312 research outputs found
International diversification, performance and offshoring : the case of the computer services industry
No full textThis article deals with the internationalization process in the computer services industry. It discusses two aspects of internationalization: the relationship between international diversification and firm performances and the new process of offshoring part of the business to low-cost countries. Analysis is based on a proprietary database covering data for the industry's 45 largest companies for the past nine years (1998-2006). It shows that product internationalization has not generated substantial profits for firms that have given priority to international growth. Non sequitur, though precise data is lacking, it seems that it has become common practice over the last five years to outsource parts of the business to subsidiaries in low-cost countries. We do not find any relation between offshoring and profitability or internationalization. The internationalization of process and product seems to be disconnected.computer industry ; services ; internationalization
Meteorological and snow accumulation gradients across Dome C, East Antarctic plateau
No full textIn situ observations show that snow accumulation is ∼10% larger 25 km north than south of the summit of Dome C on the east antarctic plateau. The mean wind direction is southerly. Although a slight slope-related diverging katabatic flow component is detectable, the area is an essentially flat (∼10 m elevation change or less) homogeneous snow surface. The European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasts meteorological analyses data reproduce a significant accumulation gradient and suggest that 90% of the the mean accumulation results from the 25% largest precipitation events. During these events, air masses originate from coastal areas in the north rather than from inland in the south. Radiative cooling condensation occurs on the way across the dome and as the moisture reservoir is depleted less snow is dumped 25 km south than north, with little direct impact from the local (50-km scale) topography. Air masses are warmer on average, and warmer north than south, when originating from the coast. This marginally affects the mean temperature gradients. The moisture gradients are more affected because moisture is nonlinearly related to temperature: the mean atmospheric moisture is larger north than south. Significant meteorological and hydrological gradients over such relatively small distances (50 km) over locally flat region may be an issue when interpreting ice cores: although cores are drilled at the top of domes and ridges where the slopes and elevation gradients are minimal, they sample small surfaces in areas affected by significant meteorological and hydrological spatial gradients
Author Correction : Parallels between experimental and natural evolution of legume symbionts (vol 9, 2264, 2018)
No full textInternational audienceCorrection to: Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04778-5, published online 11 June 2018Clémence Genthon and Céline Lopez-Roques, who performed sequencing, were inadvertently omitted from the author list. This has now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article
10 years of temperature and wind observation on a 45 m tower at Dome C, East Antarctic plateau
No full textInternational audienceLong-term, continuous in situ observations of the near-surface atmospheric boundary layer are critical for many weather and climate applications. Although there is a proliferation of surface stations globally, especially in and around populous areas, there are notably fewer tall meteorological towers with multiple instrumented levels. This is particularly true in remote and extreme environments such as the East Antarctic plateau. In the article, we present and analyze 10 years of data from six levels of meteorological instrumentation mounted on a 42 m tower located at Dome C, East Antarctica, near the Concordia research station, producing a unique climatology of the near-surface atmospheric environment (Genthon et al., 2021a, b). Monthly temperature and wind data demonstrate the large seasonal differences in the near-surface boundary layer dynamics, depending on the presence or absence of solar surface forcing. Strong vertical temperature gradients (inversions) frequently develop in calm, winter conditions, while vertical convective mixing occurs in the summer, leading to near-uniform temperatures along the tower. Seasonal variation in wind speed is much less notable at this location than the temperature variation as the winds are less influenced by the solar cycle; there are no katabatic winds as Dome C is quite flat. Harmonic analysis confirms that most of the energy in the power spectrum is at diurnal, annual and semi-annual timescales. Analysis of observational uncertainty and comparison to reanalysis data from the latest generation of ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) reanalyses (ERA5) indicate that wind speed is particularly difficult to measure at this location. Data are distributed on the PANGAEA data repository at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932512 (Genthon et al., 2021a) and https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.932513 (Genthon et al., 2021b)
Radiation data (2014-2019) at site D17 (Adelie Land, East Antarctica)
No full textThis dataset reports raw half-hourly radiative fluxes acquired at site D17 on the marginal slopes of Adelie Land (East Antarctica) and complements another dataset on near-surface meteorological variables including drifting-snow mass fluxes at the same location. The available data have been measured almost continuously since mid February 2014 with a Kipp and Zonen CNR4 net radiometer installed 2 m above ground and include downward/upward shortwave/longwave radiation.
