Rheological study of two-phase secondary fluids for refrigeration and air conditioning.

National audienceThe two phase fluids have promising application in refrigeration thanks to their large cooling capacity and their storage ability. However, the lack of information on their properties makes the selection of a proper fluid uneasy. An experimental set-up inspired from the scrapped surface heat exchanger technology is presented in this paper. It was developed both to generate and to characterise slurries in a rheological point of view. The large range of temperature envisaged here allows enlarging the field of application of the technology to cooler temperatures (freezer applications) and to positive ones (air conditioning systems). The principle of the viscosity measurements is described on solutions of ethyl alcohol; a hydrate is also presented as an example of compound showing a dissociation temperature in the range concerned by air conditioning applications

L'émergence d'une "élite du Welfare" ? Sociologie des sommets de l'Etat en interaction

Ce rapport de recherche collective propose une analyse du role joué par un certain nombre de hauts fonctionnaires dans deux secteur de la protection sociale: l'assurance maladie et les politiques de la famille durant la période qui va de 1981 à 1997

Perturbative Unification of Soft Supersymmetry--Breaking Terms

Perturbative unification of soft supersymmetry--breaking (SSB) parameters is proposed in Gauge-Yukawa unified models. The method, which can be applied in any finite order in perturbation theory, consists in searching for renormalization group invariant relations among the SSB parameters, which are consistent with perturbative renormalizability. For the minimal Gauge-Yukawa unified model based on $SU(5)$ we find that the low energy SSB sector contains a single arbitrary parameter, the unified gaugino mass. Within a certain approximation we find that the model predicts a superpartner spectrum which is consistent with the experimental data.Comment: 14 page

Metformin-mediated increase in DICER1 regulates microRNA expression and cellular senescence

Metformin, an oral hypoglycemic agent, has been used for decades to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus. Recent studies indicate that mice treated with metformin live longer and have fewer manifestations of age-related chronic disease. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this phenotype are unknown. Here, we show that metformin treatment increases the levels of the microRNA-processing protein DICER1 in mice and in humans with diabetes mellitus. Our results indicate that metformin upregulates DICER1 through a post-transcriptional mechanism involving the RNA-binding protein AUF1. Treatment with metformin altered the subcellular localization of AUF1, disrupting its interaction with DICER1 mRNA and rendering DICER1 mRNA stable, allowing DICER1 to accumulate. Consistent with the role of DICER1 in the biogenesis of microRNAs, we found differential patterns of microRNA expression in mice treated with metformin or caloric restriction, two proven life-extending interventions. Interestingly, several microRNAs previously associated with senescence and aging, including miR-20a, miR-34a, miR-130a, miR-106b, miR-125, and let-7c, were found elevated. In agreement with these findings, treatment with metformin decreased cellular senescence in several senescence models in a DICER1- dependent manner. Metformin lowered p16 and p21 protein levels and the abundance of inflammatory cytokines and oncogenes that are hallmarks of the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). These data lead us to hypothesize that changes in DICER1 levels may be important for organismal aging and to propose that interventions that upregulate DICER1 expression (e.g., metformin) may offer new pharmacotherapeutic approaches for age-related disease

Barnes maze test for spatial memory: A new, sensitive scoring system for mouse search strategies

The Barnes maze is a task used to assess spatial learning and memory in rodents. It requires animals to learn the position of a hole that can be used as an escape from a bright and open arena. The often-used parameters of latency and path length to measure learning and memory do not reflect the different navigation strategies chosen by the animals. Here, we propose an 11-point scoring scheme to classify the search strategies developed by the animals during the initial training as well as after the change of the escape target to a new position. Strategy scores add an important dimension to time and path length to assess the behavior in this popular maze

Automated fragment identification for electron ionisation mass spectrometry: application to atmospheric measurements of halocarbons

Non-target screening consists in searching a sample for all present substances, suspected or unknown, with very little prior knowledge about the sample. This approach has been introduced more than a decade ago in the field of water analysis, together with dedicated compound identification tools, but is still very scarce for indoor and atmospheric trace gas measurements, despite the clear need for a better understanding of the atmospheric trace gas composition.For a systematic detection of emerging trace gases in the atmosphere, a new and powerful analytical method is gas chromatography (GC) of preconcentrated samples, followed by electron ionisation, high resolution mass spectrometry (EI-HRMS). In this work, we present data analysis tools to enable automated fragment formula annotation for unknown compounds measured by GC-EI-HRMS. Based on co-eluting mass/charge fragments, we developed an innovative data analysis method to reliably reconstruct the chemical formulae of the fragments, using efficient combinatorics and graph theory. The method does not require the presence of the molecular ion, which is absent in ~40% of EI spectra. Our method has been trained and validated on \textgreater50 halocarbons and hydrocarbons, with 3 to 20 atoms and molar masses of 30 to 330 g mol-1, measured with a mass resolution of approx.~3500. For 90% of the compounds, more than 90% of the annotated fragment formulae are correct. Cases of wrong identification can be attributed to the scarcity of detected fragments per compound or the lack of isotopic constraint (no minor isotopocule detected).Our method enables to reconstruct most probable chemical formulae independently from spectral databases. Therefore, it demonstrates the suitability of EI-HRMS data for non-target analysis and paves the way for the identification of substances for which no EI mass spectrum is registered in databases. We illustrate the performances of our method for atmospheric trace gases and suggest that it may be well suited for many other types of samples. The L-GPL licenced Python code is released under the name ALPINAC for ALgorithmic Process for Identification of Non-targeted Atmospheric Compounds.Comment: Journal of Cheminformatics, Chemistry Central Ltd. and BioMed Central, 202

A subset of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus fails to degrade DNA from multiple clinically relevant sources

Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have a decreased ability to clear cell remnants and multiple deficiencies in the ability to degrade cellular chromatin have been linked to the disease. Since the discovery of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), a renewed interest has been sparked in this field of research with multiple studies reporting a decreased ability of patients with SLE to degrade NETs. In this study we extend these findings by investigating the ability of patients with SLE to degrade chromatin from multiple clinically relevant sources