Enfants-soldats au Nigeria : les romanciers témoignent

During an interview, Ishmael Beah, conscripted in Sierra Leone when he was 13, testified to the fact that the rights of child‐soldiers were constantly violated. In recent years, the plight of these soldiers defined as “anyone under the age of eighteen who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity”, started attracting the world’s attention, following the conflicts which have been ravaging most of the African continent for the last century. While former Biafrans and foreigners who experienced the conflict first hand wrote about casualties and the plight of refugees, the stories of young boys conscripted into the Biafran army has so far attracted very little attention. The present study seeks to assess the impact of the recruiting of child-soldiers during the Nigerian civil war on four Nigerian novelists: Abani, Adichie, Iweala and Saro-Wiwa

The Devil's Colors: A Comparative Study of French and Nigerian Folktales

This study, largely based on five separate published collections, compares French and Nigerian folktales - focusing mainly on French Dauphine and Nigerian Igboland - to consider the role color plays in encounters with supernatural characters from diverse color background. A study in black, white/red and green, the paper compares the naming of colors in the two languages and illustrates their usage as a tool to communicate color-coded values. Nigeria's history, religious beliefs, and language development offer additional clues to what at first appears to be fundamental differences in cultural approach. Attempting to trace the roots of this color-coding, the study also considers the impact of colonization on oral literature and traditional art forms

Multiple decorrelation and rate of convergence in multidimensional limit theorems for the Prokhorov metric

The motivation of this work is the study of the error term e_t^{\epsilon}(x,\omega) in the averaging method for differential equations perturbed by a dynamical system. Results of convergence in distribution for (\frac{e_t^{\epsilon}(x,\cdot)}{\sqrt\epsilon})_{\epsilon>0} have been established in Khas'minskii [Theory Probab. Appl. 11 (1966) 211-228], Kifer [Ergodic Theory Dynamical Systems 15 (1995) 1143-1172] and P\`ene [ESAIM Probab. Statist. 6 (2002) 33-88]. We are interested here in the question of the rate of convergence in distribution of the family of random variables (\frac{e_t^{\epsilon}(x,\cdot)}{\sqrt\epsilon})_{\epsilon>0} when \epsilon goes to 0 (t>0 and x\inR^d being fixed). We will make an assumption of multiple decorrelation property (satisfied in several situations). We start by establishing a simpler result: the rate of convergence in the central limit theorem for regular multidimensional functions. In this context, we prove a result of convergence in distribution with rate of convergence in O(n^{-1/2+\alpha}) for all \alpha>0 (for the Prokhorov metric). This result can be seen as an extension of the main result of P\`ene [Comm. Math. Phys. 225 (2002) 91-119] to the case of d-dimensional functions. In a second time, we use the same method to establish a result of convergence in distribution for (\frac{e_t^{\epsilon}(x,\cdot)}{\sqrt\epsilon})_{\epsilon>0} with rate of convergence in O(\epsilon^{1/2-\alpha}) (for the Prokhorov metric).Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/009117904000000036 in the Annals of Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aop/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

What is the Value of Geometric Models to Understand Matter?

This article analyzes the value of geometric models to understand matter with the examples of the Platonic model for the primary four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) and the models of carbon atomic structures in the new science of crystallography. How the geometry of these models is built in order to discover the properties of matter is explained: movement and stability for the primary elements, and hardness, softness and elasticity for the carbon atoms. These geometric models appear to have a double quality: firstly, they exhibit visually the scientific properties of matter, and secondly they give us the possibility to visualize its whole nature. Geometrical models appear to be the expression of the mind in the understanding of physical matter

David Cameron is applying lessons from his party's historyin the Conservatives' 'Euro War'

This week sees the annual Conservative Party Conference, the lead up to which has been characterised by strong language from leader and UK Prime Minister David Cameron on the UK’s relationship with the EU. Françoise Boucek argues that Cameron’s management of dissent within his party, by seeking compromise and appeasing opponents, is based on lessons learned from the Conservatives internal rows over Europe during the 1980 and 1990'

An asymptotic estimate of the variance of the self-intersections of a planar periodic Lorentz process

We consider a periodic planar Lorentz process with strictly convex obstacles and finite horizon. This process describes the displacement of a particle moving in the plane with unit speed and with elastic reflection on the obstacles. We call number of self-intersections of this Lorentz process the number V(n) of couples of integers (k,m) smaller than n such that the particle hits a same obstacle both at the k-th and at the m-th collision times. The aim of this paper is to prove that the variance of V(n) is equivalent to cn^2 (such a result has recently been proved for simple planar random walks by Deligiannidis and Utev)

The reception and impact of Nollywood in France: a preliminary survey

Following a one-year pilot project on the reception of Nollywood in the London region, an international team headed by the Open University, UK, is now embarking on a wider project, which will widen the range of diasporic contexts to incorporate data collection from European cities outside the UK where Nigerian videos are distributed and consumed, such as Dublin, Paris and Berlin. This paper will report on our efforts to address the gaps in the present knowledge and evaluation of Nollywood in France, in response to Barrot's challenge that his book on Nollywood (2005:6) was but an "incomplete and subjective" study on a largely unknown phenomenon. It will consider the reception of Nollywood films, focusing on the Paris region and using Nigerian networks such as NIDO France and the Paris-based France-Nigeria Association. Based on questionnaire and interviews' analysis and survey of popular markets such as Chateau Rouge in Paris, it will focus on the reasons attracting viewers to Nollywood and the impact of Nigerian video-films on language learning and cultural practices