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Understanding the genetic bases underlying climate adaptation is a key element to predict the potential of species to face climate warming. Although substantial climate variation is observed at a micro-geographic scale, most genomic maps of climate adaptation have been established at broader geographical scales. Here, by using a Pool-Seq approach combined with a Bayesian hierarchical model that control for confounding by population structure, we performed a genome-environment association (GEA) analysis to investigate the genetic basis of adaptation to six climate variables in 168 natural populations of Arabidopsis thaliana distributed in south-west of France. Climate variation among the 168 populations represented up to 24% of climate variation among 521 European locations where A. thaliana inhabits. We identified neat and strong peaks of association, with most of the associated SNPs being significantly enriched in likely functional variants and/or in the extreme tail of genetic differentiation among populations. Furthermore, genes involved in transcriptional mechanisms appear predominant in plant functions associated with local climate adaptation. Globally, our results suggest that climate adaptation is an important driver of genomic variation in A. thaliana at a small spatial scale and mainly involves genome-wide changes in fundamental mechanisms of gene regulation. The identification of climate-adaptive genetic loci at a micro-geographic scale also highlights the importance to include within-species genetic diversity in ecological niche models for projecting potential species distributional shifts over short geographic distances.

Abstract A good understanding of the mechanical behaviour of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) lower head is necessary both for severe accident assessment and for the definition of appropriate accident mitigation strategies. Indeed, a well-characterized failure of the lower head leads to a better evaluation of the quantity and kinetics with which core material can escape into the containment. These are the initial conditions for several ex-vessel events such as direct heating of the containment or molten core–concrete interaction. In this context, the objectives of the joint on-going work of the WP10-2 group of SARNET are: (1) improvement of predictability of the time, mode and location of RPV failure; (2) development of adequate models with the ultimate aim of being included into integral codes; (3) interpretation/analysis of experiments with models/codes combined with sensitivity studies; and (4) better understanding of the breach opening process in order to better characterize the corium release into the containment. Different approaches are considered: a simplified but well predicting model recently implemented in the severe accident Astec and Icare-Cathare codes, and viscoplasticity models implemented in the Cast3m, Ansys and Code_Aster finite element codes. Several failure criteria are considered: stress criterion, strain criterion and damage evaluation (coupled way or post-evaluation). In this paper, the OLHF-1 experiment has been used to assess the models, to perform sensitivity studies and to evaluate failure criteria that could be applied in the case of reactors. All the partners performed 2D axisymmetric analyses, allowing the evaluation of time, mode and location of vessel failure. Nevertheless, CEA conducted further 3D calculations in order to study crack propagation and the corresponding results will be presented separately at the end of the paper. The numerical formulation of the different models used is given and a comparison of experimental and numerical results is presented. The paper also shows the progress made with the objective of defining failure criteria that can be used for reactor vessel applications.

In numerous fields, especially that of geothermal energy, we need to know about the thermal behaviour of the soil now that the monitoring of renewable forms of energy is an ecological, economic and scientific issue. Thus heat from the soil is widely used for air-conditioning systems in buildings both in Canada and in the Scandinavian countries, and it is spreading. The effectiveness of this technique is based on the soils calorific potential and its thermophysical properties which will define the quality of the exchanges between the soil and a heat transfer fluid. This article puts forward a method to be used for the in situ thermophysical characterisation of a soil. It is based upon measuring the heat exchanges on the surface of the soil and on measuring a temperature a few centimetres below the surface. The system is light, inexpensive, well-suited to the taking of measurements in situ without the sensors used introducing any disturbance into the heat exchanges. Whereas the majority of methods require excitation, the one presented here is passive and exploits natural signals. Based upon a few hours of recording, the natural signals allow us to identify the soils thermophysical properties continuously. The identification is based upon frequency methods the quality of which can be seen when the thermophysical properties are injected into a model with finite elements by means of a comparison of the temperatures modelled and those actually measured on site.

Abstract In many areas which call for solar radiation harvesting, from buildings to solar power plants, all manners of windows and protective glass envelopes are required. A high transmission of solar light through glass is therefore mandatory, mostly in the visible range for lighting purposes and also in the near infrared range for power generation. For this purpose, antireflective coatings (ARCs) are deposited on glass surfaces to avoid parasitic reflection and increase transmission of the incident solar light. Porous SiO 2 or compact MgF 2 have been identified in the literature as good antireflective materials for glass due to their low refractive index. The total solar power transmitted through coated glass is determined by the wavelength-dependent optical properties (spectral complex refractive index) of both the glass and the ARC deposited on it. For many optical applications other than solar, the glass industry takes into account the impact of the variation with wavelength of the glass refractive index, represented by the Abbe number, on its transmittance. For solar applications however, in most reported studies on ARCs for solar glass, the optimization of the ARC in terms of porosity and thickness is done by considering the refractive index of the glass as a single value independent of wavelength. This approximation can affect the accuracy and pertinence of the solar ARC optimization. In this work, we therefore propose to join these two approaches by including the glass refractive index variation with wavelength in the optimization of a typical solar ARC, for a large catalog of glasses available in the industry. To achieve this goal, we simulated and optimized with a stochastic algorithm the solar antireflective properties of a porous SiO 2 coating on 24 different glasses. We studied the impact on their solar transmittance of the glass refractive index variation with wavelength, the incident solar spectrum (Direct + Circumsolar or Global Tilt), the incidence angle and the glass solar absorptance. Glasses with low refractive indices and high Abbe numbers were found to be necessary to ensure high solar transmittance. Such properties are met in crown glass such as FK ® , PK ® or BK ® .

Water use efficiency (WUE) is a quantitative measurement which improvement is a major issue in the context of global warming and restrictions in water availability for agriculture. In this study, we aimed at studying the variation and genetic control of WUE and the respective role of its components (plant biomass and transpiration) in a perennial fruit crop. We explored an INRA apple core collection grown in a phenotyping platform to screen one-year-old scions for their accumulated biomass, transpiration and WUE under optimal growing conditions. Plant biomass was decompose into morphological components related to either growth or organ expansion. For each trait, nine mixed models were evaluated to account for the genetic effect and spatial heterogeneity inside the platform. The Best Linear Unbiased Predictors of genetic values were estimated after model selection. Mean broad-sense heritabilities were calculated from variance estimates. Heritability values indicated that biomass (0.76) and WUE (0.73) were under genetic control. This genetic control was lower in plant transpiration with an heritability of 0.54. Across the collection, biomass accounted for 70% of the WUE variability. A Hierarchical Ascendant Classification of the core collection indicated the existence of six groups of genotypes with contrasting morphology and WUE. Differences between morphotypes were interpreted as resulting from differences in the main processes responsible for plant growth: cell division leading to the generation of new organs and cell elongation leading to organ dimension. Although further studies will be necessary on mature trees with more complex architecture and multiple sinks such as fruits, this study is a first step for improving apple plant material for the use of water.

Abstract We single out the role of fully coherent induced gluon radiation on light hadron production in pA collisions. The effect has the same general features as for quarkonium production, however with a richer color structure as the induced radiation depends on the global color charge of the partonic subprocess final state. Baseline predictions for light hadron nuclear suppression in pPb collisions at the LHC are provided, taking into account only the effect of fully coherent energy loss, which proves to be of the same order of magnitude as gluon shadowing or saturation. This underlines the need to include fully coherent energy loss in phenomenological studies of hadron production in pA collisions.