Roles of instrumented farm-scale trials in trade-off assessments of pasture-based ruminant production systems

For livestock production systems to play a positive role in global food security, the balance between their benefits and disbenefits to society must be appropriately managed. Based on the evidence provided by field-scale randomised controlled trials around the world, this debate has traditionally centred on the concept of economic-environmental trade-offs, of which existence is theoretically assured when resource allocation is perfect on the farm. Recent research conducted on commercial farms indicates, however, that the economic-environmental nexus is not nearly as straightforward in the real world, with environmental performances of enterprises often positively correlated with their economic profitability. Using high-resolution primary data from the North Wyke Farm Platform, an intensively instrumented farm-scale ruminant research facility located in southwest United Kingdom, this paper proposes a novel, information-driven approach to carry out comprehensive assessments of economic-environmental trade-offs inherent within pasture-based cattle and sheep production systems. The results of a data-mining exercise suggest that a potentially systematic interaction exists between 'soil health', ecological surroundings and livestock grazing, whereby a higher level of soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is associated with a better animal performance and less nutrient losses into watercourses, and a higher stocking density with greater botanical diversity and elevated SOC. We contend that a combination of farming system-wide trials and environmental instrumentation provides an ideal setting for enrolling scientifically sound and biologically informative metrics for agricultural sustainability, through which agricultural producers could obtain guidance to manage soils, water, pasture and livestock in an economically and environmentally acceptable manner. Priority areas for future farm-scale research to ensure long-term sustainability are also discussed

Controlled magnetic roughness in a multilayer that has been patterned using a nanosphere array

International audienceThe micromagnetic structure of an antiferromagnetically exchange-coupled multilayer constrained by a periodic in-plane structure has been quantified using polarized-neutron reflectometry. The pattern was realized through nanosphere lithography. The fabrication of the patterned array introduces a significant deviation in the in-plane magnetization direction near to and at the surface of the heterostructure but does not significantly perturb the domain structure. The characteristic length scale of this magnetic roughening is shown to be driven by the feature size. The roughening is not observable by conventional magnetometry techniques but is confirmed by micromagnetic simulation. The combination of scattering techniques and numerical simulation provides a powerful tool to study the subtle interlayer and intralayer ordering in patterned magnetic heterostructures

GeoLaus, une étude de l’influence des caractéristiques géo-environ- nementales sur la santé []

GeoLaus, a Study on the Influence of Geo-Environmental Characteristics on Population Health Abstract. Geographic information on risk factors for health or disease is increasingly being used to understand the determinants of health. GeoLaus is a project initiated in 2015 that studies the impact of living spaces and socio-economic situation, on physical and mental health and on different lifestyle habits. This paper discusses and illustrates the use of spatial information in CoLaus to understand the determinants of obesity and daytime sleepiness. The first results of the GeoLaus study open new perspectives on population health