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Inventaire des archives de la Société Générale de Belgique : Quatrième versement (1777-2003)
No full textFondée en 1822, plus ancienne que la Belgique, la Société Générale de Belgique fut le moteur de l’industrialisation du pays et l’un des plus puissants holdings d’Europe. De la sidérurgie au Congo, du rail à l’énergie, elle incarne deux siècles d’ambition, d’expansion et de controverses. Cet inventaire dévoile le quatrième versement d’archives de cette institution mythique : plus de quatre cents mètres de documents retraçant une aventure économique, politique et humaine hors du commun. Une plongée fascinante au cœur du pouvoir industriel belge, entre vision, influence mondiale et mémoire vivante d’un empire financier disparu.The records described in this inventory are held at the National Archives 2 - Joseph Cuvelier repository (inventory code 545 - I 78).This inventory is the fixed published version dated 06-02-2025. For the dynamic inventory under active revision, including recent updates and additions, please consult our online search platform AGATHA. In AGATHA, you can also request the archival items you wish to consult in the reading room
Uncovering Interwar Comics: The Challenge of Labeling Graphics in Belgian Weekly Magazines
No full textComics in Belgian weekly magazines remain understudied due to their fragmentary presence and the challenges of retrieval within large periodical collections. While comics are crucial artifacts of visual culture, their marginal status in general-interest magazines and their multimodal nature hinder both their discoverability and scholarly analysis. This article addresses the need for systematic identification of comics in mass-digitized archives by developing a semi-automatic detection workflow grounded
in computer vision and object detection techniques. Drawing on a representative corpus of six general-interest illustrated magazines published in Belgium between 1934 and 1940, the study applies a distant viewing approach using YOLO models to detect and label comics alongside related visual categories such as cartoons, photographs, and advertisements. The methodology combines expert-driven annotation, collaborative labeling with weighted majority voting, and model evaluation to fine-tune visual classification. Our results highlight the conceptual and technical complexities of defining comics computationally, the importance of contextual metadata, and the benefits of hierarchical and iterative model training. The proposed workflow not only enhances access to hidden visual materials in historical magazines but also contributes to broader discussions on the remediation of cultural heritage collections and the role of computational methods in comics studies
Multi-Spacecraft Studies on Cluster: Perspectives from the Whisper Experiment
No full textThe Whisper instrument provides two functions : (i) the measurement of the total density of the plasma, via an active radio frequency technique, and (ii) the continuous survey of the natural plasma emissions in the 2 kHz to 80 kHz frequency band. Each of those will serve the three dimensional exploration of the magnetosphere carried on by the Cluster mission. The absolute density values recorded from the four spacecraft will form a reference for other techniques. They will be converted into gradient vector quantities to be used for further studies. The frequency/ time spectrograms of the natural emissions can be sorted as electromagnetic emissions when present on all four spacecraft, or electrostatic ones, when seen only from a given satellite. Compared direction findings from each spacecraft can be used for remote studies about the sources of electromagnetic emissions
Development of the United States GReenhouse Gas and Air Pollutants Emissions System (GRA2PES)
No full textIn the U.S., emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants are often developed independently. Here, we describe the GReenhouse gas And Air Pollutants Emissions System (GRA2PES), which provides gridded emissions of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide (ffCO2) and 93 air quality (AQ) species for 17 combustion and non-combustion sectors at 4 km × 4 km spatial resolution across the contiguous US. We find that the AQ emissions most spatially correlated with ffCO2 are nitrogen oxides (NOx, ρ = 0.67), followed by sulfur dioxide (SO2, ρ = 0.51), carbon monoxide (CO, ρ = 0.44), and fine particulate matter (PM2.5, ρ = 0.38). We evaluate GRA2PES ffCO2 emissions with an ensemble of publicly available regional and global inventories at national (Normalized Mean Bias (NMB) = +1.4\%), state (NMB = +1.5\%, R2 = 0.98), and urban (NMB = +11.5\%, R2 = 0.97) scales. Nationally, the differences of publicly available inventories from the ensemble average range from −10.0\% to +5.7\%, and consistency diverges at state and urban scales. We simulate GRA2PES ffCO2 in a particle dispersion model and compare to measurements of radiocarbon (14C)-derived ffCO2 collected in Los Angeles (August 2021), with results suggesting that GRA2PES ffCO2 may be low by 19\% for this city, but well within model-observation differences for other publicly available inventories (−43\% to +94\%). GRA2PES AQ/ffCO2 ratios converted to concentration space generally agree with field observations (NMB = +4\%, log R2 = 0.90). Lastly, we present a method by which to utilize GRA2PES to derive AQ emission fluxes from ffCO2 emissions
Synergistic use of satellite and in-situ data for policy-relevant air quality information: A case study on Belgium
