Publications by authors named "Michaud E"

Can we turn AI black boxes into code? Although this mission sounds extremely challenging, we show that it is not entirely impossible by presenting a proof-of-concept method, MIPS, that can synthesize programs based on the automated mechanistic interpretability of neural networks trained to perform the desired task, auto-distilling the learned algorithm into Python code. We test MIPS on a benchmark of 62 algorithmic tasks that can be learned by an RNN and find it highly complementary to GPT-4: MIPS solves 32 of them, including 13 that are not solved by GPT-4 (which also solves 30). MIPS uses an integer autoencoder to convert the RNN into a finite state machine, then applies Boolean or integer symbolic regression to capture the learned algorithm.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Coronary artery disease (CAD) and peripheral artery disease (PAD) increase the risks of cardiovascular events and death. Digital health technologies are rapidly expanding to improve healthcare quality and access. The Care4Today Connect (C4T CAD-PAD) mobile application is designed to help patients with CAD and/or PAD improve medication adherence, learn about their disease, make lifestyle modifications, and enhance healthcare provider (HCP) connection via an HCP-facing portal.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An in-situ experiment was conducted in a young mangrove with no history of oil contamination (French Guiana). Control and oil-contaminated sediments were sampled one month after exposure and analyzed to a depth of 18 cm to assess natural oil depletion and changes in benthic communities. High biodegradation percentages (89-99 %) of n-alkanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were measured.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) diversion methods, including ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunts, are the standard treatment for hydrocephalus. Hair clipping (HC) has been a routine neurosurgical practice of the great majority of neurosurgeons, due to the perception that this will either decrease the risk of shunt infection or allow for a faster, unimpeded opening and closing of the skin. The benefits of not cutting or clipping hair in terms of normalizing appearance and self-esteem are obvious.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The authors share a case where a child experienced near-complete spontaneous recovery from progressive cervical spine kyphosis without requiring spinal fusion surgery.
  • * This case highlights the possibility of spontaneous recovery in certain patients and suggests that a cautious monitoring approach could be beneficial for those without neurological deficits, avoiding unnecessary surgical risks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Catheter-based treatments are becoming important for both acute and chronic pulmonary blood clots, making it essential to understand the anatomy of pulmonary arterial branches.* -
  • A study of 179 patients undergoing angiography showed a variety of branching patterns in the pulmonary arteries, with a total of 7 patterns in the right upper lobe, 3 in the right middle lobe, and so on across the left lobes.* -
  • Notably, only 2-3 branching patterns per lobe were responsible for over 90% of the observed variations, offering valuable insights for medical professionals and future research in pulmonary interventions.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Poor response to Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunotherapy remains a major barrier in the management of patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). Multiple factors are associated with poor outcomes, including biological aging and female sex. More recently, it has emerged that a B-cell-infiltrated pretreatment immune microenvironment of NMIBC tumors can influence the response to intravesically administered BCG.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

MIBC is a highly lethal disease, and the patient survival rate has not improved significantly over the last decades. UPPL is a cell line that can be used to recapitulate the luminal-like molecular subtype of bladder cancer and to discover effective treatments to be translated in patients. Here, we investigate the effects of combinational treatments of radiotherapy and immunotherapy in this recently characterized UPPL tumor-bearing mice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mangroves develop under environmental conditions and anthropogenic pressures whose impact on benthic meiofauna remains poorly understood. It is unclear how meiofauna communities are structured according to local sedimentary conditions. This study was designed to characterize the community structure of meiofauna and nematodes (dominant taxa) and the associated environmental forcings in intertidal mangrove sediments from Mayotte (Indo-West-Pacific), Martinique and Guadeloupe (Caribbean).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Martinique's mangroves, which cover 1.85 ha of the island (<0.1 % of the total area), are considerably vulnerable to local urban, agricultural, and industrial pollutants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted on adult COVID-19 patients hospitalized from February 2020 to October 2022 to identify effective inflammatory biomarkers for assessing patient risk during hospitalization.
  • The biomarkers analyzed included suPAR, C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6, procalcitonin, ferritin, and D-dimer; suPAR emerged as the strongest predictor of severe outcomes, such as death or the need for mechanical ventilation.
  • A suPAR cutoff of 4.0 ng/mL was found to indicate low risk with high sensitivity and negative predictive value, suggesting it could be a valuable tool for triaging low-risk COVID-19 patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bladder cancer (BC) is a prevalent malignancy with significant morbidity and mortality. Over the years, the landscape of bladder cancer treatment has witnessed notable advancements, particularly in the realm of immunotherapy. Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising adjunct to organ-preserving approaches, harnessing the immune system's potential to target and eliminate cancer cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We measured the nuclear-recoil ionization yield in silicon with a cryogenic phonon-sensitive gram-scale detector. Neutrons from a monoenergetic beam scatter off of the silicon nuclei at angles corresponding to energy depositions from 4 keV down to 100 eV, the lowest energy probed so far. The results show no sign of an ionization production threshold above 100 eV.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Percutaneous tibial neuromodulation is a medical guideline recommended therapy for treating symptoms of overactive bladder. Stimulation is delivered to the tibial nerve via a thin needle placed percutaneously for 30 min once a week for 12-weeks, and monthly thereafter. Studies have shown that this therapy can effectively relieve symptoms of overactive bladder; however, the frequent office visits present a barrier to patients and can impact therapy effectiveness.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The intestinal microbiota may affect mental health via the gut-brain axis, with recurrent CDI patients showing depressive symptoms that improve after fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT).
