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Dans cet article, on étudie l’impact du microcrédit en termes d’inclusion financière et sociale au niveau des activités génératrice de revenus en Mauritanie. Pour analyser les expériences vécues dans ce marché nous avons utilisé le modèle logit Probit pour identifier les facteurs affectant la durabilité de l'inclusion financière et sociale et la complémentarité entre les IMF et les banques commerciales. Les résultats de notre étude confirment que le microcrédit conduit à une inclusion financière significative pour les AGR en Mauritanie. Cet état se justifie au regard de l'étendue de la culture financière des ménages bénéficiant du microcrédit pour développer des activités génératrices de revenus (AGR). D’après les résultats, la variable « Complémentarité entre IMF et Banque Commerciale » est significativement influencée sur l’inclusion financière des ménages actifs dans les AGR. Tout comme la variable « accessibilité au microcrédit ». On peut en déduire que la complémentarité entre IMF et banque commerciale contribue à la massification du microcrédit en facilitant le financement des AGR.

Dans cet article, on étudie l’impact du microcrédit en termes d’inclusion financière et sociale au niveau des activités génératrice de revenus en Mauritanie. Pour analyser les expériences vécues dans ce marché nous avons utilisé le modèle logit Probit pour identifier les facteurs affectant la durabilité de l'inclusion financière et sociale et la complémentarité entre les IMF et les banques commerciales. Les résultats de notre étude confirment que le microcrédit conduit à une inclusion financière significative pour les AGR en Mauritanie. Cet état se justifie au regard de l'étendue de la culture financière des ménages bénéficiant du microcrédit pour développer des activités génératrices de revenus (AGR). D’après les résultats, la variable « Complémentarité entre IMF et Banque Commerciale » est significativement influencée sur l’inclusion financière des ménages actifs dans les AGR. Tout comme la variable « accessibilité au microcrédit ». On peut en déduire que la complémentarité entre IMF et banque commerciale contribue à la massification du microcrédit en facilitant le financement des AGR.

Dans cet article, on étudie l’impact du microcrédit en termes d’inclusion financière et sociale au niveau des activités génératrice de revenus en Mauritanie. Pour analyser les expériences vécues dans ce marché nous avons utilisé le modèle logit Probit pour identifier les facteurs affectant la durabilité de l'inclusion financière et sociale et la complémentarité entre les IMF et les banques commerciales. Les résultats de notre étude confirment que le microcrédit conduit à une inclusion financière significative pour les AGR en Mauritanie. Cet état se justifie au regard de l'étendue de la culture financière des ménages bénéficiant du microcrédit pour développer des activités génératrices de revenus (AGR). D’après les résultats, la variable « Complémentarité entre IMF et Banque Commerciale » est significativement influencée sur l’inclusion financière des ménages actifs dans les AGR. Tout comme la variable « accessibilité au microcrédit ». On peut en déduire que la complémentarité entre IMF et banque commerciale contribue à la massification du microcrédit en facilitant le financement des AGR.

The legacy of historic anthropogenic disturbance can significantly affect the structure and function of contemporary freshwater ecosystems. Environmental research and management that neglect anthropogenic legacy are likely to lead to a biased interpretation of present and future ecosystem dynamics. Yet, anthropogenic legacy remains poorly considered, mainly because of the challenges associated with its identification. Synthesizing past progress in legacy research, we present a conceptual framework for the systematic identification of anthropogenic legacy. We focus on the dynamic processes occurring during legacy formation (e.g., disturbance regime, ecosystem trajectories). Based on the review of relevant case studies, we discuss the historical and contemporary sources of information (e.g., communication, cartographic, paleoenvironmental sources) that can be employed for legacy identification. Finally, we provide practical examples of anthropogenic legacy identification in real‐world freshwater ecosystems. Produced in multidisciplinary collaboration, this review presents a comprehensive approach to anthropogenic legacy to foster its informed and systematic consideration in freshwater research and management. This article is categorized under: Science of Water > Water and Environmental Change Water and Life > Stresses and Pressures on Ecosystems

Most image-to-image translation models postulate that a unique correspondence exists between the semantic classes of the source and target domains. However, this assumption does not always hold in real-world scenarios due to divergent distributions, different class sets, and asymmetrical information representation. As conventional GANs attempt to generate images that match the distribution of the target domain, they may hallucinate spurious instances of classes absent from the source domain, thereby diminishing the usefulness and reliability of translated images. CycleGAN-based methods are also known to hide the mismatched information in the generated images to bypass cycle consistency objectives, a process known as steganography. In response to the challenge of non-bijective image translation, we introduce StegoGAN, a novel model that leverages steganography to prevent spurious features in generated images. Our approach enhances the semantic consistency of the translated images without requiring additional postprocessing or supervision. Our experimental evaluations demonstrate that StegoGAN outperforms existing GAN-based models across various non-bijective image-to-image translation tasks, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our code and pretrained models are accessible at https://github.com/sian-wusidi/StegoGAN.

