Study of the possible relationships between tramway front-end geometry and pedestrian injury risk

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this article is to report on the possible relationships between tramway front-end geometry and pedestrian injury risk over a wide range of possible tramway shapes. METHODS: To study the effect of tramway front-end shape on pedestrian injury metrics, accidents were simulated using a custom parameterized model of tramway front-end and pedestrian models available with the MADYMO multibody solver. The approach was automated, allowing the systematic exploration of tramway shapes in conjunction with 4 pedestrian sizes (e.g., 50th percentile male or M50). RESULTS: A total of 8,840 simulations were run, showing that the injury risk is more important for the head than for other body regions (thorax and lower extremities). The head of the M50 impacted the windshield of the tramway in most of the configurations. Two antagonist mechanisms affecting impact velocity of the head and corresponding head injury criterion (HIC) values were observed. The first is a trunk rotation resulting from an engagement of the lower body that can contribute to an increase in head velocity in the direction of the tram. The second is the loading of the shoulder, which can accelerate the upper trunk and head away from the windshield, resulting in lower impact velocities. Groups of design were defined based on 2 main parameters (windshield height and offset), some of which seem more beneficial than others for tramway design. The pedestrian size and tramway velocity (30 vs. 20?km/h) also affected the results. CONCLUSIONS: When considering only the front-end shape, the best strategy to limit the risk of head injury due to contact with the stiff windshield seems to be to promote the mechanism involving shoulder loading. Because body regions engaged vary with the pedestrian size, none of the groups of designs performed equally well for all pedestrian sizes. The best compromise is achieved with a combination of a large windscreen offset and a high windscreen. Conversely, particularly unfavorable configurations are observed for low windshield heights, especially with a large offset. Beyond the front-end shape, considering the stiffness of the current windshields and the high injury risks predicted for 30?km/h, the stiffness of the windshield should be considered in the future for further gains in pedestrian safety

Adaptive Partitioning for Iterated Sequences of Irregular OpenCL Kernels

International audienceOpenCL defines a common parallel programming language for all devices, although writing tasks adapted to the devices, managing communication and load-balancing issues are left to the programmer. We propose in this paper a static/dynamic approach for the execution of an iterated sequence of data-dependent kernels on a multi-device heterogeneous architecture. The method allows to automatically distribute irregular kernels onto multiple devices and tackles, without training, both load balancing and data transfers issues coming from hardware heterogeneity, load imbalance within the application itself and load variations between repeated executions of the sequence

Automatic OpenCL Task Adaptation for Heterogeneous Architectures

International audienceOpenCL defines a common parallel programming language for all devices, although writing tasks adapted to the devices, managing communication and load-balancing issues are left to the programmer. In this work, we propose a novel automatic compiler and runtime technique to execute single OpenCL kernels on heterogeneous multi-device architectures. The technique proposed is completely transparent to the user, does not require off-line training or a performance model. It handles communications and load-balancing issues, resulting from hardware heterogeneity, load imbalance within the kernel itself and load variations between repeated executions of the kernel, in an iterative computation. We present our results on benchmarks and on an N-body application over two platforms, a 12-core CPU with two different GPUs and a 16-core CPU with three homogeneous GPUs

Corynebacterium mucifaciensin an immunocompetent patient with cavitary pneumonia

BACKGROUND: Corynebacterium mucifaciens has been mainly isolated from skin, blood and from other normally-sterile body fluids. It has rarely been described as a human pathogen since its description. CASE PRESENTATION: We herein report the first case of cavitary pneumonia due to C. mucifaciens in an immunocompetent man returning from Maghreb. CONCLUSION: C. mucifaciens should be considered as important human pathogen in patients with severe illness and compatible history of exposure even in individuals with no clearly identified immunosuppression

SOCL: An OpenCL Implementation with Automatic Multi-Device Adaptation Support

To fully tap into the potential of today's heterogeneous machines, offloading parts of an application on accelerators is not sufficient. The real challenge is to build systems where the application would permanently spread across the entire machine, that is, where parallel tasks would be dynamically scheduled over the full set of available processing units. In this report we present SOCL, an OpenCL implementation that improves and simplifies the programming experience on heterogeneous architectures. SOCL enables applications to dynamically dispatch computation kernels over processing devices so as to maximize their utilization. OpenCL applications can incrementally make use of light extensions to automatically schedule kernels in a controlled manner on multi-device architectures. A preliminary automatic granularity adaptation extension is also provided. We demonstrate the relevance of our approach by experimenting with several OpenCL applications on a range of representative heterogeneous architectures. We show that performance portability is enhanced by using SOCL extensions.Pour exploiter au mieux les architectures hétérogènes actuelles, il n'est pas suffisant de déléguer aux accélérateurs seulement quelques portions de codes bien déterminées. Le véritable défi consiste à délivrer des applications qui exploitent de façon continue la totalité de l'architecture, c'est-à-dire dont l'ensemble des tâches parallèles les composant sont dynamiquement ordonnancées sur les unités d'exécution disponibles. Dans ce document, nous présentons SOCL, une implémentation de la spécification OpenCL étendue de sorte qu'elle soit plus simple d'utilisation et plus efficace sur les architectures hétérogènes. Cette implémentation peut ordonnancer automatiquement les noyaux de calcul sur les accélérateurs disponibles de façon à maximiser leur utilisation. Les applications utilisant déjà OpenCL peuvent être migrées de façon incrémentale et contrôlée vers SOCL car les extensions fournies sont non intrusives et requièrent très peu de modifications dans les codes. En plus de l'ordonnancement automatique de noyaux de calcul, une extension préliminaire permettant l'adaptation automatique de la granularité est mise à disposition. Nous démontrons la pertinence de cette approche et l'efficacité des extensions fournies à travers plusieurs expérimentations sur diverses architectures hétérogènes représentatives

