Acupuncture analgesia and cesarean section

The application of acupuncture anesthesia in obstetrics is discussed and reviewed. Of 14 patients delivered by cesarean section under acupuncture, 8 (57%) felt no pain, and 6 did not go through the entire procedure without other supplementary anesthesia. The failure and success rates are reviewed. It is suggested that the technique be evaluated further because with acupuncture the fetus and mother are completely protected from the secondary effects of general regional anesthesia.     

Solution- and crystal-phase covalent modification of lysozyme by a purpose-designed organoruthenium complex. A MALDI-TOF MS study of its metal binding sites

Study of the reaction between the transition organometallic complex 4-ruthenocenyl 2,6-dimethylpyrylium tetrafluoroborate and the enzyme hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) in solution and by diffusion in crystals was performed by use of a combination of spectroscopic and chromatographic methods. Conjugation involving the lysine residues of lysozyme appeared to occur readily, yielding very stable ruthenocenyl pyridinium adducts with average degrees of incorporation ranging from 0.2 to 1.8 metal complexes per protein molecule, depending on reaction conditions. Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) revealed that the protein conjugates were in fact mixtures of unmodified, mono-, di- and sometimes tripyridinium adducts. In combination with reversed-phased HPLC, we were able to show that six different monoruthenocenyl pyridinium adducts were formed in solution. This result was confirmed by trypsin digestion of a ruthenocenyl pyridinium conjugate and MALDI-TOF MS analysis of the peptide mixture, which showed that lysines 1, 13, 33, 96, 97 and 116 were involved in the reaction with the pyrylium complex, lysines 13, 33 and 116 being the major binding sites. In the tetragonal crystal state, no binding of the ruthenium complex was shown to occur at lysine 116, owing to steric hindrance at this particular position.     

As(V) retention and As(III) simultaneous oxidation and removal on a MnO2-loaded polystyrene resin

Based on KMnO4 oxidative capacity, a polystyrene matrix loaded with manganese dioxide was synthesized from an anionic commercial resin in chloride form. This medium, called R-MnO2, was tested for As(V) retention and for As(III) simultaneous oxidation and removal. Equilibrium was reached in 2 h and isotherms showed that R-MnO2 maximal capacities towards As(III) and As(V) are, respectively, 0.7 and 0.3 mmol/g. Various mechanisms were involved in As(III) retention: oxidation of H3AsO3(0) by MnO2(s) leading to the formation of HAsO4(2)- and Mn2+, fixation of As(V) formed on the resin beads and precipitation of Mn3(AsO4)2 with Mn2+ released. Successive arsenic desorption and retention steps were performed and showed that the quantity desorbed was low compared to the quantity removed during the first stage of the process. A second removal step, carried out under the same conditions as the first one, proved that the matrix second-removal capacity was weak. This solid sorbent, although not reusable, can be considered in field application as arsenic retention is really strong.     

Isolation and characterization of copolymers of beta-lactoglobulin, alpha-lactalbumin, kappa-casein, and alphas1-casein generated by pressurization and thermal treatment of raw milk

Raw skim milk was submitted to high pressure (300 to 600 MPa) and temperature (4 to 70 degrees C) treatments for 2 or 5 min. The combined effects of pressure and temperature on milk proteins induced structural changes and polymer and copolymer formation characterized by anion-exchange and size-exclusion fast protein liquid chromatography and electrophoretic techniques. Approximately half of the beta-lactoglobulin formed polymers, and the other half formed large copolymers, mainly with kappa-casein, alpha-lactalbumin via intermolecular disulfide bond exchange, and alpha(s1)-casein via physicochemical interactions, in proportions of 1.0:0.7:0.3:0.1, respectively. Minor whey proteins (serum albumin, immunoglobulins, and lactoferrin) also participated in the formation of the copolymers but to a lesser extent. Two populations of the copolymers were found with apparent molecular masses ranging from 440 to 2000 kDa for the first and more than 2000 kDa for the second. On the contrary, for heated milks the aggregation kinetics obtained by combination of high pressure and thermal treatment were very fast, as no intermediates such as dimers and small size oligomers were observed after pressurization, whatever the temperature studied. Lactosylation of proteins as well as proteolysis were very limited. A beta-casein amino-terminal peptide of 22 kDa was specifically recovered in milk samples treated under the more drastic conditions (500 MPa/55 degrees C per 5 min and 600 MPa/70 degrees C per 5 min) and might have been generated by neutral proteases such as elastase released from somatic cells present in milk. No casein was released from the micelle whatever the combination of high pressure and temperature studied.     

