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Background: Lack of awareness of cognitive decline (ACD) is common in late-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recent studies showed that ACD can also be reduced in the early stages. Methods: We described different trends of evolution of ACD over 3 years in a cohort of memory-complainers and their association to amyloid burden and brain metabolism. We studied the impact of ACD at baseline on cognitive scores' evolution and the association between longitudinal changes in ACD and in cognitive score. Results: 76.8% of subjects constantly had an accurate ACD (reference class). 18.95% showed a steadily heightened ACD and were comparable to those with accurate ACD in terms of demographic characteristics and AD biomarkers. 4.25% constantly showed low ACD, had significantly higher amyloid burden than the reference class, and were mostly men. We found no overall effect of baseline ACD on cognitive scores' evolution and no association between longitudinal changes in ACD and in cognitive scores. Conclusions: ACD begins to decrease during the preclinical phase in a group of individuals, who are of great interest and need to be further characterized. Trial registration: The present study was conducted as part of the INSIGHT-PreAD study. The identification number of INSIGHT-PreAD study (ID-RCB) is 2012-A01731-42. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lack of awareness of cognitive decline (ACD) has been described at the preclinical and prodromal stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we introduced a meta-memory ratio (MMR) and explored how it is associated with neuroimaging AD biomarkers in asymptomatic individuals at risk for AD. Method: Four hundred forty-eight cognitively healthy participants from two cohorts of subjective memory complainers (INSIGHT-PreAD and ADNI) were included. Regression models were used to assess the impact of AD biomarkers on the MMR. Result: In both cohorts, there was a significant quadratic effect of cerebral amyloidosis on the MMR value. In particular, participants had a high ACD up to the amyloid positivity threshold, above which a decrease of ACD was eventually observed as the amyloid load increased. Conclusion: This nonlinear evolution of ACD in very early AD must be taken into account in clinical care and for trial enrollment as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contamination of soil and groundwater with nonaqueous phase liquid represents a major environmental concern because of the negative effect on human health. Traditional soil flushing techniques have been proved ineffective in heterogeneous aquifers, since liquids for remediation flow preferentially through the most permeable layers and residual oil remains trapped in the low-permeability sediments. To improve the sweep efficiency, fluids with lower mobility than resident liquids can be injected, such as polymers or in situ generated foam. In addition, foam has the potential of selectively reducing mobility in higher-permeability layers compared to lower-permeability layers. The use of foams has not been popular because foam mobility is difficult to predict. In this paper, a series of 1D column experiments were conducted to investigate the variation of the resistance factor RF as a function of the permeability. Five types of sand and calibrated glass beads were used to obtain porous media of permeabilities ranging from 250 millidarcy to 100 Darcy. Two commercial nonionic surfactants, $$\hbox {Triton}^{{\circledR }}$$ X-100 (commonly used but toxic) and sucrose laurate (environmentally friendly surfactant, biodegradable), were used at a concentration equal to 10 critical micelle concentration. Columns were first saturated with water and then flushed with 1.5 PV (pore volumes) of surfactant solution in order to achieve the adsorption of molecules into the soil matrix. Then, co-injection of air and surfactant solution was performed at a constant total rate to generate in situ foam. The quality of the foam was varied from 85 to 99 % to investigate the effect of this parameter on the resistance factor. A graphic showing the dependence of RF and the permeability is presented. Results suggest that for the same total flow rate, the RF decreases as permeability increases, but for permeabilities smaller than 1 Darcy, the RF is weak, probably due to the difficulty to generate stable foam under high capillary pressures. Variations in foam quality and surfactant type do not seem to have an important effect on the results regarding RF. The presented results are assistance for predicting foam behavior in porous media of different permeabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil flushing using aqueous solutions is employed to solubilise contaminants. As water solubility is the controlling mechanism of dissolution, additives (surfactants, cosolvents, etc.) are used to enhance efficiencies and reduce the treatment time compared to the use of water alone. The use of surfactant alone gives efficiencies of about 80–85 % in laboratory experiments, but the amounts of product to be injected are very important, which does not seem to be economically sustainable. Studies indicate that when soil flushing is applied in the field, efficiency is very variable; it can vary from almost 0 % to almost 100 %. This illustrates the importance of knowledge of the field (soil heterogeneities, type of contamination, etc.). Using only one product (surfactant, cosolvent, cyclodextrin) often gives moderate efficiencies and needs very large amounts of products, with a product:pollutant ratio higher than 100:1. On the other hand, the use of more complex methods involving micro emulsions or several products with polymer injection lead to high efficiencies at first and a product:pollutant ratio that can be lower than 5. The importance of the initial saturation of the non-aqueous phase liquid is highlighted: the higher the initial saturation, the higher the efficiency. For initial saturations lower than 1 %, soil flushing may not be a very efficient technique. This paper provides an overview of recent studies in the area of soil and groundwater remediation, from laboratory columns scale to pilot and real sites. The research has focused on chlorinated solvents as they are extremely difficult to treat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-absorbing beam splitters integrated on silicon are desirable for various micro-opto electro mechanical systems (MOEMS) devices. In this paper, we demonstrate the manufacturing with a 100% yield of dielectric membranes having a diameter up to 5.9 mm and an approximately 50% reflectivity in the 570-900 nm wavelength range. The membranes are made from a stack of up to 12 alternating SiNx and SiO2 plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) films deposited and annealed on silicon. Backside micromachining of the silicon wafer by deep reactive ion etching followed by XeF2 etching is used to release the membranes. Annealing effects on stress variation and hydrogen bonding in PECVD single films and multilayers were investigated in detail to get a multilayer stack with controlled tensile stress. Optical measurements of the reflectivity, flatness and vibrations of these membranes show that they are suitable for use in MOEMS devices working in the visible-near infrared range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that the recombination energy of the direct band gap photoluminescence (PL) of germanium can be controlled by an external mechanical stress. The stress is provided by an apparatus commonly used for bulge or blister test. An energy redshift up to 60 meV is demonstrated for the room temperature PL of a thin germanium membrane (125 nm wavelength shift from 1535 to 1660 nm). This PL shift is correlated with the in-plane tensile strain generated in the film. A biaxial tensile strain larger than 0.6% is achieved by this method. This mechanical strain allows to approach the direct band gap condition for germanium which is of tremendous importance to achieve lasing with this material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]