The hidden half of flowering

Poster (2013, June)

Flowering is one of the most important developmental steps in plant life cycle and is therefore tightly controlled by environmental cues. The involvement of the aerial part of the plant in the molecular ... [more ▼]

Flowering is one of the most important developmental steps in plant life cycle and is therefore tightly controlled by environmental cues. The involvement of the aerial part of the plant in the molecular mechanisms leading to floral transition is well documented while participation of the roots received less attention. Nevertheless, the induction of flowering by photoperiod is known to involve systemic signals that move in phloem sap towards sinks, throughout the plants, including the roots. Transcriptomic analysis of roots tissues during the floral induction of flowering by a single long day of in Arabidopsis thaliana by a single long day allowed us to identify a large number of differentially expressed genes. How mutations We subsequently selected in some candidate genes affect plant development - including root architecture and flowering time - is being to analyze their flowering timefurther analyzed. Further analysis of those genes will permit us to unravel their role in the flowering induction process. [less ▲]

Non-local multiscale analyzes of composite laminates based on a damage-enhanced mean–field homogenization formulation

Conference (2013, June)

Properties of carbon fiber reinforced epoxy laminates are studied using an anisotropic gradient–enhanced continuum damage model embedded in a mean–field homogenization (MFH) procedure. The fibers are ... [more ▼]

Properties of carbon fiber reinforced epoxy laminates are studied using an anisotropic gradient–enhanced continuum damage model embedded in a mean–field homogenization (MFH) procedure. The fibers are assumed to remain elastic, and the matrix material obeys an elasto–plastic behavior enhanced by the proposed damage model. The resulting multi– scale model is then applied to study the damage process at the meso–scale of laminates, and in particular the damaging of plies in a composite stack. By using the gradient–enhanced continuum damage model, the problem of losing uniqueness and strain localization, which happens in classical finite element simulations when strain softening of materials is involved, is avoided. As a demonstration a stack with a hole is studied and it is shown that the model predicts the damaging process in bands oriented with the fiber directions, accordingly to the conducted experimental results. [less ▲]

Intact procedural motor sequence learning in developmental coordination disorder

in Research in Developmental Disabilities (2013), 34(6), 1974-1981

The purpose of the present study was to explore the possibility of a procedural learning deficit among children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). We tested 34 children aged 6–12 years with ... [more ▼]

The purpose of the present study was to explore the possibility of a procedural learning deficit among children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). We tested 34 children aged 6–12 years with and without DCD using the serial reaction time task, in which the standard keyboard was replaced by a touch screen in order to minimize the impact of perceptuomotor coordination difficulties that characterize this disorder. The results showed that children with DCD succeed as well as control children at the procedural sequence learning task. These findings challenge the hypothesis that a procedural learning impairment underlies the difficulties of DCD children in acquiring and automatizing daily activities. We suggest that the previously reported impairment of children with DCD on the serial reaction time task is not due to a sequence learning deficit per se, but rather due to methodological factors such as the response mode used in these studies. [less ▲]

An integration of external information for foreign stallions into the Belgian genetic evaluation for jumping horses

in Journal of Animal Breeding & Genetics (2013), 130(3), 209-217

The aim of this study was to test the integration of external information, i.e. foreign estimated breeding values (EBV) and the associated reliabilities (REL), for stallions into the Belgian genetic ... [more ▼]

The aim of this study was to test the integration of external information, i.e. foreign estimated breeding values (EBV) and the associated reliabilities (REL), for stallions into the Belgian genetic evaluation for jumping horses. The Belgian model is a bivariate repeatability Best Linear Unbiased Prediction animal model only based on Belgian performances while Belgian breeders import horses from neighbouring countries. Thereby, use of external information is needed as prior to achieve more accurate EBV. Pedigree and performance data contained 101,382 horses and 712,212 performances, respectively. After conversion to the Belgian trait, external information of 98 French and 67 Dutch stallions were integrated into the Belgian evaluation. Resulting Belgian rankings of the foreign stallions were more similar to foreign rankings according to the increase of the rank correlations of at least 12%. REL of their EBV were improved of at least 2% on average. External information was partially to totally equivalent to 4 years of contemporary horses’ performances or to all the stallions’ own performances. All these results showed the interest to integrate external information into the Belgian evaluation. [less ▲]

The role of Bergmann glial cells in cerebellar development

in Cancer & Metabolism (2013), 1

Géomètre: les enjeux de l'enseignement

Article for general public (2013)

L'avenir des modèles 3D urbains

Article for general public (2013)

Etude prospective des caractéristiques hématologiques, biochimiques et urinaires du Dogue de Bordeaux: Une race prédisposée à une glomérulopathie familiale

Doctoral thesis (2013)

Dogue de Bordeaux (DDB) dogs are predisposed to a juvenile glomerulonephropathy (JGN), usually leading to an end-stage chronic kidney disease (CKD), mostly before 2 years of age. Since its first ... [more ▼]

