Convertisseur d'équations LATEX2Ink

International audienceDans cet article nous présentons un outil de génération de formules mathématiques manuscrites en ligne à partir d'une chaîne LATEX. Ce générateur permettra facilement de fabriquer à partir d'un corpus de référence d'expressions mathématiques une base de données qui sera annotée automatiquement au niveau symbole. Ainsi, à partir d'une base de symboles isolés, nous pouvons produire de façon pseudo-synthétique une formule mathématique quelconque par un placement et un dimensionnement stochastiques 2D de ces éléments. Nous montrons l'intérêt de cet outil dans le cadre d'un projet visant à la conception d'une méthode adaptée à la reconnaissance et à l'interprétation d'expressions mathématiques en-ligne

Time to Virological Failure of 3 Classes of Antiretrovirals after Initiation of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy: Results from the EuroSIDA Study Group

Objective. The purpose of the present study was to determine the prevalence and incidence of virological triple drug-class failure (TCF) and to summarize the clinical outcome for patients who started receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Methods. The present study is an observational longitudinal study of 3496 treatment-experienced (TE) and treatment-naive (TN) patients monitored from the time they started receiving HAART (baseline) until TCF occurred (as determined on the basis of viral loads), until AIDS was newly diagnosed, or until death. Results. Four hundred forty-five patients (12.7%) had TCF; 370 (16.6%) of 2230 patients were TE, and 75 (5.9%) of 1266 patients were TN. At 6 years after starting HAART, 21.4% of TE and 11.2% of TN patients had TCF (P < .0001). The prevalence of TCF at or after 2002 was 15.5% in TE patients and 4.8% in TN patients. TN patients had a 32% annual increase in the incidence of TCF (95% confidence interval [CI], 14%-54%; P < .0001); at 5 years after starting HAART, the rate was comparable for TE and TN patients (3.3 and 3.4 cases/100 person-years of follow-up [PYFU], respectively). The incidence of new cases of AIDS or death was 2.7 cases/100 PYFU in patients who did not experience TCF and 5.0 cases/100 PYFU in patients who did experience TCF, an estimated 36% increase with each category of TCF (95% CI, 19%-56%; P < .0001). Conclusion. The prevalence of TCF was low after patients started receiving HAART, particularly among TN patients. Despite the influx of patients who had started receiving HAART more recently, the prevalence of TCF increased over calendar time. Patients with TCF had a higher incidence of newly diagnosed AIDS or death. Treatment of patients with TCF deserves further investigatio

In vitro culture with gemcitabine augments death receptor and NKG2D ligand expression on tumour cells

Much effort has been made to try to understand the relationship between chemotherapeutic treatment of cancer and the immune system. Whereas much of that focus has been on the direct effect of chemotherapy drugs on immune cells and the release of antigens and danger signals by malignant cells killed by chemotherapy, the effect of chemotherapy on cells surviving treatment has often been overlooked. In the present study, tumour cell lines: A549 (lung), HCT116 (colon) and MCF-7 (breast), were treated with various concentrations of the chemotherapeutic drugs cyclophosphamide, gemcitabine (GEM) and oxaliplatin (OXP) for 24 hours in vitro. In line with other reports, GEM and OXP upregulated expression of the death receptor CD95 (fas) on live cells even at sub-cytotoxic concentrations. Further investigation revealed that the increase in CD95 in response to GEM sensitised the cells to fas ligand treatment, was associated with increased phosphorylation of stress activated protein kinase/c-Jun N-terminal kinase and that other death receptors and activatory immune receptors were co-ordinately upregulated with CD95 in certain cell lines. The upregulation of death receptors and NKG2D ligands together on cells after chemotherapy suggest that although the cells have survived preliminary treatment with chemotherapy they may now be more susceptible to immune cell-mediated challenge. This re-enforces the idea that chemotherapy-immunotherapy combinations may be useful clinically and has implications for the make-up and scheduling of such treatments

Resolving Stellar Populations outside the Local Group: MAD observations of UKS2323-326

We present a study aimed at deriving constraints on star formation at intermediate ages from the evolved stellar populations in the dwarf irregular galaxy UKS2323-326. These observations were also intended to demonstrate the scientific capabilities of the multi-conjugated adaptive optics demonstrator (MAD) implemented at the ESO Very Large Telescope as a test-bench of adaptive optics (AO) techniques. We perform accurate, deep photometry of the field using J and Ks band AO images of the central region of the galaxy. The near-infrared (IR) colour-magnitude diagrams clearly show the sequences of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars, red supergiants, and red giant branch (RGB) stars down to ~1 mag below the RGB tip. Optical-near-IR diagrams, obtained by combining our data with Hubble Space Telescope observations, provide the best separation of stars in the various evolutionary stages. The counts of AGB stars brighter than the RGB tip allow us to estimate the star formation at intermediate ages. Assuming a Salpeter initial mass function, we find that the star formation episode at intermediate ages produced ~6x10^5 M_sun of stars in the observed region.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A Letter

Elaboration of a Novel Design Pirani Pressure Sensor for High Dynamic Range Operation and Fast Response Time

AbstractWe report a novel design for realizing Pirani sensor with a working range from a 1kPa up to pressure over than atmospheric one. The sensor is specifically designed to achieve high sensitivity, fast response time and high robustness. The proof of concept is composed of four metallic resistors interconnected to form a Wheatstone bridge. Two of them act simultaneously as the heating and sensing elements and the two others are used as a temperature reference. The heating element consists of a metallic wire of platinum Pt (3μm width, 1mm length) maintained on each lateral side by periodic silicon oxide SiO2 micro-bridges. The sensor design, fabrication technologies, electrical characterizations and voltage-pressure responses are described and shown. A future perspective is given, which describe the extension of this concept to elastic wave transduction of pressure using a combination of heater element and thin plate elastic waveguide

Grey and white matter correlates of recent and remote autobiographical memory retrieval:Insights from the dementias

The capacity to remember self-referential past events relies on the integrity of a distributed neural network. Controversy exists, however, regarding the involvement of specific brain structures for the retrieval of recently experienced versus more distant events. Here, we explored how characteristic patterns of atrophy in neurodegenerative disorders differentially disrupt remote versus recent autobiographical memory. Eleven behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia, 10 semantic dementia, 15 Alzheimer's disease patients and 14 healthy older Controls completed the Autobiographical Interview. All patient groups displayed significant remote memory impairments relative to Controls. Similarly, recent period retrieval was significantly compromised in behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease, yet semantic dementia patients scored in line with Controls. Voxel-based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging analyses, for all participants combined, were conducted to investigate grey and white matter correlates of remote and recent autobiographical memory retrieval. Neural correlates common to both recent and remote time periods were identified, including the hippocampus, medial prefrontal, and frontopolar cortices, and the forceps minor and left hippocampal portion of the cingulum bundle. Regions exclusively implicated in each time period were also identified. The integrity of the anterior temporal cortices was related to the retrieval of remote memories, whereas the posterior cingulate cortex emerged as a structure significantly associated with recent autobiographical memory retrieval. This study represents the first investigation of the grey and white matter correlates of remote and recent autobiographical memory retrieval in neurodegenerative disorders. Our findings demonstrate the importance of core brain structures, including the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, irrespective of time period, and point towards the contribution of discrete regions in mediating successful retrieval of distant versus recently experienced events