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Leaf Life Span (LLS) is used to classify trees into two main groups: evergreen and deciduous species. It varies according to the forms of life between taxonomic groups. Co-occurrence of deciduous and evergreen oaks is common in some Mediterranean type climate areas. Nevertheless, in the Tunisian forests, there is no enough information about the functional inter-specific diversity among oak species, especially in the mixed stand marked by the simultaneous presence of Q. suber L., Q. canariensis Willd. and their hybrid (Q. afares), the latter being an endemic oak species threatened with extinction. This study has been conducted to estimate the LLS, the relative growth rate, and the count of different growth flushes of samplings in semi-controlled conditions. Our study took 17 months, with an observation's interval of 4 weeks. The aim is to characterize and compare the hybrid species to the parental ones. Differences were observed among species, both for phenology and growth. Indeed, Q. suber saplings reached higher total height and number of growth flushes then Q. canariensis, while Q. afares showed much less growth flushes than the parental species. The LLS of parental species has exceeded the duration of the experiment, but their hybrid lost all leaves on all cohorts. The short LLSs of hybrid species are in accordance with this phenology in the field, but for Q. canariensis there was a contrast with observations in the field where phenology is strictly annual. This study allowed us to differentiate the hybrid from both parental species., {"references":["M. D. Schwartz, Phenology: An Integrative Environmental Science\", Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, 2003.","P. B. Reich, I. J Wright, J. Cavender-Bares, J. M Craine, J. Oleksyn, M. Westoby, M. B. Walters. The evolution of plant fuctional variation: traits, spectra, and strategies. International Journal of Plant Sciences164:S143-S164, 2003.","J. H. C. Cornelissen, S. Lavorel, E. Garnier, S. Diaz, N. Buchmann, D. E. Gurvich, P.B. Reich, H. ter Steege, H. D. Morgan, M. G. G. van der Heijden, J. G Pausas, H. Poorter\", A handbook of protocols for standardised and easy measurement of plant functional traits worldwide. Australian Journal of Botany 51, 335-380, 2003.","P. B. Reich, M. B. Walters, D. S. Ellsworth. Leaf life-span in relation to leaf, plant and stand characteristics among divers ecosystems. Ecological Monographs 62:365-392.1992.","M. L Navas, B. Ducout, C. Roumet, J. Richarte, E. Garnier. Leaf life span, dynamics and construction cost of species from Mediterranean old-fields differing in successional status. New Phytologist 159:213-228. 2003.","R. L. Eckstein, P. S. Karlsson, M. Weih. Leaf life span and nutrient resorption as determinants of plant nutrient conservation in temperate arctic regions. New Phytologist 143: 177-189. 1999.","K. Kikuzawa, \"Leaf survival strategy of forest trees\", Japanese Journal of Ecology 36: 131–136, 1986.","F. S. Chapin, \"The mineral nutrition of wild plants\", Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 11, 233-260, 1980.","P. B. Reich, M. B. Walters, D. S. Ellsworth. From tropics to tundra: global convergence in plant functioning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. 94:13730-13734. 1997.\n[10]\tK. Kikuzawa, \"A cost-benefit analysis of leaf habit and leaf longevity of trees and their geographical pattern\", American Naturalist 138: 1250–1263, 1991.\n[11]\tK. Kikuzawa, \"Leaf phenology as an optimal strategy for carbon gain in plants\", Canadian Journal of Botany 73: 158–163, 1995.\n[12]\tB. F. Chabot, D. J. Hicks, \"The Ecology of Leaf Life Spans\", Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 13:229-259, 1982.\n[13]\tL. D. Prior, D. Eamus and D. M. J. S. Bowman, \"Leaf attributes in the seasonally dry tropics: a comparison of four habitats in northern Australia\", Functional Ecology. 17:504–515, 2003.\n[14]\tA. Ishida, S. Diloksumpun, P. H. Ladpala, D. Staporn, S. Panuthal, M. Gamo, K. Yazaki, M. Ishizuka and L. Puangchit, \"Contrasting seasonal leaf habits of canopy trees between tropical dry-deciduous and evergreen forests in Thailand\", Tree Physiology 26, 643–656, 2006.\n[15]\tA. Sakai, D. M. Paton, P. Wardle, \"Freezing resistance of trees of the south temperate zone, especially subalpine species of Australasia\", Ecology 62: 563-570, 1981.\n[16]\t W. W. Adams, B. Demmig-Adams, A. S. Verhoeven, D. H. Barker, \"Photoinhibition during winter stress-involvement of sustained xanthophyll cycle-dependent energy dissipation, Australian Journal of Plant Physiology. 22: 261-276, 1995.\n[17]\tJ. Cavender-Bares, S. Apostol, I. Moya, J. M. Brianta, F. A. Bazzaz, \"Chilling-induced photoinhibition in two oak species: are evergreen leaves inherently better protected than deciduous leaves?\", Photosynthetica 36: 587-596, 1999.\n[18]\tF. S. Chapin, P. A. Matsonet, H. A. Mooney, \"Principles of Terrestrial Ecosystem. Ecology\", Springer-Verlag, New York, 2002.\n[19]\tY. Vitasse, S. Delzon, E. Dufrene, et al, \"Leaf phenology sensitivity to temperature in European trees: Do within-species populations exhibit similar responses?\", Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 149, 735-744, 2009.\n[20]\tC. H. Floret, M. J. Galan, E. Le Floc'h, F. Leprince, F. Romane, \"France. In: Orshan G, ed. Plant pheno-morphological studies in Mediterranean type ecosystems\", Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Press, 9–97, 1986, 1989.\n[21]\tP. Collin, P.M. Badot, B. Millet. \"Croissance rythmique et developpement du chˆene rouge d'Amerique, Quercus rubra L, cultiv´e en conditions control´ees\", Annales des sciences foresti`eres, INRA/EDP Sciences, 53 (6), pp.1059-1069, 1996\n[22]\tS. Herrmann, S. Recht, O. Angay, M. Bönn, L. Feldhahn, L. Tarkka, M.T.F. Fleischmann, T.E.E. Grams, F. Buscot, \"Endogenous rhythmic growthin oak trees is regulated by internal clocks rather than resource availability\", Journal of Experimental Botany 66:113–7127, 2015.\n[23]\tC. H. Daas, \"Exigences comparees en lumiere chez le Cheneliege (Quercus suber) et le Chenezeen (Quercus canariensis) en Tunisie et effet de la temperature sur la photosynthese de chenes mediterraneens et europeens\", These Faculte des Sciences de Tunis-Universite El Manar Tunisie, 158p, 2007.\n[24]\tQuero, R. Villar, T. Maranon, R. Zamora, L. Poorter, \"Seed-mass effects in four Mediterranean Quercus species (Fagaceae) growing in contrasting light environments\", American Journal of Botany 94: 1795–1803, 2007.\n[25]\tL. A. Turnbull, C. Paul-Victor, B. Schmid, D. W. Purves, \"Growth rates, seed size, and physiology: Do small-seeded species really grow faster?\", Ecology 89: 1352–1363, 2008.\n[26]\tM. I. Pe´rez-Ramos, G. Lorena Go´mez-Aparicio, R. Villar, L. V. Garcı´a and T. Maran˜on, \"Seedling growth and morphology of three oak species along field resource gradients and seed mass variation: a seedling age-dependent response\", Journal of Vegetation Science 21: 419–437, DOI: 10.1111/j.1654-1103.2009.01165.x, 2010."]}

