pinecone/core-2020-05-10-deduplication huggingface dataset:
Rising temperature reduces divergence in resource use strategies in coexisting parasitoid species.

International audienceCoexistence of species sharing the same resources is often possible if species are phylogenetically divergent in resource acquisition and allocation traits, decreasing competition between them. Developmental and life-history traits related to resource use are influenced by environmental conditions such as temperature, but thermal trait responses may differ among species. An increase in ambient temperature may, therefore, affect trait divergence within a community, and potentially species coexistence. Parasitoids are interesting models to test this hypothesis, because multiple species commonly attack the same host, and employ divergent larval and adult host use strategies. In particular, development mode (arrested or continued host growth following parasitism) has been recognized as a major organiser of parasitoid life histories. Here, we used a comparative trait-based approach to determine thermal responses of development time, body mass, egg load, metabolic rate and energy use of the coexisting Drosophila parasitoids Asobara tabida, Leptopilina heterotoma, Trichopria drosophilae and Spalangia erythromera. We compared trait values between species and development modes, and calculated trait divergence in response to temperature, using functional diversity indices. Parasitoids differed in their thermal response for dry mass, metabolic rate and lipid use throughout adult life, but only teneral lipid reserves and egg load were affected by developmental mode. Species-specific trait responses to temperature were probably determined by their adaptations in resource use (e.g. lipogenesis or ectoparasitism). Overall, trait values of parasitoid species converged at the higher temperature. Our results suggest that local effects of warming could affect host resource partitioning by reducing trait diversity in communities
Grain, meat and vegetables to feed Paris: where did and do they come from? Localising Paris food supply areas from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century

Consultable en ligne : http://www.springerlink.com/content/8044661362778610/International audience"The food supply to a large metropolis such as Paris involves huge fluxes of goods, which considerably impact the surrounding rural territories. Here, we present an attempt to localise Paris food supply areas, over a period of two centuries (1786, 1886, 2006), based on the analysis of data from transportation and production statistics for cereals, animal products, and fruits and vegetables, all three categories being expressed in terms of their nitrogen (i.e. protein) content. The results show contrasting trends for the three types of agricultural products. As for cereals, the Paris supply area remained for the most part restricted to the central area of the Paris basin, a region which gradually became specialised in intensive cereal production. Conversely, as animal farming had been progressively excluded from this area, regions located west and north of Paris (Brittany, Normandy, Nord-Pas-de-Calais) gradually dominated the supply of animal products to the metropolis. In addition, imported feed from South America today contributes as much as one-third of the total ration of feed in the livestock raised in these regions. For fruits and vegetables, about one-half of the Paris supply currently comes from long-distance imports, the other half coming from areas less than 200 km from Paris. As a whole, the Paris food supply area, although it has obviously enlarged in recent periods, is still anchored to an unexpected extent (about 50%) in its traditional nearby hinterland roughly coinciding with the Seine watershed, and in the regions specialised in animal farming located west and north. On the other hand, the agricultural system of the main food supply areas has considerably opened to global markets.
3D City Models and urban information: Current issues and perspectives – European COST Action TU0801

International audienceConsidering sustainable development of cities implies investigating cities in a holistic way taking into account many interrelations between various urban or environmental issues. 3D city models are increasingly used in different cities and countries for an intended wide range of applications beyond mere visualization. Could these 3D City models be used to integrate urban and environmental knowledge? How could they be improved to fulfill such role? We believe that enriching the semantics of current 3D city models, would extend their functionality and usability; therefore, they could serve as integration platforms of the knowledge related to urban and environmental issues allowing a huge and significant improvement of city sustainable management and development. But which elements need to be added to 3D city models? What are the most efficient ways to realize such improvement / enrichment? How to evaluate the usability of these improved 3D city models? These were the questions tackled by the COST Action TU0801 " Semantic enrichment of 3D city models for sustainable urban development ". This book gathers various materials developed all along the four year of the Action and the significant breakthroughs
Control Methods in Microspheres Precision Assembly for Colloidal Lithography

International audienceColloidal lithography based on the assembly of microspheres is a powerful tool for the creation of a large variety of two dimensional micro or nanostructures patterned. However very few studies examine the control, qualification and quantification of the ordering of the particles once deposited on the substrate. We have developed two unique methods working at microscopic and macroscopic scales, respectively called Microfixe® and Macrofixe®, for the analysis of grain morphology in the case of hexagonal closed packed (HCP) monolayers of spherical microparticles. The processing of the images taken at microscopic scale uses Delaunay triangulation and histograms of lengths and orientations of Delaunay triangles sides. At the macroscopic scale, six camera images are required of the sample illuminated under six different incidence angles. Image treatment consists in the comparison of the six images and eventually subdivision of these images to sharpen the analysis. At the end, the two softwares constitute artificial images of particle deposit, giving at microscopic and macroscopic scales significant information about grain size, grain morphology, orientation distributions, defaults (voids, stacking)…With these two new control methods, colloidal lithography is emerging as an industrial process
Explicit embeddings for nearest neighbor search with Mercer kernels

