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Transplant recipients receiving a kidney from an extended‐criteria donor (ECD) are exposed to calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) nephrotoxicity, as demonstrated by severe delayed graft function and/or a low GFR. Belatacept is a nonnephrotoxic drug that is indicated as an alternative to CNIs. We reported 25 cases of conversion from a CNIto belatacept due to CNIintolerance within the first 6 mo after transplantation. The mean age of the recipients was 59 years, and 24 of 25 patients received ECDkidneys. At the date of the medication switch, 12 of 25 patients displayed a calculated GFR (cGFR)<15 mL/min, six patients remained on dialysis, and the biopsies showed evidence of acute tubular damage associated with severe vascular or tubulointerstitial chronic lesions. Three patients did not recover renal function, and three patients died during the follow‐up period. Among the remaining patients, renal function improved: The cGFRwas 18.28 ± 12.3 mL/min before the medication switch compared with 34.9 ± 14.5 mL/min at 1 year after conversion to belatacept (p = 0.002). Tolerance of and compliance with belatacept were good, and only one patient experienced acute rejection. Belatacept is an effective therapy that preserves renal function in kidney transplant patients who are intolerant of CNIs. An early switch from calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs) to belatacept improves renal function in CNI‐intolerant graft recipients of kidneys from extended criteria donors.

Les stents périphériques nus sont utilisés dans le traitement des sténoses artérielles symptomatiques. La technique mini-invasive de pose de ce matériel a permis de diminuer la morbidité postopératoire par rapport à la chirurgie prothétique par abord direct, surtout d’un point de vue infectieux. Nous rapportons ici le cas d’une infection d’endoprothèse vasculaire après angioplastie au ballon actif justifiant une revue de la littérature.

Recenser et déclarer les cas de néphropathies immuno-allergiques (NIA) observés dans les centres de néphrologie de l’Ouest de la France pendant un an. Étudier les médicaments en cause, la présentation clinique et biologique, la prise en charge et l’évolution de la fonction rénale trois mois après le diagnostic de NIA.

Aims Extracardiac complications of endocarditis influence diagnosis, therapeutic plans, and prognosis. The aim of this study was to assess how early combined cerebral and abdominal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) affects the diagnosis and management of adults with endocarditis. Methods and results In a single-centre prospective study, 58 patients with endocarditis underwent systematic cerebral and abdominal MRI within 7 days following admission. Diagnostic classification (Dukes modified criteria) and therapeutic plans were established by two experts just before and after MRI and then compared. Endocarditis was initially classified as definite in 29 patients, possible in 27, and excluded in 2. MRI detected cerebral lesions in 47 patients (81%) (ischaemic lesions in 25, microbleeds in 32, and silent aneurysms in 6), and abdominal lesions in 20 patients (34%). Based solely on MRI results without taking microbleeds into account, experts upgraded endocarditis diagnostic classification in 8 out of 29 (28%) non-definite endocarditis cases either to definite in 6 or to possible in 2. This upgrading was exclusively due to cerebral MRI in four patients and to cerebral and/or abdominal MRI in four patients. Experts modified endocarditis therapeutic plans in 11 (19%) out of the 58 patients, based solely on cerebral MRI, including modification of surgical plans in six (10%) patients. Overall, early MRI led experts to modify classification and/or therapeutic plans in 16 (28%) patients. Conclusion MRI identified cerebral and/or abdominal asymptomatic lesions in many patients with endocarditis, but more frequently cerebral. Both cerebral and abdominal MRI findings affected diagnosis, but only cerebral MRI affected clinical management plans. ClinicalTrials.gov identification number NCT 00144885 IRB authorization number 0511114 (Comité Protection des Personnes Paris-Ile de France 1)

HIV-associated multicentric Castleman disease (MCD) is associated with a high risk of developing nonHodgkin lymphoma (NHL). Rituximab is effective in HIV-MCD, but its impact on NHL incidence remains unknown. From a single-center prospective cohort, 113 patients were identified with a diagnosis of HIV-MCD for the present study. To compare the incidence of NHL between patients who had received a rituximab-based treatment (R+ group) and those who had not (R− group), data were analyzed before and after matching on propensity scores and after multiple imputation. The mean follow-up was 4.2 years. In the R− group (n = 65), 17 patients developed NHL (incidence, 69.6 of 1000 person years). In the R+ group (n = 48), only 1 patient developed NHL (incidence, 4.2 of 1000 person years). Based on the propensity score-matching method, a significant decrease in the incidence of NHL was observed in patients who had been treated with rituximab (hazard ratio, 0.09; 95% confidence interval, 0.01-0.70). Ten Kaposi sarcoma (KS) exacerbations and 1 newly diagnosed KS were observed in 9 patients after rituximab therapy. Rituximab was associated with an 11-fold lower risk of developing lymphoma. KS exacerbation was the most challenging adverse event after rituximab therapy.