The invasive Pomacea maculata (= Pomacea insularum) (Perry) (Island Apple Snail) is becoming increasingly abundant in the southeastern US with potentially detrimental effects on wetland vegetation and water quality. Here, we investigate the association of plant-community structure and aquatic-predator abundance with Island Apple Snail invasion in seasonal wetlands on a cattle ranch in south-central Florida. We found a negative correlation between Island Apple Snail abundance and abundance of its preferred forage species, raising concerns that the snail may have already altered plant communities in these seasonal wetlands. We also found a negative correlation between Island Apple Snail abundance in wetlands and distance to the nearest ditch. In a snail-growth experiment, we found a negative effect of species evenness and a positive effect of total vegetation cover on Island Apple Snail weight gain. To understand Island Apple Snail invasion success in seasonal wetlands, more research is needed on t...

Rodent monitoring in biomedical laboratories is a time consuming and tedious task. Several automatic solutions that rely on different types of sensors have been proposed. Computer vision provides a significantly more universal and less intrusive solution. In this article we propose a new method to detect and classify three behaviors in rodents: exploring, rearing, and static. The method uses motion history images and a multiple classifier system to detect the three behaviors under typical laboratory conditions. It is independent of the color of the rodent and of the background. The method performs equally well on short and long video sequences, achieving a success rate of 87 %.

Translator's introduction : At the end of July 2014 there was a week-long workshop held at the Ecole des Mines in Paris, Bruno Latour's former work-place. This was a final workshop, convened by Latour's project, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, which was not only a book, but a website that was an experiment in interactive metaphysics that had been going on for four years. About 30 participants gathered to workshop and rewrite some key contested areas that had been challenged on the site with discussions and counter-examples. One of the round tables working away during the week, occasionally with changes in personnel, was on Nature. Their job (like the other round tables on Politics, Diplomacy, Religion and Economics) was to ‘reboot’ or reinstitute a concept close to the heart of the Moderns. The assumption was that the traditional concept of nature, as developed through modern European history, would no longer be adequate to a future beset by environmental crises. The main people working on a draft were Didier Debaise, Pablo Jensen, Pierre Montebello, Nicolas Prignot, Isabelle Stengers and Aline Wiame. When they finished the draft, I translated it and it was presented, in French and English, in a final two-day public session at Science Po, to a group of seven international scholars designated as “charges d'affaires,” or “diplomats from the future” whose job was to assess the results of our labours in terms of how they might be met by Gaia, the ur-representative of future planetary crises. The text, originally under the title of Our “Nature,” was as follows. [Stephen Muecke]

Objectives: This study sought to determine clinical, procedural, and treatment factors associated with acute stent thrombosis (AST) in the EUROMAX (European Ambulance Acute Coronary Syndrom...

