A new subunit vaccine based on nucleoprotein nanoparticles confers partial clinical and virological protection in calves against bovine respiratory syncytial virus

Human and bovine respiratory syncytial viruses (HRSV and BRSV) are two closely related, worldwide prevalent viruses that are the leading cause of severe airway disease in children and calves, respectively. Efficacy of commercial bovine vaccines needs improvement and no human vaccine is licensed yet. We reported that nasal vaccination with the HRSV nucleoprotein produced as recombinant ringshaped nanoparticles (NSRS) protects mice against a viral challenge with HRSV. The aim of this work was to evaluate this new vaccine that uses a conserved viral antigen, in calves, natural hosts for BRSV. Calves, free of colostral or natural anti-BRSV antibodies, were vaccinated with NSRS either intramuscularly, or both intramuscularly and intranasally using MontanideTM ISA71 and IMS4132 as adjuvants and challenged with BRSV. All vaccinated calves developed anti-N antibodies in blood and nasal secretions and N-specific cellular immunity in local lymph nodes. Clinical monitoring post-challenge demonstrated moderate respiratory pathology with local lung tissue consolidations for the non vaccinated calves that were significantly reduced in the vaccinated calves. Vaccinated calves had lower viral loads than the nonvaccinated control calves. Thus NSRS vaccination in calves provided cross-protective immunity against BRSV infection without adverse inflammatory reaction

Réalisation d’un Contrat d’Etudes Prospectives des secteurs du transport: Rapport final

Le CEP a pour objectif de réaliser un état des lieux du secteur, de conduire une analyse prospective qualitative et quantitative de l’évolution des métiers et des besoins de compétences du transport et de préconiser un plan d’actions pour les transports routiers, maritimes et fluviaux. A l’issue des travaux d’étude, le rapport final a été remis aux membres du Comité de pilotage (Ministère de l’emploi - DGEFP, Représentants des branches des transports, l’OPCA Transports et Services, Pôle Emploi, Ministère de l’écologie et du développement durable, des transport et du logement)

Contrainte globale pour le problème de recouvrement d'ensembles

Ce papier propose une approche par Programmation par Contrainte pour résoudre le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble. Ce problème d'optimisation combinatoire est fort utile pour formuler un grand nombre d'applications concrètes (assignation d'équipages, planification de tâches et de véhicules, construction de circuits imprimés) ainsi que des problèmes de graphes (Recouvrement par nœuds, ensemble de nœuds dominants et indépendants). Le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble est NP-difficile. Ce papier propose une contrainte globale SC pour le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble et un propagateur qui utilise une borne inférieure calculée par des relaxations empruntées à la Programmation Entière. Nous présentons aussi un algorithme incrémental pour calculer cette borne qui utilise une structure de données qui peut être mise à jour très vite pour des petits changements, la rendant très bien adaptée aux arbres de recherche. Notre approche est comparée avec deux autres propagateurs basés sur la relaxation linéaire et sur une approche gloutonne

Automatic extraction of relevant nodes in biochemical networks

In this paper we describe a novel method for extracting a set of nodes that best capture the connections between k given nodes of interest in a biochemical network. This method relies on the projection of the nodes of the network, seen as an undirected graph, into an euclidean space. Euclidean distances between nodes in the projected space correspond to their commute time distances in the original graph, a measure based on a random walk model on the graph. Commute time reflects the distance between two nodes while considering all paths connecting them. Results on artificial data illustrate the interest of this approach

Contrainte globale pour le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble

