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Since its first isolation from Salix roots in 1972, isolates of a sexually sterile Phytophthora species have been obtained frequently from wet or riparian habitats worldwide and have also been isolated from roots of Alnus and Prunus spp. Although originally assigned to Phytophthora gonapodyides on morphological grounds, it was recognized that these isolates, informally named P.taxon Salixsoil, might represent a separate lineage within ITS Clade 6. Based on phylogenetic analyses and comparisons of morphology, growth-temperature relationships and pathogenicity, this taxon is formally described here as Phytophthora lacustris sp. nov. Isolates of P.lacustris form a clearly resolved cluster in both ITS and mitochondrial cox1 phylogenies, basal to most other Clade 6 taxa. Phytophthora lacustris shares several unusual behavioural properties with other aquatic Clade 6 species, such as sexual sterility and tolerance of high temperatures, that have been suggested as adaptations to riparian conditions. It appears to be widespread in Europe and has also been detected in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. It was shown to be weakly or moderately aggressive on inoculation to Alnus, Prunus and Salix. The extent of P.lacustris' activity as a saprotroph in plant debris in water and as an opportunistic pathogen in riparian habitats needs further investigation. Its pathogenic potential to cultivated fruit trees also deserves attention because P.lacustris has apparently been introduced into the nursery trade. ; German Research Foundation at the University of Konstanz, Germany [SFB 454]; OTKA [F038325, K61107, IN64168, IN71349]; MIUR (Ministry of University and Research); MIPAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry); University of Catania, Italy; Scottish Government ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Worldwide, Governments have recognized the importance of liberalizing agriculture. The heart of the agriculture reforms lies in the 'market place'. This is basically a quick, diagnostic study illustrates firstly, the effects of WTO agreements and trade liberalization on Indian agriculture. Secondly, the effects of these reforms on mandates and functions of agricultural marketing institutions vis-à-vis the reforms and reorientation on happening in them in the context of trade liberalization regime in India. WTO agreements have mixed effects on agriculture of developing countries. Economic liberalization/ trade liberalization effects on Indian agriculture suggest that finance to agriculture by private sector has increased significantly. Production of food grains, non-food grains and all crops depicted a declining trend. Supply growth remains higher than growth in demand of cereals, fruits, vegetables except pulses and oilseeds. Marketed surplus and procurement prices of major staple cereals viz; paddy and wheat has shown an increasing trend. Aggregate measure of support (AMS) has decreased. Thus agricultural sector is now less protected and face stiff competition and higher price risks. Most of the functions of different agricultural marketing institutions relate to market regulation, development of infrastructure and administered prices are overlapping. The reforms in major areas of agricultural marketing sector at country level are matching with WTO liberalization requirements particularly in domestic markets, export and import, regulated markets, SPS measures and TRIPS. Some of the typical informal liberalized model markets such as alternative markets are already in operation. But some marketing institutions have been proactive in initiating reforms and marching towards commercialization

Purpose. To determine the effects and mediating factors of a physical activity (PA) or vegetable and fruit (VF) group cohesion intervention. Design. Longitudinal design. Setting. Harris County and Travis County, Texas. Participants. Community-dwelling African-American and Hispanic or Latina women. Intervention. Three hundred ten women were randomized to a PA (n = 204) or VF (n = 106) intervention group. Women met in groups six times over the course of 6 months and were exposed to a group cohesion intervention to promote walking or to increase VF consumption. Measures. Women completed the International PA Questionnaire, National Cancer Institute VF and fat screeners, PA Group Environment Questionnaire, and 7-day accelerometer protocol at baseline and post-intervention. Analyses. The direct and mediated effects of the intervention on outcomes were evaluated using a mediational chain model, controlling for baseline values and covariates using path analysis. Results. Women were middle aged (mean = 44.4 years) and overweight or obese (mean body mass index = 34.0 kg/m2). PA increased and fat consumption decreased for both groups, whereas VF consumption increased for women in VF group only (all p <. 05). Increased task cohesion led to hypothesized increases in psychosocial factors in the PA group but not to behavioral changes. Conclusions. Group cohesion interventions may have psychological and physical health benefits for African-American and Hispanic or Latina women, but refinement of measures and intervention delivery is needed to determine whether hypothesized mediational pathways are valid.