The widespread use of high-definition screens in edge devices, such as end-user cameras, smartphones, and televisions, is spurring a significant demand for image enhancement. Existing enhancement models often optimize for high performance while falling short of reducing hardware inference time and power consumption, especially on edge devices with constrained computing and storage resources. To this end, we propose Image Color Enhancement Lookup Table (ICELUT) that adopts LUTs for extremely efficient edge inference, without any convolutional neural network (CNN). During training, we leverage pointwise (1x1) convolution to extract color information, alongside a split fully connected layer to incorporate global information. Both components are then seamlessly converted into LUTs for hardware-agnostic deployment. ICELUT achieves near-state-of-the-art performance and remarkably low power consumption. We observe that the pointwise network structure exhibits robust scalability, upkeeping the performance even with a heavily downsampled 32x32 input image. These enable ICELUT, the first-ever purely LUT-based image enhancer, to reach an unprecedented speed of 0.4ms on GPU and 7ms on CPU, at least one order faster than any CNN solution. Codes are available at https://github.com/Stephen0808/ICELUT.

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) have successfully addressed various computational physics problems based on partial differential equations (PDEs). However, while tackling issues related to irregularities like singularities and oscillations, trained solutions usually suffer low accuracy. In addition, most current works only offer the trained solution for predetermined input parameters. If any change occurs in input parameters, transfer learning or retraining is required, and traditional numerical techniques also need an independent simulation. In this work, a physics-driven GraphSAGE approach (PD-GraphSAGE) based on the Galerkin method and piecewise polynomial nodal basis functions is presented to solve computational problems governed by irregular PDEs and to develop parametric PDE surrogate models. This approach employs graph representations of physical domains, thereby reducing the demands for evaluated points due to local refinement. A distance-related edge feature and a feature mapping strategy are devised to help training and convergence for singularity and oscillation situations, respectively. The merits of the proposed method are demonstrated through a couple of cases. Moreover, the robust PDE surrogate model for heat conduction problems parameterized by the Gaussian random field source is successfully established, which not only provides the solution accurately but is several times faster than the finite element method in our experiments., Comment: 18 pages,11 figures, 3 tables

A common pipeline in functional data analysis is to first convert the discretely observed data to smooth functions, and then represent the functions by a finite-dimensional vector of coefficients summarizing the information. Existing methods for data smoothing and dimensional reduction mainly focus on learning the linear mappings from the data space to the representation space, however, learning only the linear representations may not be sufficient. In this study, we propose to learn the nonlinear representations of functional data using neural network autoencoders designed to process data in the form it is usually collected without the need of preprocessing. We design the encoder to employ a projection layer computing the weighted inner product of the functional data and functional weights over the observed timestamp, and the decoder to apply a recovery layer that maps the finite-dimensional vector extracted from the functional data back to functional space using a set of predetermined basis functions. The developed architecture can accommodate both regularly and irregularly spaced data. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms functional principal component analysis in terms of prediction and classification, and maintains superior smoothing ability and better computational efficiency in comparison to the conventional autoencoders under both linear and nonlinear settings.

This paper presents OVer, a framework designed to automatically analyze the behavior of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols when subjected to a "skewed" oracle input. OVer firstly performs symbolic analysis on the given contract and constructs a model of constraints. Then, the framework leverages an SMT solver to identify parameters that allow its secure operation. Furthermore, guard statements may be generated for smart contracts that may use the oracle values, thus effectively preventing oracle manipulation attacks. Empirical results show that OVer can successfully analyze all 10 benchmarks collected, which encompass a diverse range of DeFi protocols. Additionally, this paper also illustrates that current parameters utilized in the majority of benchmarks are inadequate to ensure safety when confronted with significant oracle deviations., Comment: 13 pages; extended version of paper accepted in ICSE'24

