Supporting researchers' information management practices

By Aurelien Tabard (LRI)

Room D18 (2nd floor) at ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 13:00 to 13:45

We present our investigation on how to support the creative, difficult-to-automate aspects of research. Our field work in biology research laboratories showed that paper notebooks remain an important resource for capturing both daily activities and intuitions. Among other reasons, the affordances of paper notebooks and their electronic counter parts are totally different.

We designed PRISM, a hybrid laboratory notebook, with a participatory approach, including practitioners during the different steps of the design process. PRISM integrates paper- and computer-based information. It provides an interactive access to three parallel, cross-linked activity streams: hand-written notes on paper, type-written notes on-line, and key points (web sites, emails, analysis results) from users' computer activity.

We argue that translating all the relevant properties of paper notebooks into the digital realm is difficult and certainly not recommended. Rather, by integrating paper and electronic notebooks, we could take advantages of both worlds. During a field study, we observed how researchers used PRISM to organize their existing ideas, reflect on them and generate new ones.

Depending of your interests, we can finally discuss different aspects of the lessons learned fom PRISM:

* how to balance flexibility and discipline in information management tools,

* how redundancy of information plays a role in the creative process,

* what are the reflective practices that you have and how they differ from other disciplines.

Background paper: http://insitu.lri.fr/%7Etabard/publications/136-tabard.pdf

Movie: http://www.lri.fr/~tabard/projects/prism/PrismHigh.mov

Dissipative structures of interstellar turbulence: Observations and models

by Edith Falgarone (ENS)

Salle D18 (2nd floor) at the ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 13:00 to 13:45

Thermo-chemically driven core convection - implications for the geodynamo

By Martin Breuer (Muenster)

Room D18 (2nd floor) at ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 13:00 to 13:45

Anions interstellaires: identification et role dans la chimie inter- et circumstellaire

By Michel Guelin

Room D18 (2nd floor) at ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 10:00 to 10:45

Introduction and Overview of the CEMAG archives database

By Jean-Francois Rabasse (ENS)

Room D18 (2nd floor) at the ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 13:00 to 13:45

High capacity storage disks servers are about to come at the lab', in the next few weeks and will start service at mid/end November.

Jean-François is working on the installation of a Database and will introduce the users interface to organisation, storage and archival operations. One of the first goals will be, obviously, to unload the JxB disks workspace, getting almost full.

Users of the JxB computer (and thus, data producers) are really expected to attend.

A simple model for the solar isorotational contours

By Steven Balbus (ENS)

Room D18 (2nd floor) at ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 13:00 to 13:45

For many years, the nature of the rotation of the solar convection zone (SCZ) has been a puzzle. I will present the results of a calculation for the isorotational contours of the SCZ based on two assumptions: i.) the SCZ is marginally stable to the most rapidly growing axisymmetric, adiabatic disturbances in a weakly magnetized gas; ii.) the vorticity equation holds in its baroclinic form. The isorotational contours emerge as the characteristics of the vorticity equation, and show good overall good agreement with the helioseimology data. The existence of the tachocline lies outside the reach of this simple approach. Follow-up studies will be suggested and discussed as time permits.

An analytic theory for the initial mass function

By Patrick Hennebelle (ENS)

Room D18 (2nd floor) at ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, 13:00 to 13:45 Star formation is one of the important challenge of the modern astrophysics. Amongst many questions, understanding the initial mass function of stars (IMF), that is the number of stars of a given mass, is tremendously important. Several theories have been proposed to explain the IMF without great success. More recently, numerical simulations of supersonic turbulence including self-gravity have obtained IMF which resemble the observed one. In the talk, I will present an analytical theory, inspired from the approach used in cosmology to predict the galaxy mass spectrum, which use the statistical properties of the supersonic turbulence inferred from numerical simulations. The theory predicts an IMF which seems to be in good agreement with the observations. Within the same formalism, I will show that the mass spectrum of the molecular clumps can also be predicted and linked to the powerspectrum of the density fluctuations.