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Competing Interests: Financial/Nonfinancial Disclosures The authors have reported to CHEST the following: V. C. reports nonfinancial support from Actelion; personal fees and nonfinancial support from Boehringer Ingelheim; personal fees from Bayer/MSD; other from Gilead; personal fees from Novartis; personal fees, nonfinancial support, and other from Roche SAS; personal fees and nonfinancial support from Sanofi; personal fees from Promedior; other from Celgene; personal fees from Galapagos; other from Galecto, personal fees from Astra Zeneca; personal fees from ReImagine; personal fees from Soun; personal fees from BMS; personal fees from PPDi; personal fees from IQVIA; personal fees from Exepi; and personal fees from Shionogi; none of which were related to this work. P.-Y. B. reports grants from Laboratoire Boehringer Ingelheim and Laboratoire Roche and personal fees from Laboratoire Boehringer Ingelheim and Laboratoire Roche, outside the submitted work. H. N. reports grants from Boehringer Ingelheim and Roche/Genentech and personal fees from Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, Galapagos, and Roche/Genentech, outside the submitted work. Y. U. reports personal fees from Boehringer Ingelheim and Roche and grants and nonfinancial support from Oxyvie, outside the submitted work. None declared (P. B., M. P. d. C., Y. A., J. L. P., C. P., B. Z., V. B., B. H., A. M., M. M., S. B., C. D., Y. T.-L., E. H.).

Despite the growing literature on figurative language processing, there is still debate as to which cognitive processes and neural bases are involved. Furthermore, most studies have focused on nominal metaphor processing without any context, and very few have used auditory presentation. We therefore investigated the neural bases of the comprehension of predicative metaphors presented in a brief context, in an auditory, ecological way. The comprehension of their literal counterparts served as a control condition. We also investigated the link between working memory and verbal skills and regional activation. Comparisons of metaphorical and literal conditions revealed bilateral activation of parietal areas including the left angular (lAG) and right inferior parietal gyri (rIPG) and right precuneus. Only verbal skills were associated with lAG (but not rIPG) activation. These results indicated that predicative metaphor comprehension share common activations with other metaphors. Furthermore, individual verbal skills could have an impact on figurative language processing., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Few studies on long-term exposure to air pollution and mortality have been reported from Europe. Within the multicentre European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE), we aimed to investigate the association between natural-cause mortality and long-term exposure to several air pollutants., Methods: We used data from 22 European cohort studies, which created a total study population of 367,251 participants. All cohorts were general population samples, although some were restricted to one sex only. With a strictly standardised protocol, we assessed residential exposure to air pollutants as annual average concentrations of particulate matter (PM) with diameters of less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5), less than 10 μm (PM10), and between 10 μm and 2.5 μm (PMcoarse), PM2.5 absorbance, and annual average concentrations of nitrogen oxides (NO2 and NOx), with land use regression models. We also investigated two traffic intensity variables-traffic intensity on the nearest road (vehicles per day) and total traffic load on all major roads within a 100 m buffer. We did cohort-specific statistical analyses using confounder models with increasing adjustment for confounder variables, and Cox proportional hazards models with a common protocol. We obtained pooled effect estimates through a random-effects meta-analysis., Findings: The total study population consisted of 367,251 participants who contributed 5,118,039 person-years at risk (average follow-up 13.9 years), of whom 29,076 died from a natural cause during follow-up. A significantly increased hazard ratio (HR) for PM2.5 of 1.07 (95% CI 1.02-1.13) per 5 μg/m(3) was recorded. No heterogeneity was noted between individual cohort effect estimates (I(2) p value=0.95). HRs for PM2.5 remained significantly raised even when we included only participants exposed to pollutant concentrations lower than the European annual mean limit value of 25 μg/m(3) (HR 1.06, 95% CI 1.00-1.12) or below 20 μg/m(3) (1.07, 1.01-1.13)., Interpretation: Long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution was associated with natural-cause mortality, even within concentration ranges well below the present European annual mean limit value., Funding: European Community's Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2011)., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: The Aphekom project aimed to provide new, clear, and meaningful information on the health effects of air pollution in Europe. Among others, it assessed the health and