Journals
2009 EN
Éloi Marijon · Ludovic Trinquart · Akli Otmani
+11 more
A 40-year-old woman was referred to intensive care unit after recurrent ventricular fibrillation. She was free of cardiac medical history or medications. The resting ECG displayed an extended early repolarization in the inferior leads and all the precordial leads. Incessant ventricular fibrillations justified a treatment by intravenous amiodarone associated with general anaesthesia and mechanical ventilation without success on ventricular fibrillation. Because of a low heart rate intravenous isoproterenol infusion was initiated. Isoproterenol infusion was associated with heart rate acceleration and a decrease in J point elevation and the disappearance of ventricular fibrillation episodes. No cardiac disease was documented and the patient was implanted of a single chamber ICD. Six months later the patient was free of syncope and ventricular fibrillation on ICD memory. This case report demonstrates the usefulness and efficiency of the isoproterenol infusion to eliminate recurrent ventricular fibrillation in patients with early repolarization.
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Laurent Mezeix · Christophe Bouvet · Julitte Huez
+1 more
Entangled fibrous materials have been manufactured from different fibers: metallic fibers, glass fibers, and carbon fibers. Specimens have been produced with and without cross links between fibers. Cross-links have been achieved using epoxy spraying. The scope of this article is to analyze the mechanical behavior of these materials and to compare it with available models. The first part of this article deals with entangled fibrous materials without crosslink between fibers. Compression tests are detailed and test reproducibility is checked. In the second part, compression tests were performed on materials manufactured with cross-linked fibers. The specific mechanical behavior obtained is discussed
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Sven G. Hyberts · Dominique P. Frueh · Haribabu Arthanari
+1 more
Non-uniform sampling (NUS) enables recording of multidimensional NMR data at resolutions matching the resolving power of modern instruments without using excessive measuring time. However, in order to obtain satisfying results, efficient reconstruction methods are needed. Here we describe an optimized version of the Forward Maximum entropy (FM) reconstruction method, which can reconstruct up to three indirect dimensions. For complex datasets, such as NOESY spectra, the performance of the procedure is enhanced by a distillation procedure that reduces artifacts stemming from intense peaks.
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Dominique P. Frueh · Alison Leed · Haribabu Arthanari
+3 more
We present a time-shared 3D HSQC-NOESY experiment that enables one to simultaneously record (13)C- and (15)N-dispersed spectra in Ile, Leu and Val (ILV) methyl-labeled samples. This experiment is designed to delineate the two spectra which would otherwise overlap with one another when acquired together. These spectra display nOe correlations in the detected proton dimension, i.e. with maximum resolution. This is in contrast to NOESY-HSQC types of experiments that provide cross-peaks in the indirect dimension with low resolution due to limits in experimental time. The technique is particularly advantageous at high field where even longer experimental times would be required for comparable resolution in NOESY-HSQC experiments. The method is demonstrated at 900 MHz and at 750 MHz on 37 and 31 kDa proteins, respectively. The resolution and time saving provided in this experiment was crucial for solving the structures of these two proteins.
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Marcela Villarreal-Silva · Rocío SuárezSánchez · Rafael RodríguezMuñoz
+2 more
We have adopted the PC12 cell line as in vitro cell model for studying Dp71 function in neuronal cells. These cells express a cytoplasmic (Dp71f) and a nuclear (Dp71d) isoform of Dp71 as well as various dystrophin-associated proteins (DAPs). In this study, we revealed by confocal microscopy analysis and Western blotting evaluation of cell fractions the presence of different DAPs (beta-dystroglycan, beta-dystrobrevin, epsilon-sarcoglycan and gamma1-syntrophin) in the nucleus of PC12 cells. Furthermore, we established by immunoprecipitation assays that Dp71d and the DAPs form a dystrophin-associated protein complex (DAPC) in the nucleus. Interestingly, depletion of Dp71 by antisense treatment (antisense-Dp71 cells) provoked a drastic reduction of nuclear DAPs, which indicates that Dp71d is critical for DAPs stability within the nucleus. Although Up71, the utrophin gene product homologous to Dp71, exhibited increased expression in the antisense-Dp71 cells, its scarce nuclear levels makes unlikely that could compensate for Dp71 nuclear deficiency.
