Nouvelle description d’<i>Halecopsis insignis</i> de l’Éocène marin de l’Europe et les relations de ce taxon avec les Gonorynchiformes (Teleostei, Ostariophysi)

New description of dagger Halecopsis insignis from marine Eocene of Europe and relationships of this taxa with the Gonorynchiformes (Teleostei, Ostariophysi).The osteology of dagger Halecopsis insignis from the marine Eocene of Europe is briefly revised. The frontals are elongated and narrow at the preorbital level. The skull is latero-parietal. The mesethmoid is small and longer than broad. The lateral ethmoids are reduced. The pleurosphenoids are small and there is no orbitosphenoid. The lower jaw is short and the quadrate and the ventral branch of the preopercle very long. There are only four infraorbitals, all possessing a well developed membranodermic component. The supratemporal is strongly reduced. The extrascapular sensory commissure is enclosed in the parietals and passes also in a thin groove on the supraoccipital. The osteological characters allow to confirm that H. insignis belongs to the suborder Gonorynchoidei and to propose that it is phylogenetically lying between the family dagger Apulichthyidae, where the lateral ethmoid remains large, and the other families of this suborder, in which the membranodermic component of the infraorbitals is already lost

Ostéologie et relations phylogénétiques des Protobramidae (Teleostei, Tselfatiiformes) du Cénomanien (Crétacé supérieur) du Liban

The osteology of Protobrama avus, of a new species of this genus, P. woodwardi, and of two new monospecific genera of protobramid fishes, Eusebichthys byblosi and Abisaadichthys libanicus, is studied. Protobramidae are small deep-bodied marine teleosts from the Lower Cenomanian of Lebanon. They are characterised by the gomphosis of the neural and haemal arches on the centra all along the axial skeleton, the loss of segmentation on the dorsal and anal fin rays, the small cycloid scales covering the basis of the unpaired fins, the ribs fused with the haemapophyses, the loss of epicentrals and epipleurals, the loss of epurals, the reduced number (4 or 5) of hypurals and the fusion of hypurals 3 and 4 into a dorsal hypural plate. The skull is medio-parietal. The temporal fossa is dorsally bordered by the parietal. The jaws are feebly toothed or toothless. The maxillary, which is bordering the mouth, is always toothless. The supramaxillaries are lost. The possible synonymy of the Protobramidae and Plethodidae (or Tselfatiidae) as well as the integration of the Protobramidae, the Araripichthyidae and the Ferrifronsidae into a suborder of the Protobramoidei are discussed and rejected. The analysis of the protobramid characters leads to range them as a valid family in the clupeocephalan order Tselfatiiformes near the Plethodidae

Economics of Large Helium Cryogenic Systems: experience from Recent Projects at CERN

Large projects based on applied superconductivity, such as particle accelerators, tokamaks or SMES, require powerful and complex helium cryogenic systems, the cost of which represents a significant, if not dominant fraction of the total capital and operational expenditure. It is therefore important to establish guidelines and scaling laws for costing such systems, based on synthetic estimators of their size and performance. Although such data has already been published for many years, the experience recently gathered at CERN with the LEP and LHC projects, which have de facto turned the laboratory into a major world cryogenic center, can be exploited to update this information and broaden the range of application of the scaling laws. We report on the economics of 4.5 K and 1.8 K refrigeration, cryogen distribution and storage systems, and indicate paths towards their cost-to-performance optimisation

Specification of Eight 2400 W @ 1.8 K Refrigeration Units for the LHC

The cooling capacity below 2 K for the superconducting magnets in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at CERN, will be provided by eight refrigeration units at 1.8 K, each of them coupled to a 4.5 K refrigerator. Taking into account the cryogenic architecture of the LHC and corresponding process design constraints, a reference solution based on a combination of cold centrifugal and warm volumetric compressors was established in 1997. The process and technical requirements expressed in the specification issued in 1998 and the procurement scenario based on pre-series acceptance prior to final series delivery between 2002 and 2004 are presented in this paper

PIRATE project: point-of-care, informatics-based randomised controlled trial for decreasing overuse of antibiotic therapy in Gram-negative bacteraemia.