Latitude: 66.7°S ; Longitude 139.9°E
Date/Time (UTC): Start:2014-02-18 06:00 ; End: 2019-12-07 23:30
Elevation 450 m
The data files contain the following variables and units:
YYYY: year; MM: month; DD: day; hh: hour; mm: minute; SWU: upward shortwave radiation (W m-2); SWD: downward shortwave radiation (W m-2); LWU: upward longwave radiation (W m-2); LWD: downward longwave radiation (W m-2);The following acknowledging sentence should appear in publications making use of this dataset: "This work would not have been possible without the financial and logistical support of the French Polar Institute IPEV (programme CALVA-1013 and GLACIOCLIM-SAMBA-411)". You are invited to contact the author for more information about the data
Has the European ICT sector a chance to be competitive ?
No full textThe ICT sector is featured by technical progress, convergence and systems integration. This leads to risks of monopolization regimes at the core with higher competition regimes at the periphery. Moreover, some specific component of the system may be essential for its evolution. In particular, networking to some extent creates the system, while software (notably operating systems) is the “glue” which holds it together. In this context, the European ICT industry is potentially smashed between the cost advantages of Asian countries such as China, and the inventiveness and dynamism of the US industry. The way out of this difficult situation is to create in Europe the conditions of restoring knowledge accumulation. By concentrating on an ambitious project of open source software production in embarked and domestic systems, Europe could reach several objectives: to make freely accessible an essential facility of networks, to stimulate competition, to help reaching the Lisbon objectives and to restore the European competitiveness in ICT.information and communications technologies ; industrial policy ; competition regimes ; knowledge based society ; open source
An up-to-date quality-controlled surface mass balance data set for the 90°-180°E Antarctica sector and 1950-2005 period
No full textOn the basis of thousands of surface mass balance (SMB) field measurements over the entire Antarctic ice sheet it is currently estimated that more than 2 Gt of ice accumulate each year at the surface of Antarctica. However, these estimates suffer from large uncertainties. Various problems affect Antarctic SMB measurements, in particular, limited or unwarranted spatial and temporal representativeness, measurement inaccuracy, and lack of quality control. We define quality criteria on the basis of (1) an up-to-date review and quality rating of the various SMB measurement methods and (2) essential information (location, dates of measurements, time period covered by the SMB values, and primary data sources) related to each SMB data. We apply these criteria to available SMB values from Queen Mary to Victoria lands (90°-180°E Antarctic sector) from the early 1950s to present. This results in a new set of observed SMB values for the 1950-2005 time period with strong reduction in density and coverage but also expectedly reduced inaccuracies and uncertainties compared to other compilations. The quality-controlled SMB data set also contains new results from recent field campaigns (International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE), Russian Antarctic Expedition (RAE), and Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) projects) which comply with the defined quality criteria. A comparative evaluation of climate model results against the quality-controlled updated SMB data set and other widely used ones illustrates that such Antarctic SMB studies are significantly affected by the quality of field SMB values used as reference. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union
Resources for “De novo transcriptome assembly for Tracheliastes polycolpus, an invasive ectoparasite of freshwater fish in western Europe”
No full textData associated to this project
are no longer hosted on Figshare. Versions available here are not up-to-date
versions. Data
are now available on GenBank under the Bioproject PRJNA476682 and associated to the following publication: Mathieu-Bégné, E., Loot,
G., Blanchet, S., Toulza, E., Genthon, C. & Rey, O. (2019). De novo transcriptome assembly for Tracheliastes
polycolpus, an invasive ectoparasite of freshwater fish in western Europe. Marine
Genomics.
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