A Secondary Emission-Multiwire Chamber for Ganil Heavy Ion Beams Tuning

http://accelconf.web.cern.ch/AccelConf/c78/papers/f-19.pdfInternational audienc

The GANIL beam lines

http://accelconf.web.cern.ch/AccelConf/c81/papers/ep-36.pdfInternational audienceThe general optical functions of the beam lines are described. The principle of beam lines composed of sections with separated functions was adopted. The main technological characteristics of the equipments (guiding system, buncher, stripper, beam diagnostics and pumping system) are given

IDEFIX: a versatile performance-portable Godunov code for astrophysical flows

Exascale super-computers now becoming available rely on hybrid energy-efficient architectures that involve an accelerator such as Graphics Processing Units (GPU). Leveraging the computational power of these machines often means a significant rewrite of the numerical tools each time a new architecture becomes available. To address these issues, we present Idefix, a new code for astrophysical flows that relies on the Kokkos meta-programming library to guarantee performance portability on a wide variety of architectures while keeping the code as simple as possible for the user. Idefix is based on a Godunov finite-volume method that solves the non-relativistic HD and MHD equations on various grid geometries. Idefix includes a wide choice of solvers and several additional modules (constrained transport, orbital advection, non-ideal MHD) allowing users to address complex astrophysical problems. Idefix has been successfully tested on Intel and AMD CPUs (up to 131 072 CPU cores on Irene-Rome at TGCC) as well as NVidia and AMD GPUs (up to 1024 GPUs on Adastra at CINES). Idefix achieves more than 1e8 cell/s in MHD on a single NVidia V100 GPU and 3e11 cell/s on 256 Adastra nodes (1024 GPUs) with 95% parallelization efficiency (compared to a single node). For the same problem, Idefix is up to 6 times more energy efficient on GPUs compared to Intel Cascade Lake CPUs. Idefix is now a mature exascale-ready open-source code that can be used on a large variety of astrophysical and fluid dynamics applications.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Tussen adoptiekoe en zemelteef: iets over de houdbaarheidsdatum van ‘verse woorden’ in Vlaamse en Nederlandse kranten

FGW – Publications without University Leiden contrac

Pegylated-l-asparaginase therapy for feline large cell lymphoma: 82 cases (2017-2020)

OBJECTIVES: The present study aimed to investigate pegylated-l-asparaginase monotherapy for feline large cell lymphoma as a potential alternative to palliative corticosteroids treatment in animals whose owners declined cytotoxic chemotherapy. METHODS: A retrospective, descriptive case series of cats treated initially with pegylated-l-asparaginase as a sole therapy for feline large cell lymphoma is reported. The treatment protocol consisted of 12 intramuscular injections of pegylated-l-asparaginase with increasing intervals. If cats were unresponsive to pegylated-l-asparaginase monotherapy, a second-line treatment was initiated. Signalment, origin of lymphoma, staging, treatment, possible adverse events and follow-up data were extracted from the medical records. Responses and survival data were analysed. RESULTS: Eighty-two cats with lymphoma of five different anatomic types were included: alimentary, abdominal extra-alimentary, peripheral nodal, nasal/nasopharyngeal and other (mediastinal, renal [solitary] and miscellaneous combined in one group for analytical purposes). The response rate was 74.1% (95% confidence interval = 63.4-83.5) with 38.3% (95% confidence interval = 27.8-48.8) in complete remission. The median disease-free period and calculated overall survival time were 70 days (12-1702+) and 79 days (1-1715+), respectively. The response rate was significantly correlated with the origin of the lymphoma and the combined group had a significantly lower response rate ( P  = 0.035). Twenty-four cats were also treated with corticosteroids. There was no significant difference in outcomes between the group treated with or without corticosteroids. Adverse events were present in a small number of cats (14/82). The majority of these adverse events were mild to moderate in 5/14 cats; however, the adverse events were severe enough to cause discontinuation of therapy. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Based on the response rate and median disease-free period, treatment with pegylated-l-asparaginase is inferior when compared with historical chemotherapy protocols. However, some cats demonstrated an exceptional long disease-free period. Therefore, pegylated-l-asparaginase could be offered as an alternative to corticosteroid therapy alone. Further studies are needed to evaluate the additional benefit over palliative corticosteroid monotherapy

Commensal bacteria of the lung microbiota synergistically inhibit inflammation in a three-dimensional epithelial cell model

Patients with chronic lung disease suffer from persistent inflammation and are typically colonized by pro-inflammatory pathogenic bacteria. Besides these pathogens, a wide variety of commensal species is present in the lower airways but their role in inflammation is unclear. Here, we show that the lung microbiota contains several species able to inhibit activation of the pro-inflammatory NF-κB pathway and production of interleukin 8 (IL-8), triggered by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or H2O2, in a physiologically relevant three-dimensional (3D) lung epithelial cell model. We demonstrate that the minimal dose needed for anti-inflammatory activity differs between species (with the lowest dose needed for Rothia mucilaginosa), and depends on the type of pro-inflammatory stimulus and read out. Furthermore, we evaluated synergistic activity between pairs of anti-inflammatory bacteria on the inhibition of the NF-κB pathway and IL-8 secretion. Synergistic anti-inflammatory activity was observed for 4/10 tested consortia. These findings indicate that various microbiota members can influence lung inflammation either alone or as a consortium. This information can contribute to a better understanding of the lung microbiota in chronic lung disease development and process, and could open up new avenues for treatment

Plaquette Ordering in SU(4) Antiferromagnets

We use fermion mean field theory to study possible plaquette ordering in the antiferromagnetic SU(4) Heisenberg model. We find the ground state for both the square and triangular lattices to be the disconnected plaquette state. Our mean field theory gives a first order transition for plaquette ordering for the triangular lattice. Our results suggest a large number of low lying states.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Mañana today: a long view of economic value creation in Latin America

This commentary concerns the significant opportunities which the global economy’s current nearshoring trend offers the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region owing to a US–China decoupling. Yet the region, generally, is woefully unprepared. The state of the LAC will make or break the peoples’ attempts to exploit the new potential to better themselves. Yet the short-termist myopia and public policy neglect of politicians is the greatest obstacle to the kind of development the region needs the most: high-quality FDI enabling educated innovators to push LAC up the rank of global value chains; or else it will be trapped in middle income, at best