International audienceMany approximate nearest neighbor search algorithms operate under memory constraints, by computing short signatures for database vectors while roughly keeping the neighborhoods for the distance of interest. Encoding procedures designed for the Euclidean distance have attracted much attention in the last decade.In the case where the distance of interest is based on a Mercer kernel, we propose a simple, yet effective two-step encoding scheme: first, compute an explicit embedding to map the initial space into a Euclidean space; second, apply an encoding step designed to work with the Euclidean distance. Comparing this simple baseline with existing methods relying on implicit encoding, we demonstrate better search recall for similar code sizes with the chi-square kernel in databases comprised of visual descriptors, outperforming concurrent state-of-the-art techniques by a large margin
A Class of Random Field Memory Models for Mortality Forecasting

International audienceThis article proposes a parsimonious alternative approach for modeling the stochastic dynamics of mortality rates. Instead of the commonly used factor-based decomposition framework , we consider modeling mortality improvements using a random field specification with a given causal structure. Such a class of models introduces dependencies among adjacent cohorts aiming at capturing, among others, the cohort effects and cross generations correlations. It also describes the conditional heteroskedasticity of mortality. The proposed model is a generalization of the now widely used AR-ARCH models for random processes. For such class of models, we propose an estimation procedure for the parameters. Formally, we use the quasi-maximum likelihood estimator (QMLE) and show its statistical consistency and the asymptotic normality of the estimated parameters. The framework being general, we investigate and illustrate a simple variant, called the three-level memory model, in order to fully understand and assess the effectiveness of the approach for modeling mortality dynamics
Modeling circadian clock-cell cycle interaction effects on cell population growth rates

Accepted for publication in Journal of Theoretical Biology, post-print versionInternational audienceThe circadian clock and the cell cycle are two tightly coupled oscillators. Recent analytical studies have shown counter-intuitive effects of circadian gating of the cell cycle on growth rates of proliferating cells which cannot be explained by a molecular model or a population model alone. In this work, we present a combined molecular-population model that studies how coupling the circadian clock to the cell cycle, through the protein WEE1, affects a proliferating cell population. We show that the cell cycle can entrain to the circadian clock with different rational period ratios and characterize multiple domains of entrainment. We show that coupling increases the growth rate for autonomous periods of the cell cycle around 24 h and above 48 h. We study the effect of mutation of circadian genes on the growth rate of cells and show that disruption of the circadian clock can lead to abnormal proliferation. Particularly, we show that $\mathit{Cry1}$, $\mathit{Cry2}$ mutations decrease the growth rate of cells, $\mathit{Per2}$ mutation enhances it and $\mathit{Bmal1}$ knockout increases it for autonomous periods of the cell cycle less than 21 h and decreases it elsewhere. Combining a molecular model to a population model offers new insight on the influence of the circadian clock on the growth of a cell population. This can help chronotherapy which takes benefits of physiological rhythms to improve anti-cancer efficacy and tolerance to drugs by administering treatments at a specific time of the day
Long-term radio observations of the intermittent pulsar B1931+24

International audienceWe present an analysis of approximately 13-yr of observations of the intermittent pulsar B1931+24 to further elucidate its behaviour. We find that while the source exhibits a wide range of nulling (~4-39 d) and radio-emitting (~1-19 d) timescales, it cycles between its different emission phases over an average timescale of approximately 38 d, which is remarkably stable over many years. On average, the neutron star is found to be radio emitting for 26 +- 6 % of the time. No evidence is obtained to suggest that the pulsar undergoes any systematic, intrinsic variations in pulse intensity during the radio-emitting phases. In addition, we find no evidence for any correlation between the length of consecutive emission phases. An analysis of the rotational behaviour of the source shows that it consistently assumes the same spin-down rates, i.e. nudot = -16 +- 1 x 10^-15 s^-2 when emitting and nudot = -10.8 +- 0.4 x 10^-15 s^-2 when not emitting, over the entire observation span. Coupled with the stable switching timescale, this implies that the pulsar retains a high degree of magnetospheric memory, and stability, in spite of comparatively rapid (~ms) dynamical plasma timescales. While this provides further evidence to suggest that the behaviour of the neutron star is governed by magnetospheric-state switching, the underlying trigger mechanism remains illusive. This should be elucidated by future surveys with next generation telescopes such as LOFAR, MeerKAT and the SKA, which should detect similar sources and provide more clues to how their radio emission is regulated
Mutual influence of supernovae and molecular clouds

