The Achievement of a Decentralized Water Management Through Stakeholder Participation: An Example from the Drôme River Catchment Area in France (1981–2008)

International audienceDifferent water Acts (e.g., the European Water Framework Directive) and stakeholders involved in aquatic affairs have promoted integrated river basin management (IRBM) over recent decades. However, few studies have provided feedback on these policies. The aim of the current article is to fill this gap by exploring how local newspapers reflect the implementation of a broad public participation within a catchment of France known for its innovation with regard to this domain. The media coverage of a water management strategy in the Drôme watershed from 1981 to 2008 was investigated using a content analysis and a geographic information system (GIS). We sought to determine what public participation and decentralized decision-making can be in practice. The results showed that this policy was integrated because of its social perspective, the high number of involved stakeholders, the willingness to handle water issues, and the local scale suitable for participation. We emphasized the prominence of the watershed scale guaranteed by the local water authority. This area was also characterized by compromise, arrangements, and power dynamics on a fine scale. We examined the most politically engaged writings regarding water management, which topics each group emphasized, and how the groups agreed and disagreed on issues based on their values and context. The temporal pattern of participation implementation was progressive but worked by fits and starts

Halogens in chondritic meteorites and terrestrial accretion

Volatile element delivery and retention played a fundamental role in Earth’s formation and subsequent chemical differentiation. The heavy halogens (Cl, Br and I) are key tracers of accretionary processes due to their high volatility and incompatibility, but have low abundances in most geological and planetary materials. Noble gas proxy isotopes produced during neutron irradiation provide a high sensitivity tool for the determination of heavy halogen abundance. Here we show that Cl, Br and I abundances in carbonaceous, enstatite, Rumuruti and primitive ordinary chondrites have concentrations ~6, ~9 and between 15-37 times lower, respectively, than previously reported and most commonly accepted estimates1. This is independent of the chondrites’ oxidation state or petrological type. Bromine/Cl and I/Cl in all studied chondrites show a limited range, indistinguishable from bulk silicate Earth (BSE) estimates. Our results demonstrate that BSE depletion of halogens relative to primitive meteorites is now consistent with lithophile elements of similar volatility. The new results for carbonaceous chondrites demonstrate that late accretion, constrained to a maximum of 0.5 ± 0.2 % of Earth’s silicate mass2–5, cannot solely account for present-day terrestrial halogen inventories6,7. It is estimated that 80−90% of heavy halogens are concentrated in Earth’s surface reservoirs7,8 and have not undergone the extreme early loss observed in atmosphere-forming elements9. Therefore, in addition to late accretion of halogens and mantle degassing, which is <50% efficient over Earth history10, efficient extraction of halogen-rich fluids6 from the solid Earth during the earliest stages of Earth formation is also required. The hydrophilic nature of the halogens supports this requirement, and is consistent with a volatile/water rich late-stage terrestrial accretion</p

Unveiling an exceptional zymogen: the single-chain form of tPA is a selective activator of NMDA receptor-dependent signaling and neurotoxicity

Unlike other serine proteases that are zymogens, the single-chain form of tissue plasminogen activator (sc-tPA) exhibits an intrinsic activity similar to that of its cleaved two-chain form (tc-tPA), especially in the presence of fibrin. In the central nervous system tPA controls brain functions and dysfunctions through its proteolytic activity. We demonstrated here, both in vitro and in vivo, that the intrinsic activity of sc-tPA selectively modulates N-methyl--aspartate receptor (NMDAR) signaling as compared with tc-tPA. Thus, sc-tPA enhances NMDAR-mediated calcium influx, Erk(½) activation and neurotoxicity in cultured cortical neurons, excitotoxicity in the striatum and NMDAR-dependent long-term potentiation in the hippocampal CA-1 network. As the first demonstration of a differential function for sc-tPA and tc-tPA, this finding opens a new area of investigations on tPA functions in the absence of its allosteric regulator, fibrin