Work Organisation and Innovation - Case Study: FAVI, France

[Excerpt] FAVI is an SME based in Hallencourt in the Somme, a département in the Picardy region of France. It is a pressure die-casting company specialising in copper alloys that currently employs 406 people. The company designs, optimises, smelts, machines and assembles copper alloy pieces. Interns can at times account for 10% of the workforce. Founded in 1957, this société anonyme (public limited company) with a capital of €960,000, is part of the AFICA Group, which purchased FAVI in 1971

Drugs for malaria: something old, something new, something borrowed

Malaria was estimated to cause 800,000 deaths and 225 million cases worldwide in 2010. Worryingly, the first-line treatment currently relies on a single drug class called artemisinins, and there are signs that the parasite is becoming resistant to these drugs. The good news is that new technology has given us new approaches to drug discovery. New drugs generated this way are probably 10-15 years away from the clinic. Other antimalarials that may offer hope include those rehabilitated after not being used for some time, those that act as inhibitors of resistance mechanisms, those that limit infection while allowing protective immunity to develop, and those which are drugs borrowed from other disease treatments. All of these offer new hope of turning the tables on malaria. In parallel with the effort to develop vaccines that interrupt malaria transmission, drugs that target the parasite during transmission to the mosquito or during its pre-erythrocytic development in the liver, may allow us to terminate the parasite’s spread

Simulation of mass transport during intraperitoneal chemotherapy : a parametrical model of single tumor nodules

OBJECTIVES Patients with peritoneal carcinomatosis suffer from a widespread metastatic growth of tumor nodules in the peritoneal cavity. Although Intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy allows for higher intratumor concentrations of the cytotoxic agent compared to intravenous administration, actual application of IP chemotherapy is limited due to poor drug penetration (typically a few millimeters) in the tumor tissue. It is thus essential to better understand the drug transport during IP chemotherapy. METHODS A 3D computational fluid dynamics model of a tumor nodule with necrotic core was created in Comsol® (COMSOL, Inc., Burlington, USA) describing the drug transport occurring during IP chemotherapy, including convective/diffusive/reactive drug transport in two tumor geometries (a spherical baseline model with radius rsphere,large=1 cm/rsphere,small=2 mm and rnecrotic,large=5 mm/rnecrotic,large=1 mm). To assess the efficiency of drug administration, a penetration depth (PD) was defined as the percentage of the total radius in which the drug concentration resulted to be over 6.6E-3 mol/m3. These baseline models were subsequently adapted to evaluate the effect of therapy-related parameters (different drugs, vascular properties etc.) on drug penetration. RESULTS A large differences in PD (PD; % of total radius) were found in the baseline cases for the two different scales (PDsphere,large= 4.04%; PDsphere,small=20.82%).Vascular normalization therapy yielded different outcomes (ΔPDsphere,large+2.95%; ΔPDsphere,small +17.95%). Both cases showed less penetration when paclitaxel was used as opposed to cisplatin. This effect was more pronounced in the smaller geometry (ΔPDsphere,large =-1.91%; ΔPDsphere,small =-10.25%). CONCLUSIONS The model is able to predict drug penetration depth for different sets of IP chemotherapy-related parameters, which may lead to optimization of drug transport during IP chemotherapy

Pas d'action publique autonome sans instruments propres:Analyse comparée et longitudinale des politiques environnementales et urbaines de l'Union européenne

Dans quelle mesure l'analyse des formes d'instrumentation, c'est-à-dire du choix et de la combinaison d'instruments, explique- t-elle l'émergence et le développement d'une action publique autonome ? L'entrée par les instruments apporte-elle un éclairage fécond sur l'évolution des formes de pilotage de l'action publique privilégiées au sein de l'Union européenne ? À partir d'une analyse comparée et systématique des instruments des politiques européennes environnementales et urbaines entre 1972 et 2006, cet article s'interroge sur la relation entre les formes d'instrumentation de l'action publique européenne et la gouvernance de l'Union européenne. À travers l'analyse de deux cas contrastés, cet article montre dans quelle mesure, à travers quels mécanismes et avec quels effets, les instruments ont structuré les transformations de l'action publique européenne sur la moyenne durée.This article explores the link between policy instrumentation and policy change at the EU level. It is based on a comparative analysis of policy instruments and their development in European urban and environmental policies. The analysis is based on an original dataset, retracing the evolution of European policy instruments in both areas over the past three decades, and asks how and by whom they were chosen and combined. Challenging the existing literature on new policy instruments and new forms of EU governance, our approach is a good way to track changes in public action, as well as in regimes and political styles. It also conduces to grasping the tangible nature of public action. Understanding instrumentation is a way of comprehending changes in the state by focusing on its practices and reconfigurations, particularly in the ongoing tension between incentives and constraints.Programme de recherche européen NEWGOV (6ème PCRD