Introduction of SARS in France, March–April, 2003

We describe severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in France. Patients meeting the World Health Organization definition of a suspected case underwent a clinical, radiologic, and biologic assessment at the closest university-affiliated infectious disease ward. Suspected cases were immediately reported to the Institut de Veille Sanitaire. Probable case-patients were isolated, their contacts quarantined at home, and were followed for 10 days after exposure. Five probable cases occurred from March through April 2003; four were confirmed as SARS coronavirus by reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction, serologic testing, or both. The index case-patient (patient A), who had worked in the French hospital of Hanoi, Vietnam, was the most probable source of transmission for the three other confirmed cases; two had been exposed to patient A while on the Hanoi-Paris flight of March 22–23. Timely detection, isolation of probable cases, and quarantine of their contacts appear to have been effective in preventing the secondary spread of SARS in France

Çédille, revista de estudios franceses

Presentació

Managing for the Conservation of Forest Landscape Connectivity Under Different Land Cover Change Scenarios

Landscape connectivity has become a key issue for the conservation of biodiversity to counteract the adverse effects of habitat fragmentation and to facilitate the accommodation of species to the shifts in their natural domains caused by climate change. It is actually being included into an increasing number of policies, programs and projects. However connectivity is a dynamic property affected by global and local changes (land use, climate, etc.), and landscape planning and conservation efforts should take into account the current and foreseen patterns of change in the landscape and habitat patterns. Here we compared the contribution of different forest habitat patches for maintaining connectivity across different land-use change scenarios, including (1) loss of forest patches through forest fires, conversion to agriculture, and urban development and (2) land use changes in the non-forest matrix that may cause a reduced connectivity in the forest landscape. We integrated each of these changes into a least-cost model, where the distance between forest patches is weighted by the effort (resistance) of a particular species to traverse the different landscape elements in the matrix (effective or least-cost paths). These effective distances were incorporated into the Probability of Connectivity index index (PC) (Pascual-Hortal and Saura 2006; 2007; Saura and Pascual-Hortal 2007), which is based on graphs and the habitat availability concept (Pascual-Hortal and Saura 2006; 2007). Through a new version of the Conefor Sensinode software developed specifically for these purposes, we analyzed the importance of each forest patch as a connecting element or stepping stone between the rest of the forest habitat, through the recently described PCconnector component of that index (Saura 2007). To illustrate this methodology we applied it to a forest-dwelling bird (Sitta europaea) in the region of Galicia (NW Spain), with an extent of 29574 km2. This bird, affected by forest fragmentation, has a median dispersal distance of 3 Km (Matthysen et al. 1995) and prefers wooded cover in its dispersal movements (Verboom et al. 1991), avoiding open areas (Bélisle et al. 2001). We model the population dispersal through the least-cost analysis, taking into account the intrinsic characteristics of each land cover type (increasing the resistance from wooded to open areas, according with the forest¿s natural succession schemes, and with maximum resistance on anthropogenic land uses) and the spatial context of each pixel (percentage of forest cover around each pixel), based on a recent model (Rodríguez Freire 2006; Rodríguez Freire and Crecente 2006; 2007) that was modified to incorporate the different analyzed land-cover changes. We illustrate how the different land-use change scenarios impact the connectivity of the forest landscape and how the conservation priorities in the landscape have to be adapted to minimize the consequences of land cover change. Finally, we discuss how the methodology can be applied to a wide range of forest landscape management applications in different countries, where both the conservation of the forest critical areas and an adequate management of the landscape matrix between them are of concern to achieve the sustainability of the ecological flows and ecosystem services in the forest landscapes.JRC.H.7-Land management and natural hazard

Network analysis to assess landscape connectivity trends: Application to European forests (1990¿2000)

