Le gisement épipaléolithique à pointes de Malaurie de Champ-Chalatras (Les Martres d’Artière, Puy-de-Dôme)

Le site épipaléolithique de Champ-Chalatras se caractérise par la présence de trois concentrations de vestiges archéologiques répartis autour de plusieurs foyers construits. Les analyses spatiales ont permis de mettre en évidence la structuration de l’espace domestique des locus avec des aires d’activités spécifiques liées au débitage du silex, au façonnage des outils, au rejet d’une partie des déchets de taille et à l’utilisation de certains types d’outils en relation avec les vestiges osseux. Les données fournies par l’étude archéozoologique montrent la prédominance des bovinés (Aurochs) sur les autres espèces. L’étude technologique de l’industrie lithique a permis de déterminer les modes d’introduction des différentes matières premières jurassiques, crétacées et tertiaires en fonction de leur origine géographique. Le débitage est orienté vers la production de supports laminaires rectilignes obtenus au percuteur de pierre tendre, à partir de nucléus à un ou deux plans de frappe opposés. L’outillage se caractérise par la présence de pointes à dos rectiligne et base tronquée (pointes de Malaurie), de pièces tronquées, de rectangles, de grattoirs et de pièces esquillées. Les données techno-typologiques permettent de rapprocher le site de Champ-Chalatras des niveaux laboriens des sites de la Borie del Rey et de Pont d’Ambon dans le sud-ouest de la France. Les datations au radiocarbone (10 000 ± 100 BP, 9920±120 BP et 9580±140 BP) confirment également cet état de fait, tout comme l’assemblage faunique.The Epipalaeolithic site of Champ-Chalatras is caracterised by the existence of three concentrations of archaeological pieces around several built fire places. The spatial analysis have permitted to put in evidence the domestic space structuration of locus with specific activities areas linked up flint debitage, tools shaping, part of cut wastes throwing out and the utilisation of particular tools types in relation with bone remnants. The data provided by archaeozoological study show the predominance of aurochs among the other species. The technological study of lithic industry has permitted to determine the introduction modes of different raw materials (Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary) according to their geographical origins. The debitage is oriented to a straight blades production obtained with a soft stone hammer from bipolar cores. Toolkit is caracterised by the presence of Malaurie points, truncated pieces, rectangles, end-scrapers and “pièces esquillées”. Techno-typological data of Champ-Chalatras are similar to laborian levels of La Borie del Rey and Pont d’Ambon in south western France, which is confirmed by C14 dates (10 000±100 BP et 9920±120 BP)

Vesicular glutamate release from central axons contributes to myelin damage

Neuronal activity can lead to vesicular release of glutamate. Here the authors demonstrate that vesicular release of glutamate occurs in axons during ischemic conditions, and that an allosteric modulator of GluN2C/D is protective in models of ischemic injury

High frequency of Human Cytomegalovirus DNA in the Liver of Infants with Extrahepatic Neonatal Cholestasis

BACKGROUND: Biliary atresia (BA) is the most severe hepatic disorder in newborns and its etiopathogenesis remains unknown. Viral involvement has been proposed, including the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV). The aims of the study were to use the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to screen the liver tissue of infants with extrahepatic cholestasis for HCMV and to correlate the results with serological antibodies against HCMV and histological findings. METHODS: A retrospective study in a tertiary care setting included 35 patients (31 BA, 1 BA associated with a choledochal cyst, 2 congenital stenosis of the distal common bile duct and 1 hepatic cyst). HCMV serology was determined by ELISA. Liver and porta hepatis were examined histologically. Liver samples from infants and a control group were screened for HCMV DNA. RESULTS: Twelve patients had HCMV negative serology, 9 were positive for IgG antibodies and 14 were positive for IgG and IgM. Nine liver and seven porta hepatis samples were positive for HCMV DNA but none of the control group were positive (general frequency of positivity was 34.3% – 12/35). There was no correlation between HCMV positivity by PCR and the histological findings. The accuracy of serology for detecting HCMV antibodies was low. CONCLUSION: These results indicate an elevated frequency of HCMV in pediatric patients with extrahepatic neonatal cholestasis. They also show the low accuracy of serological tests for detecting active HCMV infection and the lack of correlation between HCMV positivity by PCR and the histopathological changes

Human Cysteine Cathepsins Are Not Reliable Markers of Infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Cystic Fibrosis

Cysteine cathepsins have emerged as new players in inflammatory lung disorders. Their activities are dramatically increased in the sputum of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, suggesting that they are involved in the pathophysiology of CF. We have characterized the cathepsins in CF expectorations and evaluated their use as markers of colonization by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The concentrations of active cathepsins B, H, K, L and S were the same in P. aeruginosa-positive (19 Ps+) and P. aeruginosa-negative (6 Ps−) samples, unlike those of human neutrophil elastase. Also the cathepsin inhibitory potential and the cathepsins/cathepsin inhibitors imbalance remained unchanged and similar (∼2-fold) in the Ps+ and Ps− groups (p<0.001), which correlated with the breakdown of their circulating cystatin-like inhibitors (kininogens). Procathepsins, which may be activated autocatalytically, are a potential proteolytic reservoir. Immunoblotting and active-site labeling identified the double-chain cathepsin B, the major cathepsin in CF sputum, as the main molecular form in both Ps+ and Ps− samples, despite the possible release of the ∼31 kDa single-chain form from procathepsin B by sputum elastase. Thus, the hydrolytic activity of cysteine cathepsins was not correlated with bacterial colonization, indicating that cathepsins, unlike human neutrophil elastase, are not suitable markers of P. aeruginosa infection

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research