Interobserver Variation Study of the Rutgeerts Score to Assess Endoscopic Recurrence after Surgery for Crohn's Disease.

BACKGROUND: After resection surgery for Crohn's disease, recurrence of endoscopic lesions at the site of the anastomosis or in the neoterminal ileum is graded according to the Rutgeerts score (RS). The goal of this study was to test the interobserver variability for RS. METHODS: Thirteen trained endoscopists evaluated the RS on 39 videotapes of patients who had undergone resection for Crohn's disease with an ileocolonic anastomosis 6 months earlier. Videotapes were randomly assigned to endoscopists through a balanced incomplete block design. Each videotape was scored independently by four endoscopists, and each endoscopist evaluated 12 videotapes, making a total of 156 videotape assessments. Reproducibility levels of the RS were assessed through unweighted kappa estimates among multiple raters. The proportion of inappropriate therapeutic initiation was estimated by randomly selecting one endoscopist for each videorecording, assuming that the majority of endoscopists correctly classified endoscopic recurrence. RESULTS: The kappa estimates were 0.43 (95% confidence interval: 0.33-0.52) for the RS on a 5-grade scale, 0.47 (0.28-0.66) for RS /= i2, and 0.64 (0.42-0.85) for RS i2. The percentages of inappropriate therapeutic initiation were 12.8% (3.8-21.9) when initiation was triggered by a RS >/= i2 and 8.3% (1.1-15.6) when initiation was triggered by a RS > i2 (p = 0.41). CONCLUSION: The reproducibility of the RS was moderate, especially when differentiating /=i2, which may lead to incorrect therapeutic decisions in >10% of patients

High permittivity processed SrTiO3 for metamaterials applications at terahertz frequencies

High permittivity SrTiO3 for the realization of all-dielectric metamaterials operating at terahertz frequencies was fabricated. A comparison of different processing methods demonstrates that Spark Plasma Sintering is the most effective sintering process to yield high density ceramic with high permittivity. We compare this sintering process with two other processes. The fabricated samples are characterized in the low frequency and in the terahertz frequency ranges. Their relative permittivities are compared with that of a reference SrTiO3 single crystal. The permittivity of the sample fabricated by Spark Plasma Sintering is as high as that of the single crystal. The role of the signal-to-noise ratio in the measurements at terahertz frequency is detailed

Sophonisbe queer ?

La critique cornélienne a fréquemment souligné que les héroïnes de Corneille manquaient de féminité parce qu’il leur coûtait peu de renoncer à l’amour. L’objet de cet article est d’aborder cette question de genre dans une perspective d’histoire de la sexualité. Si, d’un côté, la féminité n’était pas définie par la sentimentalité amoureuse au XVIIe siècle, de l’autre, le dépassement féminin de l’amour dans le théâtre de Corneille était bien perçu comme une transgression de genre. La dramaturgie cornélienne permet d’éclairer ce paradoxe. Elle suggère que c’est dans le cadre d’une conception hiérarchique de la différence entre les sexes que l’amour est associé au féminin, comme la marque d’une valeur négative, plutôt que d’une nature spécifique. Dans ce contexte, le dépassement de l’amour trouve une signification héroïque, digne d’admiration, y compris chez les personnages féminins. Or, comme nous l’apprend la querelle de Sophonisbe (1663), à partir des années 1660, la figure du dépassement de l’amour, qui se fait plus insistante dans le théâtre de Corneille, paraît moins vraisemblable. C’est, en termes dramaturgiques, la question des mœurs des personnages qui est en jeu. Alors que le critère de la « dignité » laisse le pas à celui du « sexe », celui-ci se voit effectivement défini par l’amour hétérosexuel. Cette évolution qui marque notamment l’esthétique galante pourrait ainsi marquer l’avènement d’une subjectivité hétérosexuelle, et la figure du dépassement de l’amour celui d’une position queer dans la France du XVIIe siècle.Critics have often said that Cornelian heroines were not feminine because they renounced love too easily. My aim in this article is to address the question of their gender in the context of the history of sexuality. If on the one hand femininity was not defined by sentimentality in the 17th-century France, on the other, Cornelian heroines who overcame love were usually described as enacting a gender transgression. Cornelian dramaturgy provides ways to solve this paradox. It suggests that it is within the frame of a new conception of gender, defined in terms of hierarchical rather than specific difference, that love was associated with femininity, as a negative value rather than a specific nature. In that context, overcoming love, for a female character, was both a heroic and admirable act. The dispute about Sophonisbe (1663) suggests that from the 1660s on, overcoming love, a notion increasingly recurrent in Corneille’s plays, seems to be less likely. In terms of dramaturgy, what is at stake here is the constitution of the theatrical character. While the criterion of “dignity” becomes less important than that of “sex”, the latter is defined as heterosexual love. This evolution, which has informed the aesthetics of gallantry, might then correspond to the emergence of a heterosexual subjectivity—and the figure of the overcoming of love, to that of a position called « queer » in the 17th century French culture