Prescription stimulant medications have been sought for cognitive “neuroenhancement”, the practice of enhancing ostensibly normal cognitive function such as attention span, focus, and memory. This trend, particularly studied in college students, has driven a debate about many ethical aspects related to cognitive enhancement; however, the central role of physicians and the medical ethics of this practice have been minimally investigated. In this paper, a clinical case serves as the focal point to review the current state of prescription stimulant use for enhancement, beginning with the medical and legal problems related to the surreptitious, yet common, behaviors of diversion and malingering. In contrast, there may be a growing trend for individuals to seek prescription stimulants “openly” (without malingering or diversion) as a direct request from their physician, which leads to complex ethical questions. A model of clinical-ethical decision making (the “four-box model” from Jonsen et al.) is applied to analyze the factors that a physician must consider when deciding whether to engage in the open prescribing of a stimulant neuroenhancer to otherwise healthy, autonomous adults. Four domains are explored in depth: medical indications, quality of life/beneficence, patient preferences, and contextual factors. Relevant experiences from the medical disciplines involved in athletic enhancement and cosmetic enhancement are discussed. Although an overall ethical framework for neuroenhancement continues to evolve, from a perspective of medical ethics there are presently significant reasons to be wary of cognitive neuroenhancement with stimulant medications.

SummaryThe language of psychiatry can be ambiguous and idiosyncratic, reflecting the elastic borders of mental illness and psychiatric disorder. This problem is not unique to psychiatry, but as the medical specialty moves closer towards a 'spectrum view’ of mental illness, psychiatric terminology increasingly risks misappropriation and conflation with lay concepts of normal suffering. Deciding what words mean and how psychiatric disorders are defined requires ongoing consideration of the pragmatic consequences, both intended and unintended. Refining the lexicon of psychiatry with an eye towards precision and the minimisation of stigma requires that terms be revised and updated from time to time, but often suitable word replacements remain elusive.

Veterans with mental illness tend to have shorter life spans and suboptimal physical health because of a variety of factors. These factors include poor nutrition, being overweight, and smoking cigarettes. Nonphysical contributors that may affect quality of life are the stigma associated with mental illness, social difficulties, and spiritual crises. Current mental health treatment focuses primarily on the delivery of medication and evidence-based psychotherapies, which may not affect all the above areas of a Veteran's life as they focus primarily on improving psychological symptoms. Clinicians may find greater success using integrative, comprehensive, multifaceted programs to treat these problems spanning the biological, psychological, social, and spiritual domains. These pilot studies test an adjunctive, holistic, behavioral approach to treat mental illness. This pilot work explores the hypotheses that engagement in a greater number of therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLCs) leads to improvement in quality of life, reduction of psychiatric symptoms, and weight loss.Institutional Review Boards for human subjects at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Greater Los Angeles and Long Beach Healthcare Systems approved pilot study activities at their sites. Pilot Study 1 was a prospective survey study of Veterans with mental illness, who gained weight on an atypical antipsychotic medication regimen, participating in a weight management study. At each session of the 1-year study, researchers asked a convenience sample of 55 Veterans in the treatment arm whether they engaged in each of the eight TLCs: exercise, nutrition/diet, stress management and relaxation, time in nature, relationships, service to others, religious or spiritual involvement, and recreation. Pilot Study 2 applied the TLC behavioral intervention and examined 19 Veterans with mental illness, who attended four classes about TLCs, received individual counseling over 9 weeks, and maintained journals to track TLC practice. Besides weekly journals, researchers also collected prospective data on quality of life, psychiatric symptoms, vitals, and anthropometric measurements. In both studies, investigators tested for main effects of the total number of TLCs practiced and study week using mixed-effects linear models with independent intercepts by participant.In Study 1, engagement in more TLC behaviors was significantly associated with higher ratings of quality of life, as well as greater weight loss for each additional type of TLC practiced. In Study 2, TLC practice increased significantly over 9 weeks, and was significantly associated with improvements in quality of life and diastolic blood pressure.Counseling Veterans to practice TLCs provides a holistic adjunct to current treatments for mental illness. TLCs may confer multiple benefits upon Veterans with mental illness, enhancing quality of life and well-being along with weight management efforts. As these were pilot studies, the samples sizes were relatively small and a control group was lacking. Our findings may have broader implications supporting a holistic approach in both primary and mental health care settings. Future research will expand this work to address its weaknesses and examine the cost differential between this holistic approach and traditional mental health treatment.

Deprivation-related pathology can take the form of faltering growth, medical neglect, psychomotor delay, and/or behavioral problems, in various combinations.

Deep Packet Inspection systems such as Snort and Bro express complex rules with regular expressions. In Snort, the search of a regular expression is performed with a Non-deterministic Finite Automaton (NFA). Traversing an NFA sequentially with a CPU is not deterministic in time, and it can be very time consuming. The sequential traversal of an NFA with a CPU is not deterministic in time consequently it can be time consuming. A fully parallel NFA implemented in hardware can search all rules, but most of the time only a small part is active. Furthermore, a string filter determines the traversal of an NFA. This paper proposes an FPGA Intermediate Fabric that can efficiently search regular expressions. The architecture is configured for a specific NFA based on a partial match of a rule found by the string filter. It can thus support all rules from a set such as Snort, while significantly reduce compute resources and power con-sumption compared to a fully parallel implementation. Multiple parameters can be selected to find the best tradeoff between resource consumption and the number and types of supported expressions. This architecture was implemented on a Xilinx R XC7VX1140 Virtex-7. The reported implementation, can sustain up to 512 regular expressions, while requiring 2% of the slices and 16% of the BRAM resources, for a throughput of 200 million characters per second.

