Natural estrogen emissions to subsurface tile drains from experimental grassland fields in Switzerland after application of livestock slurries and free compounds.

Natural estrogens are present in high concentrations in livestock slurries, which are often applied to agricultural fields in large quantities. As such, the export of slurry-derived natural estrogens from tile-drained fields is a potential source for estrogenic pollution in surface waters. Yet despite the abundance of tile-drained fields in Central Europe, export of natural estrogens from agricultural fields receiving livestock slurries is rarely studied in this region. In an effort to fill this knowledge gap, here we applied natural estrogens to Swiss experimental fields in the form of cattle slurry, pig slurry or dissolved in water, and quantified them in flow-proportionally collected drainage water over 18 months. After pig and cattle slurry applications, concentration maxima in drainage water of 73, 8, 37, and 60 ng L-1 for 17α-estradiol (E2α), 17ß-estradiol (E2ß), estrone (E1), and estriol (E3), respectively, were observed shortly after rain events. The exported fractions of individual natural estrogens to tile drains were on average 0.26% (ranging from 0.08 to 0.41%) after cattle, and 0.18% (0.03-0.40%) after pig slurry applications. Such numbers were higher than expected from the leaching potential based on substance properties, and comparable to those of more mobile micropollutants previously studied on the same fields. Natural estrogens were mainly exported to tile drains through preferential flow. Exported fractions were lower when applied in aqueous solution than when applied in slurry, pointing to particle-facilitated transport to tile drains when applied in slurry. In Switzerland, the estimated 6.3, 0.6, 7.4, and 7.7 g of E2α, E2ß, E1, and E3, respectively, exported through the tile-drained agricultural area per year contribute little to the total natural estrogen load received by surface waters. However, after slurry applications in highly drained catchments, natural estrogen emissions to tile drains can cause short term (i.e. less than 1 week) estrogenic exposure in nearby streams.

Effet de la valence émotionnelle de textes sur leur compréhension et l'apprentissage de nouveaux mots chez des élèves de 5éme année de primaire.

The present study examines the influence of the influence of emotional valence of texts (positive, negative and neutral), on text comprehension and learning of the new words of 139 pupils of 5th grade. Eight stories were built in three versions-positive, negative and neutral. Each story included a pseudoword that appeared three times. The student had to detect pseudowords meaning from several clues inserted in the text. The purpose for reading did not focus attention to the learning of unknown words (incidental learning). After the reading, text comprehension and learning of unknown words were assessed (orthographic recognition task and definition task). Measures of receptive vocabulary, decoding, reading comprehension and verbal working memory were also administered. The text comprehension scores as well as those obtained at the definition task were significantly lower after the reading of positive texts rather than negative or neutral texts. The effect of text valence of new words learning has not been demonstrated. The results are interpreted in terms of distracting effect of the positive emotional content on text comprehension. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).