Elaboration of integrated microelectrodes for the detection of antioxidant species

(Pt–Pt–Ag/AgCl) and (Au–Pt–Ag/AgCl) electrochemical microcells (ElecCell) were developed for the detection of redox species by cyclic voltammetry. A special emphasis was placed on the SU-8 waferlevel passivation process in order to optimize the electrochemical properties of the different “thin film” metallic layers, i.e. gold or platinum for the working electrode, platinum for the counter electrode and silver/silver chloride for the reference electrode. (Au–Pt–Ag/AgCl) microcells were applied for the detection of antioxidant species such as ascorbic and uric acids in phosphate buffer solution, evidencing high sensitivity but low selectivity. Works were extended to skin analysis, demonstrating that a good electrical contact with the skin hydrolipidic film allowed the effective evaluation of the skin global antioxidant capacity

Jacques COGET (éd.) 1994. L’homme, l’animal et la musique

Un ouvrage harmonieux comme un chant de la terre et familier comme un animal de la maisonnée que ce livre de la collection Modal ! Un manuel de musicologie qui se regarde comme un livre d’images (populaires, médiévales ou dix-neuvième, selon le sujet) et qui se médite comme un traité de la domestication des bêtes qui aurait des prolongements sur l’origine du langage… car il ne s’agit pas moins de onze articles documentés et novateurs qui rappellent et prouvent que l’Europe pastorale, d’avant ..

IS LEAF LITTER REMOVAL MORE EFFICIENT THAN LEAF LITTER SHREDDING TO CONTROL APPLE SCAB? A FIRST ANSWER IN A COMMERCIAL ORGANIC ORCHARD

In organic apple orchards, sanitation practices are a keystone of a sustainable scab management. Because the suppression of the inoculum by leaf litter removal could be a promising practice, we carried out an experiment to assess the interest of leaf removal versus leaf shredding on disease development and fruit damages. For one of the two cultivars studied, we showed that leaf litter removal can significantly decrease scab damages on fruit and leaf in comparison to leaf shredding

The domestication syndrome in Phoenix dactylifera seeds : toward the identification of wild date palm populations

Investigating crop origins is a priority to understand the evolution of plants under domestication, develop strategies for conservation and valorization of agrobiodiversity and acquire fundamental knowledge for cultivar improvement. The date palm(Phoenix dactylifera L.) belongs to the genus Phoenix, which comprises 14 species morphologically very close, sometimes hardly distinguishable. It has been cultivated for millennia in the Middle East and in North Africa and constitutes the keystone of oasis agriculture. Yet, its origins remain poorly understood as no wild populations are identified. Uncultivated populations have been described but they might represent feral, i.e. formerly cultivated, abandoned forms rather than truly wild populations. In this context, this study based on morphometrics applied to 1625 Phoenix seeds aims to (1) differentiate Phoenix species and (2) depict the domestication syndrome observed in cultivated date palm seeds using other Phoenix species as a "wild" reference. This will help discriminate truly wild from feral forms, thus providing new insights into the evolutionary history of this species. Seed size was evaluated using four parameters: length, width, thickness and dorsal view surface. Seed shape was quantified using outline analyses based on the Elliptic Fourier Transform method. The size and shape of seeds allowed an accurate differentiation of Phoenix species. The cultivated date palm shows distinctive size and shape features, compared to other Phoenix species: seeds are longer and elongated. This morphological shift may be interpreted as a domestication syndrome, resulting from the long-term history of cultivation, selection and human-mediated dispersion. Based on seed attributes, some uncultivated date palms from Oman may be identified as wild. This opens new prospects regarding the possible existence and characterization of relict wild populations and consequently for the understanding of the date palm origins. Finally, we here describe a pipeline for the identification of the domestication syndrome in seeds that could be used in other crops

Toll-like receptor 4, but not neutrophil extracellular Traps, Promote IFN Type I expression to enhance Th2 responses to Nippostrongylus brasiliensis

