system out of the available generic and web security technology which can be used as a guideline for organizations building their web sites. The framework is designed to provide necessary security services, to address the known security threats, and to provide some cover to other security problems especially unknown threats. The requirements for the design are discussed which guided us to the design of secure web system. The designed security framework is then simulated and various quality of service (QoS) metrics are calculated to measure the performance of this system., {"references":["Netcraft, \"Netcraft Web Server Survey,\" 2005. Available\nhttp://www.netcraft.com/survey","D. Hanson, \"ARIS Top Ten 2005 Threats,\" Security Focus, 2005.\nAvailable http://www.securityfocus.com/corporate/research.","R. Power, \"CSI/FBI Computer Crime and Security Survey,\" Computer\nSecurity Issues & Trends, vol. 8, no.1, 2002.","AusCERT, \"Australian Computer Crime and Security Survey,\" 2002.\nAvailable http://www.auscert.org.au.","Microsoft, \"E-Commerce Security,\" 2000. Available\nmicrosoft.com/technet/itsolutions/ecommerce/maintain/operate/ecomsec.\nasp","L. Ganci, \"Firewall and Network Configuration,\" Websphere Commerce\nV5.4 Handbook, Architecture and Integration Guide, Appendix A, IBM\nRedbooks, 2002, p. 790.","Oracle, \"Deploying CRM Applications on the ECO Structure\nArchitecture,\" 2001. Available\nhttp://www.eecostructure.com/crmwp.pdf","R. Zalenski, \"Firewall Technologies,\" IEEE Potentials, vol. 21, no. 1,\n2002, pp. 24-29.","AusCERT, Windows NT Configuration Guidelines, 2002. Available\nhttp://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=1970&cid=1920.\n[10] AusCERT, UNIX Security Checklist, v2.0, 2001. Available\nhttp://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=1935&cid=1920.\n[11] R. Sandhu and S. Samarati, \"Authentication, Access Control, and\nAudit,\" ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 28, no. 1, 1996, pp. 241-243.\n[12] J. Ellis and T. Speed, The Internet Security Guidebook: from Planning to\nDeployment. San Diego: Academic Press, 2001.\n[13] R. Duncan, \"An Overview of Different Authentication Methods and\nProtocols\", 2001, unpublished. Available\nhttp://rr.sans.org/authentic/overview.php\n[14] E. Spafford, \"Observing Reusable Password Choices,\" UNIX Security\nSymposium III Proceedings, 1992.\n[15] J. Franks, \"RFC-2617 HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access\nAuthentication,\" 1999, unpublished.\n[16] K. Fu, \"Dos and Don'ts of Client Authentication on the Web,\"\nProceedings of the 10th USENIX Security Symposium, 2001.\n[17] S. Hada and H. Maruyama, \"Session Authentication Protocol for Web\nServices,\" Proceedings Symposium on Applications and the Internet\nWorkshops, Nara, Japan, 2002.\n[18] T. Verschure, \"Smart Access: Strong Authentication on the Web,\nComputer Networks and ISDN Systems, vol. 30, 1998, pp. 1511-1519.\n[19] J. Joshi, \"Security Models for Web-Based Applications,\"\nCommunications of the ACM, vol. 44, no.2, 2001, pp. 38-44.\n[20] J. Park, R. Sandhu, and A. Joon, \"Role-Based Access Control on the\nWeb,\" ACM Transactions on Information and Systems Security, vol. 4,\nno. 1, 2001, pp. 37-71.\n[21] Publications and Web Services OWASP, A Guide to Building Secure\nWeb Applications, 2001. Available http://www.owasp.org/\n[22] R. Peteanu, Best Practices for Secure Development, 2001. Available\nhttp://members.rogers.com/razvan.peteanu"]}

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a statistical learning tool that was initially developed by Vapnik in 1979 and later developed to a more complex concept of structural risk minimization (SRM). SVM is playing an increasing role in applications to detection problems in various engineering problems, notably in statistical signal processing, pattern recognition, image analysis, and communication systems. In this paper, SVM was applied to the detection of medical ultrasound images in the presence of partially developed speckle noise. The simulation was done for single look and multi-look speckle models to give a complete overlook and insight to the new proposed model of the SVM-based detector. The structure of the SVM was derived and applied to clinical ultrasound images and its performance in terms of the mean square error (MSE) metric was calculated. We showed that the SVM-detected ultrasound images have a very low MSE and are of good quality. The quality of the processed speckled images improved for the multi-look model. Furthermore, the contrast of the SVM detected images was higher than that of the original non-noisy images, indicating that the SVM approach increased the distance between the pixel reflectivity levels (detection hypotheses) in the original images., {"references":["M. Bonneville, J. Meunier, Y. Bengio, and J. Soucy, \"Support Vector\nMachines for Improving the Classification of Brain Pet Images,\" Proc.