Developmental toxic effects of ethylbenzene or toluene alone and in combination with butyl acetate in rats after inhalation exposure

First, the developmental toxic potential of n-butyl acetate (BA) was examined in Sprague-Dawley rats following whole body inhalation exposure, 6 h day-1, from day 6 to 20 of gestation, at concentrations of 0, 500, 1000, 2000 and 3000 ppm. Maternal toxicity was evidenced by significant decreases in body weight gain at 2000 and 3000 ppm, and by reduced food consumption at 1000 ppm and higher concentrations. The effects on prenatal development were limited to a significant decrease in fetal weight at 3000 ppm. Thus, inhaled BA was not a selective developmental toxicant. In the second part of this study, the developmental toxic effects of simultaneous exposures to ethylbenzene (EB) and BA, or to toluene (TOL) and BA were evaluated. Pregnant rats were administered EB (0, 250 or 1000 ppm) and BA (0, 500 or 1500 ppm), or TOL (0, 500 or 1500 ppm) and BA (0, 500, 1500 ppm), separately and in combinations, using a 2 × 2 factorial design. The maternal weight gain was reduced after exposure to 1000 ppm EB, to 1500 ppm BA, or to 1500 ppm TOL, either alone or in binary combinations. A significant reduction of fetal weight was associated with exposure to 1000 ppm EB alone, to either mixtures of EB with BA, or to 1500 ppm TOL alone or combined with BA at either concentration. No embryolethal or teratogenic effects were observed whatever the exposure. There was no evidence of interaction between EB and BA or between TOL and BA in causing maternal or developmental effects. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Pharmacist educators in family medicine residency programs: A qualitative analysis

BACKGROUND: 25-29% of North American family medicine residency programs utilize a pharmacist to teach residents. Little is known about the impact that these pharmacist educators have on residency training. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of residents, residency directors and pharmacists within Canadian family medicine residency programs that employ a pharmacist educator to better understand the impact of the role. METHODS: Recruitment from three cohorts (residents, residency directors, pharmacists) within family medicine residency programs across Canada for one-on-one semi-structured interviews followed by thematic analysis of anonymized transcript data. RESULTS: 11 residents, 6 residency directors and 17 pharmacist educators participated in interviews. Data themes were: (1) strong value of the teaching with respect to improved resident knowledge, confidence and patient care delivery; (2) lack of a formal pharmacotherapy curriculum; (3) desire for expansion of pharmacist teaching; (4) impact of teaching on collaboration; (5) impact of teaching on residency program faculty; and (6) lack of criticism of the role. CONCLUSIONS: The pharmacist educator role is valued within residency programs across Canada and the role has a positive impact on several important aspects of family medicine resident training. Suggestions for improvement focused on expanding the teaching role and on implementing a formal curriculum for pharmacist educators to follow

The Relationship Between Schizotypal Traits and the Perceptual Processes of Multisensory Integration, Temporal Processing, and Speech Perception

Multisensory integration, the binding of sensory information from different sensory modalities, may contribute to perceptual symptomatology in schizophrenia, including hallucilllnations and aberrant speech perception. Differences in multisensory integration and temporal processing, an important component of multisensory integration, are consistently found in schizophrenia. Evidence is emerging that these differences extend across the schizophrenia spectrum, including individuals in the general population with higher schizotypal traits. In two studies, the relationship between schizotypal traits and perceptual functioning is investigated. We hypothesized associations between higher schizotypal traits and decreased multisensory integration, increased auditory speech distractibility, and less precise temporal processing. In Study 1, higher schizotypal traits were associated with higher rates of multisensory integration. In Study 2, higher schizotypal traits were not associated with multisensory integration, audiovisual speech-in-noise perception, auditory speech distractibility, or temporal processing. These mixed findings suggest that perceptual differences do not always exist in the lower end of the schizophrenia spectrum

Projet Lab2Green. Une étude expérimentale de l'impact sur les choix des consommateurs des différents systèmes d'évaluation environnemental apposés en face avant des aliments. Rapport scientifique

