The aim of the workshop was to provide a forum for discussion of new research results regarding particulate matter (PM), and atmospheric PM monitoring and management. Participants came from Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Turkey, Portugal, Hungary and Norway, representing research, managers and authorities. The workshop had four sessions: PM sources and source apportionment, Pollution trends and levels, Exposure and health, Air Quality Management. Inall, over 40 participants presented papers and posters from authors from 16 countries. A special number of the Serbian journal Chemical Industry and Chemical Engineering is being prepared. The workshop was supported from the We BIOPATR project (Research Council of Norway), and from the grant of the Ministry of Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.

The Boreal Ecosystem Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) was a large, multiyear internationally supported study designed to improve our understanding of the boreal forest biome and its interactions with the atmosphere, biosphere, and the carbon cycle in the face of global climate change. In the initial phase of this study (early 1990s), remote sensing played a key role by providing products needed for planning and modeling. During and after the main BOREAS field campaigns (1994 and 1996), innovative remote sensing approaches and analyses expanded our understanding of the boreal forest in four key areas: (1) definition of vegetation structure, (2) land-cover classification, (3) assessment of the carbon balance, and (4) links between surface properties, weather, and climate. In addition to six BOREAS special issues and over 500 journal papers, a principal legacy of BOREAS is its well-documented and publicly available database, which provides a lasting scientific resource and opportunity to further advance our understanding of this critical northern biome. | Funding sources for BOREAS included NASA, the US National Science Foundation, the US Geological Survey, the US Forest Service, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing, Natural Resources Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, National Research Council of Canada, Parks Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science (now CRESTech), Canadian Space Agency, and the Royal Society of Canada. | Peer reviewed

Female faculty in biological and agricultural engineering (BAE) were surveyed in 1998 to examine their professional experiences, motivations, and insights. Approximately 7% of all BAE faculty were women in 1998, and the total number of women in the population was 57. Results, based on a 61% response rate, showed that 60% of the population was at the assistant professor rank. Respondents reported that BAE departments provided a supportive environment and believed that the attraction of women to BAE was due to its emphasis on biological systems, as well as biological engineering's relative newness and lack of long-standing stereotypes of male dominance. Full results of the original survey were published in the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering in 2000. We re-surveyed the population of women in BAE in 2006 because we believe that longitudinal data on this population will provide interesting insights into this group and its experiences in the profession, and may suggest ways to increase female representation among engineering faculty. The population is now comprised of 89 women and represents approximately 11% of BAE faculty. Approximately 85% of all women in the original 1998 survey population are included in the current population. Reasons given by those exiting the population include staying in academia but moving to non-BAE departments such as chemical engineering or bioengineering, being promoted to academic leadership positions without retaining primary BAE status, or pursuing other non-academic professional opportunities. Forty-nine percent of the population are now assistant professors, and the number of BAE full professors increased from 10% in 1998 to 19% in 2006. A significant number of women BAE faculty have engineers and/or faculty members within their immediate families; two respondents are second-generation women engineers. The reported self-confidence level of women faculty is 65%, the same as the 1998 survey. Ninety-five percent of respondents act as mentors to others (up from 72% in 1998). Eighty-four percent of respondents do not feel that they have experienced space inequities, and 73% do not believe they have experienced salary inequities. Lack of support for dual-career couples and other family issues were mentioned by 48% of respondents as issues that could be addressed to improve the climate for women faculty in BAE; these issues were mentioned more often in 2006 than in 1998.

This work was supported by the Research Project “Characterization of the aerodynamic noise generation by rotor-stator interaction in axial flow fans”, ref. DPI-2006-15270, MEC.

[Departement_IRSTEA]Eaux [TR1_IRSTEA]RIVAGE | International audience | Based on discrete element simulations and micro-mechanical calculations, this paper presents studies on the shear strength properties of unsaturated granular materials with capillary effects. Capillary forces are described on the local scale, depending on the water content, and are superimposed on the standard dry particle interaction that is currently described through an elastic-plastic relation. Simulations of triaxial compression tests at several water-content levels in the pendular regime are used to investigate the macroscopic consequences of this local description. The two methods are in rather good agreement, both reproducing the dependency of shear strength on water content, as classically observed in laboratory experiments. For the water-content levels considered, a nonlinear evolution of the cohesion with the water content is obtained, resulting in shear-strength saturation with increasing water content. Moreover, the computations allow a capillary stress tensor to be exhibited from capillary forces, directly related to the cohesion of the material. Finally, emphasising this capillary stress contribution, the generalised effective stress concept is reviewed, with a conclusion on the limitations of the classical macroscopic description of water effects in unsaturated granular materials.

In this study, we explore mechanical constraints on the swimming performance of zebrafish larvae (Danio rerio) that might explain why larvae switch from sustained swimming to the more efficient burst & coast as they grow. Two hypotheses have been proposed to explain why young fish larvae perform poorly at burst & coast. First, their initial momentum might be low; second, their drag coefficient might be high. To test the two hypotheses, this study makes a quantitative comparison between experimental observations of swimming fish larvae and a CFD model of a self-propelled fish. The study focuses on larvae of the crucial age and size range in which zebrafish switch swimming style. Our studies show that hatchlings perform poorly not only because they cannot accelerate to a high initial coasting speed and hence do not gain enough initial momentum. But they also suffer higher decelerations while coasting due to a high drag coefficient. Overall, the fivefold difference in coasting distance between hatchlings and older larvae corresponds closely to a threefold difference in the time constant of the speed decay and a threefold difference in initial momentum. Our data also show that swimming speed does not decay exponentially, as predicted by the drag-speed relationship in the viscous flow regime, but hyperbolically, due to flow phenomena developing in the boundary layer during the coast.