\nSPIE Medical Imaging, 1998, pp. 264-273.","O. Mangasarian, W. Street, and W. Wolberg, \"Breast Cancer Diagnosis\nand Prognosis via Linear Programming,\" Operations Research, vol. 43,\n1995, pp. 570-577.","C. Kotropoulos and L. Pitas, \"Segmentation of Ultrasonic Images Using\nSupport Vector Machines,\" Pattern Recognition Letters, vol. 24, 2003,\npp. 715-727.","J. Daba and M. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross-Section of a\nSmall Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transaction on Antennas\nand Propagation, 1994, pp. 773-783.","J. Goodman, Laser Speckle and Related Phenomena. Berlin: Springer-\nVerlag, 1984.","V. Vapnik, \"Estimation of Dependences Based on Empirical Data,\"\nNauka English Translation, Springer Verlag, 1982.","N. Christianini and J. Taylor, \"Support Vector Machine and Other\nKernel Learning Methods\". London: Cambridge University Press, 2003.","J. Christopher and C. Burges, \"A Tutorial on Support Vector Machines\nfor Pattern Recognition\", Kulwer Publishers, vol. 12, no. 2, 1998, pp.\n121-167.","J. Weston and C. Watkins, \"Support Vector Machines from Multi-Class\nPattern Recognition,\" University Of London, unpublished.\n[10] T. Joachims, \"Support Vectors and Kernel Methods\", Cornell\nUniversity, unpublished.\n[11] J. Suykers and J. Vardewalle, \"Multi-Class Least Square-Support Vector\nMachine,\" Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, unpublished.\n[12] C. Hsu and C. Lin, \"A Comparison of Methods for Multi-Class Support\nVector Machines,\" IEEE Trans. Neural Net., vol. 13, 2002, pp. 415-425.\n[13] D. Snyder and M. Miller, Random Point Processes in Time and Space.\nNew York: Springer-Verlag, 1991.\n[14] K. Pelckmans, J. Suykens, T. Gestel, J. De Brabanter, L. Lukas, B.\nHamers, B. De Moor, and J. Vandewalle, \"LS-SVMlab Toolbox User-s\nGuide version 1.5\", Katholiede Univeristeit Leuven, Belgium,\nunpublished. Available http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/sista/lssvmlab/"]}

In this paper, we study statistical multiplexing of VBR video in ATM networks. ATM promises to provide high speed realtime multi-point to central video transmission for telemedicine applications in rural hospitals and in emergency medical services. Video coders are known to produce variable bit rate (VBR) signals and the effects of aggregating these VBR signals need to be determined in order to design a telemedicine network infrastructure capable of carrying these signals. We first model the VBR video signal and simulate it using a generic continuous-data autoregressive (AR) scheme. We carry out the queueing analysis by the Fluid Approximation Model (FAM) and the Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP). The study has shown a trade off: multiplexing VBR signals reduces burstiness and improves resource utilization, however, the buffer size needs to be increased with an associated economic cost. We also show that the MMPP model and the Fluid Approximation model fit best, respectively, the cell region and the burst region. Therefore, a hybrid MMPP and FAM completely characterizes the overall performance of the ATM statistical multiplexer. The ramifications of this technology are clear: speed, reliability (lower loss rate and jitter), and increased capacity in video transmission for telemedicine. With migration to full IP-based networks still a long way to achieving both high speed and high quality of service, the proposed ATM architecture will remain of significant use for telemedicine., {"references":["D. Anick, D. Mitra, and M. Sondhi, \"Stochastic Theory of Data-\nHandling System with Multiple Sources,\" Bell System TechnicalJournal,\nvol. 61, no. 6, 1982, pp. 1871-1894.","B. Maglaris, D. Anastassiou, P. Sen, G. Karlsson, and J. Robbins,\n\"Performance Models of Statistical Multiplexing in Packet Video\nCommunications,\" IEEE Trans. on Comm., vol. 7, 1988, pp. 834-844.","H. Saito, M. Kawarasaki, and H. Yamada, \"An Analysis of Statistical\nMultiplexing in an ATM Transport Network,\" IEEE Journal on Selected\nAreas in Communication, vol. 9, no. 3, 1991, pp. 359-367.","H. Heffes and D. Lucantoni, \"A Markov Modulated Characterisation of\nPacketized Voice and Data Traffic and Related Statistical Multiplexer\nPerformance,\" IEEE J. on Sel. Areas in Comm, vol. 4, 1986, pp. 856-\n867.","L. Cuthbert and J. Sapanel, ATM: The Broadband Telecommunications\nSolution. London: IEE, 1993.","A. Elwalid and D. Mirra, \"Fluid Models for the Analysis and Design of\nStatistical Multiplexing with Loss Priorities on Multiple Classes of\nBursty Traffic,\" Proc. Infocom-92, 1992, pp. 415-425."]}

