Apoptosis as a mechanism in tri-n-butyltin mediated thymocyte cytotoxicity

Tri-n-butyltin (TBT), an important environmental pollutant, is immunotoxic when administered to experimental animals. Thymic atrophy due to the depletion of cortical thymocytes has been shown to be central to this effect although the mechanism involved is currently undefined. The mode of cell death known as apoptosis has a key role in a number of physiological processes, including the regulation of the developing thymic T lymphocyte repertoire, but can also be triggered in pathological states including toxic injury. This study investigated the effects of bis(tri-n-butyltin) oxide (TBTO) on rat thymocytes and compared these findings to observations with other lymphotoxic model compounds. Exposure of thymocytes in vitro to low concentrations of TBTO resulted in delayed cell killing which bore many of the morphological and biochemical characteristics of apoptosis. Stereotypical internucleosomal DNA cleavage preceded viability loss and both these processes were inhibited by intracellular Ca2+ chelators, zinc, and agents expected to interfere with protein-DNA interactions. At tributyltin treatment levels less than an order of magnitude higher, cytolethahty by necrosis supervened. In contrast to thymocyte apoptosis caused by most other stimuli including glucocorticoids, that mediated by TBTO apparently did not require de novo protein synthesis. Thymocytes exposed to TBTO remained able to instigate apoptotic death although their ATP levels were severely depressed, indicating that the process was not dependent on fully conserved cellular energetics function. In common with the microtubule assembly inhibitor nocodazole, tributyltin was very effective in disrupting the cellular microtubule cytoskeleton. Though there was evidence that this effect may have been causal to nocodazole-mediated thymocyte apoptosis, a similar relationship was not apparent for TBTO. Apoptosis caused by TBTO was associated with nuclear hypodiploidy, but no overt disturbance of thymocyte cell cycle parameters occurred. In vivo studies indicated that thymocyte apoptosis contributed significantly to the cortical thymocyte deletion underlying the thymic involution provoked by administration of TBTO to immature rats

The lexical boost effect is not diagnostic of lexically-specific syntactic representations

Structural priming implies that speakers/listeners unknowingly re-use syntactic structure over subsequent utterances. Previous research found that structural priming is reliably enhanced when lexical content is repeated (lexical boost effect). A widely held assumption is that structure-licensing heads enjoy a privileged role in lexically boosting structural priming. The present comprehension-to-production priming experiments investigated whether head-constituents (verbs) versus non-head constituents (argument nouns) contribute differently to boosting ditransitive structure priming in English. Experiment 1 showed that lexical boosts from repeated agent or recipient nouns (and to a lesser extent, repeated theme nouns) were comparable to those from repeated verbs. Experiments 2 and 3 found that increasing numbers of content words shared between primes and targets led to increasing magnitudes of structural priming (again, with no ‘special’ contribution of verb-repetition). We conclude that lexical boost effects are not diagnostic of lexically-specific syntactic representations, even though such representations are supported by other types of evidence

Un jour, l'AOD ? Prospective sur l'Appellation d'Origine viticole Durable, fusion de l'origine et de l'environnement

L’évolution des enjeux qualitatifs du vin s’exprime historiquement par le passage de la qualité de vin (qu’est-ce qu’un vin ?) à la qualité du vin (qu’est-ce qu’un bon vin ?) Sans doute la prochaine question pourrait-elle être : qu’est-ce qu’un bon vin durable ? Pour contribuer à la réflexion sur ce thème, il peut être intéressant de procéder à un exercice de prospective fiction, que nous avons identifiée dans l’hypothèse de l’AOD, l’Appellation d’Origine Durable, scénario que nous développerons à la lumière des évolutions de la filière viticole et de la proposition de règlement relatif aux indications géographiques, et que nous soumettons à l’appréciation des lecteurs de la revue. Après avoir été simple, contrôlée puis protégée, la prochaine étape, pour l’appellation, pourrait consister à afficher sa durabilité. Nouvelle norme et nouveau signe, l’AOD exprimerait alors la fusion de la qualité de l’origine et de la durabilité

Saint Thomas d'Aquin contre les robots. Pistes pour une approche philosophique de l'Intelligence Artificielle

