La gouvernance informationnelle, outil et enjeu stratégiques des recompositions territoriales : vers l'émergence de nouveaux référentiels géographiques ?

International audienceBy facing unsettled and heterogeneous perimeters but at the same time by being obliged to lead concrete actions, new territories (i.e. large communities of municipalities) meet new and original needs in terms of “self-knowledge and representation”. At the same time, national institutions which up to this time produced standard spatial and statistical data for supra-local levels are being challenged by various private stakeholders (from Google to thematic communities). This communication aims to question the paradigm change resulting from these mutations. It will specifically focus on the reference data set conceived as a balance and meeting point for territorial knowledge. As hybrid object, territorial reference data indeed intersect two both scientific and political issues: matching knowledge and action, legitimacy to “tell the territory”.Face à des périmètres mouvants et hétérogènes mais enjoints de penser et de conduire des actions concrètes, les nouveaux territoires (intercommunalités, SCoT...) sont confrontés à des besoins de connaissance et de représentation de soi dans des termes assez largement inédits. Parallèlement, les institutions qui avaient jusqu’alors conçu et fourni les données de référence aux échelles supra-locales sont désormais concurrencées ou contournées par des acteurs aux statuts, natures et motivations très diverses (de Google aux communautés locales ou thématiques). La communication se propose d’interroger le changement de paradigme induit par ces évolutions en s’attachant au point de rencontre et d’équilibre entre représentations du territoire que constituent les référentiels (cartographiques, statistiques...). Objet hybride, les référentiels croisent deux questionnements autant scientifique que politique : celui de l’adéquation entre connaissance et action, celui de la légitimité à dire le territoire

Brief Announcement: Wait-Free Universality of Consensus in the Infinite Arrival Model

International audienceIn classical asynchronous distributed systems composed of a fixed number n of processes where some proportion may fail by crashing, many objects do not have a wait-free linearizable implementation (e.g. stacks, queues, etc.). It has been proved that consensus is universal in such systems, which means that this system augmented with consensus objects allows to implement any object that has a sequential specification. In this paper, we consider a more general system model called infinite arrival model where infinitely many processes may arrive and leave or crash during a run. We prove that consensus is still universal in this more general model. For that, we propose a universal construction based on a weak log that can be implementated using consensus objects

Research impact of paywalled versus open access papers

This note presents data from the 1science OAIndx on the average of relative citations (ARC) for 3.3 million papers published from 2007 to 2009 and indexed in the Web of Science (WoS). These data show a decidedly large citation advantage for open access (OA) papers, despite them suffering from a lag in availability compared to paywalled papers. There is an abundant literature on the citation advantage of OA papers, starting with a succinct communication by Lawrence (2001). Several studies have been listed by SPARC, the majority of which support the idea that when papers are openly available, they are more cited than papers for which availability is restricted to those who pay for access (http://sparceurope.org/oaca/). As noted by Diana Hicks on the ScienceMetrics.org blog (http://sciencemetrics.org/oaca-open-accesscitation- advantage/), skeptics argue that the advantage of OA is partly due to citations having a chance to arrive sooner. Another purported artefact would be a selection bias according to which authors pick their best (hence most citeable) papers to make OA. This paper examines the first aspect and concludes that the purported head start of OA papers is actually contrary to observed data. The limitation of the existing literature on the subject, whether supporting or refuting the OA citation advantage, is often the small number of articles analyzed, the limited size and diversity of the citing sources, and the short citation window considered. The present note examines 3,350,910 papers published between 2007 and 2009 and indexed in the WoS, with a citation window starting in 2007 and continuing up to the latest date possible (in practice, mid-2016). More than 12,000 journals indexed in the WoS were used to compute the citation

Distributed vs. semi-distributed simulations of snowpack dynamics in alpine areas: case study in the upper Arve catchment, French Alps, 1989–2015

We evaluated distributed and semi-distributed modeling approaches to simulating the spatial and temporal evolution of snow and ice over an extended mountain catchment, using the Crocus snowpack model. The distributed approach simulated the snowpack dynamics on a 250-m grid, enabling inclusion of terrain shadowing effects. The semi-distributed approach simulated the snowpack dynamics for discrete topographic classes characterized by elevation range, aspect, and slope. This provided a categorical simulation that was subsequently spatially re-projected over the 250-m grid used for the distributed simulations. The study area (the upper Arve catchment, western Alps, France) is characterized by complex topography, including steep slopes, an extensive glaciated area, and snow cover throughout the year. Simulations were carried out for the period 1989–2015 using the SAFRAN meteorological forcing system. The simulations were compared using four observation datasets including point snow depth measurements, seasonal and annual glacier surface mass balance, snow covered area evolution based on optical satellite sensors, and the annual equilibrium-line altitude of glacier zones, derived from satellite images. The results showed that in both approaches the Crocus snowpack model effectively reproduced the snowpack distribution over the study period. Slightly better results were obtained using the distributed approach because it included the effects of shadows and terrain characteristics

Muscle strength is associated with COVID-19 hospitalization in adults 50 years of age or older.

