The concept of quality of life in animals is closely associated with the concepts of animal sentience and animal welfare. It reflects a positive approach that inquires what animals like or prefer doing. The assessment of farm animal welfare requires a good understanding of the animals' affective experience, including their emotions. However, affective experience in animals is difficult to measure because of the absence of verbal communication. Recent studies in the field of cognitive psychology have shown that affective experience can be investigated without using verbal communication by examination of the interactions between emotions and cognition. On the one hand, appraisal theories provide a conceptual framework which suggests that emotions in humans are triggered by a cognitive process whereby the situation is evaluated on a limited number of elementary criteria such as familiarity and predictability. We have applied these appraisal theories to develop an experimental approach for studying the elementary criteria used by farm animals to evaluate their environment and the combinations of those criteria that trigger emotions. On the other hand, an increasing body of research, first in humans and then in other animals, suggests that emotions also influence cognitive processes by modifying attention, memory and judgement in a short- or long-term manner. Cognitive processes could therefore be manipulated and measured to provide new insights into how not only emotions but also more persistent affective states can be assessed in animals. Further work based on these cognitive approaches will offer new paradigms for improving our understanding of animal welfare, thus contributing to ‘a life of high quality’ in animals.

Afin d’évaluer les conséquences des rejets radioactifs provenant des réacteursaccidentés de la centrale nucléaire de Fukushima-Daichi sur l’environnement terrestrefrançais, l’IRSN a renforcé son plan de surveillance en échantillonnant notamment de lavégétation de prairie, du lait et de la viande des troupeaux en pâture entre avril etnovembre 2011. Ces prélèvements et ces mesures ont, entre autres, permis d’évaluer dansdes conditions de dépôts réels la chronologie des transferts du césium-134 de l’herbe aulait et à la viande. Les premières mesures significatives en 134Cs apparaissentdans l’herbe et dans le lait cinq à sept jours après la première mesure significative dansl’air. Les activités maximales atteignent 0,4 Bq.kg–1 d’herbe fraiche et0,028 Bq.L–1 dans le lait. Dans la viande, les premières mesuressignificatives apparaissent mi-avril avec une activité maximale mesurée de 0,036Bq.kg–1, avec de fortes variations d’une espèce animale à une autre. Lescoefficients de transfert moyens calculés sont proches de ceux disponibles dans lalittérature avec 0,22 j.kg–1 pour la viande de mouton, et de 0,09 et0,0014 j.L–1 pour le lait de chèvre et de vache, respectivement.

This paper explores whether the poor mastery of morphosyntax exhibited by second language (L2) learners can be tied to difficulties with non-syntactic processing. Specifically, we examine whether problems with English regular and irregular past tense are related to poor L2 phonological ability and lexical access, respectively. In Experiment 1, L2 learners showed poorer past tense mastery than native English speakers in grammaticality judgment and production tasks. L2 phonological ability was positively correlated with correct performance on regular verbs and negatively with unmarked production. L2 lexical access was positively correlated with correct performance on irregular verbs, and negatively with overregularization production. Experiment 2 simulated these difficulties in native English speakers by placing them under phonological processing (noise) or lexical access (deadline) stress. Noise selectively impacted regular verbs in grammaticality judgment but impacted all verb types in production. Deadline pressure impacted irregular verbs while sparing regular verbs across both tasks. Thus, non-syntactic processing difficulties can have specific impacts on morphosyntactic performance in both non-native and native English speakers.

This paper presents the influence of the solution chemistry of chemical bath deposition (pH and complexing agents) on the performance of CuIn(S,Se)2 cells after an initial CN treatment. It is shown that it is possible to modify the deposition conditions of the CdS by increasing the pH of the solution and by replacing the complexing agent (ammonia) by citrate ions. Both NH3 based and citrate based process give very homogenous and covering thin films. However, in the case of the citrate based process a decrease of open circuit voltage (Voc) and fill factor (FF) and thus of the cell efficiencies is observed. This points out that the main role of the buffer layer is not only related to the specific properties of the CdS itself but also to the near surface modifications of the CuIn(S,Se)2 caused by the presence of the complexing agent in the bath.

The early stages of stress development during epitaxial growth of metal layers with a large misfit in lattice parameters still need in-depth understanding. In this particular study we have focused on Ag-Cu system, which is immiscible and exhibit a large 14% misfit in lattice parameters. Ag/Cu multilayers have been grown by ultrahigh-vacuum evaporation on Si (111) maintained at -20°C, 35°C or 110°C. The thickness of the individual layers is about 100 Å. All the films present the same (111) orientation with a well defined in-plane orientation: <110> Cu or Ag // <110> Si. The stress was monitored during growth with a home-made laser curvature measurement device. The stress vs thickness behaviour is highly asymmetric when comparing Ag/Cu and Cu/Ag. Indeed Ag grown on Cu does not develop any measurable stress at any thickness or temperature, whereas Cu grows on Ag under tensile temperature and thickness-dependent stress. The temperature dependence of this stress relaxation cannot be interpreted with a standard relaxation model including dislocation motion. A possible way to understand the stress temperature dependence is to consider the evolution of microstructure during growth.

Le plutonium a été mesuré, en 1991, sur 5 échantillons de sols et 12 échantillons de sédiments du Rhône prélevés autour du site de la centrale électronucléaire de Creys-Malville. Les concentrations des sols (fraction tamisée à 2 mm) varient, pour 239+240Pu, de 35 ± 4 à 1411 ± 135 mBq.kg-1 sec et, pour 238Pu, de moins de 1 à 101 ± 6 mBq.kg-1 sec. Dans les sédiments, on observe de l7 ± 4 à 147 ± 12 mBq.kg-1 sec en 239+240Pu et de moins de 1 à 7,2 ± 1,6 mBq.kg-1 sec en 238Pu. Ces résultats sont du même ordre que les résultats de mesures de plutonium faites, à ce jour, dans l'environnement français et les rapports isotopiques 238Pu/239+240Pu sont analogues à ceux des retombées atmosphériques (0,03 à 0,08) et sont différents des rapports caractéristiques de l'usine (0,7 à 0,8). La variabilité des résultats selon les échantillons confirme que la fixation du plutonium sur les sols et les sédiments dépend, pour une large part, des teneurs de ces substrats en matière organique et en particules fines.