Climate is changing and, as a consequence, some areas that are climatically suitable for date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cultivation at the present time will become unsuitable in the future. In contrast, some areas that are unsuitable under the current climate will become suitable in the future. Consequently, countries that are dependent on date fruit export will experience economic decline, while other countries' economies could improve. Knowledge of the likely potential distribution of this economically important crop under current and future climate scenarios will be useful in planning better strategies to manage such issues. This study used CLIMEX to estimate potential date palm distribution under current and future climate models by using one emission scenario (A2) with two different global climate models (GCMs), CSIRO-Mk3.0 (CS) and MIROC-H (MR). The results indicate that in North Africa, many areas with a suitable climate for this species are projected to become climatically unsuitable by 2100. In North and South America, locations such as south-eastern Bolivia and northern Venezuela will become climatically more suitable. By 2070, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and western Iran are projected to have a reduction in climate suitability. The results indicate that cold and dry stresses will play an important role in date palm distribution in the future. These results can inform strategic planning by government and agricultural organizations by identifying new areas in which to cultivate this economically important crop in the future and those areas that will need greater attention due to becoming marginal regions for continued date palm cultivation.

International audience ; This article explores the effect of EU regulation on baby food products. A large number of medical studies have shown that pesticides and contaminants contribute to various health problems including cancer, lung disease or reproductive, endocrinal and immune system disorders. They also agree that children are more vulnerable to the dangers of pesticides and contaminants because as soon as start eating solid, they eat a limited number of food items among which fruits and vegetables hold an important position. This increased children's exposure to substances which they are less capable of metabolizing than adults (Muhlendahl et al. 1996; Koletzko et al. 1999). In order to protect the health of the most vulnerable part of the population, the European Union (EU)'s regulation establishes that no more than 0.01 mg/kg of any single pesticide residue is permitted in baby food products. It creates a difference in regulations between the EU and most of its trading partners, the majority of which do not differentiate food safety regulations according to the population age. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the impact of the specific European regulation on MRL of pesticides on trade of baby food products and compare the EU regulation to the regulations of its major trading partners through a severity index. We introduce this index in an econometric model to assess the trade implications of the standard levels in this emerging sector. The results show that the EU regulation may constrain trade.

While traditional moralities are based on the primacy of autonomy, the ethics of care, that is more concrete and more contextualist, emphasizes the notion of vulnerability as it considers an essential feature of the human condition. This ethical issue of feminist thought today tends to free itself from its origins and spread to the political sphere. Not necessarily oppose the value of autonomy and justice considered a universalist point of view, it defines the conditions for their effectiveness. Autonomy can not be regarded as a principle but as a horizon. As for justice, it takes a real meaning only if it is the result of concern for others and oneself as vulnerable. ; Alors que les morales traditionnelles se fondent sur le primat de l'autonomie, l'éthique du care, qui se veut plus contextualiste et plus concrète, met l'accent sur la notion de vulnérabilité qu'elle considère comme l'une des caractéristiques essentielles de la condition humaine. Cette éthique issue de la pensée féministe a tendance aujourd'hui à s'affranchir de ses origines et à s'étendre à la sphère politique. Sans nécessairement s'opposer à la valeur de l'autonomie et de la justice envisagées d'un point de vue universaliste, elle définit les conditions de leur effectivité. L'autonomie ne peut être considérée comme un principe mais comme un horizon. Quant à la justice, elle ne prend un sens véritable que si elle est le fruit du souci des autres et de soi-même comme personnes vulnérables.

International audience ; This article explores the effect of EU regulation on baby food products. A large number of medical studies have shown that pesticides and contaminants contribute to various health problems including cancer, lung disease or reproductive, endocrinal and immune system disorders. They also agree that children are more vulnerable to the dangers of pesticides and contaminants because as soon as start eating solid, they eat a limited number of food items among which fruits and vegetables hold an important position. This increased children's exposure to substances which they are less capable of metabolizing than adults (Muhlendahl et al. 1996; Koletzko et al. 1999). In order to protect the health of the most vulnerable part of the population, the European Union (EU)'s regulation establishes that no more than 0.01 mg/kg of any single pesticide residue is permitted in baby food products. It creates a difference in regulations between the EU and most of its trading partners, the majority of which do not differentiate food safety regulations according to the population age. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the impact of the specific European regulation on MRL of pesticides on trade of baby food products and compare the EU regulation to the regulations of its major trading partners through a severity index. We introduce this index in an econometric model to assess the trade implications of the standard levels in this emerging sector. The results show that the EU regulation may constrain trade.