Résumé : La mauritanie comme beaucoup de pays africains, a adopté des politiques de promotion des investissements et des plans d’actions pour encourager l’investissement privé local et étranger afin d’accroître la productivité de l’initiative privée et faire bénéficier son économie des retombées économiques et sociales de l’investissement. C’est dans cet ordre de pensée économique que les autorités mauritaniennes ont instauré dans la région de nouadhibou une zone franche pour le développement de l’investissement privé, de promotion des investissements, des infrastructures et de création d’emplois. Notre recherche est motivée par l'intérêt pour ce développement, visant à examiner l'essence de la zone franche et son rôle dans le développement économique, à explorer et étudier les raisons de l'établissement de la zone franche de nouadhibou, et à évaluer les impacts économiques et sociaux de cette approche visionnaire sur le développement global de l'économie mauritanienne.  Mots Clés : Investissement - Finance - Economie - Zone Franche - Croissance.   Abstract : Mauritania, paralleling many African nations, has implemented strategies and action plans to promote both local and foreign private investment. The goal is to enhance the productivity of private initiatives and enable the economy to reap the broader economic and social benefits of investment. In alignment with this economic rationale, Mauritanian authorities have established a free zone in the Nouadhibou region. This initiative focuses on advancing private investment, promoting investment, developing infrastructure, and generating employment opportunities. Our research is spurred by the intrigue in this development, aiming to scrutinize the essence of investment and its role in economic growth, examine Mauritania's investment policy, explore the rationale behind establishing the Nouadhibou Free Zone, and evaluate the economic and social impacts of this visionary approach on the overall development of, Résumé : La mauritanie comme beaucoup de pays africains, a adopté des politiques de promotion des investissements et des plans d’actions pour encourager l’investissement privé local et étranger afin d’accroître la productivité de l’initiative privée et faire bénéficier son économie des retombées économiques et sociales de l’investissement. C’est dans cet ordre de pensée économique que les autorités mauritaniennes ont instauré dans la région de nouadhibou une zone franche pour le développement de l’investissement privé, de promotion des investissements, des infrastructures et de création d’emplois. Notre recherche est motivée par l'intérêt pour ce développement, visant à examiner l'essence de la zone franche et son rôle dans le développement économique, à explorer et étudier les raisons de l'établissement de la zone franche de nouadhibou, et à évaluer les impacts économiques et sociaux de cette approche visionnaire sur le développement global de l'économie mauritanienne.  Mots Clés : Investissement - Finance - Economie - Zone Franche - Croissance.   Abstract : Mauritania, paralleling many African nations, has implemented strategies and action plans to promote both local and foreign private investment. The goal is to enhance the productivity of private initiatives and enable the economy to reap the broader economic and social benefits of investment. In alignment with this economic rationale, Mauritanian authorities have established a free zone in the Nouadhibou region. This initiative focuses on advancing private investment, promoting investment, developing infrastructure, and generating employment opportunities. Our research is spurred by the intrigue in this development, aiming to scrutinize the essence of investment and its role in economic growth, examine Mauritania's investment policy, explore the rationale behind establishing the Nouadhibou Free Zone, and evaluate the economic and social impacts of this visionary approach on the overall development of

Résumé : La mauritanie comme beaucoup de pays africains, a adopté des politiques de promotion des investissements et des plans d’actions pour encourager l’investissement privé local et étranger afin d’accroître la productivité de l’initiative privée et faire bénéficier son économie des retombées économiques et sociales de l’investissement. C’est dans cet ordre de pensée économique que les autorités mauritaniennes ont instauré dans la région de nouadhibou une zone franche pour le développement de l’investissement privé, de promotion des investissements, des infrastructures et de création d’emplois. Notre recherche est motivée par l'intérêt pour ce développement, visant à examiner l'essence de la zone franche et son rôle dans le développement économique, à explorer et étudier les raisons de l'établissement de la zone franche de nouadhibou, et à évaluer les impacts économiques et sociaux de cette approche visionnaire sur le développement global de l'économie mauritanienne.  Mots Clés : Investissement - Finance - Economie - Zone Franche - Croissance.   Abstract : Mauritania, paralleling many African nations, has implemented strategies and action plans to promote both local and foreign private investment. The goal is to enhance the productivity of private initiatives and enable the economy to reap the broader economic and social benefits of investment. In alignment with this economic rationale, Mauritanian authorities have established a free zone in the Nouadhibou region. This initiative focuses on advancing private investment, promoting investment, developing infrastructure, and generating employment opportunities. Our research is spurred by the intrigue in this development, aiming to scrutinize the essence of investment and its role in economic growth, examine Mauritania's investment policy, explore the rationale behind establishing the Nouadhibou Free Zone, and evaluate the economic and social impacts of this visionary approach on the overall development of, Résumé : La mauritanie comme beaucoup de pays africains, a adopté des politiques de promotion des investissements et des plans d’actions pour encourager l’investissement privé local et étranger afin d’accroître la productivité de l’initiative privée et faire bénéficier son économie des retombées économiques et sociales de l’investissement. C’est dans cet ordre de pensée économique que les autorités mauritaniennes ont instauré dans la région de nouadhibou une zone franche pour le développement de l’investissement privé, de promotion des investissements, des infrastructures et de création d’emplois. Notre recherche est motivée par l'intérêt pour ce développement, visant à examiner l'essence de la zone franche et son rôle dans le développement économique, à explorer et étudier les raisons de l'établissement de la zone franche de nouadhibou, et à évaluer les impacts économiques et sociaux de cette approche visionnaire sur le développement global de l'économie mauritanienne.  Mots Clés : Investissement - Finance - Economie - Zone Franche - Croissance.   Abstract : Mauritania, paralleling many African nations, has implemented strategies and action plans to promote both local and foreign private investment. The goal is to enhance the productivity of private initiatives and enable the economy to reap the broader economic and social benefits of investment. In alignment with this economic rationale, Mauritanian authorities have established a free zone in the Nouadhibou region. This initiative focuses on advancing private investment, promoting investment, developing infrastructure, and generating employment opportunities. Our research is spurred by the intrigue in this development, aiming to scrutinize the essence of investment and its role in economic growth, examine Mauritania's investment policy, explore the rationale behind establishing the Nouadhibou Free Zone, and evaluate the economic and social impacts of this visionary approach on the overall development of