This paper reports the feasibility of the ARMA model to describe a bursty video source transmitting over a AAL5 ATM link (VBR traffic). The traffic represents the activity of the action movie "Lethal Weapon 3" transmitted over the ATM network using the Fore System AVA-200 ATM video codec with a peak rate of 100 Mbps and a frame rate of 25. The model parameters were estimated for a single video source and independently multiplexed video sources. It was found that the model ARMA (2, 4) is well-suited for the real data in terms of average rate traffic profile, probability density function, autocorrelation function, burstiness measure, and the pole-zero distribution of the filter model., {"references":["B. Maglaris et al., \"Performance models of statistical multiplexing in\npacket video communications,\" IEEE Transactions on.\nCommunication., Vol. 36, pp. 834-843, 1998.","M. Nomura, T. Fujii, and N. Ohta, \"Basic characteristics of variable bit\nrate video coding in ATM environment,\" IEEE J. Select. Areas of\nCommunication, Vol. 7, pp. 752-760, 1989.","R. Grunenfelder, J. P. Cosmas et al., \"Characterization of video codecs\nas autoregressive moving average process and related queueing system\nperformance,\" IEEE J. Selected Areas of Communications, Vol. 9, pp.\n284-293, 1991.","C. Shim et al., \"Modeling and call admission control algorithm of\nvariable bit rate video in ATM networks,\" IEEE J. Selected Areas of\nCommunications, Vol. 12, pp. 332-344, 1994.","D. P. Heyman, A. Tabatabai, and T. V. Lakshman, \"Statistical analysis\nand simulation study of video teleconference traffic in ATM networks,\"\nIEEE Trans. On Circuits, Systems, and Video Technology, Vol. 2, pp.\n49-59, 1992."]}

Stochastic modeling of network traffic is an area of significant research activity for current and future broadband communication networks. Multimedia traffic is statistically characterized by a bursty variable bit rate (VBR) profile. In this paper, we develop an improved model for uniform activity level video sources in ATM using a doubly stochastic autoregressive model driven by an underlying spatial point process. We then examine a number of burstiness metrics such as the peak-to-average ratio (PAR), the temporal autocovariance function (ACF) and the traffic measurements histogram. We found that the former measure is most suitable for capturing the burstiness of single scene video traffic. In the last phase of this work, we analyse statistical multiplexing of several constant scene video sources. This proved, expectedly, to be advantageous with respect to reducing the burstiness of the traffic, as long as the sources are statistically independent. We observed that the burstiness was rapidly diminishing, with the largest gain occuring when only around 5 sources are multiplexed. The novel model used in this paper for characterizing uniform activity video was thus found to be an accurate model., {"references":["D. Anick, D. Mitra, and M. Sondhi, \"Stochastic Theory of Data-\nHandling System with Multiple Sources,\" Bell System Technical\nJournal, Vol. 61, No. 6, pp. 1871-1894, 1982.","B. Maglaris, D. Anastassiou, P. Sen, G. Karlsson, and J. Robbins,\n\"Performance Models of Statistical Multiplexing in Packet Video\nCommunications,\" IEEE Trans. on Comm., Vol. 7, pp. 834-844, 1988.","H. Saito, M. Kawarasaki, and H. Yamada, \"An Analysis of Statistical\nMultiplexing in an ATM Transport Network,\" IEEE Journal on Selected\nAreas in Communication, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 359-367, 1991.","H. Heffes and D. Lucantoni, \"A Markov Modulated Characterisation of\nPacketized Voice and Data Traffic and Related Statistical Multiplexer\nPerformance,\" IEEE J. on Sel. Areas in Comm, Vol. 4, pp. 856-867,\n1986.","N. Ohta, Packet Video: Modeling and Signal Processing, Artech House,\nLondon, 1994.","T. Hou and A. Wong, \"Queueing Analysis for ATM Switching of Mixed\nContinuous-Bit-Rate and Bursty Traffic,\" Proc. IEEE, pp. 660-667,\n1990.","C. Rosenberg, F. Guillemin, and R. Maxumdar, \"New Approach for\nTraffic Characterisation in ATM Networks\", IEEE Proceedings\nCommunications, Vol. 142, No. 2, pp. 87-90, 1995.","I. Habib and T. Saadwi, \"Multimedia Traffic Characteristics in\nBroadband Networks,\" IEEE Comm. Magazine, pp. 48-54, 1992.","L. Cuthbert and J. Sapanel, ATM: The Broadband Telecommunications\nSolution, IEE, London, 1993.\n[10] R. Cramblitt and K. Parker, \"Generation of Non-Rayleigh Speckle\nDistributions Using Marked Regularity Models,\" IEEE Transactions on\nUltrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, Vol. 46, No. 4, pp.\n867 - 874, 1999.\n[11] D. Snyder and M. Miller, \"Random Point Processes in Time and Space,\"\nSpringer-Verlag, NY, 1991."]}