Optimal control law for classical and multiconjugate adaptive optics

Classical adaptive optics (AO) is now a widespread technique for high-resolution imaging with astronomical ground-based telescopes. It generally uses simple and efficient control algorithms. Multiconjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) is a more recent and very promising technique that should extend the corrected field of view. This technique has not yet been experimentally validated, but simulations already show its high potential. The importance for MCAO of an optimal reconstruction using turbulence spatial statistics has already been demonstrated through open-loop simulations. We propose an optimal closed-loop control law that accounts for both spatial and temporal statistics. The prior information on the turbulence, as well as on the wave-front sensing noise, is expressed in a state-space model. The optimal phase estimation is then given by a Kalman filter. The equations describing the system are given and the underlying assumptions explained. The control law is then derived. The gain brought by this approach is demonstrated through MCAO numerical simulations representative of astronomical observation on a 8-m-class telescope in the near infrared. We also discuss the application of this control approach to classical AO. Even in classical AO, the technique could be relevant especially for future extreme AO systems.     

PREDICTOL: a computer program to determine the thermophysiological duration limited exposures in various climatic conditions

PREDICTOL is a PC program used to determine the thermophysiological duration limited exposures (DLE) in humans, nude or clothed, submitted to various climatic conditions (hot and cold climates) at rest or during a physical exercise. DLE are determined following different standards of the International Standardization Organization (ISO), especially ISO 7933 for hot environment and ISO-TR 11079 for cold environment. The original aspect of this program is that it can be used whatever the climatic conditions. The program presents two modes: an educational interactive mode and a scenario mode. The educational interactive mode demonstrates the thermophysiological effects, expressed as DLE, of different parameter changes (temperature, humidity, wind speed, metabolic heat production by physical exercise, clothing insulation and water vapor permeability). The scenario mode determines DLE for given various linked sequences as encountered in occupational, military or even recreational activities, each sequence being characterized by its climatic conditions, physical activities performed and by physical clothing properties. DLE given by PREDICTOL are correlated to those obtained in various controlled climatic laboratory conditions (r = 0.86; P < 0.001). PREDICTOL is written in Visual Basic 6.0. A "help menu" is provided to explain the use of the program and give information concerning the equations used to calculate both the thermal balance and DLE.     

Learning eigenfunctions links spectral embedding and kernel PCA

In this letter, we show a direct relation between spectral embedding methods and kernel principal components analysis and how both are special cases of a more general learning problem: learning the principal eigenfunctions of an operator defined from a kernel and the unknown data-generating density. Whereas spectral embedding methods provided only coordinates for the training points, the analysis justifies a simple extension to out-of-sample examples (the Nystr?m formula) for multidimensional scaling (MDS), spectral clustering, Laplacian eigenmaps, locally linear embedding (LLE), and Isomap. The analysis provides, for all such spectral embedding methods, the definition of a loss function, whose empirical average is minimized by the traditional algorithms. The asymptotic expected value of that loss defines a generalization performance and clarifies what these algorithms are trying to learn. Experiments with LLE, Isomap, spectral clustering, and MDS show that this out-of-sample embedding formula generalizes well, with a level of error comparable to the effect of small perturbations of the training set on the embedding.     

Preparation par transport en phase vapeur et caracterisation de monocristaux d' oxyde ternaire V1−xNbxOw(0 ⩽ x ⩽ 0,33)

Single crystals of V_1?xNb_xO₂ ternary oxide (0 ? x ? 0,33) are prepared by chemical transport using TeCl₄. The compositions are determined by thermogravimétric analysis under oxygen, X-ray diffraction measurements and evaluation of the insulator-metal transition temperature.