Charged excitons, or X$^{\pm}$-trions, in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides have binding energies of several tens of meV. Together with the neutral exciton X$^0$ they dominate the emission spectrum at low and elevated temperatures. We use charge tunable devices based on WSe$_2$ monolayers encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride, to investigate the difference in binding energy between X$^+$ and X$^-$ and the X$^-$ fine structure. We find in the charge neutral regime, the X$^0$ emission accompanied at lower energy by a strong peak close to the longitudinal optical (LO) phonon energy. This peak is absent in reflectivity measurements, where only the X$^0$ and an excited state of the X$^0$ are visible. In the $n$-doped regime, we find a closer correspondence between emission and reflectivity as the trion transition with a well-resolved fine-structure splitting of 6~meV for X$^-$ is observed. We present a symmetry analysis of the different X$^+$ and X$^-$ trion states and results of the binding energy calculations. We compare the trion binding energy for the $n$-and $p$-doped regimes with our model calculations for low carrier concentrations. We demonstrate that the splitting between the X$^+$ and X$^-$ trions as well as the fine structure of the X$^-$ state can be related to the short-range Coulomb exchange interaction between the charge carriers., 13 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables

String matching hardware engines generally utilize Ternary Content Addressable Memories (TCAMs). Although TCAM-based solutions are fast, they are expensive and power hungry. This paper proposes a high-performance memory-less architecture for string matching called Split-Bucket. It offers a performance comparable to TCAM-based solutions. Moreover, it is reconfigurable and scalable to the size of the target string set and the width of the string. The architecture is characterized using the Longest Prefix Match problem for IP address lookup and is implemented on a Virtex-7 FPGA. For a real-world routing table with 524 k IPv4 prefixes, the Split-Bucket architecture achieves a throughput of 103.4 M packets per second and consumes 23% and 22% of the Look Up Tables and Flip-Flops of a Xilinx XC7V2000T chip, respectively.

This paper presents the design of pipelined IEEE 754-2008 decimal floating-point (DFP) multipliers targeting FPGAs. A key component of the architecture is the fixed-point multiplier function which impacts the overall performance and area utilization. In this paper, we propose a new method to realize this operation by carefully organizing the partial products and developing an algorithm for binary-decimal compression. The DFP multipliers with 5 to 12 pipeline stages are coded in VHDL and implemented on a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA. The overall design is compared with another approach based on fixed-point multipliers using a BCD-4221 compression technique. Using post layout extracted design data, our approach achieves a delay improvement in the range of 7.9% to 20.3% and an average LUT reduction of 5%.

Weight gain and other metabolic sequelae of antipsychotic medications can lead to medication non-adherence, reduced quality of life, increased costs, and premature mortality. Of the approaches to address this, behavioral interventions are less invasive, cost less, and can result in sustained long-term benefits. We investigated behavioral weight management interventions for veterans with mental illness across four medical centers within the Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System. We conducted a 12-month, multi-site extension of our previous randomized, controlled study, comparing treatment and control groups. Veterans (and some non-veteran women) diagnosed with mental illness, overweight (defined as having a BMI over 25), and required ongoing antipsychotic therapy. One group received “Lifestyle Balance” (LB; modified from the Diabetes Prevention Program) consisting of classes and individual nutritional counseling with a dietitian. A second group received less intensive “Usual Care” (UC) consisting of weight monitoring and provision of self-help. Participants completed anthropometric and nutrition assessments weekly for 8 weeks, then monthly. Psychiatric, behavioral, and physical assessments were conducted at baseline and months 2, 6, and 12. Metabolic and lipid laboratory tests were performed quarterly. Participants in both groups lost weight. LB participants had a greater decrease in average waist circumference [F(1,1244) = 11.9, p

Background: Second-generation antipsychotic medications have proven effective for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) but may cause weight gain and other metabolic sequelae. Investigators designed and assessed a 12-month behavioral intervention for overweight/obese patients with SMI called “Lifestyle Balance” (LB), based on the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP), which was tested at 4 VA sites.

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Background: The delivery of mental health care is shifting to one that is patient-centered and recovery-oriented, with the goal of increasing quality of life. These pilot studies test an adjunctive, holistic, behavioral approach to treating serious mental illness (SMI) and medication-associated weight gain; investigators hypothesized that engagement in a greater number of therapeutic lifestyle changes (TLCs) leads to improvement in quality of life, reduction of psychiatric symptoms, and weight loss.

