Potential of compact Compton sources in the medical field.

The exceptional improvement of high power lasers and optical cavity finesses in the last fifteen years allows today the development of X-ray sources based on inverse Compton scattering. These compact sources will provide high intensity beams, with a tunable energy in the range 20-100keV, that can be used in several application including material sciences, structural biology, cultural heritage research and preservation and medical or biomedical preclinical and clinical research. The access to these devices will be easier.

Radiation therapy at compact Compton sources.

The principle of the compact Compton source is presented briefly. In collision with an ultrarelativistic electron bunch a laser pulse is back-scattered as hard X-rays. The radiation cone has an opening of a few mrad, and the energy bandwidth is a few percent.

Characterization of a P1-like bacteriophage carrying an SHV-2 extended-spectrum β-lactamase from an Escherichia coli strain.

P1 bacteriophages lysogenize bacteria as independent plasmid-like elements. We describe here a P1-like bacteriophage, RCS47, carrying a blaSHV-2 gene, isolated from a clinical strain of Escherichia coli from phylogroup B1, and we report the prevalence of P1-like prophages in natural E. coli isolates.

[Tube feeding at home in anorexia nervosa patients].

Introduction: In the aim to explore the efficacy of tube feeding (TF) in ambulatory anorexia nervosa (AN) patients, we prospectively treated 60 AN patients by tube feeding (TF) at home, using a nasogastric tube.

Methods: Nutritional (clinical, biological) and psychological (Hamilton and Beck scores) markers were assessed before and after 2 months of NEAD.

Results: While the patient's body weight was decreasing during the previous 2 months, it significantly increased (P<0.