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Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection impairs mucosal immunity and leads to bacterial translocation, fueling chronic inflammation and disease progression. While this is well established, questions remain about the compositional profile of the translocated bacteria, and to what extent it is influenced by antiretroviral therapy (ART). Using 16S ribosomal DNA targeted sequencing and shotgun proteomics, we showed that HIV increases bacterial translocation from the gut to the blood. HIV increased alpha diversity in the blood, which was dominated by aerobic bacteria belonging to Micrococcaceae (Actinobacteria) and Pseudomonadaceae (Proteobacteria) families, and the number of circulating bacterial proteins was also increased. Forty-eight weeks of ART attenuated this phenomenon. We found that enrichment with Lactobacillales order, and depletion of Actinobacteria class and Moraxellaceae and Corynebacteriacae families, were significantly associated with greater immune recovery and correlated with several inflammatory markers. Our findings suggest that the molecular cross talk between the host and the translocated bacterial products could influence ART-mediated immune recovery.

En 2013, les délais de paiement fournisseurs ont baissé pour la septième année consécutive et les délais clients ont légèrement augmenté après six ans de repli. Le solde du crédit interentreprises se dégrade. Le coût implicite des retards de paiement pour les entreprises est d’environ 10 milliards d’euros.

L’année 2013 marque un léger repli de l’activité des soixante-dix-sept principaux groupes en France. La rentabilité d’exploitation et le résultat se dégradent, sans remettre en cause la capacité des groupes à générer de la liquidité. Le niveau des capitaux propres reste élevé et la capitalisation boursière progresse.

Les 80 principaux groupes français ont continué de renforcer leur trésorerie au premier semestre 2014, tout en poursuivant leur stratégie de désendettement et d’augmentation des fonds propres.

En 2012, les délais de paiement ont baissé pour la sixième année consécutive. Pourtant, le solde du crédit interentreprises ne s’améliore plus : les délais de paiement des fournisseurs se contractent plus rapidement que ceux des clients.

Depuis 2009, les délais de paiement interentreprises ont fortement reculé en France. En 2011, ce repli perd de sa force, mais il se poursuit néanmoins. Il révèle une orientation moins défavorable que ne l’anticipaient nombre de chefs d’entreprises au tout début de l’année 2011.

Le redémarrage de l’activité des PME résidant en France se confirme en 2011, notamment grâce à un rebond des exportations, mais la fin d’année marque les prémices d’une inflexion. Le taux de marge augmente légèrement, tandis que le taux d’épargne se replie. L’investissement progresse, surtout pour les PME de l’industrie. Les capitaux propres continuent à se renforcer.

En 2010, la reprise de l’activité permet aux PME d’améliorer leur rentabilité et de consolider leurs capitaux propres, même si de fortes disparités demeurent. Le renforcement de la trésorerie et la faiblesse de l’investissement demeurent caractéristiques d’un comportement attentiste.

Les délais de paiement se sont significativement raccourcis depuis la mise en oeuvre de la LME. En 2010, le mouvement de baisse continue mais son rythme semble ralentir. Le niveau des risques de transmission des difficultés d’une entreprise à l’autre reste élevé.

En 2009, les délais de paiement diminuent. Cette baisse n’est plus le fait des seules PME, mais s’étend désormais à la sphère des ETI et des grandes entreprises. Elle génère des gains de trésorerie dont les PME sont les principales bénéfi ciaires.

À fin 2008, le taux de détention de la capitalisation des sociétés françaises du CAC 40 par les non-résidents recule pour la deuxième année consécutive pour s’établir à 39,2 %, marquant une baisse de deux points par rapport à la fin de l’année 2007.

The invention relates to a silicon sintering process, with no external force added, which comprises positioning a silicon sample in a furnace and then heat-treating this sample at least at a certain temperature and with at least a partial pressure of oxidizing species in order to control the thickness of a silicon oxide layer on the surface thereof.

Our work deals with computer vision. The problem of augmented reality implies a real time estimation of the relive position between camera and scene. This thesis presents a complete method of pose tracking that works with planar structures which are abundant in indoor and outdoor urban environments. The pose tracking is done using a low cost camera and an inertial sensor. Our approach is to use the planes to make the pose estimation easier. Homographies computed by an image tracking algorithm presented in this document are used as measurements for our Simultaneous Localization And Mapping method. This SLAM method permits a long term and robust pose tracking by propagating the measurements uncertainties. Works about selection of regions to track and their corresponding plane parameters initialization are also described in this thesis. Numerical and image based experiments shows the validity of our approach.; Le travail présenté dans ce manuscrit se situe dans le domaine de la réalité augmen- tée. Dans le contexte de la réalité augmentée, il est nécessaire de calculer la position relative entre la caméra et la scène en temps réel. Cette thèse présente une méthode complète de calcul de pose reposant sur l'utilisation de structures planes présentes dans les environnements urbains intérieurs et extérieurs. Le suivi de pose est effectué à l'aide d'une caméra bas coût et d'un capteur inertiel. Notre approche consiste à tirer parti des plans pour faciliter le calcul de la pose. Les homographies obtenues par un algorithme de suivi dans l'image de régions planes, présenté dans cette thèse, servent de mesures à notre méthode de localisation et car- tographie simultanées. Cette méthode de SLAM permet d'assurer un suivi de la pose robuste tout en permettant une reconstruction de la scène 3D et fonctionnant sur le long terme en propageant les incertitudes des mesures. Des travaux sur la sélection des régions à suivre et sur l'initialisation des paramètres des plans, correspondant à ces régions, sont également présentés. Des expériences en simulation et sur des séquences d'images réelles montrent la validité de notre approche.