Ce papier propose une approche par Programmation par Contrainte pour résoudre le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble. Ce problème d'optimisation combinatoire est fort utile pour formuler un grand nombre d'applications concrètes (assignation d'équipages, planification de tâches et de véhicules, construction de circuits imprimés) ainsi que des problèmes de graphes (Recouvrement par noeuds, ensemble de noeuds dominants et indépendants). Le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble est NP-difficile. Ce papier propose une contrainte globale SC pour le problème de recouvrement d'ensemble et un propagateur qui utilise une borne inférieure calculée par des relaxations empruntées à la Programmation Entière. Nous présentons aussi un algorithme incrémental pour calculer cette borne qui utilise une structure de données qui peut être mise à jour très vite pour des petits changements, la rendant très bien adaptée aux arbres de recherche. Notre approche est comparée avec deux autres propagateurs basés sur la relaxation linéaire et sur une approche gloutonne

The origin of terrestrial isopods (Crustacea: Isopoda: Oniscidea)

Living isopods of the suborder Oniscidea (commonly called woodlice) are the only group of Crustacea almost entirely composed of terrestrial forms. Furthermore, woodlice are completely independent from the aquatic environment from which they originally arose. From marine ancestors, woodlice are a key taxon to study the conquest of the land among arthropods because of their interesting gradation of morphological, physiological and behavioral adaptations for terrestriality. However, the origin and evolution of this model group are still poorly known. Herein, we provide a synthesis of the oniscidean fossil record to replace this group in a deep-time context. Because members of the Oniscidea are difficult to fossilize, their fossil record alone is undoubtedly fragmentary and not representative of their complete evolutionary history, but it maintains an important relevance by providing reference points. To date, the first attested occurrences of Oniscidea are recorded from the Early Cretaceous. At this time, woodlice were already widely distributed (from Western Europe to Eastern Asia) with several species. By evaluating phylogenetic studies, palaeobiogeographic context of fossil specimens and current biological considerations, we discuss and support a pre-Pangaean origin of the Oniscidea, in the Late Paleozoic-most likely during the Carboniferous. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Toward a Generic Comet Implementation of Very Large-Scale Neighborhoods

We describe here preliminary results of our Comet implementation of generic abstractions for Very LargeScale Neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are used in local search. Their size is exponential but the best neighbor can be computed in polynomial time. They have proven to be very ecient on a large set of problems. However designing such neighborhoods requires high development eorts. Our objective is to design VLSN abstractions and to implement them in the highlevel language Comet in order to provide an experimental platform for studying Very Large-Scale Neighborhoods. This will allow a user to easily dene such neighborhood in a high-level paradigm, without the requirement of implementing a dedicated algorithm from scratch

Constraint-Based Very Large-Scale Neighborhood Search

Very Large-Scale Neighborhood (VLSN) search is the idea of using neighborhoods of exponential size to find high-quality solutions to complex optimization problems efficiently. However, so far, VLSN algorithms are essentially described and implemented in terms of low-level implementation concepts, preventing code reuse and extensibility which are trademarks of constraint-programming systems. This paper aims at remedying this limitation and proposes a constraint-based VLSN (CBVLSN) framework to describe VLSNs declaratively and compositionally. Its main innovations are the concepts of cycle-consistent MoveGraphs and compositional moves which make it possible to specify an application in terms of constraints and objectives and to derive a dedicated VLSN algorithm automatically. The constraint-based VLSN framework has been prototyped in COMET and its efficiency is shown to be comparable to dedicated implementations

S1-33–1 A Multi-Stage Very Large-Scale Neighborhood Search for the Vehicle Routing Problem with Soft Time-Windows

This paper considers the VRP Problem with Soft Time-Windows (VRPSTW), a challenging routing problem due to its combination of hard time windows and a lexicographic objective function minimizing the number of vehicles, the violations of the soft time windows, and the total travel distance. The paper presents a multi-stage, variable neighborhood search algorithm for the VRPSTW, which uses the same very large-scale neighborhood (VLSN) for each of its three steps with different objective functions. Experimental results indicate that the multi-stage VLSN algorithm improves best-known solutions on 90 % and 100 % of the Type 1 and Type 3 instances respectively. Equally interesting is the fact that the multi-stage algorithm decreases the number of routes in 33 % of the instances and the soft time-window violations in 92 % of the remaining instances.