pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Subcutaneous Ustekinumab Provides Clinical Benefit for Two-Thirds of Patients With Crohn’s Disease Refractory to Anti-Tumor Necrosis Factor Agents

International audienceBackground & Aims Ustekinumab, a human monoclonal antibody against the p40 subunit of interleukins-12 and -23, is effective in inducing and maintaining remission in patients with luminal Crohn's disease (CD). We assessed the efficacy and safety of subcutaneous ustekinumab in patients with anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) refractory CD. Methods We performed a retrospective observational study, collecting data from the Groupe d'Etude Thérapeutique des Affections Inflammatoires du tube Digestif on 122 consecutive patients with active CD refractory to anti-TNF therapy who received at least 1 subcutaneous injection of ustekinumab from March 2011 to December 2014, in 20 tertiary centers in Europe. Subjects were followed for at least 3 months. The primary outcome was clinical benefit, defined as reductions in symptoms and biochemical markers of CD and complete weaning from steroids, without surgery or immunosuppressant therapies. Results Seventy-nine patients (65%) had a clinical benefit within 3 months of receiving ustekinumab. Concomitant immunosuppressant therapy at study inclusion increased the odds for a clinical benefit from ustekinumab (odds ratio, 5.43; 95% confidence interval, 1.14–25.77; P=.03). Over a median follow-up period of 9.8 months (inter-quartile range, 5.3–14.5 months), the cumulative probabilities that patients maintained the clinical benefit for 6 and 12 months after introduction of ustekinumab were 93% and 68%, respectively. Conclusions Almost two thirds of patients with CD refractory to at least 1 anti-TNF agent receive clinical benefit from ustekinumab therapy, not requiring steroids for up to 12 months afterward. While we await results from ongoing trials, ustekinumab can be considered for use in these patients
Catalytic study of SOFC electrode materials in engine exhaust gas atmosphere

International audienceA single chamber solid oxide fuel cell (SC-SOFC) is a device able to produce electricity from a mixture of hydrocarbons and oxidant. An innovative application of this system would be to recover energy from exhaust gas of a thermal engine. This paper presents a study of stability and catalytic behaviour of electrode materials composing the cell in a mixture of hydrocarbons (propane, propene), oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and water corresponding to a composition of exhaust gas. A screening of four cathode materials was done, some well-known materials in literature and leading to highest performances such as La<sub>0.6</sub>Sr<sub>0.4</sub>Co<sub>0.2</sub>Fe<sub>0.8</sub>O<sub>3−δ</sub> (LSCF), Sm<sub>0.5</sub>Sr<sub>0.5</sub>CoO<sub>3−δ </sub>and Ba<sub>0.5</sub>Sr<sub>0.5</sub>Co<sub>0.8</sub>Fe<sub>0.2</sub>O<sub>3−δ </sub>and a last one Pr<sub>2</sub>NiO<sub>4+δ</sub> (PNO) very promising for conventional SOFCs. Anode material was a cermet composed of nickel and Ce<sub>0.9</sub>Gd<sub>0.1</sub>O<sub>1.95</sub> which was also selected as the electrolyte material. Chemical stability tests and catalytic activity studies in the gas mixture were performed on the raw materials and have led to a first selection among cathodes. Two hydrocarbons/oxygen ratios (R = HC/O<sub>2</sub>) were investigated for materials tests considering the gas mixture stability at high temperature (600°C): R = 0.21 and 0.44. LSCF and PNO were considered as the most stable cathode materials, besides LSCF demonstrated a lower catalytic activity towards hydrocarbon partial oxidation than PNO especially for the R = 0.44 ratio. As for the anode side, nickel was tested regarding its catalytic activity towards hydrocarbons oxidation. It exhibited catalytic activity towards hydrocarbons partial oxidation, especially for the oxygen-lean ratio (0.44), which gradually decreased while lowering temperature from 620 to 450°C
A low level component model easing performance portability of HPC applications

