Clinicat report of a toxico-pathology case in a laboratory mouse unit

La pathologie, chez l’animal de laboratoire, s’exprime souvent de manière originale. L’auteur relate un incident survenu au sein d’une unité animale d’élevage de souris de laboratoire. De nombreux cas de mortalité sont constatés chez des souris de sexe mâle appartenant à la lignée consanguine CBA ; les animaux malades, surtout des mâles, présentent une paralysie du train postérieur. Par précaution, les souris de cette lignée ont été sacrifiées. Parallèlement à une recherche d’éventuels agents infectieux, cause de l’épizootie, une enquête portant sur les circonstances de l’incident montre que, par erreur, des animaux ont été préalablement euthanasiés dans le local à l’aide de vapeurs de chloroforme, produit hautement toxique pour le sexe mâle de la souche en question. Les autres lignées de souris n’ont pas été affectées. Les lésions histologiques ont confirmé l’origine toxique de l’affec tion, dont la gravité est directement liée au génotype de la souche concernée.Laboratory animal pathology often presents particular and specific aspects. In a breeding animal facility, one room is devoted to available weaned inbred strains of mice. A severe condition is detected on large lots of CBA mice, especially males, with an important mortality, after a flaccid paralysis of posterior limbs. That disease occurs a fortnight after the killing of a lot of mice in excess, with chloroform, CH.CL3, fumes in a bell-jarr. In prophylactic ames, in that strain, stamping-out of all animal will be decided, though neither morbidity nor mortality are displayed in cages homing mice belonging to other strains maintained in the same room. A toxic origin is suspected because of the convergence of several features : typical histo-pathological lesions, and historic reports of genetic pre disposition of some mouse inbred strains to that volatil toxic

Translation Representations and Scattering By Two Intervals

Studying unitary one-parameter groups in Hilbert space (U(t),H), we show that a model for obstacle scattering can be built, up to unitary equivalence, with the use of translation representations for L2-functions in the complement of two finite and disjoint intervals. The model encompasses a family of systems (U (t), H). For each, we obtain a detailed spectral representation, and we compute the scattering operator, and scattering matrix. We illustrate our results in the Lax-Phillips model where (U (t), H) represents an acoustic wave equation in an exterior domain; and in quantum tunneling for dynamics of quantum states

L'homme et les mammifères de France métropolitaine : évolution historique et introductions d'espèces dans les milieux humides et aquatiques

De par ses activités diversifiées, l'homme a modifié en permanence la faune mammalienne de France métropolitaine. Responsable de certaines extinctions, il est également à l'origine de réintroductions d'espèces autochtones et d'introductions d'espèces allochtones. On note que 7 des 18 mammifères fréquentant, à des degrés divers, les milieux humides et aquatiques correspondent à des espèces introduites, la plupart du temps à partir d'échappées de captivité. En effet, la finalité principale de l'apport de ces nouvelles espèces a été, à l'origine, l'élevage pour la fourrure, même si la chasse et l'agrément ont joué un rôle non négligeable. L'introduction active des mammifères exotiques sur le territoire métropolitain a débuté à la fin du XIXème siècle et s'est poursuivie jusque dans les années 1960. Par la suite, quelques cas d'introductions, accidentelles pour l'essentiel, ont encore été enregistrés. La communauté scientifique et naturaliste a insisté depuis longtemps sur les conséquences souvent néfastes de ces apports exogènes. De fait, la réglementation s'est renforcée récemment, pour tenter d'empêcher toute nouvelle initiative incontrôlée. À l'inverse, les actions de réintroductions sont soutenues et considérées comme des outils de gestion et de conservation du patrimoine naturel