The thermal decomposition of ammonium perchlorate has been extensively studied in the past. Nevertheless, the various results published illustrate, on the one hand, significant differences regarding the influence of different parameters on the decomposition and on the other hand, a lack of useful quantitative laws to predict the thermal behaviour of this crystal under a range of conditions (temperature, duration of exposure, presence of confinement).

Les bienfaits de l’activité physique sur la santé sont de plus en plus reconnus. L’activité physique permet en effet de réduire la prévalence du syndrome métabolique, on le sait. Mais au-delà de cette évidence, quels sont ses effets réels sur l’obésité et ses conséquences ? Sont-ils identiques sur les deux sexes ?

The copolycondensation of siloxane and silane bearing hydrido and methoxy groups, respectively, was carried out in a surfactant-free aqueous emulsion, at room temperature and using B(C6F5)3 as a water‐tolerant Lewis acid. Several characterization techniques, including triple detection SEC, 29Si NMR and MALDI‐TOF, confirmed the generation of linear polymers (no macrocycles), of average molar masses ranging between 30 and 80 000 g · mol−1, and bearing silanol end‐groups. Colloidal evolution with time showed that a stable surfactant‐free emulsion was generated before some coalescence occurs by decreasing the content of silanol groups suspected to stabilize the emulsion. The kinetics of reaction was followed by SEC, and revealed the generation of small cycles, along with linear oligomers, before converting them to poly(dimethylsiloxane) chains. A tentative mechanism, where ring‐opening polymerization of the most stranded cyclosiloxane and polycondensation of polymer chains are considered, is proposed.

La table ronde intitulée «Modèles de Partenariats Public-Privé en Europe, Comparaison France-pays européens »réunissait des représentants du secteur académique et industriel, de programmes scientifiques nationaux ou européens dans le domaine de la Santé, d’acteurs régionaux et nationaux du partenariat public-privé et des biotechnologies, et bien entendu de représentants d’institutions ou de programmes Européens ou extraeuropéens dans le domaine de le recherche en Santé, avec pour objectifs:

The workshop entitled “Public-Private partnerships models in Europe - comparison between France and European countries”brought together representatives of academia and industry, of national or European health research programs, of regional or national public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives, and of biotechnology with the following objectives:

Abstract: Since rewriting logic has been introduced, it has shown its adequateness both as a semantic and a logical framework. But the numerous applications of the rewriting logic in the above two areas has shown the importance of increasing its expressive power. Therefore, in order to facilitate this work, we will study in this paper how to generalize the transformation that from the equational logic has resulted in the rewriting logic. To achieve this purpose, we will show that there exists a valid and useful notion of rewriting logic associated to any rewriting theory fitting an abstract framework developed by two of the authors in previous papers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Theoretical arguments suggest that progressive gravity waves incident on a vertical wall can produce periodic standing waves only if the incident wave steepness ak is quite small, certainly less than 0.284. Laboratory experiments are carried out in which an incident wave train of almost uniform amplitude meets a vertical barrier. At wave steepnesses greater than 0.236 the resulting motion near the barrier is non-periodic. A growing instability is observed in which every third wave crest is steeper than its neighbours. The steep waves develop sharp crests, or vertical jets. The two neighbouring crests are rounded, at-topped, or of intermediate form. The instability grows by a factor of about 2.2 for every three wave periods, almost independently of the incident wave steepness.

We present a skeletonization algorithm defined by explicit Boolean conditions which are dimension independent. The proposed procedure leads to new thinning algorithms in two dimensions (2D) and three dimensions (3D). We establish the mathematical properties of the resulting skeleton referred to as the MB skeleton. From a topological point of view, we prove that the algorithm preserves connectivity in 2D and 3D. From a metric point of view, we show that the MB skeleton is located on a median hypersurface (MHS) that we define. This MHS does not correspond to the standard notion of median axis/surface in 2D/3D, as it combines the various distances associated with the hypercubic grid. The MHS specificities prove to make the skeleton robust with respect to noise and rotation. Then we present the algorithmic properties of the MB skeleton: First, the algorithm is fully parallel, which means that no spatial subiterations are needed. This property, together with the symmetry of the Boolean n-dimensional patterns, leads to a perfectly isotropic skeleton. Second, we emphasize the extreme conciseness of the Boolean expression, and derive the computational efficiency of the procedure. © 2002 SPIE and IS&T.

