Contribution à l’étude de la maturation postnatale de l’intestin grêle et du système immunitaire – Effets des polyamines exogènes

Post doctoral thesis (2005)

Contribution à l’étude de la notion d’impôt en droit belge. Contours, singularité et utilité d’un concept juridique

Doctoral thesis (2007)

Contribution à l'étude de la pathogénie de l'infection par Trypanosoma evansi

Doctoral thesis (2009)

Contribution à l'étude de la pathologie pleurale maligne.

Doctoral thesis (2009)

Contribution à l'étude de la phase précoce du choc septique :Analyse des effets hémodynamiques provoqués par l'administration continue de faibles doses d'endotoxine chez le chien.

Doctoral thesis (1993)

Modèle expérimental visant à démontrer que la perfusion soutenue d'une faible dose d'endotoxine reproduit le tableau clinique constaté chez l'homme.

Contribution à l'étude de la plaine alluviale du Geer inférieur

in Bulletin de la Société Géographique de Liège (1977)

Contribution à l'étude de la production d'hydrogène par voie microbiologique

Master's dissertation (2008)

Hydrogen is currently considered as to become an important energy carrier and energy resource in the next century. Research and developments are now focusing on a green way to produce the hydrogen. One of ... [more ▼]

Hydrogen is currently considered as to become an important energy carrier and energy resource in the next century. Research and developments are now focusing on a green way to produce the hydrogen. One of these way is the microbial way, which uses microorganisms in anaerobic condition to produce hydrogen and volatile fatty acids in aqueous media. This technology may also work with liquid wastes treatment coming from the food industry. Chimiotrophic bacterias from the genus Clostridium shows many advantages due to the substrates divsersity they can assimilate but also to the production yields they reach. The study of hydrogen production by Colstridium butyricum CWBI sp1009, isolated and characterized in earlier works in the CWBI, is the main purpose of this work. This strain was inoculated in a continuous anaerobic bio reactor with fixed biomass on a rotative horizontal cylinder. This reactor reach a glucose conversion yield of 2.1 mol_hydrogen/mol_glucose consumed. The phenomenas occurring in this reactor need to be completely understood for a future application at an industrial scale. One factor influencing the hydrogen production without being well understood is the hydrogen partial pressure and the retro inhibition it affects upon the organisms. Increasing the hydrogen transfer from the liquid to gas phase in batch fermentation in 200ml of culture media and degassing daily with nitrogen enhance the hydrogen production yield of 33%. This has also been confirmed on the bio disk bio reactor by lowering the total pressure in the reactor of 0.11bar leading to a productivity and yield enhancement. The inter facial transfer surface play also a great role and was studied in 200ml batch fermentation. These experiences shows a 25 to 100% increase of hydrogen production yield by enhancing the mixing conditions of the media. Furthermore, these experiences shows influences of the culture conditions to the microorganisms metabolisms, observing the increasing activity of the formate hydrogen lyase enzyme, partially responsible of the hydrogen production. [less ▲]

« Contribution à l’étude de la propriété de sols en droit belge, Aspects de droit privé et de droit public », Rapport belge

in La propriété (2003)

Contribution à l'étude de la robustesse des structures de bâtiments: prise en compte de la plastification progressive de la partie de la structure "non directement affectée" par l'évènement exceptionnel considéré

Master's dissertation (2011)

Contribution à l'étude de la surveillance de la mécanique ventilatoire du nouveau-né ventilé.