Sanitary requirements for reception and maintenance of laboratory animals

Avant d’aborder les aspects pratiques du contrôle de l’état sanitaire des animaux, tant à l’arrivée que dans l’unité d’élevage ou de maintenance, il est procédé à un nécessaire rappel de la nomenclature utilisée, basée sur leur état microbiologique. Une finalité se dégage : faire concorder les conditions de l’environne ment d’accueil avec celles existant à l’origine, les procédures à respecter étant d’autant plus exigentes que le statut microbiologique initial est plus strictement défini. Après l’évocation de cas particuliers d’analyses propres aux espèces les plus utilisées, il est fait allusion aux équipements spécifiques selon le statut sanitaire des animaux à héberger, aux problèmes de la prophylaxie médicale et au rôle de l’homme au sein de l’unité animale, le chercheur, le visiteur ou le technicien. Quelques règles essentielles de contrôle sont rappelées en fin d’exposé.Before considering the practical aspects of the sanitary control of animals, either at their arrival or in the animal unit, devoted to breeding or maintainance, it is necessary to recall the terminology in use based on their microbiological status. A compulsory aim is to assure a concordance of environmental conditions at the arrival with those known to have existed originally. The procedures to be observed are even more compulsory with respect to the microbiological status which has to be strictly defined. After having mentioned the particular analysis proper to the species mostly utilized special reference is made to various equipments used according to the animal’s sanitary status, as to the prophylactic medical problems posed. Finally, the role of investigators, visitors or animal techniciens is des cribed. Some main rules of control are recalled at the end of the paper

Automorphism covariant representations of the holonomy-flux *-algebra

We continue an analysis of representations of cylindrical functions and fluxes which are commonly used as elementary variables of Loop Quantum Gravity. We consider an arbitrary principal bundle of a compact connected structure group and following Sahlmann's ideas define a holonomy-flux *-algebra whose elements correspond to the elementary variables. There exists a natural action of automorphisms of the bundle on the algebra; the action generalizes the action of analytic diffeomorphisms and gauge transformations on the algebra considered in earlier works. We define the automorphism covariance of a *-representation of the algebra on a Hilbert space and prove that the only Hilbert space admitting such a representation is a direct sum of spaces L^2 given by a unique measure on the space of generalized connections. This result is a generalization of our previous work (Class. Quantum. Grav. 20 (2003) 3543-3567, gr-qc/0302059) where we assumed that the principal bundle is trivial, and its base manifold is R^d.Comment: 34 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX2e, minor clarifying remark

Comparison of absolute gain photometric calibration between Planck/HFI and Herschel/SPIRE at 545 and 857 GHz

We compare the absolute gain photometric calibration of the Planck/HFI and Herschel/SPIRE instruments on diffuse emission. The absolute calibration of HFI and SPIRE each relies on planet flux measurements and comparison with theoretical far-infrared emission models of planetary atmospheres. We measure the photometric cross calibration between the instruments at two overlapping bands, 545 GHz / 500 $\mu$m and 857 GHz / 350 $\mu$m. The SPIRE maps used have been processed in the Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (Version 12) and the HFI data are from the 2015 Public Data Release 2. For our study we used 15 large fields observed with SPIRE, which cover a total of about 120 deg^2. We have selected these fields carefully to provide high signal-to-noise ratio, avoid residual systematics in the SPIRE maps, and span a wide range of surface brightness. The HFI maps are bandpass-corrected to match the emission observed by the SPIRE bandpasses. The SPIRE maps are convolved to match the HFI beam and put on a common pixel grid. We measure the cross-calibration relative gain between the instruments using two methods in each field, pixel-to-pixel correlation and angular power spectrum measurements. The SPIRE / HFI relative gains are 1.047 ($\pm$ 0.0069) and 1.003 ($\pm$ 0.0080) at 545 and 857 GHz, respectively, indicating very good agreement between the instruments. These relative gains deviate from unity by much less than the uncertainty of the absolute extended emission calibration, which is about 6.4% and 9.5% for HFI and SPIRE, respectively, but the deviations are comparable to the values 1.4% and 5.5% for HFI and SPIRE if the uncertainty from models of the common calibrator can be discounted. Of the 5.5% uncertainty for SPIRE, 4% arises from the uncertainty of the effective beam solid angle, which impacts the adopted SPIRE point source to extended source unit conversion factor (Abridged)Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures; Incorporates revisions in response to referee comments; cross calibration factors unchange

