Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on physical activity of individuals with a spinal cord injury in Belgium: observational study.

The letter reports an observational study, which our group has undertaken, to evaluate the effect of the Covid-19 lockdown among individuals with a spinal cord injury in Belgium. The primary focus of the study was the impact of the lockdown on physical activity levels, as the literature shows that individuals with a physical disability, such as spinal cord injury, particularly benefit from physical activity. The report was written in accordance to the STROBE guidelines

Resilience and development: Mobilizing for transformation

In 2014, the Third International Conference on the resilience of social-ecological systems chose the theme “resilience and development: mobilizing for transformation.” The conference aimed specifically at fostering an encounter between the experiences and thinking focused on the issue of resilience through a social and ecological system perspective, and the experiences focused on the issue of resilience through a development perspective. In this perspectives piece, we reflect on the outcomes of the meeting and document the differences and similarities between the two perspectives as discussed during the conference, and identify bridging questions designed to guide future interactions. After the conference, we read the documents (abstracts, PowerPoints) that were prepared and left in the conference database by the participants (about 600 contributions), and searched the web for associated items, such as videos, blogs, and tweets from the conference participants. All of these documents were assessed through one lens: what do they say about resilience and development? Once the perspectives were established, we examined different themes that were significantly addressed during the conference. Our analysis paves the way for new collective developments on a set of issues: (1) Who declares/assign/cares for the resilience of what, of whom? (2) What are the models of transformations and how do they combine the respective role of agency and structure? (3) What are the combinations of measurement and assessment processes? (4) At what scale should resilience be studied? Social transformations and scientific approaches are coconstructed. For the last decades, development has been conceived as a modernization process supported by scientific rationality and technical expertise. The definition of a new perspective on development goes with a negotiation on a new scientific approach. Resilience is presently at the center of this negotiation on a new science for development. (Résumé d'auteur

Distilling the role of ecosystem services in the Sustainable Development Goals

Achieving well-being for all, while protecting the environment, is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and a central idea in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We believe that integrating ecosystem services, the benefits nature provides to people, into strategies for meeting the SDGs can help achieve this. Many development goals are likely underpinned by the delivery of one or more ecosystem services. Understanding how these services could support multiple development targets will be essential for planning synergistic and cost-effective interventions. Here we present the results of an expert survey on the contributions of 16 ecosystem services to achieving SDG targets linked to environment and human well-being, and review the capacity of modelling tools to evaluate SDG-relevant ecosystem services interactions. Survey respondents judged that individual ecosystem services could make important contributions to achieving 41 targets across 12 SDGs. The provision of food and water, habitat & biodiversity maintenance, and carbon storage & sequestration were perceived to each make contributions to >14 SDG targets, suggesting cross-target interactions are likely, and may present opportunities for synergistic outcomes across multiple SDGs. Existing modelling tools are well-aligned to support SDG-relevant ecosystem service planning. Together, this work identifies entry points and tools to further analyze the role of ecosystem services to support the SDGs

Systems thinking : an approach for understanding 'eco-agri-food systems'

The TEEBAgriFood ‘Scientific and Economic Foundations’ report addresses the core theoretical issues and controversies underpinning the evaluation of the nexus between the agri-food sector, biodiversity and ecosystem services and externalities including human health impacts from agriculture on a global scale. It argues the need for a ‘systems thinking‘ approach, draws out issues related to health, nutrition, equity and livelihoods, presents a Framework for evaluation and describes how it can be applied, and identifies theories and pathways for transformational change

The impact of natural resource use on bird and reptile communities within multiple-use protected areas: evidence from sub-arid southern Madagascar

Multiple-use protected areas, in which sustainable levels of extractive livelihood activities are permitted, play an increasingly important role in the global protected area estate, and are expected to rise in prevalence. However, we know little about their effectiveness at conserving biodiversity. We surveyed bird and reptile communities in three areas across a forest disturbance gradient resulting from charcoal production and shifting cultivation within a multiple-use protected area in Madagascar’s sub-arid spiny forest. We scored individual species using a Conservation Value Index (CVI; a simple metric based on rarity, threat and distinctiveness), and estimated the total conservation value of each treatment by calculating the sum of frequency-weighted CVI scores across all present species. Bird and reptile community responses to forest disturbance were idiosyncratic. Bird richness was greatest in the moderate-disturbance treatment, but the low-disturbance treatment had the superior conservation value due to higher frequencies of locally-endemic species. Reptile richness was the same in low- and moderate-disturbance treatments, but the conservation value of the latter was greater. The high-disturbance areas had lowest richness and conservation value for both groups. For birds, increasing disturbance levels were accompanied by community turnover from high-value to low-value species, a pattern highlighted by CVI that is masked by assessing species richness alone. Although some endemic species appear to be resilient to degradation, multiple-use protected areas in Madagascar may lose biodiversity since most endemic species are forest-dependent. Stricter protected area models may be more appropriate in areas where much of the high-value biodiversity is sensitive to habitat degradation

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Impacts of anthropogenic forcing on atmospheric circulation at 500 hPa geopotential height and on spatial distribution and concentrations of pollutants over the French Northern region in 21st century

