Development of thermal barrier coating systems from Al microparticles. Part I: Influence of processing conditions on the mechanisms of formation

International audienc

DOE Workforce Pipelines in Northern New Mexico: Frontline worker recruitment in the US nuclear weapons complex

Under pressure from major DOE contractors and state and local officials, many community colleges in Northern New Mexico have established DOE “workforce pipelines” during the last several years. First announced to the public in 2019, these pipelines are designed to quickly train many hundreds or thousands of workers for hazardous frontline positions at nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), where efforts to modernize the US nuclear arsenal are currently underway. Fueled by surging demand for frontline workers in the US nuclear weapons complex, these training programs offer rapid credentialing for hazardous DOE activities such as nuclear weapons manufacturing and nuclear waste remediation. Because they have been established at institutions of higher education that have an explicit mission to serve Hispanic, Native American, and/or low-income students in the region, these pipelines effectively target vulnerable communities for the most hazardous frontline positions at LANL. These positions (which involve direct and/or frequent exposure to radiation, organic solvents, heavy metals, beryllium, and other materials that are associated with the development of serious or life-threatening occupational illness) have been filled by the predominantly Hispanic and Native American residents of nearby communities for decades. DOE pipelines thus institutionalize the informal racial and ethnic partitioning of occupational risk that has long been active at LANL. Although presented as innovative collaborations between DOE and minority-serving educational institutions, these pipelines merely perpetuate an entrenched pattern of socioeconomic exploitation in the region. DOE workforce pipelines are also being established in the vicinity of the DOE Savannah River Site near Aiken, South Carolina, in anticipation of new nuclear weapons activities at the site. As is the case in Northern New Mexico, the pipeline programs being established in this predominantly Black region of South Carolina will effectively confine the heaviest burden of DOE-associated occupational exposure within a few, historically-disadvantaged communities. These communities will thus continue to suffer the greatest burden of DOE-associated occupational disease. Finally, DOE workforce pipelines (as they are currently implemented) sustain longstanding labor practices within DOE that needlessly expose workers to occupational risks. These practices, which require individuals to work directly with, or in close proximity to hazardous materials, pose substantial risks to workers engaged in activities such as nuclear waste remediation, and have been rejected by outside experts. Although technology that can vastly reduce or eliminate worker exposures during DOE activities has been available for decades, this technology has not been consistently adopted across the DOE complex. Indeed, DOE workforce pipelines in Northern New Mexico, which are designed to meet contractors’ demands for a continual supply of low-wage frontline workers, appear to ignore the availability of this technology altogether. Rather than stimulating investments in equipment, systems, and training aimed at eliminating needless worker exposures, these pipelines enable contractors to continue in their reliance on direct human labor, condemning yet another generation of DOE cleanup workers to life-threatening illness and injury. DOE and other officials have promoted DOE workforce pipelines as a means of uplifting local communities. Lost in this rhetoric, however, is the way these programs and the fast-track credentials they offer fit within broader patterns of economic coercion and exploitation, including the profound failure of the state’s K-12 public education system as revealed in the 2018 decision in Yazzie and Martínez v. State of New Mexico. Regrettably, DOE pipelines to hazardous industry are rapidly becoming a dominant and well-funded higher education paradigm at minority-serving institutions in Northern New Mexico. Funded in part through Congressional appropriations to DOE, efforts are now underway to support these pipelines through federal initiatives meant to benefit historically marginalized and environmentally-impacted communities

Personal Data Management Systems: The security and functionality standpoint

International audienceRiding the wave of smart disclosure initiatives and new privacy-protection regulations, the Personal Cloud paradigm is emerging through a myriad of solutions offered to users to let them gather and manage their whole digital life. On the bright side, this opens the way to novel value-added services when crossing multiple sources of data of a given person or crossing the data of multiple people. Yet this paradigm shift towards user empowerment raises fundamental questions with regards to the appropriateness of the functionalities and the data management and protection techniques which are offered by existing solutions to laymen users. These questions must be answered in order to limit the risk of seeing such solutions adopted only by a handful of users and thus leaving the Personal Cloud paradigm to become no more than one of the latest missed attempts to achieve a better regulation of the management of personal data. To this end, we review, compare and analyze personal cloud alternatives in terms of the functionalities they provide and the threat models they target. From this analysis, we derive a general set of functionality and security requirements that any Personal Data Management System (PDMS) should consider. We then identify the challenges of implementing such a PDMS and propose a preliminary design for an extensive and secure PDMS reference architecture satisfying the considered requirements. Finally, we discuss several important research challenges remaining to be addressed to achieve a mature PDMS ecosystem

