Potential Contribution of Payments for Ecological Goods and Services to Farm Income

Agri-environmental payments are part of a re-instrumentation of farm support in some developed countries. In general, they are meant to contribute to the cost of meeting regulations, compensate for income lost by adopting certain practices, and reward farmers for providing environmental services. In this context, agri-environmental payments are seen as a vehicle which could potentially contribute to meet the double objectives of providing environmental benefits to society while supporting farm income. Such agri-environmental payments are gaining importance in the policy portfolio of certain countries in response to higher social expectations with respect to the environmental performance of the agricultural sector as well as in response to international agreements constraining the use of trade-distorting support measures. The present study sheds some light on limited international experience by assessing the contribution that payments for ecological goods and services make to farm income in Switzerland, France and the Walloon region of Belgium. Results show that the contribution from agri-environmental payments to farm income differs from country to country, is modest and commensurate with the additional costs incurred by agricultural producers.Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy,

dynStruct: An automatic reverse engineering tool for structure recovery and memory use analysis

In computer security, reverse engineering is understanding how a program work. It can be used for multiple purposes, like malware analysis or security audit of a program. Reverse engineering is possible even without the source of the program. In this case, knowing what data structures are used by the program is a considerable help. But recovering these structures is di cult and time consuming. Also, at the time of writing, no tool doing this recovery has been publicly released. This paper introduces dynStruct, an open source structure recovery tool. dynStruct recovers structures in two steps. First a data gatherer executes the program and monitors it. The list of all memory accesses made by the program is written to a Json file. Afterwards a script analyzes this Json file to recover the structures. dynStruct also provides a powerful web interface. This interface, in addition to displaying e ciently the structures and raw data from the data gatherer, links the raw data and the recovered structures to allow a quick and powerful exploitation of all this information. The tests shows that dynStruct can analyze complex program like emacs or xterm. The tests also show that the recovered structures are similar to the original ones. This ensures dynStruct can provide quick and useful information to help reverse engineers in their task

Ni–W diffusion barrier: Its influence on the oxidation behaviour of a β-(Ni,Pt)Al coated fourth generation nickel-base superalloy

A Ni–W base diffusion barrier (DB) has been developed to limit interdiffusion between a fourth generation Ni-base superalloy (MCNG) and a Pt-modified nickel aluminide bondcoat. After long term oxidation, the DB layer permits to reduce the Al depletion in the coating and to delay the phase transformations in the coating. But despite this result, the oxidation behaviour of the system with DB is slightly worse than without the DB. This difference may be caused by the addition of S and/orWin the coating of the system with the DB. The DB layer also delays the Secondary Reaction Zone (SRZ) formation. Nevertheless, the propagation of the SRZ is similar in systems with and without a DB, with growth kinetics which are driven by interdiffusion

La performance économique comparée des systèmes de régulation du secteur laitier, une analyse internationale

Dans un contexte d'ouverture des marchés et de remise en cause des outils d'intervention de l’État en agriculture, cet article s’intéresse à analyser les différents systèmes de régulation du secteur laitier qui sont mis en œuvre dans les principales économies laitières des pays développés (Canada, États-Unis, France, Pays-Bas, Australie et Nouvelle-Zélande) et de discuter leurs avantages et inconvénients respectifs. À la suite d’une analyse de la performance comparée des systèmes de régulation, l’auteur conclut que le système de gestion de l’offre au Canada est celui qui stabilise le mieux les prix à la production à un niveau généralement supérieur à ce qui a cours dans les autres pays analysés. Paradoxalement, c’est dans les pays où il y a gestion de l’offre, Canada, France et Pays-Bas, que les prix à la consommation ont le moins augmenté au cours de la période d’observation, au bénéfice donc des consommateurs nationaux de produits laitiers. Quant aux coûts budgétaires par tonne de lait produit, ils sont les plus faibles en Nouvelle-Zélande, puis au Canada alors que c’est dans l’Union européenne qu’ils sont les plus élevés. Finalement, à la suite de ces constats, l’auteur questionne la finalité d'une remise en cause de la gestion de l’offre dans le secteur laitier. Son analyse le conduit à conclure que la gestion de l’offre dans le secteur laitier est un système de régulation toujours pertinen

Phénomènes d’influence sur la structuration de l’organisation communautaire au Québec

Les auteurs rendent compte des principaux résultats d’une enquête permettant de comprendre deux modalités de structuration de l’organisation communautaire : d’une part, sa transformation dans le réseau public entre 1988 et 2004, et, d’autre part, sa différenciation dans des établissements-employeurs aussi différents que ceux des réseaux public et communautaire. Pour chacune de ces modalités de structuration, la comparaison des réponses à un même questionnaire de type sondage permet aux auteurs d’établir plusieurs différences statistiques entre les groupes de répondants. De plus, l’analyse des résultats révèle l’influence des phénomènes structurels (reconfiguration des politiques sociales, action des mouvements sociaux, caractéristiques des établissements-employeurs, profil des organisateurs communautaires et offre de formation) et stratégiques (accroissement des capacités réflexives des organisateurs communautaires et mobilisation autour du regroupement professionnel) sur la transformation et la différenciation de l’organisation communautaire.The authors present main results of a survey, aiming to understand the influence of various phenomena on community organization, as it can be observed in Quebec, in the 1990’s and at the beginning of the 2000’s. They focus on two aspects of structuration: transformation of community organization between 1988 and 2004, and its differentiation in the public and in the third sectors. Data were collected through a survey, and statistical analysis show many differences between groups of respondents. The discussion reveals that structural phenomena (such as social policy, social movements’ actions, characteristics of workplace, community organizers’ profile, and offer of continuous training) and reflexive phenomena (improved knowledge of community organizers and mobilization in professional association) explain how community organization is transformed and differentiated

