OBEDIS Core Variables Project : European Expert Guidelines on a Minimal Core Set of Variables to Include in Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials of Obesity Interventions

Heterogeneity of interindividual and intraindividual responses to interventions is often observed in randomized, controlled trials for obesity. To address the global epidemic of obesity and move toward more personalized treatment regimens, the global research community must come together to identify factors that may drive these heterogeneous responses to interventions. This project, called OBEDIS (OBEsity Diverse Interventions Sharing - focusing on dietary and other interventions), provides a set of European guidelines for a minimal set of variables to include in future clinical trials on obesity, regardless of the specific endpoints. Broad adoption of these guidelines will enable researchers to harmonize and merge data from multiple intervention studies, allowing stratification of patients according to precise phenotyping criteria which are measured using standardized methods. In this way, studies across Europe may be pooled for better prediction of individuals' responses to an intervention for obesity - ultimately leading to better patient care and improved obesity outcomes.Peer reviewe

State of the climate in 2018

In 2018, the dominant greenhouse gases released into Earth’s atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—continued their increase. The annual global average carbon dioxide concentration at Earth’s surface was 407.4 ± 0.1 ppm, the highest in the modern instrumental record and in ice core records dating back 800 000 years. Combined, greenhouse gases and several halogenated gases contribute just over 3 W m−2 to radiative forcing and represent a nearly 43% increase since 1990. Carbon dioxide is responsible for about 65% of this radiative forcing. With a weak La Niña in early 2018 transitioning to a weak El Niño by the year’s end, the global surface (land and ocean) temperature was the fourth highest on record, with only 2015 through 2017 being warmer. Several European countries reported record high annual temperatures. There were also more high, and fewer low, temperature extremes than in nearly all of the 68-year extremes record. Madagascar recorded a record daily temperature of 40.5°C in Morondava in March, while South Korea set its record high of 41.0°C in August in Hongcheon. Nawabshah, Pakistan, recorded its highest temperature of 50.2°C, which may be a new daily world record for April. Globally, the annual lower troposphere temperature was third to seventh highest, depending on the dataset analyzed. The lower stratospheric temperature was approximately fifth lowest. The 2018 Arctic land surface temperature was 1.2°C above the 1981–2010 average, tying for third highest in the 118-year record, following 2016 and 2017. June’s Arctic snow cover extent was almost half of what it was 35 years ago. Across Greenland, however, regional summer temperatures were generally below or near average. Additionally, a satellite survey of 47 glaciers in Greenland indicated a net increase in area for the first time since records began in 1999. Increasing permafrost temperatures were reported at most observation sites in the Arctic, with the overall increase of 0.1°–0.2°C between 2017 and 2018 being comparable to the highest rate of warming ever observed in the region. On 17 March, Arctic sea ice extent marked the second smallest annual maximum in the 38-year record, larger than only 2017. The minimum extent in 2018 was reached on 19 September and again on 23 September, tying 2008 and 2010 for the sixth lowest extent on record. The 23 September date tied 1997 as the latest sea ice minimum date on record. First-year ice now dominates the ice cover, comprising 77% of the March 2018 ice pack compared to 55% during the 1980s. Because thinner, younger ice is more vulnerable to melting out in summer, this shift in sea ice age has contributed to the decreasing trend in minimum ice extent. Regionally, Bering Sea ice extent was at record lows for almost the entire 2017/18 ice season. For the Antarctic continent as a whole, 2018 was warmer than average. On the highest points of the Antarctic Plateau, the automatic weather station Relay (74°S) broke or tied six monthly temperature records throughout the year, with August breaking its record by nearly 8°C. However, cool conditions in the western Bellingshausen Sea and Amundsen Sea sector contributed to a low melt season overall for 2017/18. High SSTs contributed to low summer sea ice extent in the Ross and Weddell Seas in 2018, underpinning the second lowest Antarctic summer minimum sea ice extent on record. Despite conducive conditions for its formation, the ozone hole at its maximum extent in September was near the 2000–18 mean, likely due to an ongoing slow decline in stratospheric chlorine monoxide concentration. Across the oceans, globally averaged SST decreased slightly since the record El Niño year of 2016 but was still far above the climatological mean. On average, SST is increasing at a rate of 0.10° ± 0.01°C decade−1 since 1950. The warming appeared largest in the tropical Indian Ocean and smallest in the North Pacific. The deeper ocean continues to warm year after year. For the seventh consecutive year, global annual mean sea level became the highest in the 26-year record, rising to 81 mm above the 1993 average. As anticipated in a warming climate, the hydrological cycle over the ocean is accelerating: dry regions are becoming drier and wet regions rainier. Closer to the equator, 95 named tropical storms were observed during 2018, well above the 1981–2010 average of 82. Eleven tropical cyclones reached Saffir–Simpson scale Category 5 intensity. North Atlantic Major Hurricane Michael’s landfall intensity of 140 kt was the fourth strongest for any continental U.S. hurricane landfall in the 168-year record. Michael caused more than 30 fatalities and $25 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages. In the western North Pacific, Super Typhoon Mangkhut led to 160 fatalities and$6 billion (U.S. dollars) in damages across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Tropical Storm Son-Tinh was responsible for 170 fatalities in Vietnam and Laos. Nearly all the islands of Micronesia experienced at least moderate impacts from various tropical cyclones. Across land, many areas around the globe received copious precipitation, notable at different time scales. Rodrigues and Réunion Island near southern Africa each reported their third wettest year on record. In Hawaii, 1262 mm precipitation at Waipā Gardens (Kauai) on 14–15 April set a new U.S. record for 24-h precipitation. In Brazil, the city of Belo Horizonte received nearly 75 mm of rain in just 20 minutes, nearly half its monthly average. Globally, fire activity during 2018 was the lowest since the start of the record in 1997, with a combined burned area of about 500 million hectares. This reinforced the long-term downward trend in fire emissions driven by changes in land use in frequently burning savannas. However, wildfires burned 3.5 million hectares across the United States, well above the 2000–10 average of 2.7 million hectares. Combined, U.S. wildfire damages for the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons exceeded $40 billion (U.S. dollars)

