Why Walk?: The Pilgrimage Revival

The Camino de Santiago, or The Way of St. James, is one of the most important pilgrimage paths for Christians, and the past 20 years have seen a rapid and steady increase in the amount of pilgrims walking the Camino. American pilgrims that completed the pilgrimage doubled in the span in the 2 years after the 2011 release of The Way, a film that portrayed main characters that have non-religious reasons for walking the Camino. These resurgences of pilgrims has come at the same time that the Pilgrim Office, who releases official statistics on the pilgrims of the Camino, has reported that an increasing majority of pilgrims walk the Camino for non-religious reasons. These secular and cultural reasons are not expanded upon, and this research project will attempt to explain this pilgrimage revival by examining these reasons with the lenses of Frederic Gros’ philosophy on walking and Robert Macfarlane’s writings on walking and pilgrimage

MicroCT of Coronary Stents: Staining Techniques for 3-D Pathological Analysis

In the area of translational research, stent developers consult pathologists to obtain the best and most complete amount of data from implanted test devices in the most efficient manner. Through the use of micron-scale computed tomography along with post-fixation staining techniques in this study, full volumes of previously implanted stents have been analyzed in-situ in a non-destructive manner. The increased soft tissue contrast imparted by metal-containing stains allowed for a qualitative analysis of the vessel’s response to the implant with greater sensitivity and specificity while reducing beam-hardening artifact from stent struts. The developed staining techniques included iodine-potassium iodide, phosphomolybdic acid, and phosphotungstic acid, all of which bind to soft tissue and improve image quality through their ability to attenuate high energy X-rays. With these stains, the overall soft tissue contrast increased by up to 85 percent and contrast between medial and neointimal layers of the vessel increased by up to 22 percent. Beam hardening artifact was also reduced by up to 38 percent after staining. Acquiring data from the entirety of the stent and the surrounding tissue increased the quality of stent analysis in multiple ways. The three dimensional data enabled a comprehensive analysis of stent performance, lending information such as neointimal hyperplasia, percent stenosis, delineation of vessel wall layers, stent apposition, and stent fractures. By providing morphological data about stent deployment and host response, this method circumvents the need to make the more traditional histology slides for a morphometric analysis. These same data may also be applied to target regions of interest to ensure histology slides are cut from the optimal locations for a more in-depth analysis. The agents involved in such techniques are readily available in most pathology laboratories, are safe to work with, and allow for rapid processing of tissue. The ability to forego histology altogether or to highly focus what histology is performed on a vessel has the potential to hasten the development process of any coronary stent

International consensus (ICON) on treatment of Ménière's disease

Objective: To present the international consensus for recommendations for Ménière's disease (MD) treatment. Methods: Based on a literature review and report of 4 experts from 4 continents, the recommendations have been presented during the 21st IFOS congress in Paris, in June 2017 and are presented in this work. Results: The recommendation is to change the lifestyle, to use the vestibular rehabilitation in the intercritic period and to propose psychotherapy. As a conservative medical treatment of first line, the authors recommend to use diuretics and Betahistine or local pressure therapy. When medical treatment fails, the recommendation is to use a second line treatment, which consists in the intratympanic injection of steroids. Then as a third line treatment, depending on the hearing function, could be either the endolymphatic sac surgery (when hearing is worth being preserved) or the intratympanic injection of gentamicin (with higher risks of hearing loss). The very last option is the destructive surgical treatment labyrinthectomy, associated or not to cochlear implantation or vestibular nerve section (when hearing is worth being preserved), which is the most frequent option

Sex Allocation Decision Under Superparasitism by the Parasitoid Wasp Eupelmus vuilleti

International audienceSuperparasitism is a widespread phenomenon in parasitoids and may be advantageous in some circumstances. In this study, offspring sex ratio was analysed in three superparasitism situations: when the second egg was laid by a random Eupelmus vuilleti (Hymenoptera: Eupelmidae) female from a group, when an isolated female was allowed to lay two eggs on the same host (self-superparasitism) or laid one egg on a host already parasitized by a conspecific (conspecific superparasitism). Females produced a different offspring sex ratio according to the different superparasitism situations tested. These sex ratios are in line with the local mate competition theory. The results further suggest that females can discriminate between hosts parasitized by a conspecific or by themselves and adapt the sex of the eggs they lay accordingly

