Medication abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic in France: A research based on the French national health insurance database.

Objectives: During the COVID-19 pandemic in France, abortion was recognized as an essential service that cannot be delayed, and such care was therefore presumed to be maintained. The aim is to analyze the changes in the practice of abortion in 2020 to identify the consequences of the two lockdowns and the effects of the extension of the legal time limit.

Methods: We analyzed the data collected by the French national health insurance system, which covers 99% of the population.

Sporulation boundaries and spore formation kinetics of Bacillus spp. as a function of temperature, pH and a(w).

Sporulation niches in the food chain are considered as a source of hazard and are not clearly identified. Determining the sporulation environmental boundaries could contribute to identify potential sporulation niches. Spore formation was determined in a Sporulation Mineral Buffer.

Modeling heat resistance of Bacillus weihenstephanensis and Bacillus licheniformis spores as function of sporulation temperature and pH.

Although sporulation environmental factors are known to impact on Bacillus spore heat resistance, they are not integrated into predictive models used to calculate the efficiency of heating processes. This work reports the influence of temperature and pH encountered during sporulation on heat resistance of Bacillus weihenstephanensis KBAB4 and Bacillus licheniformis AD978 spores. A decrease in heat resistance (δ) was observed for spores produced either at low temperature, at high temperature or at acidic pH.

Direct visualization and quantification of bone growth into porous titanium implants using micro computed tomography.

The utility of porous metals for the integration of orthopaedic implants with host bone has been well established. Quantification of the tissue response to cementless implants is laborious and time consuming process requiring tissue processing, embedding, sectioning, polishing, imaging and image analysis. Micro-computed tomography (μCT) is a promising three dimensional (3D) imaging technique to quantify the tissue response to porous metals.

The wet-heat resistance of Bacillus weihenstephanensis KBAB4 spores produced in a two-step sporulation process depends on sporulation temperature but not on previous cell history.

While bacterial spores are mostly produced in a continuous process, this study reports a two-step sporulation methodology. Even though spore heat resistance of numerous spore-forming bacteria is known to be dependent on sporulation conditions, this approach enables the distinction between the vegetative cell growth phase in nutrient broth and the sporulation phase in specific buffer. This study aims at investigating whether the conditions of growth of the vegetative cells, prior to sporulation, could affect spore heat resistance.