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EMMC Organisation
Home | EMMC | Organisation
President & Board of Directors (BoD)
Nadja Adamovic
President, BoD
Dr. Nadja Adamovic has experience in material modelling, characterisation and process development in particular for photovoltaic applications and physical microsensors. Since 1994, she is employed at the TU Wien as senior scientist. Nadja was a coordinator/manager and Advisory Board member in several research projects.
Since 2014, Nadja was involved in the EMMC as Chair and member of the Organisational Management Board. Within EMMC-CSA she was project Coordinator and leader of Dissemination and Stakeholder Integration activities. She is one of the founders of EMMC ASBL and holds the role of EMMC ASBL President. She is also a member of the Board of Directors.
Kersti Hermansson
Kersti Hermansson is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Uppsala University. Her group conducts research on multi-scale modelling workflows to enable (adequately) accurate simulations for real-world chemical applications. The group has much experience with redox chemistry of nano-structured metal oxides, electrochemistry and fundamentals of water/solid interfaces, molecular diffusion and interactions in solids, and computational vibrational spectroscopies.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (KVA) and author of more than 240 peer-reviewed papers. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the EMMC, and was a WP leader within the EC funded EMMC-CSA.
Denka Hristova-Bogaerds
DPI- Dutch Polymer Institute
Denka Hristova-Bogaerds is a Program Area Coordinator at the Dutch Polymer Institute, where she is involved in the initiation and management of industry-driven research programs in the field of polymeric materials. She holds a PhD in Polymer Physics and has more than 20 years' experience in research and management activities.
Denka has been involved in EMMC from its beginnings. In particular, she has taken a leading role in the EMMC efforts on Translation and establishing the role of Translator.
Since 2020 she serves on the Board of Directors of EMMC ASBL.
Jesper Friis
Dr. Jesper Friis is a senior scientist at SINTEF in the group of Materials Physics with an associate position at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). An important part of his research has been on modelling of metallic alloys and solar cell silicon from the electronic to microstructure scale. The need for robust coupling of software models at different scales made him a central participant in the work conducted by EMMC on interoperability and the development of the European Materials & Modelling Ontology.
He is experienced in EU projects, both as coordinator and participant and has been an active contributor to EMMC since 2014. He serves now on the Board of Directors of EMMC ASBL.
Adham Hashibon
Fraunhofer IWM
Adham Hashibon received his PhD in 2002 in the field of Computational Physics and Materials Science.
He is the leader of the Materials Informatics Team at Fraunhofer IWM that develops tools for interoperability, ontology, digitalisation and multiscale and multi-model coupling and linking workflows including the SimPhoNy open simulation platform, data space management systems and business decision support systems.
He serves as a coordinator and partner in a number of EU funded projects. He is an active member of the management board of the EMMC since 2014 and is one of the founders of EMMC ASBL and serves on the Board of Directors.
Erich Wimmer
BoD, Co-Chair
Materials Design S.A.R.L.
Erich Wimmer is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Materials Design, a company developing software and providing services for materials research. His experience includes the development of advanced computational methods, their integration in software platforms and their industrial deployment.
Dr. Wimmer is author and co-author of over 130 scientific publications and has given numerous lectures worldwide. Within the EC funded EMMC-CSA, he has been a work package leader and he serves on the Board of Directors of the EMMC ASBL as Co-Chair.
Organisational Assembly - Chairs
Natalia Konchakova
Dr. Natalia Konchakova is a senior researcher at Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht, Germany. She works in the fields of materials modelling, simulation and characterization of lightweight metals, computation analysis of surface degradation due to corrosion and intensive mechanical loading, and investigation of Magnesium based materials for bio- and structural industrial applications.
In the frame of the EMMC activity, Natalia put her expertise in the development of European Materials Modelling Translation concept to increase the impact and industrial exploitation of materials modelling.
Franz Pirker
AC2T research GmbH
DI Franz Pirker, MSc is business development manager at AC2T research GmbH, Austria. He is responsible for, development of new business areas, the commercialization of IPRs and software and key accounting. Additionally, he coordinates the H2020 project
i-TRIBOMAT (www.i-tribomat.eu), an Open Innovation Test Bed for tribological materials characterization and upscaling. This project aims to set up new digital services and business models combining tribological characterization and materials up-scaling via modelling and simulation.
Within EMMC Franz brings in his expertise in development and commercialization of software models and products as well as setting up digital business models.
Ilian Todorov
UKRI - STFC
Prof. Ilian Todorov leads the Computational Chemistry group at STFC Daresbury Laboratory as Principal Scientific Officer. With over 20 year's experience in the field of HPC software engineering for materials modelling, he has led the UK flagship MD package, DL_POLY, and researched prospective materials for used nuclear fuel encapsulation with colleagues at Bristol, Sheffield and Queen Mary, London. He is involved in a number of academic communities in the UK (CCP5, MCC, UKCOMES and RSE Association) and is partner in the EMMC related project VIMMP (H2020).
Ilian will support EMMC in bringing in his expertise and experience with best practices in research software engineering, academic and industry outreach, training and translation.
Gerhard Goldbeck
Goldbeck Consulting Ltd.
Dr Gerhard Goldbeck has experience in a range of materials modelling topics including software development, management and marketing. In 2011 he formed Goldbeck Consulting Ltd, offering services focused on industrial impact.
