Working in a zoo: physical and zoonotic hazards, preventive measures

Working with zoo animals involves hazards for veterinarians and animal keepers. The staff is exposed to a risk of injury, either directly due to the animals or indirectly due to the equipment used for their care. The broad range of species gathered in the same place, and daily contacts between the staff and the animals also constitute a zoonotic risk. Preventive measures involve health and security measures, staff training, and communication with all the actors of animal and human health.Le travail avec des animaux de parc zoologique présente des dangers pour les vétérinaires et les soigneurs animaliers. Le personnel est soumis aux risques de blessures provoquées directement par les animaux, ou indirectement par la manipulation de matériel nécessaire à leur gestion. Le risque zoonotique est également présent en raison de la grande variété d'espèces réunies dans un même lieu et du contact quotidien du personnel avec les animaux. Les moyens de prévention impliquent des mesures d'hygiène et de sécurité, la formation du personnel, et la communication avec tous les acteurs de santé animale et humaine

Multiple receptor tyrosine kinases regulate dengue infection of hepatocytes

IntroductionDengue is an arboviral disease causing severe illness in over 500,000 people each year. Currently, there is no way to constrain dengue in the clinic. Host kinase regulators of dengue virus (DENV) infection have the potential to be disrupted by existing therapeutics to prevent infection and/or disease progression.MethodsTo evaluate kinase regulation of DENV infection, we performed kinase regression (KiR), a machine learning approach that predicts kinase regulators of infection using existing drug-target information and a small drug screen. We infected hepatocytes with DENV in vitro in the presence of a panel of 38 kinase inhibitors then quantified the effect of each inhibitor on infection rate. We employed elastic net regularization on these data to obtain predictions of which of 291 kinases are regulating DENV infection.ResultsThirty-six kinases were predicted to have a functional role. Intriguingly, seven of the predicted kinases – EPH receptor A4 (EPHA4), EPH receptor B3 (EPHB3), EPH receptor B4 (EPHB4), erb-b2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2 (ERBB2), fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2), Insulin like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF1R), and ret proto-oncogene (RET) – belong to the receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) family, which are already therapeutic targets in the clinic. We demonstrate that predicted RTKs are expressed at higher levels in DENV infected cells. Knockdown of EPHB4, ERBB2, FGFR2, or IGF1R reduces DENV infection in hepatocytes. Finally, we observe differential temporal induction of ERBB2 and IGF1R following DENV infection, highlighting their unique roles in regulating DENV.DiscussionCollectively, our findings underscore the significance of multiple RTKs in DENV infection and advocate further exploration of RTK-oriented interventions against dengue

DataManager, un système novateur de gestion et d’échange de données botaniques distribuées

National audienceDataManager, un système novateur de gestion et d'échange de données botaniques distribuées STRUCTURATION DES DONNÉES Cette application web est dédiée à des scientifiques souhaitant gérer des jeux de données spécifiques, avec le souhait de partager une partie de leur travail. Pl@ntNet-DataManager est développé avec un moteur de base de données NoSQL, offrant des fonctionnalités innovantes, notamment pour une structuration flexible des données, ainsi que des fonctions avancées de synchronisation. Ce système offre des fonctionnalités classiques de gestion de données, telles que la recherche libre, l'édition de requêtes structurées, l'import / export à différents formas, la gestion d'images ou de données géo-localisées. Ce travail a permis d'initier une nouvelle forme de gestion de gros volumes de données. Il se poursuit actuellement à travers son exploitation dans le cadre de la chaîne logicielle Pl@ntNet, notamment pour la gestion d'observations botaniques et des données visuelles associée

Urban Climate, Human behavior & Energy consumption: from LCZ mapping to simulation and urban planning (the MapUCE project)

International audienceThe MApUCE project aims to integrate in urban policies and most relevant legal documents quantitative data from urban microclimate, climate and energy.The primary objective of this project is to obtain climate and energy quantitative data from numerical simulations, focusing on urban microclimate and building energy consumption in the residential and service sectors, which represents in France 41% of the final energy consumption. Both aspects are coupled as building energy consumption is highly meteorologically dependent (e.g. domestic heating, air-conditioning) and heat waste impact the Urban Heat Island. We propose to develop, using national databases, a generic and automated method for generating Local Climate Zones (LCZ) for all cities in France, including the urban architectural, geographical and sociological parameters necessary for energy and microclimate simulations.As will be presented, previous projects on adaptation of cities to climate change have shown that human behavior is a very potent level to address energy consumption reduction, as much as urban forms or architectural technologies. Therefore, in order to further refine the coupled urban climate and energy consumption calculations, we will develop within TEB (and its Building Energy Module) a model of energy consumer behavior.The second objective of the project is to propose a methodology to integrate quantitative data in urban policies. Lawyers analyze the potential levers in legal and planning documents. A few “best cases” are also studied, in order to evaluate their performances. Finally, based on urban planning agencies requirements, we will define vectors to include quantified energy-climate data to legal urban planning documents. These vectors have to be understandable by urban planners and contain the relevant information.To meet these challenges, the project is organized around strongly interdisciplinary partners in the following fields: law, urban climate, building energetics, architecture, sociology, geography and meteorology, as well as the national federation of urban planning agencies.In terms of results, the cross-analysis of input urban parameters and urban micro-climate-energy simulated data will be available on-line as standardized maps for each of the studied cities. The urban parameter production tool as well as the models will be available as open-source. LCZ and associated urban (and social!) indicators may be integrated within the WUDAPT database

