Etude comparative de l’exploitation traditionnelle de la pintade locale (Numida meleagris) dans deux villages, Toêghin et Sambonaye, au Burkina Faso

L’élevage de la pintade se pratique à Sambonaye comme à Toêghin, sans distinction de sexes, respectivement dans les régions du Centre et du Sahel du Burkina Faso. Il comporte dans sa pratique à la fois des avantages et également des inconvénients bien connus des p roducteurs. Cette activité représente, non seulement une source importante de revenus et de protéines pour la population, mais elle répond également à leurs besoins socioculturels. Les produits de cet élevage servent  essentiellement à la vente, à la reproduction, aux dons, à  l’autoconsommation et également aux sacrifices. Les différents  pourcentages affectés à chacun des éléments d’exploitation sont approchés dans cette étude. Cette activité est liée à la saison, car défavorable en saison sèche, elle est favorable à la saison des pluies. Mais, cet élevage connaît malheureusement des contraintes  multifactorielles, parmi lesquelles les contraintes sanitaires qui conduisent à des taux de mortalité très élevés. L’élevage de la pintade revêt plusieurs avantages et inconvénients avec lesquels l’éleveur est obligé de composer tous les jours. Mais les différentes voies d’exploitation de la pintade demeurent variables d’une année à l’autre et d’un village à l’autre.Mots clés : Burkina Faso, avantages, inconvénients, exploitation, pintades

The Clinical Utility of SUDOSCAN in Chronic Kidney Disease in Chinese Patients with Type 2 Diabetes

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Anti-CD47 antibody suppresses tumor growth and augments the effect of chemotherapy treatment in hepatocellular carcinoma

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is often associated with metastasis and recurrence leading to a poor prognosis. Therefore, development of novel treatment regimens is urgently needed to improve the survival of HCC patients. In this study, we aimed to investigate the in vitro and in vivo effects of anti-CD47 antibody alone and in combination with chemotherapy in HCC. METHODS: In this study, we examined the functional effects of anti-CD47 antibody (B6H12) on cell proliferation, sphere formation, migration and invasion, chemosensitivity, macrophage-mediated phagocytosis, and tumorigenicity both in vitro and in vivo. The therapeutic efficacy of anti-CD47 antibody alone or in combination with doxorubicin was examined in patient-derived HCC xenograft. RESULTS: Blocking CD47 with anti-CD47 monoclonal antibody (B6H12) at 10mug/mL could suppress self-renewal, tumorigenicity and migration and invasion abilities of MHCC-97L and Huh-7 cells. Interestingly, anti-CD47 antibody synergized the effect of HCC cells to chemotherapeutic drugs including doxorubicin and cisplatin. Blockade of CD47 by anti-CD47 antibody induced macrophage-mediated phagocytosis. Using a patient-derived HCC xenograft mouse model, we found that anti-CD47 antibody (400mug/mouse) in combination with doxorubicin (2mg/kg) exerted maximal effects on tumor suppression, as compared with doxorubicin and anti-CD47 antibody alone. CONCLUSIONS: Anti-CD47 antibody treatment could complement chemotherapy which may be a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of HCC patients. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.postprin

The Effects of Surfaces and Surface Passivation on the Electrical Properties of Nanowires and Other Nanostructures: Time-Resolved Terahertz Spectroscopy Studies

The electrical properties of nanomaterials are strongly influenced by their surfaces, which in turn are strongly influenced by device processing and passivation procedures. Optical pump-terahertz probe spectroscopy is ideal for measuring the native properties of these materials, determining the changes induced by device processing, and studying the effectiveness of surface passivation procedures. Here we study the electronic properties of III-V nanowires and other nanomaterials in both their native and encapsulated/integrated states, which is uniquely possible with terahertz spectroscopy

Nanowires in Terahertz Photonics: Harder, Better, Stronger, Faster

By virtue of their quasi one-dimensional geometries, III-V semiconductor nanowires present unique capabilities for terahertz photonic devices. Ultrafast terahertz polarisation modulators and miniature terahertz photoconductive detectors are two examples of such nanowire-based devices. By the same token, terahertz methods such as terahertz conductivity spectroscopy offer unparalleled insight into the electronic processes that dictate the performance of nanowire-based devices

Stressful life events and cancer risk

In a prospective cohort study in Denmark of 8736 randomly selected people, no evidence was found among 1011 subjects who developed cancer that self-reported stressful major life events had increased their risk for cancer

The Complexity of Vascular and Non-Vascular Complications of Diabetes: The Hong Kong Diabetes Registry

Diabetes is a complex disease characterized by chronic hyperglycemia and multiple phenotypes. In 1995, we used a doctor-nurse-clerk team and structured protocol to establish the Hong Kong Diabetes Registry in a quality improvement program. By 2009, we had accrued 2616 clinical events in 9588 Chinese type 2 diabetic patients with a follow-up duration of 6 years. The detailed phenotypes at enrollment and follow-up medications have allowed us to develop a series of risk equations to predict multiple endpoints with high sensitivity and specificity. In this prospective database, we were able to validate findings from clinical trials in real practice, confirm close links between cardiovascular and renal disease, and demonstrate the emerging importance of cancer as a leading cause of death. In addition to serving as a tool for risk stratification and quality assurance, ongoing data analysis of the registry also reveals secular changes in disease patterns and identifies unmet needs

The influence of conceptual (mis)match on collaborative referring in dialogue

When two dialogue partners need to refer to something, they jointly negotiate which referring expression should be used. If needed, the chosen referring expression is then reused throughout the interaction, which potentially has a direct, positive impact on subsequent communication. The purpose of this study was to determine if the way in which the partners view, or conceptualise, the referent under discussion, affects referring expression negotiation and subsequent communication. A matching task was preceded by an individual task during which participants were required to describe their conceptualisations of abstract tangram pictures. The results revealed that participants found it more difficult to converge on single referring expression during the matching task when they initially held different conceptualisations of the pictures. This had a negative impact on the remainder of the task. These findings are discussed in light of the shared versus mutual knowledge distinction, highlighting how the former directly contributes to the formation of the latter

Telerobotic Pointing Gestures Shape Human Spatial Cognition

This paper aimed to explore whether human beings can understand gestures produced by telepresence robots. If it were the case, they can derive meaning conveyed in telerobotic gestures when processing spatial information. We conducted two experiments over Skype in the present study. Participants were presented with a robotic interface that had arms, which were teleoperated by an experimenter. The robot could point to virtual locations that represented certain entities. In Experiment 1, the experimenter described spatial locations of fictitious objects sequentially in two conditions: speech condition (SO, verbal descriptions clearly indicated the spatial layout) and speech and gesture condition (SR, verbal descriptions were ambiguous but accompanied by robotic pointing gestures). Participants were then asked to recall the objects' spatial locations. We found that the number of spatial locations recalled in the SR condition was on par with that in the SO condition, suggesting that telerobotic pointing gestures compensated ambiguous speech during the process of spatial information. In Experiment 2, the experimenter described spatial locations non-sequentially in the SR and SO conditions. Surprisingly, the number of spatial locations recalled in the SR condition was even higher than that in the SO condition, suggesting that telerobotic pointing gestures were more powerful than speech in conveying spatial information when information was presented in an unpredictable order. The findings provide evidence that human beings are able to comprehend telerobotic gestures, and importantly, integrate these gestures with co-occurring speech. This work promotes engaging remote collaboration among humans through a robot intermediary.Comment: 27 pages, 7 figure