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Early and extensive day care has become increasingly common in western countries. Studies investigating the potential short-term impact of such experiences on children’s development have yielded mixed results, whereas long-term effects have been understudied. In this study we therefore examine the impact of early and extensive day care on children’s emotional, behavioural, relational and cognitive functioning during preschool and the first three years of school. 878 children drawn from the longitudinal Trondheim Early Secure Study (TESS) participated in the current study. The sample was representative of Norwegian four, six and eight yearolds. Results showed apparent effects of early extensive childcare on several areas of children´s life. When results were adjusted by controlling for selection factors and correction for number of variables, almost all of the effects disappeared. This indicates that the long-term effects of time spent in non-parental childcare on children’s development are limited, at least up to age eight

International audience; The project SoDa (solar data) answers the needs of industry and research for information on solar radiation parameters with a satisfactory quality. The methodology is user-driven with a large involvement of users in the project, who gauge the progresses and achievements. A prototype service has been developed, using Internet technology, that integrates and efficiently exploits diverse networked information sources to supply value-added information. Access to data and applications has been greatly improved; efforts were made on interpolation methods and satellite data processing to achieve better quality and increase time and space coverage of the information. Applications were developed or networked to supply information actually needed by customers, and not only raw data.

International audience; Satellight was a 3 year-European research program (Jan. 1996-March 1999) with the objective of making available on Internet a database of solar radiation and daylight for Western and Central Europe. The data was obtained by processing the information provided by the Meteosat satellite every 30 minutes. We first developed and validated models to derive radiation and daylight data on ground from the satellite measurements. Then, we produced two years of data: 1996 and 1997, and made it accessible via a web server (its address is www.satel-light.com). The server provides statistics on the direct, diffuse and global illuminances or irradiances, on horizontal or tilted plane, for various zones in Europe or for specific locations. The information is presented as maps, figures or tables. In 2001, thanks to a new European project called SODA (see http://www-helioserve.cma.fr/soda/), three more years will be added to the database to make it more relevant of long term climatic trends

International audience; The estimation of the downward surface shortwave irradiance from satellite observations has been subject to numerous investigations in the past. Different methods from simple transmittance-reflectance correlations to the extensive use of radiative transfer calculations have been applied leading to generally satisfying results with an accuracy almost independent of the chosen method. In the framework of the European Community research project SATELLIGHT an attempt is made to use satellite methods to derive daylight and solar irradiance data with a continuous spatial coverage forWestern and Central Europe from Meteosat images. For potential end users these data will be placed in a data base in the Internet (Fontoynont et al., 1998). In daylighting applications, knowledge of the luminance distribution of the sky is of primary concern. Thus, beyond the retrieval of surface global irradiance, the separation of diffuse and direct components as well as a better representation of these quantities for low sun elevations had to be derived in the scope of this project. We present improvements and additions to an existing method for the derivation of the global irradiance. This includes new correction schemes for the influence of atmospheric extinction processes. These have been partly developed by simulating the satellite signal for a cloudless atmosphere using the radiative transfer code MODTRAN. In addition, the derivation of the diffuse irradiance is briefly outlined.

International audience