Présence et devenir des médicaments dans les eaux usées urbaines, une analyse bibliographique

Depuis quelques années, la présence de substances pharmaceutiques a été observée dans les milieux aquatiques y compris dans l’eau potable. Les principales sources de dispersion de ces composés dans l’environnement sont les stations d’épuration des eaux usées (STEP). Une analyse de la littérature publiée sur le sujet est proposée. Ce sont les analgésiques/anti-inflammatoires, les hypocholestérolémiants, les cytostatiques et les bêta-bloquants qui présentent les concentrations les plus élevées en entrée de station d’épuration. Malgré des rendements d’élimination quelquefois très élevés, les concentrations de ces groupes de médicaments restent non négligeables dans les effluents de stations.Les antibiotiques forment un des plus importants groupes de médicaments à cause de leur niveau de consommation, de leur fréquence de détection dans les milieux aquatiques et de leur action spécifique sur les bactéries, notamment celle potentiellement néfaste qu’ils peuvent avoir sur les bactéries mises en oeuvre dans les systèmes de traitement biologique des eaux résiduaires urbaines. Globalement, la charge en antibiotiques est faible dans les eaux usées urbaines mais elle est forte dans les effluents des hôpitaux. Les rendements d’élimination sont, quant à eux très variables, allant de 0 % pour le nitrothiazole à 95 % pour la tétracycline.For several years, the occurrence of pharmaceutical substances in the aquatic environment, and even in drinking water, has been a source of concern. The main sources of dispersion of these substances are wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). An analysis of the available literature on this topic is proposed. Analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anti-cholesterol and cytostatic drugs as well as beta-blockers are the substances that can be found in the highest concentrations in plant influents. In spite of elimination yields that can be very high, their concentrations in plant effluents can remain non-negligible. Antibiotics are one of the most important drug classes, due to their large consumption, their prevalence in aquatic systems and their specific action on bacteria, especially on those used in urban wastewater treatment biosystems. Globally, antibiotic concentrations in urban wastewater are normally low but they can be high in hospital wastewater. Elimination yields are very variable, ranging from a low of 0% for nitrothiazole to 95% for tetracycline

A Lacanian Approach to Medical Demand, With a Focus on Pediatric Genetics: A Plea for Subjectivization

Current psychological research on contemporary medicine, and in particular genetics, often targets the underpinnings of patients’ attitudes and behaviors with respect to biomedical knowledge and healthcare practices. But few studies approach these underpinnings as manifestations of the unconscious, while so doing could (in particular) help understand patients’ apparent difficulties to understand information, and to subsequently act accordingly (e.g., in making therapeutic decisions, etc.). We hypothesize that Lacan’s (1966) remarks (“The place of psychoanalysis in medicine”) on the transferential nature of the demand addressed by the patient (or his family) to the doctor can help account for these issues: demand filters medical information received from the practitioner, and thereby motivates subsequent decisions. In this paper, we try and shed light on this thesis, and focus on pediatric genetics. We start by describing the manifest doctor-patient-family relationship in the pediatric genetics consultation, in order to show where unconscious determinants can come to play a role (1). We then explain Lacan’s theory of demand: what the patient unknowingly demands is knowledge (savoir), the object of which is the body of jouissance – the libidinal experience of one’s body through the first libidinal exchanges with the Other of early infancy, whereby the subject is assigned by the Other (subjectification) a specific fantasmatic status organizing his desire. Patients’ understanding and attitudes thus vary so greatly because of this pre-existing filter. Healing and cure are merely apparent objects of the medical demand, which is an invocative drive seeking knowledge on the cause of one’s desire: medical demand is an instance of transference. Doctors should thus enable patient subjectivization, i.e., help them realize that their demand’s genuine object lies in their pre-existing subjective coordinates (2). In pediatric genetics, apparently paradoxical family attitudes heavily draw on what G. Raimbault, drawing on Lacan, called implicit demand, the object of which is knowledge about the family fantasy giving shape to the guilt of possibly transmitting the disease. We give a clinical example, then show how the concept of demand helped us elaborate the core of a research project on the subjective effects of a genetic deafblindness handicap (3)