Résumé : La mauritanie comme beaucoup de pays africains, a adopté des politiques de promotion des investissements et des plans d’actions pour encourager l’investissement privé local et étranger afin d’accroître la productivité de l’initiative privée et faire bénéficier son économie des retombées économiques et sociales de l’investissement. C’est dans cet ordre de pensée économique que les autorités mauritaniennes ont instauré dans la région de nouadhibou une zone franche pour le développement de l’investissement privé, de promotion des investissements, des infrastructures et de création d’emplois. Notre recherche est motivée par l'intérêt pour ce développement, visant à examiner l'essence de la zone franche et son rôle dans le développement économique, à explorer et étudier les raisons de l'établissement de la zone franche de nouadhibou, et à évaluer les impacts économiques et sociaux de cette approche visionnaire sur le développement global de l'économie mauritanienne.  Mots Clés : Investissement - Finance - Economie - Zone Franche - Croissance.   Abstract : Mauritania, paralleling many African nations, has implemented strategies and action plans to promote both local and foreign private investment. The goal is to enhance the productivity of private initiatives and enable the economy to reap the broader economic and social benefits of investment. In alignment with this economic rationale, Mauritanian authorities have established a free zone in the Nouadhibou region. This initiative focuses on advancing private investment, promoting investment, developing infrastructure, and generating employment opportunities. Our research is spurred by the intrigue in this development, aiming to scrutinize the essence of investment and its role in economic growth, examine Mauritania's investment policy, explore the rationale behind establishing the Nouadhibou Free Zone, and evaluate the economic and social impacts of this visionary approach on the overall development of, Résumé : La mauritanie comme beaucoup de pays africains, a adopté des politiques de promotion des investissements et des plans d’actions pour encourager l’investissement privé local et étranger afin d’accroître la productivité de l’initiative privée et faire bénéficier son économie des retombées économiques et sociales de l’investissement. C’est dans cet ordre de pensée économique que les autorités mauritaniennes ont instauré dans la région de nouadhibou une zone franche pour le développement de l’investissement privé, de promotion des investissements, des infrastructures et de création d’emplois. Notre recherche est motivée par l'intérêt pour ce développement, visant à examiner l'essence de la zone franche et son rôle dans le développement économique, à explorer et étudier les raisons de l'établissement de la zone franche de nouadhibou, et à évaluer les impacts économiques et sociaux de cette approche visionnaire sur le développement global de l'économie mauritanienne.  Mots Clés : Investissement - Finance - Economie - Zone Franche - Croissance.   Abstract : Mauritania, paralleling many African nations, has implemented strategies and action plans to promote both local and foreign private investment. The goal is to enhance the productivity of private initiatives and enable the economy to reap the broader economic and social benefits of investment. In alignment with this economic rationale, Mauritanian authorities have established a free zone in the Nouadhibou region. This initiative focuses on advancing private investment, promoting investment, developing infrastructure, and generating employment opportunities. Our research is spurred by the intrigue in this development, aiming to scrutinize the essence of investment and its role in economic growth, examine Mauritania's investment policy, explore the rationale behind establishing the Nouadhibou Free Zone, and evaluate the economic and social impacts of this visionary approach on the overall development of

This paper proposes to correct the rolling shutter (RS) distorted images by estimating the distortion flow from the global shutter (GS) to RS directly. Existing methods usually perform correction using the undistortion flow from the RS to GS. They initially predict the flow from consecutive RS frames, subsequently rescaling it as the displacement fields from the RS frame to the underlying GS image using time-dependent scaling factors. Following this, RS-aware forward warping is employed to convert the RS image into its GS counterpart. Nevertheless, this strategy is prone to two shortcomings. First, the undistortion flow estimation is rendered inaccurate by merely linear scaling the flow, due to the complex non-linear motion nature. Second, RS-aware forward warping often results in unavoidable artifacts. To address these limitations, we introduce a new framework that directly estimates the distortion flow and rectifies the RS image with the backward warping operation. More specifically, we first propose a global correlation-based flow attention mechanism to estimate the initial distortion flow and GS feature jointly, which are then refined by the following coarse-to-fine decoder layers. Additionally, a multi-distortion flow prediction strategy is integrated to mitigate the issue of inaccurate flow estimation further. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on various benchmarks while maintaining high efficiency. The project is available at \url{https://github.com/ljzycmd/DFRSC}., Comment: CVPR2024

