High mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) : a pathogenic role in preeclampsia

Introduction : la Physiopathologie maternelle de la prééclampsie s'associe typiquement à un état inflammatoire systémique modéré. La protéine "high mobility group box 1" (HMGB-1) est une protéine nucléaire ubiquitaire. En cas de stress cellulaire, elle est relâchée dans le milieu extrace llua li re et peut ainsi exercer son activité pro-inflammatoire. En cas de prééclampsie, le liquide amniotique et le cytoplasme des cellules trophoblastiques contiennent des quantités anormalement élevées de HMGB-1, mais il n'est toujours pas universellement admis que ces concentrations se retrouvent dans le sang maternel. Méthodes : nous avons recruté 32 femmes au troisième trimestre de grossesse, 16 avec et 16 sans prééclampsie. Nous avons également observé 16 femmes non enceintes et en bonne santé, appariées selon l'âge avec les femmes enceintes. Nous avons mesuré la concentration sérique de HMGB-1 chez les femmes enceintes avant, puis 24-48 heures après leur accouchement, en utilisant un kit ELISA commercial. Le même dosage a été réalisé chez les femmes non enceintes, mais à une seule reprise, au moment de leur inclusion dans l'étude. Résultats : le jour de leur inclusion dans l'étude, la concentration médiane [intervalle interquartile] de HMGB-1 chez les femmes enceintes prééclamptiques était de 2.1 ng/ml [1.1 - 3.2], de 1.1 [1.0-1.2] chez les grossesses saines (p < 0.05 vs groupe prééclamptiques) et de 0.6 [0.5 - 0.8] chez les patientes non enceintes (p < 0.01 vs deux autres groupes). Pour les deux groupes de femmes enceintes, les concentrations mesurées en post-partum ne variaient pas significativement de celles mesurées avant l'accouchement. Conclusion : avec ou sans prééclampsie, le troisième triemstre de la grossesse est associé à une élévation des taux circulants de HMGB-1. Cette augmentation est exagérée en cas de prééclampsie. L'origine de ces concentrations élevées reste à déterminer, mais elle semble impliquer d'autres organes que le placenta lui-même.

PKA antagonizes CLASP-dependent microtubule stabilization to re-localize Pom1 and buffer cell size upon glucose limitation.

Cells couple growth with division and regulate size in response to nutrient availability. In rod-shaped fission yeast, cell-size control occurs at mitotic commitment. An important regulator is the DYRK-family kinase Pom1, which forms gradients from cell poles and inhibits the mitotic activator Cdr2, itself localized at the medial cortex. Where and when Pom1 modulates Cdr2 activity is unclear as Pom1 medial cortical levels remain constant during cell elongation. Here we show that Pom1 re-localizes to cell sides upon environmental glucose limitation, where it strongly delays mitosis. This re-localization is caused by severe microtubule destabilization upon glucose starvation, with microtubules undergoing catastrophe and depositing the Pom1 gradient nucleator Tea4 at cell sides. Microtubule destabilization requires PKA/Pka1 activity, which negatively regulates the microtubule rescue factor CLASP/Cls1/Peg1, reducing CLASP's ability to stabilize microtubules. Thus, PKA signalling tunes CLASP's activity to promote Pom1 cell side localization and buffer cell size upon glucose starvation.

Labor Mobility of the Chinese Graduates from British and Spanish Universities: What Happens to the "Talent Migration"?

The scholarship on migration in Europe heavily focuses on the integration of economically vulnerable migrants. In the age of commercialization of education, however, the European Union attracts a rising number of highly skilled non-EU migrants that take up studies across the continent. Despite economic downturn, the EU universities experience a rapid growth in the number of Chinese students, many of whom settle in Europe upon graduation. Surprisingly, although the number of Chinese students in the EU increases, scholars largely ignore the labor paths that these highly skilled migrants take upon graduating from European universities. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the variation in the Chinese graduates’ labor incorporation patterns and in their spatial mobility. In this project, I also examine macro-level hypotheses predicting that the EU and host states’ labor market institutions, changes in the EU policies on the highly skilled and the outburst of economic crisis matter for the Chinese highly skilled social and spatial mobility. Seizing on surveys, interviews and on the bodies of literature on stratification and social mobility, economic incorporation, social capital and human capital, I look at the Chinese students that graduated from universities in Great Britain and Spain. These states differ in the university tuition fees, migration policies towards the highly skilled workers and in the period of the Chinese students’ influx, thus providing an economically and socially diverse sample. My research will contribute to the literature on the relations between migrants’ social mobility, class and status background and spatial mobility, at the same time adding a transnational level perspective to the study of highly skilled Asian migration.