Gerhard has been involved with the EMMC since its beginning in 2014, as a member of the Organisational Management Board and during the EMMC-CSA also as leader of the Work Package on Interoperability. He is one of the founders of EMMC ASBL and holds the role of Executive Secretary.
Ernst-Dieter Janotka
Admin-Events-Communication
Ernst-Dieter Janotka, EU funding expert and senior EU project manager, gained experience in administrative and financial coordination within several European funded projects since 2002.
Since 2014 he was in charge of the administrative and financial coordination, communication and dissemination in the FP7-ITN "Simdalee2" and the H2020 project "EMMC-CSA - The European Materials Modelling Council" at TU Wien.
Within EMMC ASBL he is assistant to the Executive Secretary, being responsible for Administration, Events & Communication.


text:
The test section has a rectangular cross-section 8 feet high, 12 feet wide, and is 10 feet long with 1.5 feet high (45º) fillets in all four corners. The actual cross-sectional area is 91.5 square feet due to the fillets. See Figure 7 for a cutaway view.
The test section is on the second floor of the building, level with both the observation deck and the model deck. Models are installed by opening the test section ceiling. An overhead ½-ton hoist allows the models to be lifted from the ground floor and lowered into the test section through the test section ceiling. The motorized ceiling moves on tracks to create a 108" x 117" entrance to the test section. The test section can be viewed from the top through a 28½" x 40" window. Additional ceiling windows are available to view more of the model.
The test section floor is fabricated of removable 7/16" thick aluminum plates. The fore and aft center plates can be interchanged with viewing windows to allow for observing the underside of the model.
Schematic of the Test Section floor including dimensions
The port side of the test section is the observation deck. It provides a view of the model through a 44" x 87¼" window. The model deck also provides a view of the test section through two 28½" x 45" windows located in the two access doors. Opening both doors provides a 95" x 60" entrance to the test section.
The test section is vented to the atmosphere by two vents (5 feet long, 2 inches wide) located on the walls at the trailing edge of the test section. The vents keep the test section static pressure equal to approximately atmospheric pressure.
The upper-corner fillets have four 100-watt halogen lights on each side of the test section that can be turned on/off for obtaining the proper lighting conditions.
Test Section Cut Away View
Test Section Conditions
A detailed upflow and dynamic pressure calibration of the test section was conducted using a five-hole probe and a NACA 0015 wing to determine the flow qualities. The upflow angle is -0.012° for normal tests. Testing with calibration and commercial models have shown a negligible crossflow. A detailed survey of the test section using a hot-wire anemometer shows a nominal turbulence intensity of 0.72%. The average year-round temperature is 52.0°F with an average pressure of 2090.2 psf (readings taken from SeaTac International Airport).
Pressure Measurements
Traverse Rig
Powered Testing
Data Acquisition System

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Many people view cooking as a hassle. In this article there are suggestions and tips that will help make cooking an enjoyable part of your day.
Do you enjoy cooking with the flavors of fresh basil? Place fresh basil into a glass. Next, ensure the stems are covered with water. Put the basil on your counter and it will remain fresh for up to seven days! If you change the water occasionally, the basil will even grow roots in the water. If you keep the basil trimmed regularly, this will promote growth and allow a decent supply of basil on an ongoing basis.
The information provided in the article should have helped you to find excitement when it comes to cooking. Using the tips here will show you how to do something that you would otherwise find boring.


text:
Q: Jhipster public api encounter Unauthorized status 401 My Project needs to set up a callback API to receive a biometric punchlog. I exposed a public API [.antMatchers("/api/daily-time-records").permitAll()] but I encounter error when I test it in postman
"type": "https://www.jhipster.tech/problem/problem-with-message",
"title": "Unauthorized",
"status": 401,
"detail": "Full authentication is required to access this resource",
"path": "/api/daily-time-records%0A",
"message": "error.http.401"
Resource
 @PostMapping("/daily-time-records")
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        .headers(HeaderUtil.createEntityCreationAlert(applicationName, true, ENTITY_NAME, result.getId().toString()))
        .body(result);
}

Security Configuration
 @Override
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        .authorizeRequests()
        .antMatchers("/api/daily-time-records").permitAll()
        .antMatchers("/api/authenticate").permitAll()
        .antMatchers("/api/register").permitAll()
        .antMatchers("/api/activate").permitAll()
        .antMatchers("/api/account/reset-password/init").permitAll()
        .antMatchers("/api/account/reset-password/finish").permitAll()
        .antMatchers("/api/admin/**").hasAuthority(AuthoritiesConstants.ADMIN)
        .antMatchers("/api/**").authenticated()
        .antMatchers("/management/health").permitAll()
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        .antMatchers("/management/info").permitAll()
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


If you are unsure how to classify yourself, try taking this test.
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WARNING: This culinary article may make some readers squeamish.
To be fair, my eating of strange things predated my French Years. I did eat squirrel when I was a child. On several occasions. My father was a hunter, and we ate what he shot: rabbit, pheasant, duck, deer... Don't ask me why he shot squirrels, but yes, they do have a faint nutty taste.
