Cell-morphodynamic phenotype classification with application to cancer metastasis using cell magnetorotation and machine-learning.

We define cell morphodynamics as the cell's time dependent morphology. It could be called the cell's shape shifting ability. To measure it we use a biomarker free, dynamic histology method, which is based on multiplexed Cell Magneto-Rotation and Machine Learning. We note that standard studies looking at cells immobilized on microscope slides cannot reveal their shape shifting, no more than pinned butterfly collections can reveal their flight patterns. Using cell magnetorotation, with the aid of cell embedded magnetic nanoparticles, our method allows each cell to move freely in 3 dimensions, with a rapid following of cell deformations in all 3-dimensions, so as to identify and classify a cell by its dynamic morphology. Using object recognition and machine learning algorithms, we continuously measure the real-time shape dynamics of each cell, where from we successfully resolve the inherent broad heterogeneity of the morphological phenotypes found in a given cancer cell population. In three illustrative experiments we have achieved clustering, differentiation, and identification of cells from (A) two distinct cell lines, (B) cells having gone through the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, and (C) cells differing only by their motility. This microfluidic method may enable a fast screening and identification of invasive cells, e.g., metastatic cancer cells, even in the absence of biomarkers, thus providing a rapid diagnostics and assessment protocol for effective personalized cancer therapy

La delimitación del ámbito rural: una cuestión clave en los programas de desarrollo rural

The delimitation of rural areas has traditionally been a topic of considerable scientific interest. The contrasts between urban and rural areas, which are easily distinguishable both in the landscape and in their social and economic characteristics, have raised the interest to define a limit that has not always been easily detectable. Quantitative and qualitative criteria, and even a mixture of both, have been used to label rural and urban territory, sometimes using terminology that shows more of the gradation between the two concepts rather than their dichotomy. International agencies have not been oblivious to this concern, and have proposed methodologies for cataloging these areas and the people in them according to criteria of rurality. Furthermore, the «territorial approach» is one of the bases of the Rural Development Programs that have been applied in the European Union over the last twenty five years, which has given a new impulse to the research in this field.<br><br>La delimitación del ámbito rural ha sido, tradicionalmente, un tema de notable preocupación científica. Los contrastes entre el mundo urbano y rural, bien visibles en el paisaje y no menos elocuentes en las características sociales y económicas de ambos, han despertado el interés por definir un límite que no siempre ha sido fácilmente detectable. Unas veces, mediante criterios cuantitativos y, otras, cualitativos, incluso una mezcla de ambos, se han etiquetado territorios con denominaciones no siempre dicotómicas que han dado a entender más bien la gradación que existe entre la ciudad y lo rural profundo. Los organismos internacionales no han sido ajenos a esta preocupación y, consiguientemente, han propuesto metodologías para catalogar los espacios y las gentes que los habitan según criterios de ruralidad. A ello se une el interés de los Programas de Desarrollo Rural que en el marco de la Unión Europea se vienen aplicando en los últimos veinticinco años y que tienen en el denominado «enfoque territorial » uno de los pilares sustanciales; ello ha motivado un nuevo impulso en la indagación de este tema que tiene un indudable interés operativo.
 
 [fr] La délimitation du domaine rural a été traditionnellement un sujet remarquable d’étude scientifique. Les contrastes entre le monde urbain et le monde rural, facilement visibles dans le paysage et non moins évidents dans les caractéristiques sociales et économiques de chacun d’entre eux ont éveillé l’intérêt sur la définition d’une limite qui n’a pas toujours été facilement détectable. Avec des critères parfois quantitatifs, parfois qualitatifs, voire avec un mélange des deux, des territoires ont été étiquetés avec des dénominations pas forcément dichotomiques qui ont permis surtout de comprendre la gradation existante entre la ville et le milieu profondément rural. Les organisations internationales ont participé aussi de cette préoccupation, et ils ont donc proposé des méthodologies pour cataloguer les espaces et les populations qui les habitent selon des critères de ruralité. À cela s’ajoute l’intérêt des Programmes de développement rural appliqués les vingt-cinq dernières années dans le cadre de l’Union Européenne et dont un des éléments essentiels est «l’approche territoriale»; cela a donné lieu à un nouvel essor des recherches sur ce sujet, dont l’intérêt opérationnel est hors de question

Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Centre: Ensuring a high-quality altimetric dataset

Sentinel-3A is scheduled for launch in Oct. 2015, with Sentinel-3B to follow 18 months later. Together these missions are to take oceanographic remote-sensing into a new operational realm. To achieve this a large number of processing, calibration and validation tasks have to be applied to their data in order to assess for quality, absolute bias, short-term changes and long-term drifts. ESA has funded the Sentinel-3 Mission Performance Centre (S3MPC) to carry out this evaluation on behalf of ESA and EUMETSAT. The S3MPC is run by a consortium led by ACRI [1] and this paper describes the work on the calibration/validation (cal/val) of the Surface Topography Mission (STM), which is co-ordinated by CLS and PML

