Book review: The Holocaust and genocides in Europe

"The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe." Benjamin Lieberman. Bloomsbury Academic. April 2013. --- Focusing on the major cases of genocide in twentieth-century Europe, including the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and genocide in the former Yugoslavia, as well as mass killing in the Soviet Union, this book outlines the internal and external roots of genocide. Using the voices of the human actors in genocide, often ignored or forgotten, this volume aims to provide arresting new insights into the discussion of genocide in other continents and historical periods. Caroline Varin would have liked to see more content suitable for advanced readers and students, but would recommend this book to readers looking for a quick overview of the subject of genocides in Europe

Clustering files of chemical structures using the Szekely-Rizzo generalization of Ward's method

Ward's method is extensively used for clustering chemical structures represented by 2D fingerprints. This paper compares Ward clusterings of 14 datasets (containing between 278 and 4332 molecules) with those obtained using the Szekely–Rizzo clustering method, a generalization of Ward's method. The clusters resulting from these two methods were evaluated by the extent to which the various classifications were able to group active molecules together, using a novel criterion of clustering effectiveness. Analysis of a total of 1400 classifications (Ward and Székely–Rizzo clustering methods, 14 different datasets, 5 different fingerprints and 10 different distance coefficients) demonstrated the general superiority of the Székely–Rizzo method. The distance coefficient first described by Soergel performed extremely well in these experiments, and this was also the case when it was used in simulated virtual screening experiments

Book review: zone of crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq by Amin Saikal

Characterised by fractured political elites and fraught economic policies, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq embody a mosaic of ethnicities. Amin Saikal, a distinguished Afghan-born scholar of international affairs, aims to provide a sweeping new understanding of the complex contemporary political and social instability encompassing the region. Caroline Varin finds this a topical and important book

Statistical modelling of citation exchange among statistics journals

Scholarly journal rankings based on citation data are often met with skepticism by the scientific community. Part of the skepticism is due to the discrepancy between the common perception of journals' prestige and their ranking based on citation counts. A more serious concern is the inappropriate use of journal rankings to evaluate the scientific influence of authors. This paper focuses on analysis of the table of cross-citations among a selection of Statistics journals. Data are collected from the Web of Science database published by Thomson Reuters. Our results suggest that modelling the exchange of citations between journals is useful to highlight the most prestigious journals, but also that journal citation data are characterized by considerable heterogeneity, which needs to be properly summarized. Inferential conclusions require care in order to avoid potential over-interpretation of insignificant differences between journal ratings

Femtosecond 240-keV electron pulses from direct laser acceleration in a low-density gas

We propose a simple laser-driven electron acceleration scheme based on tightly focused radially polarized laser pulses for the production of femtosecond electron bunches with energies in the few-hundreds-of-keV range. In this method, the electrons are accelerated forward in the focal volume by the longitudinal electric field component of the laser pulse. Three-dimensional test-particle and particle-in-cell simulations reveal the feasibility of generating well-collimated electron bunches with an energy spread of 5% and a temporal duration of the order of 1 fs. These results offer a route towards unprecedented time resolution in ultrafast electron diffraction experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, published in PR

Récolte mécanique de l'igname en Nouvelle-Calédonie

Dans le cadre de l'émergence d'une production d'igname commerciale en Nouvelle-Calédonie, une expérimentation de récolte mécanique adoptée aux petites exploitations a été entreprise. Après deux campagnes d'essais, une solution relativement satisfaisante a été obtenue en utilisant une trancheuse montée avec un seul versoir. Cet outil permet de soulever les tubercules sur le dessus des billons, leur ramassage et leur mise en caisse restant manuels. Le taux de tubercules abîmés reste faible avec les variétés D. alata de longueur moyenne et la productivité du travail se trouve multipliée par près de 3. (Résumé d'auteur