Sciences Po Lyon

International audience

The efficacy of immune response to control human cancer remains controversial. It is particularly debated whether and to what extent the capacity of tumor-infiltrating dendritic cells (DC) to drive immunization can be turned off by transformed cells, leading to tumor-specific tolerance rather than immunization. To address this issue, we have characterized the DC isolated from human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These biopsy specimens contained CD11c(high) myeloid DC (mDC), but also CD11c(-) plasmacytoid DC (pDC) and a third DC subset expressing intermediate level of CD11c. Compared with peripheral blood, CD11c(high) tumor-infiltrating DC (TIDC) displayed a "semi-mature" phenotype, and TLR4 or TLR8 stimulation drove them to mature partially and to secrete limited amounts of cytokines. In contrast, most tumor-infiltrating pDC were immature but underwent partial maturation after TLR7 activation, whereas TLR9 ligation triggered low secretion of IFN-alpha. CD11c(int) mDC represented approximately 25% of total DC in tumoral and peritumoral tissues and expressed low levels of costimulatory molecules contrasting with high levels of the immunoinhibitory molecule B7-H1. Finally, the poor APC function of total TIDC even after TLR stimulation and the migratory response of both tumor-infiltrating mDC and pDC toward CCL21 and SDF-1 in vitro suggested their ability to compromise the tumor-specific immune response in draining lymph nodes in vivo. Further studies will be required to establish the specific role of the three TIDC subsets in tumor immunity and to draw conclusions for the design of therapeutic strategies.

Abstract We develop a new methodology to estimate the elasticity of urban costs with respect to city population using French house and land price data. After handling a number of estimation concerns, we find that the elasticity of urban costs increases with city population with an estimate of about 0.03 for an urban area with 100,000 inhabitants to 0.08 for an urban area of the size of Paris. Our approach also yields a number of intermediate outputs of independent interest such as the share of housing in expenditure, the elasticity of unit house and land prices with respect to city population, and within-city distance gradients for house and land prices.

• A critical review on food systems drivers is conducted. • The review reveals several methodological and conceptual issues. • Twelve major global drivers are identified through an inductive analysis. • The links between those drivers and food systems' transitional changes are discussed. • Drivers' impacts appear highly country specific and any global trend difficult to estimate empirically.

Twenty-two patients were reported to complain of tremor, headaches, tachycardia and dizziness 1-3 h after eating veal liver. As clinical symptoms were not suggestive of an infectious cause, the presence of veterinary drug residues was suspected. Clenbuterol, a beta 2-agonist, was being illegally used in cattle because of its anabolizing properties and may explain the observed effects. Assays of clenbuterol in samples of veal liver showed concentrations of 0.375 and 0.500 micrograms/g. To our knowledge, this is one of the first reports of clinical symptoms in humans associated with the consumption of veterinary drug residue-containing food.

The transboundary Mekong Basin has been dubbed the "Battery of Southeast Asia" for its large hydropower potential. Development of hydropower dams in the six riparian countries proceeds without strategic analyses of dam impacts, e.g., reduced sediment delivery to the lower Mekong. This will impact some of the world's largest freshwater fisheries and endangers the resilience of the delta, which supports 17 million livelihoods, against rising sea levels. To highlight alternatives, we contribute an optimization-based framework for strategic sequencing of dam development. We quantify lost opportunities from past development and identify remaining opportunities for better tradeoffs between sediment and hydropower. We find that limited opportunities remain for less impactful hydropower in the lower basin, where most development is currently planned, while better trade-offs could be reached with dams in the upper Mekong in China. Our results offer a strategic vision for hydropower in the Mekong, introduce a globally applicable framework to optimize dam sequences in space and time, and highlight the importance of strategic planning on multiple scales to minimize hydropower impacts on rivers.