Dogue de Bordeaux (DDB) dogs are predisposed to a juvenile glomerulonephropathy (JGN), usually leading to an end-stage chronic kidney disease (CKD), mostly before 2 years of age. Since its first description a few years ago, the number of DDB dogs diagnosed with JGN has drastically increased in Europe. Furthermore, some DDB dogs might develop clinical signs far later than initially thought. As the mode of inheritance of this condition has not yet been elucidated, an early diagnosis of JGN is of central importance for breeders and owners. To ease screening of affected dogs, we first wanted to improve our knowledge of this ancient French breed by describing characteristics of healthy DDB dogs. Given available information, we indeed suspected that some biological specificity existed in this breed, which could affect diagnostic processes and lead to erroneous clinical decisions. We thus determined, in a first study, breed-specific biochemical and hematological reference intervals (RI). For most of the 29 measured biochemical analytes, using the manufacturer’s generic canine RI would not have had a major clinical impact, however breed-specific RI established for 6 of them were relevantly different. Limits of the RI for total proteins, total cholesterol, aspartate aminotransferase, alanine aminotransferase and lipase were higher, while they were markedly lower for total thyroxin. Among the 25 hematological RI that were determined and compared with generic canine RI established in the same laboratory, only those of some red blood cells and platelet indices were sufficiently different to have a significant impact on clinical decision. Most red blood cells indices had higher, whereas most platelet indices had lower RI. As we also hypothesized that some apparently healthy adult DDB could suffer from JGN, we decided to look, in a second study, for the biological abnormalities that were previously described in association with the disease. We thus recruited a large cohort of adult DDB and found that proteinuria (urine protein-to-creatinine ratio (UPC) > 0.5) was present in 33%, and proteinuric CKD in 2% of the dogs. When assessed by UPC, proteinuria increased with age and was associated with changes in several biological variables. Urine specific gravity, plasma albumin and total calcium decreased, whereas cholesterol, fibrinogen and thyroid-stimulating hormone increased with UPC. Furthermore, changes in total renal volume, evaluated by ultrasound, were also described to be affected by magnitude of proteinuria. Having a UPC>0.5 increased the probability of observing urinary granular casts by an odds-ratio of 4. Amplitude of biological variations observed in this study was however generally moderate. Finally, to investigate if proteinuric DDB could be suffering from a glomerular disease related to the JGN, we attempted in a third study to characterize the nature of their proteinuria. For that purpose, we used urinary proteins electrophoresis and specific tubular (retinol binding protein (uRPB) and N-acetyl-β-D-glucosaminidase (uNAG) enzyme) and glomerular (albumin (uAlb) and immunoglobulins G (uIgG)) urinary markers. One hundred and two DDB, including 2 dogs with proteinuric CKD, were retrospectively recruited for this study, irrespective of UPC values, to facilitate comparison. Final interpretations of urine proteins electrophoresis attributed a “normal” pattern to 39 dogs, a tubular pattern to 9 of them, a glomerular pattern to 38, and a mixed pattern to 16. Most of these results were highly correlated to UPC values. However, tubular and mixed patterns were only attributed to entire male dogs because of the presence of an isolated 25kDa band, which might be due to urinary contamination by seminal proteins. When results for urinary markers were compared to values obtained in non proteinuric (UPC≤0.2) DDB dogs, 37% of the borderline proteinuric dogs (0.2≤UPC<0.5) had all four markers within reference limits. On the other hand, all proteinuric DDB dogs had elevated ratios of uAlb and uIgG when their concentrations were related to urinary creatinine (/c). Only 53% of them had an elevated uRBP/c and 35% an elevated uNAG/c, which corresponded to the dogs with highest UPC values. Results of this last study support the hypothesis that proteinuric DDB dogs have a glomerular disease which is likely related to JGN. Additionally, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative likelihood ratio of electrophoresis to identify dogs with elevated uAlb/c were 94%, 92%, 11.85 and 0.07, in that order. These indices were respectively 90%, 74%, 3.43 and 0.13, to identify DDB dogs with abnormally elevated uIgG/c. [less ▲]

Recent advances on aphid alarm pheromone biosynthetic pathway

Conference (2013, June)

D-STAR digital amateur communications in space with OUFTI-1 CubeSat

Article for general public (2013)

OUFTI-1 is a nano-satellite currently being constructed by the students of the University of Liège, Belgium. Its main payload is the D-STAR amateur-radio telecommunication protocol. In this paper, we ... [more ▼]

OUFTI-1 is a nano-satellite currently being constructed by the students of the University of Liège, Belgium. Its main payload is the D-STAR amateur-radio telecommunication protocol. In this paper, we explain how hams will be able to operate OUFTI-1 for D-STAR space communications. The large footprint of OUFTI-1 results in a larger number of users being able to communicate via D-STAR. [less ▲]