Snort and Bro are Deep Packet Inspection systems which express complex rules with regular expressions. Before performing a regular expression search, these applications apply a filter to select which regular expressions must be searched. One way to search a regular expression is through a Nondeterministic Finite Automaton (NFA). Traversing an NFA is very time consuming on a sequential machine like a CPU. One solution so is to implement the NFA into hardware. Since FPGAs are reconfigurable and are massively parallel they are a good solution. Moreover, with the advent of platforms combining FPGAs and CPUs, implementing accelerators into FPGA becomes very interesting. Even though FPGAs are reconfigurable, the reconfiguration time can be too long in some cases. This paper thus proposes an overlay architecture that can efficiently find matches for regular expressions. The architecture contains multiple contexts that allow fast reconfiguration. Based on the results of a string filter, a context is selected and regular expression search is performed. The proposed design can support all rules from a set such as Snort while significantly reducing compute resources and allowing fast context updates. An example architecture was implemented on a Xilinx® xc7a200 Artix-7. It achieves a throughput of 100 million characters per second, requires 20 ns for a context switch, and occupies 9% of the slices and 85% of the BRAM resources of the FPGA.

Tattooing the skin as a means of personal expression is a ritualized practice that has been around for centuries across many different cultures. Accordingly, the symbolic meaning of tattoos has evolved over time and is highly individualized, from both the internal perspective of the wearer and the external perspective of an observer. Within modern Western societies through the 1970s, tattoos represented a cultural taboo, typically associated with those outside of the mainstream such as soldiers, incarcerated criminals, gang members, and others belonging to marginalized and counter-cultural groups. This paper aims to review the more recent epidemiology of tattoos in Western culture in order to establish that tattooing has become a mainstream phenomenon. We then review psychological and psychiatric aspects of tattoos, with a goal of revising outmoded stigmas about tattooing and helping clinicians working with tattooed patients to facilitate an exploration of the personal meaning of skin art and self-identity. We suggest that as a kind of augmentation of the physical exam, looking at and talking to patients about their tattoos can provide a valuable window into the psyche, informing clinical practice.

We have developed and tested a doubly tunable resonator, with the intention to simulate fast motion of the resonator boundaries in real space. Our device is a superconducting coplanar-waveguide half-wavelength microwave resonator, with fundamental resonant frequency ~5 GHz. Both of its ends are terminated by dc-SQUIDs, which serve as magnetic-flux-controlled inductances. Applying a flux to either SQUID allows tuning of the resonant frequency by approximately 700 MHz. By using two separate on-chip magnetic-flux lines, we modulate the SQUIDs with two tones of equal frequency, close to twice that of the resonator's fundamental mode. We observe photon generation, at the fundamental frequency, above a certain pump amplitude threshold. By varying the relative phase of the two pumps we are able to control the photon generation threshold, in good agreement with a theoretical model for the modulation of the boundary conditions. At the same time, some of our observations deviate from the theoretical predictions, which we attribute to parasitic couplings, resulting in current driving of the SQUIDs., Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures

Resume Contexte Le syndrome du « bebe secoue » (SBS) associe classiquement des hemorragies intracrâniennes et retiniennes chez un enfant de moins de 2 ans. Les sequelles neurologiques etant frequentes, l’enfant peut pretendre a une indemnisation de son dommage. Notre etude trouve sa justification dans l’absence de litterature consacree au traitement judiciaire des SBS. Population et methode Il s’git d’une etude retrospective sur 10 ans des SBS signales aux tribunaux de grande instance (TGI) de Rennes et Saint-Malo. Les dossiers ont ete recenses a partir des archives du departement d’information medicale, de la cellule d’accueil specialise de l’enfance en danger et du service de medecine legale du centre hospitalier universitaire (CHU) de Rennes. Les dossiers judiciaires ont ete consultes apres accord des procureurs de la Republique. Resultats Sur 34 dossiers inclus, 12 n’ont pu etre consultes, 16 avaient abouti a un classement sans suite ou une ordonnance de non-lieu. Six dossiers ont abouti a une condamnation penale. L’auteur etait le pere (n = 5) ou l’assistante maternelle (n = 1). Il existait 3 jugements sur interets civils dont le montant moyen etait de 3333 euros (ecart-type 2082). Seulement 2 enfants ont ete indemnises par une Commission d’indemnisation des victimes d’infraction (CIVI). Conclusion La majorite des dossiers aboutit a une absence de condamnation et d’indemnisation. Le diagnostic medical de « secousses » et donc la potentielle intervention d’un tiers ne se traduisent pas necessairement par une condamnation penale. La designation systematique d’un administrateur ad hoc pourrait permettre une saisine plus frequente de la CIVI.

Resume La possibilite de signaler aux autorites judiciaires ou administratives des faits de sevices ou de privations est une derogation legale au secret professionnel auquel sont astreints les pediatres. Le signalement de situations de danger evidentes necessitant des mesures urgentes ne pose generalement pas de difficultes pour les praticiens. Mais il est des situations plus complexes dans lesquelles l’evidence du danger et l’urgence de l’action sont moins certaines, et ou la question de l’opportunite du signalement se pose. Les poursuites contre un medecin a raison d’un signalement sont rares et les condamnations restent exceptionnelles. Dans une affaire recente concernant un pediatre, le juge disciplinaire ordinal et le juge civil ont considere que la faute du medecin residait non dans le fait d’avoir signale, mais de l’avoir fait en manquant de prudence et de circonspection, compte tenu du caractere conflictuel du divorce des parents. Les juridictions ont par ailleurs considere que les faits denonces ne constituaient pas des sevices ou des privations. Dans de tels cas, la prudence et la circonspection encouragent a promouvoir une evaluation pluridisciplinaire des enfants et des familles, associant pediatres, medecins legistes, pedopsychiatres et services sociaux.