This study examines how media system differences in the form of news change or stay the same as newspapers in the United States (liberal), Denmark (democratic corporatist), and France (polarized pluralist) move from print to online. Internet technological affordances are posited to move online news toward more advertising and information (liberal model) and more opinion and deliberation (polarized pluralist model). In the liberal direction, advertising and more localized, light news increase; toward polarized pluralism, news as a whole declines while deliberation, opinion, and nonjournalistic voices increase slightly. A lesser degree of change in France may be due to greater state insulation from market pressures; some contradictory tendencies in Denmark indicate that technological influences are shaped by contextual national factors.

Assuming no previous knowledge and concentrating on the post-1981 era, this book introduces the fundamentals of French government and society. Covering a broad spectrum of topics, French Politics and Society 2nd Edition follows a logical structure and framework for analysis, providing an excellent description of French institutions, access to background information and discussions of historical developments, political forces, public policy, and the evolution of important aspects of French society.

EBV infects most of the human population and is associated with a number of human diseases including cancers. Moreover, evasion of the immune system and chronic infection is an essential step for EBV-associated diseases. In this paper, we show that EBV can alter the regulation and expression of TLRs, the key effector molecules of the innate immune response. EBV infection of human primary B cells resulted in the inhibition of TLR9 functionality. Stimulation of TLR9 on primary B cells led to the production of IL-6, TNF-α, and IgG, which was inhibited in cells infected with EBV. The virus exerts its inhibitory function by decreasing TLR9 mRNA and protein levels. This event was observed at early time points after EBV infection of primary cells, as well as in an immortalized lymphoblastoid cell line. We determined that the EBV oncoprotein latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) is a strong inhibitor of TLR9 transcription. Overexpression of LMP1 in B cells reduced TLR9 promoter activity, mRNA, and protein levels. LMP1 mutants altered in activating the NF-κB pathway prevented TLR9 promoter deregulation. Blocking the NF-κB pathway recovered TLR9 promoter activity. Mutating the NF-κB cis element on the TLR9 promoter restored luciferase transcription in the presence of LMP1. Finally, deletion of the LMP1 gene in the EBV genome abolished the ability of the virus to induce TLR9 downregulation. Our study describes a mechanism used by EBV to suppress the host immune response by deregulating the TLR9 transcript through LMP1-mediated NF-κB activation.

This article discusses the transformations which have taken place in perceptions of the "comitology' system at European level. Whereas committees were initially conceived of as an instrument of intergovernmental control over the Commission, the evidence suggests that their functioning is generally consensual and that the Commission is among the most influential actors in committees. This explains the recent shift in the discussions over the committees' control function: the key issue is no longer how to preserve the Commission's autonomy from committees' interference, but rather how committees themselves can be kept under control, and by whom.

Abstract This article provides a literature review on the effects of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on education governance and policy process across participating countries. This review seemed necessary because there has been a growing body of literature on this topic since 2003, especially since 2010, because this literature is not always well‐known and because the discourse on the so‐called ‘PISA shock’ remains important, even if it is more of a metaphor than a concept and may be politically partial. The article exploits a dataset of 87 references which show that PISA introduced major changes in the governance of education worldwide. Driven by soft power strategies and new policy transfers, this governance is based on data and measurement tools which redefine the scales of education policies. It also shows that PISA has a strong influence on a variety of national reforms, as illustrated in many case studies. However, this influence strongly depends on domestic policy contexts that scholars intended to capture through different theoretical frameworks. Nonetheless, few propose overarching theorisations of the political meaning of PISA effects on education governance and policy processes. The article concludes by stressing three main challenges for the subsequent studies on these PISA effects: better conceptualising these effects, preserving an epistemology of uncertainty in order to avoid taken for granted views and normalising the research on PISA effects not to perpetually and artificially rediscover its so‐called novelty.

