VLTI/VINCI diameter constraints on the evolutionary status of delta Eri, xi Hya, eta Boo.

other location: http://www.obs-nice.fr/pichon/science.html ; Accepted for publication in Astron. Astrophys.International audienceUsing VLTI/VINCI angular diameter measurements, we constrain the evolutionary status of three asteroseismic targets: the stars $\delta$ Eri, $\xi$ Hya, $\eta$ Boo. Our predictions of the mean large frequency spacing of these stars are in agreement with published observational estimations. Looking without success for a companion of $\delta$ Eri we doubt on its classification as an RS CVn star

Wicked social–ecological problems forcing unprecedented change on the latitudinal margins of coral reefs: the case of southwest Madagascar

High-latitude coral reefs may be a refuge and area of reef expansion under climate change. As these locations are expected to become dryer and as livestock and agricultural yields decline, coastal populations may become increasingly dependent on marine resources. To evaluate this social–ecological conundrum, we examined the Grand Récif of Toliara (GRT), southwest Madagascar, which was intensively studied in the 1960s and has been highly degraded since the 1980s. We analyzed the social and ecological published and unpublished literature on this region and provide new data to assess the magnitude of the changes and evaluate the causes of reef degradation. Top-down controls were identified as the major drivers: human population growth and migrations, overfishing, and climate change, specifically decreased rainfall and rising temperature. Water quality has not changed since originally studied, and bottom-up control was ruled out. The identified network of social–ecological processes acting at different scales implies that decision makers will face complex problems that are linked to broader social, economic, and policy issues. This characterizes wicked problems, which are often dealt with by partial solutions that are exploratory and include inputs from various stakeholders along with information sharing, knowledge synthesis, and trust building. A hybrid approach based on classical fishery management options and preferences, along with monitoring, feedback and forums for searching solutions, could move the process of adaptation forward once an adaptive and appropriately scaled governance system is functioning. This approach has broad implications for resources management given the emerging climate change and multiple social and environmental stresses

A Solve-RD ClinVar-based reanalysis of 1522 index cases from ERN-ITHACA reveals common pitfalls and misinterpretations in exome sequencing

Purpose: Within the Solve-RD project (https://solve-rd.eu/), the European Reference Network for Intellectual disability, TeleHealth, Autism and Congenital Anomalies aimed to investigate whether a reanalysis of exomes from unsolved cases based on ClinVar annotations could establish additional diagnoses. We present the results of the "ClinVar low-hanging fruit" reanalysis, reasons for the failure of previous analyses, and lessons learned. Methods: Data from the first 3576 exomes (1522 probands and 2054 relatives) collected from European Reference Network for Intellectual disability, TeleHealth, Autism and Congenital Anomalies was reanalyzed by the Solve-RD consortium by evaluating for the presence of single-nucleotide variant, and small insertions and deletions already reported as (likely) pathogenic in ClinVar. Variants were filtered according to frequency, genotype, and mode of inheritance and reinterpreted. Results: We identified causal variants in 59 cases (3.9%), 50 of them also raised by other approaches and 9 leading to new diagnoses, highlighting interpretation challenges: variants in genes not known to be involved in human disease at the time of the first analysis, misleading genotypes, or variants undetected by local pipelines (variants in off-target regions, low quality filters, low allelic balance, or high frequency). Conclusion: The "ClinVar low-hanging fruit" analysis represents an effective, fast, and easy approach to recover causal variants from exome sequencing data, herewith contributing to the reduction of the diagnostic deadlock.The Solve-RD project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement number 779257. Data were analyzed using the RD-Connect Genome-Phenome Analysis Platform, which received funding from the EU projects RD-Connect, Solve-RD, and European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (grant numbers FP7 305444, H2020 779257, H2020 825575), Instituto de Salud Carlos III (grant numbers PT13/0001/0044, PT17/0009/0019; Instituto Nacional de Bioinformática), and ELIXIR Implementation Studies. The collaborations in this study were facilitated by the European Reference Network for Intellectual disability, TeleHealth, Autism and Congenital Anomalies, one of the 24 European Reference Networks approved by the European Reference Network Board of Member States, cofunded by the European Commission. This project was supported by the Czech Ministry of Health (number 00064203) and by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (number - LM2018132) to M.M.S

Epidemiology and outcome predictors in 450 patients with hanging-induced cardiac arrest: a retrospective study