P4 is an emergent packet-processing language with which the user can describe how the packets are to be processed in a switching element. This paper presents a way to implement complex operations that are not natively supported in P4. In this work, we explored two different methods to add extensions to P4: i) using new native primitives and ii) using extern instances. As a case study, an ROHC entity was implemented and invoked in a P4 program. The tests showed similar relative performance in both methods in terms of normalized packet latency. However, extern instances appear to be more suitable for target-specific switching applications, where the manufacturer/vendor can specify its own specific operations without changes in the P4 syntax and semantics. Extern instances only require changes in the target-specific backend compiler while keeping the P4 frontend compiler unchanged. The use of externs also results in a more elegant code solution since they are implemented outside the switch-core, thus reducing side effects risks that can be caused by a modification in a switch pipeline implementation., 6 pages, 4 figures, 3 listings

Introduction L’infection disseminee a Histoplasma capsulatum est la principale infection opportuniste rapportee chez les patients atteints du sida en Guyane. Sa localisation au systeme nerveux central (SNC) est cependant rarement decrite. L’objectif principal de cette etude etait d’estimer l’incidence de l’histoplasmose liee au SIDA en zone d’endemie. L’objectif secondaire etait de decrire les caracteristiques cliniques et paracliniques. Materiels et methodes Une etude observationnelle, prospective et multicentrique a ete realisee du 1er janvier 1990 au 31 decembre 2014, chez des patients infectes par le VIH (PVVIH) admis pour histoplasmose dans l’un des trois hopitaux de Guyane. Tous les cas d’histoplasmose ont ete confirmes grâce aux criteres EORTC-MSG et ont ete decrits. Une histoplamose du SNC etait definie par l’identification du champignon par culture ou par PCR sur le liquide cerebro-spinal (LCS). Resultats Parmi les 345 PVVIH presentant un diagnostic d’histoplasmose sur la periode d’etude de 25 ans, 6 (1,7 %) avaient un LCS positif pour Histoplasma capsulatum en culture et PCR (5) ou PCR seulement (1). Le delai median entre l’apparition des signes et le diagnostic mycologique etait de 23 jours (1 a 68). Le sex-ratio H/F etait de 0,5, l’âge median de 40 ans (33 a 48). La numeration des CD4 variait de 7 a 65/mm3 (mediane 42,5/mm3). Cinq des six patients avaient des signes neurologiques, tels que meningo-encephalite, syndrome meninge, cephalee febrile, deficit focal, retard psychomoteur, ataxie et/ou confusion. L’anemie, la neutropenie et une augmentation de la CRP etaient associees a l’atteinte du SNC. L’imagerie du SNC etait anormale pour la moitie des patients. Deux des trois patients traites par un traitement antifongique ont recu de l’itraconazole. Deux patients sont morts dans le mois qui a suivi l’admission (33 % de letalite a 28 jours). Conclusion A notre connaissance, il s’agit de la plus grande serie de cas d’atteinte rare du SNC par l’histoplasmose liee au SIDA. Le diagnostic etait difficile chez les PVVIH fortement immunodeprimes presentant une image clinique et paraclinique non specifique. Le principal diagnostic differentiel est la tuberculose du SNC. La recherche de cette mycose profonde doit etre systematique devant tout PVVIH immunodeprime presentant une atteinte neurologique et vivant ou revenant d’une zone d’endemie. Des outils de diagnostic plus sensibles sont necessaires pour eviter les erreurs et retard de diagnostic et prendre en charge correctement les patients.

Introduction La polykystose renale autosomique dominante (PKAD) est la 1re cause genetique d’insuffisance renale terminale. La dialyse peritoneale (DP) est sous utilisee du fait des d’organomegalies renales et hepatiques faisant craindre une hyperpression intra-peritoneale et d’un echec technique. Methodes Le but de notre etude est de mieux comprendre les determinants de la pression intra-peritoneale (PIP) des patients atteints de PKAD en DP. Etude retrospective multicentrique sur les patients polykystiques ayant initie la DP entre le 01/01/2010 et le 31/12/2017. Une PIP devait etre mesuree dans la premiere annee et un TDM abdomino-pelvien avoir ete effectue. Recueil de parametres cliniques et radiologiques. Relecture centralisee, en aveugle des TDM avec mesure des volumes par contourage. Analyses univariees et multivariees pour etude de la correlation avec la PIP. Realisation d’un score predictif de la PIP avec calcul du coefficient de correlation intraclasse. Resultats obtenus ou attendus Inclusion de 60 patients francais. Les volumes renaux et hepatiques sont superieurs a ceux d’une population controle non-PKAD. En analyse univariee, la PIP est correlee a l’IMC, a la surface corporelle, au volume abdominal et au volume de dialysat infuse. Une tendance a une correlation negative est retrouvee pour la grossesse. En analyse multivariee, seul l’IMC apparait fortement correle a la PIP. Les volumes renaux et hepatiques ne sont pas associes a la PIP dans notre etude. Le score predictif realise est IPP = 1,226+ (BMI*0,372) + (IPV*0,0021). Cependant le coefficient de correlation est decevant : 0,44 (0,22–0,63) Conclusion Une information majeure est retrouvee : le volume des organes n’influence pas la PIP dans notre population. L’IMC est le parametre majeur predisant la PIP des patients polykystiques. C’est un facteur composite comprenant l’importance de la masse grasse des patients (notion retrouvee dans d’autres populations en dialyse peritoneale) et celle des organomegalies dans cette population precise.