Doctoral thesis (2012)

Mechanical ventilation, still a major intervention to improve prognosis in newborns, requires careful monitoring of ventilated infants. This monitoring integrates different parameters. Its classical focus ... [more ▼]

Mechanical ventilation, still a major intervention to improve prognosis in newborns, requires careful monitoring of ventilated infants. This monitoring integrates different parameters. Its classical focus is on blood gases and their proxy (pulse oxymetry, transcutaneous oxygen and carbon dioxide content), and also includes physical assessment, thoracic imaging and appraisal of ventilator settings. Use of currently available on-line respiratory mechanics (RM) as displayed by ventilators seems limited given a large apparent variability. As current respiratory support strategies aim to reduce exposure to mechanical ventilation and to decrease ventilator associated lung injuries, additional continuous monitoring tools could benefit neonatal patients. In a review of advanced biomedical devices in use in the neonatal intensive care units and areas where improvement or evaluation is necessary, the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development underlines simple tools for continuous assessment of vital pulmonary functions at the bedside. This research aims at finding solutions to that problem. In a first step, different respiratory mechanics parameters (dynamic compliance –Cdyn, dynamic resistance –Rdyn, tidal volume –VT and the overdistension parameter C20/C) are obtained from ventilatory recordings of newborns under respiratory support with the most commonly used neonatal ventilator to evaluate their clinical relevance. Those data present a high variability and therefore lack precision. It is possible to mathematically decrease this variability by using parameters averaged over a few minutes and to obtain reproducible results. Continuous pressure, flow and volume data from the ventilator allow construction of pressure-volume, pressure-flow and flow-volume loops. From those loops, Cdyn, Rdyn and VT can be computed by the Mead-Whittenberger method. Those values when derived from respiratory cycles with good appearance significantly differ from ventilator values. Given the lack of precision of ventilator derived respiratory mechanics data, a new strategy is developed to obtain those parameters only from optimal looking respiratory cycles. A new software is designed to reconstruct waves and loops from the ventilator continuous recordings. This software individualises respiratory cycles and compute Cdyn and Rdyn (least mean square method), VT and C20/C. Using 10 sets of two recordings (one in Synchronized Intermittent Mandatory Ventilation and one in Assist/Control ventilatory modes), visual evaluation of 11274 respiratory cycles selects 4847 cycles considered optimal looking. Those assisted cycles present no or minimal leak, good hysteresis of the pressure-volume loop, and no abnormalities of the flow curves. The coefficients of variation of the respiratory mechanics parameters obtained with this method are significantly decreased, by 25-27% from the ventilator values for Rdyn, Cdyn and C20/C, and by 60% for VT. This increase in parameters precision is associated with an improved capacity to discriminate different values. Analysis of discordant values between ventilator and optimal respiratory cycles is relevant. In A/C mode, the VTs from the selected respiratory cycles are lower than values reported by the ventilator, suggesting that currently available VTs give incomplete information for adjustment of ventilator settings. In SIMV mode, the weak correlation between Cdyn from both methods leads to question the relevance of ventilator informations. The important scattering of ventilator C20/Cs out of classical values, and the absence of correlation with values from selected respiratory cycles demonstrate the lack of validity of ventilator C20/Cs. Overall, the results suggest that the use of data derived from selected respiratory cycles could underlie the conception of RM monitoring tools to support ventilatory management. To avoid the heavy workload associated with visual respiratory cycles’ selection, the software is improved to automatically identify optimal cycles. The positive predictive values and specificity of this selection are high. Respiratory mechanics parameters from cycles selected automatically are very concordant with those from visually selected cycles. The last step of this work assesses the software potential with analysis of 21 recordings from various clinical situations. The discriminating power of automatically selected respiratory cycles’ parameters is tested in an extended population. Trending abilities of those parameters are evaluated. Analyses of respiratory mechanics parameters derived from automatically selected cycles are able to demonstrate differences of 4.6-7.1% and more between parameters from two 10min recordings. Averaging data over 3-7min allows to determine a 10% difference. Parameters averaged over 10min allow detection of 10% changes in most patients. Those results should allow building trend curves with clinically and statistically significant informations. In conclusion, the continuous respiratory mechanics analysis software developed and evaluated in this work should give precise informations on the dynamic evolution of RM parameters. Functions integrated in the last version of the software give immediate research opportunities, and should lead to clinical application in a very near future. Those parameters could then complete current informations integrated in ventilatory management. [less ▲]