But squirrels aside, it may all have started in Paris on a tour of Europe with my parents when I was 12. My father devised a three-week swing through six countries and if a tire had blown at any time, our entire schedule would have been wrecked, that's how tight he had things planned.
But we did have a few days in Paris. Probably two. We stayed in a tiny pension (kind of a boarding house) off the Champs-Elysées. I don't remember much, but I remember the Arc de Triomphe and that we had to get there by walking across the star-shaped intersection through whirring cars - no stoplights then and definitely no underpass. But an elderly woman was doing it, so we just walked behind her... and prayed. I remember one day eating at one of the restaurants on the Champs and my father ordered escargots - snails - so I did, too. My mother wrinkled her nose and concentrated on her salad. The escargots were a bit rubbery, but had no taste of their own, really. Just the taste of lovely butter and parsley and garlic, which I have learned is the way God intended them to be eaten.
In the period A.E. (After Europe), there were other things I tried. There were frog's legs - cuisses de grenouille - which my father received on a fairly regular basis, for medical services rendered (a throwback to the pay-with-a-chicken of yesteryear). They taste surprisingly like snails, consistency aside, because of the butter-garlic-parsley preparation that is the same. And there was tortoise soup, ubiquitous in the 60's but since banned, I think, because tortoises are on the endangered species list. And of course ris de veau, which I never would have eaten if I'd known that it was the thymus gland of some poor calf. It loses in the translation somehow.
And that reminds me of boudin. Which would be blutwurst if you were German.
I had my first close encounter with boudin while on a trip to Brittany with my then-beau Yannick, who was from there. He took me to Beg Léguer, a tiny seacoast town near Lannion where he'd spent his summers as a boy. It was Easter and it wasn't exactly warm. The campgrounds were closed but there was a light in the snack bar and the lady remembered Yannick, his blue eyes and his lopsided smile. So she agreed to cook us up something. We were the only people there.
"What do you want to eat?" she asked us... and he turned to me.
"Well... something regional?" I questioned.
She immediately said "Ca, c'est le boudin. Aux deux pommes." Translation: That would be boudin with two types of apples (meaning regular apples, sliced and caramelized, and mashed "apples of the earth", aka potatoes).
"Do you want to know what that is?" Yannick asked me, with a note of apprehension in his voice.
"Not if you have to ask. Tell me afterward."
Afterward he told me what it was: blood sausage. My stomach went queasy for a few minutes, but I had to admit it had been tasty, fried all crisp with the melt-in-your-mouth apples and butter-rich mashed potatoes.
Since then, I've branched out to boudin créole because my children's father comes from the French West Indies. Same principle as French boudin, except tied into finger-food size sausages and jazzed up with hot chili peppers. You can get them in New Orleans and elsewhere in Louisiana, which was, after all, part of France until 1803 and remained a port that traded with the entire West Indies.
In the realm of seafood, I'm pretty unbeatable, having been brought up at "the Shore" as people say in New Jersey - the pretty part, far from New York City. So sea urchins (oursins), strange-looking as they may be, are a salty treat. A kind of saltwater caviar, as it were.
I have eaten beef tongue (langue de boeuf), which I've only had cut up in a salad. It's not half bad, but I don't think I'd go as far as the British, who eat it sliced in sandwiches... with a lot of mustard, I think. And I definitely don't want to see it lolling about in the butcher's window.
I guess you either have to get used to certain foods when you're young - before you truly understand what it is you're eating - or you have to be more intrepid (or more curious) than I am. Still, I feel I've come a long way, baby. And I'm fine with the distance covered.
As I was working on The Project (see Jan. 22), I ran across several books that I didn't remember I had. One was called "Les petits métiers des jardins publics" and another called "Des métiers et des hommes au village". They reminded me of yet another book, "Les métiers disparus" (references listed below).
The common thread in these books is jobs that have disappeared. There are plenty of them in the States, such as buggy whip maker. But in France I'm out of my native culture so maybe I notice these things more.
If you weren't too absorbed in a) your book, b) your lunch, or c) your boyfriend/girlfriend, you'd see her coming and nonchalantly get up and walk slowly and absent-mindedly in the opposite direction, maybe humming a tune, or saying loudly something like "Zut! J'ai perdu mon...." (Rats! I lost my fill-in-the-blank.), just so she wouldn't think you were trying to be slick and escape without paying. As if they didn't know. And then you'd find yourself a bench, which, unlike the chairs, was free. The chaisières were generally sour old bags with a nasty tone and a frown, which didn't improve your opinion of them much. These women were paid a minimum wage, plus about 10% on the tickets sold. Which is probably why only needy old women would put up with the job of chasing after young students and smelly vagabonds. Only lovers paid her with a smile.
The city of Paris bought the chairs in 1974, so they're free. These ladies have disappeared now. And we don't miss them a bit.
But I do miss the vitrier, the window repairman. I only had to use his services once, but was plenty glad to hear him yelling out "Viiiitrieeeeeeeeer" as he ambled up my street, a frame on his back, filled with panes of various sizes. Even oval ones for rarified ox-eye windows. He always seemed so vulnerable to me, such a perfect target for a nasty young boy with a slingshot and a good eye.
