La multifonctionnalité de l'agriculture : un concept d'avenir ?

International audienceLa multifonctionnalité de l'agriculture : un concept d'avenir ? Etude par Luc Bodiguel chargé de recherche, UMR CNRS 3128, Droit et changement social (DCS)chargé d'enseignement à la faculté de droit de Nantes et d'Angers Accès au sommaire Comment comprendre aujourd'hui le concept de multifonctionnalité de l'agriculture ? Les réformes française et communautaire sont-elles venues lui donner un véritable contenu juridique ? Une autre portée politique ? Ou, au contraire, la multifonctionnalité de l'agriculture est-elle restée au stade théorique, au concept, voire, at -elle été dépassée par d'autres concepts plus influents, plus opérationnels ou plus à la mode ? Enfin, à quoi peut bien encore servir le concept de multifonctionnalité de l'agriculture d'un point de vue politique et juridique ? Afin de tenter de répondre à ces questions, Luc Bodiguel nous propose d'observer tout d'abord les fondements et règles de droit qui peuvent aujourd'hui être liés au concept de multifonctionnalité pour ensuite s'interroger sur l'avenir du concept au vu du droit français, communautaire et de l'organisation mondiale du commerce

Prompt γ radiation measured with a Nal scintillation detector: a beam monitor for neutron scattering instruments which needs no space in the beam

We investigate the possibility of using the prompt γ rays emitted by aluminum windows in order to monitor the neutron flux of the beam. A Nal scintillation detector is used to detect the prompt γ rays. No additional material apart from the unavoidable Al windows along the flight path is placed in the beam. The performance of the monitor is compared to that of a standard BF3-monitor placed in the beam. Influences of a magnetic field on the photomultiplier of the Nal monitor is discussed, as well as the influence of activation gammas. At an instrument using a beam chopper the time behaviour is discussed

Acceleration of membrane dynamics adjacent to a wall

The dynamics of an induced lamellar microemulsion adjacent to a planar hydrophilic surface (45 ns) were found to be three times faster compared to the bicontinuous bulk structure (133 ns). For these investigations the grazing incidence technique for neutron spin echo spectroscopy has been developed to resolve the depth dependent near surface dynamics. The observation is rationalized in terms of membrane hydrodynamics, where the flow fields reflected by the surface lead to a crossover from classical to confined fluctuations, and faster dynamics on large length scales (also known as "lubrication") are predicted

Structure and dynamics of balanced supercritical CO2-microemulsions

Balanced scCO(2)-microemulsions contain equal volumes of water and CO2 and are a novel class of microemulsions of substantial interest for both fundamental research and technical applications. One existing feature of these systems is that the solvent quality of scCO(2), and hence the overall microemulsion properties, is tuned simply by adjusting pressure, which is not possible with "classical" microemulsions containing oil instead of CO2. Motivated by this, we systematically investigated the phase behavior, the microstructure, and the dynamics of balanced microemulsion systems of the type H2O-CO2-Zonyl FSO 100/Zonyl FSN 100. In systematic phase behavior studies, we found that upon increasing pressure, CO2 and water are more efficiently solubilized. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) experiments were conducted in order to determine the topology and the length scales of the underlying microstructure. The results obtained strongly suggest the existence of bicontinuously structured microemulsions with an adjustable characteristic length scale of up to 330 angstrom. From a quantitative analysis of the SANS data, we found that at a fixed microemulsion composition the stiffness of the surfactant membrane is increased solely by increasing the pressure, whereby the renormalization corrected (i.e. bare) bending rigidity kappa(0), SANS rises from kappa(0,SANS) 0.88 k(B)T at 200 bar to 0.93 k(B)T at 300 bar. These findings were confirmed with high pressure neutron spin echo experiments

Dynamic properties of microemulsions modified with homopolymers and diplock copolymers: The determination of bending moduli and renormalization effects

The properties of bicontinuous microemulsions, consisting of water, oil, and a surfactant, can be modified by the addition of diblock copolymers (boosting effect) and homopolymers (inverse boosting effect) or a combination of both. Here, the influence of the addition of homopolymers (PEP(X) and PEO(X), X=5k or 10k molecular weight) on the dynamics of the surfactant layer is studied with neutron spin echo spectroscopy (NSE). Combining the results with the previous findings for diblock copolymers allows for a better separation of viscosity and bending modulus effects. With the addition of homopolymers, a significant increase of the relaxation rate compared to the pure microemulsion has been observed. The influence on the bending rigidity kappa is measured with NSE experiments. Homopolymer addition reduces kappa by up to Deltakappa approximately -0.5k(B)T, whereas the diblock copolymer yields an increase of kappa by approximately 0.3k(B)T. Comparison of the bending moduli that are obtained by analysis of the dynamics to those obtained from small angle neutron scattering (SANS) sheds light on the different renormalization length scales for NSE and SANS. Variation of the surfactant concentration at otherwise constant conditions of homopolymer or diblock-copolymer concentration shows that NSE results are leading to the pure bending rigidity, while the renormalized one is measured with SANS