Research networks and inventors’ mobility as drivers of innovation evidence from Europe

We investigate the importance of the labour mobility of inventors, as well as the scale, extent and density of their collaborative research networks, for regional innovation outcomes. To do so, we apply a knowledge production function framework at the regional level and include inventors’ networks and their labour mobility as regressors. Our empirical approach takes full account of spatial interactions by estimating a spatial lag model together, where necessary, with a spatial error model. In addition, standard errors are calculated using spatial heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation consistent estimators to ensure their robustness in the presence of spatial error autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity of unknown form. Our results point to the existence of a robust positive correlation between intraregional labour mobility and regional innovation, whilst the relationship with networks is less clear. However, networking across regions positively correlates with a region’s innovation intensity.

Is response to fire influenced by dietary specialization and mobility? A comparative study with multiple animal assemblages

Fire is a major agent involved in landscape transformation and an indirect cause of changes in species composition. Responses to fire may vary greatly depending on life histories and functional traits of species. We have examined the taxonomic and functional responses to fire of eight taxonomic animal groups displaying a gradient of dietary and mobility patterns: Gastropoda, Heteroptera, Formicidae, Coleoptera, Araneae, Orthoptera, Reptilia and Aves. The fieldwork was conducted in a Mediterranean protected area on 3 sites (one unburnt and two burnt with different postfire management practices) with five replicates per site. We collected information from 4606 specimens from 274 animal species. Similarity in species composition and abundance between areas was measured by the Bray-Curtis index and ANOSIM, and comparisons between animal and plant responses by Mantel tests. We analyze whether groups with the highest percentage of omnivorous species, these species being more generalist in their dietary habits, show weak responses to fire (i.e. more similarity between burnt and unburnt areas), and independent responses to changes in vegetation. We also explore how mobility, i.e. dispersal ability, influences responses to fire. Our results demonstrate that differences in species composition and abundance between burnt and unburnt areas differed among groups. We found a tendency towards presenting lower differences between areas for groups with higher percentages of omnivorous species. Moreover, taxa with a higher percentage of omnivorous species had significantly more independent responses of changes in vegetation. High- (e.g. Aves) and low-mobility (e.g. Gastropoda) groups had the strongest responses to fire (higher R scores of the ANOSIM); however, we failed to find a significant general pattern with all the groups according to their mobility. Our results partially support the idea that functional traits underlie the response of organisms to environmental changes caused by fire.

Mobility Among Social Education Students at the University of Girona: Taking Stock of a Decade of Fieldwork Practice Abroad

The following article is divided into five sections, each one with a specific objective. The first section briefly presents the student mobility experiences obtained basically through the fieldwork practice course in social education studies at the University of Girona. The second section delves more deeply to explore the value of the exchange and the student mobility experience over one semester of intensive fieldwork practice. The third section presents data about the students who have participated in this experience inall ten of the graduating classes. The fourth part offers an assessment of the experience and reports which aspects are considered essential to a good student mobility experience. Finally, various actions to be taken to improve these educational experiences within the social education studies at the University of Girona are specified

Inventors on the move: tracing inventors’ mobility and its spatial distribution

This paper aims to provide insights into the phenomenon of knowledge flows. We study one of the main mechanisms through which these flows occur, i.e., the mobility of highly-skilled individuals. We focus on the geographical mobility of inventors across European regions. Thus, patent data are used to trace the pattern of inventors’ mobility across european regions, to track down focuses of attraction of talent throughout the continent, and to study their distribution across the space. To do so, we gather information from PCT patent documents and we first match the names which seemed to belong to the same inventor and then we create a new algorithm to decide whether each patent applied for under each name belongs to the same inventor.

The attenuation of concentrations model: a new method for assessing mercury mobility in sediments

In this work we propose a new approach for the determination of the mobility of mercury in sediments based on spatial distribution of concentrations. We chose the Tainheiros Cove, located in the Todos os Santos Bay, Brazil, as the study area, for it has a history of mercury contamination due to a chloro-alkali plant that was active during 12 years. Twenty-six surface sediment samples were collected from the area and mercury concentrations were measured by cold vapour atomic absorption spectrophotometry. A contour map was constructed from the results, indicating that mercury accumulated in a "hot spot" where concentrations reach more than 1 µg g-1. The model is able to estimate mobility of mercury in the sediments based on the distances between iso-concentration contours that determines an attenuation of concentrations factor. Values of attenuation ranged between 0.0729 (East of the hot spot, indicating higher mobility) to 0.7727 (North of the hot spot, indicating lower mobility).