Le développement des activités humaines a engendré et engendre encore d’importants rejets d’espèces gazeuses et particulaires dans l’atmosphère. Parmi ces rejets, des gaz à effet de serre contribuent à augmenter la température moyenne du globe, on parle de forçage anthropique. Cette élévation impacte les différentes composantes du système climatique. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à l’atmosphère. La thèse, pluridisciplinaire, cherche à répondre à deux questions : le forçage anthropique peut-il influencer la circulation atmosphérique et plus précisément, sa variabilité, et peut-il avoir des conséquences sur la diffusion d’espèces polluantes ? Le travail est basé sur la comparaison de deux périodes, l’une de 1960 à 1989 représente le climat sans forçage, tandis que l’autre, de 2070 à 2099 prend en compte les différents scénarios de forçage anthropique. La première étape consiste à caractériser la variabilité de la circulation de l’atmosphère pour les mois hivernaux à partir des hauteurs du géopotentiel à 500 hPa sur une fenêtre Atlantico-Européenne. Les structures de variabilité étudiées concernent les modes de variabilité et les régimes de temps. D’après notre étude, les forçages ne modifient pas leurs structures dans l’espace mais davantage leurs fréquences d’apparition et leurs temps de persistance moyens. La deuxième étape concerne la modélisation de la qualité de l’air sur la région Nord-Pas de Calais. L’analyse des simulations actuelle et future révèle que les concentrations de particules en suspension et du dioxyde d’azote augmentent. En revanche aucune corrélation directe entre modes de variabilité sous forçage et diffusion n’est détectée.The growth of human activities causes significant emissions of gaseous and particulate species in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases contribute to increase the average global temperature, it’s called anthropogenic forcing. This temperature increase modifies the various components of the Earth’s climate system. In this thesis, the atmosphere is our topic of interest. The objective of this thesis is to answer two questions on a multidisciplinary basis: (1) can anthropogenic radiative forcing influences atmospheric circulation and more specifically, its variability? (2) And can it affects the spatial distribution of pollutants? This work is based on the comparison of two periods: one from 1960 to 1989 representing the climate without scenarios forcing; the other from 2070 to 2099 considering different scenarios of anthropogenic forcing. The first step is to characterize the atmospheric circulation variability, in wintertime, from the 500 hPa geopotential height at North Atlantic and European scale. The main structures of variability we studied are the so-called modes of variability and weather regimes. In our study, the scenarios do not change their structure in space but rather their frequency of occurrence and mean residence time. The second step concerns modeling of air quality over the French Northern region. Analysis of simulations reveals that actual and future concentrations of particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide increase, but no direct correlation between changes of variability modes and spatial distribution of pollutants is detected

Phantom limb pain following limb amputation : treatment and prevention methods

Objective: The aim of this systematic review is to present an up-to-date analysis of the current prevention and treatment methods available and effective at reducing PLP after limb amputation. Method: A comprehensive research equation was inserted in the following databases: Pubmed, PEDro, Cochrane and Scopus. Out of the 129 identified articles, 22 corresponded to the inclusion criteria and were chosen for further analysis. Results: Different trials, mostly RCTs, were divided according to treatment type of action, namely pharmacological and physical approaches, but also peripheral blocks, stump liners and novel interventions. Focus was put the effect these had on PLP intensity and/or duration, as measured by VAS and other scales. Trial durations and follow-up periods varied among the studies. Sample groups tended to be heterogeneous, making it difficult to compare results to one another. Conclusion: Research has yet to discover one specific intervention which leads to significant and long-term attenuation of PLP. Peripheral blocks and novel approaches which directly stimulate the cortex, however, show promising results among different type of amputee individuals. Future research should help clarify the exact physiopathology of PLP in order to generate targeted treatment possibilities and optimise guidelines of best-practice.Master [120] en sciences de la motricité, orientation générale, Université catholique de Louvain, 201

Osteoporosis within the spinal cord injured population: prevention and treatment methods : systematic review of the literature

Objective: The aim of this review of the literature is to present an up-to-date analysis of the current prevention and treatment methods available for treating SCI-induced osteoporosis. Method: An equation research was put in the following databases: Pubmed, PEDro, Cochrane and Scopus, giving a total of 139 articles. Out of these, 14 articles corresponded to the inclusion criteria and were used for further analysis. Results: Using BMD as an indicator of bone health and predictor of risk of fracture, an analysis of the effect of mechanical and pharmacological treatment methods was performed. Although studies investigating the bisphosphonate therapy have shown a significant and short-term attenuation of bone loss, others focusing on mechanical interventions have not been able to present similar results. The optimal treatment of SCI-induced osteoporosis remains one that combines both therapies. Conclusion: Research has yet to discover one specific intervention with significant and long-term results for osteoporosis of the SCI population. However, current treatment methods should continue to be put in place in the acute phases of SCI for their positive effects of the general well-being of these patients.Master [60] en kinésithérapie et réadaptation, Université catholique de Louvain, 201

Sport adapté et handicap physique : effets et situation en Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

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