Smart contract transactions associated with security attacks often exhibit distinct behavioral patterns compared with historical benign transactions before the attacking events. While many runtime monitoring and guarding mechanisms have been proposed to validate invariants and stop anomalous transactions on the fly, the empirical effectiveness of the invariants used remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we studied 23 prevalent invariants of 8 categories, which are either deployed in high-profile protocols or endorsed by leading auditing firms and security experts. Using these well-established invariants as templates, we developed a tool Trace2Inv which dynamically generates new invariants customized for a given contract based on its historical transaction data. We evaluated Trace2Inv on 42 smart contracts that fell victim to 27 distinct exploits on the Ethereum blockchain. Our findings reveal that the most effective invariant guard alone can successfully block 18 of the 27 identified exploits with minimal gas overhead. Our analysis also shows that most of the invariants remain effective even when the experienced attackers attempt to bypass them. Additionally, we studied the possibility of combining multiple invariant guards, resulting in blocking up to 23 of the 27 benchmark exploits and achieving false positive rates as low as 0.32%. Trace2Inv outperforms current state-of-the-art works on smart contract invariant mining and transaction attack detection in terms of both practicality and accuracy. Though Trace2Inv is not primarily designed for transaction attack detection, it surprisingly found two previously unreported exploit transactions, earlier than any reported exploit transactions against the same victim contracts.

Fierté, communion, partage, éblouissement, exemplarité. Les premiers sentiments que nous éprouvons lorsque nous participons aux manifestations du Hirak se télescopent et se bousculent : la joie qui émane des présents, leur enthousiasme et, avec le temps, la perception de cette sérénité qu’on appelle pacifisme. Et puis, petit à petit, ce qui nous est apparu comme une famille, comme des Ouled El Houma, comme « tous les voisins » et collègues, réunis ici par miracle, avec leurs enfants et leurs amis, prend la figure d’un collectif qui déclare, qui affirme. Et c’est toute l’Algérie qui s’exprime, dans toute l’Algérie. Au fil des vendredis, le citoyen cède le pas au sociologue qui veut comprendre, aller plus loin et saisir le pourquoi et le comment de cette société qui s’est unie et réunie sous les mêmes slogans. Et la revendication centrale Yetna7aou Ga3 n’est pas un coup de colère. Elle exprime la volonté irréfragable de construire un ordre plus juste. Rachid Sidi Boumedine remonte aux sources du Hirak et propose des clés de lecture d’un mouvement puissant et pacifique dont le patriotisme joyeux souligne parfaitement les mécanismes de résilience et de survie d’une société face à un système clientéliste et ses réseaux rentiers. A travers plusieurs réflexions présentées ici, l’auteur met à nu autant les raisons profondes de la revendication que les arcanes dissimulés de ce que le Hirak dénonce comme « le Système », qui use de toutes les ruses et menaces pour survivre, en changeant de façade.À PROPOS DE L'AUTEURAprès avoir mené des études scientifiques et travaillé dans le secteur de l’énergie, c’est plutôt l’activité de sociologue que Rachid Sidi Boumedine a exercée, soit comme enseignant-chercheur, soit dans le domaine de l’urbanisme et l’aménagement. Il a dirigé, en sus de ses travaux personnels, plusieurs organismes publics d’étude et de recherche. Après une activité de recherche menée au CREAD en qualité de Directeur de recherches associé, avant sa retraite, il se co

