Admission into healthcare education in France: Half-baked reform that further complicates the system.

France has undertaken the most ambitious reform of healthcare education in more than 10 years. It has resulted in a hybrid system with multiple pathways, granting admission into the healthcare professions after competitive exams. The reform continues the trend to increase the quotas limiting the number of second year healthcare students, and also creates new local access options to healthcare education.

CLAIRE-Parallelized Diffeomorphic Image Registration for Large-Scale Biomedical Imaging Applications.

We study the performance of CLAIRE-a diffeomorphic multi-node, multi-GPU image-registration algorithm and software-in large-scale biomedical imaging applications with billions of voxels. At such resolutions, most existing software packages for diffeomorphic image registration are prohibitively expensive. As a result, practitioners first significantly downsample the original images and then register them using existing tools.

Dynamics of initial carbon allocation after drought release in mature Norway spruce-Increased belowground allocation of current photoassimilates covers only half of the carbon used for fine-root growth.

After drought events, tree recovery depends on sufficient carbon (C) allocation to the sink organs. The present study aimed to elucidate dynamics of tree-level C sink activity and allocation of recent photoassimilates (C ) and stored C in c. 70-year-old Norway spruce (Picea abies) trees during a 4-week period after drought release.

Carbon allocation to root exudates is maintained in mature temperate tree species under drought.

Carbon (C) exuded via roots is proposed to increase under drought and facilitate important ecosystem functions. However, it is unknown how exudate quantities relate to the total C budget of a drought-stressed tree, that is, how much of net-C assimilation is allocated to exudation at the tree level. We calculated the proportion of daily C assimilation allocated to root exudation during early summer by collecting root exudates from mature Fagus sylvatica and Picea abies exposed to experimental drought, and combining above- and belowground C fluxes with leaf, stem and fine-root surface area.

Pre-existing helminth infection impairs the efficacy of adjuvanted influenza vaccination in mice.

The world health organization estimates that more than a quarter of the human population is infected with parasitic worms that are called helminths. Many helminths suppress the immune system of their hosts to prolong their survival. This helminth-induced immunosuppression "spills over" to unrelated antigens and can suppress the immune response to vaccination against other pathogens.

Why are there so many hospital beds in Germany?

The place of hospitals in health systems is undergoing rapid change worldwide due to the high cost of hospital care and the changing health needs of the population. The Covid-19 pandemic has recently drawn public attention towards hospital capacity and has added new urgency to discussions on the future role of hospitals. In this context, recent experience in Germany provides valuable information for health systems seeking to manage hospital capacity.

A Combination of Deworming and Prime-Boost Vaccination Regimen Restores Efficacy of Vaccination Against Influenza in Helminth-Infected Mice.

Helminths still infect a quarter of the human population. They manage to establish chronic infections by downmodulating the immune system of their hosts. Consequently, the immune response of helminth-infected individuals to vaccinations may be impaired as well.

Born in the USA? A Comparison of "Inspired" Health Care Reforms in Germany and France.

Context: Despite numerous examples of health policy transfer in Western health systems, the nature of such "inspired" reforms has received little detailed attention. The aim of this article is to apply and refine a specific theoretical angle for the analysis of these reforms using the theoretical frameworks of transfer and translation.

Methods: The design is based on a comparative case study: the introduction of disease management programs (DMPs) for diabetes in Germany in 2002 and in France in 2008, drawing on a literature review and semistructured interviews.

Elucidating different pattern of immunoregulation in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice and their F1 progeny.

Helminths are large multicellular parasites that infect one quarter of the human population. To prolong their survival, helminths suppress the immune responses of their hosts. Strongyloides ratti delays its expulsion from the gut by induction of regulatory circuits in a mouse strain-specific manner: depletion of Foxp3 regulatory T cells (Treg) improves the anti-S.

CLAIRE: Constrained Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Image Registration on Parallel Computing Architectures.

CLAIRE (Mang & Biros, 2019) is a computational framework for onstrained rge deformation diffeomorphic mage gistration (Mang et al., 2019). It supports highly-optimized, parallel computational kernels for (multi-node) CPU (Gholami et al.

Fast GPU 3D diffeomorphic image registration.

3D image registration is one of the most fundamental and computationally expensive operations in medical image analysis. Here, we present a mixed-precision, Gauss-Newton-Krylov solver for diffeomorphic registration of two images. Our work extends the publicly available CLAIRE library to GPU architectures.

Tools of power: pay-for-performance in French and German health reforms.

Purpose: Pay-for-performance (P4P) as an innovation for improved health care has been introduced in many health systems worldwide. The aim of this article is to apply and refine a specific theoretical angle for the analysis of these reforms, the theoretical frameworks of public policy instruments and programmatic actors, in order to highlight differences between countries.

Design/methodology/approach: This analysis is based on a comparative case study of the introduction of P4P in France and Germany in the ambulatory sector for the period from 2007 until 2017.

