Development of a TiNbTaMoZr-Based High Entropy Alloy with Low Young´s Modulus by Mechanical Alloying Route

In this work, an equiatomic TiNbTaMoZr-based high-entropy alloy (HEA) has been developed by a powder metallurgy route, which consists of a process of combined one-step low-temperature mechanical milling starting from the transition metals as raw materials and a subsequent pressureless sintering. In this way, the optimized synthesized specimen, after 10 h of milling time, showed two di erent body-centered cubic (bcc) TiNbTaMoZr alloys, which, after sintering at 1450 C, 1 h of dwell time and a heating and cooling rate of 5 C min1, it remained formed as two bcc TiNbTaMoZr-based HEAs. This material, with micrometric and equiaxed particles, and with homogeneously distributed phases, presented a Young’s modulus that was significantly higher (5.8 GPa) and lower (62.1 GPa) than that of the usual commercially pure (cp) Ti and Ti6Al4V alloy used for bone-replacement implants. It also presented similar values to those of the HEAs developed for the same purpose. These interesting properties would enable this TiNbTaMoZr-based HEA to be used as a potential biomaterial for bulk or porous bone implants with high hardness and low Young´s modulus, thereby preventing the appearance of stress-shielding phenomena

Preoperative Exercise to Improve Fitness in Patients Undergoing Complex Surgery for Cancer of the Lung or Oesophagus (PRE-HIIT): Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial

Patients with cancer of the lung or oesophagus, undergoing curative treatment, usually require a thoracotomy and a complex oncological resection. These surgeries carry a risk of major morbidity and mortality, and risk assessment, preoperative optimisation, and enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) pathways are modern approaches to optimise outcomes. Pre-operative fitness is an established predictor of postoperative outcome, accordingly, targeting pre-operative fitness through exercise prehabilitation has logical appeal. Exercise prehabilitation is challenging to implement however due to the short opportunity for intervention between diagnosis and surgery. Therefore, individually prescribed, intensive exercise training protocols which convey clinically meaningful improvements in cardiopulmonary fitness over a short period need to be investigated. This project will examine the influence of exercise prehabilitation on physiological outcomes and postoperative recovery and, through evaluation of health economics, the impact of the programme on hospital costs

Rehabilitation strategies following oesophagogastric and Hepatopancreaticobiliary cancer (ReStOre II) : a protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Curative treatment for upper gastrointestinal (UGI) and hepatopancreaticobiliary (HPB) cancers, involves complex surgical resection often in combination with neoadjuvant/adjuvant chemo/chemoradiotherapy. With advancing survival rates, there is an emergent cohort of UGI and HPB cancer survivors with physical and nutritional deficits, resultant from both the cancer and its treatments. Therefore, rehabilitation to counteract these impairments is required to maximise health related quality of life (HRQOL) in survivorship. The initial feasibility of a multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme for UGI survivors was established in the Rehabilitation Strategies following Oesophago-gastric Cancer (ReStOre) feasibility study and pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT). ReStOre II will now further investigate the efficacy of that programme as it applies to a wider cohort of UGI and HPB cancer survivors, namely survivors of cancer of the oesophagus, stomach, pancreas, and liver. METHODS: The ReStOre II RCT will compare a 12-week multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme of supervised and self-managed exercise, dietary counselling, and education to standard survivorship care in a cohort of UGI and HPB cancer survivors who are > 3-months post-oesophagectomy/ gastrectomy/ pancreaticoduodenectomy, or major liver resection. One hundred twenty participants (60 per study arm) will be recruited to establish a mean increase in the primary outcome (cardiorespiratory fitness) of 3.5 ml/min/kg with 90% power, 5% significance allowing for 20% drop out. Study outcomes of physical function, body composition, nutritional status, HRQOL, and fatigue will be measured at baseline (T0), post-intervention (T1), and 3-months follow-up (T2). At 1-year follow-up (T3), HRQOL alone will be measured. The impact of ReStOre II on well-being will be examined qualitatively with focus groups/interviews (T1, T2). Bio-samples will be collected from T0-T2 to establish a national UGI and HPB cancer survivorship biobank. The cost effectiveness of ReStOre II will also be analysed. DISCUSSION: This RCT will investigate the efficacy of a 12-week multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme for survivors of UGI and HPB cancer compared to standard survivorship care. If effective, ReStOre II will provide an exemplar model of rehabilitation for UGI and HPB cancer survivors. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, registration number: NCT03958019, date registered: 21/05/2019

Promoting narrative skills in 5- to 8-year-old French-speaking children: The effects of a short conversational intervention

International audienc

Promoting narrative skills in French-speaking children through a short conversational interaction and the relation of its effectiveness to executive function skills

International audienc

Le rôle d'une procédure d'intervention dialogique sur l'apprentissage et l'évaluation des compétences narratives chez l'enfant francophone de 5 à 8 ans.