dynStruct: An automatic reverse engineering tool for structure recovery and memory use analysis

dynStruct is an open source structure recovery tool for ×86 binaries. It uses dynamic binary instrumentation to record information about memory accesses, which is then processed off-line to recover structures created and used by the binary. It provides a powerful web interface which not only displays the raw data and the recovered structures but also allows this information to be explored and manually edited. dynStruct is an effective tool for analyzing programs as complex as emacs

La régulation laitière face à la volatilité des marchés – États-Unis, Nouvelle-Zélande, Canada, France, Suisse

L’objectif de cet article consiste, dans un contexte de volatilité accrue des prix des produits laitiers, à documenter et comparer la logique des systèmes de régulation mis en œuvre dans divers pays afin de gérer cette volatilité. Cinq pays font l’objet de l’analyse : les États-Unis, la Nouvelle-Zélande, le Canada, la France et la Suisse. Les mécanismes de gestion des déséquilibres de marché sont inexistants en Nouvelle-Zélande. Au Canada, la notion de déséquilibre de marché ne peut exister tant que le système de gestion de l’offre reste en place. Mais ce système de régulation isole l’industrie canadienne du reste du commerce mondial et la contraint à se développer sur la seule base du marché domestique. Aux États-Unis, l’intervention sur le marché en cas de baisse des marges est définie de telle sorte que son impact sur un rééquilibrage du marché risque d’être très limité. Par contre, le programme de paiements contra-cycliques pourra protéger le revenu des producteurs. En France, la gestion du marché par les quotas a été progressivement démantelée pour être remplacée par une contractualisation entre producteurs et laiteries. Les mécanismes de gestion de déséquilibre des marchés ne sont pas vraiment définis dans les textes de l’Organisation commune des marchés, laissant planer une forte incertitude quant à la capacité du système d’apporter une protection des revenus aux producteurs laitiers. En Suisse, la gestion des déséquilibres relève de l’interprofession, sans que cette dernière n’ait vraiment réussi à être efficace en la matière.This article, in a context of increased price volatility, documents and compares the logic of the regulation system of various countries in managing this volatility. Five countries have been selected: the United States, New Zealand, Canada, France, and Switzerland. These mechanisms are non-existent in New Zealand. In Canada, the supply management system prevents the appearance of market imbalance. But this regulatory system isolates Canadian industry from the rest of world trade and forces it to develop on the sole basis of the domestic market. In the United States, intervention in the market in the event of a decline in margins is defined in such a way that its impact on a rebalancing of the market is likely to be very limited. On the other hand, the counter-cyclical payments program will protect producers’ income. In France, the quota system was progressively dismantled. It was replaced by a contractualization policy between producers and processors. The mechanisms for managing market imbalances are not really defined in the texts of the Common Market Organization for agricultural markets. In Switzerland, the management of imbalances falls within the scope of the interprofessional organization, without the latter having really managed to be effective in this regard

Zip4/Spo22 Is Required for Class I CO Formation but Not for Synapsis Completion in Arabidopsis thaliana

In budding yeast meiosis, the formation of class I interference-sensitive crossovers requires the ZMM proteins. These ZMM proteins are essential in forming a mature synaptonemal complex, and a subset of these (Zip2, Zip3, and Zip4) has been proposed to compose the core of synapsis initiation complexes (SICs). Zip4/Spo22 functions with Zip2 to promote polymerization of Zip1 along chromosomes, making it a crucial SIC component. In higher eukaryotes, synapsis and recombination have often been correlated, but it is totally unknown how these two processes are linked. In this study, we present the characterization of a higher eukaryote SIC component homologue: Arabidopsis AtZIP4. We show that mutations in AtZIP4 belong to the same epistasis group as Atmsh4 and eliminate approximately 85% of crossovers (COs). Furthermore, genetic analyses on two adjacent intervals of Chromosome I established that the remaining COs in Atzip4 do not show interference. Lastly, immunolocalization studies showed that polymerization of the central element of the synaptonemal complex is not affected in Atzip4 background, even if it may proceed from fewer sites compared to wild type. These results reveal that Zip4 function in class I CO formation is conserved from budding yeast to Arabidopsis. On the other hand, and contrary to the situation in yeast, mutation in AtZIP4 does not prevent synapsis, showing that both aspects of the Zip4 function (i.e., class I CO maturation and synapsis) can be uncoupled