International audienceScientific applications are getting increasingly complex, e.g., to improve their accuracy by taking into account more phenomena. Meanwhile, computing infrastructures are continuing their fast evolution. Thus, software engineering is becoming a major issue to offer ease of development, portability and maintainability while achieving high performance. Component based software engineering offers a promising approach that enables the manipulation of the software architecture of applications. However, existing models do not provide an adequate support for performance portability of HPC applications. This paper proposes a low level component model (L²C) that supports inter-component interactions for typical scenarios of high performance computing, such as process-local shared memory and function invocation (C++ and Fortran), MPI, and Corba. To study the benefits of using L²C, this paper walks through an example of stencil computation, i.e. a structured mesh Jacobi implementation of the 2D heat equation parallelized through domain decomposition. The experimental results obtained on the Grid'5000 testbed and on the Curie supercomputer show that L²C can achieve performance similar to that of native implementations, while easing performance portability
Symmetries in Nuclei

46 pages, 11 figures. Lecture given at the XL Latin American School of Physics "Symmetries in Physics", Mexico City, July 26 - August 6, 2010. Accepted for publication in AIP Conference Proceedings Series.International audienceThe use of dynamical symmetries or spectrum generating algebras for the solution of the nuclear many-body problem is reviewed. General notions of symmetry and dynamical symmetry in quantum mechanics are introduced and illustrated with simple examples such as the SO(4) symmetry of the hydrogen atom and the isospin symmetry in nuclei. Two nuclear models, the shell model and the interacting boson model, are reviewed with particular emphasis on their use of group-theoretical techniques
Pairing Vibrations Study with the Time-Dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory

International audienceWe study pairing vibrations in $^{18,20,22}$O and $^{42,44,46}$Ca nuclei solving the time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equation in coordinate space with spherical symmetry. We use the SLy4 Skyrme functional in the normal part of the energy density functional and a local density dependent functional in its pairing part. Pairing vibrations are excited by two-neutron transfer operators. Strength distributions are obtained using the Fourier transform of the time-dependent response of two-neutron pair-transfer observables in the linear regime. Results are in overall agreement with quasiparticle random phase approximation calculations for Oxygen isotopes, though differences appear when increasing the neutron number. Both low lying pairing modes and giant pairing vibrations (GPV) are discussed. The GPV is observed in the Oxygen but not in the Calcium isotopes
Measuring cosmic bulk flows with Type Ia Supernovae from the Nearby Supernova Factory

12 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in Section 3. Cosmology of A&A October 10, 2013 - this article has an erratum : http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201321880eContext. Our Local Group of galaxies appears to be moving relative to the cosmic microwave background with the source of the peculiar motion still uncertain. While in the past this has been studied mostly using galaxies as distance indicators, the weight of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) has increased recently with the continuously improving statistics of available low-redshift supernovae. Aims. We measured the bulk flow in the nearby universe ($0.015 < z < 0.1$) using 117 SNe Ia observed by the Nearby Supernova Factory, as well as the Union2 compilation of SN Ia data already in the literature. Methods. The bulk flow velocity was determined from SN data binned in redshift shells by including a coherent motion (dipole) in a cosmological fit. Additionally, a method of spatially smoothing the Hubble residuals was used to verify the results of the dipole fit. To constrain the location and mass of a potential mass concentration (e.g., the Shapley supercluster) responsible for the peculiar motion, we fit a Hubble law modified by adding an additional mass concentration. Results. The analysis shows a bulk flow that is consistent with the direction of the CMB dipole up to $z \sim 0.06$, thereby doubling the volume over which conventional distance measures are sensitive to a bulk flow. We see no significant turnover behind the center of the Shapley supercluster. A simple attractor model in the proximity of the Shapley supercluster is only marginally consistent with our data, suggesting the need for another, more distant source. In the redshift shell $0.06 < z < 0.1$, we constrain the bulk flow velocity to $< 240~\textrm{km s}^{-1}$ (68% confidence level) for the direction of the CMB dipole, in contradiction to recent claims of the existence of a large-amplitude dark flow
Development of a Darcy- Brinkman model to simulate water flow and tracer transport in a heterogeneous karstic aquifer (Val d'Orléans, France)