The induction of Th2 responses is thought to be multifactorial, and emerge from specific pathways distinct from those associated with antagonistic antibacterial or antiviral Th1 responses. Here, we show that the recognition of non-viable Nippostrongylus brasiliensis (Nb) in the skin induces a strong recruitment of monocytes and neutrophils and the release of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Nb also activates toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling with expression of Ifnb transcripts in the skin and the development of an IFN type I signature on helminth antigen-bearing dendritic cells in draining lymph nodes. Co-injection of Nb together with about 10,000 Gram-negative bacteria amplified this TLR4-dependent but NET-independent IFN type I response and enhanced the development of Th2 responses. Thus, a limited activation of antibacterial signaling pathways is able to boost antihelminthic responses, suggesting a role for bacterial sensing in the optimal induction of Th2 immunity

The reduction of 4-nitrobenzene diazonium electrografted layer: An electrochemical study coupled to in situ sum-frequency generation spectroscopy

This work describes an electrochemical study of 4-nitrobenzene diazonium (4-NBD) reduction onto glassy carbon (GC) electrode coupled to in situ sum-frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy. After 4-NBD grafting at 0.3 V vs. saturated calomel electrode (SCE) onto GC, SFG allowed a clear signal assigned to the symmetrical vibration mode of the nitro (NO2) groups to be observed at 1349 cm-1 or 1353 cm-1 depending on whether the spectrum was recorded in air or inside the solution. This result proved that 4-NBD grafting actually occurs at a potential as high as 0.3 V vs. SCE. The combination of SFG data and cyclic voltammetry (CV) also indicated that at such a potential, NO2 groups did not experience reduction process into hydroxylamine (NHOH) or amine (NH2) groups. The electrolysis of grafted NO2 moieties at -0.1 V was followed by CV and in situ by SFG. The exponential decay of the NO2 signal located at 1353 cm-1 vs. electrolysis time was in accordance with a charge transfer-limited reaction rate for a species immobilized at the electrode surface, and allowed a first order kinetic rate constant for NO2 reduction to be estimated k = 0.006 s-1. The integration of the peaks observed on the corresponding cyclic voltammograms (CVs) which were attributed to the NO/NHOH reversible system showed that the NO2 reduction produced both hydroxylamine and amine groups and was not quantitative. The fact that SFG spectroscopy was silent for long electrolysis time values suggested the remaining nitro groups to be located far from the electrode surface, as a consequence of an electron tunneling efficiency which decreased throughout the film thickness. Further electrolysis at -0.8 V allowed the remaining nitro groups to be reduced into NH2 with almost quantitative yields. All these results suggest the existence of a stratified layer during the electrolysis process, in which there is no limitation due to H+ diffusion in the organic film

Eur Respir J

Omalizumab is a monoclonal anti-IgE antibody used to treat severe allergic asthma (SAA). The aim of the STELLAIR study was to determine the importance of pre-treatment blood eosinophil count as a predictive measure for response to omalizumab.This retrospective real-life study was conducted in France between December 2015 and September 2016 using medical records of SAA omalizumab-treated patients. Response to omalizumab was assessed by three criteria: physician evaluation, reduction of >/=40% in annual exacerbation rate and a combination of both. Response rate was calculated according to blood eosinophil count measured in the year prior to omalizumab initiation.872 SAA omalizumab-treated patients were included by 78 physicians (723 adults (age >/=18 years) and 149 minors (age 6-17 years)). Blood eosinophil count was >/=300 cells.microL(-1) in 52.1% of adults and 73.8% of minors. By physician evaluation, 67.2% of adults and 77.2% of minors were responders and 71.1% adults and 78.5% minors had a >/=40% reduction in the exacerbation rate. In adults, the response rate for combined criteria was 58.4% (95% CI 53.2-63.4%) for blood eosinophils >/=300 cells.microL(-1) (n=377) and 58.1% (95% CI 52.7-63.4%) for blood eosinophils /=300 cells.microL(-1), and suggests that omalizumab effectiveness is similar in "high" and "low" eosinophil subgroups