L'objectif de la présente recherche est de procéder à une mesure comportementale effective empirique, précise, contrôlée, reproductible et conséquentielle (qui a des conséquences directes et objectives sur le bien-être de celui qui prend la décision), de l'impact sur la consommation individuelle que l'on peut attendre de tel ou tel type d'information environnementale sur les produits et de tel ou tel format d'étiquetage. Dans une première section, les auteurs font le bilan des autres travaux visant à évaluer l'impact de l'étiquetage sur les comportements des consommateurs. Dans une seconde section, ils présentent la méthodologie expérimentale. Puis, ils font état des résultats obtenus dans la section trois, avant de les discuter et de conclure dans la section quatre

Projet Lab2Green. Une étude expérimentale de l'impact sur les choix des consommateurs des différents systèmes d'évaluation environnemental apposés en face avant des aliments. Rapport scientifique

L'objectif de la présente recherche est de procéder à une mesure comportementale effective empirique, précise, contrôlée, reproductible et conséquentielle (qui a des conséquences directes et objectives sur le bien-être de celui qui prend la décision), de l'impact sur la consommation individuelle que l'on peut attendre de tel ou tel type d'information environnementale sur les produits et de tel ou tel format d'étiquetage. Dans une première section, les auteurs font le bilan des autres travaux visant à évaluer l'impact de l'étiquetage sur les comportements des consommateurs. Dans une seconde section, ils présentent la méthodologie expérimentale. Puis, ils font état des résultats obtenus dans la section trois, avant de les discuter et de conclure dans la section quatre

Images d'abattoir : la réalité crue ? Quelques pistes de réflexion sur le discours de l'image ayant trait à la mise à mort des animaux

Dans les sociétés industrielles et urbanisées, la mise à mort des animaux est reléguée dans un monde éloigné des villes et de la réalité sociale . La délégation progressive de la gestion de cette activité à des appareils spécialisés peut être vue en lien avec « le rapport à la mort, au sexe, à l'aléa, à tout ce que l'homme affronte difficilement sans médiation, et qui, d'après Marc Guillaume , ne serait plus assuré symboliquement à l'intérieur de la société ». Parler des abattoirs, « ..

Effect of process parameters on the energy requirement in ultrasonical treatment of waste sludge

Mechanical treatment methods are used as pre-treatment methods in order to enhance the efficiency of conventional sludge treatment processes and the sludge becomes more suitable for its complete treatment. The ultrasound is an alternative method among other methods, but because of its high energy requirement it should be optimized before utilization. This work gives the optimized parameters such as sonication time, sonication power (these parameters are the two factors which play part for energy calculations), type of sludge, cooling requirements and solid content in the sludge solution. Even if the previous researchers prefer to use the energy (specific energy usually), we have found out that both the sonication time and the sonication power have individual importance. For municipal sludge the main conclusion can be summarized as: “high power-short retention time” is more effective than “low power-long retention time”. As this phenomenon may alter from sludge to sludge, various combinations of power and retention time should be tried while keeping the volume small and the concentration below a certain level. The process should be performed at moderate temperatures and the efficiency increases if the sludge is as homogeneous as possible

Reconnaissance au travail (la)

La « reconnaissance » est devenue un nouvel enjeu de société. Le désir d’être reconnu envahit le monde du travail et imprègne les relations et les discours des individus. Reconnaissance de compétences, reconnaissance de la personne à travers son positionnement dans l’organisation, reconnaissance vis à vis de la hiérarchie et du groupe. Que revendiquet-on dans le monde du travail, quand on demande « une plus grande reconnaissance » ? quelles formes celle-ci peut-elle prendre, en particulier dans les démarches d’évaluation ou de validation de l’expérience ? Comment les entreprises abordent-elles ces attentes collectives et individuelles de reconnaissance

An empirical resource for discovering cognitive principles of discourse organisation: the ANNODIS corpus

International audienceThis paper describes the ANNODIS resource, a discourse-level annotated corpus for French. The corpus combines two perspectives on discourse: a bottom-up approach and a top-down approach. The bottom-up view incrementally builds a structure from elementary discourse units, while the top-down view focuses on the selective annotation of multi-level discourse structures. The corpus is composed of texts that are diversified with respect to genre, length and type of discursive organisation. The methodology followed here involves an iterative design of annotation guidelines in order to reach satisfactory inter-annotator agreement levels. This allows us to raise a few issues relevant for the comparison of such complex objects as discourse structures. The corpus also serves as a source of empirical evidence for discourse theories. We present here two first analyses taking advantage of this new annotated corpus --one that tested hypotheses on constraints governing discourse structure, and another that studied the variations in composition and signalling of multi-level discourse structures