Spectacular Bodies: Los Angeles Beach Cultures and the Making of the “California Look” (1900s-1960s)

This article explores the origins, whitewashing, and eventual fetishization of the “California look”—a body ideal centered on bronzed skin, bleached hair, and bulging muscles, which gained a prominent place within American visual imagery in the second half of the twentieth century. Rather than solely focusing on representations of California bodies in popular culture, as other studies have done, the article locates the origins of the California look in the social history of Los Angeles’ beaches and, in particular, their use as sites of corporeal spectacles. Unlike in Europe and the East Coast, where hygienist justifications for seaside recreation endured, from the early twentieth century onwards Southern California beachgoers set medical concerns aside and focused on having fun, and shaping and parading their bodies. In parallel, consumer capitalism, aided by the rise of the beauty, exercise, and diet industries, transformed these local pursuits of health and fitness into a marketable lifestyle and coherent set of body aesthetics. Despite African-American, Asian, and Latino Angelenos’ continuing engagement with local beach cultures, national and popular culture representations of such trends systematically erased non-white bodies, thereby constructing the California look as a conspicuously white icon

EVALUATION DE SYSTEMES DE PRODUCTION INNOVANTS INSCRITS EN AGRICULTURE DURABLE : LE CAS DES SYSTEMES BOVINS HERBAGERS DU HAUT-BOCAGE POITEVIN

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceSince 1990, farmers of Poitou's Haut-Bocage (center West of France) have set up cattle grassland systems based upon André Pochon‘s Britain example and largely based on grazing of temporary grass-clover pastures. Adapted by farmers' groups to the specific pedoclimatic conditions of this region, these innovative systems create high value added by important cost savings, in complete contrast to the main agricultural development in the region, aiming at increasing work productivity thanks to the growth of production per hectare and per worker. The effects of grassland systems implementation in this region are appraised by using the concept of production system and the methods of project's assessment (comparison of a grassland scenario and a counterfactual scenario), from standpoint of both farmers and the whole national economy. The results of the differential between this two scenarios point out that farmers benefit from higher incomes and less working load and that, between 1990 and 2009, this implementation allowed net national income increase, 50% more farmers' job creation and a better labour remuneration in all the sectors. These less subsidized cattle grassland systems, characterized by a higher social and environmental viability, also allowed to cut down public expenditures

Multi-layered Spiking Neural Network with Target Timestamp Threshold Adaptation and STDP

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) are good candidates to produce ultra-energy-efficient hardware. However, the performance of these models is currently behind traditional methods. Introducing multi-layered SNNs is a promising way to reduce this gap. We propose in this paper a new threshold adaptation system which uses a timestamp objective at which neurons should fire. We show that our method leads to state-of-the-art classification rates on the MNIST dataset (98.60%) and the Faces/Motorbikes dataset (99.46%) with an unsupervised SNN followed by a linear SVM. We also investigate the sparsity level of the network by testing different inhibition policies and STDP rules

Scalable BGP Prefix Selection for Effective Inter-domain Traffic Engineering

Inter-domain Traffic Engineering for multi-homed networks faces a scalability challenge, as the size of BGP routing table continue to grow. In this context, the choice of the best path must be made potentially for each destination prefix, requiring all available paths to be characterised (e.g., through measurements) and compared with each other. Fortunately, it is well-known that a few number of prefixes carry the larger part of the traffic. As a natural consequence, to engineer large volume of traffic only few prefixes need to be managed. Yet, traffic characteristics of a given prefix can greatly vary over time, and little is known on the dynamism of traffic at this aggregation level, including predicting the set of the most significant prefixes in the near future. %based on past observations. Sophisticated prediction methods won't scale in such context. In this paper, we study the relationship between prefix volume, stability, and predictability, based on recent traffic traces from nine different networks. Three simple and resource-efficient methods to select the prefixes associated with the most important foreseeable traffic volume are then proposed. Such proposed methods allow to select sets of prefixes with both excellent representativeness (volume coverage) and stability in time, for which the best routes are identified. The analysis carried out confirm the potential benefits of a route decision engine

