Des arbitrages politiques inachevés

La politique d’orientation scolaire française a constamment obéi à deux priorités différentes : d’une part le contrôle et la planification des flux d’élèves et d’autre part le souci de faciliter la construction du projet personnel de l’élève. L’évolution des décisions des gouvernements successifs à l’égard des services d’orientation traduit les hésitations entre ces deux politiques. En outre, alors que se renforçait l’autonomie des acteurs locaux et que disparaissait un pilotage national fort, les services d’orientation étaient rejetés à la périphérie du système, ouvrant sur les dysfonctionnements et insatisfactions inévitables vis-à-vis des processus d’orientation-répartition dont le rôle essentiel reste tenu par les conseils de classe.The French policy on careers advice at school has constantly recovered two different priorities: on the one hand controlling and planning flows of pupils and on the other hand helping pupils to build up their personal projects. The evolution of the successive governments’ decisions towards orientation services shows the hesitations between those two policies. Besides, while the autonomy of local participants was being reinforced and a strong national guidance was disappearing, careers advice services were rejected on the periphery of the system, thus revealing dysfunctions and unavoidable dissatisfactions towards career advice processes – distribution which essential role remains held by the conseils de classe.La política de orientación escolar francesa ha abracado constantemente dos prioridades diferentes : de una parte el control y la planificación del flujo de alumnos y de otra parte, la preocupación de facilitar la construcción del proyecto personal del alumno. La evolución de las decisiones de los sucesivos gobiernos respecto a los servicios de orientación traduce las vacilaciones entre estas dos políticas. Además, en tanto que se reforzaba la autonomía de los actores locales y que desaparecía un pilotaje nacional fuerte, los servicios de orientación eran rechazados hacia la periferia del sistema, dando lugar a los disfuncionamientos e insatisfacciones inevitables frente a los procesos de orientación-repartición cuyo papel esencial sigue siendo desempeñado por los consejos de clase

New Therapeutic Guidelines in Cardiology

peer reviewedCardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in the so-called industrial countries. An appropriate management is mandatory and its modalities should be known and applied by physicians. European and American recommendations are regularly published and updated. They are available on the web sites of the European Society of Cardiology (www.escardio.org), the American Heart Association (www.aha.org) and the American College of Cardiology (www.acc.org This article describes the recent therapeutic options of some cardiovascular diseases, especially coronary artery disease, valvular diseases, atrial fibrillation and implantable defibrillator, but is far to be exhaustive

Genetic control of plasticity of oil yield for combined abiotic stresses using a joint approach of crop modeling and genome-wide association

Understanding the genetic basis of phenotypic plasticity is crucial for predicting and managing climate change effects on wild plants and crops. Here, we combined crop modeling and quantitative genetics to study the genetic control of oil yield plasticity for multiple abiotic stresses in sunflower. First we developed stress indicators to characterize 14 environments for three abiotic stresses (cold, drought and nitrogen) using the SUNFLO crop model and phenotypic variations of three commercial varieties. The computed plant stress indicators better explain yield variation than descriptors at the climatic or crop levels. In those environments, we observed oil yield of 317 sunflower hybrids and regressed it with three selected stress indicators. The slopes of cold stress norm reaction were used as plasticity phenotypes in the following genome-wide association study. Among the 65,534 tested SNP, we identified nine QTL controlling oil yield plasticity to cold stress. Associated SNP are localized in genes previously shown to be involved in cold stress responses: oligopeptide transporters, LTP, cystatin, alternative oxidase, or root development. This novel approach opens new perspectives to identify genomic regions involved in genotype-by-environment interaction of a complex traits to multiple stresses in realistic natural or agronomical conditions.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, Plant, Cell and Environmen

Widespread occurrence of chromosomal aneuploidy following the routine production of Candida albicans mutants

It has come to our attention that approximately 35% of >100 published microarray datasets, where transcript levels were compared between two different strains, exhibit some form of chromosome-specific bias. While some of these arose from the use of strains whose aneuploidies were not known at the time, in a worrisome number of cases the recombinant strains have acquired additional aneuploidies that were not initially present in the parental strain. The aneuploidies often affected a different chromosome than the one harboring the insertion site. The affected strains originated from either CAI-4, RM1000, BWP17 or SN95 and were produced through a variety of strategies. These observations suggest that aneuploidies frequently occur during the production of recombinant strains and have an effect on global transcript profiles outside of the afflicted chromosome(s), thus raising the possibility of unintended phenotypic consequences. Thus, we propose that all Candida albicans mutants and strains should be tested for aneuploidy before being used in further studies. To this end, we describe a new rapid testing method, based on a multiplex quantitative PCR assay, that produces eight bands of distinct sizes from either the left or right arms of each C. albicans chromosome