Corneille galant. Pierre Corneille's comedies and the history of sexuality

Contre une conception essentialiste du point de vue du genre, et irénique, de la galanterie, cette étude appréhende cette dernière en termes d’histoire de la sexualité pour mettre en évidence la mise en place d’une micropolitique galante dès le premier XVIIe siècle. Elle se concentre sur les premières comédies de Corneille, dont le succès fait fond sur l’essor d’une nouvelle culture amoureuse, la galanterie. La première partie problématise le succès du discours galant, qui, produit par la sphère des belles lettres, peut toujours tourner à la simple politesse, mais ne s’en impose pas moins dans le contexte de la mixité d’ancien régime. La comédie cornélienne constitue ainsi une technologie galante où s’élabore, et d’où se diffuse, le discours galant qui, en régulant le commerce amoureux, légitime le mariage d’amour. La deuxième partie appréhende le conflit dramatique autour duquel s’organise l’intrigue galante en termes de constructionnisme social pour définir les contours de l’érotique galante. Dispositif « hétérotopique », la galanterie commande des processus de subjectivation tels que l’amour hétérosexuel cède désormais le pas à l’amitié homosociale, naturalisant du même coup le lien entre sexe et investissement affectif – ce complexe bientôt appelé « sexualité ». La galanterie s’inscrit ainsi dans la généalogie de la matrice hétérosexuelle. La troisième partie aborde la dramaturgie tragique de Corneille et montre comment la tragédie classique, en réponse à la tendance du discours galant à fonctionner à titre d’art de plaire autant qu’à titre d’art d’aimer, a inventé un discours amoureux adapté à l’individualisme moderne : non plus l’amour comme « passion de l’âme », mais, tout simplement, « la passion ».As opposed to an irenic conception of gallantry that also relies on an essentialist definition of gender, this study addresses gallantry in terms of the history of sexuality, so as to emphasize the deployment of a gallant micropolitics the early 17th century France. It focuses on the success of Pierre Corneille’s comedies in the context of the blooming of a new amorous culture, soon to be called gallantry. The first part problematizes the discourse of gallantry produced by the sphere of the belle-Letters, which can always turn to mere courtesy, but nevertheless becomes pervasive to regulate men/women interactions in the Ancien Régime France. The Cornelian comedy functions as a gallant technology that produces and diffuses the discourse of gallantry, which organizes amorous relationships so as to legitimize love marriage. The second part addresses the conflict around which turns the whole plot of Corneille’s gallant comedies in terms of social constructionism, so as to account for the erotic subjectivities construed by gallantry. As an “heterotopic” apparatus, gallantry implies processes of subjectivation such that heterosexual love now prevails over homosocial friendship, thereby naturalizing the link between sex and emotional investment – a complex soon to be called “sexuality”. Thus, gallantry is part of the genealogy of the heterosexual matrix. The third part focuses on Pierre Corneille’s poetics of tragedy, and shows that the genre of the 17th century French tragedy replied to the tendency for the discourse of gallantry to function as a form of politeness rather than an authentic form of love by inventing an amorous discourse more suitable to modern individualism, and which no longer depicts love as a “passion of the soul” but simply as, in French, la passion

La sodomie dans l’affaire Théophile de Viau : questions de genre et de sexualité dans la France du premier xviie siècle

Sodomy in the Theophile de Viau affair: questions of gender and sexuality in early modern France.There is a puzzling misunderstanding about the Theophile affair. While the historiography of libertinism, focusing on erudite libertinism, no longer mentions sodomy as a key issue of the trial, historians of homosexual repression address sexual encounters between men in an essentialist approach, making no distinction between early modern sodomy and contemporary homosexuality. Thus, in the first part of this article, I emphasize that sodomy is a central point in Theophile’s trial both as a literary matter and as an illicit act. In the second part, I historicize sexual encounters between men by arguing that one should not equate sodomy with male homosexuality. Sodomy refers to anal sex between men and women as well. Even when it refers to anal sex between men, it postulates no erotic preference and has nothing to do with any sexual orientation. As a theological concept, it does not pertain to sexuality at all. Finally, it is not associated with gender deviance. In the third part, I suggest that discourse about sodomy must not conceal other discourses among sexual behaviors between men in early modern France and may not be a sufficient means to discuss them. In short, the purpose of this article is to clear the way toward a history of male homosexuality in early modern France from a historicist if not constructionist perspective

The Postsexual Transition : Sex and Love after Sexuality in Contemporary French Novel.