Fierté, communion, partage, éblouissement, exemplarité. Les premiers sentiments que nous éprouvons lorsque nous participons aux manifestations du Hirak se télescopent et se bousculent : la joie qui émane des présents, leur enthousiasme et, avec le temps, la perception de cette sérénité qu’on appelle pacifisme. Et puis, petit à petit, ce qui nous est apparu comme une famille, comme des Ouled El Houma, comme « tous les voisins » et collègues, réunis ici par miracle, avec leurs enfants et leurs amis, prend la figure d’un collectif qui déclare, qui affirme. Et c’est toute l’Algérie qui s’exprime, dans toute l’Algérie. Au fil des vendredis, le citoyen cède le pas au sociologue qui veut comprendre, aller plus loin et saisir le pourquoi et le comment de cette société qui s’est unie et réunie sous les mêmes slogans. Et la revendication centrale Yetna7aou Ga3 n’est pas un coup de colère. Elle exprime la volonté irréfragable de construire un ordre plus juste. Rachid Sidi Boumedine remonte aux sources du Hirak et propose des clés de lecture d’un mouvement puissant et pacifique dont le patriotisme joyeux souligne parfaitement les mécanismes de résilience et de survie d’une société face à un système clientéliste et ses réseaux rentiers. A travers plusieurs réflexions présentées ici, l’auteur met à nu autant les raisons profondes de la revendication que les arcanes dissimulés de ce que le Hirak dénonce comme « le Système », qui use de toutes les ruses et menaces pour survivre, en changeant de façade.À PROPOS DE L'AUTEURAprès avoir mené des études scientifiques et travaillé dans le secteur de l’énergie, c’est plutôt l’activité de sociologue que Rachid Sidi Boumedine a exercée, soit comme enseignant-chercheur, soit dans le domaine de l’urbanisme et l’aménagement. Il a dirigé, en sus de ses travaux personnels, plusieurs organismes publics d’étude et de recherche. Après une activité de recherche menée au CREAD en qualité de Directeur de recherches associé, avant sa retraite, il se co

Fierté, communion, partage, éblouissement, exemplarité. Les premiers sentiments que nous éprouvons lorsque nous participons aux manifestations du Hirak se télescopent et se bousculent : la joie qui émane des présents, leur enthousiasme et, avec le temps, la perception de cette sérénité qu’on appelle pacifisme. Et puis, petit à petit, ce qui nous est apparu comme une famille, comme des Ouled El Houma, comme « tous les voisins » et collègues, réunis ici par miracle, avec leurs enfants et leurs amis, prend la figure d’un collectif qui déclare, qui affirme. Et c’est toute l’Algérie qui s’exprime, dans toute l’Algérie. Au fil des vendredis, le citoyen cède le pas au sociologue qui veut comprendre, aller plus loin et saisir le pourquoi et le comment de cette société qui s’est unie et réunie sous les mêmes slogans. Et la revendication centrale Yetna7aou Ga3 n’est pas un coup de colère. Elle exprime la volonté irréfragable de construire un ordre plus juste. Rachid Sidi Boumedine remonte aux sources du Hirak et propose des clés de lecture d’un mouvement puissant et pacifique dont le patriotisme joyeux souligne parfaitement les mécanismes de résilience et de survie d’une société face à un système clientéliste et ses réseaux rentiers. A travers plusieurs réflexions présentées ici, l’auteur met à nu autant les raisons profondes de la revendication que les arcanes dissimulés de ce que le Hirak dénonce comme « le Système », qui use de toutes les ruses et menaces pour survivre, en changeant de façade.À PROPOS DE L'AUTEURAprès avoir mené des études scientifiques et travaillé dans le secteur de l’énergie, c’est plutôt l’activité de sociologue que Rachid Sidi Boumedine a exercée, soit comme enseignant-chercheur, soit dans le domaine de l’urbanisme et l’aménagement. Il a dirigé, en sus de ses travaux personnels, plusieurs organismes publics d’étude et de recherche. Après une activité de recherche menée au CREAD en qualité de Directeur de recherches associé, avant sa retraite, il se co

Fierté, communion, partage, éblouissement, exemplarité. Les premiers sentiments que nous éprouvons lorsque nous participons aux manifestations du Hirak se télescopent et se bousculent : la joie qui émane des présents, leur enthousiasme et, avec le temps, la perception de cette sérénité qu’on appelle pacifisme. Et puis, petit à petit, ce qui nous est apparu comme une famille, comme des Ouled El Houma, comme « tous les voisins » et collègues, réunis ici par miracle, avec leurs enfants et leurs amis, prend la figure d’un collectif qui déclare, qui affirme. Et c’est toute l’Algérie qui s’exprime, dans toute l’Algérie. Au fil des vendredis, le citoyen cède le pas au sociologue qui veut comprendre, aller plus loin et saisir le pourquoi et le comment de cette société qui s’est unie et réunie sous les mêmes slogans. Et la revendication centrale Yetna7aou Ga3 n’est pas un coup de colère. Elle exprime la volonté irréfragable de construire un ordre plus juste. Rachid Sidi Boumedine remonte aux sources du Hirak et propose des clés de lecture d’un mouvement puissant et pacifique dont le patriotisme joyeux souligne parfaitement les mécanismes de résilience et de survie d’une société face à un système clientéliste et ses réseaux rentiers. A travers plusieurs réflexions présentées ici, l’auteur met à nu autant les raisons profondes de la revendication que les arcanes dissimulés de ce que le Hirak dénonce comme « le Système », qui use de toutes les ruses et menaces pour survivre, en changeant de façade.À PROPOS DE L'AUTEURAprès avoir mené des études scientifiques et travaillé dans le secteur de l’énergie, c’est plutôt l’activité de sociologue que Rachid Sidi Boumedine a exercée, soit comme enseignant-chercheur, soit dans le domaine de l’urbanisme et l’aménagement. Il a dirigé, en sus de ses travaux personnels, plusieurs organismes publics d’étude et de recherche. Après une activité de recherche menée au CREAD en qualité de Directeur de recherches associé, avant sa retraite, il se co