BackgroundCardiac arrest is the most life-threatening complication of attempted suicide by hanging. However, data are scarce on its characteristics and outcome predictors.MethodsThis retrospective observational multicentre study in 31 hospitals included consecutive adults admitted after cardiac arrest induced by suicidal hanging. Factors associated with in-hospital mortality were identified by multivariate logistic regression with multiple imputations for missing data and adjusted to the temporal trends over the study period.ResultsOf 450 patients (350 men, median age, 43 [34–52] years), 305 (68%) had a psychiatric history, and 31 (6.9%) attempted hanging while hospitalized. The median time from unhanging to cardiopulmonary resuscitation was 0 [0–5] min, and the median time to return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) was 20 [10–30] min. Seventy-nine (18%) patients survived to hospital discharge. Three variables were independently associated with higher in-hospital mortality: time from collapse or unhanging to ROSC>20 min (odds ratio [OR], 4.71; 95% confidence intervals [95%CIs], 2.02–10.96; p = 0.0004); glycaemia >1.4 g/L at admission (OR, 6.38; 95%CI, 2.60–15.66; p < 0.0001); and lactate >3.5 mmol/L at admission (OR, 6.08; 95%CI, 1.71–21.06; p = 0.005). A Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score of >5 at admission was associated with lower in-hospital mortality (OR, 0.009; 95%CI, 0.02–0.37; p = 0.0009).ConclusionIn patients with hanging-induced cardiac arrest, time from collapse or unhanging to return of spontaneous circulation, glycaemia, arterial lactate, and coma depth at admission were independently associated with survival to hospital discharge. Knowledge of these risk factors may help guide treatment decisions in these patients at high risk of hospital mortality

Emergence of methicillin resistance predates the clinical use of antibiotics.

The discovery of antibiotics more than 80 years ago has led to considerable improvements in human and animal health. Although antibiotic resistance in environmental bacteria is ancient, resistance in human pathogens is thought to be a modern phenomenon that is driven by the clinical use of antibiotics1. Here we show that particular lineages of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus-a notorious human pathogen-appeared in European hedgehogs in the pre-antibiotic era. Subsequently, these lineages spread within the local hedgehog populations and between hedgehogs and secondary hosts, including livestock and humans. We also demonstrate that the hedgehog dermatophyte Trichophyton erinacei produces two β-lactam antibiotics that provide a natural selective environment in which methicillin-resistant S. aureus isolates have an advantage over susceptible isolates. Together, these results suggest that methicillin resistance emerged in the pre-antibiotic era as a co-evolutionary adaptation of S. aureus to the colonization of dermatophyte-infected hedgehogs. The evolution of clinically relevant antibiotic-resistance genes in wild animals and the connectivity of natural, agricultural and human ecosystems demonstrate that the use of a One Health approach is critical for our understanding and management of antibiotic resistance, which is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development

A Consistency-Specificity Trade-Off to Select Source Behavior in Information Fusion

International audienceCombining pieces of information provided by several sources without or with little prior knowledge about the behavior of the sources is an old yet still important and rather open problem in the belief function theory. In this paper, we propose an approach to select the behavior of sources based on a very general and expressive fusion scheme, that has the important advantage of making clear the assumptions made about the sources. The selection process itself relies on two cornerstones that are the notions of specificity and consistency of a knowledge representation, and that we adapt to the considered fusion scheme. We illustrate our proposal on different examples and show that the proposed approach actually encompasses some important existing fusion strategies

