Search

New mining exploration companies have entered the scene in France in the context of mining renewal. This paper analyses how private actors attempt to convince various publics about the future profitability of technological developments. We use the terms « promise engineering » to describe this activity. To understand the controversies that mining projects have spurred in France, we investigate the tensions between the promises designed for investors, and other promises addressed to the populations impacted by exploration projects and their future developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sound model for the prediction of the deformed roll profile during flat rolling is vital for the precision control of the strip profile and strip shape. However, preliminary inves-tigations reveal that the applicability of existing models may be limited due to their inher-ent predictions errors. In this paper, a new model is proposed which is capable of precisely predicting the deformed roll profile in a multihigh mill. The model, which is developed on the basis of the predictions from finite element simulation, is applied to the analysis of roll deformation in a 20-high Sendzimir mill under some special conditions, such as rigid outer rolls and no roll shifting, etc. The prediction accuracy of the new model is demonstrated through comparison with the predictions from the finite element simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge systems in agriculture need to devise new forms of collaboration between farmers, development agents and researchers in the current socio-economic context in which the social functions of agriculture are being questioned. So far very few research studies have addressed the issue of the knowledge content to be produced in such situations. Our paper rests on the hypothesis that the synergy between the empirical knowledge of producers and scientific knowledge is able to generate new agronomic knowledge. We explored this new form of knowledge production by examining two situations: saffron cultivation in southwestern France and French truffle production, for which the technical management is a major hindrance to their development. We show that neither scientific nor empirical knowledge on their own are sufficient to improve it. On the basis of an "engineering of agronomic knowledge" approach that makes explicit and combines knowledges from different sources, we then propose four modes of synergy: (1) translating the objectives and practices of producers into action-oriented scientific questions; (2) scientifically grounding heuristic knowledge by referring it to explicative scientific knowledge; (3) linking the indicators used by the producers to scientifically measurable parameters; (4) selecting on a scientific basis appropriate equivalent plants for transposing knowledge from one to the other. These four modes are then discussed; it is underlined that this cognitive approach to the synergy between empirical and scientific knowledge could effectively be completed by analysing the socio-organisational settings in which this knowledge finds its meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]