You'd call down to him from your window, tell him what floor and await him on your doorstep. Vitriers were usually dressed rough and had some sort of regional, non-Parisian accent, plus a mustache and maybe a few days growth of stubble. They talked little, aside from "Where's the window?" and set about their work as if they didn't enjoy being indoors. They cautiously removed the offending pane over a newspaper or rag that they kept for just that purpose, and then either handed the pieces to you for careful disposal or emptied them into a large box on their backpack-frame, probably to be sold for pennies to a scrap man who in turn sold them for a few more pennies to a glass company that melted them down to make new glass. Then the vitrier would measure your window and put in the right size, sometimes after trimming it down with his tools and snapping off the excess. He'd tap in those tiny nails to hold it in place, sculpt in the putty and then ask for his pittance. With a nod and a perfunctory tipping of his cap or beret, he'd be off and you'd soon hear him from your window taking up his song: Vitrier! Viiitrieeeeer!
I also miss the knife-sharpener, who walked a lot faster... almost always too fast for me to catch. Back in the day, he must have been slowed up by all the homemakers who rushed downstairs, knives in hand. By the time I reached Montmartre in 1971, such homemakers were few and far between, I guess. As soon as you heard him swinging his bell in the distance, you rushed to gather up your dull knives, scurried down the stairs without impaling yourself and ran through the street after him.
Again, I only managed this once. These aiguisseurs de couteaux didn't do stairs. Of course they would have had a hard time, what with that huge grindstone-on-a-wheel they pushed down the cobblestoned streets. It made a bzzzzzz-ing sound and children liked to stop and watch the sparks fly, especially on cold days. The aiguisseurs were usually swarthy-looking, but they never yelled anything that would indicate their nationality. Just that swinging of the loud bell and bumping of the grindstone-wheelbarrow.
One nationality you could recognize though was the gypsy who strode down the street accompanied by a young boy - or sometimes girl - rumbling a snare drum. He carried a stepladder over his shoulder, perched a capuchin monkey on his arm and led a llama (with two l's, please) or a goat on a leash. He would stop at a choice spot - which (lucky for me) was just below my window at the entrance to the park below the Sacré-Coeur - and the snare drum would sound a sharp, final rat-a-tat. He'd set up the stepladder, the young boy-or-girl would start a new drum roll, the llama (or goat) would dutifully climb up the three steps and then balance all four hooves on the top... or if it were feeling particularly inspired, lift one hoof and balance on only three. Whereupon the snare drum would break into a little dance rhythm, the monkey would doff his hat and the llama/goat would jump down with a sigh of relief. Then the child collected money from the crowd and the gypsy gave a morsel to both the llama/goat and the monkey and made a fuss over them, to keep them sweet.
My children loved their act and would clap their little hands from our fifth-floor window. We would take a franc or two and wrap it in newspaper and yell to the child until (s)he looked up. Then we'd throw it out the window to the pavement, where it would be scooped up and handed, with the rest of the booty, to the gypsy, who put it in the red velvet money bag hanging from his waist. After that, the gypsy folded the stepladder, the monkey jumped up on his arm... and they were off, presumably to the next corner. Sometimes you could hear the drum routine two or three times before they disappeared from earshot.
And from the streets of Paris, I guess, because I haven't seen or heard one in almost two decades.
Nowadays it's other métiers, other trades that are becoming rare. Stationery shops, for instance. There used to be a large one just across from the Abbesses Métro station in my neighborhood. It sold newspapers and magazines, both domestic and international, to us all, along with books, maps, paper, pencils and other office/school materials. Plus it had a Xerox machine that worked full-time... when it wasn't broken. The gentleman who owned it was in a wheelchair and often surly, but rarely to me, whom he would tease mercilessly, a little quirky smile on one side of his face. On one of my stays here I didn't see him and presumed he was off on vacation or ill or something. The next trip I still didn't see him and asked after him. Whereupon I learned that he had died many months earlier, of a heart attack. His daughter lived in Montreal and his son had moved down from the north of France to handle things, but missed his family. After a year, he gave it up and rented the store to a ponsy shop that now sells fancy, expensive teas. We all scramble to find our newspapers and other things elsewhere. Which is getting hard. I guess there's not enough money in it, plus too much competition from megastores such as Carrefour and Leclerc... and shopkeepers must get tired of inventorying pencils and erasers and boxes of paperclips year in and year out.
This and other such shops are probably the métiers disparus of tomorrow. And Paris will be just a touch sadder without them.
*Evidently chaisières also existed in churches at one time. French churches mostly have chairs, not pews.
While the Ile de la Cité is the historical heart of Paris, Les Halles was its ventre - its belly - for about 800 years. Now it's in the process of becoming the new heart of the French capital.
One reason for this is the mass transit system deep underground, at the geographic crosshairs of Paris. Five Métro lines and three RER regional express commuter lines cross at the Châtelet-Les-Halles station, north-to-south and east-to-west, pumping 750,000 people in and out every day.
Another reason is what is already housed in the Forum des Halles under the site of Baltard's twelve pavilions, both in the spaceship-styled multilevel section opened in 1979 and then in the second more airy and streamlined section opened in 1985. High on my list of favorites are the FNAC bookstore, where I'm able to find just about any book, CD or DVD I want, and also the 19-screen CinéCité multiplex, where you'll often find me in the ticket line for the 10 a.m. cheap(er) show. There are many other shops of all sizes selling all sorts of merchandise to as many as 150,000 customers each day, as well as several purveyors of fast food, plus a public mediathèque with CDs in all the musical genres. There's also an Olympic-size swimming pool across from the movie theater, with a huge picture window so people can gawk as they wait for their show to start. Miraculously, all that will remain open during the construction project, with work on the underground part taking place between 10 pm and 8 am, when businesses are closed.