Mating success and potential male-worker conflict in a male-dimorphic ant

BACKGROUND: Males of many species adjust their reproductive tactics with regard to their condition and status. For example, large males may develop weapons and fight for access to females, whereas small or undernourished males do not express costly weapons or ornaments and sneak copulations. Different condition-dependent reproductive tactics may be associated with unequal average fitness, but the tactic chosen by a given male under given circumstances is thought to result in the highest possible fitness return.The ant species Cardiocondyla obscurior exhibits an environment-controlled polymorphism of docile, winged males and aggressive "ergatoid" males. Ergatoid males, which can replenish their sperm supply throughout their lives, engage in lethal fighting, and attempt to monopolize all female sexuals available in their nests, were previously assumed to gain higher lifetime reproductive success than the peaceful, winged males, which disperse to mate away from the nest and whose spermatogenesis is limited to the first days of adult life. However, precise data on male mating success have as yet not been available.Here, we compare the average mating success of the two male morphs, taking the high mortality rate of immature ergatoid males into account. Because individuals in insect societies may have opposing interests about their own development, we also investigate whether the interests of male larvae coincide with those of the workers and the rest of the society. RESULTS: When the survival probability of males is taken into account, winged males are more likely to mate multiply and in consequence have a higher estimated average mating success than ergatoid males. Therefore, male larvae are expected to prefer developing into winged instead of ergatoid adults. CONCLUSION: Though male larvae can expect a higher average mating success when developing into winged males, most colonies produce only ergatoid males under standard conditions. This might point at a novel type of potential kin conflict within the social insect colony. Because workers in insect societies usually control male larval development, ergatoid male production under normal conditions probably reflects the optimal allocation strategy of workers to maximise their inclusive fitness

MicroCT of Coronary Stents: Staining Techniques for 3-D Pathological Analysis

In the area of translational research, stent developers consult pathologists to obtain the best and most complete amount of data from implanted test devices in the most efficient manner. Through the use of micron-scale computed tomography along with post-fixation staining techniques in this study, full volumes of previously implanted stents have been analyzed in-situ in a non-destructive manner. The increased soft tissue contrast imparted by metal-containing stains allowed for a qualitative analysis of the vessel’s response to the implant with greater sensitivity and specificity while reducing beam-hardening artifact from stent struts. The developed staining techniques included iodine-potassium iodide, phosphomolybdic acid, and phosphotungstic acid, all of which bind to soft tissue and improve image quality through their ability to attenuate high energy X-rays. With these stains, the overall soft tissue contrast increased by up to 85 percent and contrast between medial and neointimal layers of the vessel increased by up to 22 percent. Beam hardening artifact was also reduced by up to 38 percent after staining. Acquiring data from the entirety of the stent and the surrounding tissue increased the quality of stent analysis in multiple ways. The three dimensional data enabled a comprehensive analysis of stent performance, lending information such as neointimal hyperplasia, percent stenosis, delineation of vessel wall layers, stent apposition, and stent fractures. By providing morphological data about stent deployment and host response, this method circumvents the need to make the more traditional histology slides for a morphometric analysis. These same data may also be applied to target regions of interest to ensure histology slides are cut from the optimal locations for a more in-depth analysis. The agents involved in such techniques are readily available in most pathology laboratories, are safe to work with, and allow for rapid processing of tissue. The ability to forego histology altogether or to highly focus what histology is performed on a vessel has the potential to hasten the development process of any coronary stent

Field line distribution of density at \u3ci\u3eL\u3c/i\u3e=4.8 inferred from observations by CLUSTER

For two events observed by the CLUSTER space- craft, the field line distribution of mass density ρ was inferred from Alfve ́n wave harmonic frequencies and compared to the electron density ne from plasma wave data and the oxy- gen density nO+ from the ion composition experiment. In one case, the average ion mass M≡ρ/ne was about 5amu (28 October 2002), while in the other it was about 3 amu (10 September 2002). Both events occurred when the CLUSTER 1 (C1) spacecraft was in the plasmatrough. Nevertheless, the electron density ne was significantly lower for the first event (ne =8 cm−3 ) than for the second event (ne =22 cm−3 ), and this seems to be the main difference leading to a dif- ferent value of M. For the first event (28 October 2002), we were able to measure the Alfve ́n wave frequencies for eight harmonics with unprecedented precision, so that the er- ror in the inferred mass density is probably dominated by factors other than the uncertainty in frequency (e.g., mag- netic field model and theoretical wave equation). This field line distribution (at L=4.8) was very flat for magnetic lati- tude |MLAT|20◦ but very steeply increasing with respect to |MLAT| for |MLAT|40◦. The total variation in ρ was about four orders of magnitude, with values at large |MLAT| roughly consistent with ionospheric values. For the second event (10 September 2002), there was a small local maxi- mum in mass density near the magnetic equator. The in- ferred mass density decreases to a minimum 23% lower than the equatorial value at |MLAT|=15.5◦, and then steeply in- creases as one moves along the field line toward the iono- sphere. For this event we were also able to examine the spa- tial dependence of the electron density using measurements of ne from all four CLUSTER spacecraft. Our analysis in- dicates that the density varies with L at L∼5 roughly like L−4, and that ne is also locally peaked at the magnetic equa- tor, but with a smaller peak. The value of ne reaches a den- sity minimum about 6% lower than the equatorial value at |MLAT|=12.5◦, and then increases steeply at larger values of |MLAT|. This is to our knowledge the first evidence for a local peak in bulk electron density at the magnetic equa- tor. Our results show that magnetoseismology can be a useful technique to determine the field line distribution of the mass density for CLUSTER at perigee and that the distribution of electron density can also be inferred from measurements by multiple spacecraft