Le développement des conférences, colloques et débats dans les centres de culture scientifique

Natali Jean-Paul. Le développement des conférences, colloques et débats dans les centres de culture scientifique. In: Quaderni, n°46, Hiver 2001-2002. La Science dans la cité. pp. 163-177

Le rôle des scientifiques dans les productions muséales

The relationship between the scientific community and the professional community of science centres concern a whole of functions conditionning the communication value of these centers : legitimation of the way of publicisation of science, validation of the cultural products, and coherence and relevance of the dicurses held by the institution. Beyond the trans[ structuration] process of the scientific knowledge, there is the question, in term of reliability and veracity, of the confidence granted by the visitor to the contents of the exhibit devices with which it interacts. Particulary, from a citizen point of view of the construction of the opinions which underlie the democratic actions that he wants to implementLes rapports entre la communauté scientifique et la communauté des professionnels de centres culturels scientifiques s’articulent sur un ensemble de fonctions qui conditionnent la valeur communicationnelle des établissements muséaux : légitimation des démarches de publicisation de la science, validation des produits culturels et cohérence et pertinence des discours (énonciation) tenus par l’institution. Au-delà des procès de trans-[ structurations] des savoirs scientifiques se pose, en termes de fiabilité et de véracité, la question de la confiance que le visiteur peut accorder aux contenus des dispositifs de médiation avec lesquels il interagit, notamment dans une optique citoyenne de la construction des opinions qui sous-tendent les actions démocratiques qu’il veut mettre en oeuvre.Las relaciones entre la comunidad de los científicos y la comunidad de los profesionales de centros culturales científicos movilizan un conjunto de funciones que determinan el valor de la comunicación en estos establecimientos : legitimación de los procesos de publicidad de ciencia, validación de las producciones culturales, coherencia y pertinencia de los discursos. Mas allá de los procesos de trans-estructuración de conocimientos científicos, hay que interrogarse sobre el problema de la confianza que los visitantes pueden conceder a lo que encuentran, en la perspectiva ciudadana de la construcción de las opiniones que determinan las acciones democráticas que quieren llevar.Natali Jean-Paul. Le rôle des scientifiques dans les productions muséales. In: Culture & Musées, n°10, 2007. pp. 37-61

