Abstract: A method includes the following steps: a) the production of a slip including more than 4% and less than 50% of ceramic particles and including: b) a first particulate fraction including of orientable particles having a median length L?50 and representing more than 1% of the ceramic particles, and c) a second particulate fraction having a median length D50 at least ten times shorter than L?50 and representing more than 1% of the ceramic particles, the first and second particulate fractions together representing more than 80% of all of the ceramic particles, in volume percentages based on the total quantity of ceramic particles; d) oriented freezing of the slip by moving a solidification front at a lower speed than the speed of encapsulation of the ceramic particles; e) elimination of the crystals of the solidified liquid phase of the block; and f) optionally sintering.

Abstract: Process for the manufacture of a mesoporous product comprising the following successive steps: a) preparation of a slip comprising: a solvent, an additive, more than 4%, as percentage by volume based on the slip, of a powder formed of ceramic particles, b) oriented freezing of the slip, so as to form a block comprising ice crystals separated by walls, c) removal of the ice crystals from said frozen slip block, optionally removed from the mold, so as to obtain a porous preform, d) removal of the additive, so as to obtain a preformed mesoporous product, the additive and the amount of additive being chosen so that the additive is present in a mesopore-forming micellar phase in said walls, more than 25% by volume of said ceramic particles exhibiting a size less than twice the size of the micelles of said mesopore-forming micellar phase.

Abstract: Preparation of a slip including more than 4% and less than 50% of ceramic particles and including more than 1% of orientable ceramic particles made of a material including an oriented function, as volume percentage on the basis of the set of ceramic particles, wherein the fraction of non-orientable ceramic particles has a median length less than ten times the median length of the orientable ceramic particles if the set of ceramic particles includes less than 80%, as volume percentage, of orientable ceramic particles, oriented freezing of the slip by movement of a solidification front at a speed less than the speed of encapsulation of the ceramic particles; elimination of the crystals of solidified liquid phase of said block, optionally, sintering.

Abstract: Product formed from a ceramic material, at least part of the said product not being formed from amorphous silica and including pores and satisfying the following criteria (a), (b) and (c): (a) at least 70% by number of the said pores are frustoconical tubular pores extending substantially parallel to each other in a longitudinal direction; (b) in at least one cross-section plane, the mean size of the cross sections of the said pores is greater than 0.15 ?m and less than 300 ?m; (c) in at least one cross-section plane, at least 50% by number of the pores have a convexity index Ic of greater than 87%, the convexity index of a pore being equal to the ratio Sp/Sc of the surfaces Sp and Sc delimited by the perimeter and by the convex envelope of the said pore, respectively.

Abstract: Process for the manufacture of a mesoporous product comprising the following successive steps: a) preparation of a slip comprising: a solvent, an additive, more than 4%, as percentage by volume based on the slip, of a powder formed of ceramic particles, b) oriented freezing of the slip, so as to form a block comprising ice crystals separated by walls, c) removal of the ice crystals from said frozen slip block, optionally removed from the mold, so as to obtain a porous preform, d) removal of the additive, so as to obtain a preformed mesoporous product, the additive and the amount of additive being chosen so that the additive is present in a mesopore-forming micellar phase in said walls, more than 25% by volume of said ceramic particles exhibiting a size less than twice the size of the micelles of said mesopore-forming micellar phase.

Abstract: A method of processing a tree data structure organized into interconnected elements. The method comprises the steps of: defining processing units as subsets of interconnected elements and allocating each processing unit a processing time on which the data of the allocated processing unit is to be used by a unit that is the destination for the data. The processing method can be applied to streaming metadata, in particular for adaptation of scalable multimedia content.

Abstract: A method, corresponding device and computer program product are provided for generating a file describing a bit stream, from a description scheme describing a structure and a content that are compliant with a predetermined format and comprising a set of attributes and elements. The bit stream includes a plurality of fields. The method includes: assigning at least one value of at least one identified filed of the stream to at least one variable defined by an attribute of the description scheme, called assignment attribute; storing the variable; determining at least one characteristic of at least one element of the description file, from and evaluation of a conditional expression relating to the value; generating a portion of the description file according to the characteristics determined in the determination step.

Abstract: Product formed from a ceramic material, at least part of the said product not being formed from amorphous silica and including pores and satisfying the following criteria (a), (b) and (c): (a) at least 70% by number of the said pores are frustoconical tubular pores extending substantially parallel to each other in a longitudinal direction; (b) in at least one cross-section plane, the mean size of the cross sections of the said pores is greater than 0.15 ?m and less than 300 ?m; (c) in at least one cross-section plane, at least 50% by number of the pores have a convexity index Ic of greater than 87%, the convexity index of a pore being equal to the ratio Sp/Sc of the surfaces Sp and Sc delimited by the perimeter and by the convex envelope of the said pore, respectively.