Measurement of the Bottom-Strange Meson Mixing Phase in the Full CDF Data Set

We report a measurement of the bottom-strange meson mixing phase \beta_s using the time evolution of B0_s -> J/\psi (->\mu+\mu-) \phi (-> K+ K-) decays in which the quark-flavor content of the bottom-strange meson is identified at production. This measurement uses the full data set of proton-antiproton collisions at sqrt(s)= 1.96 TeV collected by the Collider Detector experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron, corresponding to 9.6 fb-1 of integrated luminosity. We report confidence regions in the two-dimensional space of \beta_s and the B0_s decay-width difference \Delta\Gamma_s, and measure \beta_s in [-\pi/2, -1.51] U [-0.06, 0.30] U [1.26, \pi/2] at the 68% confidence level, in agreement with the standard model expectation. Assuming the standard model value of \beta_s, we also determine \Delta\Gamma_s = 0.068 +- 0.026 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps-1 and the mean B0_s lifetime, \tau_s = 1.528 +- 0.019 (stat) +- 0.009 (syst) ps, which are consistent and competitive with determinations by other experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, Phys. Rev. Lett 109, 171802 (2012

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

COVID-19 symptoms at hospital admission vary with age and sex: results from the ISARIC prospective multinational observational study

Background: The ISARIC prospective multinational observational study is the largest cohort of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. We present relationships of age, sex, and nationality to presenting symptoms. Methods: International, prospective observational study of 60 109 hospitalized symptomatic patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 recruited from 43 countries between 30 January and 3 August 2020. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate relationships of age and sex to published COVID-19 case definitions and the most commonly reported symptoms. Results: ‘Typical’ symptoms of fever (69%), cough (68%) and shortness of breath (66%) were the most commonly reported. 92% of patients experienced at least one of these. Prevalence of typical symptoms was greatest in 30- to 60-year-olds (respectively 80, 79, 69%; at least one 95%). They were reported less frequently in children (≤ 18 years: 69, 48, 23; 85%), older adults (≥ 70 years: 61, 62, 65; 90%), and women (66, 66, 64; 90%; vs. men 71, 70, 67; 93%, each P < 0.001). The most common atypical presentations under 60 years of age were nausea and vomiting and abdominal pain, and over 60 years was confusion. Regression models showed significant differences in symptoms with sex, age and country. Interpretation: This international collaboration has allowed us to report reliable symptom data from the largest cohort of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Adults over 60 and children admitted to hospital with COVID-19 are less likely to present with typical symptoms. Nausea and vomiting are common atypical presentations under 30 years. Confusion is a frequent atypical presentation of COVID-19 in adults over 60 years. Women are less likely to experience typical symptoms than men

First Sight of the Upper Tropospheric Humidity Variability during CINDY-DYNAMO : Exploitation of the SAPHIR Measurements

International audienceThe SAPHIR microwave radiometer onboard the Megha-Tropiques platform offers a unique insight of the tropospheric humidity through its 6 channels located in the 183.31 GHz water vapor absorption band. The special configuration of these channels gives the possibility to better constraint the retrieval of the relative humidity profile. More specifically, the 3 central channels (±0.2GHz, ±1.1GHz, ±2.8GHz) can be quite straitforwardly interpreted in terms of 3 layer-averaged upper tropospheric humidity (UTHs). The present work focuses on the study of theses UTHs, with a particular emphasis on the CINDY-DYNAMO period

lnterest of multi-species swards for pasture-based milk production systems

The objective of this 2-year study was to determine the potential ofmulti-species swards (MSS)for making secure forage availability in grazing dairy systems, and for increasing milkproduction on a per-ha basis. Four types of sward with increasing number of sward species(fi-om pure perennial ryegrass to a mixture of five species including perennial ryegrass, twoclovers, chicory and tall fescue) were compared with four block replicates. Treatments withinblocks were simultaneously grazed by four homogeneous dairy herds at the same pastureallowance. Total grazing days per season or per year were unaffected by treatment, but milkoutput per ha was greater for grass-legume mixtures and MSS compared to pure perennialryegrass swards. This was related to greater milk production per cow and per day. It isconcluded that, under favourable weather conditions particularly in late spring and earlysummer, advantages of MSS on milk output on a per-ha basis are main! y due to an improvedper-cow production rather than to increased pasture herbage production and grazing days/ ha