Electrochemotherapy in radiotherapy-resistant epidural spinal cord compression in metastatic cancer patients

Objective: To report efficacy and safety of percutaneous electrochemotherapy (ECT) in patients with radiotherapy-resistant metastatic epidural spinal cord compression (MESCC). Material/ methods: This retrospective study analyzed all consecutive patients treated with bleomycin-based ECT between February-2020 and September-2022 in a single tertiary referral cancer center. Changes in pain were evaluated with the Numerical Rating Score (NRS), in neurological deficit with the Neurological Deficit Scale, and changes in epidural spinal cord compression were evaluated with the epidural spinal cord compression scale (ESCCS) using an MRI. Results: Forty consecutive solid tumour patients with previously radiated MESCC and no effective systemic treatment options were eligible. With a median follow-up of 5.1 months [1-19.1], toxicities were temporary acute radicular pain (25%), prolonged radicular hypoesthesia (10%), and paraplegia (7.5%). At 1 month, pain was significantly improved over baseline (median NRS: 1.0 [0-8] versus 7.0 [1.0-10], P < .001) and neurological benefits were considered as marked (28%), moderate (28%), stable (38%), or worse (8%). Three-month follow-up (21 patients) confirmed improved over baseline (median NRS: 2.0 [0-8] versus 6.0 [1.0-10], P < .001) and neurological benefits were considered as marked (38%), moderate (19%), stable (33.5%), and worse (9.5%). One-month post-treatment MRI (35 patients) demonstrated complete response in 46% of patients by ESCCS, partial response in 31%, stable disease in 23%, and no patients with progressive disease. Three-month post-treatment MRI (21 patients) demonstrated complete response in 28.5%, partial response in 38%, stable disease in 24%, and progressive disease in 9.5%. Conclusions: This study provides the first evidence that ECT can rescue radiotherapy-resistant MESCC

Overview of LifeCLEF location-based species prediction task 2020 (GeoLifeCLEF)

International audienceUnderstanding the geographic distribution of species is a key concern in conservation. By pairing species occurrences with environmental features, researchers can model the relationship between an environment and the species which may be found there. To advance the state-of-the-art in this area, a large-scale machine learning competition called GeoLifeCLEF 2020 was organized. It relied on a dataset of 1.9 million species observations paired with high-resolution remote sensing imagery, land cover data, and altitude, in addition to traditional low-resolution climate and soil variables. This paper presents an overview of the competition , synthesizes the approaches used by the participating groups, and analyzes the main results. In particular, we highlight the ability of remote sensing imagery and convolutional neural networks to improve predictive performance, complementary to traditional approaches

The Anch'Or Harpoon Technique With a Manually Expandable Stentretriever (Tigertriever 13), a Technical Note

Background and purposeStent and balloon anchor techniques have been described to obtain distal support and straighten catheter loops, stabilize microcatheters in giant aneurysms, or access distal tortuous anatomy during thrombectomy. These techniques require catheterization of distal arteries with a microcatheter but tortuosity and length issues may render it challenging, precluding the distal unsheathing of a classical auto-expandable stentretriever with the anchor technique.MethodsTherefore, we developed the so-called Anch'Or Harpoon Technique using a manually expandable stent retriever, the Tigertriever 13 (Rapid Medical, Yoqneam, Israel). Here, the stent retriever is not unsheathed but pushed out of a microcatheter, and then advanced as far as possible before manual opening.Results and conclusionThis technique may be used in 2 different situations. First, in the case of vessel tortuosity if the microcatheter can't be advanced as far as the physician wants: the Tigertriever 13 could be delivered through the microcatheter without having to unsheathe it, and be advanced and opened distally to its microcatheter to establish a stable anchor prior to advancing the guiding, intermediate, and micro-catheters (Anchor technique). The second situation is when distal occlusions lead to length issues; the microcatheter may be too short to cross a distal clot: the Tigertriever 13 could then be pushed out of the microcatheter, and be used to cross a sub-occlusive clot as it has a soft shaped distal tip and the physician has a visual on the artery beyond the sub-occlusion. Then, the Tigertriever would be manually expanded through the clot and retrieved (Harpoon technique) to obtain a recanalization

Cellular Immune Responses Induced with Dose-Sparing Intradermal Administration of HIV Vaccine to HIV-Uninfected Volunteers in the ANRS VAC16 Trial

