Experimental setup for exposure to tunable ultrashort high-intensity pulsed electric fields and real-time dosimetric measurements

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Joint inversion of normal-mode and finite-frequency S-wave data using an irregular tomographic grid, Geophysical Journal International

International audienceGlobal-scale tomographic models should aim at satisfying the full seismic spectrum.For this purpose, and to better constrain isotropic 3--D variations of shear velocities in the mantle, we tackle a joint inversion of spheroidal normal-mode structure coefficients and multiple-frequency S-wave delay-times.In all previous studies for which normal modes were jointly inverted for, with body and/or surface waves, the mantle was laterally parameterized with uniform basis functions, such as spherical harmonics, equal-area blocks, evenly spaced spherical splines.In particular, spherical harmonics naturally appear when considering the Earth's free oscillations.However, progress towards higher resolution joint tomography requires a movement away from such uniform parameterization, to overcome its computational inefficiency to adapt to local variations in resolution.The main goal of this study is to include normal modes into a joint inversion based upon a non-uniform parameterization, that is adapted to the spatially varying smallest resolving-length of the data.Thus, we perform the first joint inversion of normal-mode and body-wave data using an irregular tomographic grid, optimized according to ray density.We show how to compute the projection of 3--D sensitivity kernels for both data sets onto our parameterization made up of spherical layers spanned with irregular Delaunay triangulations.This approach, computationally efficient, allows us to map into the joint model multi-scale structural informations from data including periods in the 10--51\,s range for body waves and 332--2134 s for normal modes.Tomographic results are focussed on the 400--2110 km depth range, where our data coverage is the most relevant.We discuss the potential of a better resolution where the grid is fine, compared to spherical harmonics up to degree 40, as the number of model parameters is similar.Our joint model seems to contain coherent structural components beyond degree 40, such as those related to the Farallon subduction.Assessing their robustness is postponed to a future work.A wider application of this tomographic workflow, holding promise to better understand mantle dynamics at various spatial scales, should primarily consist in adding surface-wave data and extending our sets of normal-mode and body-wave data

Electric field and temperature measurements for in vitro exposures to high-intensity nanosecond pulsed electric fields

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Experimental Dosimetry Techniques for Exposing Cells to High-Intensity Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Fields

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Characterization of a TEM Cell-Based Setup for the Exposure of Biological Cell Suspensions to High-Intensity nanosecond Pulsed Electric Fields (nsPEF)

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The impact of impaired macrophage functions in cystic fibrosis disease progression

International audienceThe underlying cause of morbidity in cystic fibrosis (CF) is the decline in lung function, which results in part from chronic inflammation. Inflammation and infection occur early in infancy in CF and the role of innate immune defense in CF has been highlighted in the last years. Once thought simply to be consumers of bacteria, macrophages have emerged as highly sensitive immune cells that are located at the balance point between inflammation and resolution of this inflammation in CF pathophysiology. In order to assess the potential role of macrophage in CF, we review the evidence that: (1) CF macrophage has a dysregulated inflammatory phenotype; (2) CF macrophage presents altered phagocytosis capacity and bacterial killing; and (3) lipid disorders in CF macrophage affect its function. These alterations of macrophage weaken innate defense of CF patients and may be involved in CF disease progression and lung damage

Characterization of a TEM cell-based setup for the exposure of biological cell suspensions to high-intensity nanosecond pulsed electric fields (nsPEFs)

International audienceIn this paper, we propose and characterize a setup based on a Transverse ElectroMagnetic (TEM) cell to expose a Petri dish filled with a biological suspension to nanosecond high-voltage pulsed electric fields. Monopolar and bipolar pulses of 1.2 ns duration and 1.6 kV amplitude are delivered to the TEM cell. Time domain measurements and numerical results show that the system is well suited to deliver high-intensity pulsed electric fields with 1.2 ns duration and amplitudes of at least 100 kV/m

Open transverse electromagnetic (tem) cell as applicator of high-intensity nsPEFs and electro-optic measurements

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Information Internet en langue française en oncologie ORL

Objective: Internet has become the first place where patients go when seeking information on their disease. The type and the quality of the medical information available on French-language websites is poorly known, especially in the field of head and neck surgery. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of these sites. Materials and methods: We entered six keywords-"cancer du larynx", "cancer de l'amygdale", "cancer de la thyroïde", "carcinome papillaire de la thyroïde", "cancer de la langue", and "cancer de la parotide"-in two different search engines and, for each keyword, the first 50 websites were reviewed using the tool called DISCERN. With two head and neck surgeons, we rated their contents in terms of quality and comprehension. Results: On 600 websites only 95 (16%) contained information that proved to be somewhat useful to patients. According to our scoring system, 8% of websites were found to be excellent, 24% good, 14% fairly good, 15% mediocre, 27% poor, and 12% very poor. Just over 60% of the websites were found to be clear. The study also showed that the order in which these websites were ranked in the search engine, their affiliation, the target population, or who financed them had little impact on quality. The websites were more likely to be high quality if they were managed by doctors and had bibliographical references as well as a date indicating a recent website update. Conclusion: This study again shows that the search for medical information on the Internet is time-consuming and often disappointing: very few websites provide information that is both clear and exhaustive. However, we also found that very few websites contained information that was seriously inaccurate. Given the growing popularity of the Internet, a high-quality French-language website specializing in head an neck surgery would be highly beneficial to patients, as would an ENT portal that would take them to selected websites, saving time and providing a guarantee of quality. © 2009 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved