Type 2 diabetes (or non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, NIDDM) is a common metabolic disease in man. The Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rat has been designed as a NIDDM model. Previous studies with this ...strain have shown differences at the mitochondrial level. The mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT) is a widely studied phenomenon but yet poorly understood, that leads to mitochondrial dysfunction and cell death. The aim of this work was to compare the differences in susceptibility of induction of the MPT with calcium phosphate in GK and Wistar rats. Our results show that heart mitochondria from GK rats are less susceptible to the induction of MPT, and show a larger calcium accumulation before the overall loss of mitochondrial impermeability.
The heart is one of the organs affected during the later stages of diabetes. Mitochondrial function has already been proposed to be affected during the course of diabetes. Nevertheless, little ...information is known concerning the impact of antioxidants in heart mitochondria of a milder model for diabetes, such as the Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rat, where mitochondrial function appears ameliorated. The objective of this work was to test if injections of Vitamin E and Coenzyme Q10, alone and in combination, were able to modify mitochondrial performance in the hearts of GK rats. Several aspects of mitochondrial function were measured, such as the respiratory control ratio and the electric potential, as well as the mitochondrial accumulation of Vitamin E and Coenzymes Q9 and Q10. We observed that only Vitamin E appeared to have a positive impact on the mitochondrial phosphorylation efficiency and on mitochondrial performance, namely on the ability to generate the electric transmembrane potential in the presence of supra-physiological calcium concentrations. Vitamin E administration also increased the mitochondrial concentration of Coenzyme Q10. None of the treatments was able to reverse the diabetic phenotype in GK rats. We conclude that in this model of mild hyperglycemia, administration of antioxidants may have a marginal positive impact on mitochondrial function.
In this study, we analyzed the antimicrobial resistance properties and T antigenic types of 511 isolates collected in Lisbon district, Portugal, from throat swabs of healthy subjects (n=341), during ...2000-2002 and from diverse infection sites (n=170) of outpatients and inpatients, during 1999-2002. Erythromycin resistance was higher in tonsillitis/pharyngitis (27.4%) and skin infection isolates (21.1%), than in carriage and invasive isolates (<or=10%). Differences in erythromycin resistance among children and adults were noticed only for carriage isolates (9.3% in children and 21.1% in adults). Most erythromycin-resistant isolates from carriage (82.4%) and tonsillitis/pharyngitis (71.9%) showed the M phenotype. All M phenotype isolates (n=53) carried mef(A), whereas all MLS(B) phenotype isolates (n=19) carried erm(B) and not erm(A). Resistance to tetracycline mediated by tet(M) in most isolates was <or=6% in tonsillitis/pharyngitis and carriage isolates, 36.8% in skin infection isolates, and 44.1% in invasive isolates. The M phenotype increased since 2000, linked to a decrease of tetracycline resistance, and was predominantly associated with T1 in 2000-2001 and T12 in 2002 among carriage isolates, and with T8/25/Imp19 through 2000-2002 among tonsillitis/pharyngitis isolates. The majority (53%) of the tetracycline-resistant invasive isolates were nontypable. All isolates were susceptible to penicillin and chloramphenicol. This study showed that tetracycline and macrolide resistance frequency and phenotypes differ among GAS from various origins and changed over time. Moreover, T typing suggested that most drug-resistant isolates causing oropharyngeal carriage are distinct from the majority of isolates causing noninvasive and invasive infection.
UFO: A Scalable GPU-based Image Processing Framework for On-line Monitoring Vogelgesang, M.; Chilingaryan, S.; dos Santos Rolo, Tomy ...
2012 IEEE 14th International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communication & 2012 IEEE 9th International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems,
2012-June
Conference Proceeding
Current synchrotron experiments require state-of-the-art scientific cameras with sensors that provide several million pixels, each at a dynamic range of up to 16 bits and the ability to acquire ...hundreds of frames per second. The resulting data bandwidth of such a data stream reaches several Gigabits per second. These streams have to be processed in real-time to achieve a fast process response. In this paper we present a computation framework and middleware library that provides re-usable building blocks to implement high-performance image processing algorithms without requiring profound hardware knowledge. It is based on a graph structure of computation nodes that process image transformation kernels on either CPU or GPU using the OpenCL sub-system. This system architecture allows deployment of the framework on a large range of computational hardware, from netbooks to hybrid compute clusters. We evaluated the library with standard image processing algorithms required for high quality tomographic reconstructions. The results show that speed-ups from 7× to 37× compared to traditional CPU-based solutions can be achieved with our approach, hence providing an opportunity for real-time on-line monitoring at synchrotron beam lines.
Sur base d’une enquête réalisée dans le secteur des centres d’appel téléphonique, cette thèse analyse l’impact subjectif de la prescription du mensonge au travail. Le premier temps de la thèse ...est consacré à la présentation et à l’interprétation du matériel clinique. Celle-ci débouche sur une discussion psychodynamique du concept de souffrance éthique qui convoque le champ de la philosophie morale, notamment les éthiques du care. Par ailleurs, la mise en évidence de stratégies défensives contre la souffrance au travail d’un type nouveau, ainsi que de modes de gestion du personnel qui se caractérisent par une instrumentalisation de la reconnaissance, permettent de réinterroger à de nouveaux frais les avantages et les inconvénients de ces concepts au sein d’une théorie de l’autonomie. Enfin, le problème de la servitude volontaire est abordé à l’aide de travaux philosophiques sur la liberté de la volonté. Il en ressort que l’articulation entre liberté et coercition bénéficierait d’une discussion approfondie des rapports entre violence et corps érogène.
Drawing on a survey conducted in call centres, this thesis analyzes the subjective impact of the prescription of lying in the workplace. The first part of the thesis is devoted to the presentation and interpretation of clinical data. This leads to a discussion of the psychodynamic concept of ethical suffering. The latter summons the field of moral philosophy, namely the ethics of care. Furthermore, the identification of a new type of defensive strategies againts suffering at work, as well as personnel management methods wich are characterized by a manipulation of recognition, allow us to re-examine the advantages and disadvantages of these concepts for a theory of autonomy. Finally, the problem of voluntary servitude is approached from the standpoint of the philosophical debate on free will. It appears that the link between freedom and coercion would benefit from a thorough discussion between violence and the erogenous body.
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