Family farmers and major retail chains in the Brazilian organic sector: assessing new development pathways. A case study in a peri-urban district of Sao Paulo

The expansion of the organic sector in Brazil is seen as a leverage for the social emancipation of the small family farmers. Next to the traditional alternatives circuits of organic food and farming, new powerful capitalistic actors, such as supermarket chains, are rapidly entering the Brazilian organic arena. Can family farming benefit from the development of these “conventional” commercialisation circuits in the organic sector? Research undertaken in 2007, in a green belt rural community of São Paulo, shows how family farmers benefited from the implication of large retail chains in the organic sector and how an economically and ecologically outstanding agriculture may arise from these circumstances. However, we highlight the crucial role played by social regulation: only strong solidarity between farmers and the implication of technicians, militants and researchers in the process made it possible to counter the negative effects of the liberal logic governing the development of organic farming via the major retailers. Still, as tougher competition is expected on the regional organic market, the development of short supply chains involving “committed” consumers and the broader integration of the local farmers in networks of organic militancy appear crucial. It would guarantee a continuous enhancement of the local human and social capital, reinforce an emerging process of internal conversion and allow for a stronger social regulation of the future local development pattern

How to promote innovation and interdisciplinarity in organic food and farming research evaluation

The development of organic food and farming research calls for system-oriented, innovative, interdisciplinary approaches. The process of evaluating research proposals is a crucial step towards this objective. Based on the EU CORE Organic pilot call for joint transnational research projects, we analysed to what extent the evaluation criteria and procedures implemented address this issue. Feedback on the experience of the target groups involved in this call was gathered and discussed in relation to findings from the literature. Our results show that interdisciplinary and innovative aspects could be better addressed, and evaluation criteria more clearly defined and delimited. This entails reshaping the main criteria and developing more suitable evaluation categories and sub-criteria. We also suggest creating mechanisms to enable funding of a few “risky” research projects, to facilitate entry of newcomers to the arena, to promote exploratory research projects and to support longitudinal interaction among applicants and assessors

Les environnements numériques d’apprentissage (ENA) : État des lieux et prospective

Rapport d’analyse et de synthès

Asymptotics of the visibility function in the Boolean model

23 pagesThe aim of this paper is to give a precise estimate on the tail probability of the visibility function in a germ-grain model: this function is defined as the length of the longest ray starting at the origin that does not intersect an obstacle in a Boolean model. We proceed in two or more dimensions using coverage techniques. Moreover, convergence results involving a type I extreme value distribution are shown in the two particular cases of small obstacles or a large obstacle-free region

MUDANÇA SOCIAL E MODERNIZAÇÃO ECOLÓGICA NO BRASIL SOCIAL CHANGE AND ECOLOGIC MODERNIZATION IN BRAZIL

Este artigo analisa as trajetórias de conversão para agricultura orgânica de agricultores familiares localizados na região metropolitana de São Paulo durante os anos 1990 e 2000. Esta conversão ocorreu sob o impulso inicial de indivíduos ligados ao movimento da teologia da libertação e depois da estruturação posterior de um mercado regional em torno da grande distribuição. O texto mostra como a integração desses agricultores em um sistema de mercado regido por lógicas capitalistas foi acompanhada, localmente, por uma profissionalização da agricultura e pela implantação de lógicas e estruturas empresariais. Mostra também como estas dinâmicas de modernização ecológica, embora contribuindo para a geração de uma nova elite rural e de novas formas de desigualdade social, parecem ao mesmo tempo poder contribuir para a manutenção da agricultura em um contexto de forte pressão urbana, para o retorno dos jovens a esta atividade e para a construção de territórios de qualidade ecológica. Nesse sentido, ele indaga se existiriam contextos nos quais a modernização ecológica seria um compromisso aceito por defensores de uma alternativa mais radical? Qualquer que seja a resposta a essa pergunta, a demonstração aqui proposta sublinha a importância de reintegrar a análise das trajetórias ecológicas agrícolas em um estudo mais geral das mudanças sociais, particularmente em seus componentes locais.AbstractThis paper analyzes small farmers’ trajectories in converting to organic farming in the metropolitan region of São Paulo during the 1990s and 2000s. The  conversion occurred under the initial push of individuals connected the movement of the Theology of Liberation and after the structuring of a regional market around large-scale distribution. The paper shows how the integration of these farmers in a market system ruled by capitalist logic was accompanied, at the local level, by the professionalization of agriculture and by the implantation of corporate structures and logic. It also shows how these ecologic modernization dynamics, while contributing to the creation of a new rural elite and new forms of social inequality, seem to also be able to contribute to the maintenance of farming in a context of strong urban pressure, to the return ofyoung people to farming, and the construction of territories of ecologic quality.In this sense, it questions whether contexts exist in which ecologic modernization would be a compromise accepted by defenders of more radical alternatives? Whichever the answer to this question, the answer we propose underlines the importance of reintegrating the analysis of the ecologic farming trajectories to a broader study of social changes, mainly in its local components