Nonetheless more than 30 years have passed since the Trou des Halles was filled, reformatting this neighborhood. While the underground part has aged relatively well, the above-ground part has not fared as well. Designed by Jean Willerval, the dated white "umbrellas" sheltering the main entrance to the Netherworld below have never been what I'd call pretty and not many people will regret their passing. I hope the jugglers, who used to gather there, will come back though. It was always good fun to take a moment and watch them practice and initiate the young to the marvels of anti-gravity. The new, much larger Canopée (canopy) that will replace the umbrella feature will be made of glass and steel. Its North Wing will house public facilities: a cultural center, a library, an auditorium, and rehearsal rooms for the arts. The South Wing will become a music conservatory for the four central arrondissements of Paris.
The garden area will also see major changes. It was never very appealing and there were barriers that prevented people from strolling through it. You were rerouted a longer way and had to stick to graveled paths. Now it's to be turned into trees and vast lawns where, unlike many French parks, the grass will be open to picnics and bare feet.
The new project has been in development since 2002, shortly after Bertrand Delanoë, a Socialist, became mayor of Paris. Initially, the Parisians were asked to choose between four projects. One had colored glass columns to bring light into the underground "city"; another was similar in purpose but more bizarrely geometric in shape. Fun, but neither was a good fit for the neighborhood. None of the four won over the hearts of the Parisians, so the mayor ultimately picked one: the least intrusive. Work began in 2010 and by now all of Willerval's umbrellas are gone. That was the easy part. Now the hard part begins.
The neighborhood called Les Halles has gone through a lot of changes over its lifetime. And is undergoing yet another facelift as I write this. To understand what it represents to Paris, it might be helpful to go over a bit of history.
In the beginning Paris was a fishing village on what is now the Ile de la Cité. But as it grew, it spilled over onto both banks of the Seine. By the end of the first millennium, the southern bank, Rive Gauche, had focused on the Sorbonne, churches and St. Germain Abbey, all of which used Latin and that's why it became known as the Quartier Latin. The northern bank, Rive Droite, became the commercial district, in great part because of the sandy area - the Place de Grève (grève means beach) - where boats could land to load or unload goods. Just up the banks from the beach was the central marketplace, where City Hall stands today.
In 1190, King Philippe-Auguste built walls around the city to protect it from invaders such as the Vikings in the past and his Plantagenêt cousins, the kings of England, in the future. He also moved the central market to the location where it would stand for 800 years. Two covered pavilions were constructed to make the market more sanitary and from then on the district became a blend of similar pavilions and regular shops. The market came in very handy when the Louvre, part of the city's fortifications, became the royal residence under King Charles V in the 14th century. Now that the king was in the neighborhood, it was even more important for food to be handy, for his many feasts. Gradually more and more merchants arrived to supply both the court and the ordinary citizens, and Les Halles became Zola's Ventre de Paris, the Belly of Paris.
In 1969, market activities were exiled south to Rungis, near Orly Airport. The rats had to look elsewhere for their three square meals a day (see March 9 blog). For two years, Victor Baltard's twelve cast-iron-and-glass pavilions were used for cultural events. Then in 1971, the six eastern-most pavilions were razed to make way for the RER regional express train station and the Forum des Halles shopping center, to be built - eventually - in the huge hole called the Trou des Halles. When it was all over, only one pavilion survived: Number 8, the egg and poultry market, transferred to Nogent-sur-Marne, where it serves as a cultural center to this day. The Japanese city of Yokohama bought the upper half of one other structure. The rest was sold for scrap metal.
If you wander through Les Halles today, all you'll find left on-site is the domed Bourse de Commerce, built twenty years before the French Revolution to house offices for the police and the weights-and-measures officials on its ground floor, with huge wheat granaries on the upper level. There's also the Fontaine des Innocents, a fountain built in 1549 and shifted slightly twice as the neighborhood evolved. And of course the transcendent Saint Eustache Church, whose construction lasted from 1532 to 1640... and which has protected the raucous souls of Les Halles throughout all of its mutations - past, present and future.
This is the third in a series about Les Halles, which is undergoing yet another total re-make. The buildings that were eventually built on the site of Baltard's pavilions have now been torn down and a whole new concept will gradually become the new reality of this old neighborhood.
Even people who know little about photography usually recognize two names, both French: Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau.
Doisneau (1912-1994) is best known for his picture everyone calls "The Kiss", Le Baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville. But at one point his interest was in the sociological aspect of photography and he is known for helping establish photojournalism. This is very obvious in his photos of the neighborhood called Les Halles, "The Belly of Paris" as Zola called it. He took his first photo there in 1933 and came back time and again over a 40-year period.