International audienc

A conversational intervention procedure as a tool for improving and evaluating narrative skills : A study of 5-to-8 years old French children.

International audienceBy age five children have acquired basic narrative skills and are able to report events temporally framed within a narrative structure. However, at least when they have to produce autonomous narratives on the basis of images, until 8-9 years many children have difficulties in telling coherent and causally-motivated stories, particularly when the internal states of the characters and a mentalistic understanding of the world are involved. The aim of this study is to contribute further results concerning the role of a dialogical intervention procedure soliciting children's attention on the reasons of the events of a story on children's production of complex mind-oriented narratives. To this effect, 140 French-speaking children aged 5 to 8 years (35 children at each age level) followed an experimental procedure devised in earlier studies. They were first exposed to five pictures (the "stone story" whose main point is a misunderstanding between two characters) presented sequentially. After the pictures had been removed, all children were requested to tell the experimenter the story (first narrative). Then, 25 children at each age level were asked questions soliciting the reasons of the key events in the story (the conversation group) while the other 10 (the control group) played a memory game with the story pictures and other similar cards. Then, all children were asked to narrate once again the story (second narrative). One week later children were asked to tell the story a third time (to test the stability of the eventual changes obtained immediately afterwards) and to tell a new story analogous to the stone story (to test the generalization power of the conversational intervention). Narrative skills were analyzed for causal and evaluative relations (explanations, internal states, false beliefs and overall coherence). Results show that from age six on, the conversation group improved, significantly more then the control group, the overall coherence and mind-oriented causal plot of the story in their second narrative. A relation between improvements and success in ToM tasks is observed. Results also show stability and generalization of the changes confirming the importance of the conversational intervention in improving the coherence of children's narratives and its usefulness as an assessment tool

The role of a dialogical intervention procedure on the learning and the evaluation of narrative in 5-to-8 years old French children

At 8-9 years many children have still difficulties in telling coherent and causally-motivated stories, particularly when the internal states of the characters and a mentalistic understanding of the world are involved. The aim of this study is to contribute new results concerning the role of a dialogical intervention procedure on these narrative skills. To this effect, 140 French-speaking children aged 5 to 8 years followed an experimental procedure devised in earlier studies in which they told a story based on five pictures concerning a misunderstanding before and after having participated in a conversation with the experimenter or after having played a memory game (the control group). One week later performances on "stability" (same story) and "generalization" (analogous story) tasks and on two false belief tasks were recorded. Results show that from age six on, the conversation group improved their narratives, improvements that are stable and generalizables, and related to success in ToM tasks, confirming the role of the conversational intervention for learning and for the evaluation of narrative skills.A 8-9 ans les enfants ont encore des difficultés à raconter des histoires cohérentes mettant en avant les relations causales et les états émotionnels et épistémiques des personnages. Le but de cette étude est de contribuer des nouvelles données sur les effets d'une procédure dialogique d'intervention sur cette compétence. A cet effet, 140 enfants entre 5 et 8 ans, francophones scolarisés en France, ont participé à une étude où les enfants racontaient une histoire (à partir de 5 images) avant et après avoir participé à une conversation avec l'expérimentateur ou à un jeu de "memory" (groupe contrôle). Une semaine plus tard "stabilité" et " généralisation" ainsi que deux tâches de fausse croyance étaient recueillies. Les résultats montrent que dès 6 ans les enfants du groupe conversation améliorent leur récit et que les améliorations sont stables et généralisables, confirmant ainsi le rôle de l'intervention dialogique pour les apprentissages et l'évaluation

Multicentric Analysis of the Species Distribution and Antifungal Susceptibility of Cryptic Isolates from Aspergillus Section Fumigati

The antifungal susceptibility of Aspergillus cryptic species is poorly known. We assessed 51 isolates, belonging to seven Fumigati cryptic species, by the EUCAST reference method and the concentration gradient strip (CGS) method. Species-specific patterns were observed, with high MICs for azole drugs, except for Aspergillus hiratsukae and Aspergillus tsurutae , and high MICs for amphotericin B for Aspergillus lentulus and Aspergillus udagawae