Belief in free will has been a mainstay in philosophy throughout history, grounded in large part in our intuitive sense that we consciously control our actions and could have done otherwise. However, psychology and psychiatry have long sought to uncover mechanistic explanations for human behavior that challenge the notion of free will. In recent years, neuroscientific discoveries have produced a model of volitional behavior that is at odds with the notion of contra-causal free will and our sense of conscious agency. Volitional behavior instead appears to have antecedents in unconscious brain activity that is localizable to specific neuroanatomical structures. Updating notions of free will in favor of a continuous model of volitional self-control provides a useful paradigm to conceptualize and study some forms of psychopathology such as addiction and impulse control disorders. Similarly, thinking of specific symptoms of schizophrenia as disorders of agency may help to elucidate mechanisms of psychosis. Beyond clinical understanding and etiological research, a neuroscientific model of volitional behavior has the potential to modernize forensic notions of responsibility and criminal punishment in order to inform public policy. Ultimately, moving away from the language of free will towards the language of volitional control may result in an enhanced understanding of the very nature of ourselves.

Bit-width allocation has a crucial impact on hardware efficiency and accuracy of fixed-point arithmetic circuits. This paper introduces a new accuracy-guaranteed word-length optimization approach for feed-forward fixed-point designs. This method uses affine arithmetic, which is a well-known analytical technique, for both range and precision analyses. This paper introduces an acceleration technique and two new semianalytical algorithms for precision analysis. While the first algorithm follows a progressive search strategy, the second one uses a tree-shaped search method for fractional width optimization. The algorithms offer two different time-complexity/cost efficiency tradeoffs. The first algorithm has polynomial complexity and achieves comparable results with existing heuristic approaches. The second algorithm has exponential complexity, but it achieves near-optimal results compared to the exhaustive search method. A commonly used set of case studies is used to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed techniques and algorithms in terms of optimization time and hardware cost. The first and second algorithms achieve 10.9% and 13.1% improvements in area, respectively, over uniform fractional width allocation. The proposed acceleration technique reduces the complexity of the fractional width selection problem by an average of 20.3%.

International audience; Today, hydroacoustic technologies are able to monitor fish populations and assess fish biomass by providing data of a high spatio-temporal resolution, and without damaging the environment. Such techniques are widely used in lakes and marine environments, but they remain much less tested in shallow waters - especially in estuarine habitats. Our study was carried out using a strictly methodological approach. This was necessary in order to take into account the highly changeable nature of the ecosystem in question. Hydroacoustic surveys were conducted in the mesohaline part of the Gironde estuary using SIMRAD EK60 split-beam echosounders, operating simultaneously at two frequencies (70 kHz and 120 kHz). Different mobile hydroacoustic surveys were tested in different seasons, with vertical acquisition, in order to compare variability of results due to the sampling strategy, and to validate the relevance of our design by repeating the surveys. The results obtained on survey design choices gave similar outcomes when sampling was carried out with or against the current and between two mobile designs. The comparison between flood and ebb tides gave different results from one day to another but we observed the same evolution for each flood tide or for each ebb tide on several successive days. This acoustic study in the Gironde estuary was used to validate a reliable sampling mobile design. It is the first step in the process of gaining a better understanding of estuarine ecosystems, an understanding that will be enhanced by combining our data with data from a variety of other sources.

In this paper, we present a method to measure the body temperature of an animal using a thermographic camera in hyperthermia experiments, where the heat contrast between the animal and its background is low. This work was done in the context of the study of artificially induced atypical febrile seizures. In order to measure the temperature of a moving animal continuously, we need to detect it in each video frame and then select a subset of pixels to evaluate its body temperature. To detect the animal in each frame, we propose a tracking method based on the minimization of a cost function that uses constraints such as temperature smoothness and proximity. The temperature of the animal is then taken as the mean of a subset of pixels from the detected area. For videos up to 19,000 frames long, the method achieves temperature estimation within $$0.7\,^{\circ }\text{ C }$$ from ground-truth more than 73 % of the time in difficult measurement scenarios.