Development of an apparatus for obtaining molecular beams in the energy range from 2 to 200 eV

The formation and detection of molecular beams obtained by charge exchange from a low-energy ion source is discussed. Dispersion in energy of the ion source was measured and problems concerning detection of neutral beams were studied. Various methods were used, specifically secondary electron emissivity of a metallic surface and ionization of a gas target with a low ionization voltage. The intensities of neutral beams as low as 10 eV are measured by a tubular electron multiplier and a lock-in amplifier

Extended Model driven Architecture to B Method

International audienceModel Driven Architecture (MDA) design approach proposes to separate design into two stages: implementation independent stage then an implementation-dependent one. This improves the reusability, the reusability, the standability, the maintainability, etc. Here we show how MDA can be augmented using a formal refinement approach: B method. Doing so enables to gradually refine the development from the abstract specification to the executing implementation; furthermore it permits to prove the coherence between components in low levels even if they are implemented in different technologies

Unsupervised Visual Feature Learning with Spike-timing-dependent Plasticity: How Far are we from Traditional Feature Learning Approaches?

Spiking neural networks (SNNs) equipped with latency coding and spike-timing dependent plasticity rules offer an alternative to solve the data and energy bottlenecks of standard computer vision approaches: they can learn visual features without supervision and can be implemented by ultra-low power hardware architectures. However, their performance in image classification has never been evaluated on recent image datasets. In this paper, we compare SNNs to auto-encoders on three visual recognition datasets, and extend the use of SNNs to color images. The analysis of the results helps us identify some bottlenecks of SNNs: the limits of on-center/off-center coding, especially for color images, and the ineffectiveness of current inhibition mechanisms. These issues should be addressed to build effective SNNs for image recognition

A statistical approach for predicting grassland degradation in disturbance-driven landscapes

Maintaining a land base that supports safe and realistic training operations is a significant challenge for military land managers which can be informed by frequent monitoring of land condition in relation to management practices. This study explores the relationship between fire and trends in tallgrass prairie vegetation at military and non -military sites in the Kansas Flint Hills. The response variable was the longterm linear trend (2001-2010) of surface greenness measured by MODIS NDVI using BFAST time series trend analysis. Explanatory variables included fire regime (frequency and seasonality) and spatial strata based on existing management unit boundaries. Several non-spatial generalized linear models (GLM) were computed to explain trends by fire regime and/or stratification. Spatialized versions of the GLMs were also constructed. For non-spatial models at the military site, fire regime explained little (4%) of the observed surface greenness trend compared to strata alone (7% - 26%). The non-spatial and spatial models for the non -military site performed better for each explanatory variable and combination tested with fire regime. Existing stratifications contained much of the spatial structure in model residuals. Fire had only a marginal effect on surface greenness trends at the military site despite the use of burning as a grassland management tool. Interestingly, fire explained more of the trend at the nonmilitary site and models including strata improved explanatory power. Analysis of spatial model predictors based on management unit stratification suggested ways to reduce the number of strata while achieving similar performance and may benefit managers of other public areas lacking sound data regarding land usage

Romance d\u27Estelle no. 3

Que j\u27aime avoir les Hirondelles a ma fenetre,tous les ans, venir m\u27apporter des nouvelles de l\u27approche du doux printems le meme nidme disent elles ba revoir les memes amoursce n\u27est qu\u27a des amans fideles a vous annoncerles beaux jours a vous annoncer les beaux jours. 2e CoupletLorsque les premieres geleesFont tomber les feuilles des bois,Les HIrondelles rassembleesS\u27appellent toutes sur les toits:Partons, partons, se disent elles,Fuyons la neige et les autans;Point d\u27hiver pour les coeurs fideles,Ils sont toujours dans le printems. 3e CoupletSi par malheur dans le voyage,Victime d\u27un cruel enfant,Une Hirondelle mise en cageNe peut rejoinder son amant;Vous boyez mourir l\u27hirondelleD\u27ennui de douleur et d\u27amour;Tandis que son amant fidele,Pres de la, meurt le meme jour