Occident | EPFL Graph Search

L'Occident ou la civilisation occidentale est une aire culturelle dont les définitions recouvrent généralement la majorité de l'Europe, l'Amérique septentrionale et l'Australasie dans sa définition la plus restrictive. Sa société contemporaine résulte de la civilisation gréco-romaine (philosophie, science et droit) et de la religion chrétienne (branches catholiques et protestantes). Son emploi actuel sous-entend également une distanciation avec soit le reste du monde, soit une ou plusieurs autres zones d'influences du monde comme le monde arabe, le monde chinois ou la sphère d'influence russe. À l'origine, cette distanciation s'exprimait face à l'Orient. La notion politique d'Occident apparaît progressivement à partir de 285, avec la division de l'Empire romain, lorsque l'Empire romain d'Occident, qui utilise l'alphabet latin, se forme autour de Rome, et que l'Empire romain d'Orient, qui regroupe les territoires hellénistiques de Grèce, d'Anatolie, du Levant et d’Égypte, se constitue

Driving an electric vehicle. A sociological analysis on pioneer users

Christophe Jemelin, Nicolas Louvet

In most of the western countries, car is the prevalent means of transport for local mobility. At the same time, sensitivity to environmental issues is increasing, correlated to the consciousness that carbon dioxide emissions have to be reduced. In regard to these two trends (individual mobility and public opinions favourable to a reduction of carbon emissions), energy-efficient vehicles will probably develop in the future-car manufacturers actually prepare new offers for the mass market. Comparable cases have occurred during the last decades-probably more modest but full of learning: some local authorities have promoted innovations based on electric vehicles in the 1990s, and some people have chosen this kind of cars for their daily travels. This article deals with these pioneers (This article comes from a communication at the ECEEE Summer Study, June 2009, Panel 6: Energy efficiency in transport and mobility.). Reporting studies carried out in 2006 and 2008, we intend to identify the reasons of this innovative modal choice, to show the difficulties that electric vehicle drivers then encountered and to analyse the patterns of use that governed their mobility and their use of electric vehicles.

2011

Novel Analytical Methods for Allergy-Related Studies

Mikaël Frossard

Managing and treating diseases require a deep understanding of the pathologies coupled with accurate diagnostic procedures. The constant development and improvement of bioanalytical methods reflect the need of diagnosis ameliorations with respect to accuracy, sensitivity and efficiency. The field of allergy diagnosis is a good example. Despite affecting almost a third of the population in western countries, allergies still present complex challenges for the physicians in terms of diagnosis and allergen characterization. This thesis presents novel analytical methods developed for the fast and personalized allergy component-resolved diagnosis (CRD), the allergen identification and quantification in food matrices and the characterization of allergen modifications, notably nitration. Immunomagnetic separation (IMS) was used to perform the allergy diagnosis at the molecular level by extracting the IgE antibodies from allergic patient blood sera and probing them against individual allergens and natural allergenic extracts. The fast and highly selective IMS procedure was coupled to matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) and electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry (MS) to identify accurately and with high sensitivity the proteins recognized as sensitizers by the patient antibodies. The developed CRD methods were successful to diagnose cowâs milk, egg, peanut and tree nuts allergies, allowing the resolution of several complex clinical cases. Additionally, precious information was collected for the cross-reactivity and cross-sensitization in peanut and tree nuts allergies using blood sera from the PronNut clinical study. Allergen nitration is one of the potential causes for the increase in allergy prevalence observed recently and requires thorough investigation. Herein, various nitrating agents were tested and compared for in vitro allergen nitration. After modifying allergens using two of the most efficient nitrating procedures, the nitration sites were identified by bottom-up proteomics (BUP) and compared to the known epitopes, bringing useful information and novel insights to the problem of correlation between protein nitration and allergenicity. The presence of a minute amount of allergens in a food product is responsible for potential life-threatening reactions in highly allergic patients and sensitive analytical methods are therefore required in food quality assessments. A proteomic-based method was used for the quality control of several food products suspected of causing severe reactions for peanut and hazelnut-allergic patients. Peptide markers were identified in a first screening of the food extracts by BUP using a high-resolution MS instrument. A standard addition method was then used to quantify peanut and hazelnut proteins by BUP using an untargeted âshotgunâ approach.

EPFL2020

Notch Signaling - a Booster of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia During Initiation and Disease Progression

Delphine Maude Tardivon

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a B cell malignancy and represents the most common leukemia in adults within the Western world. This disease mainly affects the elderly, with a median age of diagnosis over 70. The disease course is highly variable among patients; some experience rapidly progressing leukemia which becomes resistant to treatment, while others bear indolent disease and will die from other causes. Morbidity correlates with the chromosomal aberration and mutational burdens observed in patients. NOTCH1 gain-of-function mutations are among the most frequently observed mutations in patients. They are found in 10-15% of CLL patients at diagnosis and their prevalence increases up to 30% in late-stage disease. Many correlative studies have shown that patients harboring NOTCH1 mutations exhibit a reduced survival compared to those with unmutated NOTCH1. Although the presence of NOTCH1 mutations is associated with poor prognosis, it remains unclear by which mechanisms NOTCH signaling might influence disease development. Here, we assessed the role of Notch signaling in CLL using genetic loss- and gain-of-function studies in a transgenic mouse model (IgH.TEµ) that faithfully recapitulates human disease phenotypes. We found that B cell specific knock-out of RBP-J significantly decreased prevalence of CLL induction in RBP-J depleted mice compared to control animals. Reciprocal Notch gain-of-function experiments revealed that mice with enforced Notch1 signaling had an earlier CLL onset compared to controls. Recipients of sorted CLL-like cells over-expressing Notch1 had reduced survival compared to control infusion. Taken together, these genetic studies strongly suggest a role for Notch signaling in disease initiation. To study the molecular mechanisms by which Notch1 signaling enhanced CLL aggressiveness, global gene expression as well as global epigenetic analyses were performed on sorted CLL-like cells from Notch1 gain-of-function and control animals. Cell cycle related pathways in gene set enrichment analysis were the most significantly induced signature in the Notch1 gain-of function CLL-like cells compared to control CLL-like cells. This result was further confirmed by functional cell cycle assays in vivo, strongly suggesting that Notch signaling accelerates CLL initiation by promoting proliferation.

EPFL2020

Novel Analytical Methods for Allergy-Related Studies

Mikaël Frossard

EPFL2020

Notch Signaling - a Booster of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia During Initiation and Disease Progression

Delphine Maude Tardivon

EPFL2020