When the decision was made to move Les Halles to Rungis, a suburb between Paris proper and Orly Airport, and to raze the Baltard pavilions, Doisneau sensed that this was the end of an era. He took it upon himself to record it all on film, going out once a week. "I had to get up at 3 in the morning, in Montrouge [a suburb bordering on Paris to the south], to get over there in time to catch the workers who started at dawn, the guys who unloaded the trucks, the guys who set up the stalls. Hard shooting conditions: poor lighting, reflexes slowed by fatigue, so many images to choose from! And it was intimidating. But I stuck it out. I knew that it was all going to disappear. I absolutely had to capture it for the future."
This exhibition shows all the aspects of the world Doisneau captured: the workers, the poor people who culled through the garbage left behind, the old buildings torn down, and even the new installations at Rungis. 208 photographs in all, mostly black-and-white. It's aimed at people old enough to remember what it represented, what it smelled and sounded like, as well as those who never knew the graceful Baltard pavilions or Le Trou Des Halles, the gigantic hole dug for the new shopping center and then left abandoned for what seemed like years. In the words of the curator, "the exhibit shows the life, the color and the character of the neighborhood from the Thirties to the Seventies".
 P.S. During this exhibit, photographs by Doisneau have also been put up in both Hôtel de Ville Métro stations (Lines 8 & 11).
P.P.S. Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë has made it a point of honor to open up City Hall to the people. All the exhibits hosted there are free, because it's the People's House. And the mayor has even stepped up the rhythm, with two exhibits running simultaneously right now in two different sections of the main floor: this one on Doisneau and another one on cartoonist Sempé (see blog, Feb. 4) running until the end of March. Both have long lines, but both are well worth the wait.
 There are two kinds of animals on Earth: wild ones and domesticated ones.
And then there's the rat.
It's not wild, really, but I don't think you could say it's been domesticated, even though rats rely on man as a source of food.
I'm not talking here about the asepticized white rats that run this way and that in lab mazes all around the globe. I'm talking about your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, it-bit-my-baby rat associated with unsavory slums or abandoned buildings. The unmistakable - even in Latin - rattus, whether black (rattus rattus) or brown (rattus norvegicus... although why Norway got the honor of having the brown rat named after it, I can't begin to tell you).
The first of the twelve signs in the Chinese zodiac is the rat, which they claim is "spirited, witty, alert, delicate, adaptable and full of vitality". And as rats are said to have originated in Asia, maybe the Chinese are right. But for most of us, rats just symbolize unsanitary conditions and diseases such as the bubonic plague (for the latter, see Albert Camus).
Personally, I've seen mice in one particular Paris Métro station, scurrying along the rails, scavenging for bits of food commuters let drop. But a rat I've never seen, even though I'm told they're around.
In fact, the only time there were no rats in Paris was in the freezing winter of 1870-71, when German troops surrounded Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, cutting it off from any source of food. On October 7th one of the government's ministers, Léon Gambetta, escaped in a hot-air balloon (taking off from right below what would become my home a century later) and flew over the German lines to set up a parallel government farther south. Behind him, he left two million starving Parisians who took to eating their horses, cats, dogs... even the exotic animals in the zoo. After five months, Paris capitulated, but then came the Commune (think Les Mis) and by the time that was over in May, there was reportedly not a single rat left in the entire city.
Leap forward in time to General Charles de Gaulle, President of France from 1959 to 1969. As President, he lived in the Palais de l'Elysée, the White House of France. From his upstairs windows, he could look out over the graveled courtyard to the posh buildings across the Rue St. Honoré. On one of those buildings just opposite his windows was a sign that read ATTILA, Fléau des Rats - a reference to Attila the Hun being the Scourge of God. It advertised the services of an exterminator who touted himself as the Scourge of Rats, but De Gaulle is said to have felt it was personally aimed at him by a left-wing citizen. Plus he deemed it below his dignity to have this visible from his residence. He tried everything he could, legally, to make Attila move or take down the sign, but long after De Gaulle stepped down both were still there.
 While still President, De Gaulle decided to do away with Les Halles, the neighborhood Emile Zola wrote of as "The Belly of Paris". It was an anachronistic bottleneck within the city, a seedy leftover of the 12th century, but a neighborhood bubbling with life as of the wee small hours of the morning. I went there with the American Embassy's Marine Guards to buy fruit and vegetables for their barracks, because none of them spoke French. It was a fascinating place, filled with smells pleasant and unpleasant, littered with green-grocer trimmings and rejects, noisy with the calls and songs of vendors who spoke a French I hadn't learned in school. Les Halles was alive, amazingly alive, sensually alive. I only went there once... and then it was gone, relocated outside of Paris to Rungis, where I'm sure the vendors are happy to have a roof over their heads through summer storms and winter cold but also where any hint of folklore is totally absent.
... which, interestingly enough, was the year the rats returned to Paris after the Franco-Prussian War.
And that is a bit of the history of Paris which you won't find in the history books.
This is the first in a series about Les Halles, which is undergoing yet another total re-make. The buildings that were eventually built on the site of Baltard's pavilions have now been torn down and a whole new concept will gradually become the new reality of this old neighborhood.
The building in the middle was once a dairy farm.
There's a saying: The more things change, the more they stay the same. But it doesn't hold true for neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are more apt to say "Gone, but not forgotten".