Antibiotic overuse drives antibiotic resistance. The optimal duration of antibiotic therapy for Gram-negative bacteraemia (GNB), a common community and hospital-associated infection, remains unknown and unstudied via randomised controlled trials (RCTs). This investigator-initiated, multicentre, non-inferiority, informatics-based point-of-care RCT will randomly assign adult hospitalised patients receiving microbiologically efficacious antibiotic(s) for GNB to (1) 14 days of antibiotic therapy, (2) 7 days of therapy or (3) an individualised duration determined by clinical response and 75% reduction in peak C reactive protein (CRP) values. The randomisation will occur in equal proportions (1:1:1) on day 5 (±1) of efficacious antibiotic therapy as determined by antibiogram; patients, their physicians and study investigators will be blind to treatment duration allocation until the day of antibiotic discontinuation. Immunosuppressed patients and those with GNB due to complicated infections (endocarditis, osteomyelitis, etc) and/or non-fermenting bacilli ( &lt;i&gt;Acinetobacter&lt;/i&gt; spp, &lt;i&gt;Burkholderia&lt;/i&gt; spp, &lt;i&gt;Pseudomonas&lt;/i&gt; spp) &lt;i&gt;Brucella&lt;/i&gt; spp, &lt;i&gt;Fusobacterium&lt;/i&gt; spp or polymicrobial growth with Gram-positive organisms will be ineligible. The primary outcome is incidence of clinical failure at day 30; secondary outcomes include clinical failure, all-cause mortality and incidence of &lt;i&gt;Clostridiumdifficile&lt;/i&gt; infection in the 90-day study period. An interim safety analysis will be performed after the first 150 patients have been followed for ≤30 days. Given a chosen margin of 10%, the required sample size to determine non-inferiority is roughly 500 patients. Analyses will be performed on both intention-to-treat and per-protocol populations. Ethics approval was obtained from the cantonal ethics committees of all three participating sites. Results of the main trial and each of the secondary endpoints will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. This trial is registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03101072; pre-results)

On the observation of unusual high concentration of small chain-like aggregate ice crystals and large ice water contents near the top of a deep convective cloud during the CIRCLE-2 experiment

During the CIRCLE-2 experiment carried out over Western Europe in May 2007, combined in situ and remote sensing observations allowed to describe microphysical and optical properties near-top of an overshooting convective cloud (11 080 m/−58 °C). The airborne measurements were performed with the DLR Falcon aircraft specially equipped with a unique set of instruments for the extensive in situ cloud measurements of microphysical and optical properties (Polar Nephelometer, FSSP-300, Cloud Particle Imager and PMS 2-D-C) and nadir looking remote sensing observations (DLR WALES Lidar). Quasi-simultaneous space observations from MSG/SEVIRI, CALIPSO/CALIOP-WFC-IIR and CloudSat/CPR combined with airborne RASTA radar reflectivity from the French Falcon aircraft flying above the DLR Falcon depict very well convective cells which overshoot by up to 600 m the tropopause level. Unusual high values of the concentration of small ice particles, extinction, ice water content (up to 70 cm−3, 30 km−1 and 0.5 g m−3, respectively) are experienced. The mean effective diameter and the maximum particle size are 43 μm and about 300 μm, respectively. This very dense cloud causes a strong attenuation of the WALES and CALIOP lidar returns. The SEVIRI retrieved parameters confirm the occurrence of small ice crystals at the top of the convective cell. Smooth and featureless phase functions with asymmetry factors of 0.776 indicate fairly uniform optical properties. Due to small ice crystals the power-law relationship between ice water content (IWC) and radar reflectivity appears to be very different from those usually found in cirrus and anvil clouds. For a given equivalent reflectivity factor, IWCs are significantly larger for the overshooting cell than for the cirrus. Assuming the same prevalent microphysical properties over the depth of the overshooting cell, RASTA reflectivity profiles scaled into ice water content show that retrieved IWC up to 1 g m−3 may be observed near the cloud top. Extrapolating the relationship for stronger convective clouds with similar ice particles, IWC up to 5 g m−3 could be experienced with reflectivity factors no larger than about 20 dBZ. This means that for similar situations, indication of rather weak radar echo does not necessarily warn the occurrence of high ice water content carried by small ice crystals. All along the cloud penetration the shape of the ice crystals is dominated by chain-like aggregates of frozen droplets. Our results confirm previous observations that the chains of ice crystals are found in a continental deep convective systems which are known generally to generate intense electric fields causing efficient ice particle aggregation processes. Vigorous updrafts could lift supercooled droplets which are frozen extremely rapidly by homogeneous nucleation near the −37 °C level, producing therefore high concentrations of very small ice particles at upper altitudes. They are sufficient to deplete the water vapour and suppress further nucleation as confirmed by humidity measurements. These observations address scientific issues related to the microphysical properties and structure of deep convective clouds and confirm that particles smaller than 50 μm may control the radiative properties in convective-related clouds. These unusual observations may also provide some possible insights regarding engineering issues related to the failure of jet engines commonly used on commercial aircraft during flights through areas of high ice water content. However, large uncertainties of the measured and derived parameters limit our observations