Standing gravity waves forced beyond the maximum height for perfect periodicity can produce vertical jets with sharp-pointed tips. In this paper, canonical forms for the wave crests are derived which display sharp cusps in the limit as the time t tends to infinity. The theoretical profile is in general quartic in the space coordinates, and can describe the smooth transition of a fairly low wave crest to a cusped form. There is no singularity as the surface slope passes through 45°.

A systematic exploration of the VH2/Vκ12–13 variable domains of the anti‐CD4 monoclonal antibody (mAb) 13B8.2 was performed by the Spot method to screen for paratope‐derived peptides (PDPs) demonstrating CD4 binding ability. Nine peptides, named CB1 to CB9, were identified, synthesized in a cyclic and soluble form and tested for binding to recombinant soluble CD4. Among them, CB1, CB2 and CB8 showed high anti‐CD4 activity. Competition studies for CD4 binding indicated that PDPs CB1, CB8, and the parental mAb 13B8.2 recognized the same complementarity determining region (CDR)3‐likeloop region. PDP CB1 was shown to mimic the biological properties of 13B8.2 mAb in two independent cellular assays, demonstrating inhibitory activities in the micromolar range on antigen presentation and human immunodeficiency virus promoter activation. Our results indicate that the bioactive CDR‐H1 PDP CB1 has retained a significant part of the parental 13B8.2 mAb properties and might be a lead for the design of anti‐CD4 peptidomimetics of clinical interest.

In a previous paper it was shown that in steep standing waves on water the collapse of a rounded cavity in the wave trough can produce quite high local vertical accelerations, initiating the growth of a strong vertical jet. In one example given here, the acceleration exceeds 100g. The main purpose of the present paper is to follow the subsequent development of the jet by means of a boundary-integral time-stepping technique. It is found that the jets tend to bifurcate into two halves, each forming a plunging or spilling breaker. The transition of the rising wave trough into a thin jet is here compared with an asymptotic flow in which the free surface is given by a quartic equation.

Trans-activation response (TAR) RNA-binding protein (TRBP) is a cellular protein that binds to the human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) TAR element RNA. It has two double-stranded RNA binding domains (dsRBDs), but only one is functional for TAR binding. TRBP interacts with the interferon-induced protein kinase R (PKR) and inhibits its activity. We used the yeast two-hybrid assay to map the interaction sites between the two proteins. We show that TRBP and PKR-N (178 first amino acids of PKR) interact with PKR wild type and inhibit the PKR-induced yeast growth defect in this assay. We characterized two independent PKR-binding sites in TRBP. These sites are located in each dsRBD in TRBP, indicating that PKR-TRBP interaction does not require the RNA binding activity present only in dsRBD2. TRBP and its fragments that interact with PKR reverse the PKR-induced suppression of HIV-1 long terminal repeat expression. In addition, TRBP activates the HIV-1 long terminal repeat expression to a larger extent than the addition of each domain. These data suggest that TRBP activates gene expression in PKR-dependent and PKR-independent manners.

In a plane hexagonal array of pores such as occurs in Thalassiosira oestrupiiand other related species of marine diatom, the presence of a single, exceptional pore near the center of the array can cause the distortion in the pattern in such a way that the pores tend to diminish in diameter Dwith increasing distance Rfrom the center. By a simple mathematical argument it is shown that for large values of R/Dthe pore diameter Dvaries as R−1/6. This decrease in pore diameter with distance may have some developmental consequences. The law is generalized to other types of pattern. The second type of constraint, related to the presence of outer boundaries, is also discussed.

A new system of equations for calculating time-dependent motions of deep-water gravity waves (Balk 1996) is here developed analytically and set in a form suitable for practical applications. The method is fully nonlinear, and has the advantage of essential simplicity. Both the potential and the kinetic energy involve polynomial expressions of low degree in the Fourier coefficients Yn(t). This leads to equations of motion of correspondingly low degree. Moreover the constants in the equations are very simple. In this paper the equations of motion are specialized to standing waves, where the coefficients Yn are all real. Truncation of the series at low values of ∣n∣, say n &lt; N, leads to ‘partial waves’ with solutions apparently periodic in the time t. For physical applications N must however be large. The method will be applied to the breaking of standing waves by the forming of sharp corners at the crests, and the generation of vertical jets rising from the wave troughs.

Some remarkable new series for p, in which the convergence is exponentially rapid, have been discovered by Bailey et al. [1, 2] using machine subroutines; see also Wagon [3]. An example is equation (17) below. Although the authors also provide algebraic proofs, these seem at first sight to be very special. The purpose of this note is to provide a more general demonstration and to deduce other instances of such series. It will be shown that all the results follow naturally from one or other of two simple lemmas.