Cereal cultivars innovations adapted to organic production: A new challenge

To face and better manage the development of new varieties in a society calling for more and more transparency, the French National Research Institute (INRA) has get involved in an ambitious reflexive program about the question of "impacts, acceptability and management of varietal innovations" engaging all its thematic research departments. New collaboration between social and technical sciences are promoted to produce, from exemplary case studies, generic concepts and tools to assess the different types of impact of a new variety. Breeding and management of new genetic materials adapted to organic farming conditions constitute an appropriate theme to develop such an integrated process. A pluridisciplinary research team, associating plant breeders, soil scientists, ecologists, agronomists, economists, sociologists, in close collaboration with professionals , will try to assess both the agroenvironmental and socioeconomic impacts of changes, by studying current dynamics around original durum wheat and rice cultivars adapted to organic production in different territories

An integrated study of the development of organic rice cultivation in the Camargue (France)-

In the Camargue, rice and durum wheat are associated in rotations that have an ambivalent ecological impact: on the one hand, these two crops contribute to the preservation of the surrounding ecosystem, while on the other hand, when cropped intensively, they can threaten the ecological equilibrium of this protected area. In this context, organic agriculture would seem to be an alternative adopted by a certain number of producers and processors. However, the pioneers of this practice encounter numerous problems, both agronomic and economic. The study presented here aims: to construct a pluridisciplinary approach to analyse the conditions of the development of organic cereal cultivation in the Camargue: to identify the principal factors that limit the development of this new practice: to produce knowledge useful in helping ricegrowers put into practice organic cropping systems

La construction d’une démarche interdisciplinaire à partir de l’émergence de la céréaliculture biologique en Camargue: le projet CEBIOCA

La céréaliculture biologique apparait comme une alternative aux modes de production conventionnels, pour un nombre croissant d'agriculteurs de Camargue. Le programme CEBIOCA cherche à appuyer le développement de ce prototype d'agriculture en favorisant l'élaboration de pratiques agricoles pertinentes, la production de matériel végétal adapté et la mesure des impacts de la conversion à l'AB. Un groupe de travail interdisciplinaire, associant génétique, agronomie, malherbologie, écologie et sociologie s'est constitué à l'occasion de la réponse à l'appel d'offre CIAB et au cours de la première phase de fonctionnemet qui est présenté ici. Malgré certaines lacunes ou faiblesses dans la construction interdiciplinaire, les résultats font entrevoir des perspectives prometteuses,dans un contexte plus favorable, à condition que les partenariats scientifiques et professionnles soient renforcés

L'acacia au Sénégal

L'intérêt agronomique et écologique des rhizobiums repose essentiellement sur leurs propriétés symbiotiques. Il est donc capital de pouvoir apprécier la diversité des souches sur la base de leur pouvoir de nodulation. L'objectif de ce travail est de proposer une nouvelle approche, alternative aux tests de nodulation, permettant de classer les souches en fonction de leur spécificité symbiotique. Au cours des premières étapes de l'interaction rhizobium-légumineuses, les rhizobiums excrètent des molécules signal, appelées facteurs Nod, qui jouent un rôle déterminant dans l'infection et la nodulation des plantes-hôtes. Leur utilisation potentielle comme marqueur de la spécificité de nodulation a été évaluée à partir de l'étude d'une collection de souches isolées d'#Acacia et de #Sesbania au Sénégal. L'analyse chromatographique des facteurs Nod de ces souches a montré que les profils chromatographiques sont parfaitement corrélés à la fois à la structure chimique des facteurs Nod et à la spécificité d'hôte des souches, et plus particulièrement à la plante d'isolement. Une telle méthode de caractérisation globale des facteurs Nod pourrait donc être utilisée pour la caractérisation symbiotique des rhizobiums, en particulier pour l'étude taxonomique, l'étude de la biodiversité des souches ou pour le contrôle des inoculums. (Résumé d'auteur

Designing capacity-building in e-learning expertise: Challenges and strategies

This research study looks at how organizations in developing countries perceive the challenge of building capacity in e-learning expertise. Data was collected on six such organizations, and a range of perceived rationales and constraints were identified. The paper hypothesizes a four-part framework to define the e-learning capacity gaps that these circumstances appear to represent: the 'instructional design capacity gap', the 'production capacity gap', the 'tutorial capacity gap' and the 'community building gap'. The framework is used to re-examine the data to explore the ways in which the organizations' e-learning activities might constitute strategic responses to the hypothesized capacity gaps

Smeared phase transition in a three-dimensional Ising model with planar defects: Monte-Carlo simulations