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a recent class of statistical classification and regression techniques playing an increasing role in applications to detection problems in various engineering problems, notably in statistical signal processing, pattern recognition, image analysis, and communication systems. In this paper, SVM is applied to an infrared (IR) binary communication system with different types of channel models including Ricean multipath fading and partially developed scattering channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the receiver. The structure and performance of SVM in terms of the bit error rate (BER) metric is derived and simulated for these channel stochastic models and the computational complexity of the implementation, in terms of average computational time per bit, is also presented. The performance of SVM is then compared to classical binary signal maximum likelihood detection using a matched filter driven by On-Off keying (OOK) modulation. We found that the performance of SVM is superior to that of the traditional optimal detection schemes used in statistical communication, especially for very low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ranges. For large SNR, the performance of the SVM is similar to that of the classical detectors. The implication of these results is that SVM can prove very beneficial to IR communication systems that notoriously suffer from low SNR at the cost of increased computational complexity., {"references":["V. Vapnik, \"Estimation of Dependences Based on Empirical Data,\"\nNauka English Translation, Springer Verlag, 1982.","J. Christopher and C. Burges, \"A Tutorial on Support Vector Machines\nfor Pattern Recognition\", Kulwer Academic Publishers, Knowledge\nDiscovery & Data Mining, vol. 12, no. 2, 1998, pp. 121-167.","J. Weston and C. Watkins, \"Support Vector Machines from Multi-Class\nPattern Recognition,\" University Of London, unpublished.","S. Chen, S. Gunn, and C. Harris, \"Decision Feedback Equalizer Design\nUsing Support Vector Machines,\" Inst. Elect. Eng. Proc. Vision, Image\nand Signal Processing, vol. 147, no. 3, 2000, pp. 213-219.","D. Sebald and J. Bucklew, \"Support Vector Machine Techniques for\nNon Linear Equalization,\" IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol.\n48, 2000, pp. 3217-3266.","F. Albu and D. Martinez, \"The Application of Support Vector Machines\nwith Gaussian Kernels for Overcoming Co-Channel Interference,\"\nProceedings of the 9th IEEE International Workshop Neural Networks\nfor Signal Processing, Madison, WI, Aug. 23-25, 1999, pp. 49-57.","F. Perez-Cruz, A. Navia-Vazquez, P. Alarcon-Dianna, and A. Artes-\nRodriguez, \"SVC-Based Equalizer for Burst TDMA Transmission,\"\nSignal Processing, 2000.","C. Mokbel and F. Hashem, \"Support Vector Machines in Digital\nCommunication,\" Master Thesis, Univ. of Balamand, Lebanon, 2003.","M. Audeh, J. Khan, and J. Barry, \"Decision-Feedback Equalization of\nPulse-Position Modulation on Measured Nondirected Indoor Infrared\nchannels,\" IEEE Trans. on Comm., vol. 47, no. 4, 1999, pp. 500 - 510.\n[10] B. Mukherjee, Optical Communication Networks. McGraw-Hills, 1997.\n[11] C. Hsu and C. Lin, \"A Comparison of Methods for Multi-Class Support\nVector Machines,\" IEEE Trans. Neural Net., vol. 13, 2002, pp.415-425.\n[12] A. Smola, \"Support Vector Learning: Concepts and Algorithms,\"\nAustralian National University, unpublished.\n[13] L. Lukas, P. Dooren & B. De Moor, \"Least Square-Support Vector\nMachine Classifier: A Large Scale Algorithm,\" Universite Catholique de\nLouvain, Belgium, unpublished.\n[14] T. Joachims, \"Support Vector Machines\", Cornell University,\nunpublished.\n[15] J. Kahn and J. Barry, \"Wireless Infrared Communication,\" IEEE journal\non selected areas in Communication, vol. 16, 1997.\n[16] G. Keiser, Optical Fiber Communications. London: Macgraw Hills,\n2000.\n[17] H. Uno, K. Kumatani, adn I. Shirakana, \"Detection of Digital Modulated\nInfrared System,\" Osaka University, Japan, unpublished.