Resume L’introduction en 1993 en France de la vaccination contre Haemophilus influenzae de serotype b (Hib) a permis une reduction rapide du nombre des cas d’infections invasives dues a cette espece. Pourtant, malgre une dose de rappel, la survenue d’une meningite a Hib reste possible, bien qu’exceptionnelle. Nous rapportons 3 observations de meningites a Hib en saison hivernale entre 2007 et 2010, survenues chez des enfants correctement vaccines, âges de 9, 14 et 29 mois. L’evolution sous traitement a ete favorable pour les 3 enfants et aucun deficit immunitaire n’a ete mis en evidence. Apres 18 annees de vaccination, ces observations mettent en evidence le risque toujours present des meningites a Hib, y compris chez des enfants vaccines, ainsi que la persistance de la circulation des souches dans la population generale.

WOS:000324536200013; International audience; The present study shows no adverse effects of the anti-diabetic drug metformin on bone mass and fracture healing in rodents but demonstrates that metformin is not osteogenic in vivo, as previously proposed. Introduction In view of the increased incidence of fractures in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), we investigated the effects of metformin, a widely used T2DM therapy, on bone mass and fracture healing in vivo using two different rodent models and modes of metformin administration. Methods We first subjected 12-week-old female C57BL/6 mice to ovariectomy (OVX). Four weeks after OVX, mice received either saline or metformin administered by gavage (100 mg/kg/daily). After 4 weeks of treatment, bone micro-architecture and cellular activity were determined in tibia by micro-CT and bone histomorphometry. In another experiment, female Wistar rats aged 3 months were given only water or metformin for 8 weeks via the drinking water (2 mg/ml). After 4 weeks of treatment, a mid-diaphyseal osteotomy was performed in the left femur. Rats were sacrificed 4 weeks after osteotomy and bone architecture analysed by micro-CT in the right tibia while fracture healing and callus volume were determined in the left femur by X-ray analysis and micro-CT, respectively. Results In both models, our results show no significant differences in cortical and trabecular bone architecture in metformin-treated rodents compared to saline. Metformin had no effect on bone resorption but reduced bone formation rate in trabecular bone. Mean X-ray scores assessed on control and metformin fractures showed no significant differences of healing between the groups. Fracture callus volume and mineral content after 4 weeks were similar in both groups. Conclusions Our results indicate that metformin has no effect on bone mass in vivo or fracture healing in rodents.

In this study, asymmetric non-pipelined large size unsigned and signed multipliers are implemented using symmetric and asymmetric embedded multipliers, look-up tables and dedicated adders in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Decompositions of the operands are performed for the efficient use of the embedded blocks. Partial products are organised in various configurations, and the additions of the products are realised in an optimised manner. The additions used in the implementation of the multiplication include compressor-based, Delay-Table and Ternary-adder-based approaches. These approaches have led to the minimisation of the total critical path delay with reduced utilisation of FPGA resources. The asymmetric multipliers were implemented in Xilinx FPGAs using 18×18-bit and 25×18-bit embedded signed multipliers. Implementation results demonstrate an improvement of up to 32× in delay and up to 37× in the number of embedded blocks compared with the performance of designs generated by commercial synthesis tools.

International audience; Since the start of industrialization, machine capabilities have increased in such a way that the control of processes by humans is becoming increasingly complex. This is especially the case in Intelligent Manufacturing Systems for which processes tend to be so autonomous that humans are more and more unaware of processes running, particularly when humans may need to intervene to update the manufacturing plan or to modify the process configuration if machines or intelligent entities need assistance. The present paper proposes solutions based on the use of Human(s)-Machine(s) Cooperation (HMC) principles to support humans in the process control. The aim of these principles is to adopt a human-centered approach for the design and evaluation of assistance systems and processes, as well as their interaction with humans. Two main complementary features of HMC, the know-how and the know-how-to-cooperate, are detailed. They provide a very useful approach to design task allocation, support for mutual understanding and communication between one human operator and one Artificial Self Organizing system. An assistance system resulting from this approach was evaluated and first results highlighted the improvement of global performance and acceptability.

Antipsychotics are some of the most frequently prescribed medications not only for psychotic disorders and symptoms but also for a wide range of on-label and off-label indications. Because second-generation antipsychotics have largely replaced first-generation antipsychotics as first-line options due to their substantially decreased risk of extrapyramidal side effects, attention has shifted to other clinically concerning adverse events associated with antipsychotic therapy. The focus of this article is to update the nonextrapyramidal side effects associated with second-generation antipsychotics. Issues surrounding diagnosis and monitoring as well as clinical management are addressed.

Spatial Averaging Filters (SAF) are extensively used in image processing for image smoothing and denoising. Their latest implementations have already achieved constant time computational complexity regardless of kernel size. However, all the existing O(1) algorithms require additional memory for temporary data storage. In order to minimize memory usage in embedded systems, we introduce a new two-dimensional recursive SAF. It uses previous resultant pixel values along both rows and columns to calculate the current one. It can achieve constant time computational complexity without using any additional memory usage. Experimental comparisons with previous SAF implementations shows that the proposed 2D-Recursive SAF does not require any additional memory while offering a computational time similar to the most efficient existing SAF algorithm. These features make it especially suitable for embedded systems with limited memory capacity., SPIE Photonics Europe, Sunday 3 April 2016, Brussels, Belgium, Series: Proceedings of SPIE; no. 9897