My dissertation reads the contemporary French novel from the viewpoint of the history of sexuality, and argues that sexuality (as a Foucauldian apparatus that shaped erotic subjectivities in the modern era) is declining today. Chapter 1 shows that, in the postmodern era, gay marriage implies the decline of sexuality: as the hetero/homo binary becomes obsolete for the purposes of defining who can marry whom, sexuality forfeits the prominent role it had had in the construction of personal identities. I call the decline of sexuality that characterizes the postmodern era “the postsexual transition.” The two following chapters focus on Michel Houellebecq and Virginie Despentes, authors who depict the experience of romantic love through the perspective of their specific gender, sexual, social, and political identities. Chapter 2 analyzes Les Particules Elémentaires (1998), the science-fiction novel of straight male novelist Michel Houellebecq, which describes how humanity metamorphoses into a neo-humanity that reproduces itself through cloning instead of heterosexual intercourse. In this context, heterosexuality becomes useless and even zombie-like, devoid of any substance. Chapter 3 deals with Virginie Despentes’s controversial problematization of rape and prostitution in her best-sellers Baise-Moi (1994) and King Kong Théorie (2006). I argue that the book’s lesbian and pro-sex feminism, which provoked an outcry from feminist quarters, becomes perfectly legible once we view it as an instance of a postsexual transition. For Manu, one of the two heroines of the novel and a rape survivor, sex is not about desire or identities; it is a source of potential intensification of pleasure or pain, and nothing more. While Despentes’s critics continue to define sexuality as the basis of the modern individual’s authentic subjectivity, she insisted on representing sexuality as a superficial type of human contact with no depth to it. Both novels show that the decline of sexuality impairs the experience of romantic love, which is premised on the notion that male and female are essentially complementary. But significantly, while Houellebecq, a middle-class, heterosexual, white male writer, seems unable to accept the decline of sexuality, Despentes, a queer author, embraces the new erotic possibilities opened up by the postsexual transition.PHDRomance Languages & Literatures: FrenchUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135924/1/dupas_1.pd

« Le « terrain » des IUFM »

International audienc

SrTiO3-δ à haute permittivité pour les applications aux métamatériaux au térahertz

International audienc

Association Between Plasma Concentrations of Certolizumab Pegol and Endoscopic Outcomes of Patients With Crohn's Disease.

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Monitoring plasma concentrations of anti-tumor necrosis factor agents could optimize treatment of patients with Crohn's Disease (CD). In a post hoc analysis of data from a clinical trial, we compared the relationship between plasma concentrations of certolizumab pegol (CZP) and endoscopic and clinical responses and remission with CZP therapy in patients with moderate to severe ileocolonic CD. METHODS: We analyzed data from the Endoscopic Mucosal Improvement in Patients with Active CD Treated with CZP trial, from 89 adult patients with active endoscopic CD (ulceration in ≥ 2 intestinal segments and CD Endoscopic Index of Severity [CDEIS] scores of ≥ 8 points). Patients received subcutaneous CZP (400 mg) at weeks 0, 2, and 4 and then every 4 weeks until week 52. Endoscopic evaluations were performed at weeks 0, 10, and 54. Blood samples were collected to measure CZP plasma concentrations at weeks 8 and 54. CZP quartiles at weeks 8 (n = 80) and 54 (n = 45) were correlated with endoscopic response (>5-point decrease in CDEIS from baseline) and remission (CDEIS, <6) at weeks 10 and 54, respectively. RESULTS: Higher concentrations of CZP at week 8 were associated with endoscopic response (P = .0016) and remission (P = .0302) at week 10 (n = 45). At week 54, the rates of endoscopic remission correlated with plasma concentrations of CZP (P = .0206). There was a significant inverse relationship between plasma concentrations of CZP and baseline levels of C-reactive protein and body weight (P = .0014 and P = .0373, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Endoscopic response and remission are associated with higher plasma concentrations of CZP in patients with moderate to severe ileocolonic CD. These results support the need to consider the pharmacokinetics of anti-tumor necrosis factor agents and therapeutic drug monitoring to optimize treatment. Clinicaltrials.gov Number, NCT00297648