\n[18] S. Hranilovic, \"Modulation and Constrained Coding Techniques for\nWireless Infrared Communication Channels,\" University of Toronto,\nCanada, unpublished.\n[19] J. Daba and M. Bell, \"Statistics of the Scattering Cross Section of a\nSmall Number of Random Scatterers,\" IEEE Transactions on Antennas\nand Propagation, Vol. 43, No. 8, pp.773-783, August 1995.\n[20] J. Barry, J. Kahn, W. Krause, E. Lee, and D. Messerchmitt, \"Simulation\nof Multipath Impulse Response for Indoor Wireless Optical Channels,\"\nIEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Comm., vol. 11, no. 3, 1993.\n[21] K. Mandke, H. Nam, L. Yerramneni, C. Zuniga, T. Rappaport,\n\"Ultrawide band Wireless,\" High Frequency Electronics, pp. 22-32,\nSept. 2003.\n[22] D. Snyder and M. Miller, Random Point Processes in Time and Space.\nNew York: Springer-Verlag, 2002.\n[23] K. Pelckmans, J. Suykens, T. Gestel, J. De Brabanter, L. Lukas, B.\nHamers, B. De Moor, and J. Vandewalle, \"LS-SVMlab Toolbox User-s\nGuide Version 1.5,\" Katholiede Univeristeit Leuven, Belgium,\nunpublished. Available http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/sista/lssvmlab/\n[24] D. Anguita, A. Boni, and S. Ridella, \"A Digital Architecture for SVM:\nTheory, Algorithm & FPGA Implementation,\" IEEE Transaction on\nNeural Networks, vol. 14, no. 5, 2003, pp. 993-1000."]}

ESA's Venus Express probe has been in orbit since April 2006. Eight research papers in this issue present new results from the mission, covering the atmosphere, polar features, interactions with the solar wind and the controversial matter of venusian lightning. Hakan Svedham et al. open the section with a review of the similarities and (mostly) differences between Venus and its 'twin', the Earth. Andrew Ingersoll considers the latest results, and also how the project teams plan to make the most of the probe's remaining six years of life. Venus' mesosphere is a transition region between the retrograde super rotation at the top of the thick clouds and the solar-antisolar circulation in the thermosphere. The mesospheric distributions of HF, HCl, H2O and HDO are reported, and an unexpected extensive layer of warm air at altitudes 90–120 km on the nightside is found. Venus has thick clouds of H2SO4 aerosol particles extending from altitudes of 40 to 60 km. The 60–100 km region (the mesosphere) is a transition region between the 4 day retrograde superrotation at the top of the thick clouds and the solar–antisolar circulation in the thermosphere (above 100 km), which has upwelling over the subsolar point and transport to the nightside1,2. The mesosphere has a light haze of variable optical thickness, with CO, SO2, HCl, HF, H2O and HDO as the most important minor gaseous constituents, but the vertical distribution of the haze and molecules is poorly known because previous descent probes began their measurements at or below 60 km. Here we report the detection of an extensive layer of warm air at altitudes 90–120 km on the night side that we interpret as the result of adiabatic heating during air subsidence. Such a strong temperature inversion was not expected, because the night side of Venus was otherwise so cold that it was named the ‘cryosphere’ above 100 km. We also measured the mesospheric distributions of HF, HCl, H2O and HDO. HCl is less abundant than reported 40 years ago3. HDO/H2O is enhanced by a factor of ∼2.5 with respect to the lower atmosphere, and there is a general depletion of H2O around 80–90 km for which we have no explanation.

The effects of water temperature on the timing of spawning of perch Perca fluviatilis in Lake Geneva were assessed in a 20 year survey (1984–2003). Spawning started at the end of April or at the beginning of May, when the water temperature rose to >10° C, but most of the spawns were laid when water temperature exceeded 12° C. This led to a positive correlation between the date of the mid-spawning period and the date when the water temperature rose to >12° C. Large perch had a tendency to spawn later than the small ones, which led to a positive correlation between the date of mid-spawning period and the yearly mean width of perch egg-ribbons. The coefficient of multiple determination between the date of mid-spawning period and the mean width of the ribbon of spawn, combined with the date when the water temperature rose to >12° C was r2= 0·77. The perch generally chose deeper spawning places (12 m) at the end of the spawning period than at the beginning (4 m), which was related to water temperature.