Making space for experiential knowledge in climate change adaptation? Insights from municipal planning officers in Bohol, Philippines

Climate change is a global phenomenon that has multiple local effects on people and places. Yet, climate change knowledge often travels uncomfortably across scales and needs constant re-interpretation as it is applied in different spatial contexts. This requires the examination of how scientific and local knowledge about climate change travel across social systems and shape local meanings and adaptive actions on climate change. Using an interpretive social science analysis of environmental change, this study investigates development planning as a key boundary object for handling both kinds of knowledge and explores experiential knowledge of climate change held by planning officers from the coastal landscape of the island province of Bohol, Philippines. Drawing upon face-to-face interviews, mental maps, and planning documents review, main results first characterise three experiential ways of knowing about climate change across spaces of lived experiences and spaces of maps and plans. Then, we show how planners engage with climate change adaptation by combining national, techno-scientific and local, on-the-ground ways of knowing, offering a venue in which experiential knowledge on climate change is used for building planning significance and making more grounded accounts of adaptation moving forward in planning policy and practice

Viruses of protozoan parasites and viral therapy: Is the time now right?

Infections caused by protozoan parasites burden the world with huge costs in terms of human and animal health. Most parasitic diseases caused by protozoans are neglected, particularly those associated with poverty and tropical countries, but the paucity of drug treatments and vaccines combined with increasing problems of drug resistance are becoming major concerns for their control and eradication. In this climate, the discovery/repurposing of new drugs and increasing effort in vaccine development should be supplemented with an exploration of new alternative/synergic treatment strategies. Viruses, either native or engineered, have been employed successfully as highly effective and selective therapeutic approaches to treat cancer (oncolytic viruses) and antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases (phage therapy). Increasing evidence is accumulating that many protozoan, but also helminth, parasites harbour a range of different classes of viruses that are mostly absent from humans. Although some of these viruses appear to have no effect on their parasite hosts, others either have a clear direct negative impact on the parasite or may, in fact, contribute to the virulence of parasites for humans. This review will focus mainly on the viruses identified in protozoan parasites that are of medical importance. Inspired and informed by the experience gained from the application of oncolytic virus- and phage-therapy, rationally-driven strategies to employ these viruses successfully against parasitic diseases will be presented and discussed in the light of the current knowledge of the virus biology and the complex interplay between the viruses, the parasite hosts and the human host. We also highlight knowledge gaps that should be addressed to advance the potential of virotherapy against parasitic diseases

Daily allergy burden and heart rate characteristics in adults with allergic rhinitis based on a wearable telemonitoring system

Background: Allergic rhinitis includes a certain degree of autonomic imbalance. However, no information is available on how daily changes in allergy burden affect autonomic imbalance. We aimed to estimate associations between daily allergy burden (allergy symptoms and mood) and daily heart rate characteristics (resting heart rate and sample entropy, both biomarkers of autonomic balance) of adults with allergic rhinitis, based on real-world measurements with a wearable telemonitoring system. Methods: Adults with a tree pollen allergy used a smartphone application to self-report daily allergy symptoms (score 0–44) and mood (score 0–4), and a Mio Alpha 2 wristwatch to collect heart rate characteristics during two pollen seasons of hazel, alder and birch in Belgium. Associations between daily allergy burden and heart rate characteristics were estimated using linear mixed effects distributed lag models with a random intercept for individuals and adjusted for potential confounders. Results: Analyses included 2497 participant-days of 72 participants. A one-point increase in allergy symptom score was associated with an increase in next-day resting heart rate of 0.08 (95% CI: 0.02–0.15) beats per minute. A one-point increase in mood score was associated with an increase in same-day sample entropy of 0.80 (95% CI: 0.34–1.26) × 10−2. No associations were found between allergy symptoms and heart rate sample entropy, nor between mood and resting heart rate. Conclusion: Daily repeated measurements with a wearable telemonitoring system revealed that the daily allergy burden of adults with allergic rhinitis has systemic effects beyond merely the respiratory system.</p

CELF proteins regulate CFTR pre-mRNA splicing: essential role of the divergent domain of ETR-3

Cystic fibrosis is a prominent genetic disease caused by mutations of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene. Among the many disease-causing alterations are pre-mRNA splicing defects that can hamper mandatory exon inclusion. CFTR exon 9 splicing depends in part on a polymorphic UG(m)U(n) sequence at the end of intron 8, which can be bound by TDP-43, leading to partial exon 9 skipping. CELF proteins, like CUG-BP1 and ETR-3, can also bind UG repeats and regulate splicing. We show here that ETR-3, but not CUG-BP1, strongly stimulates exon 9 skipping, although both proteins bind efficiently to the same RNA motif as TDP-43 and with higher affinity. We further show that the skipping of this exon may be due to the functional antagonism between U2AF65 and ETR-3 binding onto the polymorphic U or UG stretch, respectively. Importantly, we demonstrate that the divergent domain of ETR-3 is critical for CFTR exon 9 skipping, as shown by deletion and domain-swapping experiments. We propose a model whereby several RNA-binding events account for the complex regulation of CFTR exon 9 inclusion, with strikingly distinct activities of ETR-3 and CUG-BP1, related to the structure of their divergent domain

UN MATERIAU BIOSOURCE DE CHOIX : LES FIBRES NATURELLES. CARACTÉRISATIONS ET APPLICATIONS

11 pInternational audienceLes fibres naturelles sont de plus en plus employées pour le renforcement mécanique de matériaux polymères. Même si ces fibres possèdent généralement des propriétés mécaniques inférieures aux fibres inorganiques classiques, telles que les fibres de verre ou les fibres de carbone, elles possèdent en revanche plusieurs avantages dont un coût de revient beaucoup plus faible. Cependant, ces fibres étant d'origine naturelle, il existe une grande variabilité de propriétés pour une même espèce. L''utilisation de fibres naturelles est en expansion dans le domaine du bâtiment afin de remplacer les matériaux d'isolation classiques par des matériaux naturels. Dans ce cas, ces fibres s'utilisent seules, soit en combinaison avec d'autres matériaux, afin de créer des matériaux de gros œuvre ou de finition possédant une résistance thermique plus élevée. Dans d'autres secteurs, les fibres naturelles sont associées à des polymères afin de former des matériaux composites dont les applications sont croissantes que ce soit dans le domaine de l'électronique, de l'automobile ou du bâtiment. Le but premier de l'utilisation de fibres naturelles est dans ce cas le renforcement mécanique du polymère. Cependant, le comportement thermique de ces matériaux doit également dans certains cas être pris en compte, soit parce que l'on souhaite que le matériau puisse évacuer de la chaleur ou bien au contraire parce que l'on souhaite que celui-ci possède de bonnes propriétés isolantes. Dans cet article, nous présenterons les résultats d'études effectuées au CERTES. Dans un premier temps, nous aborderons la caractérisation thermophysique (conductivité et diffusivité thermiques) de composites renforcés par des fibres de sisal, banane, feuille d'ananas. Nous mettrons ainsi en évidence un certains nombres de facteurs influents (taux de fibres, hybridation, traitement chimique...) sur les propriétés thermophysiques de ces matériaux. Dans un second temps, nous détaillerons les résultats concernant une étude menée sur du bois de palmier dattier, utilisé comme isolant naturel de substitution dans le bâtiment. Enfin, nous conclurons par une étude originale, actuellement en cours, permettant de relier les propriétés thermophysiques de composites renforcés par des fibres de lin à leur porosité