Multi-Node Multi-GPU Diffeomorphic Image Registration for Large-Scale Imaging Problems.

We present a Gauss-Newton-Krylov solver for large deformation diffeomorphic image registration. We extend the publicly available CLAIRE library to multi-node multi-graphics processing unit (GPUs) systems and introduce novel algorithmic modifications that significantly improve performance. Our contributions comprise () a new preconditioner for the reduced-space Gauss-Newton Hessian system, () a highly-optimized multi-node multi-GPU implementation exploiting device direct communication for the main computational kernels (interpolation, high-order finite difference operators and Fast-Fourier-Transform), and () a comparison with state-of-the-art CPU and GPU implementations.

Pemetrexed-Based Chemotherapy Is Inferior to Pemetrexed-Free Regimens in Thyroid Transcription Factor 1 (TTF-1)-Negative, EGFR/ALK-Negative Lung Adenocarcinoma: A Propensity Score Matched Pairs Analysis.

Introduction: Thyroid transcription factor 1 (TTF-1) is a prognostic biomarker in lung adenocarcinoma; however, TTF-1-positive patients also display more favorable factors like actionable target mutations. In contrast, TTF-1-negative cancer is a poorly described entity. We performed a retrospective study to characterize a TTF-1-negative phenotype and to evaluate outcome depending on the chemotherapy regimen applied in the EGFR/ALK-negative population.

Helminth Infections Suppress the Efficacy of Vaccination against Seasonal Influenza.

Helminth parasites infect more than a quarter of the human population and inflict significant changes to the immunological status of their hosts. Here, we analyze the impact of helminth infections on the efficacy of vaccinations using Litomosoides sigmodontis-infected mice. Concurrent helminth infection reduces the quantity and quality of antibody responses to vaccination against seasonal influenza.

European mental health research resources: Picture and recommendations of the ROAMER project.

As part of the Roamer project, we sought to have a picture of the available mental health research (MHR) funding, capacity-building and infrastructures resources and to establish consensus-based recommendations that would allow an increase of European MHR resources and enable better use and accessibility to them. The methods fell into three sections (i) a review of the literature, (ii) a mental health-related keywords search within the Cordis, On-Course and Meril databases which contain information on European research funding, training and infrastructures. These reviews provided an overview that was presented to (iii) two experts workshops with 28 participants drawn from academic which identified gaps and produced recommendations.

Basophils are dispensable for the establishment of protective adaptive immunity against primary and challenge infection with the intestinal helminth parasite Strongyloides ratti.

Infections with helminth parasites are controlled by a concerted action of innate and adaptive effector cells in the frame of a type 2 immune response. Basophils are innate effector cells that may also contribute to the initiation and amplification of adaptive immune responses. Here, we use constitutively basophil-deficient Mcpt8-Cre mice to analyze the impact of basophils during initiation and execution of the protective type 2 responses to both, a primary infection and a challenge infection of immune mice with the helminth parasite Strongyloides ratti.

Local ablative treatment for synchronous single organ oligometastatic lung cancer-A propensity score analysis of 180 patients.

Introduction: Local ablative treatment (LAT) improves outcome in lung cancer with oligometastatic disease (OMD) and potentially leads to long term survival. The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate and quantify the additional benefit of LAT in synchronous OMD and to further identify prognostic factors for survival.

Patients And Methods: A propensity score-matched pairs analysis was performed on a set of patient and disease variables in 180 patients, treated for synchronous single organ OMD including non small-cell and neuroendocrine lung cancer with ≤4 metastases between 2000 and 2016 in 3 lung cancer centers in Berlin, Germany.

The balance of adult mental health care: provision of core health versus other types of care in eight European countries.

Aims: Although many mental health care systems provide care interventions that are not related to direct health care, little is known about the interfaces between the latter and core health care. 'Core health care' refers to services whose explicit aim is direct clinical treatment which is usually provided by health professionals, i.e.

Interleukin-9 promotes early mast cell-mediated expulsion of Strongyloides ratti but is dispensable for generation of protective memory.

IL-9 is a cytokine with pleiotropic function that mediates allergic inflammation and immunity to intestinal helminth parasites. Accumulating evidence suggests that IL-9 acts via both, initiation and regulation of adaptive immune responses and direct activation of intestinal effector pathways. Here we use IL-9 receptor deficient mice on BALB/c and C57BL/6 genetic background to dissect effector and regulatory functions of IL-9 during infection with the parasitic nematode Strongyloides ratti.

Management of end-stage heart failure patients with or without ventricular assist device: an observational comparison of clinical and economic outcomes.

Objectives: Heart transplantation (HT) and ventricular assist devices (VAD) for the management of end-stage heart failure have not been directly compared. We compare the outcomes and use of resources with these 2 strategies in 2 European countries with different allocation systems.

Methods: We studied 83 patients managed by VAD as the first option in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany (Group I) and 141 managed with either HT or medical therapy, as the first option, in Paris, France (Group II).