Indoor location for safety application using wireless networks

This paper presents the indoor positioning research activities carried out within the scope of the Liaison project. Most of the work has been performed on WiFi location. WiFi is nowadays widely deployed in buildings such as hotels, hospitals, airports, train stations, public buildings, etc. Using this infrastructure to locate terminals connected to the wireless LAN is expected to have a low cost. Methods presented in this paper include fingerprinting with particle filter constrained on a Voronoi diagram and TOA based on data frames and acknowledgments at the IEEE 802.11 MAC level. Other technologies have also been researched: A-GNSS to handle the transition between outdoors and indoors, UWB in ad-hoc mode to cope with possible lacks of infrastructure and inertial MEMS to increase the availability and robustness of the overall system

Meta-analysis of shared genetic architecture across ten pediatric autoimmune diseases

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified hundreds of susceptibility genes, including shared associations across clinically distinct autoimmune diseases. We performed an inverse χ(2) meta-analysis across ten pediatric-age-of-onset autoimmune diseases (pAIDs) in a case-control study including more than 6,035 cases and 10,718 shared population-based controls. We identified 27 genome-wide significant loci associated with one or more pAIDs, mapping to in silico-replicated autoimmune-associated genes (including IL2RA) and new candidate loci with established immunoregulatory functions such as ADGRL2, TENM3, ANKRD30A, ADCY7 and CD40LG. The pAID-associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were functionally enriched for deoxyribonuclease (DNase)-hypersensitivity sites, expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs), microRNA (miRNA)-binding sites and coding variants. We also identified biologically correlated, pAID-associated candidate gene sets on the basis of immune cell expression profiling and found evidence of genetic sharing. Network and protein-interaction analyses demonstrated converging roles for the signaling pathways of type 1, 2 and 17 helper T cells (TH1, TH2 and TH17), JAK-STAT, interferon and interleukin in multiple autoimmune diseases

Micro-patterned porous substrates for cell-based assays

10.1039/c2lc20696jLab on a Chip - Miniaturisation for Chemistry and Biology1291717-1722LCAH

Microstructured Reactors Designed by Stereolithography and Characterized by Fluorescent Probes

The main objective of this research was to define a structured and functionalized support for future biomedical applications (model of “low-density bioarray”). The experiments were carried out by using stereolithography process with a special SU-8 photoresist and the reproducibility of the method was studied by analyzing the surface profile of the support. Finally, a matrix of regular controlled sized wells was fabricated. Chemical reactions leading to covalent grafting were run to demonstrate that the inner surface of the wells remains still reactive after polymerization. The grafting of fluorophores with carboxylic functions activated by N-hydroxysuccinimide was studied as function of time, in order to determine the best reactions, conditions. Then, the grafting of two distinct fluorescent probes was led simultaneously inside the wells, showing the possibility of spatial localization of diverse reactions on the same support. The covalent and localized bindings were confirmed by fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy analyses

Treatment of wastewater dyeing agent by photocatalytic process in solar reactor

The photocatalytic decolorization of industrial textile dyes has been studied. The treatment was carried out on a solar reactor consisting in a flat active plane, tilted so as to face the sun and to allow the trickling of the water to be treated. Alternatively the reactor could be irradiated by an artificial source. After checking the system using salicylic acid, a conventional model molecule, the photocatalytic decolorization of Orange II, Yellow Drimarene, and Black Drimarene dyes was investigated. Artificial and solar irradiation gave comparable results although the heating by the sun reduced the amount of adsorption. The kinetics agrees with the Langmuir-Hinshelwood model and a discrepancy between adsorption constants deduced from the kinetic and adsorption experiments was interpreted by considering various types of adsorption sites. Orange II and Drimarene dyes decolorization kinetics are opposite limiting cases of the above model, as being of order 0 and 1 with respect to the dye, respectively