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International audience; Water pipes are considered as tangible assets designed to provide a level of service throughout an expected lifetime. The asset can be characterised by two types of values: capital or accounting value and functional value. The capital value of assets depreciates according to a specific rate per time period. The depreciation is assessed by the annual amortisation of the capital asset, which constitutes a potential self-budgeting for future renewal. The development in the last 20 years of public sector accounting standards boards dedicated to tangible capital assets management has encouraged water and wastewater utilities to consider capital depreciation as a decision-making criterion for asset prioritisation. At the same time, when the capital depreciates the asset function deteriorates, but this deterioration is more difficult to assess. In fact, each asset can be evaluated according to a functional value that indicates the capacity of the asset to deliver the designated service at the required level. This value declines during the service life because of the occurrence of unexpected events (failures, breaks, leaks and degradation). The functional deterioration, also referred to as "obsolescence" or "reliability", is still misunderstood for water pipe assets. This study addresses the following questions: How can the functional value be estimated for water systems both at the pipe and at the network scale? How can the decision-making process for pipe renewal be improved by incorporating specific indicators based on both functional and accounting values? The current research focuses on the definition of an appropriate time-dependent functional value, based on the following hypothesis: the functional value depends on both structural and hydraulic deterioration of the pipe asset, but is partially restored by curative maintenance actions. The calibration of the functional value is mainly based on historical incident data, roughness data and managers' opinions. In order to carry out the decision-making process, the evolution of the functional value is simultaneously analysed with the depreciation of the capital asset value. The implementation of the approach at the pipe and the network level leads to an assessment of innovative criteria for the purpose of assessing possible renewal policies.

International audience; Most water distribution networks are assemblies of buried elements which makes their diagnosis complex and requires implementing an asset management (AM) policy of actions performed in the short, medium and long terms. To implement such an AM, decision makers must diagnose the condition of the asset by developing specific tools for establishing priorities between assets and plan the actions needed to maintain or improve their condition. This study focuses on two topics. (i) The implementation of a spatiotemporal analysis of the propagation of pipe breaks. This innovative approach inspired by criminality analysis allows focusing on hotspot zones in order to discriminate critical assets. We have designed a new ‘clustering’ criterion that can be used as a prioritization criterion for asset sorting. (ii) The second part addresses the issue of multi-criteria decision making concerning the classification of pipe renewal candidates by comparing two kinds of aggregation method: (i) an unsophisticated approach by using adapted weighted sum methods; and (ii) a sophisticated approach by using the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) and the ‘Elicitation Et Choix Traduisant la REalité’ (ELECTRE III). The underlying reason for comparing these methods is to know whether the unsophisticated methods ensure reliable replacement policy compared to the sophisticated one.

