L’importance de planifier en vue du vieillissement de la population : Notre ville est-elle amie des aînés?

This article has two objectives: to determine to what extent seniors feel that their community meets the needs of an aging population, and to provide a critical reflection on the benefits and challenges of conducting research with a community partner comprised mainly of seniors. Two hundred and eighty-nine seniors who live in the city of Moncton, New Brunswick (Canada) completed and returned a questionnaire as part of this mixed methodology research project. The resulting data was subjected to a statistical analysis, a content analysis, as well as a qualitative identification by theme. Survey results indicate that the presence of ice and snow on sidewalks is the most serious obstacle to the creation of an age friendly community, followed by telephone access to municipal and governmental offices. The main finding of the study is that seniors need to be able to leave their homes to participate fully in community life.Le présent article poursuit deux objectifs : déterminer dans quelle mesure les personnes âgées jugent que leur collectivité répond aux besoins de la population vieillissante et proposer une réflexion critique sur les avantages et les défis de mener une recherche avec un partenaire communautaire composé à majorité d’aînés. Deux cent quatre-vingt-neuf personnes âgées, habitant la ville de Moncton, au Nouveau-Brunswick (Canada), ont rempli et renvoyé un questionnaire dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche à méthode mixte. Nous avons procédé à une analyse statistique, une analyse du contenu et une identification qualitative par thèmes. Les résultats du sondage révèlent que la présence de glace et de neige sur les trottoirs est l’obstacle grave le plus fréquemment relevé en ce qui a trait à la création d’une collectivité amie des aînés, suivi de l’accès par téléphone aux bureaux municipaux et aux bureaux des gouvernements. La principale conclusion qui se dégage de l’étude est que les aînés ont besoin de pouvoir se déplacer à l’extérieur de leur domicile pour participer pleinement à la vie communautaire

Transportation for Seniors in a Rural Community: Can the Nursing Home Play a Role?

In New Brunswick, a large percentage of the population is made up of older adults living in rural communities. This situation presents a number of challenges, particularly in terms of transportation. This paper describes a pilot project in a small rural community in New Brunswick in which a shuttle bus belonging to a long-term care facility was used to provide transportation for older adults living in the community. Both interviews and standardized quantitative measures of life satisfaction and depressive symptoms were used to measure quality of life with older adults who used the bus (n = 8) and older adults who did not use the bus (n = 17). Interviews with the bus drivers and program coordinators, as well as observations of a bus trip were also carried out. Bus takers were found to have lower scores on many quality-of-life indicators than non-bus takers, and were very satisfied with the bus service. Recommendations for increasing the long-term viability of the initiative are addressed in the Discussion.Au Nouveau Brunswick, une grande proportion de la population se compose d’adultes plus âgés qui vivent dans des collectivités rurales. Une telle situation pose un certain nombre de défis, notamment quant au transport. Le présent article expose un projet pilote d’une petite collectivité rurale du Nouveau Brunswick dans laquelle un bus-navette appartenant à un établissement de soins de longue durée a été utilisé pour transporter les adultes plus âgés qui vivent dans la collectivité. À la fois les entretiens, les mesures quantitatives normalisées de satisfaction à l’égard de la vie et les symptômes dépressifs ont été utilisés afin de mesurer la qualité de la vie des adultes plus âgés qui utilisaient le bus-navette (n = 8) et de ceux qui ne l’utilisaient pas (n = 17). Des entretiens avec les chauffeurs et les coordonnateurs du programme ont été effectués et des observations ont été recueillies au cours d’un trajet en bus-navette. Les personnes qui adoptaient ce moyen de transport présentaient des résultats plus faibles quant à de nombreux indicateurs de la qualité de vie que les personnes qui ne prenaient pas le bus et elles étaient très satisfaites du service de bus-navette. Des recommandations en vue d’accroître la viabilité à long terme de l’initiative sont abordées dans la discussion