Abstract: Product formed from a ceramic material, at least part of the product not being formed from amorphous silica, having pores and satisfying the following criteria: (a?) at least 70% by number of the pores are tubular pores extending substantially parallel to each other in a longitudinal direction; (b?) in at least one cross-section plane, at least 30% by number of the pores have a section of convex hexagonal shape, these pores being known hereinbelow as “hexagonal pores”, at least 80% by number of the hexagonal pores having a roundness index of greater than 0.70, the roundness index being equal to the ratio SA/LA of the lengths of the small and long axes of the ellipse in which the section is inscribed; the mean size of the cross sections of the pores is greater than 0.15 ?m and less than 25 ?m.

Abstract: Method of generating a file describing a bit stream, corresponding device and computer program product. The invention relates to a method of generating a description file (14) of a bit stream (11), from a description scheme (15) describing a structure and a content that are compliant with a predetermined format and comprising a set of attributes and elements, the bit stream (11) consisting of a plurality of fields. According to the invention, such a method comprises: a step for assigning at least one value of at least one identified field of the stream to at least one variable defined by an attribute of the description scheme, called assignment attribute; a step for storing said variable; a step for determining at least one characteristic of at least one element of the description file, from an evaluation of a conditional expression relating to said value; a step for generating a portion of the description file according to the characteristics determined in the determination step.

Abstract: The invention proposes a method of filtering a bitstream according to user specifications. The proposed method uses a semantic description and a syntactical description of the bitstream. The semantic description is scanned to select the elementary units that match the user specification. The time is used as a linking mechanism between the semantic description and the syntactical description to locate the elements of the syntactical description that are to be removed. A filtered syntactical description is generated by removing the located elements. Finally, a filtered bitstream is generated from the filtered syntactical description.

Abstract: A method of processing a tree data structure organized into interconnected elements. The method comprises the steps of: defining processing units as subsets of interconnected elements and allocating each processing unit a processing time on which the data of the allocated processing unit is to be used by a unit that is the destination for the data. The processing method can be applied to streaming metadata, in particular for adaptation of scalable multimedia content.

Abstract: A method of transferring a file includes generating a version of an object version at the source entity as a function of the profile of the destination entity (e.g., screen, calculation capacity, storage). A basic document is basic version of the object described in a document written in a markup language (e.g., XML). One or more transformations are defined (for example into the XSL format). The application of a transformation to the basic document allows generation of a transformed document. An adapted version of the object is generated from the transformed document.

Abstract: The invention proposes a new type of schema derived from the XML schema which permits to describe a coding format in a generic fashion. Such a schema is used to carry out the syntactic analysis of a bit stream to produce a document that represents the bit stream which is an instance of said schema, or to generate a bit stream from a document representing the bit stream.

Abstract: The invention proposes a method of issuing a bit stream organized in fields according to a certain bit stream format. Each field of the bit stream has a value and semantics. According to the invention the field semantics is issued with the value of the field when the bit stream is displayed so as to provide a version of the bit stream that is human-readable. According to the invention, a schema is proposed that, in addition to generically describing the bit stream format, also comprises components containing said field semantics. This schema is used by a parser for syntactically analyzing an input bit stream to be displayed, thereby generating a structured description of said bit stream. A transformation is then applied to the structured description to generate a document formatted for display.

Abstract: The invention proposes a method of filtering a bitstream according to user specifications. The proposed method uses a semantic description and a syntactical description of the bitstream. The semantic description is scanned to select the elementary units that match the user specification. The time is used as a linking mechanism between the semantic description and the syntactical description to locate the elements of the syntactical description that are to be removed. A filtered syntactical description is generated by removing the located elements. Finally, a filtered bitstream is generated from the filtered syntactical description.

Abstract: The invention relates to a method of coding a plurality of multimedia data according to which original multimedia data are acquired and converted into one or several bitstreams in which the different levels of information are then captured by means of analysis and segmentation. A description step allows to generate from said obtained levels of information description data that are then coded. More precisely, this description step comprises a defining sub-step, provided for storing a set of descriptors related to said plurality of multimedia data, and a description sub-step, provided for selecting the description data to be coded in accordance with every level of information as obtained in the structuring step. The set of descriptors includes, according to the invention, at least a shape descriptor and a shape deformation descriptor.

Abstract: It is an object of the invention to propose a method of transferring a file containing a certain version of an object (for example, a multimedia object such as an image, audio or video) from a source entity (for example, a server) to a destination entity (for example, a client), said version being generated at the level of the source entity as a function of the profile of the destination entity (screen, calculation capacity, storage . . . ).

Abstract: A method of deriving geometrical data of a structure from an image of the structure comprises the selection of marker points in the image. A typical contour is associated with the marker points and the geometrical data is calculated from the typical contour. According to the invention, correctness values are associated with the marker points. The correctness values indicate the reliability of the correspondence of the marker points to typical (anatomical) features in the structure. Furthermore, a cost function is associated with a typical contour, which cost function is dependent on the correctness values of the marker points. The typical contour is arranged in such a manner that the cost function reaches an optimum value, such as a local maximum or minimum value. The method is particularly suitable for deriving geometrical data, such as angles and distances concerning the spinal column of a patient.

Abstract: The invention proposes a new type of schema derived from the XML schema which permits to describe a coding format in a generic fashion. Such a schema is used to carry out the syntactic analysis of a bit stream to produce a document that represents the bit stream which is an instance of said schema, or to generate a bit stream from a document representing the bit stream.