Immigrant occupational mobility: Longitudinal evidence from Spain

This article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants between their countries of origin and Spain on the basis of one of the few surveys available internationally with longitudinal information on immigrant employment in home and host countries. The evidence shows that the occupational status of immigrants in the Spanish labour market is, in general, substantially worse than in their countries of origin. The severe loss of occupational status experienced by immigrants is explained by the combined effect of the intense initial downgrading they experience when entering the Spanish labour market and their very slow occupational progress during their stay in Spain. These findings are more in line with the segmented assimilation theory, which suggests a limited or blocked immigrant occupational mobility, than with the assimilation theory, which predicts a U-shaped evolution in the occupational status of immigrants between their home and host countries. As a result, the Spanish case contrasts sharply with previous evidence for other advanced countries, which tends to support the assimilation perspective. Finally, the empirical evidence suggests that one of the elements impeding the occupational mobility of immigrants in Spain is the significant size of the secondary segment of the labour market, which restricts immigrants' opportunities mainly to low-status occupations.

Estratégias de pré-concentração em eletroforese capilar (CE): parte 1. Manipulação da velocidade eletroforética do analito

Capillary electrophoresis has become a well-established and routine-based separation technique. It is based on the differences between charged analyte mobility in aqueous or organic electrolytes. Its major limitation is the sensitivity due to small sample injection volumes and the narrow diameter of the capillaries, especially when UV detection is used. There are a number of ways to increase the concentration sensitivity. This report shows some on-line preconcentration strategies to perform it in free solution capillary electrophoresis that are based on manipulation of the analyte electrophoretic velocity during the sample introduction (stacking, field amplification and transient isotachophoresis).

Conference Proceedings. Academic Mobility Blending Perspectives - Mobilité Académique Perspectives croisées

Les 21, 22 et 23 septembre 2006, le Département d’Études Françaises de l’Université de Turku (Finlande) a organisé une conférence internationale et bilingue (anglais et français) sur le thème de la mobilité académique ; le but de cette rencontre était de rendre possible la tenue d’un forum international et multidisciplinaire, susceptible d’être le siège de divers débats entre les différents acteurs de la mobilité académique (c’estàdire des étudiants, des chercheurs, des personnels enseignants et administratifs, etc.). Ainsi, ont été mis à contribution plus de cinquante intervenants, (tous issus de domaines aussi variés que la linguistique, les sciences de l’éducation, la didactique, l’anthropologie, la sociologie, la psychologie, l’histoire, la géographie, etc.) ainsi que cinq intervenants renommés1. La plupart des thèmes traités durant la conférence couvraient les champs suivants : l’organisation de la mobilité, les obstacles rencontrés par les candidats à la mobilité, l’intégration des étudiants en situation d’échange, le développement des programmes d’études, la mobilité virtuelle, l’apprentissage et l’enseignement des langues, la prise de cosncience interculturelle, le développement des compétences, la perception du système de mobilité académique et ses impacts sur la mobilité effective. L’intérêt du travail réalisé durant la conférence réside notamment dans le fait qu’il ne concentre pas uniquement des perspectives d’étudiants internationaux et en situation d’échange (comme c’est le cas de la plupart des travaux de recherche déjà menés sur ce sujet), mais aussi ceux d’autres corps : enseignants, chercheurs, etc. La contribution suivante contient un premier corpus de dixsept articles, répartis en trois sections : 1. Impacts de la mobilité étudiante ; 2. Formation en langues ; 3. Amélioration de la mobilité académique. À l’image de la conférence, la production qui suit est bilingue : huit des articles sont rédigés en français, et les neuf autres en anglais. Certains auteurs n’ont pas pu assister à la conférence mais ont tout de même souhaité apparaître dans cet ouvrage. Dans la première section de l’ouvrage, Sandrine Billaud tâche de mettre à jour les principaux obstacles à la mobilité étudiante en France (logement, organisation des universités, démarches administratives), et propose à ce sujet quelques pistes d’amélioration. Vient ensuite un article de Dominique Ulma, laquelle se penche sur la mobilité académique régnant au sein des Instituts Universitaires de Formation des Maîtres (IUFM) ; elle s’est tout particulièrement concentrée sur l’enthousiasme des stagiaires visàvis de la mobilité, et sur les bénéfices qu’apporte la mobilité Erasmus à ce type précis d’étudiant. Ensuite, dans un troisième article, Magali Hardoin s’interroge sur les potentialités éducationnelles de la mobilité des enseignantsstagiaires, et tâche de définir l’impact de celleci sur la construction de leur profil professionnel. Après cela arrive un groupe de trois articles, tous réalisés à bases d’observations faites dans l’enseignement supérieur espagnol, et qui traitent respectivement de la portée qu’a le programme de triple formation en langues européennes appliquées pour les étudiants en mobilité (Marián MorónMartín), des conséquences qu’occasionne la présence d’étudiants étrangers dans les classes de traductions (Dimitra Tsokaktsidu), et des réalités de l’intégration sur un campus espagnol d’étudiants américains en situation d’échange (Guadalupe Soriano Barabino). Le dernier article de la section, issu d’une étude sur la situation dans les institutions japonaises, fait état de la situation des programmes de doubles diplômes existant entre des établissements japonais et étrangers, et tente de voir quel est l’impact exact de tels programmes pour les institutions japonaises (Mihoko Teshigawara, Riichi Murakami and Yoneo Yano). La seconde section est elle consacrée à la relation entre apprentissage et enseignement des langues et mobilité académique. Dans un premier article, Martine Eisenbeis s’intéresse à des modules multimédia réalisés à base du film « L’auberge espagnole », de Cédric Klapish (2001), et destinés aux étudiants en mobilité désireux d’apprendre et/ou améliorer leur français par des méthodes moins classiques. Viennent ensuite les articles de Jeanine Gerbault et Sabine Ylönen, lesquels traitent d’un projet européen visant à supporter la mobilité étudiante par la création d’un programme multimédia de formation linguistique et culturelle pour les étudiants en situation de mobilité (le nom du projet est EUROMOBIL). Ensuite, un article de Pascal Schaller s’intéresse aux différents types d’activités que les étudiants en séjour à l’étranger expérimentent dans le cadre de leur formation en langue. Enfin, la section s’achève avec une contribution de Patricia KohlerBally, consacrée à un programme bilingue coordonné par l’Université de Fribourg (Suisse). La troisième et dernière section propose quelques pistes de réflexion destinées à améliorer la mobilité académique des étudiants et des enseignants ; dans ce cadre seront donc évoquées les questions de l’égalité face à la mobilité étudiante, de la préparation nécessitée par celleci, et de la prise de conscience interculturelle. Dans un premier chapitre, Javier Mato et Bego