Partially Hydrolysed Whey-Based Infant Formula Improves Skin Barrier Function

Specific partially hydrolysed whey-based infant formulas (pHF-W) have been shown to decrease the risk of atopic dermatitis (AD) in infants. Historically, AD has been associated primarily with milk allergy; however, defective skin barrier function can be a primary cause of AD. We aimed to ascertain whether oral supplementation with pHF-W can improve skin barrier function. The effect of pHF-W was assessed on transepidermal water loss (TEWL) and antibody productions in mice epicutaneously exposed to Aspergillus fumigatus. Human primary keratinocytes were stimulated in vitro, and the expression of genes related to skin barrier function was measured. Supplementation with pHF-W in neonatal mice led to a significant decrease in TEWL and total IgE, but not in allergen-specific antibody levels. The whey hydrolysate was sufficient to decrease both TEWL and total IgE. Aquaporin-3 gene expression, linked with skin hydration, was modulated in the skin of mice and human primary keratinocytes following protein hydrolysate exposure. Skin barrier improvement may be an additional mechanism by which pHF-W may potentially reduce the risk of AD development in infants. Further human studies are warranted to confirm the clinical efficacy of these observations

Gratings with an aperiodic basis: single-mode emission in multi-wavelength lasers

We propose a new class of gratings having multiple spatial frequencies. Their design relies on the use of small aperiodic grating sequences as unit cells whose repetition forms a superlattice. The superlattice provides well-defined Fourier components, while the choice of the unit cell structure enables the selection, modulation or suppression of certain Fourier components. Using these gratings to provide distributed feedback in mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers, we demonstrate simultaneous lasing on multiple well-defined and isolated longitudinal modes, each one having a sidemode suppression ratio of about 20 dB.United States. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (MURI 67N-1069926)Harvard University (Nanoscale Systems and Engineering Center)United States. Air Force (‘Deterministic Aperiodic Structures for Onchip Nanophotonic and Nanoplasmonic Device Applications’ under award no. FA9550-10-1- 0019)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF CAREER Award ECCS-0846651)Georgia Institute of Technology (Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair of OptoElectronics

SPHERE: the exoplanet imager for the Very Large Telescope

Observations of circumstellar environments to look for the direct signal of exoplanets and the scattered light from disks has significant instrumental implications. In the past 15 years, major developments in adaptive optics, coronagraphy, optical manufacturing, wavefront sensing and data processing, together with a consistent global system analysis have enabled a new generation of high-contrast imagers and spectrographs on large ground-based telescopes with much better performance. One of the most productive is the Spectro-Polarimetic High contrast imager for Exoplanets REsearch (SPHERE) designed and built for the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. SPHERE includes an extreme adaptive optics system, a highly stable common path interface, several types of coronagraphs and three science instruments. Two of them, the Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) and the Infra-Red Dual-band Imager and Spectrograph (IRDIS), are designed to efficiently cover the near-infrared (NIR) range in a single observation for efficient young planet search. The third one, ZIMPOL, is designed for visible (VIR) polarimetric observation to look for the reflected light of exoplanets and the light scattered by debris disks. This suite of three science instruments enables to study circumstellar environments at unprecedented angular resolution both in the visible and the near-infrared. In this work, we present the complete instrument and its on-sky performance after 4 years of operations at the VLT.Comment: Final version accepted for publication in A&

The large deviation approach to statistical mechanics

The theory of large deviations is concerned with the exponential decay of probabilities of large fluctuations in random systems. These probabilities are important in many fields of study, including statistics, finance, and engineering, as they often yield valuable information about the large fluctuations of a random system around its most probable state or trajectory. In the context of equilibrium statistical mechanics, the theory of large deviations provides exponential-order estimates of probabilities that refine and generalize Einstein's theory of fluctuations. This review explores this and other connections between large deviation theory and statistical mechanics, in an effort to show that the mathematical language of statistical mechanics is the language of large deviation theory. The first part of the review presents the basics of large deviation theory, and works out many of its classical applications related to sums of random variables and Markov processes. The second part goes through many problems and results of statistical mechanics, and shows how these can be formulated and derived within the context of large deviation theory. The problems and results treated cover a wide range of physical systems, including equilibrium many-particle systems, noise-perturbed dynamics, nonequilibrium systems, as well as multifractals, disordered systems, and chaotic systems. This review also covers many fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics, such as the derivation of variational principles characterizing equilibrium and nonequilibrium states, the breaking of the Legendre transform for nonconcave entropies, and the characterization of nonequilibrium fluctuations through fluctuation relations.Comment: v1: 89 pages, 18 figures, pdflatex. v2: 95 pages, 20 figures, text, figures and appendices added, many references cut, close to published versio

