University of Nice Sophia Antipolis

About: University of Nice Sophia Antipolis is a education organization based out in Nice, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Stars. The organization has 10291 authors who have published 19964 publications receiving 680762 citations. The organization is also known as: UNS & University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis.

A new form of long-term depression in the perirhinal cortex

Abstract: We demonstrate a form of long-term depression (LTD) in the perirhinal cortex that relies on interaction between different glutamate receptors. Group II metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors facilitated group I mGlu receptor-mediated increases in intracellular calcium. This facilitation plus NMDA receptor activation may be necessary for induction of LTD at resting membrane potentials. However, depolarization enhanced NMDA receptor function and removed the requirement of synergy between group I and group II mGlu receptors: under these conditions, activation of only NMDA and group I mGlu receptors was required for LTD. Such glutamate receptor interactions potentially provide new rules for synaptic plasticity. These forms of LTD occur in the perirhinal cortex, where long-term decreases in neuronal responsiveness may mediate recognition memory.

Programming, Composing, Deploying for the Grid

Abstract: In summary, the essence of our proposition, presented in this chapter, is as follows: a distributed object-oriented programming model, smoothly extended to get a component-based programming model (in the form of a 100% Java library); moreover this model is “grid-aware” in the sense that it incorporates from the very beginning adequate mechanisms in order to further help in the deployment and runtime phases on all possible kind of infrastructures, notably secure grid systems. This programming framework is intended to be used for large scale grid applications. For instance, we have succeeded to apply it for a numerical simulation of electromagnetic waves propagation, a non embarrassingly parallel application [21], featuring visualization and monitor- ing capabilities for the user. To date, this simulation has successfully been deployed on various infrastructures, ranging from interconnected clusters, to an intranet grid composed of approxi- matively 300 desktop machines. Performances compete with a previous existing version of the application, written in Fortran MPI. The proposed object-oriented approach is more generic and features reusability (the component-oriented version is under development, which may further add dynamicity to the application), and the deployment is very flexible.

Long-period seismicity in the shallow volcanic edifice formed from slow-rupture earthquakes

Abstract: Volcanic eruptions are often preceded by long-period seismic events that were thought to be generated by the resonance of cracks filled with magmatic fluid. Analysis and modelling of long-period seismicity at volcanoes in Italy, Costa Rica and Peru shows that it could instead be caused by slow rupture along faults in the upper volcanic edifice.

Analytical strategies for discriminating archeological fatty substances from animal origin.

Abstract: Mass spectrometry (MS) is an essential tool in the field of biomolecular archeology to characterize amorphous organic residues preserved in ancient ceramic vessels. Animal fats of various nature and origin, namely subcutaneous fats of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and also of dairy products, are those most commonly identified in organic residues in archeological pottery. Fats and oils of marine origin have also been revealed. Since the first applications of MS coupled with gas chromatography (GC) in archeology at the end of 1980s, several developments have occurred, including isotopic determinations by GC coupled to isotope ratio MS and identification of triacylglycerols (TAGs) structure by soft ionization techniques (ESI and APCI). The combination of these methods provides invaluable insights into the strategies of exploitation of animal products in prehistory. In this review, I focus on the analytical strategies based upon MS that allow elucidation of the structure of biomolecular constituents and determination of their isotopic values to identify the nature of animal fat components preserved in highly complex and degraded archeological matrices.

Fast-moving features in the debris disk around AU Microscopii

Abstract: In the 1980s, excess infrared emission was discovered around main-sequence stars; subsequent direct-imaging observations revealed orbiting disks of cold dust to be the source. These ‘debris disks’ were thought to be by-products of planet formation because they often exhibited morphological and brightness asymmetries that may result from gravitational perturbation by planets. This was proved to be true for the β Pictoris system, in which the known planet generates an observable warp in the disk. The nearby, young, unusually active late-type star AU Microscopii hosts a well-studied edge-on debris disk; earlier observations in the visible and near-infrared found asymmetric localized structures in the form of intensity variations along the midplane of the disk beyond a distance of 20 astronomical units. Here we report high-contrast imaging that reveals a series of five large-scale features in the southeast side of the disk, at projected separations of 10–60 astronomical units, persisting over intervals of 1–4 years. All these features appear to move away from the star at projected speeds of 4–10 kilometres per second, suggesting highly eccentric or unbound trajectories if they are associated with physical entities. The origin, localization, morphology and rapid evolution of these features are difficult to reconcile with current theories.