Get PDFAs in most European countries, the impact of Air Quality policy in Belgium is monitored with an accurate but relatively sparse network of instruments measuring in situ the near-surface concentration of various pollutants. Assessment at unmeasured locations is based on interpolation techniques and/or numerical models. We demonstrate how today’s dedicated satellite data sets for AQ, and in particular Sentinel-5 Precursor TROPOMI NO2 , can be used in conjunction with the near-surface data to assess AQ over the entire Belgian domain in an observational approach virtually independent from assumptions on (changing) emissions. Specifically, after temporal aggregation and spatial oversampling (1x1km2), these satellite data reveal policy-relevant spatial and temporal features, and a high correlation (r - 0.9) with the near-surface measurements where these are available, in particular when adjusting the latter for local representativeness with land-cover data. This tight relation allows for a pragmatic conversion of tropospheric columns to near-surface concentrations over the entire Belgian domain using Regression Kriging, yielding uncertainties (- 12%) well below the amplitude of the larger spatio-temporal features over Belgium. This synergistic product, named LEGO-4-AQ, is evaluated against the Belgian assessment model RIO, revealing good agreement (r -m 0.85) but also interesting local deviations. Both satellite tropospheric vertical column densities and synergistic near-surface concentrations are found to have decreased by 3-10%/year over the period 2019-2024, with midday values at a 4x4km resolution now mostly below the WHO annual (all-day) exposure guideline of 10 ug/m. The three urban low-emission zones already in place in Belgium do not (yet) show stronger reductions than those observed in other (sub-)urban parts of the country
Diving into Diversity: The Complex Evolutionary History and Species Richness of the 'sawfin barbs' from Lake Edward and Adjacent Systems
No full textThe TREE4FLUX project: Monitoring woody productivity and respiration to track Congo Basin Forest Carbon Dynamics
Get PDFTropical forests play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Yet, climate change threatens their ability to take up and store carbon. Our understanding of the spatial and temporal carbon distribution in trees and forests remains limited regarding these perturbations, especially in the context of tropical forests of Central Africa. The TREE4FLUX project aims to address these gaps by conducting research at different scales around the CongoFlux tower in the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve (DRC) in the heart of the Congo Basin forests. At the forest ecosystem scale, carbon uptake can be monitored by measurements of CO2 exchanges between the atmosphere and the vegetation using the Eddy Covariance approach. Carbon assessments are also possible through tree-growth measurements within a network of permanent inventory plots. However, refining the carbon cycle at the tree scale requires a detailed study of the numerous metabolic processes that underlie tree growth, e.g. photosynthesis, wood formation, or respiration. Because they are largely controlled by various climatic drivers, it remains challenging to establish climate-growth relationships. The chronology of carbon uptake and attribution to the different mechanisms remain unclear and prevent the grasp of their periodic intra-annual variations. To untangle that problem, monitoring cambial phenology helps characterize the distribution, allocation, and short- and long-term carbon storage in woody material. While tree growth uptakes carbon, respiration and decomposition release carbon back into the atmosphere at various levels. Heterotrophic and autotrophic respirations have therefore a decisive role in the carbon cycle at the forest scale, but face significant misunderstandings in this regard. To enhance our understanding of the carbon dynamic from individual tree to forest scale, we urgently need respiration monitoring in both living and decayed trees. This requires unravelling the metabolic processes driving both autotrophic and heterotrophic respiration, i.e. the tree growth and decayed process, respectively. Characterization of carbon fluxes according to an integrative approach is required to refine forest dynamics models and improve our comprehension of global carbon dynamics
Citizens can help to map putative transmission sites for snail-borne diseases
No full textIntroduction Schistosomiasis and fasciolosis are snail-borne diseases of great medical and veterinary health importance. The World Health Organization recommends complementing drug treatment with snail control and community involvement for disease elimination, but there is a general lack of snail experts and hence snail distribution data. Therefore, we adopted a citizen science approach and involved citizens in the monitoring of medically and veterinary important snail taxa. Materials and methods Snail data was collected weekly by 25 trained citizen scientists (CSs) at 76 sites around southern Lake Albert (Uganda) for 20 months. At each site, snails were searched for 30 minutes, sorted, target snail hosts identified to genus level, counted and data submitted through a smartphone application. The quality of this data was assessed by comparing it to monthly data collected by an 'expert' malacologist using the same sampling protocol. Generalised binomial logistic and linear mixed-effects models were used to analyse the variables for agreement between the CSs and expert. Findings The binary agreement in presence/absence of Biomphalaria, Bulinus and Radix snails reported by the expert and CSs ranged between 70% and 86% (900 reports) with an average of 17% false negatives (sites wrongly defined as snail-free). The agreement for Biomphalaria and Radix increased with snail abundance, and false negatives decreased when the number of snails collected by citizens was aggregated per month. Site type significantly predicted binary agreement, which was lowest at lake sites (55%) and highest at spring sites (99%) with variations across genera. Similar temporal trends in snail abundance were recorded despite the expert reporting higher abundance. However, the relative abundance was consistent across site types. The match between the sites with highest Biomphalaria spp. abundance identified by CSs and expert was consistently high (similar to 84.1%) and increased over time. Conclusions and recommendations Our results demonstrate the potential of citizen science to map putative schistosomiasis transmission sites. We therefore argue that this inclusive, powerful and cost-effective approach can be more sustainable than top-down monitoring and intervention campaigns