Modeling and mapping domestic energy behavior: Insights from a consumer survey in France

Consultable en ligne : http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2017.06.021International audienceMost works on the modeling of energy consumption in buildings make little headway in producing results that can be put to use in public policies. They reduce energy consumption to a quantity, without taking account of the behavioral processes and spatial variations that generate and explain them. The objective of our study is to reverse the perspective and to start from energy-related behavior rather than from intensities of consumption. Using regression methods and data from a survey on the energy lifestyles of 1950 households in the Île-de-France (Paris) region, we first model energy-related behaviors by looking at the characteristics of dwellings and buildings, as well as the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of their occupants. Second, we in-vestigate the relationship between behavior and energy consumption by using our models to simulate domestic energy consumption at national scale. Finally, we map energy behaviors at the scale of the Île-de-France region.Energy-related behaviors turn out to be the product of complex interactions between habitat, inhabitants, and environment. Their spatial distribution is linked to territorial dynamics (metropolitanization, distribution of habitat types, etc.), as suggested by our cartographic analysis. But these results also highlight the complexity of the processes, insofar as there are no mechanical explanatory variables for behaviors

Redundancy implies robustness for bang-bang strategies

International audienceWe develop in this paper a method ensuring robustness properties to bang-bang strategies, for general nonlinear control systems. Our main idea is to add bang arcs in the form of needle-like variations of the control. With such bang-bang controls having additional degrees of freedom, steering the control system to some given target amounts to solving an overdeter-mined nonlinear shooting problem, what we do by developing a least-square approach. In turn, we design a criterion to measure the quality of robustness of the bang-bang strategy, based on the singular values of the end-point mapping, and which we optimize. Our approach thus shows that redundancy implies robustness, and we show how to achieve some compromises in practice, by applying it to the attitude control of a 3d rigid body

Parametrisation of the variety of human behaviour related to building energy consumption in the Town Energy Balance (SURFEX-TEB v. 8.2)

International audienceThe anthropogenic heat flux can be an important part of the urban surface energy balance. Some of it is due to energy consumption inside buildings, which depends on building use and human behaviour, both of which are very heterogeneous in most urban areas. Urban canopy parametrisations (UCP), such as the Town Energy Balance (TEB), parametrise the effect of the buildings on the urban surface energy balance. They contain a simple building energy model. However, the variety of building use and human behaviour at grid point scale has not yet been represented in state of the art UCPs. In this study, we describe how we enhance the Town Energy Balance in order to take fractional building use and human behaviour into account. We describe how we parametrise different behaviours and initialise the model for applications in France. We evaluate the spatio-temporal variability of the simulated building energy consumption for the city of Toulouse. We show that a more detailed description of building use and human behaviour enhances the simulation results. The model developments lay the groundwork for simulations of coupled urban climate and building energy consumption which are relevant for both the urban climate and the climate change mitigation and adaptation communities

Automatic trajectory control of single cells using dielectrophoresis based on visual feedback

International audienceThis paper deals with the automatic control of the trajectory of T-lymphocytes using dielectrophoretic (DEP) actuation. Dielectrophoresis is a physical phenomenon induced by a non-uniform electric field enabling application of a force on a dielectric object. In most of the cases, it is used in a passive way. Theelectric field is in a steady state and the force applied on the cells depends on the cell's characteristics and position inside the channel. These systems are limited as cells with similar characteristics will undergo the same forces. To overcome thisissue, active devices where the electric field changes over time were developed. However, the voltages that should be applied to generate the desired electric field are mostly computed offline using finite element methods. Thus, there is a low number of devices using automatic approaches with dielectrophoretic actuationwhere the electric field is computed and updated in real time based on the current position of the cell. We propose here an experimental bench used to study the automatic trajectory control of cells by dielectrophoresis. The computation of thedielectrophoretic force is done online with a model based on the Fourier series depending on the cell's characteristics, position and electric field. This model allows the use of a controller based on visual feedback running at 120 Hz to control the position of cells inside a microfluidic chip. As cells are sensitive to the electric field, the controller limits the norm of the electric field while maximizing the gradient to maximize the DEP force. Experiments have been performed and T-lymphocytes were successfully steered along several types of trajectories at a speed of fivetimes their size per second. The mean error along those trajectories is below 2 μm. The viability of the cells has been checked after the experiments and confirms that this active DEP actuation does not harm the cells