Cultivating diversity and food quality. Proceedings of Diversifood EU Forum, Brussels, 11 April 2018

To tackle this issue, Diversifood team organised a forum with policy makers and stakeholders on the 11th of April 2018, in Brussels. Diversifood’s aim is to share results and key lessons including new approaches for the management of cultivated biodiversity, for plant breeding for sustainable farming systems, and new relationships among actors of food systems. In the afternoon, there was time for discussion, knowledge sharing, collecting feedback and extending current policies to include cultivating diversity and food quality (for FP9, CAP 2020, The outputs of this workshop will feed Diversifood’s final recommendations. The forum was kindly hosted by the European Committee of the Regions (Rue Belliard/Belliardstraat 101, 1040 Brussels)

Inorganic carbon time series at Ocean Weather Station M in the Norwegian Sea

International audienceDissolved inorganic carbon (CT) has been collected at Ocean Weather Station M (OWSM) in the Norwegian Sea since 2001. Seasonal variations in CT are confined to the upper 50 m, where the biology is active, and below this layer no clear seasonal signal is seen. From winter to summer the surface CT concentration typical drops from 2140 to about 2040 ?mol kg?1, while a deep water CT concentration of about 2163 ?mol kg?1 is measured throughout the year. Observations show an annual increase in salinity normalized carbon concentration (nCT) of 1.3±0.7 ?mol kg?1 in the surface layer, which is equivalent to a pCO2 increase of 2.6±1.2 ?atm yr?1, i.e. larger than the atmospheric increase in this area. Observations also show an annual increase in the deep water nCT of 0.57± 0.24 ?mol kg?1, of which about a tenth is due to inflow of old Arctic water with larger amounts of remineralised matter. The remaining part has an anthropogenic origin and sources for this might be Greenland Sea surface water, Iceland Sea surface water, and/or recirculated Atlantic Water. By using an extended multi linear regression method (eMLR) it is verified that anthropogenic carbon has entered the whole water column at OWSM

Reversible Diffusion-Limited Reactions: "Chemical Equilibrium" State and the Law of Mass Action Revisited

The validity of two fundamental concepts of classical chemical kinetics - the notion of "Chemical Equilibrium" and the "Law of Mass Action" - are re-examined for reversible \textit{diffusion-limited} reactions (DLR), as exemplified here by association/dissociation $A+A \rightleftharpoons B$ reactions. We consider a general model of long-ranged reactions, such that any pair of $A$ particles, separated by distance $\mu$, may react with probability $\omega_+(\mu)$, and any $B$ may dissociate with probability $\omega_-(\lambda)$ into a geminate pair of $A$s separated by distance $\lambda$. Within an exact analytical approach, we show that the asymptotic state attained by reversible DLR at $t = \infty$ is generally \textit{not a true thermodynamic equilibrium}, but rather a non-equilibrium steady-state, and that the Law of Mass Action is invalid. The classical picture holds \text{only} in physically unrealistic case when $\omega_+(\mu) \equiv \omega_-(\mu)$ for any value of $\mu$.Comment: 4 page

Exponential Mixing for a Stochastic PDE Driven by Degenerate Noise

We study stochastic partial differential equations of the reaction-diffusion type. We show that, even if the forcing is very degenerate (i.e. has not full rank), one has exponential convergence towards the invariant measure. The convergence takes place in the topology induced by a weighted variation norm and uses a kind of (uniform) Doeblin condition.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Descriptive analysis of copy number variation regions in a population of dairy Gyr cattle.

The aim of this work was to investigate, based on a high density BovineHD SNP array, the abundance and distributions of CNVs and CNVR in a Gyr cattle population from Brazil. Genotype data of representative bulls were recorded, totaling 476 Gyr animals. For CNV identification was used the PennCNV software and the CNVRs were determined by the CNVRuler software. A total of 26,672 CNVs were found, beingon average 62 CNV per animal. Also, 1,898 CNVRs were detected on the autosomal chromosomes. Also, 1,898 CNVRs were detected on the autosomal chromosomes with 96% of these between 1.1 Kb to 100 Kb. The Ensembl's VEP tool, using the CNVRs information as input, found 913 coding regions, suggesting that exon regions were duplicated. In summary, the results help to better understand the Gyr genome and suggest that CNVRs might have some relationship with production traits.WCGALP 2014

Bubble concentration on spheres for supercritical elliptic problems

We consider the supercritical Lane-Emden problem (P_\eps)\qquad -\Delta v= |v|^{p_\eps-1} v \ \hbox{in}\ \mathcal{A} ,\quad u=0\ \hbox{on}\ \partial\mathcal{A} where $\mathcal A$ is an annulus in \rr^{2m}, $m\ge2$ and p_\eps={(m+1)+2\over(m+1)-2}-\eps, \eps>0. We prove the existence of positive and sign changing solutions of (P_\eps) concentrating and blowing-up, as \eps\to0, on $(m-1)-$dimensional spheres. Using a reduction method (see Ruf-Srikanth (2010) J. Eur. Math. Soc. and Pacella-Srikanth (2012) arXiv:1210.0782)we transform problem (P_\eps) into a nonhomogeneous problem in an annulus \mathcal D\subset \rr^{m+1} which can be solved by a Ljapunov-Schmidt finite dimensional reduction

Descriptive analysis of copy number variation regions in a population of dairy Gyr cattle.

The aim of this work was to investigate, based on a high density BovineHD SNP array, the abundance and distributions of CNVs and CNVR in a Gyr cattle population from Brazil. Genotype data of representative bulls were recorded, totaling 476 Gyr animals. For CNV identification was used the PennCNV software and the CNVRs were determined by the CNVRuler software. A total of 26,672 CNVs were found, beingon average 62 CNV per animal. Also, 1,898 CNVRs were detected on the autosomal chromosomes. Also, 1,898 CNVRs were detected on the autosomal chromosomes with 96% of these between 1.1 Kb to 100 Kb. The Ensembl's VEP tool, using the CNVRs information as input, found 913 coding regions, suggesting that exon regions were duplicated. In summary, the results help to better understand the Gyr genome and suggest that CNVRs might have some relationship with production traits

A measure on the set of compact Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker models

Compact, flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) models have recently regained interest as a good fit to the observed cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations. However, it is generally thought that a globally, exactly-flat FLRW model is theoretically improbable. Here, in order to obtain a probability space on the set F of compact, comoving, 3-spatial sections of FLRW models, a physically motivated hypothesis is proposed, using the density parameter Omega as a derived rather than fundamental parameter. We assume that the processes that select the 3-manifold also select a global mass-energy and a Hubble parameter. The inferred range in Omega consists of a single real value for any 3-manifold. Thus, the obvious measure over F is the discrete measure. Hence, if the global mass-energy and Hubble parameter are a function of 3-manifold choice among compact FLRW models, then probability spaces parametrised by Omega do not, in general, give a zero probability of a flat model. Alternatively, parametrisation by the injectivity radius r_inj ("size") suggests the Lebesgue measure. In this case, the probability space over the injectivity radius implies that flat models occur almost surely (a.s.), in the sense of probability theory, and non-flat models a.s. do not occur.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures; v2: minor language improvements; v3: generalisation: m, H functions of