Mixed experimental and numerical approach for characterizing the biomechanical response of the human leg under elastic compression.

8 p.International audienceElastic compression is the process of applying an elastic garment around the leg, supposedly for enhancing the venous flow. However, the response of internal tissues to the external pressure is still partially unknown. In order to improve the scientific knowledge about this topic, a slice of a human leg wearing an elastic garment is modeled by the finite-element method. The elastic properties of the tissues inside the leg are identified thanks to a dedicated approach based on image processing. After calibrating the model with magnetic resonance imaging scans of a volunteer, the pressure transmitted through the internal tissues of the leg is computed. Discrepancies of more than 35% are found from one location to another, showing that the same compression garment cannot be applied for treating deficiencies of the deep venous system or deficiencies of the large superficial veins. Moreover, it is shown that the internal morphology of the human leg plays an important role. Accordingly, the approach presented in this paper may provide useful information for adapting compression garments to the specificity of each patient

FRACAS: A FRench Annotated Corpus of Attribution relations in newS

Quotation extraction is a widely useful task both from a sociological and from a Natural Language Processing perspective. However, very little data is available to study this task in languages other than English. In this paper, we present a manually annotated corpus of 1676 newswire texts in French for quotation extraction and source attribution. We first describe the composition of our corpus and the choices that were made in selecting the data. We then detail the annotation guidelines and annotation process, as well as a few statistics about the final corpus and the obtained balance between quote types (direct, indirect and mixed, which are particularly challenging). We end by detailing our inter-annotator agreement between the 8 annotators who worked on manual labelling, which is substantially high for such a difficult linguistic phenomenon

Etude simultanée de la composition chimique de la fraction organique des particules secondaires et de la phase gazeuse atmosphériques en site réel et en atmosphère simulée

National audienceSecondary Organic Aerosols (SOAs) are formed in the atmosphere by gas-to-particle conversion of oxygenated Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds (SVOCs). However, the community currently lacks data to describe these multiphase phenomena and assess their climate and health impacts. This analytical work intends to improve our understanding of SOA by an original study based on the development of a simultaneous sampling method for gaseous and particulate phases. Both phases are analyzed by the same sensitive and rapid analytical technique coupling thermal-desorption, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS). The method involves derivatization of oxygenated SVOCs, in gas and particulate phases, on a solid support fitting with TD, to improve their analytical response and facilitate their identification. This work presents this development performed combining smog chamber experiments and the MEGAPOLI field campaign.Les Aérosols Organiques Secondaires (AOS) sont formés dans l'atmosphère par conversion de gaz organiques en particules ; ils sont issus de l'oxydation en phase gazeuse de Composés Organiques Volatils (COV) précurseurs, menant à la formation de Composés Organiques Semi-Volatils (COSV) oxygénés se partageant entre les phases gazeuse et particulaire. La communauté manque actuellement de données pour décrire ces phénomènes multiphasiques et évaluer leurs impacts climatiques et sanitaires. Ce travail analytique se propose ainsi d'améliorer notre connaissance des AOS par une étude originale basée sur la mise au point d'une méthode de prélèvement simultané des phases gazeuse et particulaire et leur analyse par une même technique analytique sensible et rapide, le couplage thermo-désorption/chromatographie en phase gazeuse/spectrométrie de masse (TD-GCMS). La méthode consiste en une dérivatisation indispensable des COSV oxygénés, prélevés en phase gazeuse comme en phase particulaire, sur un support solide thermo-désorbable afin d'améliorer leur réponse analytique et de faciliter leur identification. Ce travail présente le développement réalisé à partir d'expériences en chambres de simulation atmosphérique - dont CESAM, chambre spécialement conçue pour l'étude des phénomènes multiphasiques - et de la campagne de terrain du projet européen MEGAPOLI

Structure and Dynamics of Water Confined in Imogolite Nanotubes

International audienceWe have studied the properties of water adsorbed inside nanotubes of hydrophilic imogolite, an aluminum silicate clay mineral, by means of molecular simulations. We used a classical force field to describe the water and the flexible imogolite nanotube and validated it against the data obtained from first-principles molecular dynamics. With it, we observe a strong structuration of the water confined in the nanotube, with specific adsorption sites and a distribution of hydrogen bond patterns. The combination of number of adsorption sites, their geometry, and the preferential tetrahedral hydrogen bonding pattern of water leads to frustration and disorder. We further characterize the dynamics of the water, as well as the hydrogen bonds formed between water molecules and the nanotube, which is found to be more than 1 order of magnitude longer than water–water hydrogen bonds

EphrinB/EphB Signaling Controls Embryonic Germ Layer Separation by Contact-Induced Cell Detachment

Tissue boundary formation in the early vertebrate embryo involves cycles of cell attachment and detachment at the boundary, and cell contact-dependent signaling by membrane-bound EphB receptors and ephrinB ligands