A profile of social isolation and the influence of demographics in older persons living in residential care, Durban, South Africa

Introduction: Residential care settings have shown high social isolation rates with incumbent risks necessitating measurement to formulate health promotion policies. Objective: To measure social isolation levels in older persons living in a lower socio-economic residential care setting in South Africa. Method: A cross sectional survey with older persons from four inner city residential care facilities. A researcher administered questionnaire was developed based on the Working Paper No.66, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Data were analysed to describe social isolation and assess the influence of demographics. Results: The response rate was 72.14% (n = 277) and representative of the residential care population for age and gender. Nearly half of the respondents (47.3%) met criteria for social isolation in terms of social network support and density and almost 20% for perceived isolation through decreased levels of friendship. Conclusion: Although residential care does not prevent social isolation, the residents in the setting may provide a buffering in the provision of some social suppor

Inborn errors of OAS-RNase L in SARS-CoV-2-related multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a rare and severe condition that follows benign COVID-19. We report autosomal recessive deficiencies of OAS1, OAS2, or RNASEL in five unrelated children with MIS-C. The cytosolic double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-sensing OAS1 and OAS2 generate 2'-5'-linked oligoadenylates (2-5A) that activate the single-stranded RNA-degrading ribonuclease L (RNase L). Monocytic cell lines and primary myeloid cells with OAS1, OAS2, or RNase L deficiencies produce excessive amounts of inflammatory cytokines upon dsRNA or severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) stimulation. Exogenous 2-5A suppresses cytokine production in OAS1-deficient but not RNase L-deficient cells. Cytokine production in RNase L-deficient cells is impaired by MDA5 or RIG-I deficiency and abolished by mitochondrial antiviral-signaling protein (MAVS) deficiency. Recessive OAS-RNase L deficiencies in these patients unleash the production of SARS-CoV-2-triggered, MAVS-mediated inflammatory cytokines by mononuclear phagocytes, thereby underlying MIS-C

Autoantibodies against type I IFNs in patients with life-threatening COVID-19

Interindividual clinical variability in the course of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is vast. We report that at least 101 of 987 patients with life-threatening coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia had neutralizing immunoglobulin G (IgG) autoantibodies (auto-Abs) against interferon-w (IFN-w) (13 patients), against the 13 types of IFN-a (36), or against both (52) at the onset of critical disease; a few also had auto-Abs against the other three type I IFNs. The auto-Abs neutralize the ability of the corresponding type I IFNs to block SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro. These auto-Abs were not found in 663 individuals with asymptomatic or mild SARS-CoV-2 infection and were present in only 4 of 1227 healthy individuals. Patients with auto-Abs were aged 25 to 87 years and 95 of the 101 were men. A B cell autoimmune phenocopy of inborn errors of type I IFN immunity accounts for life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia in at least 2.6% of women and 12.5% of men

Naviguer le maintien à domicile en communautés de langue officielle en situation minoritaire rurales : enjeux et pistes de solutions

Le vieillissement de la population dans les provinces de l’Atlantique est une réalité courante en plus d’une composition géographique rurale et la présence de communautés de langue officielle en situation minoritaire (CLOSM). Les objectifs de cette étude descriptive qualitative étaient de 1) comprendre les services utilisés pour le maintien à domicile, et 2) déterminer les services nécessitant une amélioration pour l’accès en français. Vingt-six (n=26) personnes âgées ont participé à cette étude en région rurale de l’île du Prince Édouard. Les résultats témoignent des difficultés d’accès aux services pour le maintien à domicile tout en offrant des pistes de solutions pour l’améliorer.Population aging in the Atlantic provinces is a current reality combined to a rural geographical composition and the presence of official language minority communities (OLMC). The objectives of this qualitative descriptive study were to 1) understand service utilization for aging in place, and 2) determine which services need improvements for access in French. Twenty-six (n=26) older adults participated in this study from rural communities in Prince Edward Island. The results attest that access to services in French for aging in place is difficult while offering possible solutions for improvement