Efficient extraction of canonical spatial relationships using a recursive enumeration of k-subsets

The spatial arrangement of a chemical compound plays an important role regarding the related properties or activities. A straightforward approach to encode the geometry is to enumerate pairwise spatial relationships between k substructures, like functional groups or subgraphs. This leads to a combinatorial explosion with th

Variability and short-term determinants of walking capacity in patients with intermittent claudication

OBJECTIVE: Global positioning system (GPS) recordings can provide valid information on walking capacity in patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and intermittent claudication (IC) during community-based outdoor walking. This study used GPS to determine the variability of the free-living walking distance between two stops (WDBS), induced by lower-limb pain, which may exist within a single stroll in PAD patients with IC and the potential associated parameters obtained from GPS analysis.METHODS: This cross-sectional study of 57 PAD patients with IC was conducted in a university hospital. The intervention was a 1-hour free-living walking in a flat public park with GPS recording at 0.5 Hz. GPS-computed parameters for each patient were WDBS, previous stop duration (PSD), cumulated time from the beginning of the stroll, and average walking speed for each walking bout. The coefficient of variation of each parameter was calculated for patients with the number of walking bouts (N(WB)) >or=5 during their stroll. A multivariate analysis was performed to correlate WDBS with the other parameters. RESULTS: Mean (SD) maximal individual WDBS was 1905 (1189) vs 550 (621) meters for patients with N(WB) <5 vs N(WB) >or= 5, respectively (P < .001). In the 36 patients with N(WB) >or= 5, the coefficient of variation for individual WDBS was 43%. Only PSD and cumulated time were statistically associated with WDBS in 16 and 5 patients, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: A wide short-term variability of WDBS exists and likely contributes to the difficulties experienced by patients with IC to estimate their maximal walking distance at leisurely pace. Incomplete recovery from a preceding walk, as estimated through PSD, seems to dominantly account for the WDBS in patients with IC

Current correlations of an on-demand electron source as an evidence of single particle emission

In analogy with quantum optics, short time correlations of the current fluctuations are used to characterize an on-demand electron source consisting of a quantum dot connected to a conductor via a tunable tunnel barrier. We observe a new fundamental noise for electrons associated with the quantum fluctuations of the electron emission time, which we call quantum jitter. In optimum operating conditions of the source, the noise reduces to the quantum jitter limit, which demonstrates single particle emission. Combined with the coherent manipulations of single electrons in a quantum conductor, this electron quantum optics experiment opens the way to explore new problems including quantum statistics and interactions at the single electron level

Measurement of finite-frequency current statistics in a single-electron transistor

Electron transport in nano-scale structures is strongly influenced by the Coulomb interaction which gives rise to correlations in the stream of charges and leaves clear fingerprints in the fluctuations of the electrical current. A complete understanding of the underlying physical processes requires measurements of the electrical fluctuations on all time and frequency scales, but experiments have so far been restricted to fixed frequency ranges as broadband detection of current fluctuations is an inherently difficult experimental procedure. Here we demonstrate that the electrical fluctuations in a single electron transistor (SET) can be accurately measured on all relevant frequencies using a nearby quantum point contact for on-chip real-time detection of the current pulses in the SET. We have directly measured the frequency-dependent current statistics and hereby fully characterized the fundamental tunneling processes in the SET. Our experiment paves the way for future investigations of interaction and coherence induced correlation effects in quantum transport.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, published in Nature Communications (open access

Motion-Aware Mosaicing for Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy

Probe-based Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy (pCLE) pro- vides physicians with real-time access to histological information during standard endoscopy procedures, through high-resolution cellular imaging of internal tissues. Earlier work on mosaicing has enhanced the potential of this imaging modality by meeting the need to get a complete representation of the imaged region. However, with approaches, the dynamic information, which may be of clinical interest, is lost. In this study, we propose a new mosaic construction algorithm for pCLE sequences based on a min-cut optimization and gradient-domain composition. Its main advantage is that the motion of some structures within the tissue such as blood cells in capillaries, is taken into account. This allows physicians to get both a sharper static representation and a dynamic representation of the imaged tissue. Results on 16 sequences acquired in vivo on six different organs demonstrate the clinical relevance of our approach

OC-0145: Preoperative radiotherapy with an integrated boost compared to chemoradiotherapy for rectal cancer

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Inhibiting LXRα phosphorylation in hematopoietic cells reduces inflammation and attenuates atherosclerosis and obesity in mice

Atherosclerosis and obesity share pathological features including inflammation mediated by innate and adaptive immune cells. LXRα plays a central role in the transcription of inflammatory and metabolic genes. LXRα is modulated by phosphorylation at serine 196 (LXRα pS196), however, the consequences of LXRα pS196 in hematopoietic cell precursors in atherosclerosis and obesity have not been investigated. To assess the importance of LXRα phosphorylation, bone marrow from LXRα WT and S196A mice was transplanted into Ldlr-/- mice, which were fed a western diet prior to evaluation of atherosclerosis and obesity. Plaques from S196A mice showed reduced inflammatory monocyte recruitment, lipid accumulation, and macrophage proliferation. Expression profiling of CD68+ and T cells from S196A mouse plaques revealed downregulation of pro-inflammatory genes and in the case of CD68+ upregulation of mitochondrial genes characteristic of anti-inflammatory macrophages. Furthermore, S196A mice had lower body weight and less visceral adipose tissue; this was associated with transcriptional reprograming of the adipose tissue macrophages and T cells, and resolution of inflammation resulting in less fat accumulation within adipocytes. Thus, reducing LXRα pS196 in hematopoietic cells attenuates atherosclerosis and obesity by reprogramming the transcriptional activity of LXRα in macrophages and T cells to promote an anti-inflammatory phenotype

PHYMYCO-DB: A curated database for analyses of fungal diversity and evolution.

International audienceBackground: In environmental sequencing studies, fungi can be identified based on nucleic acid sequences, using either highly variable sequences as species barcodes or conserved sequences containing a high-quality phylogenetic signal. For the latter, identification relies on phylogenetic analyses and the adoption of the phylogenetic species concept. Such analysis requires that the reference sequences are well identified and deposited in public-access databases. However, many entries in the public sequence databases are problematic in terms of quality and reliability and these data require screening to ensure correct phylogenetic interpretation. Methods and Principal Findings: To facilitate phylogenetic inferences and phylogenetic assignment, we introduce a fungal sequence database. The database PHYMYCO-DB comprises fungal sequences from GenBank that have been filtered to satisfy stringent sequence quality criteria. For the first release, two widely used molecular taxonomic markers were chosen: the nuclear SSU rRNA and EF1-a gene sequences. Following the automatic extraction and filtration, a manual curation is performed to remove problematic sequences while preserving relevant sequences useful for phylogenetic studies. As a result of curation, ,20% of the automatically filtered sequences have been removed from the database. To demonstrate how PHYMYCO-DB can be employed, we test a set of environmental Chytridiomycota sequences obtained from deep sea samples. Conclusion: PHYMYCO-DB offers the tools necessary to: (i) extract high quality fungal sequences for each of the 5 fungal phyla, at all taxonomic levels, (ii) extract already performed alignments, to act as 'reference alignments', (iii) launch alignments of personal sequences along with stored data. A total of 9120 SSU rRNA and 672 EF1-a high-quality fungal sequences are now available. The PHYMYCO-DB is accessible through the URL http://phymycodb.genouest.org/