  • The study hypothesized that changes in short-chain and carboxylic acids (SCCA) in the bloodstream post-FMT could influence microglial inflammatory responses, which are linked to mental health.
  • Results indicated that successful FMT led to better mental and physical health outcomes, along with significant changes in circulating SCCA, and that a combination of these acids reduced inflammatory responses in cultured microglia, highlighting their role in gut-brain communication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study assessed black carbon (BC) dynamics, concentrations, and the organic matter (OM) isotopic carbon composition in northeastern South America drainage basin coastal sediments. Paraíba do Sul (PSR; Atlantic Rainforest, Brazil) coastal sediments displayed more C-enriched values (-22.6 ± 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We explore unique considerations involved in fitting machine learning (ML) models to data with very high precision, as is often required for science applications. We empirically compare various function approximation methods and study how they with increasing parameters and data. We find that neural networks (NNs) can often outperform classical approximation methods on high-dimensional examples, by (we hypothesize) auto-discovering and exploiting modular structures therein.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Preexisting cardiovascular disease (CVD) was examined to see if it impacted in-hospital death and cardiovascular events among critically ill COVID-19 patients, utilizing data from 68 U.S. hospitals during the early pandemic stages.
  • Out of 5,133 patients studied, 22.9% had CVD, with a 34.6% death rate and 17.9% experiencing cardiovascular events; however, CVD itself did not significantly predict cardiovascular events.
  • Myocardial injury upon ICU admission was strongly linked to higher odds of both death and cardiovascular events, indicating that factors such as this injury were more critical in determining the outcomes than CVD alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) is an evolving treatment modality for patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) who are not candidates for pulmonary endarterectomy. Although several imaging modalities currently exist for evaluating CTEPH, their individual use, specifically in the clinical practice of BPA, has not been well described. In this article, we provide a preprocedural, intraprocedural, and postprocedural interventional imaging roadmap for safe and effective BPA performance in routine clinical practice.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Human secretory immunoglobulins (SIg) A1 and SIgA2 guide mucosal responses toward tolerance or inflammation, notably through reverse-transcytosis, the apical-to-basal transport of IgA2 immune complexes via M cells of gut Peyer's patches. As such, the maintenance of a diverse gut microbiota requires broad affinity IgA and glycan-glycan interaction. Here, we asked whether IgA1 and IgA2-microbiota interactions might be involved in dysbiosis induction during inflammatory bowel diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There are two major clinically described forms of IgE-dependent soy allergy: (i) a primary dietary form, linked to sensitization against soy storage proteins Gly m 5 and Glym 6, and (ii) a form included in birch-soy syndromes linked to Gly m 4, a PR-10-like allergen. This second form sometimes causes severe systemic reactions, even anaphylaxis, especially on consuming certain forms of soy such as soymilks or smoothies. Skin prick tests and specific IgE assays against soy whole extracts lack sensitivity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Diabetes mellitus (DM) significantly increases the risk of severe outcomes in COVID-19 patients, with a study showing higher incidences of in-hospital death, mechanical ventilation, and renal therapy among those with DM.
  • The research identified inflammation, specifically measured by suPAR levels, as a major factor in the association between DM and severe COVID-19 outcomes, with 84.2% of the effect mediated by this biomarker.
  • Hyperglycemia and higher insulin doses were also found to predict severe outcomes independently, suggesting both inflammation and high blood sugar levels contribute to the risks faced by diabetic patients during COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The role of YAP/TAZ, two transcriptional co-activators involved in several cancers, was investigated in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: Fibroblast like synoviocytes (FLS) from patients with RA or osteoarthritis were cultured in 2D or into 3D synovial organoids. Arthritis rat model (n=28) and colitis mouse model (n=21) were used.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background Use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ACEi/ARB) is thought to affect COVID-19 through modulating levels of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, the cell entry receptor for SARS-CoV2. We sought to assess the association between ACEi/ARB, biomarkers of inflammation, and outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. Methods and Results We leveraged the ISIC (International Study of Inflammation in COVID-19), identified patients admitted for symptomatic COVID-19 between February 1, 2020 and June 1, 2021 for COVID-19, and examined the association between in-hospital ACEi/ARB use and all-cause death, need for ventilation, and need for dialysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF