Organic Farming Training and needs of stakeholders (Teachers and advisers); Status and proposals

The work carried out made it possible to better understand the devices of training, the knowledge of the training and development stakeholders, their expectations in the domainof organic farming. If the general principles and techniques of organic farming are fairly well known, their variation in practice is not easily normative. The courses, primarily based on knowledge transfer, are not very effective and the surveyed actors highlighted the value of networks and non-formal trainings. Proposals for changing devices are presented being based on such an innovative action in the Loire Valley with teachers and trainers. The issue of the integration of e-learning in these devices is presented with its potentialsand limits. The issue of educational resources concerning their format, their contents as the media used and their accessibility is addressed with proposals based on Swiss and the Loire Valley achievements

References for organic farming systems: proposal for an innovative analytical frame

The RefAB project, associating about twenty people from research, training and development produced methodological framework of production of references at the level of the agricultural systems, built for organic farming but relevant to any type of agriculture. It is thus proposed to analyze the agricultural systems (in their economic, social and environmental performances) via five fundamental principles and properties in organic farming: resilience, autonomy, diversity, equity and ecology (referring to IFOAM principles). Various criteria, evaluated by indicators, make it possible to characterize the organic agricultural systems. If certain indicators are classically used in production of references, others are more innovative. The potential of the approach relies in the global approach that is proposed at the level of the farm

Scale relativity and fractal space-time: theory and applications

In the first part of this contribution, we review the development of the theory of scale relativity and its geometric framework constructed in terms of a fractal and nondifferentiable continuous space-time. This theory leads (i) to a generalization of possible physically relevant fractal laws, written as partial differential equation acting in the space of scales, and (ii) to a new geometric foundation of quantum mechanics and gauge field theories and their possible generalisations. In the second part, we discuss some examples of application of the theory to various sciences, in particular in cases when the theoretical predictions have been validated by new or updated observational and experimental data. This includes predictions in physics and cosmology (value of the QCD coupling and of the cosmological constant), to astrophysics and gravitational structure formation (distances of extrasolar planets to their stars, of Kuiper belt objects, value of solar and solar-like star cycles), to sciences of life (log-periodic law for species punctuated evolution, human development and society evolution), to Earth sciences (log-periodic deceleration of the rate of California earthquakes and of Sichuan earthquake replicas, critical law for the arctic sea ice extent) and tentative applications to system biology.Comment: 63 pages, 14 figures. In : First International Conference on the Evolution and Development of the Universe,8th - 9th October 2008, Paris, Franc

Canonical Melnikov theory for diffeomorphisms

We study perturbations of diffeomorphisms that have a saddle connection between a pair of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. We develop a first-order deformation calculus for invariant manifolds and show that a generalized Melnikov function or Melnikov displacement can be written in a canonical way. This function is defined to be a section of the normal bundle of the saddle connection. We show how our definition reproduces the classical methods of Poincar\'{e} and Melnikov and specializes to methods previously used for exact symplectic and volume-preserving maps. We use the method to detect the transverse intersection of stable and unstable manifolds and relate this intersection to the set of zeros of the Melnikov displacement.Comment: laTeX, 31 pages, 3 figure

Hahn's Symmetric Quantum Variational Calculus

We introduce and develop the Hahn symmetric quantum calculus with applications to the calculus of variations. Namely, we obtain a necessary optimality condition of Euler-Lagrange type and a sufficient optimality condition for variational problems within the context of Hahn's symmetric calculus. Moreover, we show the effectiveness of Leitmann's direct method when applied to Hahn's symmetric variational calculus. Illustrative examples are provided.Comment: This is a preprint of a paper whose final and definite form will appear in the international journal Numerical Algebra, Control and Optimization (NACO). Paper accepted for publication 06-Sept-201

In vitro inhibition of human sarcoma cells' invasive ability by bis(5-amidino-2-benzimidazolyl)methane--a novel esteroprotease inhibitor.

Bis(5-amidino-2-benzimidazolyl)methane (BABIM) is a synthetic aromatic amidine compound which has a number of important biochemical effects, including inhibition of a family of esteroproteases (trypsin, urokinase, plasmin) previously linked to the complex process of tumor invasion. Previous work has suggested that exogenous natural protease inhibitors can block invasion of tumor cells across basement membranes (BM) in vitro. The authors studied the effect of BABIM on the human cell line HT-1080 with the use of a quantitative in vitro amnion invasion assay system. They have verified the ability of these cells to grow in nude mice and metastasize via the lymphatics or blood vessels on the basis of the route of administration of the inoculum. Cells which were able to actively cross the entire BM were trapped on filters and counted by both brightfield microscopy and by beta scintillation counting of cells whose DNA was labeled with tritiated thymidine. In agreement with either counting technique, BABIM, at a concentration of 10(-4) M, significantly inhibited invasion (P less than 0.005) over the 7-day course of the experiments. Under these conditions, the inhibitor was nontoxic and did not alter the attachment of the cells to the amniotic membrane. Furthermore, a highly significant inhibition of invasion (P less than 0.001) was also demonstrated across a variation in molar concentration of BABIM of more than 2 orders of magnitude. Most remarkably, cells were initially inhibited in their ability to invade in the presence of between 10(-9) and 10(-3) M BABIM. Measurement of Type IV specific collagenase in media from these cells shows a significant inhibition of activity in the presence of BABIM. These results suggest two, not necessarily exclusive, alternative interpretations: first, that inhibition of the proteolytic steps along the pathway of activation of basement membrane degrading enzymes results in inhibition of invasion; second, that arginine directed esteroproteases may work in concert with cellular collagenolytic metalloproteinases in the process of invasion by human tumor cells through native matrix barriers

