Untargeted profiling of urinary steroid metabolites after testosterone ingestion: opening new perspectives for antidoping testing.

AIM: Antidoping procedures are expected to greatly benefit from untargeted metabolomic approaches through the discovery of new biomarkers of prohibited substances abuse. RESULTS: Endogenous steroid metabolites were monitored in urine samples from a controlled elimination study of testosterone undecanoate after ingestion. A platform coupling ultra-high pressure LC with high-resolution quadrupole TOF MS was used and high between-subject metabolic variability was successfully handled using a multiblock data analysis strategy. Links between specific subsets of metabolites and influential genetic polymorphisms of the UGT2B17 enzyme were highlighted. CONCLUSION: This exploratory metabolomic strategy constitutes a first step toward a better understanding of the underlying patterns driving the high interindividual variability of steroid metabolism. Promising biomarkers were selected for further targeted study.

Recent Progress and Perspectives in Digital Holographic Microscopy

Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM), is a new imaging technique allowing to provide quantitative phase images with a high accuracy and stability making possible to explore a large variety of relevant processes, occurring on the p.s to day time scale, in the fields including material research as well as cell biology. As a non invasive and real time imaging technique, DHM is particularly well suited for high throughput screening

Cannabis use in a Swiss male prison: qualitative study exploring detainees' and staffs' perspectives.

BACKGROUND: Several studies suggest a high prevalence of cannabis use before and during imprisonment, but subjective perspectives of detainees and staff towards its use in prison are lacking. This issue was explored in the framework of an observational study addressing tobacco use in three Swiss prisons in 2009 and 2010 that involved multiple strands (quantitative and qualitative components). This article presents qualitative data on cannabis use collected in one of the settings. METHODS: We used in-depth semi-structured interviews with both detainees and staff to explore their attitudes towards cannabis in one post-trial male Swiss prison. We performed specific coding and thematic analysis for cannabis with the support of ATLAS.ti, compared detainees' and staff's opinions, and considered the results with regard to drug policy in prison in general. RESULTS: 58 participants (31 male offenders, mean age 35 years, and 27 prison staff, mean age 46 years, 33% female) were interviewed. Detainees estimated the current use of cannabis use to be as high as 80%, and staff 50%. Participants showed similar opinions on effects of cannabis use that were described both at individual and institutional levels: analgesic, calming, self-help to go through the prison experience, relieve stress, facilitate sleep, prevent violence, and social pacifier. They also mentioned negative consequences of cannabis use (sleepiness, decreased perception of danger and social isolation), and dissatisfaction regarding the ongoing ambiguous situation where cannabis is forbidden but detection in the urine was not sanctioned. However, the introduction of a more restrictive regulation induced fear of violence, increased trafficking and a shift to other drug use. CONCLUSION: Although illegal, cannabis use is clearly involved in daily life in prison. A clearer and comprehensive policy addressing cannabis is needed, including appropriate measures tailored to individual users. To sustain a calm and safe environment in prison, means other than substance or medication use are required.

Services standardization in the United-States and in Europe: an institutional analysis of private authority

This contribution explores the role of international standards in the rules governing the internationalisation of the service economy. It analyses on a cross-institutional basis patterns of authority in the institutional setting of service standards in the European and Amercian context. The entry into force of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995 gave international standards a major role in harmonising the technical specifications of goods and services traded on the global market Despite the careful wording of the WTO, a whole range of international bodies still have the capacity to define generic as well as detailed technical specifications affecting how swelling offshore services are expected to be traded on worldwide basis. The analysis relies on global political economy approaches to identify constitutive patterns of authority mediating between the political and the economic spheres on a transnational space. It extends to the area of service standards the assumption that the process of globalisation is not opposing states and markets, but a joint expression of both of them including new patterns and agents of structural change through formal and informal power and regulatory practices. The paper argues that service standards reflect the significant development of a form of transnational hybrid authority, that blurs the distinction between private and public actors, whose scope spread all along from physical measures to societal values, and which reinforces the deterritorialisation of regulatory practices in contemporary capitalism. It provides evidence of this argument by analysing the current European strategy regarding service standardization in response to several programming mandate of the European Commission and the American views on the future development of service standards.

Le "Protévangile de Jacques" en latin. Etat de la question et perspectives nouvelles

Dans la première partie, on décrit et classifie les témoins qui contribuent à la connaissance du Protévangile de Jacques (PJ) en latin : 23 mss latins, les évangiles irlandais de l'enfance du Liber Flavus Fergusiorum (LFF) et du Leabhar Breac (LB). On clarifie dans une seconde partie plusieurs questions touchant à la diversité des formes textuelles du PJ en Occident, démontrant l'existence d'au moins deux traductions latines indépendantes. (I) L'une, plutôt littérale, est conservée en partie dans Montpellier 55 (M2) et Paris, n.a.l. 718 (S). (II) L'autre, caractérisée par des amplifications, est représentée par 4 témoins : Sainte-Geneviève 2787 (G; texte presque complet); l'homélie Inquirendum est (ch. 1-8, mss KPRBDO); l'Evangile latin de l'enfance combinant une partie du PJ, le Pseudo-Matthieu et une source inconnue, de coloration docète (compilation J, 8 témoins); le récit du LFF (ch. 1-16). Une troisième traduction indépendante est peut-être attestée (mss TUE). On montre ainsi l'existence de deux étapes successives d'amplification de la traduction II (IIa et IIb), illustrant le besoin d'expliciter la narration concise du PJ original. Cette traduction amplifiée a servi de modèle à l'auteur du remaniement latin du Pseudo-Matthieu. On éclaire enfin les antécédents, les caractéristiques et l'évolution de J, qui a vu le jour avant 800. La présente étude trouvera son prolongement dans l'édition critique des diverses formes du Protévangile latin