Statistical Quantile Learning for Large, Nonlinear, and Additive Latent Variable Models.

The studies of large-scale, high-dimensional data in fields such as genomics and neuroscience have injected new insights into science. Yet, despite advances, they are confronting several chal- lenges, often simultaneously: lack of interpretability, nonlinearity, slow computation, inconsistency and uncertain convergence, and small sample sizes compared to high feature dimensions. Here, we propose a relatively simple, scalable, and consistent nonlinear dimension reduction method that can potentially address these issues in unsupervised settings. We call this method Statistical Quantile Learning (SQL) because, methodologically, it leverages on a quantile approximation of the latent variables together with standard nonparametric techniques (sieve or penalyzed methods). We show that estimating the model simplifies into a convex assignment matching problem; we derive its asymptotic properties; we show that the model is identifiable under few conditions. Compared to its linear competitors, SQL explains more variance, yields better separation and explanation, and delivers more accurate outcome prediction. Compared to its nonlinear competitors, SQL shows considerable advantage in interpretability, ease of use and computations in large-dimensional set- tings. Finally, we apply SQL to high-dimensional gene expression data (consisting of 20, 263 genes from 801 subjects), where the proposed method identified latent factors predictive of five cancer types. The SQL package is available at https://github.com/jbodelet/SQL

Increased Reactive Oxygen Species and Cell Cycle Defects Contribute to Anemia in the RASA3 Mutant Mouse Model s

RASA3 is a Ras GTPase activating protein that plays a critical role in blood formation. The autosomal recessive mouse model scat (severe combined anemia and thrombocytopenia) carries a missense mutation in Rasa3. Homozygotes present with a phenotype characteristic of bone marrow failure that is accompanied by alternating episodes of crisis and remission. The mechanism leading to impaired erythropoiesis and peripheral cell destruction as evidenced by membrane fragmentation in scat is unclear, although we previously reported that the mislocalization of RASA3 to the cytosol of reticulocytes and mature red cells plays a role in the disease. In this study, we further characterized the bone marrow failure in scat and found that RASA3 plays a central role in cell cycle progression and maintenance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels during terminal erythroid differentiation, without inducing apoptosis of the precursors. In scat mice undergoing crises, there is a consistent pattern of an increased proportion of cells in the G0/G1 phase at the basophilic and polychromatophilic stages of erythroid differentiation, suggesting that RASA3 is involved in the G1 checkpoint. However, this increase in G1 is transient, and either resolves or becomes indiscernible by the orthochromatic stage. In addition, while ROS levels are normal early in erythropoiesis, there is accumulation of superoxide levels at the reticulocyte stage (DHE increased 40% in scat; p = 0.02) even though mitochondria, a potential source for ROS, are eliminated normally. Surprisingly, apoptosis is significantly decreased in the scat bone marrow at the proerythroblastic (15.3%; p = 0.004), polychromatophilic (8.5%; p = 0.01), and orthochromatic (4.2%; p = 0.02) stages. Together, these data indicate that ROS accumulation at the reticulocyte stage, without apoptosis, contributes to the membrane fragmentation observed in scat. Finally, the cell cycle defect and increased levels of ROS suggest that scat is a model of bone marrow failure with characteristics of aplastic anemia