Funder: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) : RGPIN‐2021‐03153; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000049Funder: Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004189Funder: German Ministry of Education and ResearchFunder: European Commission; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000780BACKGROUND: Weak muscle strength has been associated with a wide range of adverse health outcomes. Yet, whether individuals with weaker muscle strength are more at risk for hospitalization due to severe COVID-19 is still unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate the independent association between muscle strength and COVID-19 hospitalization. METHODS: Data from adults 50 years of age or older were analysed using logistic models adjusted for several chronic conditions, body-mass index, age, and sex. Hand-grip strength was repeatedly measured between 2004 and 2017 using a handheld dynamometer. COVID-19 hospitalization during the lockdown was self-reported in summer 2020 and was used as an indicator of COVID-19 severity. RESULTS: The study was based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and included 3600 older adults (68.8 ± 8.8 years, 2044 female), among whom 316 were tested positive for the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (8.8%), and 83 (2.3%) were hospitalized due to COVID-19. Results showed that higher grip strength was associated with a lower risk of COVID-19 hospitalization [adjusted odds ratio (OR) per increase of 1 standard deviation in grip strength = 0.64, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) = 0.45-0.87, P = 0.015]. Results also showed that age (OR for a 10 -year period = 1.70, 95% CI = 1.32-2.20, P < 0.001) and obesity (OR = 2.01, 95% CI = 1.00-3.69, P = 0.025) were associated with higher risk of COVID-19 hospitalization. Sensitivity analyses using different measurements of grip strength as well as robustness analyses based on rare-events logistic regression and a different sample of participants (i.e. COVID-19 patients) were consistent with the main results. CONCLUSIONS: Muscle strength is an independent risk factor for COVID-19 severity in adults 50 years of age or older

Evolution of hypoxia and hypoxia-inducible factor asparaginyl hydroxylase regulation in chronic kidney disease

Background The roles of hypoxia and hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) during chronic kidney disease (CKD) are much debated. Interventional studies with HIF-α activation in rodents have yielded contradictory results. The HIF pathway is regulated by prolyl and asparaginyl hydroxylases. While prolyl hydroxylase inhibition is a well-known method to stabilize HIF-α, little is known about the effect asparaginyl hydroxylase factor inhibiting HIF (FIH). Methods We used a model of progressive proteinuric CKD and a model of obstructive nephropathy with unilateral fibrosis. In these models we assessed hypoxia with pimonidazole and vascularization with three-dimensional micro-computed tomography imaging. We analysed a database of 217 CKD biopsies from stage 1 to 5 and we randomly collected 15 CKD biopsies of various severity degrees to assess FIH expression. Finally, we modulated FIH activity in vitro and in vivo using a pharmacologic approach to assess its relevance in CKD. Results In our model of proteinuric CKD, we show that early CKD stages are not characterized by hypoxia or HIF activation. At late CKD stages, some areas of hypoxia are observed, but these are not colocalizing with fibrosis. In mice and in humans, we observed a downregulation of the HIF pathway, together with an increased FIH expression in CKD, according to its severity. Modulating FIH in vitro affects cellular metabolism, as described previously. In vivo, pharmacologic FIH inhibition increases the glomerular filtration rate of control and CKD animals and is associated with decreased development of fibrosis. Conclusions The causative role of hypoxia and HIF activation in CKD progression is questioned. A pharmacological approach of FIH downregulation seems promising in proteinuric kidney disease

Critically Ill Patients with Visceral Nocardia Infection, France and Belgium, 2004-2023.

peer reviewedWe studied 50 patients with invasive nocardiosis treated during 2004-2023 in intensive care centers in France and Belgium. Most (65%) died in the intensive care unit or in the year after admission. Nocardia infections should be included in the differential diagnoses for patients in the intensive care setting