Multiple (inverse) binomial sums of arbitrary weight and depth and the all-order epsilon-expansion of generalized hypergeometric functions with one half-integer value of parameter

We continue the study of the construction of analytical coefficients of the epsilon-expansion of hypergeometric functions and their connection with Feynman diagrams. In this paper, we show the following results: Theorem A: The multiple (inverse) binomial sums of arbitrary weight and depth (see Eq. (1.1)) are expressible in terms of Remiddi-Vermaseren functions. Theorem B: The epsilon expansion of a hypergeometric function with one half-integer value of parameter (see Eq. (1.2)) is expressible in terms of the harmonic polylogarithms of Remiddi and Vermaseren with coefficients that are ratios of polynomials. Some extra materials are available via the www at this http://theor.jinr.ru/~kalmykov/hypergeom/hyper.htmlComment: 24 pages, latex with amsmath and JHEP3.cls; v2: some typos corrected and a few references added; v3: few references added

The Hahn Quantum Variational Calculus

We introduce the Hahn quantum variational calculus. Necessary and sufficient optimality conditions for the basic, isoperimetric, and Hahn quantum Lagrange problems, are studied. We also show the validity of Leitmann's direct method for the Hahn quantum variational calculus, and give explicit solutions to some concrete problems. To illustrate the results, we provide several examples and discuss a quantum version of the well known Ramsey model of economics.Comment: Submitted: 3/March/2010; 4th revision: 9/June/2010; accepted: 18/June/2010; for publication in Journal of Optimization Theory and Application

Health information seeking on the Internet: a double divide? Results from a representative survey in the Paris metropolitan area, France, 2005–2006

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Internet is a major source of information for professionals and the general public, especially in the field of health. However, despite ever-increasing connection rates, a digital divide persists in the industrialised countries. The objective of this study was to assess the determinants involved in: 1) having or not having Internet access; and 2) using or not using the Internet to obtain health information.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional survey of a representative random sample was conducted in the Paris metropolitan area, France, in the fall of 2005 (n = 3023).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Close to 70% of the adult population had Internet access, and 49% of Internet users had previously searched for medical information. Economic and social disparities observed in online health information seeking are reinforced by the economic and social disparities in Internet access, hence a double divide. While individuals who reported having a recent health problem were less likely to have Internet access (odds ratio (OR): 0.72, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.53–0.98), it is they who, when they have Internet access, are the most likely to search for health information (OR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.11–1.87).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>In the French context of universal health insurance, access to the Internet varies according to social and socioeconomic status and health status, and its use for health information seeking varies also with health beliefs, but not to health insurance coverage or health-care utilisation. Certain economic and social inequalities seem to impact cumulatively on Internet access and on the use of the Internet for health information seeking. It is not obvious that the Internet is a special information tool for primary prevention in people who are the furthest removed from health concerns. However, the Internet appears to be a useful complement for secondary prevention, especially for better understanding health problems or enhancing therapeutic compliance.</p

Transfer of energy to high frequencies in the cubic defocusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation

We consider the cubic defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation on the two dimensional torus. We exhibit smooth solutions for which the support of the conserved energy moves to higher Fourier modes. This behavior is quantified by the growth of higher Sobolev norms: given any δ[much less-than]1,K [much greater-than] 1, s > 1, we construct smooth initial data u 0 with ||u0||Hs , so that the corresponding time evolution u satisfies u(T)Hs[greater than]K at some time T. This growth occurs despite the Hamiltonian’s bound on ||u(t)||H1 and despite the conservation of the quantity ||u(t)||L2. The proof contains two arguments which may be of interest beyond the particular result described above. The first is a construction of the solution’s frequency support that simplifies the system of ODE’s describing each Fourier mode’s evolution. The second is a construction of solutions to these simpler systems of ODE’s which begin near one invariant manifold and ricochet from arbitrarily small neighborhoods of an arbitrarily large number of other invariant manifolds. The techniques used here are related to but are distinct from those traditionally used to prove Arnold Diffusion in perturbations of Hamiltonian systems