Slopes instability of the Dolomieu crater in La Reunion from seismological observations and numerical modeling.

International audienceThe intensity of volcanic activity and seasonal rains associated with the instability of the natural slopes has caused many rockfalls in the Dolomieu crater located on top of the volcano Piton de la Fournaise in La Reunion Island. These phenomena, that involve individual blocks up to larger volumes, are expected to be related to the volcanic activity. The unpredictable nature and destructive power of gravitational flows make in-situ measurements extremely difficult. The seismic signal generated by these slope instabilities provides thus a unique tool to trace back these events and retrieve their characteristics (volume, duration, localization, . . . ). The permanent seismic network set on Le Piton de la Fournaise volcano is particularly well suited to the study of seismic signals related to gravitational collapse and of their relation to volcanic activity. Using this network and the new seismic broadband stations recently installed, the seismic signals generated by slope instabilities have been acquired and analyzed. In a first step, signal processing techniques have been developed to distinguish the seismic signal generated by rockfalls from that generated by other seismological events that affect the Piton de la Fournaise Volcano. A localization method has been developed based on inversion of waves arrival time. We focus on the 2006-2007 period, during which the crater has undergone a major collapse. This event has considerably destabilized the Dolomieu crater edges, providing a good opportunity to study the evolution in time of the rockfall activity. Analysis of the seismic signal and simple scaling laws for granular flows made it possible to derive interesting relations between the energy of the seismic waves and the characteristics of rockfalls. The role of the local topography in these relations has been investigated using numerical modeling of dry granular flows and the Digital Elevation Model of the Dolomieu crater constructed by photogrammetric techniques. Good agreement is found between the scaling laws obtained theoretically and those derived from seismic observation providing insight into the effect of the source parameters on the generated seismic signal. The detection methods and the scaling laws developed here provide useful tools for monitoring of rockfall activity, in particular in relation with the volcanic activity. These works were conducted within UNDERVOLC project

Linear inequalities among graph invariants: Using GraPHedron to uncover optimal relationships

Optimality of a linear inequality in finitely many graph invariants is defined through a geometric approach. For a fixed number of graph vertices, consider all the tuples of values taken by the invariants on a selected class of graphs. Then form the polytope which is the convex hull of all these tuples. By definition, the optimal linear inequalities correspond to the facets of this polytope. They are finite in number, are logically independent, and generate precisely all the linear inequalities valid on the class of graphs. The computer system GraPHedron, developed by some of the authors, is able to produce experimental data about such inequalities for a "small" number of vertices. It greatly helps in conjecturing optimal linear inequalities, which are then hopefully proved for any number of vertices. Two examples are investigated here for the class of connected graphs. First, all the optimal linear inequalities for the stability number and the number of edges are obtained. To this aim, a problem of Ore (1962) related to the Turán Theorem (1941) is solved. Second, several optimal inequalities are established for three invariants: the maximum degree, the irregularity, and the diameter. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Variation in hospital admission in febrile children evaluated at the Emergency Department (ED) in Europe : PERFORM, a multicentre prospective observational study

Funding Information: This project was funded by the European Union?s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to ML (Grant No. 668303), the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre at Newcastle Hospitals NHS foundation trust to ME, and the National Institute for Health Research to RGN (CL-2018-21-007). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Borensztajn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.OBJECTIVES: Hospitalisation is frequently used as a marker of disease severity in observational Emergency Department (ED) studies. The comparison of ED admission rates is complex in potentially being influenced by the characteristics of the region, ED, physician and patient. We aimed to study variation in ED admission rates of febrile children, to assess whether variation could be explained by disease severity and to identify patient groups with large variation, in order to use this to reduce unnecessary health care utilization that is often due to practice variation. DESIGN: MOFICHE (Management and Outcome of Fever in children in Europe, part of the PERFORM study, www.perform2020.org), is a prospective cohort study using routinely collected data on febrile children regarding patient characteristics (age, referral, vital signs and clinical alarming signs), diagnostic tests, therapy, diagnosis and hospital admission. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Data were collected on febrile children aged 0-18 years presenting to 12 European EDs (2017-2018). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We compared admission rates between EDs by using standardised admission rates after adjusting for patient characteristics and initiated tests at the ED, where standardised rates >1 demonstrate higher admission rates than expected and rates <1 indicate lower rates than expected based on the ED patient population. RESULTS: We included 38,120 children. Of those, 9.695 (25.4%) were admitted to a general ward (range EDs 5.1-54.5%). Adjusted standardised admission rates ranged between 0.6 and 1.5. The largest variation was seen in short admission rates (0.1-5.0), PICU admission rates (0.2-2.2), upper respiratory tract infections (0.4-1.7) and fever without focus (0.5-2.7). Variation was small in sepsis/meningitis (0.9-1.1). CONCLUSIONS: Large variation exists in admission rates of febrile children evaluated at European EDs, however, this variation is largely reduced after correcting for patient characteristics and therefore overall admission rates seem to adequately reflect disease severity or a potential for a severe disease course. However, for certain patient groups variation remains high even after adjusting for patient characteristics.publishersversionPeer reviewe