International audienceModelling karstic aquifers is problematic because the equation of references (i.e. Darcy) is adapted to describe hydrodynamics of flow in a rock where porosity is low. The modelling of the karstic drains requires to use a macroscopic equation representative of the physics of flows occurring in rock where pores are important in size. To answer this question, our study presents an example of the hydrodynamic model adapted to the karstic aquifer of the Val d'Orléans starting from two equations characterizing the dynamics of the fluids: i) the Darcy law used to describe the hydraulic behaviour of massive limestone, and ii) the equation of Brinkman models the flows in vacuums of big sizes within the karstic drain. In the second objective, the flow equations are coupled with the transport equation to predict the karst properties. The results are tested by using six tracer tests carried out in the Val d'Orléans. The simulations show that the draining permeability ranges from 5 10-6 to 5.5 10-5 m2, the limestone permeability ranges from 8 10-11 to 6 10-10 m2. The dispersivity coefficients in the drains range from 23 to 43 m and in the fractured zone from 1 to 5 m
Slipping zone location in squeeze flow

the original publication is available at http://www.springerlink.com/content/f1611lmr64836780/International audienceIn squeeze flow rheometry, the main problem is the boundary condition between the squeezed material and the plates. Therefore, the crucial assumption is to know the location and the shape of the sample part where wall slip may or may not occur. This question is investigated from experimental results. For this, squeeze flow experiments are carried out to visualize the flow pattern at the walls. Influence of boundary conditions is particularly studied using different plate surface condition. As a result, with wall slipping conditions, we propose a flow modelling divided into two zones: a circular central zone of the sample sticks on the plates and, beyond that zone, the sample slips at the plates with friction
Energy-scalable temporal cleaning device for femtosecond laser pulsesbased on cross-polarized wave generation

International audienceWe report on a compact energy-scalable device for generating high-fidelity femtosecond laser pulses based on spatial filtering through a hollow-core fiber followed by a nonlinear crystal for crosspolarized wave (XPW) generation. This versatile device is suited for temporal pulse cleaning over a wide range of input energies (from 0.1 to >10 mJ) and is successfully qualified on different ultrafast laser systems. Full characterization of the XPW output is presented. In particular, we demonstrate the generation of 1.6 mJ energy pulses starting from 11 mJ input pulse energy. The temporal contrast of the pulses is enhanced by more than 4 orders of magnitude. In addition, pulse shortening from 40 fs down to 15 fs Fourier-transform limit yields an overall peak-power transmission of up to 50%. This device not only serves as an integrated pulse contrast filter inside an ultrafast laser amplifier but also as a simple back-end solution for temporal post-compression of amplified pulses
Comparison and interactions between the long-term pursuit of energy independence and climate policies

Ensuring energy security and mitigating climate change are key energy policy priorities. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III report emphasized that climate policies can deliver energy security as a co-benefit, in large part through reducing energy imports. Using five state-of-the-art global energy-economy models and eight long-term scenarios, we show that although deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would reduce energy imports, the reverse is not true: ambitious policies constraining energy imports would have an insignificant impact on climate change. Restricting imports of all fuels would lower twenty-first-century emissions by only 2–15% against the Baseline scenario as compared with a 70% reduction in a 450 stabilization scenario. Restricting only oil imports would have virtually no impact on emissions. The modelled energy independence targets could be achieved at policy costs comparable to those of existing climate pledges but a fraction of the cost of limiting global warming to 2 ∘C
Energy-efficient multi-standard early stopping criterion for low-density-parity-check iterative decoding