Multi-stage freezing of HEUR polymer networks with magnetite nanoparticles

We observe a change in the segmental dynamics of hydrogels based on hydrophobically modified ethoxylated urethanes (HEUR) when hydrophobic magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) are embedded in the hydrogels. The dynamics of the nanocomposite hydrogels is investigated using dielectric relaxation spectroscopy (DRS) and neutron spin echo (NSE) spectroscopy. The magnetic nanoparticles within the hydrophobic domains of the HEUR polymer network increase the size of these domains and their distance. The size increase leads to a dilution of the polymers close to the hydrophobic domain, allowing higher mobility of the smallest polymer blobs close to the “center”. This is reflected in the decrease of the activation energy of the β-process detected in the DRS data. The increase in distance leads to an increase of the size of the largest hydrophilic polymer blobs. Therefore, the segmental dynamics of the largest blobs is slowed down. At short time scales, i.e. 10−9 s < τ < 10−3 s, the suppression of the segmental dynamics is reflected in the α-relaxation processes detected in the DRS data and in the decrease of the relaxation rate Γ of the segmental motion in the NSE data with increasing concentration of magnetic nanoparticles. The stepwise (multi-stage) freezing of the small blobs is only visible for the pure hydrogel at low temperatures. On the other hand, the glass transition temperature (Tg) decreases upon increasing the MNP loading, indicating an acceleration of the segmental dynamics at long time scales (τ ∼ 100 s). Therefore, it would be possible to tune the Tg of the hydrogels by varying the MNP concentration. The contribution of the static inhomogeneities to the total scattering function Sst(q) is extracted from the NSE data, revealing a more ordered gel structure than the one giving rise to the total scattering function S(q), with a relaxed correlation length ξNSE = (43 ± 5) Å which is larger than the fluctuating correlation length from a static investigation ξSANS = (17.2 ± 0.3) Å

Structure and dynamics of nanoemulsions: Insights from combining dynamic and static neutron scattering

Despite their lack of thermodynamical stability, nanoemulsions can show a remarkable degree of kinetic stability. Among the various different preparation methods the phase-inversion concentration method is particularly interesting as it occurs spontaneously. Here we investigate such a system composed of a surfactant, cosurfactant, and oil that upon dilution with water forms long time metastable oil-in-water nanoemulsion droplets. The dynamics of the amphiphilic monolayers and its elastic properties is important for their stability and therefore the monolayer dynamics have been investigated by neutron spin echo (NSE). Despite the difficulties arising from the inherently polydisperse nature and the large number of different components necessarily contained in commercial nanoemulsion formulations, information concerning the membrane rigidity was extracted from the combination of small angle neutron scattering and NSE and several different formulations are compared. These results show that small amounts of different admixed ionic surfactants can modify the monolayer rigidity substantially and similarly effects of surface bound polyelectrolytes have been evaluated

Polymer enrichment decelerates surfactant membranes near interfaces

Close to a planar surface, lamellar structures are imposed upon otherwise bulk bicontinuous microemulsions. Thermally induced membrane undulations are modified by the presence of the rigid interface. While it has been shown that a pure membrane's dynamics are accelerated close to the interface, we observed nearly unchanged relaxation rates for membranes spiked with large amphiphilic diblock copolymers. An increase of the polymer concentration by a factor of 2–3 for the first and second surfactant membrane layers was observed. We interpret the reduced relaxation times as the result of an interplay between the bending rigidity and the characteristic distance of the first surfactant membrane to the rigid interface, which causes the hydrodynamic and steric interface effects described in Seifert's theory. The influence of these effects on decorated membranes yields a reduction of the frequencies and an amplification of the amplitudes of long-wavelength undulations, which are in accordance to our experimental finding

Grazing incidence neutron spin echo spectroscopy: instrumentation aspects and scientific opportunities

Grazing Incidence Neutron Spin Echo Spectroscopy (GINSES) opens new possibilities for observing the thermally driven dynamics of macromolecules close to a rigid interface. The information about the dynamics can be retrieved as a function of scattering depth of the evanescent neutron wave, on the length scale in the range of some 10-100 nm. Using a classical neutron spin echo spectrometer with a laterally collimated beam, dynamics can be measured in grazing incidence geometry. We show examples of how the interface modifies the dynamics of microemulsions, membranes and microgels. Instrumental details and possible improvements for this technique will be presented. The key issue is the low intensity for dynamics measurements with an evanescent neutron wave. Conceptual questions how a specialised instrument could improve the experimental technique will be discussed

Effect of nanoconfinement on polymer dynamics: Surface layers and interphases

We present neutron spin echo experiments that address the much debated topic of dynamic phenomena in polymer melts that are induced by interacting with a confining surface. We find an anchored surface layer that internally is highly mobile and not glassy as heavily promoted in the literature. The polymer dynamics in confinement is, rather, determined by two phases, one fully equal to the bulk polymer and another that is partly anchored at the surface. By strong topological interaction, this phase confines further chains with no direct contact to the surface. These form the often invoked interphase, where the full chain relaxation is impeded through the interaction with the anchored chains.The support of the DFG Priority Program SPP1369 Polymer-Solid Contacts: Interfaces and Interphases is gratefully acknowledged. A. A. and J. C. acknowledge financial support from Projects No. MAT2007-63681 and No. IT-436-07 (G.V.). The research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source was sponsored by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy.Peer Reviewe