IL-7 plays a major role in T lymphocyte homeostasis and has been proposed as an immune adjuvant for lymphopenic patients. This prospect is based, at least in part, on the short-term expansion of peripheral T cells in rIL7-treated mice and primates. Nevertheless, in vivo, following initial increases in T cell proliferation and numbers, lymphocytes return to a quiescent state. As the bases for this cell cycle exit have not yet been elucidated, it is important to assess the long-term biological effects of IL-7 on quiescent human T lymphocyte subsets. In this study, we find that IL-7-stimulated CD4+ naive lymphocytes enter into cell cycle with significantly delayed kinetics as compared with the memory population. Importantly though, these lymphocytes exit from the cell cycle despite the continuous replenishment of rIL-7. This response is distinct in memory and naive CD4+ lymphocytes with memory cells starting to exit from cycle by day 10 vs day 18 for naive cells. Return to quiescence is associated with a cessation in IL-7R signaling as demonstrated by an abrogation of STAT-5 phosphorylation, despite an up-regulation of surface IL-7Ralpha. Indeed, an initial 10-fold decrease in IL-7Ralpha mRNA levels is followed by increased IL-7Ralpha expression in naive as well as memory T cells, with kinetics paralleling cell cycle exit. Altogether, our data demonstrate that IL-7 promotes the extended survival of both naive and memory CD4+ T cells, whereas cycling of these two subsets is distinct and transient. Thus, IL-7 therapy should be designed to allow optimal responsiveness of naive and memory T cell subsets.

Increases in the frequency and intensity of heat waves are direct consequences of global climate change with a higher risk for urban populations due to the urban heat island effect. Reducing urban overheating is a priority, as is identifying the most vulnerable people to establish targeted and coordinated public health policies. There are many ways of understanding the concept of vulnerability and multiple definitions and applications exist in the literature. To date, however, nothing has been done on the territory of this study, the metropolis of Lyon (France). The objective is thus to construct two vulnerability indices: physiological, focusing on the organism's capacities to respond to heat waves; and socio-economic, based on the social and economic characteristics and capacities of the community. To this end, two complementary methodologies have been implemented: the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) and the PCA (Principal Component Analysis) with Varimax rotation, respectively. The results were then spatialized to the smallest demographic census unit in France. The areas highlighted differed due to conceptual and methodological differences: the highest physiological vulnerabilities are in the center while the socio-economic ones are in the eastern periphery of the urban area. The location of these areas will enable prevention campaigns to be carried out, targeted according to the publics concerned.

Abstract An enigma lies at the heart of this article. In December 2006, the mayor of Saint‐Étienne, Michel Thiollière, was elected as the fifth best mayor in the world by the internet site City Mayors. Yet no publicity was made locally around this award. Taking this anecdote as a starting point, this article deals with the motivations that can lead a city mayor to become involved in urban international relationships' policy (city twinning, participation in cities networks, study trips, etc.). On the one hand these activities provide resources for building up political legitimacy and for electoral control, and on the other they provide resources for policy solutions to urban problems in the public realm. Nevertheless, in a context of transformation of the process of legitimization of urban elected officials, the second kind of resources seems to be the most sought after in mayoral involvement in international activities.

Abstract The following report describes the preparation and reactions of organocobalt compounds, especially the thermally unstable tris(π‐allyl)cobalt and cyclooctenylcobalt compounds. The stoichiometric and catalytic transformations of these highly reactive organocobalt systems give an insight into the rôle of cobalt in homogeneous catalysis involving alkenes and alkynes.

Que font les inspecteurs généraux de l’Éducation nationale, les statisticiens du ministère ou les experts de l’OCDE quand ils disent évaluer l’école française ? Assistons-nous à la mise en œuvre d’une véritable politique d’évaluation en la matière et quelle en serait la logique ? En éducation, l’évaluation suscite périodiquement des débats depuis plus de quarante ans. Mais au-delà de ces discours, nombreux, les pratiques effectives des évaluateurs, et leur signification politique, sont peu connues. Sur la base d’une enquête de terrain de quatre ans auprès des acteurs nationaux de l’évaluation, l’ouvrage retrace l’évolution de cette politique éducative depuis 1958. Il montre qu’en raison des incertitudes caractérisant les attentes des décideurs et des acteurs du système éducatif, et du flou officiel qui entoure la notion d’évaluation, cette politique s’explique principalement par la concurrence que se livrent les évaluateurs entre eux, concurrence qui porte sur le type de connaissance qu’ils peuvent proposer aux décideurs. À la croisée de la sociologie, de la science politique et des sciences de l’éducation, l’ouvrage interroge ainsi un aspect peu étudié du système éducatif français et propose un nouveau regard sur les enjeux contemporains liés à sa régulation et au poids des groupes professionnels dans l’action publique.