A NICE combination for predicting hospitalisation at the Emergency Department : a European multicentre observational study of febrile children

Funding Information: DB, UB, EC, JD, ME, MF, NH, BK, FMT, HM, EL, ML, MP, IRC, FS, MT, CV, SY, DZ and WZ report grants from the European Union. Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme during the study conduct. FS reports a grant from the Slovenian Research Agency outside the submitted work. Funding Information: MP reports a grant from Pfizer and financial support from Pfizer and Sanofi outside the submitted work. MF reports a grant from CSL Behring outside the submitted work. RN reports a grant from the National Institute for Health Research during the study conduct. ME reports financial support from the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre based at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Newcastle University ng the study conduct. MT is a member of the Advisory Board of MSD and Pfizer, a member of the National Committee on Immunization Practices and a member of the national Scientific Advisory Group for the management of the pandemic. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)Background: Prolonged Emergency Department (ED) stay causes crowding and negatively impacts quality of care. We developed and validated a prediction model for early identification of febrile children with a high risk of hospitalisation in order to improve ED flow. Methods: The MOFICHE study prospectively collected data on febrile children (0–18 years) presenting to 12 European EDs. A prediction models was constructed using multivariable logistic regression and included patient characteristics available at triage. We determined the discriminative values of the model by calculating the area under the receiver operating curve (AUC). Findings: Of 38,424 paediatric encounters, 9,735 children were admitted to the ward and 157 to the PICU. The prediction model, combining patient characteristics and NICE alarming, yielded an AUC of 0.84 (95%CI 0.83-0.84). The model performed well for a rule-in threshold of 75% (specificity 99.0% (95%CI 98.9-99.1%, positive likelihood ratio 15.1 (95%CI 13.4-17.1), positive predictive value 0.84 (95%CI 0.82-0.86)) and a rule-out threshold of 7.5% (sensitivity 95.4% (95%CI 95.0-95.8), negative likelihood ratio 0.15 (95%CI 0.14-0.16), negative predictive value 0.95 (95%CI 0.95-9.96)). Validation in a separate dataset showed an excellent AUC of 0.91 (95%CI 0.90- 0.93). The model performed well for identifying children needing PICU admission (AUC 0.95, 95%CI 0.93-0.97). A digital calculator was developed to facilitate clinical use. Interpretation: Patient characteristics and NICE alarming signs available at triage can be used to identify febrile children at high risk for hospitalisation and can be used to improve ED flow. Funding: European Union, NIHR, NHS.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Defects in tRNA Modification Associated with Neurological and Developmental Dysfunctions in Caenorhabditis elegans Elongator Mutants

Elongator is a six subunit protein complex, conserved from yeast to humans. Mutations in the human Elongator homologue, hELP1, are associated with the neurological disease familial dysautonomia. However, how Elongator functions in metazoans, and how the human mutations affect neural functions is incompletely understood. Here we show that in Caenorhabditis elegans, ELPC-1 and ELPC-3, components of the Elongator complex, are required for the formation of the 5-carbamoylmethyl and 5-methylcarboxymethyl side chains of wobble uridines in tRNA. The lack of these modifications leads to defects in translation in C. elegans. ELPC-1::GFP and ELPC-3::GFP reporters are strongly expressed in a subset of chemosensory neurons required for salt chemotaxis learning. elpc-1 or elpc-3 gene inactivation causes a defect in this process, associated with a posttranscriptional reduction of neuropeptide and a decreased accumulation of acetylcholine in the synaptic cleft. elpc-1 and elpc-3 mutations are synthetic lethal together with those in tuc-1, which is required for thiolation of tRNAs having the 5′methylcarboxymethyl side chain. elpc-1; tuc-1 and elpc-3; tuc-1 double mutants display developmental defects. Our results suggest that, by its effect on tRNA modification, Elongator promotes both neural function and development

Phylogenomic analysis of the Chlamydomonas genome unmasks proteins potentially involved in photosynthetic function and regulation

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellular green alga, has been exploited as a reference organism for identifying proteins and activities associated with the photosynthetic apparatus and the functioning of chloroplasts. Recently, the full genome sequence of Chlamydomonas was generated and a set of gene models, representing all genes on the genome, was developed. Using these gene models, and gene models developed for the genomes of other organisms, a phylogenomic, comparative analysis was performed to identify proteins encoded on the Chlamydomonas genome which were likely involved in chloroplast functions (or specifically associated with the green algal lineage); this set of proteins has been designated the GreenCut. Further analyses of those GreenCut proteins with uncharacterized functions and the generation of mutant strains aberrant for these proteins are beginning to unmask new layers of functionality/regulation that are integrated into the workings of the photosynthetic apparatus