Scale (2018)

How can the observation scale of a phenomenon influence research? Under what conditions is it possible to move from one scale to another?What role do instrumentation, modelling and digital tools play in these different levels of analysis? The same questions then arise with regard to the results obtained. The change of scale acts within the operations of interpretation and extrapolation.

This series of conferences will bring together specialists from disciplines such as law, medicine, literature, physics and the social sciences to discuss this issue.

A series of public lectures organised as part of the "La recherche dans tous ses états"

teaching programme.

• Wednesdays from 17 October to 21 November 2018from 5.15pm to 6.45pm
• Amphimax building, room 410

Organisation: Delphine Preissmann (FBM, Sciences au Carré, delphine.preissmann@unil.ch)

The concept of scale in law. From consensual practice to digital practice.

L. Moreillon, Faculty of Law, Criminal Sciences and Public Administration

The notion of scale in law. From a consensual practice to a digital one.

Law is a science focused on the human being, in its individuality. However, very often, in order to solve an individual problem, it is necessary to refer to specific scales: Bernese scale in labour law, salary scale for civil servants, fine scale for traffic offences, salary scale for civil servants, salary scale for civil servants, fine scale for traffic offences, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants, fine scale for civil servants;These include fines for traffic offences, fines for disability insurance (pension calculation), and fines for pain and suffering and mental anguish. How the law came to refine a consensual practice.

With the digitalisation and digitisation of data, the question of a robotised law arises. What will tomorrow's notion of scale be? Will litigants take their cases to court or will they go along with the solution indicated to them by the judicial robot?

The exposome in public health: how does the environment influence our health over the long term?

M.Bochud, Faculty of Biology and Medicine

Health determinants are numerous and complex. Some are modifiable, others are not, such as age and genetic factors. An individual’s exposure to various molecules (diet, pollution, endocrine disruptors, toxic substances) and socio-economic factors begins at conception, in utero, and persists throughout life. There are time windows during a person’s life when a specific exposure can have a particularly significant impact on their health. The exposome represents the totality of a person's exposure to environmental factors from conception to the end of life. Recent technological advances are making it possible to measure a person's exposome with ever greater precision, and to gain a better understanding of the impact of the environment (in the broadest sense) on health. A better understanding of the exposome should enable effective and sustainable health prevention and promotion interventions to be put in place.

Putting text into play.

I. Pante, Faculty of Arts

With the advent of Big Data, where digital archives continue to expand, research in the humanities has unprecedented and growing access to sources that were once restricted to the privacy of the scribe. Coupled with the computing power of our information technology tools and the frenetic expansion of the web, texts seem to have become points on a map;have become dots on a map, to the point where some critics recommend abandoning reading in favour of statistical methods, which are sometimes seen as the only valid access to scientific knowledge. 

With these "new" approaches, have the human sciences foundé their électronic microscope? Moreover, is the use of the zoom lens really appropriate for our material? Far from simply shaking up our objects and our research methods, the changes in scale that have occurred over the last two decades invite us to rethink everything, starting with our conception of text.

Big and Small Data: the challenges of scale changes in the exploitation of digital data

O. Glassey, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences

From atoms to mountain ranges jumping scales in Earth sciences

L. Baumgartner, Faculté des géosciences et de l'environnement

The Tanzanian wasp has a wing opening of less than 1mm, an albatross 3.6m. Both can fly. How?

A. Bay, High Energy Physics Laboratory, Faculty of Basic Sciences, EPFL

Physics needs the concept of a scale in several contexts.
Scales are linked to the concept of measurement, which necessitates the definition of appropriate units: the metre, the kilogram, the second, etc.

The laws of measurement require the definition of appropriate units. The laws of scale relate variations in one quantity to another and are fundamental to the physical description of phenomena. But this does not always work in a simple way:
is it possible to relate the dynamics of a model of aircraft to those of a full-scale aircraft? We will therefore discuss a few examples from the engineering sciences. Finally, in the field of fundamental research, scales appear in particle physics and cosmology. It is here that the sub-microscopic scale comes into contact with the infinitely large.