Toutes ensemble? Femmes et société : intégration et marginalisation

The three articles included in this special section are focused on the question of women's place in society, in the lineage of the original theme of Women in French conference in 2013, they come from: Solitary solidarity. Specifically, in terms of the studies presented are here, there is the question of structures that favor or not the integration of women in contemporary society: whether family, professional networks and associations, professional and creatives activities, or anchoring the feminine autonomy in mentalities and habit

Forging the endothelium during inflammation: pushing at a half-open door?

During an inflammatory response, changes in the adhesive properties of the endothelium occur that enable normally non-adherent blood-borne leukocytes to adhere and subsequently to traverse the endothelium through small gaps at inter-cellular junctions. This review concentrates on the role played by inter-endothelial adhesion molecules during transmigration and the way in which their expression may be regulated during inflammation. We show that the final "open" signals that lead to the formation of clefts between adjacent endothelial cells may be derived from inflamed tissue underlying the endothelium and from activated leukocyte

LPS differentially regulates adhesion and transendothelial migration of human monocytes under static and flow conditions

One of the key components of the innate immune response is the recognition of microbial products such as LPS by Toll-like receptors on monocytes and neutrophils. We show here that short-term stimulation of primary human monocytes with LPS led to an increase in adhesion of monocytes to endothelial cells and a dramatic decrease in transendothelial migration under static conditions. In contrast, under normal physiological flow, monocyte adhesion and migration across a human umbilical vein endothelial cell monolayer appeared to be unaffected by LPS treatment. LPS stimulation of monocytes activated β1 and β2 integrins, but did not increase their surface expression levels. During septic shock, reduction in blood flow as a result of vasodilation and vascular permeability leads to adhesion and accumulation of LPS-stimulated circulating monocytes onto the blood vessel walls. The different findings of monocyte migration under static and flow conditions in our study may offer one explanation for this phenomenon. The rapid engagement of LPS-activated monocytes preventing transendothelial migration could represent a novel mechanism of bacterial exclusion from the vasculature. This occurs during the early stages of sepsis, and in turn may modulate the severity of the pathophysiolog

SUMO-1 regulates the conformational dynamics of Thymine-DNA Glycosylase regulatory domain and competes with its DNA binding activity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The human thymine-DNA glycosylase (TDG) plays a dual role in base excision repair of G:U/T mismatches and in transcription. Regulation of TDG activity by SUMO-1 conjugation was shown to act on both functions. Furthermore, TDG can interact with SUMO-1 in a non-covalent manner.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using NMR spectroscopy we have determined distinct conformational changes in TDG upon either covalent sumoylation on lysine 330 or intermolecular SUMO-1 binding through a unique SUMO-binding motif (SBM) localized in the C-terminal region of TDG. The non-covalent SUMO-1 binding induces a conformational change of the TDG amino-terminal regulatory domain (RD). Such conformational dynamics do not exist with covalent SUMO-1 attachment and could potentially play a broader role in the regulation of TDG functions for instance during transcription. Both covalent and non-covalent processes activate TDG G:U repair similarly. Surprisingly, despite a dissociation of the SBM/SUMO-1 complex in presence of a DNA substrate, SUMO-1 preserves its ability to stimulate TDG activity indicating that the non-covalent interactions are not directly involved in the regulation of TDG activity. SUMO-1 instead acts, as demonstrated here, indirectly by competing with the regulatory domain of TDG for DNA binding.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>SUMO-1 increases the enzymatic turnover of TDG by overcoming the product-inhibition of TDG on apurinic sites. The mechanism involves a competitive DNA binding activity of SUMO-1 towards the regulatory domain of TDG. This mechanism might be a general feature of SUMO-1 regulation of other DNA-bound factors such as transcription regulatory proteins.</p

Energy expenditure of extreme competitive mountaineering skiing

Purpose: Multi-hour ski mountaineering energy balance may be negative and intake below recommendations. Methods: Athletes on the ‘Patrouille des Glaciers' racecourses (17 on course Z, 27km, +2,113m; 11 on course A, 26km, +1,881m) volunteered. Pre-race measurements included body mass, stature, VO2max, and heart rate (HR) vs VO2 at simulated altitude; race measurements HR, altitude, incline, location, and food and drink intake (A). Energy expenditure (EE) was calculated from altitude corrected HR derived VO2. Results: Race time was 5h 7min±44min (mean±SD, Z) and 5h 51min±53min (A). Subjects spent 19.2±3.2MJ (Z), respectively, 22.6±2.9MJ (A) during the race. Energy deficit was −15.5±3.9MJ (A); intake covered 20±7% (A). Overall energy cost of locomotion (EC) was 9.9±1.3Jm−1kg−1 (Z), 8.0±1.0Jm−1kg−1 (A). Uphill EC was 11.7±1Jm−1kg−1 (Z, 13% slope) and 15.7±2.3Jm−1kg−1 (A, 19% slope). Race A subjects lost −1.5±1.1kg, indicating near euhydration. Age, body mass, gear mass, VO2max and EC were significantly correlated with performance; energy deficit was not. Conclusions: Energy expenditure and energy deficit of a multi-hour ski mountaineering race are very high and energy intake is below recommendations

