French Research Community Research Articles

Concerned yet polluting: A survey on French research personnel and climate change

We present a survey of the French research community and climate change carried out in 2020. It is one of the largest surveys ever conducted on this issue: it is based on a sample of more than 6,000 respondents representative of the French public sector research community, regardless of their status and discipline. On the one hand, it measures practices that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, such as air travel, and addresses the differences between disciplines and within them according to different individual characteristics (gender, status, location, etc.). On the other hand, it questions the representations of research actors concerning the climate emergency, and what they are willing to do to reduce their emissions. The survey highlights three results: first, an acute awareness of environmental and climate issues widely shared by members of the scientific community; second, a willingness to implement changes; and third, a clear gap between these attitudes and practices that still emit large amounts of greenhouse gases. This raises the question of the role of research institutions, whose support is required to implement profound reforms in the organization of research activities.

Advancing Fourier: space-time concepts in ultrafast optics, imaging, and photonic neural networks.

The concepts of Fourier optics were established in France in the 1940s by Pierre-Michel Duffieux, and laid the foundations of an extensive series of activities in the French research community that have touched on nearly every aspect of contemporary optics and photonics. In this paper, we review a selection of results where applications of the Fourier transform and transfer functions in optics have been applied to yield significant advances in unexpected areas of optics, including the spatial shaping of complex laser beams in amplitude and in phase, real-time ultrafast measurements, novel ghost imaging techniques, and the development of parallel processing methodologies for photonic artificial intelligence.

Design and validation of MEDRYS, a Mediterranean Sea reanalysis over the period 1992–2013

Abstract. The French research community in the Mediterranean Sea modeling and the French operational ocean forecasting center Mercator Océan have gathered their skill and expertise in physical oceanography, ocean modeling, atmospheric forcings and data assimilation to carry out a MEDiterranean sea ReanalYsiS (MEDRYS) at high resolution for the period 1992–2013. The ocean model used is NEMOMED12, a Mediterranean configuration of NEMO with a 1∕12° ( ∼ 7 km) horizontal resolution and 75 vertical z levels with partial steps. At the surface, it is forced by a new atmospheric-forcing data set (ALDERA), coming from a dynamical downscaling of the ERA-Interim atmospheric reanalysis by the regional climate model ALADIN-Climate with a 12 km horizontal and 3 h temporal resolutions. This configuration is used to carry a 34-year hindcast simulation over the period 1979–2013 (NM12-FREE), which is the initial state of the reanalysis in October 1992. MEDRYS uses the existing Mercator Océan data assimilation system SAM2 that is based on a reduced-order Kalman filter with a three-dimensional (3-D) multivariate modal decomposition of the forecast error. Altimeter data, satellite sea surface temperature (SST) and temperature and salinity vertical profiles are jointly assimilated. This paper describes the configuration we used to perform MEDRYS. We then validate the skills of the data assimilation system. It is shown that the data assimilation restores a good average temperature and salinity at intermediate layers compared to the hindcast. No particular biases are identified in the bottom layers. However, the reanalysis shows slight positive biases of 0.02 psu and 0.15 °C above 150 m depth. In the validation stage, it is also shown that the assimilation allows one to better reproduce water, heat and salt transports through the Strait of Gibraltar. Finally, the ability of the reanalysis to represent the sea surface high-frequency variability is shown.

The coming of age of microbial ecotoxicology: report on the first two meetings in France.

Context and objectives Microorganisms are ubiquitous in soil, air, and water ecosystems, where they are key players of ecosystem services. Microbial ecotoxicology is an emerging interdisciplinary area of research which aims at investigating the impact of human activities on the diversity, abundance, and activity of microorganisms. In return, the results of such investigations hold the promise to provide novel ways of assessing in a sensitive way the impacts of diverse environmental disturbances and subsequent ecosystem responses. Thus and although the term itself is yet rarely encountered in the scientific literature, microbial ecotoxicology already addresses an increasing political and societal demand. In the French scientific landscape, which often mimics the famous (but sometimes indigestible) “mille-feuilles” pastry, microbial ecotoxicologists are scattered across many different research centers belonging to different research organizations and universities. This research field has thus lacked any visibility and remained unorganized until now. Formal organization of scientific activities may be considered a typical “froggies” concern (or ailment). Nevertheless, it is rather surprising that scientific journals and significant international conferences specifically devoted to microbial ecotoxicology have been missing so far, especially considering the plethoric range of journals and congresses devoted to microbial ecology and ecotoxicology. With these considerations in mind, the idea of organizing the French research community of microbial ecologists around concepts of ecotoxicology made its way, with the aim of sharing the necessity to overcome artificial boundaries that prevent progress in this promising field.

