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The HybridKnife water-jet system (ERBE, Tubingen, Germany) has been shown to increase dissection speed and decreased the risk of perforation during endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD). Glycerol mixture is a viscous, long-lasting solution preferentially used by Japanese ESD experts. The combination of the HybridKnife system with a glycerol solution has not been evaluated to date. A prospective non-randomised comparative study of ESD with HybridKnife injecting of either a glycerol mixture or normal saline was performed. Twenty dissections (ten per group) were performed on four anaesthetised domestic mini-pigs. Dissection speed (mm2/min), size of the specimen (mm2), duration (min), en bloc resection rate, and bleeding and perforation rates were prospectively recorded. An evaluation of operator comfort and perception of safety (dissection score) was performed using a visual analogue scale with 0 being the worst score and 10 the best. High-pressure injection of the glycerol mixture and dissection with the HybridKnife was feasible without complications. Dissection was significantly more rapid (1.67-fold) with glycerol injection than normal saline injection (27.44 vs. 16.44 mm2/min; p< 0.001). The dissection score was significantly higher in the glycerol group than in the normal saline group (5.9 vs. 2.9; p< 0.001). No differences were observed in the rates of en bloc resection, bleeding and perforation. Seven first human cases were also easy without need of preliminary incision and technical complication. High-pressure jet injection of glycerol with HybridKnife for ESD is feasible and increases the speed and safety of the procedure compared with use of normal saline.

The Auroral Planetary Imaging and Spectroscopy (APIS) service, accessible online, provides an open and interactive access to processed auroral observations of the outer planets and their satellites. Such observations are of interest for a wide community at the interface between planetology, magnetospheric and heliospheric physics. APIS consists of (i) a high level database, built from planetary auroral observations acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) since 1997 with its mostly used Far-Ultraviolet spectro-imagers, (ii) a dedicated search interface aimed at browsing efficiently this database through relevant conditional search criteria and (iii) the ability to interactively work with the data online through plotting tools developed by the Virtual Observatory (VO) community, such as Aladin and Specview. This service is VO compliant and can therefore also been queried by external search tools of the VO community. The diversity of available data and the capability to sort them out by relevant physical criteria shall in particular facilitate statistical studies, on long-term scales and/or multi-instrumental multi-spectral combined analysis.

Entrée en service en octobre 1975, l'usine Framatome de Chalon-sur-Saône a une capacité de réalisation de huit chaudières nucléaires par an. Les auteurs décrivent la façon dont cette grande unité industrielle a été intégrée à l'environnement de la Saône-et-Loire, sur le plan de son implantation et de son impact extérieur. Ils présentent également l'environnement interne de l'usine.

In the framework of the Europlanet-RI program, a prototype of Virtual Observatory dedicated to Planetary Science was defined. Most of the activity was dedicated to the elaboration of standards to retrieve and visualize data in this field, and to provide light procedures to teams who wish to contribute with on-line data services. The architecture of this VO system and selected solutions are presented here, together with existing demonstrators.

A Data Access Protocol has been set up to search and retrieve Planetary Science data in general. This protocol will allow the user to select a subset of data from an archive in a standard way, based on the IVOA Table Access Protocol (TAP). The TAP mechanism is completed by an underlying Data Model and reference dictionaries. This paper describes the principle of the EPN-TAP protocol and interfaces, underlines the choices that have been made, and discusses possible evolutions.

In the Virtual Observatory (VO), the Registry provides the mechanism with which users and applications discover and select resources–typically, data and services–that are relevant for a particular scientific problem. Even though the VO adopted technologies in particular from the bibliographic community where available, building the Registry system involved a major standardisation effort, involving about a dozen interdependent standard texts. This paper discusses the server-side aspects of the standards and their application, as regards the functional components (registries), the resource records in both format and content, the exchange of resource records between registries (harvesting), as well as the creation and management of the identifiers used in the system based on the notion of authorities. Registry record authors, registry operators or even advanced users thus receive a big picture serving as a guideline through the body of relevant standard texts. To complete this picture, we also mention common usage patterns and open issues as appropriate.

L’endoscopie en urgence a acquis depuis de très nombreuses années toute sa place dans le traitement des occlusions digestives. L’amélioration du matériel, endoscopes souples, prothèses expansives, a permis d’obtenir une grande efficacité des procédures endoscopiques au prix d’une mortalité et d’une morbidité bien inférieure à celles de la chirurgie. For several years, endoscopy in emergency has become evident for treating occlusive syndrome. Material improvement, flexible endoscopes, self expandable metal stents, allow for effective procedures with lower mortality and morbidity than surgery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a prospective randomized multicenter trial that tested the efficacy of combining ursodeoxycholic acid and norfloxacin in the prevention of polyethylene stent clogging in patients with obstructive jaundice due to an unresectable malignancy at the level of the common bile duct. After insertion of a 10-Fr straight polyethylene stent, patients were allocated to receive oral treatment with ursodeoxycholic acid and norfloxacin, or conservative treatment. The primary outcome measure was stent blockage within six months. Thirty-three patients (group I) received ursodeoxycholic acid and norfloxacin, and 29 received conservative treatment (group II). At six months, cumulative stent patency rate did not differ significantly between group I (47 ± 11%, mean ± se, median 149 days) and group II patients (24 ± 10%, mean ± se, median 100 days, P= 0.23, log-rank test). Four stents were clogged by ursodeoxycholic acid. Survival did not differ between the two groups. Combined therapy with ursodeoxycholic acid and norfloxacin failed to improve stent patency. Moreover, ursodeoxycholic acid can cause stent obstruction.

The poem "Throes," by Jean-Marie Le Sidaner is presented. First Line: At any given moment, someone somewhere in; Last Line: napped breaths come to drown us?

The poem "Screens," by Jean-Marie Le Sidaner is presented. First Line: In every room of his apartment, screens are; Last Line: He's forgotten how.

The poem "The Alarm," by Jean-Marie Le Sidaner is presented. First Line: The television had announced the imminence of; Last Line: allowed to come back into its own.

The goal of this article is to show that, if one avoids star forming regions, mass-losing AGB stars can generally be selected from the data that will be provided by the near-infrared surveys which are presently considered. Also, if IRAS data are available, the separation between carbon-rich and oxygen-rich stars can be operated by their positions in infrared colour diagrams. In extragalactic systems, red supergiants can be discriminated from AGB stars by their luminosities.

We investigate the effect of the variability on the positions of AGB stars in colour diagrams. We try to evaluate the impact of this effect on the separation between oxygen-rich and carbon-rich stars.

We describe an online database for extrasolar planetary-mass candidates, which is updated regularly as new data are available. We first discuss criteria for inclusion of objects in the catalog: “definition” of a planet and several aspects of the confidence level of planet candidates. We are led to point out the contradiction between the sharpness of criteria for belonging to a catalog and the fuzziness of the confidence level for an object to be a planet. We then describe the different tables of extrasolar planetary systems, including unconfirmed candidates (which will ultimately be confirmed, or not, by direct imaging). It also provides online tools: histograms of planet and host star data, cross-correlations between these parameters, and some Virtual Observatory services. Future evolutions of the database are presented.