Stratégies d’artification dans le domaine du luxe Le cas des vins de prestige

Cet article étudie certaines pratiques d’artification, c’est-à-dire de transformation du « non art » en « art » appliquées au secteur du luxe et plus particulièrement aux produits de luxe issus du terroir : les vins de prestige. Après avoir exposé la tendance actuelle des grandes « maisons » de luxe à se rapprocher du monde de l’art et de la culture, nous interrogeons cette tendance au regard du concept d’artification développé par Shapiro (2004). L’analyse confirme que le secteur du luxe suit aujourd’hui une artification partielle qui facilite la perception des produits de luxe comme des produits uniques, proches des oeuvres d’art. Le cas particulier des vins de luxe est ensuite étudié à dessein de comprendre les modalités spécifiques des pratiques d’artification dans un domaine où les produits sont issus de la terre et donc de la Nature beaucoup plus que de la Culture. Une analyse des communications effectuée au travers du carré sémiotique met au jour les stratégies sous-jacentes à cet objectif d’artification des vins de luxe. Nous analysons les risques et avantages de telles stratégies ainsi que les conditions d’efficience de nouveaux codes communicationnels fondés sur la « signature ».This research is about the artification process in the luxury sector and more specifically for natural but luxury products from the terroir (luxury wines). The artification is the process by which a common object or a practice becomes a “work of art” and is entered into the “world of art” (Shapiro, 2004). Based on a literature review we analyse, in this article, to what extent the current collaboration between the luxury sector and the art world is relevant to artification. Our analysis confirms that the luxury sector is today partially “artified”, meaning that products are perceived as works of art and producers as artists. We then move to natural but luxury products and analyze how the artification could be adopted to this specific case, i.e. for products emerging from “nature”. Based on a comparative analyze of advertising in this sector, we highlight how to artify luxury products emerging from “nature”, for the specific case of luxury wines. The role of the “signature” strategy is highlighted, its benefits and limits are exposed and discussed

Light recycling in LED-pumped Ce:YAG luminescent concentrators

International audienceWe report the development of a high-brightness, high-power Ce:YAG luminescent concentrator pumped by 2240 blue LEDs in quasi-continuous wave operation (10 µs, 10 Hz). Using light confinement and recycling in the three space dimensions, the parallelepiped (1mm×14×mm×200mm) Ce:YAG emits a power of 145 W from a square output surface (1 × 1mm 2) corresponding to a brightness of 4.6 kW/cm 2 /sr. This broadband yellow source has a unique combination of luminous flux (7.6 10 4 lm) and brightness (2.4 10 4 cd/mm 2) and overcomes many other visible incoherent sources by one order of magnitude. This paper also proposes a deep understanding of the performance drop compared to a linear behavior when the pump power increases. Despite excited state absorption was unexpected for this low doped Ce:YAG pumped at a low irradiance level, we demonstrated that it affects the performance by tripling the losses in the concentrator. This effect is particularly important for small output surfaces corresponding to strong light recycling in the concentrator and to average travel distances inside the medium reaching meters

Mapping the Galactic centre’s dark cluster via resonant relaxation

International audienceSupermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies dominate the gravitational potential of their surrounding stellar clusters. In these dense environments, stars follow nearly Keplerian orbits, which get slowly distorted as a result of the potential fluctuations generated by the stellar cluster itself. In particular, stars undergo a rapid relaxation of their eccentricities through both resonant and non-resonant processes. An efficient implementation of the resonant diffusion coefficients allows for detailed and systematic explorations of the parameter space describing the properties of the stellar cluster. In conjunction with recent observations of the S-cluster orbiting SgrA*, this framework can be used to jointly constrain the distribution of the unresolved, old, background stellar cluster and the characteristics of a putative dark cluster. Specifically, we show how this can be used to estimate the typical mass and cuspide exponent of intermediate-mass black holes consistent with the relaxed state of the distribution of eccentricities in the observed S-cluster. This should prove useful in constraining supermassive black hole formation scenarios

Ce:LYSO, from scintillator to solid-state lighting as a blue luminescent concentrator

Abstract Cerium-doped lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (Ce:LYSO) is a well-known single crystal scintillator used in medical imaging and security scanners. Recent development of high power UV LED, matching its absorption band, questions the possibility to use Ce:LYSO in a new way: as LED-pumped solid-state light source. Since Ce:LYSO is available in large size crystals, we investigate its potential as a luminescent concentrator. This paper reports an extensive study of the performance in close relation to the spectroscopic properties of this crystal. It gives the reasons why the Ce:LYSO crystal tested in this study is less efficient than Ce:YAG for luminescent concentration: limited quantum efficiency and high losses coming from self-absorption and from excited-state absorption are playing key roles. However, we demonstrate that a Ce:LYSO luminescent concentrator is an innovative source for solid-state lighting. Pumped by a peak power of 3400 W in quasi-continuous wave regime (40 µs, 10 Hz), a rectangular (1 × 22 × 105 mm3) Ce:LYSO crystal delivers a broadband spectrum (60 nm FWHM) centered at 430 nm. At full output aperture (20 × 1 mm2), it emits a peak power of 116 W. On a squared output surface (1 × 1 mm2) it emits 16 W corresponding to a brightness of 509 W cm–2 sr–1. This combination of spectrum power and brightness is higher than blue LEDs and opens perspectives for Ce:LYSO in the field of illumination namely for imaging