This paper reports on several simultaneous outbreaks of norovirus infection linked to the consumption of raw oysters. Since January 2010, 334 cases in 65 clusters were reported from five European countries: the United Kingdom, Norway, France, Sweden and Denmark. The article describes the available epidemiological and microbiological evidence of these outbreaks.

The accidents described below are of some importance, since pentothal is frequently administered in unfavourable conditions : if not promptly recognized they may prove fatal. During and after the invasion of France it was necessary to administer pentothal to hundreds of patients who had not been prepared and whose stomachs contained food. In four cases food was inhaled during the administration.

Nocardia cerradoensis was first isolated in 2003 in the El Cerrado region of Brazil; since then, only 2 human infections, in France and Spain, have been reported. We describe 3 autochthonous cases in residents of Spain during 2011 and 2014. Together these cases support the idea of an emerging global pathogenic microorganism.

Ectaetia capdoliensis sp. n., first Cretaceous and oldest representative of the scatopsid subfamily Ectaetiinae, is described from the Late Albian / Early Cenomanian amber of southwestern France. This fossil demonstrates the remarkable morphological stability of these flies since at least the mid-Cretaceous. It suggests the presence of rotten wood under wet palaeoenvironment for the correspondi...

Hyperimmunoglobulinemia D is the less severe form of mevalonate kinase deficiency (MKD) caused by recessive inherited mutation in the mevalonate kinase gene. Hyperimmunoglobulinemia D is characterized by febrile attacks, often associated with transient digestive manifestations, such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting. Here we report for the first time 2 patients with MKD revealed by seve...

FosA, a glutathione S-transferase that inactivates fosfomycin, has been reported as the cause of enzymatic resistance to fosfomycin. We show that multiple lineages of FosA-producing extended spectrum β-lactamase Escherichia coli have circulated in France since 2012, potentially reducing the efficacy of fosfomycin in treating infections with antimicrobial drug-resistant gram-negative bacilli.

Dealing with complex palaeogeographical histories is a problem of major importance in biogeographical studies. Since the superposition of palaeogeographical events may produce multiple changes in species range distributions, highly complex patterns of animal and plant distributions are to be expected (Nelson & Platnick, 1981; Brown & Gibson, 1983; Myers & Institut de Recherche pour le Développe...

We used pulsed-field gel electrophoresis analysis and genotyping to compare clinical isolates of Bordetella pertussis recovered since the early 1990s in Finland and France, 2 countries with similar histories of long-term mass vaccination with whole-cell pertussis vaccines. Isolates from both countries were similar genetically but varied temporally.

This manuscript has many predecessors. It is based on lectures and courses that repeatedly have been held since 1975 in Germany, Italy and France. Parts of this script were adopted from course scripts and other material by Hartmut B ¨ arnighausen (University of Karlsruhe). I am grateful to him for his generosity and for numerous discussions and suggestions.

We give a proof of the generalisation of Mendes-France and Van der Poorten's recent result over an arbitrary field of positive characteristic and then by extending a result of Carlitz, we shall introduce a class of algebraically independent series.