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Nathalie Bertrand · Clara Desgranges · Dominique Poquillon
+2 more
The oxidation of iron has been studied at low temperatures (between 260 and 500 C) in dry air or air with 2 vol% H2O, in the framework of research on dry corrosion of nuclear waste containers during long-term interim storage. Pure iron is regarded as a model material for low-alloyed steel. Oxidation tests were performed in a thermobalance (up to 250 h) or in a laboratory furnace (up to 1000 h). The oxide scales formed were characterized using SEM-EDX, TEM, XRD, SIMS and EBSD techniques. The parabolic rate constants deduced from microbalance experiments were found to be in good agreement with the few existing values of the literature. The presence of water vapor in air was found to strongly influence the transitory stages of the kinetics. The entire structure of the oxide scale was composed of an internal duplex magnetite scale made of columnar grains and an external hematite scale made of equiaxed grains. 18O tracer experiments performed at 400 C allowed to propose a growth mechanism of the scale
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Rahel Sahli · Emanuel Christ · Dominique Kuhlen
+2 more
We report on a 74-year-old male patient who presented with progressive neuroophthalmologic symptoms soon after the administration of a long-acting gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist for treatment of a prostate cancer. Imaging revealed a destructively growing and extensively calcified sellar mass inconsistent with a pituitary adenoma. A transseptal transsphenoidal tumor mass reduction yielded a histological diagnosis of a collision tumor comprised of a gonadotroph adenoma intermingled with osteochondroma. We discuss a potential causal relationship between the administration of the long-acting gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist and the sudden appearance of the previously unsuspected sellar lesion. Although the association of these two tumors is very likely coincidental, the possibility of causal relationship is addressed.
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Carole Adam · Andreas Herzig · Dominique Longin
In this paper, we provide a logical formalization of the emotion triggering process and of its relationship with mental attitudes, as described in Ortony, Clore, and Collins’s theory. We argue that modal logics are particularly adapted to represent agents’ mental attitudes and to reason about them, and use a specific modal logic that we call Logic of Emotions in order to provide logical definitions of all but two of their 22 emotions. While these definitions may be subject to debate, we show that they allow to reason about emotions and to draw interesting conclusions from the theory.
Springer Science+Business Media
Journals
2009 EN
Chantraine Florence · Viana Marylène · Pouget Christelle
+5 more
The aim of this study is to limit the hurdles generated by the presence of a surfactant, i.e., sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), in effervescent detergent tablets containing a chlorine provider. The results are highlighted by investigating the tablet's functional characteristics (mechanical strength, disintegration time). A second objective is to increase the surfactant content of the tablet in order to improve the cleaning properties of the detergent formula without retaining the previous drawbacks. For low tablet porosity, mechanical properties are damaged by the presence of 2% of SDS and while disintegration through an erosion mechanism is slowed down. Experimental evidence indicated that these phenomena are associated with the coexistence of SDS and sodium dichloroisocyanurate (DCCNa). Their separation by locating SDS in the tablet core was encouraging but had limited value due to the slow dissolution of the SDS core. The problem was solved when 2% SDS was concentrated on one face of the tablet; however, a higher concentration induced a delayed disintegration due to the progressive erosion of SDS, which behaved as a massive solid. The coating of the tablet with SDS was beneficial because the dissolution of the film delayed effervescence and consequently disintegration. Neither coating the SDS particles with cellulosic film nor including them in zeolite was an appropriate solution. On the other hand, segregating SDS and DCCNa by placing them in separate layers of the tablet produced very conclusive results when microcrystalline cellulose and an effervescent system were added to the SDS. Furthermore, this bilayer tablet allowed the SDS content to be increased while a satisfactory tensile strength and a low disintegration time were retained.
Journals
2009 EN
Abdourrahmane M. Atto · Dominique Pastor · Grégoire Mercier
International audienceThis work addresses the unification of some basic functions and thresholds used in non-parametric estimation of signals by shrinkage in the wavelet domain. The Soft and Hard thresholding functions are presented as degenerate \emph{smooth sigmoid based shrinkage} functions. The shrinkage achieved by this new family of sigmoid based functions is then shown to be equivalent to a regularisation of wavelet coefficients associated with a class of penalty functions. Some sigmoid based penalty functions are calculated, and their properties are discussed. The unification also concerns the universal and the minimax thresholds used to calibrate standard Soft and Hard thresholding functions: these thresholds pertain to a wide class of thresholds, called the detection thresholds. These thresholds depend on two parameters describing the sparsity degree for the wavelet representation of a signal. It is also shown that the non-degenerate sigmoid shrinkage adjusted with the new detection thresholds is as performant as the best up-to-date parametric and computationally expensive method. This justifies the relevance of sigmoid shrinkage for noise reduction in large databases or large size images
Springer Science+Business Media