In light of the pervasive developments of new technologies, such as NBIC (Nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science), it is imperative to produce a coherent and deep reflexion on the human nature, on human intelligence and on the limit of both of them, in order to successfully respond to some technical argumentations that strive to depict humanity as a purely mechanical system. For this purpose, it is interesting to refer to the epistemology and metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas as a stable philosophical reference on Human Nature. Indeed, we find in the works of Aquinas some of the most productive elements that could form a base to our deeper understanding of, and possibly even solutions to some of the most perplexing questions raised in our times by the existence of AI

L' affaire Bordeaux Magnum ou la vente en primeur et la rupture brutale des relations commerciales établies

La rupture brutale des relations commerciales régit-elle les relations commerciales qui se nouent à Bordeaux lors de la campagne des primeurs ? La rencontre d’un système de vente construit sur les usages de place et d’une règlementation nationale soucieuse de normer la fin des relations commerciales s’annonce particulièrement instructive

Wearing frog hats and attempting walls: The processing of conceptual combination and coercion

This thesis is concerned with the mental representation and online processing of conceptual structure. In particular, it investigates two issues: First, it explores some of the processing mechanisms underlying the comprehension of conceptual combinations. Second, it explores some of the processing mechanisms underlying the production of coerced expressions. These two issues are investigated experimentally using a priming paradigm. Noun-noun combinations like dog scarf are common in everyday discourse but often have more than one interpretation. How do language users arrive at an interpretation of the relationship between the two nouns? The first half of the thesis reports four expression-picture matching experiments that used priming to investigate the influence of modifier and head constituents on the comprehension of novel ambiguous noun-noun combinations. Experiment 1 examined the effects of lexical repetition and semantic relation. Results showed reliable relation priming, regardless of whether the modifier or head was repeated between prime and target: Participants tended to choose target pictures involving the same relation as a preceding prime picture. Experiment 2 demonstrated significant relation priming when neither constituent was repeated. Experiment 3 showed significant relation priming when each picture contained both possible semantic relations, arguing against a possible visual-priming account of the effect. Experiment 4 showed that relation priming did not have an effect on the time taken to comprehend a combination. The findings are interpreted in light of competing models of conceptual combination. The second half of the thesis reports four experiments designed to investigate the effects of priming on the production of complement coercions like The author began the book. Recent work in lexical semantics has demonstrated that verbs such as begin and enjoy semantically select for event complements. Where such verbs occur with entity-denoting nouns (e.g., begin the book, enjoy the wine), the NP complement undergoes semantic type coercion, inducing a reference shift to the event associated with that NP. Using a combined picture-description/sentence completion task, participants were presented with pictures followed by sentence fragments which they were instructed to complete. Experiment 5 showed a reliable effect of Prime: Participants tended to produce a target description involving the same level of semantic specification as the preceding prime. Experiment 6 did not show fully significant priming in the absence of (coercing) verb overlap between prime and target. Experiment 7 revealed evidence of semantic and syntactic components to the priming effect. Experiment 8 showed no evidence for differing global and local contextual influences on priming. Taken together, the results of Experiments 5–8 are interpreted in terms of a model of language production based on Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999). Overall, this study offers insight into the representation and processing of conceptual structure in comprehension and production from a psycholinguistic perspective

Diffamation, dénigrement, procédure bâillon ?

Consécutivement à cette décision, la justice a parfois été accusée dans la presse d’avoir fait droit à une demande dite « bâillon », protectrice des intérêts de la filière, représentée à l’instance par le Conseil interprofessionnel du vin de bordeaux (CIVB). Il est donc nécessaire et instructif d’observer le détail de la motivation de ce jugement du tribunal de Libourne, largement diffusé, en situant cette affaire dans le contexte environnemental propre au vignoble bordelais, de sorte que chacun puisse s’appuyer sur des éléments tangibles pour forger son opinion

Affaire Petrus c/Petrus Lambertini. Match retour sur terrain civil

Après avoir échoué, lors d’un procès en pratiques commerciales trompeuses, à faire condamner des négociants bordelais qui proposaient à la vente un vin « Petrus Lambertini », la société exploitant le célébrissime cru reprenait une action en nullité de la marque pour déceptivité et en responsabilité pour atteinte à une marque jouissant de renommée. S’agissant de l’un des crus les plus prestigieux au monde, ce match retour, qui se jouait sur le terrain du droit de la propriété industrielle, était très attendu