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The article presents a study which tested a welfare assessment method in two main types of farms differing by their type of floor, either concrete, fully or partially slatted (C), or straw (S) bedding. The welfare assessment method was build based on criteria related to behaviour, lesions cores and human/animal interactions. The study showed that severe wounds and tail lesions were less frequent in S than in C farms. It also revealed that positive social behaviour was more prevalent in C.

The structure of new submicronic spherical Ag-Pd powders (75/25 and 70/30 wt/wt% as spheres of mean diameter ca. 300 nm) has been investigated by various techniques. X-ray diffraction, carried out on both powder and single particles, showed two distinct metal phases, the first one being pure silver, the second one slightly alloyed palladium. X-ray microanalysis performed under SEM indicated that each grain displays intermetallic character, both metals being present in proportion close to the mean composition. Space-resolved information has been obtained by three different techniques: X-ray microanalysis carried out under transmission electron microscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry, the three of them leading to converging results. Each grain appears as a core made of pure silver surrounded by a 10–15 nm thick layer of slightly alloyed palladium with a mean Pd/Ag ratio 89%/11% which possibly increases from inside to outside.

Various properties of submicronic silver-palladium powders (70/30 and 75/25 Ag/Pd % wt/wt), recently obtained by a new process of precipitation in aqueous solution, are described. These powders are intended to be used in the multilayer ceramic capacitor industry. The morphology of the particles has been analysed through various measurements, such as SEM images, tap density, BET surface area, and the size distribution by a sedimentation technique. The powders were found to be made of spherical shaped particles of mean diameter close to 0.3 µm with a narrow size distribution. The individual grains were agglomerated only to a small extent. After being conditioned as a paste by blending with an organic binder, screen-printed and fired, the particles sintered into a conductive layer of low resistivity (15–30 µWcm for 2 µm thickness) with only a few remaining voids, as observed by SEM. Thermal measurements indicated no melting of a pure silver phase at 960 °C, thus indicating that alloying was achieved before this temperature.