Collège de France

About: Collège de France is a education organization based out in Paris, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Receptor. The organization has 6541 authors who have published 11983 publications receiving 648742 citations. The organization is also known as: College de France.

Symbolic capital and social classes

Abstract: In this short but dense piece, written for a special issue of the journal L'Arc devoted to the medieval historian Feorges Duby (whose sprawling oeuvre Bourdieu admired and drew on for its scrupulous genealogy of the mental-cum-social structure of the feudal triad of knight, priest, and peasant: see Georges Duby, The Three Orders (1982 [1978]), Bourdieu sums up and clarifies the core thesis of Distinction just as he was completing the book. This article is valuable for (1) stating forthrightly Bourdieu's conception of the 'double objectivity' of the social world and spotlighting the recursive constitution of social and mental structures; (2) stressing the performative capacity of symbolic forms and their multi-level implication in social struggles over and across social divisions; and (3) suggesting alluring parallels and obstinate differences between Bourdieu's 'genetic structuralism' and both the literary vision of Mercel Proust and the marginalist microsociology of Erving Goffman - two of his favorite mental 'sparring partners. 'In all, this article illuminates how Bourideu mingled Marx's sensuous materialism, Durkheim's teachings on classification (later extended by Cassirer), and Weber's insight into hierarchies of honor into a sociological model of class all his own - LW.

Brain macrophages stimulate neurite growth and regeneration by secreting thrombospondin

Abstract: The presence of macrophages in the developing or lesioned central nervous system (CNS) led us to study the influence of these cells on neuronal growth. Macrophages were isolated from embryonic rat brain and we observed that factors released in vitro by these cells stimulate neurite growth and regeneration of cultured CNS neurons. This effect was inhibited by antibodies directed against thrombospondin, an extracellular matrix protein that we found to be synthesized and released by brain macrophages. Immunodetection of thrombospondin in the adult rat brain lesioned by kainic acid confirmed the production of this protein by brain macrophages and indicated an early intraparenchymal accumulation of thrombospondin following injury. These results suggest that brain macrophages contribute actively to neurite growth or regeneration during the development or in pathological contexts.

Pearling Instabilities of Membrane Tubes with Anchored Polymers

Abstract: We have studied the pearling instability induced on hollow tubular lipid vesicles by hydrophilic polymers with hydrophobic side groups along the backbone. The results show that the polymer concentration is coupled to local membrane curvature. The relaxation of a pearled tube is characterized by two different well-separated time scales, indicating two physical mechanisms. We present a model, which explains the observed phenomena and predicts polymer segregation according to local membrane curvature at late stages.

Combined effects of GDNF, BDNF, and CNTF on motoneuron differentiation in vitro

Abstract: We have previously shown that glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), in addition to promoting the survival of dopaminergic neurons in cultures from embryonic rat ventral mesencephalon,also increases the activity of choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) in the cranial motoneurons present in these cultures (Zurn et al.: Neuroreport 6:113-118, 1994). By using the intermediate filament protein peripherin as a motoneuron marker, we report here that GDNF increases the number of motoneurons as well as the length of their neurites. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) also promote ChAT activity, motoneuron survival, and neurite outgrowth in these cultures, but to varying degrees. Although these three molecules have similar effects on cultured motoneurons, we provide evidence for a distinct mode of action of GDNF, BDNF, and CNTF, since combinations of GDNF and BDNF, GDNF and CNTF, and BDNF and CNTF have either additive or synergistic effects on ChAT activity and motoneuron number. In addition to the previously described motoneuron-specific neurotrophic factors BDNF and CNTF, GDNF combined with the latter two factors may provide an important tool for the treatment of human motoneuron diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and spinal muscular atrophy, both by increasing efficiency of treatment, and by decreasing the likelihood of deleterious side-effects.