Élaboration de protocoles délibératifs dans le cadre de l’institution muséale scientifique. De l’évaluation des publics aux situations de communication avec les citoyens

I. UNE DÉMARCHE EXPÉRIMENTALE D’ÉLABORATION DE PROTOCOLES DÉLIBÉRATIFS Bénéficiant d’une position professionnelle dans le champ muséographique – comme chargé de projet à la Cité des sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris, (CSI) – et d’une activité de recherche en sciences de l’information et de la communication – comme chercheur associé au Centre d’Étude du Débat Public, université de Tours, CEDP – il m’a été possible de développer une démarche de [conception/analyse] portant tout d’abord sur la r..

Une question sociosémiotique : l'état imaginaire des sciences

Decrusse Anne and Jean-Paul Natali - "A sociosemiotics topics: The imaginary state of sciences". The exhibition of science in museums rises some new problems concerning exposition and popularizatioa Studies of the semiology of medias have already paid special attention to scientific communication: scientific popular news and scientific exhibition. The paper attemps to inform about current issues on the topic and to present a working group on sociosemiotics applied to the relations between "Science and Society". In presenting the program of this group, this paper insists on the first results concerning the transcoding from scientific discourse towards popularizing media, and the relation between Sociology and History of the Sciences and concepts, and the relationship between Culture and Scientific communication and museography.La mise en musée de la science pose un certain nombre de problèmes, liés à la vulgarisation. La sémiologie des média s'est déjà intéressée spécifiquement à la diffusion scientifique (revues de vulgarisation et expositions scientifiques). L'article a pour objet d'informer des développements récents de cette réflexion avec la constitution d'un groupe de recherches sociosémiotique sur le domaine "science et société". Il présente le programme de travail et les premiers résultats de la réflexion de ce groupe, notamment en ce qui conceme le transcodage sémiotique des champs scientifiques aux champs de la vulgarisation. Sont également abordés les rapports du champ historique et social des sciences à la production des concepts et le rapport entre la culture, la divulgation scientifique en général, et les musées en particulier.Decrusse Anne, Natali Jean-Paul. Une question sociosémiotique : l'état imaginaire des sciences. In: Langage et société, n°45, 1988. pp. 75-80

Réplication du génome du virus de l’hépatite delta : un rôle pour la petite protéine delta S-HDAg

International audienc

Hepatitis Delta Virus histone mimicry drives the recruitment of chromatin remodelers for viral RNA replication

International audienceHepatitis Delta virus (HDV) is a satellite of Hepatitis B virus with a single-stranded circular RNA genome. HDV RNA genome synthesis is carried out in infected cells by cellular RNA polymerases with the assistance of the small hepatitis delta antigen (S-HDAg). Here we show that S-HDAg binds the bromodomain (BRD) adjacent to zinc finger domain 2B (BAZ2B) protein, a regulatory subunit of BAZ2B-associated remodeling factor (BRF) ISWI chromatin remodeling complexes. shRNA-mediated silencing of BAZ2B or its inactivation with the BAZ2B BRD inhibitor GSK2801 impairs HDV replication in HDV-infected human hepatocytes. S-HDAg contains a short linear interacting motif (SLiM) KacXXR, similar to the one recognized by BAZ2B BRD in histone H3. We found that the integrity of the S-HDAg SLiM sequence is required for S-HDAg interaction with BAZ2B BRD and for HDV RNA replication. Our results suggest that S-HDAg uses a histone mimicry strategy to co-activate the RNA polymerase II-dependent synthesis of HDV RNA and sustain HDV replication