monetary benefits of reducing short and long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM) and ozone in 25 European cities., Method: Health impact assessments were performed using routine health and air quality data, and a common methodology. Two scenarios were considered: a decrease of the air pollutant levels by a fixed amount and a decrease to the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines. Results were economically valued by using a willingness to pay approach for mortality and a cost of illness approach for morbidity., Results: In the 25 cities, the largest health burden was attributable to the impacts of chronic exposure to PM2.5. Complying with the WHO guideline of 10 μg/m(3) in annual mean would add up to 22 months of life expectancy at age 30, depending on the city, corresponding to a total of 19,000 deaths delayed. The associated monetary gain would total some €31 billion annually, including savings on health expenditures, absenteeism and intangible costs such as well-being, life expectancy and quality of life., Conclusion: European citizens are still exposed to concentrations exceeding the WHO recommendations. Aphekom provided robust estimates confirming that reducing urban air pollution would result in significant health and monetary gains in Europe. This work is particularly relevant now when the current EU legislation is being revised for an update in 2013., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Short term associations between air pollution indicators and hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases have been suggested by epidemiological and clinical studies. The present study aims at estimating the association between particles with diameter <10 microm (PM(10)), nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) and ozone and hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases in eight French cities during the 1998-2003 period., Methods: The daily number of hospitalizations in each city was extracted from the French hospital information system (PMSI) for cardiovascular diseases, cardiac diseases, ischemic heart diseases and stroke. Excess relative risks (ERRs) of hospitalization associated with a 10 microg/m(3) increase in pollutant levels were estimated in each city by fitting a Poisson regression model, controlling for well-known confounding factors and temporal trends. City-specific results were then combined by inverse variance weighting., Results: Daily number of hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases was associated with PM(10) levels (for a 10 microg/m(3) increase, ERR=0.8%, 95% CI: [0.2, 1.5]), with NO(2) (1.1%, [0.6, 1.6]) but not with ozone (0.1% [-0.2%, 0.5%]). Associations were stronger in people aged 65 years and over, and when only hospitalizations for ischemic heart diseases were considered. No association was found between strokes and air pollution levels., Discussion: Our study suggests that the ambient levels of air pollutants currently experienced in the eight French cities, which are close to European air quality guidelines, are yet linked to a short term increase of hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases. These results are consistent with epidemiological and toxicological data on the cardiovascular effects of air pollution.

In the past few years many studies on air pollution and health based on time series have been carried out. Yet, this approach does not assess exposure to air pollution at an individual level but it is based on ambient concentrations measured by air quality monitoring networks. Questions on the estimates of exposure to pollutants have been raised, in particular the fact that background measuring stations only have been considered in the set up of pollution indicators. To assess the impact of exposure indicator characteristics on the results of time series analysis, two series (black smoke and sulfur dioxide, respectively) of exposure indicators to urban air pollution were set up taking into account a growing part of proximity measures (industrial sources) available in the studied urban area (Le Havre, France). For each pollutant, indicators distributions were almost similar, especially for black smoke. Whatever the pollutant, the most obvious heterogeneity could be observed between the 100% background indicator and the indicator including the arithmetic mean for all the stations (50% background stations and 50% proximity stations). Then the sensitivity of the associations between mortality and air pollution to these indicators was studied. These indicators did not show statistically significant differences in the estimated excess risk. Yet, confidence intervals were more statistically significant as the contribution of proximity stations was more substantial, in particular for SO2. To conclude, the use of proximity measurements did not influence dramatically on the mean estimates of the association between air pollution and mortality indicators in Le Havre. Therefore it does not seem relevant to include the data provided by the proximity stations in the urban exposure indicators within the context of the epidemiology monitoring system.