23rd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, 1-5 September 2008, Valencia, Spain; 1071-1074, Solar Grade Silicon obtained by purification of metallurgical grade Silicon becomes an important source of Silicon feedstock for the crystalline Silicon based PV industry. This paper presents a new process and furnace for the crystallization of multi-crystalline Silicon ingot, using purified metallurgical grade Silicon as feedstock. In particular, the influence of the remaining dopant concentrations, such as Boron and Phosphorous, in purified metallurgical Silicon on the electrical characteristics of the obtained ingots, wafers and solar cells are discussed. Indications have been found that compensation of n-type and p-type dopants can lead to an improved minority carrier diffusion length, improving the overall efficiencies of solar cells: Efficiencies of 14 % have been obtained on ingots that were grown from feedstock with relatively high concentrations of Boron (2.5x1017 cm-3) and Phosphorous (3.5x1017 cm-3) respectively. Although the feedstock is n-type due to the higher concentration of Phosphorous, the ingot showed a p-type polarity with a resistivity of 0.5 Ohm-cm over 75% of its height starting from the bottom, which is due to a more effective segregation of Phosphorous. This also leads to an accumulation of Phosphorous atoms in the top region of the ingot, which turns n-type again and a transition region of high compensation.

23rd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, 1-5 September 2008, Valencia, Spain; 1445-1448, This study is devoted to the variations of the carrier lifetime and minority carrier diffusion length with the compensation level in solar-grade crystalline silicon. Especially we show, by using the Shockley-Read-Hall statistics, that an increase in the compensation level reduces the recombination strength of doping species and of some metal impurities. These theoretical results are confirmed by the chemical and electrical characterizations of strongly compensated multicrystalline silicon wafers and solar cells, from silicon purified by the metallurgical route. These results are of paramount importance since an accurate control of the compensation level can lead to strong improvements in silicon solar cells efficiencies. Nevertheless, possible limits of too high compensation levels are also evoked.

The human genome sequence defines our inherent biological potential; the realization of the biology encoded therein\ud requires knowledge of the function of each gene. Currently, our knowledge in this area is still limited. Several lines of\ud investigation have been used to elucidate the structure and function of the genes in the human genome. Even so, gene\ud prediction remains a difficult task, as the varieties of transcripts of a gene may vary to a great extent. We thus\ud performed an exhaustive integrative characterization of 41,118 full-length cDNAs that capture the gene transcripts as\ud complete functional cassettes, providing an unequivocal report of structural and functional diversity at the gene level.\ud Our international collaboration has validated 21,037 human gene candidates by analysis of high-quality full-length\ud cDNA clones through curation using unified criteria. This led to the identification of 5,155 new gene candidates. It also\ud manifested the most reliable way to control the quality of the cDNA clones. We have developed a human gene\ud database, called the H-Invitational Database (H-InvDB; http://www.h-invitational.jp/). It provides the following:\ud integrative annotation of human genes, description of gene structures, details of novel alternative splicing isoforms,\ud non-protein-coding RNAs, functional domains, subcellular localizations, metabolic pathways, predictions of protein\ud three-dimensional structure, mapping of known single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), identification of polymorphic\ud microsatellite repeats within human genes, and comparative results with mouse full-length cDNAs. The H-InvDB\ud analysis has shown that up to 4% of the human genome sequence (National Center for Biotechnology Information\ud build 34 assembly) may contain misassembled or missing regions. We found that 6.5% of the human gene candidates\ud (1,377 loci) did not have a good protein-coding open reading frame, of which 296 loci are strong candidates for nonprotein-coding\ud RNA genes. In addition, among 72,027 uniquely mapped SNPs and insertions/deletions localized within\ud human genes, 13,215 nonsynonymous SNPs, 315 nonsense SNPs, and 452 indels occurred in coding regions. Together\ud with 25 polymorphic microsatellite repeats present in coding regions, they may alter protein structure, causing\ud phenotypic effects or resulting in disease. The H-InvDB platform represents a substantial contribution to resources\ud needed for the exploration of human biology and pathology

We present direct imaging of magnetic flux structures in the anisotropic, spin-triplet superconductor Sr$_{2}$RuO$_{4}$ using a scanning $\mu$SQUID microscope. Individual quantized vortices were seen at low magnetic fields. Coalescing vortices forming flux domains were revealed at intermediate fields. Based on our observations we suggest that a mechanism intrinsic to the material stabilizes the flux domains against the repulsive vortex-vortex interaction. Topological defects like domain walls can provide this, implying proof for unconventional chiral superconductivity., Comment: submitted to PRL