"La Grande Vasière" mid-shelf mud belt : Holocene sedimentary structure, natural and anthropogenic impacts

The Quaternary sequence of the Armorican continental shelf in the Bay of Biscay is setting down above one regional erosion surface, which has been produced by successive transgressions that occurred during the last deglaciations. The few meters of the sequence covers the Holocene period and it is composed by two clean and sandy units at the base followed by thin (few decimetres) clayed sand unit and mud (few millimetres) unit in the top. The two upper units form the improperly called "La Grande Vasière" area over 8,000 km2. The settlement of these sedimentary units occurred since 8,000 C14 years BP, previously to other coastal mud fields setting of the shelf. Historical grain size data show that the mud field has lost part of the fine content during the last 30 years. "La Grande Vasière" evolves at the rhythm of the cycles of deposition and remobilization. Fluvial supplies and tide currents are the major control factors of the deposition. Bioturbation enhances the homogenization of the surficial sediments. Waves and anthropogenic actions are the main factors for the remobilization of the fine particles. The action of both the storms and the bottom trawls are tentatively quantified

Arsonium-Containing Lipophosphoramides, Poly-Functional Nano-Carriers for Simultaneous Antibacterial Action and Eukaryotic Cell Transfection.

International audienceGene therapy of diseases like cystic fibrosis (CF) would consist of delivering a gene medicine towards the lungs via the respiratory tract into the target epithelial cells. Accordingly, poly-functional nano-carriers are required in order to overcome the various successive barriers of such a complex environment, such as airway colonization with bacterial strains. In this work, the antibacterial effectiveness of a series of cationic lipids is investigated before evaluating its compatibility with gene transfer into human bronchial epithelial cells. Among the various compounds considered, some bearing a trimethyl-arsonium headgroup demonstrate very potent biocide effects towards clinically relevant bacterial strains. In contrast to cationic lipids exhibiting no or insufficient antibacterial potency, arsonium-containing lipophosphoramides can simultaneously inhibit bacteria while delivering DNA into eukaryotic cells, as efficiently and safely as in absence of bacteria. Moreover, such vectors can demonstrate antibacterial activity in vitro while retaining high gene transfection efficiency to the nasal epithelium as well as to the lungs in mice in vivo. Arsonium-containing amphiphiles are the first synthetic compounds shown to achieve efficient gene delivery in the presence of bacteria, a property particularly suitable for gene therapy strategies under infected conditions such as within the airways of CF patients

Influence de l'arrangement granulaire d'un sédiment polydisperses sur le seuil de mise en mouvement

La prédiction du transport d'un mélange de particules de plusieurs tailles est un point sensible d'une représentation de la dynamique sédimentaire sur de nombreux faciès en rivière ou en mer. Afin de déterminer les processus critiques qui régissent la mise en mouvement de tels mélanges et de quantifier leur contributions, des essais ont été réalisés dans un petit canal à courant. Ils ont porté sur des échantillons reconstitués, formés de sables naturels lithoclastiques bien triés ou de mélanges sableux bimodaux. L'objectif est d'observer et de quantifier les différences de comportement à l'entrainement entre un sédiment unimodal et un sédiment mélangé. Les résultats obtenus sont comparés à une sélection de formulations issues de la littérature. La série de tests a permis de mettre en évidence quelques processus particuliers du début du transport sédimentaire multiclasse dans un écoulement stationnaire. La granulométrie utilisée s'étend des sables fins aux sables très grossiers. Des paramètres du mélange tels que le rapport de taille des particules, le taux de saturation des échantillons par les grains dont la taille est la plus fine ou la porosité influent sur la modulation de la contrainte de frottement critique. Les comparaisons mesures / formules ont mis en évidence la difficulté de prédire le seuil de mise en mouvement des particules d'un mélange hétérométrique. Par conséquent, l'incertitude sur la granulométrie transportée s'accroît lorsque le frottement est proche du frottement critique d'une certaine classe de taille

Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the presence of variable viscosity for mudflow resuspension in estuaries

The temporal stability of a parallel shear flow of miscible fluid layers of dif- ferent density and viscosity is investigated through a linear stability analysis and direct numerical simulations. The geometry and rheology of this Newto- nian fluid mixing can be viewed as a simplified model of the behavior of mud- flow at the bottom of estuaries for suspension studies. In this study, focus is on the stability and transition to turbulence of an initially laminar configuration. A parametric analysis is performed by varying the values of three control pa- rameters, namely the viscosity ratio, the Richardson and Reynolds numbers, in the case of initially identical thickness of the velocity, density and viscosity profiles. The range of parameters has been chosen so as to mimic a wide variety of real configurations. This study shows that the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is controlled by the local Reynolds and Richardson numbers of the inflection point. In addition, at moderate Reynolds number, viscosity strat- ification has a strong influence on the onset of instability, the latter being enhanced at high viscosity ratio, while at high Reynolds number, the influ- ence is less pronounced. In all cases, we show that the thickness of the mixing layer (and thus resuspension) is increased by high viscosity stratification, in particular during the non-linear development of the instability and especially pairing processes. This study suggests that mud viscosity has to be taken into account for resuspension parameterizations because of its impact on the inflec- tion point Reynolds number and the viscosity ratio, which are key parameters for shear instabilities

Les cosmologistes s'aventurent de l'autre côté du Big Bang

What existed before the Universe? Physics, as the common sense, comes up against this metaphysical question. The one of before the creation, of a pre-origin, from an anteriority at the beginning. (1,5 page

Une grille de calcul pour déchiffrer l'atome

Manage the huge quantity of data produced by the LHC is not within the reach of human being and the Grid will make 8000 computers to work on line (⅓ page