General Overview of FTTx Markets at end 2009

The FTTx market's growth momentum carried on into the second half of 2009, with FTTx customer numbers worldwide rising to 63 million, which marks a more than 16% increase in six months. But beyond these figures that reflect the current situation, there have been several announcements from private operators and governments that have confirmed the interest in very high-speed access in most parts of the world.FTTx market, FTTH/B.

Asynchronous Interactive Physical Simulation

This document introduces a multi-agent framework for real-time physical simulation. Unlike classical physical simulators, no shared discrete time-line is imposed to simulated objects. Each simulated object is an autonomous agent that can maintain its simulation state, and possibly modify its behavior by checking its environment. Decision schemes are proposed that enable objects to locally adapt their computation time, in order to maintain approximate global synchronization. Results and measures are presented, especially regarding time management and simulation synchronization in regard of classical simulation methods. Examples are shown, outlining some of the practical advantages such a framework provides

Phylogenomic analysis of lactobacillus curvatus reveals two lineages distinguished by genes for fermenting plant-derived carbohydrates

Lactobacillus curvatus is a lactic acid bacterium encountered in many different types of fermented food (meat, seafood, vegetables, and cereals). Although this species plays an important role in the preservation of these foods, few attempts have been made to assess its genomic diversity. This study uses comparative analyses of 13 published genomes (complete or draft) to better understand the evolutionary processes acting on the genome of this species. Phylogenomic analysis, based on a coalescent model of evolution, revealed that the 6,742 sites of single nucleotide polymorphism within the L. curvatus core genome delineate two major groups, with lineage 1 represented by the newly sequenced strain FLEC03, and lineage 2 represented by the type-strain DSM20019. The two lineages could also be distinguished by the content of their accessory genome, which sheds light on a long-term evolutionary process of lineage-dependent genetic acquisition and the possibility of population structure. Interestingly, one clade from lineage 2 shared more accessory genes with strains of lineage 1 than with other strains of lineage 2, indicating recent convergence in carbohydrate catabolism. Both lineages had a wide repertoire of accessory genes involved in the fermentation of plant-derived carbohydrates that are released from polymers of α/β-glucans, α/β-fructans, and N-acetylglucosan. Other gene clusters were distributed among strains according to the type of food from which the strains were isolated. These results give new insight into the ecological niches in which L. curvatus may naturally thrive (such as silage or compost heaps) in addition to fermented food.Fil: Teran, Lucrecia Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Coeuret, Gwendoline. Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique; FranciaFil: Raya, Raul Ricardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tucumán. Centro de Referencia para Lactobacilos; ArgentinaFil: Zagorec, Monique. Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique; FranciaFil: Champomier-Vergès, Marie-Christine. Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique; FranciaFil: Chaillou, Stéphane. Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique; Franci

Lateral Touch and Frictional Vibrations of Human Fingerprints

In this report, we experimentally show that human fingerprints play a significant role in the lateral touch vibratory mechanisms and that direction of movement results in differ-ent dynamic strains on the pulp. Sources that generate sound at the interface are first empiri-cally identified and a spherical model of the index finger is proposed to forecast the radiated fields. Then, haptic sounds are recorded using a miniature microphone placed in the near field. Results are compared with vibrometric measurements carried out in quite similar conditions to assess of the results relevance. Results show that fingerprints can?t be neglected in the tri-bologic interaction. Finally, this research provide a useful information for tactile displays de-signers and offers future investigations perspectives in many research fields linked with the haptic science

Generalized God-Objects: a Paradigm for Interacting with Physically-Based Virtual World

International audienceIn this paper, we show a method to interact with physically-based environments in a way which guarantee their integrity whatever the mechanical properties of the virtual interaction tool and the control device. It consists in an extension of the god-object concept. The interaction tools are modeled as physical bodies which tend to reach, if possible, the position maintained by the user. Their behavior is computed via the dynamic laws of motion by the simulation engine, as the other bodies in the scene. The cases of articulated rigid bodies and deformable bodies are studied. This mechanism also provides a unified framework which allows the control of virtual objects via devices providing force feedback or not. Finally, some applications including virtual surgery are shown to illustrate the effectiveness of the approach

Adaptive resolution of 1D mechanical B-spline

International audienceThis article presents an adaptive approach to B-spline curve physical simulation. We combine geometric refinement and coarsening techniques with an appropriate continuous mechanical model. We thus deal with the (temporal and geometric) continuity issues implied when mechanical adaptive resolution is used. To achieve real-time local adaptation of spline curves, some criteria and optimizations are shown. Among application examples, real-time knot tying is presented, and curve cutting is also pointed out as a nice sideeffect of the adaptive resolution animation framework

Indexing and retrieval VRML models

International audienceIn this paper we present a three-dimensional model retrieval system. A three-dimensional model is described by two invariant descriptors: a shape index and a histogram of distances between meshes. This work focuses on extracting invariant descriptors that well represent a three-dimensional model, and on combining theses descriptors in order to get a better retrieval performance. An experimental evaluation demonstrates the good performance of the approach

Adaptive Pseudo-Transient-Continuation-Galerkin Methods for Semilinear Elliptic Partial Differential Equations

In this paper we investigate the application of pseudo-transient-continuation (PTC) schemes for the numerical solution of semilinear elliptic partial differential equations, with possible singular perturbations. We will outline a residual reduction analysis within the framework of general Hilbert spaces, and, subsequently, employ the PTC-methodology in the context of finite element discretizations of semilinear boundary value problems. Our approach combines both a prediction-type PTC-method (for infinite dimensional problems) and an adaptive finite element discretization (based on a robust a posteriori residual analysis), thereby leading to a fully adaptive PTC-Galerkin scheme. Numerical experiments underline the robustness and reliability of the proposed approach for different examples.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1408.522

Smooth constraints for spline variational modeling

International audienceThis article introduces a new class of constraints for spline variational modeling, which allows more flexible user specification, as a constrained point can `slide' along a spline curve. Such constraints can, for example, be used to preserve correct parameterization of the spline curve. The spline surface case is also studied. Efficient numerical schemes are discussed for real-time solving, as well as interactive visualization during the energy minimization process. Examples are shown, and numerical results discussed