Landscape networks and ecosystems worldwide are undergoing changes that may impact in different ways relevant ecological processes such as gene flow, pollination, or wildlife dispersal. A myriad of indices have been developed to characterize landscape patterns, but not all of them are equally suited to evaluate temporal changes in landscape connectivity as is increasingly needed for biodiversity monitoring and operational indicator delivery. Relevant advancements in this direction have been recently proposed based on graph theoretical methods to analyze landscape network connectivity and on the measurement of habitat availability at the landscape scale. Building from these developments, we modify a recent index and present the equivalent connected area (ECA) index, defined as the size of a single patch (maximally connected) that would provide the same probability of connectivity than the actual habitat pattern in the landscape. The temporal changes in ECA can be directly compared with the changes in total habitat area. This allows for additional and straightforward insights on the degree to which the gains or losses in habitat amount can be beneficial or deleterious by affecting landscape elements that uphold connectivity in a wider landscape context. We provide a demonstrative example of application and interpretation of this index and approach to monitor changes in functional landscape connectivity. We focus on the trends in European forests at the province level in the period 1990¿2000 from Corine land cover data, considering both changes in the forest spatial pattern and in the average permeability of the landscape matrix. The degree of connectivity was rather stable over most of the study area, with a slight overall increase in forest connectivity in Europe. However, a few countries and regions concentrated remarkably high changes in the analyzed period, particularly those with a low forest cover. The species traits also affected the responses to landscape pattern changes, which were more prominent for those species with limited dispersal abilities. We conclude discussing the potential of this approach for consistent indicator delivery, as well as the limitations and possibilities of application to a variety of situations, for which the required quantitative tools are freely available as open source projects.JRC.H.7-Climate Risk Managemen

Sustaining forest landscape connectivity under different land cover change scenarios

Managing forest landscapes to sustain functional connectivity is considered one of the key strategies to counteract the negative effects of climate and human-induced changes in forest species pools. With this objective, we evaluated whether a robust network of forest connecting elements can be identified so that it remains efficient when facing different types of potential land cover changes that may affect forest habitat networks and ecological fluxes. For this purpose we considered changes both in the forested areas and in the non-forest intervening landscape matrix. We combined some of the most recent developments in graph theory with models of land cover permeability and least-cost analysis through the forest landscape. We focused on a case of study covering the habitat of a forestdwelling bird (nuthatch, Sitta europaea) in the region of Galicia (NW Spain). Seven land-use change scenarios were analysed for their effects on connecting forest elements (patches and links): one was the simplest case in which the landscape is represented as a binary forest/non-forest pattern (and where matrix heterogeneity is disregarded), four scenarios in which forest lands were converted to other cover types (to scrubland due to wildfires, to extensive and intensive agriculture, and to urban areas), and two scenarios that only involved changes in the non-forested matrix (renaturalization and intensification). Our results show that while the network of connecting elements for the species was very robust to the conversion of the forest habitat patches to different cover types, the different change scenarios in the landscape matrix could more significantly weaken its long-term validity and effectiveness. This is particularly the case when most of the key connectivity providers for the nuthatch are located outside the protected areas or public forests in Galicia, where biodiversity-friendly measures might be more easily implemented. We discuss how the methodology can be applied to a wide range of forest landscape management situations, where both the conservation of the forest critical areas and an adequate management of the landscape matrix between them are of concern to achieve the sustainability of the ecological flows and ecosystem services at the wider forest landscape scale.JRC.H.3-Forest Resources and Climat

Laboratory Guidelines for Detection, Interpretation, and Reporting of Maternal Cell Contamination in Prenatal Analyses: A Report of the Association for Molecular Pathology

This document summarizes laboratory guidelines for the detection, interpretation, and reporting of maternal cell contamination in prenatal analyses

Chronique bibliographique - 2009-2012

peer reviewedChronique bibliographique qui, sur le modèle de "l’Inventaire Bibliographique des Isiaca" (IBIS), publié dans les "ÉPRO" entre 1972 et 1991, recense, avec un commentaire critique, les publications touchant aux cultes isiaques entre 2009 et 2012

[Treatment of information on personal health data for research purposes: nobody should ignore the law.]

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