Determination of chlorophenols from water by solid phase microextraction - ion mobility spectrometry (SPME-IMS)

Chlorophenols have been classified as possible carcinogens for humans. Chlorophenols have been used as pesticides and wood preservatives. In Finland, during 1930 – 1980s, saw mills used KY-5 wood preservative that contained 2,4,6-TCP, 2,3,4,6-TeCP and PCP. Especially in Finland chlorophenols have entered the environment by leaking from contaminated grounds of old saw mills. Although chlorophenol concentrations found in environment do not cause acute concern, long term exposure can increase the risk of cancer. SPME is relatively cheap and simple sampling method, in which the sample extraction and concentration are performed in a single step. Solvents are not required in SPME. IMS is based on the detection of sample ion drift times. Based on the drift times, reduced mobilities are calculated, which are comparable despite the measurement conditions. SPME-IMS coupling has not been used earlier in the determination of chlorophenols from water samples. The scope of this work was to study, if SPME-IMS system is suitable for detecting chloro-phenols from water samples. The aim was to determine the most optimal extraction condi-tions, which were then applied to real water samples. Following detection limits were deter-mined: 2,4,6-TCP: 0.33 mg/l; 2,3,4,6-TeCP: 0.63 mg/l and PCP: 1.63 mg/l. Detection limits were high compared to the highest possible chlorophenol concentration that is allowed in Finnish drinking water, 10 μg/l. Detected concentrations from water sample differed from verified concentrations in the case of 2,3,4,6-TeCP by 4.6 % and in the case of 2,4,6-TCP by 48.4 %. Based on the results it can be said that SPME-IMS setup is suitable for preliminary analysis of mg/l chlorophenol concentrations from water samples.

Response of Grilage-Like Structures by the Mobility Approach

This work presents an application of the Mobility Approach to the analysis of the power flow through grillage-like structures. Such structures are usually found in offshore platforms, supporting large and heavy machines. Different wave kinds (longitudinal, flexural and torsional) were initially considered in the power flow analysis between two beams joined in L. Beams excited by an in-plane point force showed strong coupling between longitudinal-flexural waves, while that for out-of-plane point force excitation, flexural-torsional waves coupling represents the most important mechanism of energy transmission. The response determination of grillages by the mobility approach requires the structure to be separated into simple beam-like structural components. Equations for rotations and displacements at the joints of all beams are written for as mobility functions, and moments and forces acting at the joints. A system of equations relating all such internal forces and moments is obtained. This approach was applied to simple grillages. Response results showed good agreement when compared to those provided by Finite Elements.