Characterization of Spontaneous Bone Marrow Recovery after Sublethal Total Body Irradiation: Importance of the Osteoblastic/Adipocytic Balance

Many studies have already examined the hematopoietic recovery after irradiation but paid with very little attention to the bone marrow microenvironment. Nonetheless previous studies in a murine model of reversible radio-induced bone marrow aplasia have shown a significant increase in alkaline phosphatase activity (ALP) prior to hematopoietic regeneration. This increase in ALP activity was not due to cell proliferation but could be attributed to modifications of the properties of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). We thus undertook a study to assess the kinetics of the evolution of MSC correlated to their hematopoietic supportive capacities in mice treated with sub lethal total body irradiation. In our study, colony-forming units – fibroblasts (CFU-Fs) assay showed a significant MSC rate increase in irradiated bone marrows. CFU-Fs colonies still possessed differentiation capacities of MSC but colonies from mice sacrificed 3 days after irradiation displayed high rates of ALP activity and a transient increase in osteoblastic markers expression while pparγ and neuropilin-1 decreased. Hematopoietic supportive capacities of CFU-Fs were also modified: as compared to controls, irradiated CFU-Fs significantly increased the proliferation rate of hematopoietic precursors and accelerated the differentiation toward the granulocytic lineage. Our data provide the first evidence of the key role exerted by the balance between osteoblasts and adipocytes in spontaneous bone marrow regeneration. First, (pre)osteoblast differentiation from MSC stimulated hematopoietic precursor's proliferation and granulopoietic regeneration. Then, in a second time (pre)osteoblasts progressively disappeared in favour of adipocytic cells which down regulated the proliferation and granulocytic differentiation and then contributed to a return to pre-irradiation conditions

Writing Europe : the Dutch case

No abstract

Parallel Empirical Evaluations: Resilience despite Concurrency

Computational evaluations are crucial in modern problem-solving when we surpass theoretical algorithms or bounds. These experiments frequently take much work, and the sheer amount of needed resources makes it impossible to execute them on a single personal computer or laptop. Cluster schedulers allow for automatizing these tasks and scale to many computers. But, when we evaluate implementations of combinatorial algorithms, we depend on stable runtime results. Common approaches either limit parallelism or suffer from unstable runtime measurements due to interference among jobs on modern hardware. The former is inefficient and not sustainable. The latter results in unreplicable experiments. In this work, we address this issue and offer an acceptable balance between efficiency, software, hardware complexity, reliability, and replicability. We investigate effects towards replicability stability and illustrate how to efficiently use widely employed cluster resources for parallel evaluations. Furthermore, we present solutions which mitigate issues that emerge from the concurrent execution of benchmark jobs. Our experimental evaluation shows that – despite parallel execution – our approach reduces the runtime instability on the majority of instances to one second

Tien Shan geohazards database: Earthquakes and landslides

In this paper we present new and review already existing landslide and earthquake data for a large part of the Tien Shan, Central Asia. For the same area, only partial databases for sub-regions have been presented previously. They were compiled and new data were added to fill the gaps between the databases. Major new inputs are products of the Central Asia Seismic Risk Initiative (CASRI): a tentative digital map of active faults (even with indication of characteristic or possible maximum magnitude) and the earthquake catalogue of Central Asia until 2009 that was now updated with USGS data (to May 2014). The new compiled landslide inventory contains existing records of 1600 previously mapped mass movements and more than 1800 new landslide data. Considering presently available seismo-tectonic and landslide data, a target region of 1200 km (E–W) by 600 km (N–S) was defined for the production of more or less continuous geohazards information. This target region includes the entire Kyrgyz Tien Shan, the South-Western Tien Shan in Tajikistan, the Fergana Basin (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) as well as the Western part in Uzbekistan, the North-Easternmost part in Kazakhstan and a small part of the Eastern Chinese Tien Shan (for the zones outside Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, only limited information was available and compiled)..

O gulag e a literatura de gulag: um balanço das pesquisas

This paper presents an overview of recent and old debates on the literature created in Soviet concentration camp complexes (gulags), and examines books, conferences, research institutions and memory organizations dedicated to the matter. The article concludes with the observation that studies on the distinctiveness of Gulag literature are still scarce

Towards a typology of local development policies and programmes

The main aim of this article is to provide a viable classification of local development policies and programmes by spelling out the essential elements of the local development approach (LDA) as they emerge from the literature, namely the existence of a territorial focus, the mobilisation of local actors and the attempt to reach policy integration. Subsequently, and for each element, we will specify which its most relevant dimension is in order to identify some typical configurations that emerge in real world policies and programmes. This will allow building up a framework in which any specific instance of LDA initiative can be located. From the normative point of view, the main conclusion is that the territorial focus and the mobilisation of local actors appear to be the necessary conditions for effective policy integration, the third element of LDA