Micro-Capsules in Shear Flow

This paper deals with flow-induced shape transitions of elastic capsules. The state of the art concerning both theory and experiments is briefly reviewed starting with dynamically induced small deformation of initially spherical capsules and the formation of wrinkles on polymerized membranes. Initially non-spherical capsules show tumbling and tank-treading motion in shear flow. Theoretical descriptions of the transition between these two types of motion assuming a fixed shape are at variance with the full capsule dynamics obtained numerically. To resolve the discrepancy, we expand the exact equations of motion for small deformations and find that shape changes play a dominant role. We classify the dynamical phase transitions and obtain numerical and analytical results for the phase boundaries as a function of viscosity contrast, shear and elongational flow rate. We conclude with perspectives on timedependent flow, on shear-induced unbinding from surfaces, on the role of thermal fluctuations, and on applying the concepts of stochastic thermodynamics to these systems.Comment: 34 pages, 15 figure

Illuminating collaboration in emergency health care situations:Paramedic-physician collaboration and 3D telepresence technology

Introduction. This paper focuses on paramedics\u27 perspectives regarding paramedic-physician collaboration today, and their perspectives regarding the potential of 3D telepresence technology in the future. Method. Interviews were conducted with forty practicing paramedics. Analysis. The interview data were analysed using open and axial coding. An agreement of 0.82 using Cohen\u27s kappa inter-coder reliability measure was reached. After coding was completed themes and relationships among codes were synthesised using topic memos. Results. Paramedics expressed concern about the lack of respect and trust exhibited towards them by other medical professionals. They discussed how they paint the picture for physicians and the importance of the physician trusting the paramedic. They further reported 3D telepresence technology would make their work visible in ways not previously possible. They also reported the technology would require additional training, changes to existing financial models used in emergency health care, and increased access to physicians. Conclusions. Teaching collaboration skills and strategies to physicians and paramedics could benefit their collaboration today, and increase their readiness to effectively use collaboration technologies in the future

Bounds on the heat kernel of the Schroedinger operator in a random electromagnetic field

We obtain lower and upper bounds on the heat kernel and Green functions of the Schroedinger operator in a random Gaussian magnetic field and a fixed scalar potential. We apply stochastic Feynman-Kac representation, diamagnetic upper bounds and the Jensen inequality for the lower bound. We show that if the covariance of the electromagnetic (vector) potential is increasing at large distances then the lower bound is decreasing exponentially fast for large distances and a large time.Comment: some technical improvements, new references, to appear in Journ.Phys.

Selective Reflection Spectroscopy at the Interface between a Calcium Fluoride Window and Cs Vapour

A special vapour cell has been built, that allows the measurement of the atom-surface van der Waals interaction exerted by a CaF2 window at the interface with Cs vapour. Mechanical and thermal fragility of fluoride windows make common designs of vapour cells unpractical, so that we have developed an all-sapphire sealed cell with an internal CaF2 window. Although impurities were accidentally introduced when filling-up the prototype cell, leading to a line-broadening and shift, the selective reflection spectrum on the Cs D1 line (894 nm) makes apparent the weak van der Waals surface interaction. The uncertainties introduced by the effects of these impurities in the van der Waals measurement are nearly eliminated when comparing the selective reflection signal at the CaF2 interface of interest, and at a sapphire window of the same cell. The ratio of the interaction respectively exerted by a sapphire interface and a CaF2 interface is found to be 0.55 $\pm$ 0.25, in good agreement with the theoretical evaluation of ~0.67.Comment: soumis \`a Appl Phys B MS 4734