Anticancer Multidrug Resistance Mediated by MRP1: Recent Advances in the Discovery of Reversal Agents

International audienc

Water and cattle shape habitat selection by wild herbivores at the edge of a protected area

Understanding the spatiotemporal dynamics of human‐wildlife interfaces is important for the sustainable management of protected areas and wildlife conservation. We investigated the drivers of domestic and wild herbivore habitat selection at the edge of an unfenced protected area adjacent to Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe. We used GPS data to quantify the movement patterns of elephant bulls, buffalo and cattle at multiple scales and according to seasonal changes of surface water availability. Cattle, elephant and buffalo prefer open grassland habitats found close to water but elephant and buffalo avoid cattle differently. During the rainy season, cattle enter the protected area daily; buffalo avoid cattle completely at the home range scale, whereas elephant bulls avoid cattle at finer scales by favoring temporal niche shift. Elephant bulls avoid direct encounters with cattle (or people) during the day but come closer to the boundary and to water at night when cattle are kept in enclosures close to the homesteads. During the dry season, when cattle range further into the protected area in search of forage, buffalo and cattle spatial overlap increases as water dependence takes precedence over avoidance. Elephant bulls range closer to the boundary at night and increase the number of excursions into the Communal Area. Cattle herding creates a buffer zone between wildlife areas and human settlements because wild herbivores strongly avoid livestock and people. However, avoidance only lasts as long as resources are abundant. Our study suggests that long‐term planning of both artificial water provisioning and traditional cattle herding practices could help maintaining spatial segregation and thus mitigate conservation conflicts such as pathogen transmission, crop raiding or livestock depredation

Fiber Bragg Based Sensors for Foot Plantar Pressure Analysis

Gait analysis is of major importance in physical rehabilitation scenarios, lower limbs diseases diagnosis and prevention. Foot plantar pressure is a key parameter in the gait analysis and its dynamic monitoring is crucial for an accurate assessment of gait related pathologies and/or rehabilitation status evolution. It is therefore critical to invest effort in research for foot plantar analysis technologies. From that perspective, optical fiber sensors appear to be an excellent solution, given their sensing advantages for medical applications, when compared with their electronic counterparts. This chapter explores the use of optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors, both in plastic and silica optical fiber, to dynamically monitor the foot plantar pressure. An array of FBGs was integrated in a specially designed cork insole, with the optical sensors placed at key pressure points for analysis. Both insoles, containing plastic and silica optical fiber sensors, were tested for dynamic gait monitoring and body center of mass displacement, showing the reliability of this sensing technology for foot plantar pressure monitoring during gait motion