Understanding the perception of farmers on how the climate is changing is important for building adaptation strategies. Farmers usually take appropriate adaptive measures only when they have a good perception of the on-going changes. The present study aims at analysing the perception of climatic variability by local population and their strategies to lessen the negatives effects of these changes in Benguene (Mali). The study used mixed method combining qualitative and quantitative analyses. The data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. The study sample comprises a total of 29 household heads selected through a purposive sampling Descriptive analyses of socio-economic data were performed and comparative analysis of farmers’ perception of climate parameters with measured climatic data of the period 1983-2018 was carried out. The results revealed that farmers have a wrong perception of the trend of climate parameters as compared to the trend showed by measured climate date. They overwhelmingly perceive an increase of temperature, a decrease in rainfall, a late onset and a premature termination of the rainy season. Measured climatic data however showed a two-phase cyclic variability of the rainfall and a tree-phase cyclic variability of the temperature. In response to the perceived changes, farmers adopted survival strategies more aligned on past climatic chocks than on-going climatic variability. There is an urgent need to provide farmers with updated climatic information to help them distinguish between past and current climatic variability for their adoption of better adaptation strategies., La compréhension de la perception des agriculteurs sur la façon dont le climat change est cruciale pour anticiper ses impacts. Les agriculteurs sont connus pour prendre les mesures appropriées pour s'adapter à leur environnement uniquement lorsqu'ils perçoivent un changement en cours. Ce travail vise à analyser la perception des populations locales et les stratégies mises en œuvre par celles-ci pour minimiser les effets néfastes des aléas climatiques dans le terroir de Benguéné, au Mali. L’étude a utilisé une approche méthodologique mixte combinant une analyse qualitative et une analyse quantitative. Les données ont été collectées auprès à l’aide d’un questionnaire semi-structuré. L’échantillon comprend 29 chefs d’exploitation sélectionnés de façon raisonnée. Des analyses descriptives et une analyse comparée de la perception des ménages avec les évidences climatiques de la période 1983-2018 ont été réalisées. Les résultats montrent une mauvaise perception des agriculteurs de Benguéné comparée aux évidences climatiques. Dans leur grande majorité ils perçoivent une augmentation de la température, une diminution de la pluviométrie, un début tardif et une fin précoce de saison.  Contrairement à la perception paysanne, les données indiquent une variabilité cyclique biphasée pour la pluviométrie et triphasée pour la température. En réponse aux changements perçus, les populations adoptent des stratégies qui peuvent être qualifiées de mesures de survie en réponse aux chocs vécus les années antérieures plutôt que des mesures adaptatives aux conditions actuelles. Il est important de mettre à la disposition des agriculteurs une information climatique actualisée afin de booster leur capacité de discernement entre la variabilité passée et actuelle pour la mise en œuvre de meilleures stratégies d’adaptation à la variabilité du climat.

Understanding the perception of farmers on how the climate is changing is important for building adaptation strategies. Farmers usually take appropriate adaptive measures only when they have a good perception of the on-going changes. The present study aims at analysing the perception of climatic variability by local population and their strategies to lessen the negatives effects of these changes in Benguene (Mali). The study used mixed method combining qualitative and quantitative analyses. The data were collected using a semi-structured questionnaire. The study sample comprises a total of 29 household heads selected through a purposive sampling Descriptive analyses of socio-economic data were performed and comparative analysis of farmers’ perception of climate parameters with measured climatic data of the period 1983-2018 was carried out. The results revealed that farmers have a wrong perception of the trend of climate parameters as compared to the trend showed by measured climate date. They overwhelmingly perceive an increase of temperature, a decrease in rainfall, a late onset and a premature termination of the rainy season. Measured climatic data however showed a two-phase cyclic variability of the rainfall and a tree-phase cyclic variability of the temperature. In response to the perceived changes, farmers adopted survival strategies more aligned on past climatic chocks than on-going climatic variability. There is an urgent need to provide farmers with updated climatic information to help them distinguish between past and current climatic variability for their adoption of better adaptation strategies., La compréhension de la perception des agriculteurs sur la façon dont le climat change est cruciale pour anticiper ses impacts. Les agriculteurs sont connus pour prendre les mesures appropriées pour s'adapter à leur environnement uniquement lorsqu'ils perçoivent un changement en cours. Ce travail vise à analyser la perception des populations locales et les stratégies mises en œuvre par celles-ci pour minimiser les effets néfastes des aléas climatiques dans le terroir de Benguéné, au Mali. L’étude a utilisé une approche méthodologique mixte combinant une analyse qualitative et une analyse quantitative. Les données ont été collectées auprès à l’aide d’un questionnaire semi-structuré. L’échantillon comprend 29 chefs d’exploitation sélectionnés de façon raisonnée. Des analyses descriptives et une analyse comparée de la perception des ménages avec les évidences climatiques de la période 1983-2018 ont été réalisées. Les résultats montrent une mauvaise perception des agriculteurs de Benguéné comparée aux évidences climatiques. Dans leur grande majorité ils perçoivent une augmentation de la température, une diminution de la pluviométrie, un début tardif et une fin précoce de saison.  Contrairement à la perception paysanne, les données indiquent une variabilité cyclique biphasée pour la pluviométrie et triphasée pour la température. En réponse aux changements perçus, les populations adoptent des stratégies qui peuvent être qualifiées de mesures de survie en réponse aux chocs vécus les années antérieures plutôt que des mesures adaptatives aux conditions actuelles. Il est important de mettre à la disposition des agriculteurs une information climatique actualisée afin de booster leur capacité de discernement entre la variabilité passée et actuelle pour la mise en œuvre de meilleures stratégies d’adaptation à la variabilité du climat.