International audienceContext. Molecular clouds are known to be turbulent and strongly affected by stellar feedback. Moreover, stellar feedback is believed to drive turbulence at large scales in galaxies.Aims. We study the role played by supernovae in molecular clouds and the influence of the magnetic field on this process.Methods. We performed three-dimensional numerical simulations of supernova explosions, in and near turbulent self-gravitating molecular clouds. In order to study the influence of the magnetic field, we performed both hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical simulations. We also ran a series of simple uniform density medium simulations and developed a simple analytical model.Results. We find that the total amount of momentum that is delivered during supernova explosions typically varies by a factor of about 2, even when the gas density changes by 3 orders of magnitude. However, the amount of momentum delivered to the dense gas varies by almost a factor of 10 if the supernova explodes within or outside the molecular cloud. The magnetic field has little influence on the total amount of momentum injected by the supernova explosions but increases the momentum injected into the dense gas.Conclusions. Supernovae that explode inside molecular clouds remove a significant fraction of the cloud mass. Supernovae that explode outside have a limited influence on the cloud but nevertheless remove a substantial amount of gas at densities between 1 cm-3 and 100 cm-3, that would be forming stars later. It is thus essential to know sufficiently well the correlation between supernovae and the surrounding dense material in order to know whether supernovae can regulate star formation effectively
On chip real time monitoring of B-cells hybridoma secretion of immunoglobulin.

International audienceThe secretions of molecules by cells are of tremendous interest for both fundamental insights studies and medical purposes. In this study, we propose a new biochip-based approach for the instantaneous monitoring of protein secretions, using antibody production by B lymphocytes cultured in vitro. This was possible thanks to the Surface Plasmon Resonance imaging (SPRi) of a protein biochip where antigen proteins (Hen Egg Lysozyme, HEL) were micro-arrayed along with series of control proteins. B cell hybridomas were cultured on the chip and the secretion of immunoglobulins (antibody) specific to HEL was monitored in real-time and detected within only few minutes rather than after a 30-60 min incubation with standard ELISA experiments. This fast and sensitive detection was possible thanks to the sedimentation of the cells on the biochip sensitive surface, where local antibody concentrations are much higher before dilution in the bulk medium. An other interesting feature of this approach for the secretion monitoring was the independence of the SPR response--after normalization--regarding to the density of the surface-immobilized probes. Such biosensor might thus pave the way to new tools capable of both qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis of proteins secreted by other immune cells
Dietary anaplerotic therapy improves peripheral tissue energy metabolism in patients with Huntington disease

International audienceBackground: We previously identified a systemic metabolic defect associated with early weight loss in patients with Huntington disease (HD) suggesting a lack of substrates for the Krebs cycle. Dietary anaplerotic therapy with triheptanoin is used in clinical trials to promote energy production in patients with peripheral and brain Krebs cycle deficit, as its metabolites - C5 ketone bodies - cross the blood brain barrier. Methods: We conducted a short-term clinical trial in six HD patients (UHDRS= 33 ±13, 15-49) to monitor the tolerability of triheptanoin. We also assessed peripheral markers of short-term efficacy that were shown to be altered in early stages of HD, i.e. low serum IGF1 and 31P-NMR spectroscopy (NMRS) in muscle. Results: At baseline, 31P-NMRS displayed two patients with end-exercise muscle acidosis despite a low work output. On day 2, the introduction of triheptanoin was well tolerated in all patients, and in particular, there was no evidence of mitochondrial overload from triheptanoin-derived metabolites. After 4 days of triheptanoin-enriched diet, muscle pH regulation was normalized in the two patients with pre-treatment metabolic abnormalities. A significant increase of serum IGF1 was also observed in all patients (205 ng/ml ±60 versus 246 ng/ml ±68, p=0.010). Conclusion: This study provides a rationale for extending our anaplerotic approach with triheptanoin in HD
Gaps, rings, and non-axisymmetric structures   in protoplanetary disks
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From simulations to ALMA observations

