Developing long-term monitoring of natural areas for a Unesco world heritage site: study case of la Reunion

La Réunion island, in the Mascarenes, has been recognized as a World Heritage site for its Piton, Cirques and Remparts since 2010. The site, coinciding with the core zone of La Réunion National Park, represents 100000 ha, equivalent to 40 % of the island. These dramatic landscapes of rugged terrain, impressive escarpments, forested gorges are dominated by three cliff-rimmed cirques and two volcanoes ― a dormant massif forming the highest peak, Piton des Neiges (3069 m), and in the eastern part of the island lies the very active volcano, the Piton de la Fournaise (2632 m). The island harbours a wide variety of natural habitats (tropical montane cloud forests, subalpine shrublands, lowland forests, dry forest…), now all remnant in the Mascarene archipelago, that host high levels of endemism for both flora and fauna. Thereby, La Réunion is the most significant contributor towards conservation of terrestrial biodiversity in the Mascarene islands. The Divines project (FEDER) aims at developing innovative methods for characterizing and monitoring terrestrial biodiversity in the long term for conservation managers to ensure the protection of this world heritage site. In this poster, a description of the goals, actions and preliminary results of the DIVINES project will be described from gene to ecosystem levels

Michel de Montaigne, Essais, 1588 (Exemplaire de Bordeaux), édition numérique génétique (XML-TEI/ PDF)

International audienceLe projet MONLOE ("Montaigne à l'oeuvre") qui fait partie du corpus de textes édités par le programme des Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes - base Epistemon, Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance, Tours) a pour épicentre cette transcription et édition experte en XML/TEI de l’Exemplaire de Bordeaux (EB). Ce précieux document conservé à la Bibliothèque Mériadeck de Bordeaux a été numérisé par la Bibliothèque nationale de France et mis en ligne sur Gallica le 30 mai 2016, ce qui a permet de visualiser en même temps le texte et le fac-similé. Exemplaire exceptionnel des Essais de 1588 (Paris, L’Angelier), ce document annoté de la main de Montaigne est publié en ligne dans une version HTML en mode texte cherchable, dans l’imprimé et dans les parties manuscrites, y compris dans toutes ses ratures, ses « litures » et ses « trassures » comme Montaigne les appelle, en restituant au mieux les différents codes graphiques et typographiques de l'auteur. L’édition numérique permet de visualiser et d’explorer les strates décelables dans la rédaction des Essais, méthode plus archéologique que génétique ou strictement diachronique. Elle offre la transcription intégrale de toutes les additions et retouches sur l’imprimé par le jeu des couleurs, avec les modifications manuscrites et les restitutions indispensables à partir de l’édition de 1595. La transcription de base réalisée à l’identique respecte la présentation physique du livre avec les usages typographiques de l’époque (alignement, répartition des i/j et u/v, signatures, titres courants). Elle devient une véritable édition critique numérique par le balisage à partir d’un fichier-base en XML/ TEI, générant deux niveaux: 1) Quasi-diplomatique ou fac-similaire 2) Régularisé. Le protocole appliqué est celui de la TEI-Renaissance utilisé par les BVH depuis 2007. Le projet utilise le langage XSLT qui permet de générer semi-automatiquement la désabréviation et la dissimilation des textes transcrits et ainsi de passer de l’état quasi-diplomatique à l’état régularisé, de styler les différentes portions du texte et d’affecter des couleurs aux niveaux d’intervention à signaler. Les principes de cette philologie augmentée appliqués par les éditeurs scientifiques suivent les exigences de base de la philologie traditionnelle: traitement des variantes et des fautes de typographie, erreurs et confusions de l’auteur, sans ajouter artificiellement des accents aigus sur les participes passés ni d’accent grave pour distinguer entre a et à, des et dès, etc. Le format PDF permet de visualiser l’ensemble, mais la version optimale est celle que l’on peut voir en ligne avec les options de consultation (https://montaigne.univ-tours.fr)

A Killer–Rescue system for self-limiting gene drive of anti-pathogen constructs

A number of genetic mechanisms have been suggested for driving anti-pathogen genes into natural populations. Each of these mechanisms requires complex genetic engineering, and most are theoretically expected to permanently spread throughout the target species' geographical range. In the near term, risk issues and technical limits of molecular methods could delay the development and use of these mechanisms. We propose a gene-drive mechanism that can be self-limiting over time and space, and is simpler to build. This mechanism involves one gene that codes for toxicity (killer) and a second that confers immunity to the toxic effects (rescue). We use population-genetic models to explore cases with one or two independent insertions of the killer gene and one insertion of the rescue gene. We vary the dominance and penetrance of gene action, as well as the magnitude of fitness costs. Even with the fitness costs of 10 per cent for each gene, the proportion of mosquitoes expected to transmit the pathogen decreases below 5 per cent for over 40 generations after one 2 : 1 release (engineered : wild) or after four 1 : 2 releases. Both the killer and rescue genes will be lost from the population over time, if the rescue construct has any associated fitness cost. Molecular approaches for constructing strains are discussed

Preliminary design of the wavefront sensor for CCAT

CCAT1 is a submillimeter telescope currently under development that will be located at an altitude of 5600 meters in the Andes mountains of northern Chile. The atmospheric transmission at this site will allow CCAT to achieve high sensitivity over a wide field of view and a broad wavelength range to provide an unprecedented capability for deep, large area multicolor submillimeter surveys. In order to achieve high aperture efficiencies out to frequencies of ~ 1 THz, the 162 individual panels that form the 25 meter aperture of CCAT must be aligned to a tolerance of a few microns rms. The design of a wavefront sensor to achieve this goal is presented

The HTLV-1 Tax interactome

The Tax1 oncoprotein encoded by Human T-lymphotropic virus type I is a major determinant of viral persistence and pathogenesis. Tax1 affects a wide variety of cellular signalling pathways leading to transcriptional activation, proliferation and ultimately transformation. To carry out these functions, Tax1 interacts with and modulates activity of a number of cellular proteins. In this review, we summarize the present knowledge of the Tax1 interactome and propose a rationale for the broad range of cellular proteins identified so far

Dual mode transducers based on cMUTs technology

International audienceMore and more medical ultrasonic applications are strongly interested by the development of dual acoustic sources enable to emit high frequency ultrasound (echographic imaging) and low frequency pressure field (therapeutic ultrasounds). The use of the piezoelectricity to fabricate such device requires overcoming strong technological bottlenecks. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the technology of capacitive micro-machined ultrasonic transducer is able to take up this challenge. To this end a demonstrator was designed and manufactured. The first part of the paper is devoted to the design of the low and high frequency cMUTs. For the low acoustic source, a dedicated time domain model was used, taking into account the nonlinearity of the cMUT. Several simulations were conducted to optimize the emitted pressure field intensity at 1 MHz for a set of diaphragm with different sizes and geometries. The high frequency source was designed on the help of a linear model, where output parameters were central frequency, bandwidth and collapse voltage. The second part of this paper reports a set of characterization results and performances of the fabricated device: electrical impedance, mechanical displacements performed in water and acoustic pressure fields