The history of our young center has been dominated by our effort to install infrastructure and consolidate the base for our future development. In recent years we have seen the fruits of this effort in our ever stronger publication record, the organization of important clinical studies and the recruitment of top flight researchers. A key to our success is the social commitment from the private sector through the ProCNIC Foundation. The additional support for the Center from this public-private partnership liberates our ambition to aim for excellence, and provides us with invaluable business and organizational expertise. Looking at the achievements of 2011, no one could doubt that the CNIC now ranks as one of the leading biomedical research centers on the world stage. In a year filled with important landmarks for the CNIC, the crowning achievement was undoubtedly receiving the Premio Severo Ochoa in November. The Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence Program is a new government initiative that celebrates and rewards world-class excellence in Spanish research. The CNIC is one of eight garlanded centers, including Life and non Life Sciences centers, chosen from a cohort of seventy-five applicants in a highly competitive selection procedure. Twenty-two shortlisted candidates were assessed by panels of international experts led by nobel laureates in their respective fields. The Life Sciences and Medicine panel, chaired by Robert Huber of the Max-Planck-Institut für Biochemie, selected the CNIC among just three research institutes in this area. [.] ; No

In the frame of a project funded by the European Food Safety Authority (Prima Phacie), effort was put into identifying and testing qualitative plant-pest risk assessment schemes for their suitability in supporting risk management decisions for the European Union. Five schemes were tested, two largely based on the EPPO scheme and three adapted from schemes used in non-European countries. We report the results from the application of these schemes as applied to Xanthomonas citri strains causing Citrus Bacterial Canker, in regard to the risk of its entry, establishment and spread, as well as its potential impact. For this pathogen, three entry pathways into the EU risk assessment area were considered: a) import of fresh citrus fruits, b) import of ornamental rutaceous plants or plant parts, and c) illegal entry of plant propagative material. With the current EU measures in place, of the five schemes tested, two indicated path (c) as that of the highest risk, whereas the other three suggested path (a) as such. This discrepancy is due to the different level of details the components of the risk of entry are considered in each scheme. Most schemes suggested that the establishment potential lay around the mid-range of possible values. All schemes indicated a high rate for potential spread (primarily through human activities) and a medium to high rate for impact potential. The effectiveness of risk management measures was evaluated by comparing results of assessments with and without management measures in place. (Texte integral)

Part 1: Algorithms, Scheduling, Analysis, and Data Mining ; International audience ; Massively parallel DNA sequencing platforms have become widely available, reducing the cost of DNA sequencing by over two orders of magnitude, and democratizing the field by putting the sequencing capacity of a major genome center in the hands of individual investigators. New challenges include the development of robust protocols for generating sequencing libraries, building effective new approaches to resequence and data-analysis. In this paper we demonstrate a new sequencing algorithm, named DGraph, which has two modules, one module is responsible to construct De Bruijn graph by cutting reads into k-mers, and the other's duty is to simplify this graph and collect all long contigs. The authors didn't adapt the sequence graph reductions operations proposed by RAMANA M.IDURY or Finding Eulerian Superpaths proved by Pavel A.Pevzner or bubble remove steps suggested by Danial Zerbino, As the first operations was computing expensive, and the second one was impractical, and the last one did not benefit either the quality of contigs or the efficiency of the assembler. Our assembler was focused only on efficient and effective error removal and path reduction operations. Applying DGraph to the simulation data of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster chromosome X, DGraph (3min) is about six times faster than velvet 0.3 (19 mins), and its coverage (92.5%) is also better than velvet (78.2%) when k = 21. Compare to velvet, the results shows that the algorithm of DGraph is a faster program with high quality results.

Latin America is becoming the fastest growing agricultural production region and Brazil has by far the fastest growing agricultural sector. China from being a small agricultural importer (1.4% of world imports in 1990/01), became the fifth largest importer at 5.4% of world imports in 2006/07. China's overall trade with Latin America has expanded substantially during the last two decades -the rate of growth has been greater than any other region in the world since 2005. Most exports from Latin America to China are primary products while Chinese exports to Latin America are mostly industrial products. The Chinese demand for agricultural products is concentrated in food products such as grains and oilseeds. Countries specialised in those commodities -eg. Brazil and Argentina-exhibit a strong orientation on the Chinese market. In turn, growing subsectors in China, like fruits and vegetables, are posing strong competition to some world supplier countries in Latin America such as Chile and Peru. Since China is promoting structural reforms of its agricultural sector, aimed at increasing productivity and improving food security, and is expanding their direct investments overseas to secure provision of raw materials, Latin American governments need to pursue long-run strategic public policies. They need to optimize trade results and promote production efficiency that on one hand contribute to take advantage of the current market situation but at the same time assure the protection of the natural resources and preserve the production capacity and the agricultural diversity.