The objective was to compare the safety and cellular immunogenicity of intradermal versus intramuscular immunization with an HIV-lipopeptide candidate vaccine (LIPO-4) in healthy volunteers.A randomized, open-label trial with 24 weeks of follow-up was conducted in France at six HIV-vaccine trial sites. Sixty-eight healthy 21- to 55-year-old HIV-uninfected subjects were randomized to receive the LIPO-4 vaccine (four HIV lipopeptides linked to a T-helper-stimulating epitope of tetanus-toxin protein) at weeks 0, 4 and 12, either intradermally (0.1 ml, 100 microg of each peptide) or intramuscularly (0.5 ml, 500 microg of each peptide). Comparative safety of both routes was evaluated. CD8+ T-cell immune responses to HIV epitopes (ELISpot interferon-gamma assay) and tetanus toxin-specific CD4+ T-cell responses (lymphoproliferation) were assessed at baseline, two weeks after each injection, and at week 24.No severe, serious or life-threatening adverse events were observed. Local pain was significantly more frequent after intramuscular injection, but local inflammatory reactions were more frequent after intradermal immunization. At weeks 2, 6, 14 and 24, the respective cumulative percentages of induced CD8+ T-cell responses to at least one HIV peptide were 9, 33, 39 and 52 (intradermal group) or 14, 20, 26 and 37 (intramuscular group), and induced tetanus toxin-specific CD4+ T-cell responses were 6, 27, 33 and 39 (intradermal), or 9, 46, 54 and 63 (intramuscular). In conclusion, intradermal LIPO-4 immunization was well tolerated, required one-fifth of the intramuscular dose, and induced similar HIV-specific CD8+ T-cell responses. Moreover, the immunization route influenced which antigen-specific T-cells (CD4+ or CD8+) were induced.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00121121

Single Trial Classification of Motor Imagination Using 6 Dry EEG Electrodes

BACKGROUND: Brain computer interfaces (BCI) based on electro-encephalography (EEG) have been shown to detect mental states accurately and non-invasively, but the equipment required so far is cumbersome and the resulting signal is difficult to analyze. BCI requires accurate classification of small amplitude brain signal components in single trials from recordings which can be compromised by currents induced by muscle activity. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: A novel EEG cap based on dry electrodes was developed which does not need time-consuming gel application and uses far fewer electrodes than on a standard EEG cap set-up. After optimizing the placement of the 6 dry electrodes through off-line analysis of standard cap experiments, dry cap performance was tested in the context of a well established BCI cursor control paradigm in 5 healthy subjects using analysis methods which do not necessitate user training. The resulting information transfer rate was on average about 30% slower than the standard cap. The potential contribution of involuntary muscle activity artifact to the BCI control signal was found to be inconsequential, while the detected signal was consistent with brain activity originating near the motor cortex. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our study shows that a surprisingly simple and convenient method of brain activity imaging is possible, and that simple and robust analysis techniques exist which discriminate among mental states in single trials. Within 15 minutes the dry BCI device is set-up, calibrated and ready to use. Peak performance matched reported EEG BCI state of the art in one subject. The results promise a practical non-invasive BCI solution for severely paralyzed patients, without the bottleneck of setup effort and limited recording duration that hampers current EEG recording technique. The presented recording method itself, BCI not considered, could significantly widen the use of EEG for emerging applications requiring long-term brain activity and mental state monitoring

Clinical Manifestations and Case Management of Ebola Haemorrhagic Fever caused by a newly identified virus strain, Bundibugyo, Uganda, 2007-2008

A confirmed Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EHF) outbreak in Bundibugyo, Uganda, November 2007-February 2008, was caused by a putative new species (Bundibugyo ebolavirus). It included 93 putative cases, 56 laboratory-confirmed cases, and 37 deaths (CFR = 25%). Study objectives are to describe clinical manifestations and case management for 26 hospitalised laboratory-confirmed EHF patients. Clinical findings are congruous with previously reported EHF infections. The most frequently experienced symptoms were non-bloody diarrhoea (81%), severe headache (81%), and asthenia (77%). Seven patients reported or were observed with haemorrhagic symptoms, six of whom died. Ebola care remains difficult due to the resource-poor setting of outbreaks and the infection-control procedures required. However, quality data collection is essential to evaluate case definitions and therapeutic interventions, and needs improvement in future epidemics. Organizations usually involved in EHF case management have a particular responsibility in this respect