On-farm influence of production patterns on total polyphenol content in peach

Peach production in France is constantly confronted with marketing problems due to a decrease in fruit consumption and increasing competition with neighbouring Mediterranean countries. The production of higher quality products using production methods such as organic farming (OF) appears to be a tangible way of differentiating and enhancing peach production. To test this hypothesis, an on-farm study was conducted in one of the major production areas in South-eastern France. Focussing on the peach cultivar, cv. Spring Lady®, paired comparisons were conducted between plots in OF and conventional farming (CF). Farmers' practices were identified and checked against crop measurements and performances (yield, sugar content, size classes) in 2004 (12 plots) and in 2005 (10 plots). Polyphenol contents were assessed as an additional component of fruit quality, using the Folin-Ciocalteu colorimetric method. Organic peaches have a higher polyphenol content at harvest. Contents were 4.8 times higher in 2004, whereas the same phenomenon was not observed in 2005. Levels of nitrogen, yield and tree vigour management appeared to be the key elements responsible for the synthesis of total polyphenols and sugar content This implies new opportunities for improving the nutritional quality of peaches, based on production methods

A Status Study of the Qualifications of the Classroom Teachers and Programs in Physical Education of Selected Elementary Schools

The purpose of this study was to determine the personal and professional qualifications of the classroom teachers of physical education and the status of the physical education programs is selected elementary schools. Four areas of the problem were studied: (1) the personal and professional qualifications of the classroom teachers in physical education; (2) the present policies and practices used in conducting the physical education programs; (3) the contents of the physical education programs and (4) the attitudes of the classroom teachers in regard to their responsibilities for elementary physical education. The following procedure was employed. Three hundred seventy questionnaires were sent to classrooms teachers from grades one through six in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Illinois, and Nebraska. To achieve the purposes of the study the following areas were investigated: (1) the educational background of the classroom teachers selected for the study; (2) the school policies related to elementary physical education; (3) curriculum planning in physical education; (4) the activities that were afford beyond the instructional program in the elementary grades; (5) the methods used to student evaluation; and (6) the classroom teachers’ attitudes toward physical education. As a result of the findings obtained during this investigation, the following conclusions appear warranted. Many of the teachers surveyed had less than a minor in physical education. Approximately one-half of the classroom teachers surveyed were responsible for teaching physical education to their own students. A great majority of the teachers expressed a need for curriculum guide in physical education. The teachers felt that they had responsibility for the physical education. The classroom teachers realized that their children have needs in the educational area called physical education

Sea surface temperature contributes to marine crocodylomorph evolution

During the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, four distinct crocodylomorph lineages colonized the marine environment. They were conspicuously absent from high latitudes, which in the Mesozoic were occupied by warm-blooded ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Despite a relatively well-constrained stratigraphic distribution, the varying diversities of marine crocodylomorphs are poorly understood, because their extinctions neither coincided with any major biological crises nor with the advent of potential competitors. Here we test the potential link between their evolutionary history in terms of taxic diversity and two abiotic factors, sea level variations and sea surface temperatures (SST). Excluding Metriorhynchoidea, which may have had a peculiar ecology, significant correlations obtained between generic diversity and estimated Tethyan SST suggest that water temperature was a driver of marine crocodylomorph diversity. Being most probably ectothermic reptiles, these lineages colonized the marine realm and diversified during warm periods, then declined or became extinct during cold intervals

Decontextualizing contextual inversion

Contextual inversion, introduced as an analytical tool by David Lewin, is a concept of wide reach and value in music theory and analysis, at the root of neo-Riemannian theory as well as serial theory, and useful for a range of analytical applications. A shortcoming of contextual inversion as it is currently understood, however, is, as implied by the name, that the transformation has to be defined anew for each application. This is potentially a virtue, requiring the analyst to invest the transformational system with meaning in order to construct it in the first place. However, there are certainly instances where new transformational systems are continually redefined for essentially the same purposes. This paper explores some of the most common theoretical bases for contextual inversion groups and considers possible definitions of inversion operators that can apply across set class types, effectively decontextualizing contextual inversions.Accepted manuscrip

Fourier phase and pitch-class sum

Music theorists have proposed two very different geometric models of musical objects, one based on voice leading and the other based on the Fourier transform. On the surface these models are completely different, but they converge in special cases, including many geometries that are of particular analytical interest.Accepted manuscrip

Simultaneous measurement of Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio at microscale with two-modes scanning microdeformation microscopy

International audienceIn this paper, we present a technique to simultaneously measure Young's modulus E and Poisson's ratio ν of an isotropic material at local scale in a single experiment. Using several flexural modes of vibration of the scanning microdeformation microscope, it is possible to decouple the contributions of E and ν from the first two resonant frequencies, thereby providing access to both the elastic parameters. The proposed approach is applied to SU8 thin films deposited on silicon substrates and provides values consistent with those from the literature

Les Antihistaminiques au Service de la Chirurgie. Leur rôle de Sécurité dans les Névrectomies chez le Cheval

Carnus Octave, Amiot J. Les antihistaminiques au service de la chirurgie. Leur rôle de sécurité dans les névrectomies chez le Cheval. In: Bulletin de l'Académie Vétérinaire de France tome 103 n°3, 1950. pp. 165-166

A geometric model of tube categories

We give a geometric model for a tube category in terms of homotopy classes of oriented arcs in an annulus with marked points on its boundary. In particular, we interpret the dimensions of extension groups of degree 1 between indecomposable objects in terms of negative geometric intersection numbers between corresponding arcs, giving a geometric interpretation of the description of an extension group in the cluster category of a tube as a symmetrized version of the extension group in the tube. We show that a similar result holds for finite dimensional representations of the linearly oriented quiver of type A-double-infinity.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. Discussion of maximal rigid objects and triangulations at end of Section 3. Minor correction

Scratching the scale labyrinth

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to computer-aided microtonal improvisation by combining methods for (1) interactive scale navigation, (2) real-time manipulation of musical patterns and (3) dynamical timbre adaption in solidarity with the respective scales. On the basis of the theory of well-formed scales we offer a visualization of the underlying combinatorial ramifications in terms of a scale labyrinth. This involves the selection of generic well-formed scales on a binary tree (based on the Stern-Brocot tree) as well as the choice of specific tunings through the specification of the sizes of a period (pseudo-octave) and a generator (pseudo-fifth), whose limits are constrained by the actual position on the tree. We also introduce a method to enable transformations among the modes of a chosen scale (generalized and refined “diatonic” and “chromatic” transpositions). To actually explore the scales and modes through the shaping and transformation of rhythmically and melodically interesting tone patterns, we propose a playing technique called Fourier Scratching. It is based on the manipulation of the “spectra” (DFT) of playing gestures on a sphere. The coordinates of these gestures affect score and performance parameters such as scale degree, loudness, and timbre. Finally, we discuss a technique to dynamically match the timbre to the selected scale tuning

Theoretical model for ultracold molecule formation via adaptive feedback control

We investigate pump-dump photoassociation of ultracold molecules with amplitude- and phase-modulated femtosecond laser pulses. For this purpose a perturbative model for the light-matter interaction is developed and combined with a genetic algorithm for adaptive feedback control of the laser pulse shapes. The model is applied to the formation of 85Rb2 molecules in a magneto-optical trap. We find for optimized pulse shapes an improvement for the formation of ground state molecules by more than a factor of 10 compared to unshaped pulses at the same pump-dump delay time, and by 40% compared to unshaped pulses at the respective optimal pump-dump delay time. Since our model yields directly the spectral amplitudes and phases of the optimized pulses, the results are directly applicable in pulse shaping experiments