Knowledge management in a French research community: a case study of GeCSO congress

PurposeThis paper aims to present the state of the art of a rising French research community on knowledge management, who organized during the past four years, a French speaking congress (GeCSO). Interests in knowledge management (KM) come from various disciplines: economy, social, engineering. These interests are not often linked. Within the firms, KM practices vary a lot depending on national cultures and on activity sectors. However, one can identify a potential symmetry between the diversity of practices and the partitioning of scientific approaches.Design/methodology/approachIn order to synthesize the different approaches in KM, the authors studied the 62 papers published in the first three conferences. To have a first representation of the diversity, they analyzed the keywords that were used: among 173 keywords used by the authors, eight keywords represent 27 per cent of the total amount.FindingsThree main dimensions which emerged from the articles are analysed: the practical dimension, the epistemological point of view, and the intention to define a theory of action.Originality/valueKM is an emerging domain, especially in French culture. This paper can be seen as a first foundation of the domain, and also a manifesto to develop interdisciplinary research on this topic.

Seamless MESO-NH modeling over very large grids

With the computing power it brings, the new generation of massively parallel computers allows one to perform a “seamless” modeling of weather on large grids, but it requires a large parallel computing capability for the models. Due to improvements in this direction in the meteorological model of the French research community MESO-NH, a computing performance of over 4 Teraflop/s was obtained with 130 000 cores on the machine of the European computer center PRACE. This is a first in France for a weather code. A high resolution simulation, covering the Atlantic and Europe, of the tropical cyclone Helene and its interaction with a planetary wave was also conducted, for which the excellent result gives hope to an improved weather forecasting in Europe.

The french research community's perspectives on new public human resource management

OECD analyses show that France has been slow in introducing the new Human Resource Management (HRM) model; however, the few changes that have been made have still aroused controversy. There is a substantial body of empirical research showing that the newly introduced tools and initiatives have often had little effect on HRM practices, and external analyses show that progress in public-sector HRM reform in France has been imperceptible compared with the situation in many other countries. At the same time, the managerial philosophy on which some new HRM processes are based is increasingly being challenged. This paper summarizes current views on HRM reform in France and presents the results of a survey of public-sector management researchers that highlights the two main French perspectives on HRM reform.

The candidates respond

France's presidential elections are taking place at a time of deep debate over the French research community's standing and prospects. To further the debate, Nature's Declan Butler submitted a list of questions on research issues to the three leading candidates. Their full responses, in both French and English, are on our website. Here we present extracts.

The Rhône-Aggregation Land Surface Scheme Intercomparison Project: An Overview

The Rhône-Aggregation (Rhône-AGG) Land Surface Scheme (LSS) intercomparison project is an initiative within the Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX)/Global Land–Atmosphere System Study (GLASS) panel of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). It is a intermediate step leading up to the next phase of the Global Soil Wetness Project (GSWP) (Phase 2), for which there will be a broader investigation of the aggregation between global scales (GSWP-1) and the river scale. This project makes use of the Rhône modeling system, which was developed in recent years by the French research community in order to study the continental water cycle on a regional scale. The main goals of this study are to investigate how 15 LSSs simulate the water balance for several annual cycles compared to data from a dense observation network consisting of daily discharge from over 145 gauges and daily snow depth from 24 sites, and to examine the impact of changing the spatial scale on the simulations. The overall evapotranspiration, runoff, and monthly change in water storage are similarly simulated by the LSSs, however, the differing partitioning among the fluxes results in very different river discharges and soil moisture equilibrium states. Subgrid runoff is especially important for discharge at the daily timescale and for smaller-scale basins. Also, models using an explicit treatment of the snowpack compared better with the observations than simpler composite schemes. Results from a series of scaling experiments are examined for which the spatial resolution of the computational grid is decreased to be consistent with large-scale atmospheric models. The impact of upscaling on the domain-averaged hydrological components is similar among most LSSs, with increased evaporation of water intercepted by the canopy and a decrease in surface runoff representing the most consistent inter-LSS responses. A significant finding is that the snow water equivalent is greatly reduced by upscaling in all LSSs but one that explicitly accounts for subgrid-scale orography effects on the atmospheric forcing.

Ten-year long monitoring of laboratory mouse and rat colonies in French facilities: a retrospective study.

From 1988 to 1997, a total of 69 mouse colonies and 36 rat colonies were examined for the presence of antibodies to 14 indigenous viruses of mice and rats. Among mouse viruses, high positivity rates were observed with mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), Theiler's encephalomyelitis virus (THEMV), minute virus of mice (MVM), Sendai virus and pneumonia virus of mice (PVM); the prevalence rates were high in rats with Khilam's rat virus (KRV), THEMV, Toolan's H-1 virus, Sendai virus, Parker's rat coronavirus (RCV/SDA) and PVM. During the last decade, the prevalence of some agents such as MHV, Sendai virus, THEMV, PVM and MVM has apparently decreased although they were still present in 1997 (except for PVM). Another point is the constant increase of colonies found free of viruses through this decade, demonstrating the efforts of the French research community to increase the quality of hygiene in laboratory animals.