ASIRPA - Analyse des Impacts de la Recherche Publique Agronomique. Rapport final

Le rapport fait le bilan de trois années de recherche concernant les méthodologies d'évaluation d'un organisme public de recherche finalisée. Au cours de trois années de recherche, l’équipe ASIRPA a construit une approche d’évaluation fondée sur la réalisation d’études de cas standardisées, conciliant analyse qualitative et quantitative des impacts des recherches selon cinq dimensions d’analyse. La démarche a été utilisée avec succès par les départements de recherche de l’institut. Une analyse transversale des 30 études réalisées à ce jour a permis de construire une typologie de 5 familles de chemins d’impact caractéristiques de l’institut. Le présent rapport démontre la pertinence des études ex post pour permettre à un organisme finalisé de mieux connaître l’impact de ses recherches, et favoriser les échanges avec les chercheurs et les partenaires autour de cette questio

European Lung Cancer Working Party Clinical Practice Guidelines Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: II. Unresectable Non-metastatic Stages

The present guidelines on the management of unresectable non-metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were formulated by the ELCWP in October 2005. They are designed to answer the following eight questions: 1) Is chest irradiation curative for NSCLC? 2) What are the contra-indications (anatomical or functional) to chest irradiation? 3) Does the addition of chemotherapy add an advantage to radiotherapy? 4) Does the addition of radiotherapy add an advantage to chemotherapy? 5) Is irradiation as effective as surgery for marginally resectable stage III? 6) How to best combine chemotherapy with radiotherapy: sequentially, concomitantly, as consolidation, as induction, as radiosensitiser? 7) In case of too advanced locoregional disease, is there a role for consolidation (salvage) local treatment (surgery or radiotherapy) after induction chemotherapy? 8) In 2005, what are the technical characteristics of an adequate radiotherapy

European Lung Cancer Working Party. Clinical Practice Guidelines. Small Cell Lung Cancer: V. Extensive disease

The present guidelines on the management of extensive disease small cell lung cancer (SCLC) were formulated by the ELCWP in October 2007. They are designed to answer the following nine questions: 1) What is the definition of extensive disease? 2)What are the active drugs? 3) What is the best induction regimen? 4) Is there a role for maintenance chemotherapy? 5) Is there a role for dose-intensive chemotherapy? 6) Is there a role for the use of haemopoietic growth factors and stem cells support? 7) Is there a role for alternating or sequential chemotherapy? 8) Is there a role for biological treatments? 9) Is there a place for second-line chemotherapy

European Lung Cancer Working Party Clinical Practice Guidelines. Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: III. Metastatic disease

The present guidelines on the management of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NS CLC) were formulated by the ELCWP in October 2006. They are designed to answer the following twelve questions: 1) What benefits can be expected from chemotherapy and what are the treatment objectives? 2) What are the active chemotherapeutic drugs for which efficacy has been shown? 3) Which are the most effective platinum-based regimens? 4) Which is the indicated dosage of cisplatin? 5) Can carboplatin be substituted for cisplatin? 6) Which is the optimal number of cycles to be administered? 7) Can non-platinum based regimens be substituted for platinum based chemotherapy as first-line treatment? 8) Is there an indication for sequential chemotherapy? 9) What is the efficacy of salvage chemotherapy and which drugs should be used in that indication? 10) What is the place of targeted therapies? 11) What is the place of chemotherapy in the management of a patient with brain metastases? 12) Which specific drugs can be used for the patient with bone metastases

Improved annotation of the insect vector of citrus greening disease: Biocuration by a diverse genomics community

The Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri Kuwayama) is the insect vector of the bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas), the pathogen associated with citrus Huanglongbing (HLB, citrus greening). HLB threatens citrus production worldwide. Suppression or reduction of the insect vector using chemical insecticides has been the primary method to inhibit the spread of citrus greening disease. Accurate structural and functional annotation of the Asian citrus psyllid genome, as well as a clear understanding of the interactions between the insect and CLas, are required for development of new molecular-based HLB control methods. A draft assembly of the D. citri genome has been generated and annotated with automated pipelines. However, knowledge transfer from well-curated reference genomes such as that of Drosophila melanogaster to newly sequenced ones is challenging due to the complexity and diversity of insect genomes. To identify and improve gene models as potential targets for pest control, we manually curated several gene families with a focus on genes that have key functional roles in D. citri biology and CLas interactions. This community effort produced 530 manually curated gene models across developmental, physiological, RNAi regulatory and immunity-related pathways. As previously shown in the pea aphid, RNAi machinery genes putatively involved in the microRNA pathway have been specifically duplicated. A comprehensive transcriptome enabled us to identify a number of gene families that are either missing or misassembled in the draft genome. In order to develop biocuration as a training experience, we included undergraduate and graduate students from multiple institutions, as well as experienced annotators from the insect genomics research community. The resulting gene set (OGS v1.0) combines both automatically predicted and manually curated gene models.Peer reviewedBiochemistry and Molecular BiologyEntomology and Plant Patholog

