scholarly journals Spreading herbivore manure in livestock farms increases soil carbon content, while granivore manure decreases it

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Curien ◽  
Alice Issanchou ◽  
Francesca Degan ◽  
Vincent Manneville ◽  
Nicolas P. A. Saby ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Generalized Least Squares ◽  
Farming Practices ◽  
Livestock Manure ◽  
Livestock Farming ◽  
Soil Database ◽  
Soil Carbon Content ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Agricultural Census ◽  
Soil Ecosystem Services

AbstractLivestock farming occupies 57% of agricultural area in France and has contrasting impacts on the environment. Studies have analyzed relations between livestock farming and soil organic carbon (SOC) content, but the influence of livestock farming on soils is difficult to perceive at a large scale. The objective of this study was to increase understanding of impacts of livestock farming on soils that receive livestock manure depending on different initial levels of SOC content, at cantonal level. To this end, we used French soil and agricultural databases to analyze relations between livestock farming practices and SOC content. We used statistical data calculated from the French soil test database for the periods 2000–2004 and 2010–2014. For livestock farming practices, we used data from the French agricultural census of 2000 and 2010, and for spreading of livestock manure, data from the French program to control pollution of agricultural origin (2002–2007) and data from the French Livestock Institute. The novelty of our large-scale analysis is to differentiate the origin of livestock manure (herbivore or granivore) and the type of crop on which it was spread (crops or grasslands). Statistical analysis was performed at the cantonal scale for France using the method of generalized least squares. We show for the first time that, at the national scale, spreading of livestock manure influences SOC content and dynamics significantly. Our results also show the importance of the nature of the manure; solid manure increases SOC content, unlike liquid manure. Spreading herbivore manure on crops increases SOC content, but spreading granivore manure may decrease it. Livestock manure spread on grasslands has no significant effect on SOC content, possibly due to under-representation of grassland soils in the soil database. These results demonstrate the importance of the complementary between crop and livestock to maintain soil ecosystem services, including soil fertility.

A large-scale analysis of HTTPS deployments: Challenges, solutions, and recommendations

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Qinwen Hu ◽  
Muhammad Rizwan Asghar ◽  
Nevil Brownlee
Keyword(s):  
Secure Communication ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Transport Layer ◽  
Security Level ◽  
Secure Socket Layer ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Government Websites ◽  
Encrypted Communication ◽  
Specific Implementation

HTTPS refers to an application-specific implementation that runs HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) on top of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS). HTTPS is used to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of web servers and clients, for different purposes such as online banking and e-commerce. However, many HTTPS vulnerabilities have been disclosed in recent years. Although many studies have pointed out that these vulnerabilities can lead to serious consequences, domain administrators seem to ignore them. In this study, we evaluate the HTTPS security level of Alexa’s top 1 million domains from two perspectives. First, we explore which popular sites are still affected by those well-known security issues. Our results show that less than 0.1% of HTTPS-enabled servers in the measured domains are still vulnerable to known attacks including Rivest Cipher 4 (RC4), Compression Ratio Info-Leak Mass Exploitation (CRIME), Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption (POODLE), Factoring RSA Export Keys (FREAK), Logjam, and Decrypting Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) using Obsolete and Weakened eNcryption (DROWN). Second, we assess the security level of the digital certificates used by each measured HTTPS domain. Our results highlight that less than 0.52% domains use the expired certificate, 0.42% HTTPS certificates contain different hostnames, and 2.59% HTTPS domains use a self-signed certificate. The domains we investigate in our study cover 5 regions (including ARIN, RIPE NCC, APNIC, LACNIC, and AFRINIC) and 61 different categories such as online shopping websites, banking websites, educational websites, and government websites. Although our results show that the problem still exists, we find that changes have been taking place when HTTPS vulnerabilities were discovered. Through this three-year study, we found that more attention has been paid to the use and configuration of HTTPS. For example, more and more domains begin to enable the HTTPS protocol to ensure a secure communication channel between users and websites. From the first measurement, we observed that many domains are still using TLS 1.0 and 1.1, SSL 2.0, and SSL 3.0 protocols to support user clients that use outdated systems. As the previous studies revealed security risks of using these protocols, in the subsequent studies, we found that the majority of domains updated their TLS protocol on time. Our 2020 results suggest that most HTTPS domains use the TLS 1.2 protocol and show that some HTTPS domains are still vulnerable to the existing known attacks. As academics and industry professionals continue to disclose attacks against HTTPS and recommend the secure configuration of HTTPS, we found that the number of vulnerable domain is gradually decreasing every year.

scholarly journals The Matter of Chance: Auditing Web Search Results Related to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Primary Elections Across Six Search Engines

2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932110068
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Urman ◽  
Mykola Makhortykh ◽  
Roberto Ulloa
Keyword(s):  
Search Engine ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Web Search ◽  
Primary Elections ◽  
Virtual Agents ◽  
Search Results ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Algorithmic Information

We examine how six search engines filter and rank information in relation to the queries on the U.S. 2020 presidential primary elections under the default—that is nonpersonalized—conditions. For that, we utilize an algorithmic auditing methodology that uses virtual agents to conduct large-scale analysis of algorithmic information curation in a controlled environment. Specifically, we look at the text search results for “us elections,” “donald trump,” “joe biden,” “bernie sanders” queries on Google, Baidu, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and Yandex, during the 2020 primaries. Our findings indicate substantial differences in the search results between search engines and multiple discrepancies within the results generated for different agents using the same search engine. It highlights that whether users see certain information is decided by chance due to the inherent randomization of search results. We also find that some search engines prioritize different categories of information sources with respect to specific candidates. These observations demonstrate that algorithmic curation of political information can create information inequalities between the search engine users even under nonpersonalized conditions. Such inequalities are particularly troubling considering that search results are highly trusted by the public and can shift the opinions of undecided voters as demonstrated by previous research.

scholarly journals Advances in decomposing complex metabolite mixtures using substructure- and network-based computational metabolomics approaches

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehdi A. Beniddir ◽  
Kyo Bin Kang ◽  
Grégory Genta-Jouve ◽  
Florian Huber ◽  
Simon Rogers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Product ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Scale Analysis ◽  
Computational Tools ◽  
Natural Product Discovery ◽  
Large Scale Analysis ◽  
Metabolite Annotation

This review highlights the key computational tools and emerging strategies for metabolite annotation, and discusses how these advances will enable integrated large-scale analysis to accelerate natural product discovery.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document