We present results of large-scale Monte Carlo simulations for a three-dimensional Ising model with short range interactions and planar defects, i.e., disorder perfectly correlated in two dimensions. We show that the phase transition in this system is smeared, i.e., there is no single critical temperature, but different parts of the system order at different temperatures. This is caused by effects similar to but stronger than Griffiths phenomena. In an infinite-size sample there is an exponentially small but finite probability to find an arbitrary large region devoid of impurities. Such a rare region can develop true long-range order while the bulk system is still in the disordered phase. We compute the thermodynamic magnetization and its finite-size effects, the local magnetization, and the probability distribution of the ordering temperatures for different samples. Our Monte-Carlo results are in good agreement with a recent theory based on extremal statistics.Comment: 9 pages, 6 eps figures, final version as publishe

SND@LHC: The Scattering and Neutrino Detector at the LHC

SND@LHC is a compact and stand-alone experiment designed to perform measurements with neutrinos produced at the LHC in the pseudo-rapidity region of ${7.2 < \eta < 8.4}$. The experiment is located 480 m downstream of the ATLAS interaction point, in the TI18 tunnel. The detector is composed of a hybrid system based on an 830 kg target made of tungsten plates, interleaved with emulsion and electronic trackers, also acting as an electromagnetic calorimeter, and followed by a hadronic calorimeter and a muon identification system. The detector is able to distinguish interactions of all three neutrino flavours, which allows probing the physics of heavy flavour production at the LHC in the very forward region. This region is of particular interest for future circular colliders and for very high energy astrophysical neutrino experiments. The detector is also able to search for the scattering of Feebly Interacting Particles. In its first phase, the detector will operate throughout LHC Run 3 and collect a total of 250 $\text{fb}^{-1}$

Amyloid and tau pathology associations with personality traits, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and cognitive lifestyle in the preclinical phases of sporadic and autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease

Background Major prevention trials for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are now focusing on multidomain lifestyle interventions. However, the exact combination of behavioral factors related to AD pathology remains unclear. In 2 cohorts of cognitively unimpaired individuals at risk of AD, we examined which combinations of personality traits, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and cognitive lifestyle (years of education or lifetime cognitive activity) related to the pathological hallmarks of AD, amyloid-β, and tau deposits. Methods A total of 115 older adults with a parental or multiple-sibling family history of sporadic AD (PREVENT-AD [PRe-symptomatic EValuation of Experimental or Novel Treatments for AD] cohort) underwent amyloid and tau positron emission tomography and answered several questionnaires related to behavioral attributes. Separately, we studied 117 mutation carriers from the DIAN (Dominant Inherited Alzheimer Network) study group cohort with amyloid positron emission tomography and behavioral data. Using partial least squares analysis, we identified latent variables relating amyloid or tau pathology with combinations of personality traits, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and cognitive lifestyle. Results In PREVENT-AD, lower neuroticism, neuropsychiatric burden, and higher education were associated with less amyloid deposition (p = .014). Lower neuroticism and neuropsychiatric features, along with higher measures of openness and extraversion, were related to less tau deposition (p = .006). In DIAN, lower neuropsychiatric burden and higher education were also associated with less amyloid (p = .005). The combination of these factors accounted for up to 14% of AD pathology. Conclusions In the preclinical phase of both sporadic and autosomal dominant AD, multiple behavioral features were associated with AD pathology. These results may suggest potential pathways by which multidomain interventions might help delay AD onset or progression

Functional mechanisms underlying pleiotropic risk alleles at the 19p13.1 breast-ovarian cancer susceptibility locus

A locus at 19p13 is associated with breast cancer (BC) and ovarian cancer (OC) risk. Here we analyse 438 SNPs in this region in 46,451 BC and 15,438 OC cases, 15,252 BRCA1 mutation carriers and 73,444 controls and identify 13 candidate causal SNPs associated with serous OC (P=9.2 × 10-20), ER-negative BC (P=1.1 × 10-13), BRCA1-associated BC (P=7.7 × 10-16) and triple negative BC (P-diff=2 × 10-5). Genotype-gene expression associations are identified for candidate target genes ANKLE1 (P=2 × 10-3) and ABHD8 (P<2 × 10-3). Chromosome conformation capture identifies interactions between four candidate SNPs and ABHD8, and luciferase assays indicate six risk alleles increased transactivation of the ADHD8 promoter. Targeted deletion of a region containing risk SNP rs56069439 in a putative enhancer induces ANKLE1 downregulation; and mRNA stability assays indicate functional effects for an ANKLE1 3′-UTR SNP. Altogether, these data suggest that multiple SNPs at 19p13 regulate ABHD8 and perhaps ANKLE1 expression, and indicate common mechanisms underlying breast and ovarian cancer risk