On the dynamics of multiple systems of hot super-Earths and Neptunes: Tidal circularization, resonance and the HD 40307 system

[Abridged] We consider the dynamics of a system of hot super-Earths or Neptunes such as HD 40307. We show that, as tidal interaction with the central star leads to small eccentricities, the planets in this system could be undergoing resonant coupling even though the period ratios depart significantly from very precise commensurability. In a three planet system, this is indicated by the fact that resonant angles librate or are associated with long term changes to the orbital elements. We propose that the planets in HD 40307 were in a strict Laplace resonance while they migrated through the disc. After entering the disc inner cavity, tidal interaction would cause the period ratios to increase from two but with the inner pair deviating less than the outer pair, counter to what occurs in HD 40307. However, the relationship between these pairs that occurs in HD 40307 might be produced if the resonance is impulsively modified by an event like a close encounter shortly after the planetary system decouples from the disc. We find this to be in principle possible for a small relative perturbation on the order of a few 1.d-3 but then we find that evolution to the present system in a reasonable time is possible only if the masses are significantly larger than the minimum masses and tidal dissipation is very effective. On the other hand we found that a system like HD 40307 with minimum masses and more realistic tidal dissipation could be produced if the eccentricity of the outermost planet was impulsively increased to about 0.15. The form of resonantly coupled tidal evolution we consider here is quite general and could be of greater significance for systems with inner planets on significantly shorter orbital periods characteristic of for example CoRoT 7 b.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Chronic insomnia: are patients also suffering from PTSD symptoms?

IntroductionInsomnia is highly prevalent in the general population, and is commonly associated with somatic and psychiatric comorbidities. However, its origins remain poorly-understood. Recently, adverse childhood events (ACE), including traumatic experiences, have been found to be significantly associated with both insomnia and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD). Many patients with PTSD suffer from sleep disorders. However, we know much less about traumatic childhood experiences in patients with insomnia and PTSD.MethodsOur exploratory study investigated a cohort of 43 patients (14 males, 29 females) clinically diagnosed with chronic insomnia at a sleep center, and systematically evaluated their condition using the trauma history questionnaire (THQ), and the PTSD checklist (PCL-5).ResultsOur results show that 83.72% of insomnia patients reported at least one traumatic event, while the prevalence of PTSD symptoms was 53.49%. For 11.6% of patients, insomnia began in childhood, while for 27.07% it began in adolescence. PCL-5 scores were associated with higher Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) scores, but not trauma. ISI scores were also higher for women, and positive relationships were observed between ISI scores, PCL-5 scores and the number of self-reported traumatic events among women.ConclusionsThese exploratory results highlight that the relationship between PTSD symptoms and insomnia could be sex-specific. They also highlight the importance of PTSD symptoms screening for patients diagnosed with chronic insomnia

Chan-Vese based method to segment mouse brain MRI images: application to cerebral malformation analysis in trisomy 21

International audienceIn this paper, a semi automatic active contour method based on Chan-Vese model is proposed for the segmentation of mouse brain MR images. First, a 2 ½ D strategy is applied on the axial images to segment the 3D volume of interest. The method takes into account the special shape of the object to segment. Moreover, the user defines the limits where to search these contours and also provides an initial contour. This semi automatic method makes that human intervention is limited and the tedious manual handling is greatly reduced. Results have shown that the brain volumes estimated by the method are identical to expert manually estimated volumes. Last but not least, the new method was used in the analysis of the cerebral malformations linked to Trisomy 21: no significant difference of the brain volumes between Tri-somy 21 mice and the control ones were found

Democracia sem garantias

Com uma observação aguda das crises postas para a democracia na contemporaneidade, atravessada e engolfada pela expansão e pela onipresença das ideologias neoliberais, Marc James Léger é categórico ao afirmar que a democracia está em apuros. Em sua análise, o autor apresenta a compreensão de que, há muito, os movimentos da arte, independentemente de suas conceitualizações e perspectivas, nunca estiveram dissociados do capitalismo e da ideologia burguesa, que sempre lhes serviram como pano de fundo. Mais inquietante, entretanto, é a formulação de Léger ao se perguntar e ao nos perguntar “se a arte de alguma forma não é, involuntária ou programaticamente, um aspecto dessa mesma governança neoliberal”