Low-density-parity-check codes decoding relies on powerful iterative algorithms, whose implementation is often expensive in terms of complexity and power consumption. Several early stopping criteria (ESCs) have been proposed to reduce the number of iterations performed by a decoder with no (or limited) degradation of error correction performance. However, most of the existing ESCs have considered a reduced set of system parameters for validation and often have ignored the impacts related to a real hardware implementation. This study proposes a novel multi-standard early stopping criterion (MSESC) able to adapt dynamically to changes of code parameters, quantisation and channel conditions. A dedicated hardware architecture is devised and integrated in a multi-standard decoder, and compared with existing techniques. Post-layout results of the proposed MSESC show a small area increment (+1.3%) and a large decrement of the average energy consumption (up to 87.2%) with respect to the same decoder implemented with no ESC. Moreover, it is shown that MSESC offers an energy consumption reduction with respect to the state-of-the-art ESCs ranging from 4% [at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)] to 16% (at low SNR)
Corporate multiculturalism, diversity management, and positive interculturalism in Irish schools and society

This article offers an empirical critique of recent social and educational policy responses to cultural diversity in an Irish context, with a particular focus on antiracism, integration and intercultural education policies developed during the socalled\ud
‘Celtic Tiger’ era. Combining ethnographic and discourse analytic techniques, I highlight the centrality of the Celtic Tiger economy and corporate interests in influencing the particular version of interculturalism promulgated by the Irish state. I argue that broader macro processes and discourses operating at the level of Irish state policy can impact the local school level, resulting in negative consequences for ethnic minority students, particularly those who are least endowed with the cultural and linguistic capital valued by the school and wider society
Quasiparticle interference in an iron-based superconductor

We develop a model for the effect of a magnetic field on quasiparticle interference in an iron-based superconductor. Recently, scanning tunneling experiments have been performed on Fe(Se, Te) to determine the relative sign of the superconducting gap from the magnetic-field dependence of quasiparticle scattering amplitudes. Using a simple two-band BCS model, we study three different cases of scattering in a spin-split spectrum. The dominant effect of a magnetic field in iron-based superconductors is caused by the Pauli limiting of conduction electrons. Thereby time-reversal odd scattering is induced which enhances the sign-preserving and depresses the sign-reversing peaks in the quasiparticle interference patterns
Structural asymmetries of the human cerebellum in relation to cerebral cortical asymmetries and handedness

Contains fulltext :
                  165787.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)There is evidence that the human cerebellum is involved not only in motor control but also in other cognitive functions. Several studies have shown that language-related activation is lateralized toward the right cerebellar hemisphere in most people, in accordance with leftward cerebral cortical lateralization for language and a general contralaterality of cerebral-cerebellar activations. In terms of behavior, hand use elicits asymmetrical activation in the cerebellum, while hand preference is weakly associated with language lateralization. However, it is not known how, or whether, these functional relations are reflected in anatomy. We investigated volumetric gray matter asymmetries of cerebellar lobules in an MRI data set comprising 2226 subjects. We tested these cerebellar asymmetries for associations with handedness, and for correlations with cerebral cortical anatomical asymmetries of regions important for language or hand motor control, as defined by two different automated image analysis methods and brain atlases, and supplemented with extensive visual quality control. No significant associations of cerebellar asymmetries to handedness were found. Some significant associations of cerebellar lobular asymmetries to cerebral cortical asymmetries were found, but none of these correlations were greater than 0.14, and they were mostly method-/atlas-dependent. On the basis of this large and highly powered study, we conclude that there is no overt structural manifestation of cerebellar functional lateralization and connectivity, in respect of hand motor control or language laterality
Correlation Between Processing Conditions, Microstructure and Mechanical Behavior in Regenerated Silkworm Silk Fibers