Abstract: Latin America is becoming the fastest growing agricultural production region and Brazil has by far the fastest growing agricultural sector. China from being a small agricultural importer (1.4% of world imports in 1990/01), became the fifth largest importer at 5.4% of world imports in 2006/07. China"s overall trade with Latin America has expanded substantially during the last two decades -the rate of growth has been greater than any other region in the world since 2005. Most exports from Latin America to China are primary products while Chinese exports to Latin America are mostly industrial products. The Chinese demand for agricultural products is concentrated in food products such as grains and oilseeds. Countries specialised in those commodities –eg. Brazil and Argentinaexhibit a strong orientation on the Chinese market. In turn, growing subsectors in China, like fruits and vegetables, are posing strong competition to some world supplier countries in Latin America such as Chile and Peru. Since China is promoting structural reforms of its agricultural sector, aimed at increasing productivity and improving food security, and is expanding their direct investments overseas to secure provision of raw materials, Latin American governments need to pursue long-run strategic public policies. They need to optimize trade results and promote production efficiency that on one hand contribute to take advantage of the current market situation but at the same time assure the protection of the natural resources and preserve the production capacity and the agricultural diversity

La pomme, fruit le plus cultivé sur le sol français, est principalement menacée par le pathogène Venturia inaequalis, responsable de la maladie de la tavelure qui génère des pertes considérables si elle n'est pas traitée. La politique actuelle de gestions des risques phytopathologiques en France incite à une forte réduction des traitements phytosanitaires tout en maximisant le rendement et la qualité des productions. Dans ce contexte, il apparaît indispensable de mieux comprendre les interactions entre l'arbre, son pathogène, et leur environnement, qui s'articulent pour le cas de la tavelure du pommier autour de la durée d'humectation des feuilles. Au cours de ce travail nous nous sommes intéressés à ce paramètre pour essayer de mieux comprendre les interactions entre microclimat de l'arbre et durée d'humectation. L'étude s'est déroulée en trois étapes majeures : la modélisation de l'évaporation d'une goutte sur un support végétal, l'étude expérimentale de la mouillabilité des feuilles de pommier, et l'étude expérimentale de la variabilité spatiale de la durée d'humectation sous un couvert de pommiers. Ce travail a permis d'expliciter la forte variabilité intra-couronne de la durée d'humectation via la prise en compte de la structure de l'arbre et de la dynamique horaire du microclimat. Le modèle développé, au-delà des liens déjà connus entre l'intensité du flux évaporatif et les variables climatiques, a montré la sensibilité importante du temps d'évaporation à la mouillabilité du support via la forme de la goutte d'eau, mettant en avant la nécessité de quantifier au mieux cette interaction goutte support via l'estimationdes angles de contact statiques et dynamiques.

La pomme, fruit le plus cultivé sur le sol français, est principalement menacée par le pathogène Venturia inaequalis, responsable de la maladie de la tavelure qui génère des pertes considérables si elle n'est pas traitée. La politique actuelle de gestions des risques phytopathologiques en France incite à une forte réduction des traitements phytosanitaires tout en maximisant le rendement et la qualité des productions. Dans ce contexte, il apparaît indispensable de mieux comprendre les interactions entre l'arbre, son pathogène, et leur environnement, qui s'articulent pour le cas de la tavelure du pommier autour de la durée d'humectation des feuilles. Au cours de ce travail nous nous sommes intéressés à ce paramètre pour essayer de mieux comprendre les interactions entre microclimat de l'arbre et durée d'humectation. L'étude s'est déroulée en trois étapes majeures : la modélisation de l'évaporation d'une goutte sur un support végétal, l'étude expérimentale de la mouillabilité des feuilles de pommier, et l'étude expérimentale de la variabilité spatiale de la durée d'humectation sous un couvert de pommiers. Ce travail a permis d'expliciter la forte variabilité intra-couronne de la durée d'humectation via la prise en compte de la structure de l'arbre et de la dynamique horaire du microclimat. Le modèle développé, au-delà des liens déjà connus entre l'intensité du flux évaporatif et les variables climatiques, a montré la sensibilité importante du temps d'évaporation à la mouillabilité du support via la forme de la goutte d'eau, mettant en avant la nécessité de quantifier au mieux cette interaction goutte support via l'estimationdes angles de contact statiques et dynamiques.