Relation Between Conductivity and Ion Content in Urban Wastewater

Wastewater conductivity has been monitored for extended periods of time by in situ probes and on grabbed samples in four communities (from 1,000 to 350,000 PE). In parallel, the concentrations of the main ionic contributors, such as calcium, sodium, potassium, magnesium, ammonium, ortho-phosphate, chloride and sulphate have been measured and their variations with respect to time compared to human activity patterns. It appears that sodium, potassium, ammonium and ortho-phosphate, which contribute to about 34% to wastewater conductivity, exhibit diurnal variations in phase with human activity evaluated by absorbance at 254 nm. However calcium (≈ 22% of wastewater conductivity) is out‑of-phase. This release, ahead of the one of other cations and anions, could be related to sewer concrete corrosion or to groundwater infiltration. The combination of these different ionic contributions creates a conductivity pattern which cannot be easily related to human activity. It makes difficult to integrate conductivity in a monitoring system able to detect ion-related abnormalities in wastewater quality.Les variations de la conductivité d’eaux usées urbaines ont été suivies sur de longues durées a l’aide de sondes placées in situ en entrée d’installations de traitement et sur des échantillons prélevés automatiquement. Quatre communautés (entre 1 000 et 350 000 habitants) ont été choisies pour cette étude. On a également dosé sur les échantillons les principaux ions (calcium, sodium, potassium, magnésium, ammonium, ortho-phosphates, chlorures et sulfates). Il apparait que le sodium, le potassium, l’ammonium et les ortho-phosphates contribuent pour 34 % a la conductivité des eaux usées et présentent des variations journalicres en phase avec la pollution carbonée soluble, estimée a partir de l’absorbance a 254 nm. Par contre, le calcium, qui contribue pour 22 % a la conductivité, présente un déphasage qui peut ztre du a son transport dans le réseau d’assainissement du fait de la corrosion des conduites en béton ou a des infiltrations d’eaux claires. Finalement, la combinaison de ces différentes contributions ioniques conduit a une variabilité de la conductivité qu’il n’est pas facile de lier a l’activité humaine, et donc a des rejets accidentels dans le cadre d’un systcme de détection de variation anormale de la qualité des eaux usées

Compact Dual-Linear Polarized Wideband Antenna for VHF/UHF band.

International audienceA new compact dual-linearly polarized ultrawideband (UWB) antenna for VHF/UHF applications is proposed on this letter. The antenna is miniaturized thanks to inductive loading and lumped resistances. In addition, to reduce back radiation and to optimize the impedance matching at low frequencies, a ferrite layer is placed close to the radiating element. This antenna provides broadband characteristics and unidirectional radiation patterns over the whole bandwidth with a length and a height respectively limited to 6 LF l and 13 LF l , where LF l is the wavelength at the lowest frequency of the operating band. Simulations and measurements are found to be in good agreements

Ion Channels as Promising Therapeutic Targets for Melanoma

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Less Citation, Less Dissemination: The Case of French Psychoanalysis

The future of all publishing is open to question, and this is especially true in the case of psychoanalytic publishing. Stepansky (2009) has explored the future of psychoanalytic publishing with a particular emphasis upon how the digital era has had an impact upon the decline of scholarly publication in the United States. If this trend continues, the survival of contemporary psychoanalytic research will depend upon its capacity to embrace and utilize digital publishing. Echoing this perspective, we tried to determine whether the seemingly small international visibility of contemporary French psychoanalytic research could be related to its lack of acknowledgment of the impact of digitalization on rules of writing and publishing. We believe that achieving visibility doesn\u27t chiefly depend on overcoming a language barrier (not such an issue for younger generations), cultural differences, or geographical distance (made irrelevant by the Internet). Rather, our intuition is that French psychoanalytic work would become more visible if it demonstrated familiarity with psychoanalytic work in English, citing it and engaging in dialogue. Anglo-American psychoanalytic publications follow a specific rule of digitalized, database-anchored research. This rule is that the bibliometric value of a journal, which largely conditions its academic visibility and value, depends on the algorithmic measure of the number and type of cites that it receives from published articles published. (This is the case, in different ways, with the commonest algorithms: Thomson\u27s Impact Factor and SCImago\u27s Journal and Country Rank.) In other words, the algorithmic measure of this value ultimately depends on whether and how researchers cite a given journal—these citation practices will then, in turn, make it a more desirable publishing venue. The bottom line is that citations have a real effect, as they directly contributing to the space of academic publishing by differentiating journals both numerically and hierarchically. It is plausible to imagine that an increase in the number of Anglo-American journal citations in French journals would be likely to produce a rise in international visibility for French journals. Of course, this is speculative and cannot (yet) be put to test. Let us begin with a preliminary effort: to draw on an original database in order (a) to determine whether French psychoanalytic productions are visible internationally, and (b) to clarify the citation practices comparatively between the French and Anglo-American contexts. To the best of our knowledge, this issue has not been addressed so far; in providing preliminary data and reflections, our hope is modest: to inspire discussion and debate. To that end, we first measure the citational visibility of French vs. Anglo-American psychoanalytic journals across all disciplines and languages (their respective global outreach); we then relate this outreach measure to a geographic breakdown of psychoanalytic article citations, in order to make sense of specific geographical differences in citation practices

False-positive diagnosis of ascending aorta dissection by single-plane transesophageal echocardiography

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Health determinants of informal caregivers aged 65 years and over

peer reviewe