Regenerated silkworm fibers spun through a wet-spinning process followed by an immersion postspinning drawing step show a work to fracture comparable with that of natural silkworm silk fibers in a wide range of spinning conditions. The mechanical behavior and microstructure of these high performance fibers have been characterized, and compared with those fibers produced through conventional spinning conditions. The comparison reveals that both sets of fibers share a common semicrystalline microstructure, but significant differences are apparent in the amorphous region. Besides, high performance fibers show a ground state and the possibility of tuning their tensile behavior. These properties are characteristic of spider silk and not of natural silkworm silk, despite both regenerated and natural silkworm silk share a common composition different from that of spider silk
A ferrous oxalate mediated photo-Fenton system: Toward an increased biodegradability of indigo dyed wastewaters

This study assessed the applicability of a ferrous oxalate mediated photo-Fenton pretreatment for indigo-dyed wastewaters as to produce a biodegradable enough effluent, likely of being derived to conventional biological processes. The photochemical treatment was performed with ferrous oxalate and hydrogen peroxide in a Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) under batch operation conditions. The reaction was studied at natural pH conditions (5–6) with indigo concentrations in the range of 6.67–33.33 mg L−1, using a fixed oxalate-to-iron mass ratio (C2O42−/Fe2+ = 35) and assessing the system's biodegradability at low (257 mg L−1) and high (1280 mg L−1) H2O2 concentrations. In order to seek the optimal conditions for the treatment of indigo dyed wastewaters, an experimental design consisting in a statistical surface response approach was carried out. This analysis revealed that the best removal efficiencies for Total Organic Carbon (TOC) were obtained for low peroxide doses. In general it was observed that after 20 kJ L−1, almost every treated effluent increased its biodegradability from a BOD5/COD value of 0.4. This increase in the biodegradability was confirmed by the presence of short chain carboxylic acids as intermediate products and by the mineralization of organic nitrogen into nitrate. Finally, an overall decrease in the LC50 for Artemia salina indicated a successful detoxification of the effluent
Performance impact of honing dynamics on surface finish of precoated cylinder bores

The surface modification of engine cylinder bores with improved sliding properties is often produced by the honing process. This multi-stage process is performed using abrasive stones loaded against the bore with simultaneous rotation and oscillation. To guarantee this process robustness with acceptable dimensional accuracy and surface quality, the stone dynamic effects in continuous balanced contact with the workpiece have to studied deeply.  This paper highlights these effects on honed surface textures. The stone dynamic behavior was studied at conventional regime ranged from 0,5g to 1,5g as often used in mass production. In this range, the dimensional accuracy is ensured by opposition to the surface appearance. However, higher accelerations up to 2,5g improve simultaneously the form quality (especially straightness) and reduces the cycle time. This work shows, at least, that the bore surface finish can be dynamically controlled while honing. This technology is enabled by a micro scale regeneration mechanism of abrasive stones
A chemical understanding for the enhanced hydrogen tunnelling in hydroperoxidation of linoleic acid catalysed by soybean lipoxygenase-1

The reaction path of the Interacting-State Model (ISM) is used with the Transition-State Theory (TST) and the semiclassical correction for tunnelling (ISM/scTST) to calculate the rates of H-atom abstraction from C(11) of linoleic acid catalysed by soybean lipoxygenase-1 (SLO), as well as of an analogous uncatalysed reaction in solution. The calculated hydrogen-atom transfer rates, their temperature dependency and kinetic isotope effect (KIE) are in good agreement with the experimental data. ISM/scTST calculations reveal the hypersensitivity of the rate to protein dynamics when the hydrogen bonding to a carbon atom is present in the reaction coordinate. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/poc.134
All the Truth About NEvAr

The use of Evolutionary Computation approaches to generate images has reached a great popularity. This led to the emergence of a new art form—Evolutionary Art—and to the proliferation of Evolutionary Art Tools. In this paper, we present an Evolutionary Art Tool, NEvAr, the experimental results achieved, and the work methodology used to generate images. In NEvAr, useful individuals are stored in a database in order to allow their reuse. This database is playing an increasingly important role in the creation of new images, which led us to the development of automatic seeding procedures, also described. The automation of fitness assignment is one of our present research interests. We will, therefore, describe some preliminary results achieved with our current approach to automatic evaluation.http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:101366240234