When I moved to Montmartre in 1970, it wasn't a rich neighborhood but it wasn't as dirt poor as when Renoir and Picasso and Juan Gris and other artists had moved in about a century earlier. Montmartre was a blend of young and old, plumbers, electricians, artisans and artists, with some famous movie, theater and music hall stars thrown into the mix. It was a true melting pot. Maybe more so, literally, than the United States.
The changes were gradual at first. Then around the year 2000 the neighborhood was discovered by the bobos - the bourgeois bohème - the Beautiful People, who work so very, very hard not to look rich, right down to the designer rips in their $200 jeans. Real estate values have profited from their invasion, but a lot of the poetry is gone. Piaf wouldn't recognize Montmartre any more if she came to sing in its streets. And when I took a walk around the other day, I had a hard time remembering what used to be where, so I started taking notes of Then and Now.
Some changes are for the better. At the Place des Abbesses, there was a run-down two-story shoe store that rarely sold any shoes because the man who owned it was so unpleasant - and racist in a mixed-race neighborhood - that no one wanted to deal with him. As he owned not only the business but the building as well, he didn't need to worry about covering rent, so he just sat inside his shop, glowering behind his display window of out-dated shoes. When he died, his son sold it to the City of Paris, who tore down the Dickensian shop and put up a debatably ugly Space Age neo-classic apartment building that houses in its courtyard the 400-seat Théâtre des Abbesses, which opened in 1996. A sister of the Théâtre de la Ville in the heart of town, and subsidized by the Paris City Hall, it also offers activities open to the public as well as rehearsal rooms for music and dance... an excellent thing in a neighborhood known not only for artists but also for its dancers and musicians.
But most changes have followed another track.
For instance, the veterinarian is now a trendy clothes shop. So is the butcher's. There are a lot of them in the neighborhood: trendy clothes shops, souvenir or knick-knack shops, banks and real estate agencies. In fact, that's about all that's left.
Across from Charles Dullin's Théâtre de l'Atelier there used to be a dry cleaner; now it's one of the real estate agencies. On the corner was a bakery, which is now a trendy clothes store. Next to it, going uphill, was a small fish monger shop run by a husband and wife; it, too, is now a trendy clothes store (is there any other kind in the neighborhood?) Across the way, the tiny mom-and-pop hairdresser-and-barbershop has been transformed into a souvenir shop.
At the five-street intersection was the neighborhood bakery and a florist; now they're respectively a café and a souvenir shop. There's still a charcuterie (deli), previously owned by a couple whose children I watched grow up, but instead of touting delicious ready-to-eat dishes, its new owners have emblazoned the shop window with "sandwiches - paninis", aiming at a totally different audience: passing tourists.
Next door, an old friend - the wine shop - is now a pizzeria. That's one of the changes that hurt the most. I was good friends with both successive owners. The first was an ex-gymnast and that's why my children ended up doing gymnastics in the public gym down the street (still there! although it, in turn, had once been the local covered market). The second owner had children the same age as mine, and shared my love of sailing. This Caves de Nîmes was a daily stop, even if no wine was bought - just conversation exchanged.
Headed from there back to my old place, the adjacent butcher's shop is now a rival pizzeria. Next to it, the fur shop that was there when I moved into the neighborhood, replaced by a shop selling wonderful wooden toys and creative games, now sells tchatchkis aimed at not only passing tourists but also the resident bobos. The shop that sold the balls of wool I knit my babies' sweaters from now sells balls... with little lightbulbs inside to decorate the stylish interiors of the bobos. The sad-eyed widow who ran that shop was the sister of the woman who ran the children's clothes store across the way with her husband, and whose daughter became a pharmacist and worked in the pharmacie next door. I bought all my children's "Sunday clothes" there; they were fairly expensive, but they were fashionable and well-made and lasted in such good condition that they were handed down to friends' sons and daughters. The children's clothes shop is now a souvenir shop, as is the pharmacie next to it, newly sold out by its Franco-Iranian pharmacist.
Next was a tiny restaurant run by a man nicknamed Mickey (Mouse) and his wife Myriam. It's also now a souvenir shop - like all the other shops on that block. Mickey and Myriam lived over the shop, as did everyone in those days. (The apartment above a premises went with the shop, and that's where you lived. No need to commute to work, unless you call a flight of stairs a commute.) I knew the three consecutive owners of the restaurant. The first couple had transformed it from a girdle shop. The second ultimately moved to a larger café back at the five-street intersection (which is still there, but under new and fancier management). During that time, an Australian friend appropriately named Bruce (see Monty Python) went down there to call for a taxi late one night, only to find the owner and his assistant - an ex-circus performer with an eye-patch whom we all knew only as Neunoeil (One-eye) - daintily massaging wine into a laughing woman's bounteous breasts, which she had drunkenly pulled out and rested on the counter of the bar. Montmartre had a wilder night life then, and it was the only time I ever heard of Bruce being flummoxed.
There were two pastry shops vying for our patronage, and I was friends with both of them. The larger belonged to Monsieur and Madame Prandy, and remained a pastry shop through two successive owners. It now sells perfumes. The smaller one belonged to Monsieur and Madame Bertheau, who retired to their native Loire region. Mr. Bertheau, who had worked since he was 14, sold his shop to provide money to retire on. He sold to a young man "just starting out in the trade" and who promised to keep it as it was, even wheedling out of them the only thing they longed to take with them: an etched glass panel depicting Millet's L'Angélus, the name of their shop. The young man insisted that, being mounted on the wall, it was a part of the building. Sore at heart, they left it behind. After one month of work on the shop, it re-opened as... a Häagen-Dazs, with Millet's L'Angélus presiding over it all. The "buyer" had merely been a straw man for the company, who wanted a highly profitable presence right across from Montmartre's funiculaire. I've never set foot in it, and never will, no matter how hot the day, because they broke my friend's heart and stole what was to be the couple's pension.