Several studies have been conducted in recent years into the effects of gamification on learner motivation. However, little is known about how learner profiles affect the impact of specific game elements. This research analyzes the effect of a gamified mathematic learning environment on the motivation and the motivated behaviors of 258 learners in secondary schools in France. Overall, results indicate that randomly assigned game elements generally demotivate learners. A more thorough analysis revealed that gamification has a positive impact on the most amotivated learners to do mathematic, although different effects were observed on learners. In particular, we noticed significant influences of their initial level of motivation and their player type on the variation in motivation during the study. We show that these influences vary according to the game element they used. These findings suggest that to increase efficiency, gamification should be tailored not only to the player profile but also to their level of initial motivation for the learning task.

Europeanization studies has become a very prominent research agenda. However, the theoretical framework becomes problematic when one starts to look for methods to study Europeanization empirically. Three main problems can be identified: First, Europeanization is not a linear process, where European integration influences the national level. It is, on the contrary, a circular movement, where national actors, policies, ideas or structures influence European integration, which, at the same time, reflects clearly at the national level. Second, what precisely is “Europeanized” compared to what is influenced by “purely” domestic politics? Third, how can we measure change at the national level? The aim of this article is to articulate the implications of the main methodological challenges and to propose possible solutions in the context of Europeanization studies. I argue that in order to study Europeanization, two particular methodological choices must be made. It is first necessary to compare actors from different national backgrounds, but also from different policy fields based on a long-term analysis. Second, a test variable is needed to study the activities of these actors not only in the European Union, but also abroad.

In civil engineering, when a CFRP-reinforced structure is subjected to fire, both the structure and CFRP are simultaneously affected by elevated temperature and mechanical loading. In the Eurocodes, the strengths of concrete and steel are described to be reduced with increased temperature; however, the codes do not describe the performance of hand-laid CFRP. This paper presents the thermomechanical performance of hand-laid CFRP with and without thermal insulation under different mechanical loading conditions. Experimental tests were conducted to identify the maximum transient heating temperature and duration to which CFRP can be exposed at different levels of mechanical load. The results show that when the applied load increases, the rupture temperature and maximum exposure duration decrease. At 20 °C, the rupture temperature of CFRP gradually decreases when the applied load increases from 10% to 50% of the material's ultimate strength; at room temperature, as the applied load reaches 75% of the ultimate strength, the rupture temperature significantly decreases. Likewise, the exposure duration gradually decreases when the applied load varies from 10% to 50% of CFRP's ultimate strength, and decreases considerably when the applied load is 75% of the ultimate strength. Additional tests were conducted on CFRP protected by an insulation material to characterize the effectiveness of the used insulation material used on the performance of hand-laid CFRP subjected to thermal and mechanical loading. Finite element models were used to investigate the thermal conduction, and these models were successfully validated by the experimental results. Thus, the models were confirmed to predict the fire protection capability of the used insulation material reliably and accurately.

The propaganda magazine of the terrorist group Islamic State (IS), entitled Dabiq, displays IS' utilization of different representations of youth to convert a new generation of jihadi fighters. This study analyzes why IS uses youth in its propaganda and what functions of discourse these representations serve. This article is a qualitative content analysis of the Dabiq magazines with direct reference to Henry Giroux's theory of the myth of childhood innocence, which portrays youths as passive victims. The evolution of representations of youth in Dabiq aligns with this myth, as the publications tend to give active and violent roles to youth in order to foster new social paradigms.