L'élevage, le conseil, et l'écopathologie. Résultats d'une approche didactique de situations de diagnostic d'élevage en production porcine

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Laser-driven acceleration of quasi-monoenergetic, near-collimated titanium ions via a transparency-enhanced acceleration scheme

Laser-driven ion acceleration has been an active research area in the past two decades with the prospects of designing novel and compact ion accelerators. Many potential applications in science and industry require high-quality, energetic ion beams with low divergence and narrow energy spread. Intense laser ion acceleration research strives to meet these challenges and may provide high charge state beams, with some successes for carbon and lighter ions. Here we demonstrate the generation of well collimated, quasi-monoenergetic titanium ions with energies ∼145 and 180 MeV in experiments using the high-contrast(<10-9) and high-intensity (6× 1020 W cm-2) Trident laser and ultra-Thin (∼100 nm) titanium foil targets. Numerical simulations show that the foils become transparent to the laser pulses, undergoing relativistically induced transparency (RIT), resulting in a two-stage acceleration process which lasts until ∼2 ps after the onset of RIT. Such long acceleration time in the self-generated electric fields in the expanding plasma enables the formation of the quasi-monoenergetic peaks. This work contributes to the better understanding of the acceleration of heavier ions in the RIT regime, towards the development of next generation laser-based ion accelerators for various applications

Comparison of optical sensors discrimination ability using spectral libraries

In remote sensing, the ability to discriminate different land covers or material types is directly linked with the spectral resolution and sampling provided by the optical sensor. Previous studies showed that the spectral resolution is a critical issue, especially in complex environment. In spite of the increasing availability of hyperspectral data, multispectral optical sensors onboard various satellites are acquiring everyday a massive amount of data with a relatively poor spectral resolution (i.e. usually about 4 to 7 spectral bands). These remotely sensed data are intensively used for Earth observation regardless of their limited spectral resolution. In this paper, we studied seven of these optical sensors: Pleiades, QuickBird, SPOT5, Ikonos, Landsat TM, Formosat and Meris. This study focuses on the ability of each sensor to discriminate different materials according to its spectral resolution. We used four different spectral libraries which contains around 2500 spectra of materials and land covers with a fine spectral resolution. These spectra were convolved with the Relative Spectral Responses (RSR) of each sensor to create spectra at the sensors’ resolutions. Then, these reduced spectra were compared using separability indexes (Divergence, Transformed divergence, Bhattacharyya, Jeffreys-Matusita) and machine learning tools. In the experiments, we highlighted that the spectral bands configuration could lead to important differences in classification accuracy according to the context of application (e.g. urban area)

Long-term results of NOPHO ALL-92 and ALL-2000 studies of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldAnalysis of 2668 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treated in two successive Nordic clinical trials (Nordic Society of Paediatric Haematology and Oncology (NOPHO) ALL-92 and ALL-2000) showed that 75% of all patients are cured by first-line therapy, and 83% are long-term survivors. Improvements in systemic and intrathecal chemotherapy have reduced the use of central nervous system (CNS) irradiation to <10% of the patients and provided a 5-year risk of isolated CNS relapse of 2.6%. Improved risk stratification and chemotherapy have eliminated the previous independent prognostic significance of gender, CNS leukemia and translocation t(1;19)(q23;p13), whereas the post-induction level of minimal residual disease (MRD) has emerged as a new risk grouping feature. Infant leukemia, high leukocyte count, T-lineage immunophenotype, translocation t(4;11)(q21;q23) and hypodiploidy persist to be associated with lower cure rates. To reduce the overall toxicity of the treatment, including the risk of therapy-related second malignant neoplasms, the current NOPHO ALL-2008 protocol does not include CNS irradiation in first remission, the dose of 6-mercaptopurine is reduced for patients with low thiopurine methyltransferase activity, and the protocol restricts the use of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in first remission to patients without morphological remission after induction therapy or with high levels of MRD after 3 months of therapy

Iterated Moire Maps and Braiding of Chiral Polymer Crystals

In the hexagonal columnar phase of chiral polymers a bias towards cholesteric twist competes with braiding along an average direction. When the chirality is strong, screw dislocations proliferate, leading to either a tilt grain boundary phase or a new "moire state" with twisted bond order. Polymer trajectories in the plane perpendicular to their average direction are described by iterated moire maps of remarkable complexity.Comment: 10 pages (plain tex) 3 figures uufiled and appende

Dic(9;20)(p13;q11) in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is related to low cellular resistance to asparaginase, cytarabine and corticosteroids.