One good change is the shop that once sold organic fruit and vegetables - first by a dishy Québecois with a hippie red beard and then by a nice couple whose pasty complexions and stooped posture were bad advertising for the benefits organic foods could offer. It's now an appetizing shop specializing in chocolates and macaroons, less good for your health perhaps, but oh so enticing.
Bob Dylan's The Times They Are a-Changin' comes to mind. Or Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi, whose refrain says "paved Paradise; put up a parking lot". I'm not really a nostalgia freak, but I do prefer when there was more variety in the neighborhood, when you could get anything you needed practically within a block or two of home or find a repairman just downstairs rather than having to call a central service that sends you out The Guy On Duty.
... when you knew the people who owned the mom-and-pop stores and you had a connection to them and their families. It was more of a true neighborhood, and the people just went upstairs when they closed up shop for dinner, instead of driving off into the night.


One up on the 'sickie'….how to get out of work the right way!
Chucking a sickie has been called a great Australian tradition. This year it was estimated that up 180,000 people took a Monday sickie ahead of the Australia Day public holiday on Tuesday, giving themselves an extra-long weekend.
However the sickie can also be a contentious issue. With sick days estimated to cost the Australian economy $30 billion a year in lost productivity, some would say that taking a sickie is irresponsible and detrimental to the economy.
Plus there's always the risk of being caught – particularly when people post healthy looking photos on social media, or happy snaps of their long weekend getaway, when they should have been at work.
On the flip side, others see the benefit of people taking a 'mental health day' when they need it. And companies can encourage loyalty and boost productivity when their employees have more flexibility and control over the time they take off and when.
What we can all agree on is that hard working, Australian employees do need to take a break from time to time – and if that can be done in an organised way, it can only be of benefit to the workplace and the worker.
This is why ideas like the Big Day Off are great for everyone involved – the lucky staff members that score an extra paid day off work (one that it is even sanctioned by the powers that be, i.e. the boss); the company in encouraging loyalty and boosting flexibility; and of course the cause, with businesses and employees working together to support people with spinal cord injury, a life-long disability that affects over 15,000 Australians.
So we have a better idea for you than chucking a sickie or two in 2016 – how about nominating your boss to register to participate in the Big Day Off today and you won't have to!


text:
Копето́н ямайський (Myiarchus barbirostris) — вид горобцеподібних птахів родини тиранових (Tyrannidae). Ендемік Ямайки.

Поширення і екологія
Ямайські копетони поширені на всій території Ямайки. Вони живуть в гірських і рівнинних тропічних лісах, в парках на висоті до 2000 м над рівнем моря.

Примітки

Джерела
 Raffaele, Herbert; James Wiley, Orlando Garrido, Allan Keith & Janis Raffaele (2003) Birds of the West Indies, Christopher Helm, London.

Тиранові
Птахи, описані 1827
Ендемічні птахи Ямайки

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
HomeNewsCommercial Vehicles
This is the biggest bus in the world
The Volvo Gran Arctic 300 is nearly 100 feet long, and can take 300 passengers. Coming to a city in Brazil soon.
Nov 30, 2016 at 8:00am ET
By: Graham King
It is called the Volvo Gran Arctic 300 and it measures no less than 98 feet (30 meters) from end to end. Capacity? 300 people between the trio of articulated segments.
It was developed by Volvo Bus Latin America specifically for Brazil's Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system. It sits at the top Volvo's "bendy bus" range on the continent, which also includes models that seat 150, 180, and 210 passengers.
The Gran Arctic is actually the second double-articulated bus that Volvo has built for the Brazilian market. The first was launched in the early 1990s and had a capacity of up to 270 passengers. Volvo reckons the new model's higher capacity means fewer buses will be needed, cutting the cost per passenger for operators, and reducing traffic and emissions in Brazil's congested cities.
Gallery: Volvo Gran Arctic 300
Speaking of which, the Gran Arctic's massive size should not be too much of a problem, as it is mostly intended for use in segregated bus lanes. But I dare say there will be occasions when it has to join the normal traffic flow, where it will probably take up most of the road.
The president of Volvo Bus Latin America, Fabiano Todeschini, said: "We are leaders in vehicles for BRT and we are making available to the market the greatest coach in the world. This vehicle will provide more efficiency to organized transport systems, ensuring better quality of life for passengers and [being] more cost effective for operators."
There are other makers of double-articulated buses in the world, even just in South America. But none produce anything on the same, gigantic scale as the Gran Arctic.
I actually live in a city that uses articulated buses and, as a motorist, I pretty much hate them. They simply take up far too much space. But I'll let you in on a little secret: in a former life, I was a bus driver, and the bus driver bit of my brain really wants a go in the Gran Arctic.
The longest car in the world is dead, but it's coming back to life
Gallery: World's Longest Car