Determining the core of journals of a research centre: The example of researchers from the Department of Rural Economy and Sociology of the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique,France

This paper analyses the determination of visibility of journals in which researchers of INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research) publish. The corpus is comprised of 671 articles published over a period of four years in 258 journals. The advantage of the method applied for determining the visibility of journals is that it combines two approaches: a) bibliometric indicators (coverage by the ISI-publications and by two specific French databases) and b) experts' opinions (10 economists and sociologists). The main results are: a) There is a convergence between the opinion of the experts and «visibility» in the databases, b) The impact factor confirms the main opinions of the experts. The first journals ranked by the experts and JCR Social Sciences are the same but represent only 40 per cent of the total journals analysed. The other journals were revealed by the experts and French databases.«Whoever seeks to pass a balanced but lucid judgement on the general trends of the activity carried out by the profession to which he belongs, is liable to say either banalities or to hurt his colleagues»The notion which we retain of core is that which is successively and conjointly validated by the experts and by the major databases representative of the field.This study was financed by the Department of Rural Economy and Sociology of INRA.     

Optimization of printing parameters for improvement of mechanical and thermal performances of 3D printed poly(ether ether ketone) parts

Many processing parameters can be adjusted to optimize the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process, a popular and widely used additive manufacturing techniques for plastic materials. Among those easily adjusted parameters are the nozzle temperature, printing speed, raster orientation, and layer thicknesses. Using poly(ether ether ketone) (PEEK) as the base material, a design of experiments analysis was performed on the main FFF parameters. A response surface methodology was applied to analyze the results and to maximize the output responses. Results have shown that the nozzle temperature is the most influential parameter on tensile properties and the crystallinity degree of printed PEEK by FFF process. Parts produced with optimized FFF parameters were then subjected to an annealing treatment to induce a relaxation of residual stress and to enhance crystallinity. The best properties for 3D printed PEEK parts were achieved with annealed parts prepared at 400°C with a printing speed of 30 mm/s, 0.15 mm layer thickness and raster orientation of [0°/15°/−15°]. The resulting parts have mechanical properties comparable to those of injected PEEK.     

Electron drift velocity measurements in liquid krypton–methane mixtures

Electron drift velocities have been measured in liquid krypton, pure and mixed with methane at different concentrations (1–10% in volume) versus electric field strength, and a possible effect of methane on electron lifetime has been investigated. While no effect on lifetime could be detected, since lifetimes were in all cases longer than what measurable, a very large increase in drift velocity (up to a factor 6) has been measured.     

The stiffness of the crossbridge is a function of the intrinsic protein osmotic pressure generated by the crossbridge itself

A model is presented that makes it possible to determine the stiffness of the crossbridge from protein osmotic stress experiments. The model was elaborated while studying the osmotic properties of F-actin and of myosin subfragment-1 F-actin. These studies showed that the elastic modulus by bending of the monomer is directly related to the intrinsic protein osmotic pressure of the system. At a protein osmotic pressure of 1.8 x 10(5) dynes/cm2, the physiological protein osmotic pressure of frog skeletal muscle, it was found that the elastic moduli by bending of the monomer in F-actin and in the myosin subfragment-1 decorated F-actin are 6.5 X 10(7) and 3.3 X 10(8) dynes/cm2, respectively. The value of the elastic modulus by bending of the monomer in the myosin subfragment-1 decorated F-actin compares favorably with the values of the elastic modulus by stretching determined in skeletal muscle fibres.     

Urinary excretion of free and acetylated polyamines in hepatocellular carcinoma

Bone mineral density (BMD), and associated biochemical and endocrine markers were compared in a group of runners with menstrual dysfunction (IR, n=13), and a group of performance matched eumenorrheic runners (R, n=15). All subjects claimed to have normal eating habits. Body height and weight, body mass index, and amount of body fat were similar. The IR group consisted of 5 presently oligomenorrheic (O) and 8 presently amenorrheic (A) runners. The BMD values of the athletes were additionally compared with corresponding values in a reference group (C) of healthy age matched controls (n=54). BMD values were significantly lower in IR compared with R on all measuring sites: Total body (-9%, p=0.03), femoral neck (-11%, p=0.01), lumbar spine (-12%, p=0.001), lower leg (-6.5%, p=0.03) and arms (-7%, p=0.01). In addition, IR athletes had lower total body (-5%, p=0.01), and lumbar spine BMD (-10%, p=0.001) than C. No differences were observed in serum IGF-1, SHBG, testosterone and cortisol, or in the biochemical marker of bone formation (osteocalcin) and bone resorption (1 CTP). Values of serum E2, FSH and LH were low in IR and normal in R. TSH was in the normal range in both groups, but f-T4 was significantly lower in IR than in R. The athletes were furthermore grouped according to past and present menstrual dysfunction severity. At all measuring sites, with the exception of the lower leg, increasing menstrual dysfunction severity was linearly associated with declining BMD values (p<0.05). In conclusion, even highly conditioned cortical bone tissue seems to be negatively related to menstrual disorders, which may serve to explain the high incidence of stress fractures in athletes with menstrual disorders. Single measurements of biochemical markers of bone resorption and formation may not reflect the current bone status.