EXPE: An expandable programming language for on-line psychological experiments

International audienceEXPE is a DOS program for the design and running of experiments that involve the presentation of audio or visual stimuli and the collection of on-line or off-line behavioral responses. Its flexibility makes it also a very useful tool for the rapid design of protocols for testing neu-ropsychological patients. EXPE provides a powerful scripting language which allows the user to specify all the components of an experiment in a human readable file. Subjects' responses are saved in a user-specified format, also in readable ASCII files. A remarkable feature of EXPE is that the user can easily add new commands to the language: all the instructions are calls to functions written in independent Borland Pascal units. Thus, users can link their own pascal procedures to EXPE to meet any special need. This makes it possible, for example, to adapt EXPE to new hardware, such as new sound or video boards

Functional characterization of a multi-cancer risk locus on chr5p15.33 reveals regulation of TERT by ZNF148

Genome wide association studies (GWAS) have mapped multiple independent cancer susceptibility loci to chr5p15.33. Here, we show that fine-mapping of pancreatic and testicular cancer GWAS within one of these loci (Region 2 in CLPTM1L) focuses the signal to nine highly correlated SNPs. Of these, rs36115365-C associated with increased pancreatic and testicular but decreased lung cancer and melanoma risk, and exhibited preferred protein-binding and enhanced regulatory activity. Transcriptional gene silencing of this regulatory element repressed TERT expression in an allele-specific manner. Proteomic analysis identifies allele-preferred binding of Zinc finger protein 148 (ZNF148) to rs36115365-C, further supported by binding of purified recombinant ZNF148. Knockdown of ZNF148 results in reduced TERT expression, telomerase activity and telomere length. Our results indicate that the association with chr5p15.33-Region 2 may be explained by rs36115365, a variant influencing TERT expression via ZNF148 in a manner consistent with elevated TERT in carriers of the C allele

Particulate matter exposure during pregnancy is associated with birth weight, but not gestational age, 1962-1992: a cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Exposure to air pollutants is suggested to adversely affect fetal growth, but the evidence remains inconsistent in relation to specific outcomes and exposure windows.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using birth records from the two major maternity hospitals in Newcastle upon Tyne in northern England between 1961 and 1992, we constructed a database of all births to mothers resident within the city. Weekly black smoke exposure levels from routine data recorded at 20 air pollution monitoring stations were obtained and individual exposures were estimated via a two-stage modeling strategy, incorporating temporally and spatially varying covariates. Regression analyses, including 88,679 births, assessed potential associations between exposure to black smoke and birth weight, gestational age and birth weight standardized for gestational age and sex.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Significant associations were seen between black smoke and both standardized and unstandardized birth weight, but not for gestational age when adjusted for potential confounders. Not all associations were linear. For an increase in whole pregnancy black smoke exposure, from the 1^st(7.4 μg/m³) to the 25^th(17.2 μg/m³), 50^th(33.8 μg/m³), 75^th(108.3 μg/m³), and 90^th(180.8 μg/m³) percentiles, the adjusted estimated decreases in birth weight were 33 g (SE 1.05), 62 g (1.63), 98 g (2.26) and 109 g (2.44) respectively. A significant interaction was observed between socio-economic deprivation and black smoke on both standardized and unstandardized birth weight with increasing effects of black smoke in reducing birth weight seen with increasing socio-economic disadvantage.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The findings of this study progress the hypothesis that the association between black smoke and birth weight may be mediated through intrauterine growth restriction. The associations between black smoke and birth weight were of the same order of magnitude as those reported for passive smoking. These findings add to the growing evidence of the harmful effects of air pollution on birth outcomes.</p

About the fatigue endurance of unidirectional flax-epoxy composite laminates

International audienceEven if the knowledge on the fatigue behaviour of plant fibre composites has increased steadily in the last few years, some issues still remain open at the present time. Such is the case, for instance, of the high-cycle fatigue strength. Actually, most of the fatigue studies available in the open literature to date are limited to a maximum of 1-2 million cycles. All available stress-life plots exhibit linear trends with constant slope and does not reveal any fatigue limit for these given cycle numbers. So, this paper proposes to investigate the High-Cycle Fatigue behaviour of a flax-epoxy laminated composite. The effect of loading frequency is firstly evaluated on the Low-Cycle Fatigue behaviour using a multi-instrumented analysis including infrared thermography and acoustic emission. Results show that high frequency could be a suitable method to shorten the fatigue tests and study the High Cycle Fatigue behaviour of this type of composite material. Based on this result, high-frequency (30 Hz) is used to investigate the behaviour of the flax-epoxy composite on a range of 106- 108 cycles. Results show that fatigue damage continues to evolve and the maximum stress continues to decrease as a function of increasing number of cycles, following a power-law trend. This result suggests that, if a fatigue limit does exist for unidirectional flax-epoxy composite laminates, it is so low that it cannot observed in tests up to 108 cycles. It is also recommended to take it into consideration when designing plant fibre composite structures

Thermal effects on the static and fatigue behaviour of woven hemp fabric/greenpoxy composites

International audienceThis work investigates the influence of temperature on the static and fatigue behaviour of a balanced woven hemp fibre fabric reinforced GreenPoxy composite. Tensile tests under monotonic and cyclic loading are performed at two different temperatures, 23 and 70°C. Despite a significant decrease in the static properties, results point out a good fatigue strength at 70°C, with a high-cycle fatigue limit close to that<br&gtmeasured at room temperature. The studied hemp/GreenPoxy composite presents competitive tensile properties compatible with most of the requirements for semi-structural applications

High-Speed Digital Electronics Board on a Novel Biobased and Biodegradable Substrate

International audienceThis paper describes a comparative study between traditional and sustainable approaches on a high-speed digital electronics design, demonstrating a solution similar to modern embedded systems. The system was produced on traditional flame retardant 4 (FR4) substrate and on biosourced and biodegradable, sustainable printed circuit board (PCB) substrate based on polylactic acid (PLA) and flax fibers, to evaluate the maturity of ecological substrates. The substrate was first characterized from a radio-frequency point of view, using resonant cylindrical cavities and a resonant microstrip line. Then, the circuit design was constrained by the measured relative permittivity and loss tangent, in order to guarantee a good matching of the differential lines and to reach a low signal distortion. Similarly, the physicochemical properties of the substrate induced the choice of processes for etching and soldering the components. The matched transmission lines were simulated with ADS software using input/output buffer information (IBIS) models of the digital circuits. Their characterization was conducted with eye diagram and time domain reflectometry technics. As an introduction, a life-cycle analysis (LCA) was conducted to evaluate the ecological impact part of the FR4 PCB among this electronic board life cycle impact

Complete Analytical Calculation of Static Leakage Parameters: A Step Toward HF Transformer Optimization

International audienc

Etude et réalisation de deux structures d’onduleurs Hautes Fréquences (HF) et Très Hautes Fréquences (VHF) à transistor GaN

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