“Savages Who Speak French”: Folklore, Primitivism and Morals in Robert Hertz

Hertz's analysis of the Alpine cult of Saint Besse apparently marks a break from his studies of death, sin and the left to folkloric studies. This analysis helps one to understand the personality of Robert Hertz. His sociological curiosity about folklore reveals his ambiguous position in social sciences at the beginning of the twentieth century. His text appears to be a variation from the Durkheimian norm, but another reading could suggest that Hertz continued and went beyond Durkheimian thought to something between sociology of the modern world and engaged socialism. Through this study, Hertz linked his political ideals, his work in ethnology and his desire for social involvement. The cult of Saint Besse perpetuated as much religious tradition as local identity. The Alpine people were presented in the text as wilful perpetuators of an ideal social order, whose loss for his contemporary city dwellers Hertz feared. The alpine Other, marked by a material and moral backwardness, represented for activist and socialist Hertz one of the paths of balanced social organization that stabilized the identity of a group across time if it fit rather well into the folkloric stereotypes of the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, by linking events in Herz's life (e.g., the accidental Alpine death of his father), this article suggests that the legend of Saint Besse embodied several recurring motifs in Hertz' career: the accidental deaths of saint and father by falls, the military role of the saint and of Hertz himself

Gd(III) polyaminocarboxylate chelate: realistic manybody molecular dynamics simulations for molecular imaging applications

Realistic molecular dynamics simulations of polyaminocarboxylate complexes of gadolinium (III) ion in water are performed, providing coordination numbers and average residence times in quantitative agreement with available experimental data. A theoretical analysis, based on fitting a fluctuating charges model on ab initio data, also indicates that charge transfer between the ion and the ligand is significant

A Bayesian Model to Describe Factors Influencing Trough Levels of Vancomycin in Hemodialysis Patients

International audienceBACKGROUND/AIMS: In hemodialysis patients, there is a marked inter-individual variability in the pharmacokinetics of vancomycin. This retrospective study was carried out to design a model describing the parameters that may influence the trough concentrations of vancomycin (TCV) in hemodialysis patients. METHODS: A Bayesian model was constructed from data obtained during 314 hemodialysis sessions performed in 31 hemodialysis patients receiving vancomycin. The model's validity was assessed by goodness of fit. A bootstrap resampling method was used to calculate bias and accuracy for 80 predicted and observed TCV. RESULTS: A total of 31 patients underwent dialysis 3 times a week for a mean duration of 4 h. Their mean age was 69 +/- 12 years. The vancomycin infusion was started 30 min before the scheduled end of the dialysis session at a flow rate of 1,000 mg/h. The mean TCV of the study population was 16.1 +/- 3.2 mg/l. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve of the constructed model was 95.2%. In the validation sample (80 randomly selected TCV), the observed mean TCV was 15.8 +/- 3.6 mg/l, whereas the mean TCV predicted by the model was 15.7 +/- 3.0 mg/l. If the mean bias was low between the predicted and observed TCV (-0.1 mg/l), SD was high (3.43 mg/l). The variables most closely linked to TCV were in descending order: weight after dialysis, weight before dialysis, the dose of vancomycin administered during the previous dialysis session and creatinine concentration before dialysis. CONCLUSION: This simple model describes patient-related and dialysis-related parameters that mainly influence TCV. Before its use in clinical practice, this model should be validated prospectively

Performance of the extended use of the FilmArray BCID panel kit for bronchoalveolar lavage analysis

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) are responsible for an increase in morbidity, mortality, and prolonged hospital stay. A multiplex PCR kit such as the FilmArray BCID panel could allow early adaptation of antimicrobial therapy, which is crucial for clinical outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test the performances of FilmArray BCID panel for the detection of bacteria producing VAP. We tested the FilmArray BCID panel on 50 bronchoalveolar lavages (BALs), from patients hospitalized in two intensive care units at the Angers university hospital, compared to the conventional culture-based method. The sensitivity and the specificity of the FilmArray BCID panel were 67.2% and 98.9% respectively. They were 88.6% and 98.3% respectively when considering BALs with a positive culture > 10 CFU/mL, and 94.7% and 99.6% respectively if considering BALs with a positive direct examination. This study underlines the good performance of the FilmArray BCID panel for BAL fluid analysis. In case of positive direct examination, this test allows reliable results that can be obtained at an early stage, facilitating the early adaptation of antimicrobial therapy