Electrochemical Biosensors and Angiogenesis

Electrochemical methods provide attractive sensing techniques for biology. Electrochemical devices can be easily manufactured, miniaturized and are sometimes the only direct sensing method available. However, stability of these sensors is problematic, as foreign-body type reactions may induce distortions of the signal (biofouling). As a consequence, investigating the interactions with the biological matrix is of paramount importance to achieve reliable sensing. Different types of electrodes (boron doped diamond and different preparations of glassy carbon) and various electrode coatings were tested, in the presence of biological molecules. The results showed that boron doped diamond and fibronectin coated sensors offer good stability, even in the presence of high concentrations of proteins. A generally applicable protocol to assess the quality of electrode materials in biofouling conditions is also presented. Fibronectin has also been found to be a highly biocompatible coating, perfectly suited for cell-based measurements. This fibronectin coating was used on an electrode array to study the pathway leading to angiogenic factor induced nitric oxide release. Vascular endothelial growth factor, a well known angiogenic factor, was initially used and allowed me to setup a reliable and robust protocol for the use of electrode arrays in biology. It was then demonstrated that angiogenin, another angiogenic factor, leads to nitric oxide exocytosis through PI-3 kinase transduction

Complex Embeddings for Simple Link Prediction

In statistical relational learning, the link prediction problem is key to automatically understand the structure of large knowledge bases. As in previous studies, we propose to solve this problem through latent factorization. However, here we make use of complex valued embeddings. The composition of complex embeddings can handle a large variety of binary relations, among them symmetric and antisymmetric relations. Compared to state-of-the-art models such as Neural Tensor Network and Holographic Embeddings, our approach based on complex embeddings is arguably simpler, as it only uses the Hermitian dot product, the complex counterpart of the standard dot product between real vectors. Our approach is scalable to large datasets as it remains linear in both space and time, while consistently outperforming alternative approaches on standard link prediction benchmarks.Comment: 10+2 pages, accepted at ICML 201

Electrochemical sensing of angiogenin induced endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity

This paper was presented at the 2nd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2009), which was held at Brunel University, West London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IPEM, the Italian Union of Thermofluid dynamics, the Process Intensification Network, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.Angiogenesis, formation of new blood vessels, is a complex but critical phenomenon. In particular, it is regulated by different angiogenic factors. Nitric oxide (NO) is also a very well known biological mediator involved in vascular physiology. This study focuses on relationships between the effect of angiogenin, a major angiogenic factor, and extracellular NO release. NO concentration was sensed electrochemically using a fibronectin coated multiple microelectrode array. Angiogenin was shown to increase NO levels, thus triggering nitric oxide synthase (NOS) activity. Angiogenin reactive pathway being very complex, we have used various selective inhibitors of angiogenin to investigate the mechanism leading to NO production. Neomycin, an antibiotic blocking nuclear translocation, inhibited angiogenin effect on NOS. This result demonstrates that angiogenin activates NOS by interacting with the cell nucleus.This study is funded by Medermica Ltd; the DIUS; KICOS (K20602000681-08B0100-02210); the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (M10749000231-08N4900-23110); and the Korea Biotech R&D Group of Next-Generation Growth Engine Project (F104AB010004-08A0201-00410)

Langue de spécialité et noms propres : comparaison des noms de matériels militaires britanniques et américains

L’analyse d’un corpus fini et fortement motivé, à savoir les noms de matériels militaires contemporains aux États-Unis et en Grande-Bretagne, permet de poser la question d’une éventuelle différence de traitement lexical entre les deux aires linguistiques et en raison du changement éventuel de motivation dans un domaine identique.Through the analysis of a finite, specific and highly motivated corpus, i.e., the names of contemporary American and British military equipment, the paper examines the possibility of significant lexical differences between a British and American approach to a similar environment

L'ordre d'opération dans l'Armée de Terre

L'article étudie les caractéristiques majeures de l'ordre d'opération qui permettent de le définir en tant que genre : structure figée, normes de rédaction strictes, relations de l'auteur au destinataire.The paper studies the major characteristics of the operation order to be defined as a genre with its fixed structure, strict writing norms, relations between author and addressee

Ébauche d'une caractérisation de l'anglais de l'histoire

L'objectif de cet article est d'examiner les caractéristiques de l'anglais de l'histoire tel qu'il est possible de l'étudier à partir de seize articles de recherche en provenance de sources différentes et publiés au cours de ces trente dernières années. Il est également fait appel aux nombreux travaux d'historiens ayant réfléchi à l'écriture de leur discipline. Bien que retrouvant de nombreux éléments déjà présents dans les articles de recherche, et particulièrement rappelés par la communauté LANSAD au niveau de la structure et de l'organisation du discours, l'analyse suggère tout particulièrement l'absence d'une terminologie spécifique à la discipline « histoire », mettant ainsi en évidence le caractère original de l’anglais de cette discipline.This article examines the characteristics of the English of history as it appears in sixteen research articles of different origins published over the last thirty years. The study is also based on the many comments proposed by historians on the writing of their own discipline. Although it points out several constituting elements already present in other research articles, especially as described by the ESP community as far as the structure of discourse is concerned, the major conclusion suggested by the study is the absence of a specific terminology pertaining to history as a discipline, thus placing the English of history on an original footing when compared to the usual characteristics of ESP