Overlooked impacts and challenges of the new European discard ban

Discards are the portion of animal and plant material in the catch that is dumped back at sea. The Common Fisheries Policy plan proposed by the European Commission for 2014-2020 presents a controversial goal: to enforce the landing of fishing discards as a measure to encourage their reduction. This historical and political decision will shape the future of the fishing exploitation in European Seas. Discards generated by European fleets are not negligible, and its reduction is an ecological, socioeconomical and moral imperative. However, it must be achieved through the reduction in discards at source and the promotion of selective and non-destructive gears. We argue it is doubtful that this discard ban will result in an effective reduction of discards. The proposed measure may, in fact, negatively affect ecosystems at all levels of biological hierarchy by disregarding the Ecosystem-Based Approach to Fisheries and the Precautionary Principle. It could negatively impact several species by increasing fishing mortality, also commercial species if discards are not accounted in the total allowable catch. Communities preying on discards will likely be affected. The role discards currently play in the energy turnover of current ecosystems will be modified and should be fully evaluated. The landing of discards will likely generate new markets of fishmeal due to the growing demands for marine living resources. The ban will require substantial public investment to deal with technical problems on board and to control and enforce. Therefore, this measure should be only implemented after rigorous scientific and technical studies have been developed

A031 Développement d’un peptido-mimétique de la glycorpotein VI plaquettaire comme outil d’imagerie de la fibrose

ObjectifLa glycoprotéine VI est le récepteur d’activation des plaquettes par les collagènes de type I et de type III. Nous avons émis l’hypothèse que nous pourrions développer une sonde spécifique du collagène basée sur la spécificité de GPVI et que cette sonde permettrait de visualiser la fibrose in vivo par une méthode non invasive.MéthodesUn anticorps bloquant la liaison de GPVI au collagène a été utilisé pour cribler une banque peptidique permettant d’identifier un motif peptidique cyclique. La capacité du peptide à mimer la GPVI a été analysée par des études de liaison et de compétition en phase solide. La liaison au collagène tissulaire a été analysée par histochimie. L’imagerie in vivo a été réalisée par injection du peptide-marqué au Tc-99m dans un modèle de fibrose cicatricielle sur infarctus du myocarde chez le rat, scintigraphie et autoradiographieRésultatsLe peptide, nommé collagelin, se lie de manière spécifique à l’anticorps anti GPVI 9O12.2 et aux collagènes I et III in vitro et la liaison est inhibée par GPVI indiquant que le peptide mime GPVI. Cependant le collagelin n’inhibe pas l’agrégation des plaquettes induite par le collagène. Les études d’histochimie montrent que le collagelin se lie au collagène tissulaire sur coupe d’aorte et de queue de rat indiquant que le collagelin se comporte comme un traceur du collagène. Dans le modèle d’infarctus cicatriciel, une accumulation du collagelin radiomarqué est observée dans la zone cardiaque par scintigraphie planaire et tomographie chez les animaux avec MI mais pas chez les animaux contrôles ni avec un peptide contrôle. L’accumulation du traceur dans les zones de fibrose a été mise en évidence ex vivo par superposition des images d’autoradiographies et d’histologie sur coupes congelées.ConclusionNous avons produit un peptide qui mime en partie le site de liaison de GPVI au collagène. Ce peptide se comporte comme un traceur spécifique du collagène in vitro et in vivo. Nous proposons que ce traceur pourrait être utile pour le diagnostic et le suivi évolutif de la fibrose dans un grand nombre de pathologies

A Study of the Residual 39Ar Content in Argon from Underground Sources

The discovery of argon from underground sources with significantly less 39Ar than atmospheric argon was an important step in the development of direct-detection dark matter experiments using argon as the active target. We report on the design and operation of a low background detector with a single phase liquid argon target that was built to study the 39Ar content of the underground argon. Underground argon from the Kinder Morgan CO2 plant in Cortez, Colorado was determined to have less than 0.65% of the 39Ar activity in atmospheric argon.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figure

Opening a new window to other worlds with spectropolarimetry

A high level of diversity has already been observed among the planets of our own Solar System. As such, one expects extrasolar planets to present a wide range of distinctive features, therefore the characterisation of Earth- and super Earth-like planets is becoming of key importance in scientific research. The SEARCH (Spectropolarimetric Exoplanet AtmospheRe CHaracerisation) mission proposal of this paper represents one possible approach to realising these objectives. The mission goals of SEARCH include the detailed characterisation of a wide variety of exoplanets, ranging from terrestrial planets to gas giants. More specifically, SEARCH will determine atmospheric properties such as cloud coverage, surface pressure and atmospheric composition, and may also be capable of identifying basic surface features. To resolve a planet with a semi major axis of down to 1.4AU and 30pc distant SEARCH will have a mirror system consisting of two segments, with elliptical rim, cut out of a parabolic mirror. This will yield an effective diameter of 9 meters along one axis. A phase mask coronagraph along with an integral spectrograph will be used to overcome the contrast ratio of star to planet light. Such a mission would provide invaluable data on the diversity present in extrasolar planetary systems and much more could be learned from the similarities and differences compared to our own Solar System. This would allow our theories of planetary formation, atmospheric accretion and evolution to be tested, and our understanding of regions such as the outer limit of the Habitable Zone to be further improved.Comment: 23 pages, accepted for publication in Experimental Astronom

CLT in Functional Linear Regression Models

International audienceWe propose in this work to derive a CLT in the functional linear regression model to get confidence sets for prediction based on functional linear regression. The main difficulty is due to the fact that estimation of the functional parameter leads to a kind of ill-posed inverse problem. We consider estimators that belong to a large class of regularizing methods and we first show that, contrary to the multivariate case, it is not possible to state a CLT in the topology of the considered functional space. However, we show that we can get a CLT for the weak topology under mild hypotheses and in particular without assuming any strong assumptions on the decay of the eigenvalues of the covariance operator. Rates of convergence depend on the smoothness of the functional coefficient and on the point in which the prediction is made