School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

About: School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a facility organization based out in Villejuif, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Politics. The organization has 1230 authors who have published 2084 publications receiving 57740 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales & EHESS.

Habeas Corpus: The Sense of Ownership of One ' s Own Body

Abstract: What grounds my experience of my body as my own? The body that one experiences is always one's own, but it does not follow that one always experiences it as one's own. One might even feel that a body part does not belong to oneself despite feeling sensations in it, like in asomatognosia. The article aims at understanding the link between bodily sensations and the sense of ownership by investigating the role played by the body schema.

Stability without a pact? Lessons from the European gold standard, 1880—1914

Abstract: Stability pacts European lessons from the gold standard The gold standard was a system of fixed exchange rates that offered little opportunity for carrying out monetary policies, short of suspending gold convertibility. Trade integration and capital mobility were very high. It is worthwhile asking whether there are useful lessons to draw for EMU from European experience during that period. One clear lesson is that debts matter. Another basic finding is that the stability of the European gold standard depended on the underlying price trend. Deflation prior to 1895 resulted in rising public debt burdens, which forced some countries to leave the system. Once gold was discovered and deflation gave way to inflation, real interest service fell, debts grew more slowly and a high degree of convergence allowed most countries to return to gold. For EMU, this result implies that stability will hinge on the ECB's policy not being too restrictive. Other lessons concern the fragility of institutions in the face of deep public finance difficulties, the risks for the single market of leaving out countries that have not fully converged, and the existence of a virtuous cycle including low real interest rates, fast growth and debt reduction — Marc Flandreau, Jacques Le Cacheux and Frederic Zumer

Optical imaging of infants' neurocognitive development: recent advances and perspectives.

Abstract: Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) provides a unique method of monitoring infant brain function by measuring the changes in the concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin. During the past 10 years, NIRS measurement of the developing brain has rapidly expanded. In this article, a brief discussion of the general principles of NIRS, including its technical advantages and limitations, is followed by a detailed review of the role played so far by NIRS in the study of infant perception and cognition, including language, and visual and auditory functions. Results have highlighted, in particular, the developmental changes of cerebral asymmetry associated with speech acquisition. Finally, suggestions for future studies of neurocognitive development using NIRS are presented. Although NIRS studies of the infant brain have yet to fulfill their potential, a review of the work done so far indicates that NIRS is likely to provide many unique insights in the field of developmental neuroscience. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol, 2008

Carbon sequestration due to the abandonment of agriculture in the former USSR since 1990

Abstract: The end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of its agricultural structures in the early 1990s has induced the abandonment of a large croplands area, which have been recovered by herbaceous plants. This widespread unintended and abrupt land use change took place over 200,000 km(2), a large enough scale to impact the continental and global carbon budgets. The goal of this study is to estimate the net biome productivity (NBP) of the abandoned croplands and to assess the soil C storage dynamics due to recent land conversion. The soil C balance and its input (net primary productivity) and output (heterotrophic respiration) fluxes is simulated in a spatially explicit manner with the process-driven natural vegetation/crop model Organizing Carbon and Hydrology in Dynamic Ecosystems-Supra-Thermal Ion Composion Spectrometer prescribed with successive area changes of abandoned croplands during the 1990s. We estimate that regional agricultural abandonment is responsible of a cumulated carbon sink over 1991 2000 of 373 gC m(-2), or 64 TgC over the domain considered, which defines a mean annual C sink of 46.7 g C m(-2) a(-1). Agricultural practices during the former cultivation phase determine a legacy on the C sink following abandonment, which impacts by +37% to -25% according to the practice considered (no tillage, no fertilization, and export of some crop residues). We conclude that futures studies of this regional change in the C cycle should better consider management information in order to refine the NBP estimate.