Thematic and citation structure dynamics of Food & Farming research

This paper analyses the Organic Food & Farming (OF&F) scientific domain dynamic throught a "progressive document co-citation analysis" based on peer-reviewed papers from Web of Science. The dataset of OF&F domain displayed an exponential growth and a thematic diversification pattern. Both dominant and marginal clusters in association with their main cited articles were identified. This study enables to pinpoint major themes addressed or emerging. It can feed further research work and projects, namely with the definition of information system and research policy

Information needs and thematic priorities of the organic food and farming sector in France

A large survey was performed among a wide range of actors covering the areas of experimentation and research, processing and distribution, extension services, education and administration, all more or less committed in OF&F, to identify their information needs. This survey highlights the need for increased information dissemination. This analysis identifies four different publics with specific needs. Professional experience, degree of commitment to OF&F and professional category are structuring variables. Legal and economic information on food quality and processing is generally of interest to senior actors who have the lowest information needs. On the contrary, junior actors actively involved in the developmental and educational aspects of OF&F have the greatest information needs over a wide range of themes. Thematic priorities are also different depending on professional categories and types of information. While technicians and farmers call for scientific and technical information on plant production issues, only young farmers in OF&F give priority to animal production issues. The dataset must be further analysed but it already provides insights for recommendations on information dissemination and research priority setting

SWIP at QALD-3 : results, criticisms and lesson learned

International audienceThis paper presents the results obtained by the SWIP system while participating in the QALD-3 (Question Answering over Linked Data) challenge, co-located with CLEF 2013 (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum). We tackled task 1, multilingual question answering, whose purpose is to interpret natural language questions in order to return the answers contained in a graph knowledge base. We answered queries of both proposed datasets (one concerning DBpedia, the other Musicbrainz) and took into consideration only questions in English. The system SWIP (Semantic Web Interface using Patterns) aims at automatically generating formal queries from user queries expressed in natural language. For this, it relies on the use of query patterns which enable the complex task of interpreting natural language queries. The results obtained on the Musicbrainz dataset (precision = 0,51, recall = 0,51, F-measure = 0,51) are very satisfactory and encouraging. The results on DBpedia (precision = 0,16, recall = 0,15, F-measure = 0,16) are more disappointing. In this paper, we present both the SWIP approach and its implementation. We then present the results of the challenge in more detail and their analysis. Finally we draw some conclusions on the strengths and weaknesses of our approach, and suggest ways to improve its performance

Analysis of biofilm-nanoparticles interaction using microscopy (fluorescence, MEB, STEM, MET, EDS)

International audienceAmong biofilm's properties, the ability to interact with/catch pollutants can have applications in bioremediation. Here, biofilm interactions with metals (as iron nanoparticles (NanoFer 25S)) was evaluated using various approaches in microscopy. For this, biofilm growth, sampling, labelling and treatment were developed for each type of microscopy to access the surface or inside of the biofilm, biofilm composition, and metal location. Multispecies biofilms were grown on sand or in PVC tubes inoculated with aquifer water spiked with a nutritive solution to enhance denitrification, and then put in contact with nanoparticles. According to the targeted microscopy, biofilms were (i) sampled as flocs or attached biofilm, (ii) submitted to cells (DAPI) and/or lectins (PNA and ConA coupled to FITC or Au nanoparticles) labelling, and (iii) prepared for observation (fixation, cross-section, freezing…). Fluorescent microscopy revealed that nanoparticles were embedded in the biofilm structure as 0.5-5µm size aggregates. SEM observations also showed NP aggregates closed to microorganisms but it was not possible to conclude a potential interaction between nanoparticles and the biological membranes. STEM-in-SEM analysis showed NP aggregates could enter inside the biofilm over a depth of 7-11µm. Moreover, microorganisms were circled by an EPS ring that prevented the direct interaction between NP and membrane. TEM(STEM)/EDS revealed that NP aggregates were co-localized with lectins suggesting a potential role of exopolysaccharides in NP embedding. The combination of several approaches in microscopy is thus a good tool to better understandi and characterize biofilm/pollutant interaction

Etude en sciences sociales de grandes expéditions naturalistes contemporaines françaises,

social studies of sciences; Biodiversity inventories; systematicsInternational audienceCet article présente le projet de recherche interdisciplinaire, Expebiodiv visant à réaliser une étude interdisciplinaire des expeditions naturalistes contemporaines. Le cas étudié est celui du projet "La planète revisitée" qui est lancé pour 10 ans par le Museum d'Histoires Naturelle de Paris et l'ONG Pronatura International

Elucidating dramatic ligand effects on SET processes: iron hydride versus Iron borohydride catalyzed reductive radical cyclization of unsaturated organic halides

An iron(II) borohydride complex ([(η1-H3BH)FeCl(NCCH3)4]) is employed as the precatalyst in iron-catalyzed radical cyclizations of unsaturated organic halides in the presence of NaBH4. Mechanistic investigations have established that the ligand bound to the metal center (acetonitrile versus ethylenebis(diphenylphosphine) (dppe)) plays a crucial role in the structure and reactivity of the active anionic iron(I) hydride ([HFeCl(dppe)2]−) and borohydride ([(η1-H3BH)FeCl(NCCH3)4]−) with unsaturated haloacetals. This work provides new insights into iron(I) hydride and borohydride species and their potential implication in single-electron processes

Genetic diversity of eleven European pig breeds

A set of eleven pig breeds originating from six European countries, and including a small sample of wild pigs, was chosen for this study of genetic diversity. Diversity was evaluated on the basis of 18 microsatellite markers typed over a total of 483 DNA samples collected. Average breed heterozygosity varied from 0.35 to 0.60. Genotypic frequencies generally agreed with Hardy-Weinberg expectations, apart from the German Landrace and Schwäbisch-Hällisches breeds, which showed significantly reduced heterozygosity. Breed differentiation was significant as shown by the high among-breed fixation index (overall FST = 0.27), and confirmed by the clustering based on the genetic distances between individuals, which grouped essentially all individuals in 11 clusters corresponding to the 11 breeds. The genetic distances between breeds were first used to construct phylogenetic trees. The trees indicated that a genetic drift model might explain the divergence of the two German breeds, but no reliable phylogeny could be inferred among the remaining breeds. The same distances were also used to measure the global diversity of the set of breeds considered, and to evaluate the marginal loss of diversity attached to each breed. In that respect, the French Basque breed appeared to be the most "unique" in the set considered. This study, which remains to be extended to a larger set of European breeds, indicates that using genetic distances between breeds of farm animals in a classical taxonomic approach may not give clear resolution, but points to their usefulness in a prospective evaluation of diversity