Measuring the Expertise of Workers for Crowdsourcing Applications

International audienceCrowdsourcing platforms enable companies to propose tasks to a large crowd of users. The workers receive a compensation for their work according to the serious of the tasks they managed to accomplish. The evaluation of the quality of responses obtained from the crowd remains one of the most important problems in this context. Several methods have been proposed to estimate the expertise level of crowd workers. We propose an innovative measure of expertise assuming that we possess a dataset with an objective comparison of the items concerned. Our method is based on the definition of four factors with the theory of belief functions. We compare our method to the Fagin distance on a dataset from a real experiment, where users have to assess the quality of some audio recordings. Then, we propose to fuse both the Fagin distance and our expertise measure

The discovery of wild date palms in oman reveals a complex domestication history involving centers in the middle east and africa

For many crops, wild relatives constitute an extraordinary resource for cultivar improvement [1, 2] and also help to better understand the history of their domestication [3]. However, the wild ancestor species of several perennial crops have not yet been identified. Perennial crops generally present a weak domestication syndrome allowing cultivated individuals to establish feral populations difficult to distinguish from truly wild populations, and there is frequently ongoing gene flow between wild relatives and the crop that might erode most genetic differences [4]. Here we report the discovery of populations of the wild ancestor species of the date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.), one of the oldest and most important cultivated fruit plants in hot and arid regions of the Old World. We discovered these wild individuals in remote and isolated mountainous locations of Oman. They are genetically more diverse than and distinct from a representative sample of Middle Eastern cultivated date palms and exhibit rounded seed shapes resembling those of a close sister species and archeological samples, but not modern cultivars. Whole-genome sequencing of several wild and cultivated individuals revealed a complex domestication history involving the contribution of at least two wild sources to African cultivated date palms. The discovery of wild date palms offers a unique chance to further elucidate the history of this iconic crop that has constituted the cornerstone of traditional oasis polyculture systems for several thousand years [5]

The Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit: a consolidated design for the system requirement review of the preliminary definition phase

The Athena X-ray Integral Unit (X-IFU) is the high resolution X-ray spectrometer, studied since 2015 for flying in the mid-30s on the Athena space X-ray Observatory, a versatile observatory designed to address the Hot and Energetic Universe science theme, selected in November 2013 by the Survey Science Committee. Based on a large format array of Transition Edge Sensors (TES), it aims to provide spatially resolved X-ray spectroscopy, with a spectral resolution of 2.5 eV (up to 7 keV) over an hexagonal field of view of 5 arc minutes (equivalent diameter). The X-IFU entered its System Requirement Review (SRR) in June 2022, at about the same time when ESA called for an overall X-IFU redesign (including the X-IFU cryostat and the cooling chain), due to an unanticipated cost overrun of Athena. In this paper, after illustrating the breakthrough capabilities of the X-IFU, we describe the instrument as presented at its SRR, browsing through all the subsystems and associated requirements. We then show the instrument budgets, with a particular emphasis on the anticipated budgets of some of its key performance parameters. Finally we briefly discuss on the ongoing key technology demonstration activities, the calibration and the activities foreseen in the X-IFU Instrument Science Center, and touch on communication and outreach activities, the consortium organisation, and finally on the life cycle assessment of X-IFU aiming at minimising the environmental footprint, associated with the development of the instrument. Thanks to the studies conducted so far on X-IFU, it is expected that along the design-to-cost exercise requested by ESA, the X-IFU will maintain flagship capabilities in spatially resolved high resolution X-ray spectroscopy, enabling most of the original X-IFU related scientific objectives of the Athena mission to be retained. (abridged).Comment: 48 pages, 29 figures, Accepted for publication in Experimental Astronomy with minor editin