An effective method for the early detection of breast cancer is the mammographic screening. One of the most important signs of early breast cancer is the presence of microcalcifications. For the detection of microcalcification in a mammography image, we propose to conceive a multiagent system based on a dual irregular pyramid. An initial segmentation is obtained by an incremental approach; the result represents level zero of the pyramid. The edge information obtained by application of the Canny filter is taken into account to affine the segmentation. The edge-agents and region-agents cooper level by level of the pyramid by exploiting its various characteristics to provide the segmentation process convergence., {"references":["P. Bertolino. \"Contributions des pyramides irrégulières en segmentation\nd'images multirésolution\". Ph.D. thesis, Institut National Polytechnique\nde Grenoble, 1995","A. Boucher. \"Une approche décentralisée et adaptative de la gestion\nd'informations en vision, Application ├á l'interprétation d'images de\ncellules en mouvement\". Ph.D. thesis, Université Joseph Fourier,\nGrenoble, 1999.","J.F. Canny. \"A computational approach to edge detection\". Patt\nAna.Mach. Int, 1986, pp. 8(6):679-698.","DDSM: Digital Database for Screening Mammography. University of\nSouth Florida.\nhttp://marathon.csee.usf.edu/Mammography/Database.html00","E. Duchesnay. \"Agents situés dans l-image et organisés en pyramide\nirrégulière. Contribution ├á la segmentation par une approche\nd-agrégation coopérative et adaptative\". Ph.D. Université de Rennes-1,\n2001.","J. Freixenet, X. Munoz, D. Raba, J. Mart and X. Cufi. \"Yet Another\nSurvey on Image Segmentation: Region and Boundary Information\nIntegration\". ECCV 2002, LNCS 2352, Springer- Berlin Heidelberg,\n2002, pp. 408-422.","F. Gaspoz. \"Mammographie digitale & Analyse d-images par\nordinateur\". Laboratoire TIMC - IMAG. Faculté de Médecine\nGrenoble. Université Joseph Fourier Grenoble, France. 2003","L. Germond, M.Dojat, C. Taylor, C. Garbay. \"A Cooperative Framework\nfor Segmentation of MRI Brain Scans\". Artif. Intell. in Med. 20 (2000),\npp. 277-94.","Y. Haxhimusa, W.G. Kropatsch. \"Hierarchical Image Partitioning with\nDual Graph Contraction\". Technical Report PRIP-TR-81, Institute of\nComputer Aided Automation 183/2, Patt. Recogn. Image. Proc Group,\nAustria, 2003.\n[10] J.M. Jolion and A. Montanvert. \"The adapted pyramid: a framework for\n2d image analysis\". Computer Vision Graphics and Image Processing,\nMay 1992, pp. 55(3):339-348.\n[11] W.G. Kropatsch. \"Building irregular pyramids by Dual Graph\nContraction\". Technical Report PRIP-TR-35, Institute of Automation\n183/2, Dept. for Patt. Rec. Image. Proc, TU Wien,Austria, 1994.\n[12] H. Macho, W. Kropatsch. \"Finding connected components with dual\nirregular pyramids\". PRIP, Institute for Automation, AUSTRIA. In\nCinquième Colloque DGCI, p.147-158. LLAIC1, Université d'Auvergne\n(1995).\n[13] P. Meer. \"Stochastic image pyramids\". Comp. Vision. Graph. Image\nProc, 1989, pp. 45 (3): 269-294.\n[14] N. Selmaoui, W. Kropatsch. \"Watershed by Dual Graph Contraction.\"\nPRIP - Institute for Automation, 183/2. Vienna University of\nTechnology, Austria (1997).\n[15] H. Settache. \"Une plate-forme multi-agents pour la segmentation\nd-images: Application dans le domaine des IRM cérébrales 2D\". DEA\nReport, Université de Caen, 2002\n[16] D. Willersinn. \"Parallel Graph Contraction for Dual Irregular\nPyramids\". PRIP-TR 28, Institute for Automation, 183/2, Technical\nUniversity of Vienna, Austria, 1994"]}

Background: Astaxanthin (ATX) is a lipophilic compound found in many marine organisms. Studies have shown that ATX has many strong biological properties, including antioxidant, antiviral, anticancer, cardiovascular, anti-inflammatory, neuro-protective and anti-diabetic activities. However, no research has elucidated the effect of ATX on ionic channels. ATX can be extracted from shrimp by-products. Our work aims to characterize ATX cell targets to lend value to marine by-products. Methods: We used the Xenopus oocytes cell model to characterize the pharmacological target of ATX among endogenous Xenopus oocytes&rsquo, ionic channels and to analyze the effects of all carotenoid-extract samples prepared from shrimp by-products using a supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) method. Results: ATX inhibits amiloride-sensitive sodium conductance, xINa, in a dose-dependent manner with an IC50 of 0.14 &micro, g, a maximum inhibition of 75% and a Hill coefficient of 0.68. It does not affect the potential of half activation, but significantly changes the kinetics, according to the slope factor values. The marine extract prepared from shrimp waste at 10 &micro, g inhibits xINa in the same way as ATX 0.1 &micro, g does. When ATX was added to the entire extract at 10 &micro, g, inhibition reached that induced with ATX 1 &micro, g. Conclusions: ATX and the shrimp Extract inhibit amiloride-sensitive sodium channels in Xenopus oocytes and the TEVC method makes it possible to measure the ATX inhibitory effect in bioactive SFE-Extract samples.