Counting what really counts? Assessing the political impact of science

The production of scientific knowledge is expected to benefit society in a variety of ways. However, and despite the many theoretical models available in the literature, there are few practical frameworks for assessing the dimensions of the effect of research on society—including its political impacts. As part of the ASIRPA approach, in this paper we propose an ordinal rating scale to allow assessment of the political impact of research, based on a review of the literature, qualitative evidence of political impact gleaned from a collection of case studies, and an expert panel. The resulting metric uses a 1–5 scale to evaluate the intensity of the political impact of research according to generic criteria associated to each rating level. Routine application of this scale in case study research is increasing, and is allowing robust, simple and consistent self-assessments of the political impacts across cases, to complement qualitative case study descriptions. The methodology used to design the rating scale prompted the panel experts to reveal their evaluation rationales and justify their judgments, increasing the transparency of the assessments. We believe that the benefits of assigning an ordinal measure to the political impact of research outweigh the risks of misuse of an impact number. The advantages include influencing political agenda-setting by showing what really matters, the opportunities it provides for scaling-up analyses of multidimensional impacts and identifying impact-generating mechanisms, and learning about and promoting discussion of the value systems reflected in the assessment

Erratum: “Nonlinear evolution of nonuniformly heated falling liquid films” [Phys. Fluids 14

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Agricultural research impact assessment: issues, methods and challenges

The Research Impact Assessment (RIA) is expected to increase the efficiency with which public funds are used, and to improve more broadly the functioning of the research and innovation system and its contribution to address a wide range of socio-economic and environmental issues. Both standard economic approaches, which aim to estimate the economic benefits of research investments, and case-study approaches, which aim to analyse the processes of impact generation, have been applied to agricultural research in practice. Standard economic approaches generally focus on public research as information on private efforts in agricultural research is limited, and on economic impacts such as productivity growth. Case studies provide richer information, through a narrative, and highlight the complex relationships among the various variables, events and actors, but it is difficult to standardise results and scale them up. The challenge for RIA is to take into account broader impacts that go beyond science and economic impacts, and to improve knowledge on impact-generating mechanisms. This has become more difficult as agricultural research and innovation systems are increasingly open and complex, and changing quickly. Observation of practices applied to agricultural research in five selected organisations confirms the difference found in RIA between academic research and in practice. In both, the assessment systems pursue the same objectives: 1) Learning: enhance the know-how to produce an environment conducive to socio-economic impact; 2) Capacity building: spread the culture of socio-economic impact to its researchers; and 3) Reporting to stakeholders: from accountability purposes to advocacy targeted to various audiences. The accountability objective, including estimating returns on the financial investment, poses complex challenges and is in tension with the learning and capacity building objectives. The future of RIA will depend on the capacity to improve estimation methods and gather quality information (which also takes into account non-economic impacts) and the sharing of good practices

A phase II single-arm study of induction chemotherapy with cisplatin and gemcitabine followed by concurrent cisplatin and gemcitabine with thoracic radiation for unresectable locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of the combination of cisplatin–gemcitabine with concurrent thoracic radiotherapy for locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (LA-NSCLC). Methods: This was a phase II, multicenter, open-label, single-arm trial in treatment-naïve patients with stage IIIA and IIIB LA-NSCLC. After three induction cycles with gemcitabine 1250 mg/m 2 plus cisplatin 80 mg/m 2 , two concurrent chemoradiotherapy cycles with gemcitabine 300 mg/m 2 , cisplatin 80 mg/m 2 , and radiotherapy (63 Gy) were administered. The primary endpoint was response rate after induction chemotherapy followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Secondary endpoints included time to progressive disease (TtPD), overall survival (OS), and safety. Results: Overall, 49 patients (median age 63.4 years; 73.5% male; Karnofsky performance status scores of 80, 85, 90, and 100 [16.3%, 2.0%, 49.0%, and 32.7%, respectively]; disease stage IIIA or IIIB 28.6% and 71.4%, respectively) were enrolled and treated. Response rate was 38.8% (95% confidence interval [CI] 25.2–53.8%). Median TtPD was 11.4 months (95% CI 9.4–12.9). Median OS was 21.8 months (95% CI 17.5–26.0), with 1- and 2-year survival rates of 70.8% and 43.7%, respectively. Overall, six patients discontinued from study treatment due to adverse events (AEs), of which two were serious AEs. The most relevant grade 3/4 AEs were neutropenia and thrombocytopenia in induction chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy, and grade 3 events related to radiation in acute chemoradiotherapy, e.g. dysphagia, radiation pneumonitis, and radiation esophagitis. Conclusions: Induction chemotherapy followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy with gemcitabine (300 mg/m 2 ) and cisplatin was associated with acceptable toxicity. The observed median OS time was 21.8 months. Response evaluation was difficult as in many cases it was not possible to differentiate tumor progression from local radiofibrosis