In the context of computer graphics, this project aims to enhance the realism and visual richness of digital images. More precisely, our goal is to design novel representations for the creation, manipulation and efficient rendering of highly detailed 3D objects. First, the focus will be put on the representation of meso-scale geometry to find a lightweight and more controllable alternative to the classical bitmap-based displacement, normal, albedo or bidirectional reflectance textures. Then, we plan to generalize our approach to reproduce the very high-frequency effects produced by some classes of micro-scale geometry (e.g., brushed metals). Such effects are challenging to reproduce as they cannot be explicitly represented but smoothed out by classical material representations. Finally, we also plan to embed multi-scale aspects into our novel representation to enable alias-free rendering from distant viewpoints while avoiding the over-smoothing produced by current approaches.

Most of the 250 millions of male piglets reared yearly in the EU are castrated by surgical means without pain prevention. Castration is performed primarily to improve meat quality and secondly to facilitate management. Indeed, pigs for meat production are usually slaughtered when testes are well developed and secrete sex steroids at the origin of boar taint, a specific taste of the meat rejected by consumers, and of behavioural problems linked to mounting and aggressive behaviours. Following the general trend of the society for a better recognition of animal sentience, there is an increasing pressure for banning surgical castration. In addition to avoiding suffering of piglets due to surgical castration, raising entire males may have positive effects on the environment since the food conversion of entire males is more efficient (about 10%). A positive influence of testicular hormones on health is also suspected. Another alternative to surgical castration would be to perform immuno-castration which consists of vaccinating the animals against reproductive hormones a few weeks before slaughter. Immuno-castrated animals benefit from the testicular hormones during most of their life and their feed conversion efficiency is intermediate between surgically castrated and entire males. The aim of the present project is to acquire more knowledge on the development of the behaviour, physiology and nutrient requirements of entire and immuno-castrated pigs to take advantage of their positive characteristics and to reduce the impact of their negative ones. The project will be divided into four tasks focusing on the influence of testicular hormones on behaviour (Task 1), on the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system (Task 2), on the immune function and health (Task 3) and on the nutrient utilization (Task 4). Since the underlying physiological mechanisms of sexual development are connected, we will analyse the interactions between systems and functions. In each task, we will compare entire males, males surgically castrated early in life and males immuno-castrated during puberty (subjected to sex hormones for a large period of their life). Therefore, we will be able to determine short and long-term effects of testicular hormones. According to the present knowledge on the different aspects, we will follow the development of the pigs or focus on the actual slaughter age of fattening pigs. In addition, for Tasks 1-3, we will vary the housing as a possible solution for reducing the negative effects of sexual development since it may affect deeply the behaviour, HPA axis and immune system. For Task 1, animals will be observed either in their rearing environment, during controlled tests outside their home pen and at the slaughter house. Animals will be fitted with ear transponders to analyze feeding behaviour by telemetry. For Task 2, animals will be submitted either to single samplings (in blood, saliva and/or urine) at various ages or to serial blood samplings via a permanent catheter after a hormonal challenge or an acute stressor. Concentrations of hormones or their metabolites from the HPA axis and SNS will be measured. For Task 3, we will evaluate various dimensions of the immune system using blood cell numeration, in vitro tests of lymphocytes proliferation, analysis of lymphocytes subtypes by cytometry, IgG response to an immune challenge. Health of the animals will be evaluated by measurement of blood concentrations of proteins indicative of inflammatory reactions and by clinical examination of the viscera from slaughtered animals. In Task 4, we will measure circulating levels of hormones and nutrients with single samples collected at various ages or serial blood collected at one age in catheterized animals. In addition, we will evaluate energy and protein utilization by measurements in metabolic chamber. For Tasks 2-4, level of expression of receptors or enzymes from the HPA axis (in adrenals and liver), receptors to sex hormones (in liver, adrenals, muscle and lymphoid organs), receptors or hormones from the somatotropic axis (liver and muscle) will be measured in tissue samples collected in slaughtered animals. We expect that some of these results regarding the effects of testicular hormones on the behaviour and the physiology may apply to numerous mammalian species especially those characterized by a pubertal development similar to pigs. Some other results, for instance those regarding the handling easiness of pigs, the effect of housing or the nutrient requirements, will be more specific to pigs. These results will contribute to remove breaks to the production of entire and immuno-castrated pigs that may improve animal welfare and reduce environmental problems.