Etude en sciences sociales de grandes expéditions naturalistes contemporaines françaises,

social studies of sciences; Biodiversity inventories; systematicsInternational audienceCet article présente le projet de recherche interdisciplinaire, Expebiodiv visant à réaliser une étude interdisciplinaire des expeditions naturalistes contemporaines. Le cas étudié est celui du projet "La planète revisitée" qui est lancé pour 10 ans par le Museum d'Histoires Naturelle de Paris et l'ONG Pronatura International

Evolutionary tinkering of the expression of PDF1s suggests their joint effect on zinc tolerance and the response to pathogen attack

Multigenic families of Plant Defensin type 1 (PDF1) have been described in several species, including the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana as well as zinc tolerant and hyperaccumulator A. halleri. In A. thaliana, PDF1 transcripts (AtPDF1) accumulate in response to pathogen attack following synergic activation of ethylene/jasmonate pathways. However, in A. halleri, PDF1 transcripts (AhPDF1) are constitutively highly accumulated. Through an evolutionary approach, we investigated the possibility of A. halleri or A. thaliana species specialization in different PDF1s in conveying zinc tolerance and/or the response to pathogen attack via activation of the jasmonate (JA) signaling pathway. The accumulation of each PDF1 from both A. halleri and A. thaliana was thus compared in response to zinc excess and MeJA application. In both species, PDF1 paralogues were barely or not at all responsive to zinc. However, regarding the PDF1 response to JA signaling activation, A. thaliana had a higher number of PDF1s responding to JA signaling activation. Remarkably, in A. thaliana, a slight but significant increase in zinc tolerance was correlated with activation of the JA signaling pathway. In addition, A. halleri was found to be more tolerant to the necrotrophic pathogen Botrytis cinerea than A. thaliana. Since PDF1s are known to be promiscuous antifungal proteins able to convey zinc tolerance, we propose, on the basis of the findings of this study, that high constitutive PDF1 transcript accumulation in A. halleri is a potential way to skip the JA signaling activation step required to increase the PDF1 transcript level in the A. thaliana model species. This could ultimately represent an adaptive evolutionary process that would promote a PDF1 joint effect on both zinc tolerance and the response to pathogens in the A. halleri extremophile species

A defective Krab-domain zinc-finger transcription factor contributes to altered myogenesis in myotonic dystrophy type 1

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is an RNA-mediated disorder caused by a non-coding CTG repeat expansion that, in particular, provokes functional alteration of CUG-binding proteins. As a consequence, several genes with misregulated alternative splicing have been linked to clinical symptoms. In our search for additional molecular mechanisms that would trigger functional defects in DM1, we took advantage of mutant gene-carrying human embryonic stem cell lines to identify differentially expressed genes. Among the different genes found to be misregulated by DM1 mutation, one strongly downregulated gene encodes a transcription factor, ZNF37A. In this paper, we show that this defect in expression, which derives from a loss of RNA stability, is controlled by the RNA-binding protein, CUGBP1, and is associated with impaired myogenesis—a functional defect reminiscent of that observed in DM1. Loss of the ZNF37A protein results in changes in the expression of the subunit α1 of the receptor for the interleukin 13. This suggests that the pathological molecular mechanisms linking ZNF37A and myogenesis may involve the signaling pathway that is known to promote myoblast recruitment during development and regeneratio

Increased bioavailability of hesperetin-7-glucoside compared with hesperidin results in more efficient prevention of bone loss in adult ovariectomised rats

Hesperidin (Hp), a citrus flavonoid predominantly found in oranges, shows bone-sparing effects in ovariectomised (OVX) animals. In human subjects, the bioavailability of Hp can be improved by the removal of the rhamnose group to yield hesperetin-7-glucoside (H-7-glc). The aim of the present work was to test whether H-7-glc was more bioavailable and therefore more effective than Hp in the prevention of bone loss in the OVX rat. Adult 6-month-old female Wistar rats were sham operated or OVX, then pair fed for 90d a casein-based diet supplemented or not with freeze-dried orange juice enriched with Hp or H-7-glc at two dose equivalents of the hesperetin aglycone (0·25 and 0·5%). In the rats fed 0·5%, a reduction in OVX-induced bone loss was observed regarding total bone mineral density (BMD):+7·0% in OVX rats treated with Hp (HpOVX) and +6·6% in OVX rats treated with H-7-glc (H-7-glcOVX) v. OVX controls (P<0·05). In the rats fed 0·25% hesperetin equivalents, the H-7-glcOVX group showed a 6·6% improvement in total femoral BMD v. the OVX controls (P<0·05), whereas the Hp diet had no effect at this dose. The BMD of rats fed 0·25% H-7-glc was equal to that of those given 0·5% Hp, but was not further increased at 0·5% H-7-glc. Plasma hesperetin levels and relative urinary excretion were significantly enhanced in the H-7-glc v. Hp groups, and the metabolite profile showed the absence of eriodictyol metabolites and increased levels of hesperetin sulphates. Taken together, improved bioavailability of H-7-glc may explain the more efficient bone protection of this compoun