Use of Treponema pallidum PCR in Testing of Ulcers for Diagnosis of Primary Syphilis(1.).

Treponema pallidum PCR (Tp-PCR) has been noted as a valid method for diagnosing syphilis. We compared Tp-PCR to a combination of darkfield microscopy (DFM), the reference method, and serologic testing in a cohort of 273 patients from France and Switzerland and found the diagnostic accuracy of Tp-PCR was higher than that for DFM

Quasi-long range order in the random anisotropy Heisenberg model

The large distance behaviors of the random field and random anisotropy Heisenberg models are studied with the functional renormalization group in $4-\epsilon$ dimensions. The random anisotropy model is found to have a phase with the infinite correlation radius at low temperatures and weak disorder. The correlation function of the magnetization obeys a power law $<{\bf m}({\bf r}_1) {\bf m}({\bf r}_2)>\sim| {\bf r}_1-{\bf r}_2|^{-0.62\epsilon}$. The magnetic susceptibility diverges at low fields as $\chi\sim H^{-1+0.15\epsilon}$. In the random field model the correlation radius is found to be finite at the arbitrarily weak disorder.Comment: 4 pages, REVTe

Critical behavior of a fluid in a disordered porous matrix: An Ornstein-Zernike approach

Using a liquid-state approach based on Ornstein-Zernike equations, we study the behavior of a fluid inside a porous disordered matrix near the liquid-gas critical point.The results obtained within various standard approximation schemes such as lowest-order $\gamma$-ordering and the mean-spherical approximation suggest that the critical behavior is closely related to that of the random-field Ising model (RFIM).Comment: 10 pages, revtex, to appear in Physical Review Letter

Ruthenacycles and Iridacycles as Catalysts for Asymmetric Transfer Hydrogenation and Racemisation

Ruthenacycles, which are easily prepared in a single step by reaction between enantiopure aromatic amines and [Ru(arene)Cl2]2 in the presence of NaOH and KPF6, are very good asymmetric transfer hydrogenation catalysts. A range of aromatic ketones were reduced using isopropanol in good yields with ee’s up to 98%. Iridacycles, which are prepared in similar fashion from [IrCp*Cl2]2 are excellent catalysts for the racemisation of secondary alcohols and chlorohydrins at room temperature. This allowed the development of a new dynamic kinetic resolution of chlorohydrins to the enantiopure epoxides in up to 90% yield and 98% enantiomeric excess (ee) using a mutant of the enzyme Haloalcohol dehalogenase C and an iridacycle as racemisation catalyst.