This proposal describes an experimental nanoscale platform to address modern aspects of enzymatic biocatalysis. The aim of this project is to develop new experimental tools to both assemble artificial enzymatic complexes, in a way spatially controlled at the nanoscale, and to probe their functional behavior, at the scale of a few, or even individual, enzyme molecules. To this aim a new local probe electrochemical technique will be designed allowing the functional probing of enzyme clusters at the nanoscale. Addressing single, or a small number of a selected arrangement of biomolecules, is the unique way to understand the correlation between the enzyme activity and fluctuation of its behavior. In the present case, using a local probe electrochemical technique will specifically allow the functional behavior of enzyme clusters to be probed as a function of their spatial position in the enzyme assembly, i.e. as a function of their degree of diffusional coupling with neighboring enzyme populations . In living systems, the cellular organization of cooperating enzymes into supramolecular complexes is a metabolism key feature. A major advantage of such organization is the transfer of biosynthetic intermediates between catalytic sites without diffusion into the bulk phase of the cell. This so-called 'metabolic channelling' is supposed to combine an enhancement of the reaction rates with a fine tuning of metabolic pathways. Our first aim will be to experimentally challenge this model through the design of a spatially controlled assembly of artificial enzymatic complexes. Using electronic nanolithography with the help of the RTB at LAAS, we will design a nanoplateform with precise control of the positioning of two enzymes performing a redox cascade reaction. In the first combination, diffusion controlled reactions will be simulated by positioning single enzymes clusters several hundred nanometers one from each other. In the second set-up, the two enzymes will be clustered at the 10-50 nm scale in order to mimick channeling. Virus capsids will be used as templates for controlling these enzymes distributions. Since the final enzyme of the biosynthetic assembly will be a redox enzyme, i.e. glucose oxidase, which accepts a large range of soluble cofactors, electrochemistry is the technique of choice to study the kinetic behavior of the reconstructed enzymatic pathway. In order to reproduce the confined working environment of the natural enzymatic supramolecular complexes, which minimizes diffusional dispersion of the reactants, we propose to develop and to use for this study an innovative nanoelectrochemical technique which will allow a small patch of the enzyme bearing surface to be confined under a 'hollow' microlectrode. This 'nanocavity ' microlectrode will be fabricated at the apex of an AFM probe. The resulting combined nanocavity AFM-SECM probe will allow the enzyme clusters to be located on the surface and the electrochemical currents associated to the enzymatic redox catalysis to be measured. Using nanocavity microelectrodes ~ 100-500 nm in size it will be possible to 'cap' a selected population of enzymes and to probe their collective functional behavior. The local probe configuration will allow the enzyme populations to be selected based on their spatial position i.e based on their degree of diffusive coupling with neighboring enzyme clusters. Using even smaller nanocavity microelectrodes, ~ a few 10 nm in size, will make the functional behavior of individual enzyme molecules experimentally accessible. Addressing the catalytic behavior of single enzyme molecules is, in itself , a biologically relevant question, since in classical enzymology, insight into the dynamic behavior of enzymatic processes is typically derived from ensemble measurements. The kinetic behavior observed is the mean of the contribution of individual enzymes fluctuating between more or less active conformations. A way for living systems to finely tune metabolic networks is to modulate enzymes conformations (ie through phosphorylation or protein regulator interactions). Direct experimental information about the dynamics at the single-molecular level, however is sparse and has until recently been primarily deduced from molecular-dynamics simulations. Exploring the individual, or a few, nano-scale behavior of molecules in complex local environments is of great need to better understand the chemical reaction efficiency and functionality of enzyme at work. Observing a single enzyme removes the usual ensemble average, allowing the exploration of hidden heterogeneity in complex condensed phases as well as direct observation of dynamic changes, without synchronization. Such an approach should reveal itself extremely valuable for an in depth understanding of in vivo complex enzymatic mechanisms.

Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) consists of projecting directly in physical space information coming from the digital world. Beyond conventional display methods based on screens or planar projections, this approach opens new perspectives for future applications in areas as diverse as aircraft maintenance or scientific mediation. However, even though inherent problems of computer vision and computer graphics are being solved today, the problems related to interaction remain largely unexplored. The characteristics of the used medium challenge the traditional approaches, and new techniques must be explored. The ISAR project focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of these new interaction paradigms. The ISAR overall goal is to systematically explore the design space of interaction with SAR. Making SAR interactive is the unavoidable step towards the full adoption of SAR in various contexts including industrial and cultural contexts. To achieve our objectives, we have built a multidisciplinary consortium composed of two research institutes, Inria-Bordeaux and LIG-CNRS, whose teams are specialists in 3D and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and a company, Diotasoft, which brings its expertise in the domain of registration in augmented reality.

Most of the theoretical models in economics proposed so far to describe money emergence are based on three intangible assumptions: the omniscience of economic agents, an infinite time and an extremely large number of agents (not bounded). The goal of this interdisciplinary study is to investigate the condition of apparition of a monetary economy in a more ecological framework provided with the assumption that the market is made up of a finite number of agents having a bounded rationality and facing a time constraint. The monetary economy recently developed the tools to test experimentally the theoretical and behavioural assumptions that govern the emergence of money as a medium of exchange. These models, called "search-theoretical models" allow to define economic structures (mode of interaction, agent specialisation in terms of production and consumption, cost structures, etc.) easily implementable within a computer simulation or a laboratory experiment. In this study, we propose a generic model and environment of monetary prospecting. Our first objective is to artificially identify structural (trading organisation, agents specialisation) and cognitive conditions (learning skills, memory and strategic anticipation abilities, tradeoff exploration/exploitation) that allowed money emergence. This will provide relevant environmental constraints that we will use during our manipulations in the laboratory. The agents that will be involved in these manipulations will be of two types: non-human primates (rhesus macaques) and humans. The formers will allow us to assess the relevance of high-level learning processes in order to achieve money emergence. In particular, are learning rules by trial and error without sophisticated representation and extent strategic anticipation sufficient enough? We will build an ecological environment suitable for the investigation of their behaviour and, in particular, their propensity to exemplify a monetary behaviour. On the basis of the results obtained with our artificial agents in terms of economic structure and cognitive features that are suitable to money emergence, we can make predictions about the macaques ability to instantiate a monetary behaviour in the framework of the economic models concerned. In the latter, we will study, by a reverse methodological transfer process, the correlations between the behaviour leading to money emergence and some of their psychological characteristics supposedly relevant (risk aversion, patience, computational abilities, depth of strategic reasoning). This then will allows us to "humanise" our artificial agents and explore more systematically the interaction effets between cognitive features and economic structures that can lead to achieve a monetary equilibrium. This study will allow us to set-up a new experimental tool by which we will be able to compare cognitive architecture between artificial agents, humans and macaques. It will potentially provide us with the foundations for a genuine comparative approach that has never been conducted so far and to integrate methodologically scattered results observed so far upon the biological basis of money emergence.