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldDic(9;20)(p13;q11) was first described as a nonrandom chromosome abnormality in B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (BCP ALL) in the mid 1990s,1, 2 and 71 dic(9;20)-positive cases have since then been reported.3, 4, 5 Approximately 90% of these cases were children or adolescents, with dic(9;20) occurring in about 2% of childhood BCP ALL.6 The recent review by Forestier et al.5 describes that dic(9;20)-leukaemias are of B-cell precursor immunophenotype, never have a high hyperdiploid modal number, show a female predominance, and have a significant age incidence peak at 3 years. Most patients are allocated to non-standard risk treatment arms due to high WBC (median 24 109/l) and a relatively high frequency of CNS disease or other extra-medullary leukaemia (EML) at diagnosis. The prognostic implications of dic(9;20) are to a large extent unknown. A relatively large proportion of the relapses reported in the literature have been extra-medullary, and post-relapse treatment including block therapy has been successful in several patients, as illustrated by a p-EFS of 0.62 and a predicted overall survival of 0.82 at 5 years for the 24 Nordic cases.

'Choosing shoes': a preliminary study into the challenges facing clinicians in assessing footwear for rheumatoid patients

Background: Footwear has been accepted as a therapeutic intervention for the foot affected by rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Evidence relating to the objective assessment of footwear in patients with RA is limited. The aims of this study were to identify current footwear styles, footwear characteristics, and factors that influence footwear choice experienced by patients with RA. Methods: Eighty patients with RA were recruited from rheumatology clinics during the summer months. Clinical characteristics, global function, and foot impairment and disability measures were recorded. Current footwear, footwear characteristics and the factors associated with choice of footwear were identified. Suitability of footwear was recorded using pre-determined criteria for assessing footwear type, based on a previous study of foot pain. Results: The patients had longstanding RA with moderate-to severe disability and impairment. The foot and ankle assessment demonstrated a low-arch profile with both forefoot and rearfoot structural deformities. Over 50% of shoes worn by patients were opentype footwear. More than 70% of patients’ footwear was defined as being poor. Poor footwear characteristics such as heel rigidity and sole hardness were observed. Patients reported comfort (17%) and fit (14%) as important factors in choosing their own footwear. Only five percent (5%) of patients wore therapeutic footwear. Conclusions: The majority of patients with RA wear footwear that has been previously described as poor. Future work needs to aim to define and justify the specific features of footwear that may be of benefit to foot health for people with RA

Molecular Biomarkers of Neovascular Age-Related Macular Degeneration With Incomplete Response to Anti-Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Treatment.

The standard treatment for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) consists of intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGF). However, for some patients, even maximal anti-VEGF treatment does not entirely suppress exudative activity. The goal of this study was to identify molecular biomarkers in nAMD with incomplete response to anti-VEGF treatment. Aqueous humor (AH) samples were collected from three groups of patients: 17 patients with nAMD responding incompletely to anti-VEGF (18 eyes), 17 patients affected by nAMD with normal treatment response (21 eyes), and 16 control patients without any retinopathy (16 eyes). Proteomic and multiplex analyses were performed on these samples. Proteomic analyses showed that nAMD patients with incomplete anti-VEGF response displayed an increased inflammatory response, complement activation, cytolysis, protein-lipid complex, and vasculature development pathways. Multiplex analyses revealed a significant increase of soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1) [ p = 0.001], interleukin-6 (IL-6) [ p = 0.009], bioactive interleukin-12 (IL-12p40) [ p = 0.03], plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 (PAI-1) [ p = 0.004], and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) [ p = 0.004] levels in incomplete responders in comparison to normal responders. Interestingly, the same biomarkers showed a high intercorrelation with r2 values between 0.58 and 0.94. In addition, we confirmed by AlphaLISA the increase of sVCAM-1 [ p &lt; 0.0001] and IL-6 [ p = 0.043] in the incomplete responder group. Incomplete responders in nAMD are associated with activated angiogenic and inflammatory pathways. The residual exudative activity of nAMD despite maximal anti-VEGF treatment may be related to both angiogenic and inflammatory responses requiring specific adjuvant therapy. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD02247