International audienceAims. Recent observations by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of disks around young stars revealed distinct asymmetries in the dust continuum emission. In this work we wish to study axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric structures that are generated by the magneto-rotational instability in the outer regions of protoplanetary disks. We combine the results of state-of-the-art numerical simulations with post-processing radiative transfer (RT) to generate synthetic maps and predictions for ALMA.Methods. We performed non-ideal global 3D magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) stratified simulations of the dead-zone outer edge using the FARGO MHD code PLUTO. The stellar and disk parameters were taken from a parameterized disk model applied for fitting high-angular resolution multi-wavelength observations of various circumstellar disks. We considered a stellar mass of M∗ = 0.5 M⊙ and a total disk mass of about 0.085 M∗. The 2D initial temperature and density profiles were calculated consistently from a given surface density profile and Monte Carlo radiative transfer. The 2D Ohmic resistivity profile was calculated using a dust chemistry model. We considered two values for the dust-to-gas mass ratio, 10-2 and 10-4, which resulted in two different levels of magnetic coupling. The initial magnetic field was a vertical net flux field. The radiative transfer simulations were performed with the Monte Carlo-based 3D continuum RT code MC3D. The resulting dust reemission provided the basis for the simulation of observations with ALMA.Results. All models quickly turned into a turbulent state. The fiducial model with a dust-to-gas mass ratio of 10-2 developed a large gap followed by a jump in surface density located at the dead-zone outer edge. The jump in density and pressure was strong enough to stop the radial drift of particles at this location. In addition, we observed the generation of vortices by the Rossby wave instability at the jump location close to 60 AU. The vortices were steadily generated and destroyed at a cycle of 40 local orbits. The RT results and simulated ALMA observations predict that it is feasible to observe these large-scale structures that appear in magnetized disks without planets. Neither the turbulent fluctuations in the disk nor specific times of the model can be distinguished on the basis of high-angular resolution submillimeter observations alone. The same applies to the distinction between gaps at the dead-zone edges and planetary gaps, to the distinction between turbulent and simple unperturbed disks, and to the asymmetry created by the vortex
Guelb el Ahmar (Bathonian, Anoual Syncline, eastern Morocco): First continental flora and fauna including mammals from the Middle Jurassic of Africa

International audienceWe report the discovery in Mesozoic continental " red beds " of Anoual Syncline, Morocco, of the new Guelb el Ahmar (GEA) fossiliferous sites in the Bathonian Anoual Formation. They produced one of the richest continental biotic assemblages from the Jurassic of Gondwana, including plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. Both the sedimentological facies and the biotic assemblage indicate a lacustrine depositional environment. The flora is represented by tree trunks (three families), pollen (13 species, five major clades) and charophytes. It suggests local forests and humid (non-arid) conditions. The vertebrate fauna is dominated by microvertebrates recovered by screening-washing. It is rich and diverse, with at least 29 species of all major groups (osteichthyans, lissamphibians, chelonians, diapsids, mammals), except chondrichthyans. It includes the first mammals discovered in the Middle Jurassic of Arabo-Africa. The GEA sites yielded some of the earliest known representatives of osteoglossiform fishes, albanerpetontid and caudate amphibians, squamates (scincomorphans, anguimorphan), cladotherian mammals, and likely choristoderes. The choristoderes, if confirmed, are the first found in Gondwana, the albanerpetontid and caudatan amphibians are among the very few known in Gondwana, and the anguimorph lizard is the first known from the Mesozoic of Gondwana. Mammals (Amphitheriida, cf. Dryolestida) remain poorly known, but are the earliest cladotherians known in Gondwana.The GEA biotic assemblage is characterized by the presence of Pangean and Laurasian (especially European) taxa, and quasi absence of Gondwanan taxa. The paleobiogeographical analysis suggests either a major fossil bias in Gondwana during the Middle Jurassic, and an overall vicariant Pangean context for the GEA assemblage, or alternatively, noticeable Laurasian (European) affinities and North-South dispersals. The close resemblance between the Bathonian faunas of GEA and Britain is remarkable, even in a Pangean context. The similarity between the local Anoual Syncline Guelb el Ahmar and Ksar Metlili faunas raises questions on the ?Berriasian age of the latter. Research Highlights  First discovered Middle Jurassic flora and fauna with microvertebrates from Africa.  It yields the first Middle Jurassic mammals from Africa (stem Cladotheria).  The fauna has either Laurasian or Pangean affinities
The M 4.5 Vallorcine (French Alps) earthquake of 8 September 2005 and its complex aftershock sequence

International audienceOn 8 September 2005 a moderate M 4.5 earthquake occurred in the north-western Alps midway between Chamonix (France) and Martigny (Switzerland). The focal mechanism corresponds to a right-lateral strike-slip on a N60°E fault plane. The foreshock-mainshock-aftershock sequence is investigated on the basis of data recorded by a temporary network of 28 stations deployed for 1 month just after the mainshock, and data from permanent, regional seismic networks. Absolute and relative locations of more than 400 events are obtained with a mean uncertainty of approximately 0.2 km. Small foreshocks, the mainshock, and early and late aftershocks are located relative to the main aftershock set. The seismic sequence exhibits a surprisingly complex structure, with at least five clusters on distinct fault planes. The main elongated cluster agrees with the location of the mainshock, its hypocenter being 4.3 km below sea level. We discuss the relationship between the right-lateral fault beneath the Loriaz peak (the source of the Vallorcine event), the nearby normal Remuaz fault, and the regional seismotectonic stress field