Fierté, communion, partage, éblouissement, exemplarité. Les premiers sentiments que nous éprouvons lorsque nous participons aux manifestations du Hirak se télescopent et se bousculent : la joie qui émane des présents, leur enthousiasme et, avec le temps, la perception de cette sérénité qu’on appelle pacifisme. Et puis, petit à petit, ce qui nous est apparu comme une famille, comme des Ouled El Houma, comme « tous les voisins » et collègues, réunis ici par miracle, avec leurs enfants et leurs amis, prend la figure d’un collectif qui déclare, qui affirme. Et c’est toute l’Algérie qui s’exprime, dans toute l’Algérie. Au fil des vendredis, le citoyen cède le pas au sociologue qui veut comprendre, aller plus loin et saisir le pourquoi et le comment de cette société qui s’est unie et réunie sous les mêmes slogans. Et la revendication centrale Yetna7aou Ga3 n’est pas un coup de colère. Elle exprime la volonté irréfragable de construire un ordre plus juste. Rachid Sidi Boumedine remonte aux sources du Hirak et propose des clés de lecture d’un mouvement puissant et pacifique dont le patriotisme joyeux souligne parfaitement les mécanismes de résilience et de survie d’une société face à un système clientéliste et ses réseaux rentiers. A travers plusieurs réflexions présentées ici, l’auteur met à nu autant les raisons profondes de la revendication que les arcanes dissimulés de ce que le Hirak dénonce comme « le Système », qui use de toutes les ruses et menaces pour survivre, en changeant de façade.À PROPOS DE L'AUTEURAprès avoir mené des études scientifiques et travaillé dans le secteur de l’énergie, c’est plutôt l’activité de sociologue que Rachid Sidi Boumedine a exercée, soit comme enseignant-chercheur, soit dans le domaine de l’urbanisme et l’aménagement. Il a dirigé, en sus de ses travaux personnels, plusieurs organismes publics d’étude et de recherche. Après une activité de recherche menée au CREAD en qualité de Directeur de recherches associé, avant sa retraite, il se co

As the automotive industry grows, modern vehicles will be connected to 5G networks, creating a new Vehicular-to-Everything (V2X) ecosystem. Network Slicing (NS) supports this 5G-V2X ecosystem by enabling network operators to flexibly provide dedicated logical networks addressing use case specific-requirements on top of a shared physical infrastructure. Despite its benefits, NS is highly vulnerable to privacy and security threats, which can put Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) in dangerous situations. Deep Learning-based Intrusion Detection Systems (DL-based IDSs) have been proposed as the first defense line to detect and report these attacks. However, current DL-based IDSs are processing and memory-consuming, increasing security costs and jeopardizing 5G-V2X acceptance. To this end, this paper proposes a lightweight intrusion detection scheme for 5G-V2X sliced networks. Our scheme leverages DL and Knowledge Distillation (KD) for training in the cloud and offloading knowledge to slice-tailored lightweight DL models running on CAVs. Our results show that our scheme provides an optimal trade-off between detection accuracy and security overhead. Specifically, it can reduce security overhead in computation and memory complexity to more than 50% while keeping almost the same performance as heavy DL-based IDSs.

Building accurate Machine Learning (ML) attack detection models for 5G and Beyond (5GB) vehicular networks requires collaboration between Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) nodes. However, while operating collaboratively, ensuring the ML model's security and data privacy is challenging. To this end, this article proposes a secure and privacy-preservation on-demand framework for building attack-detection ML models for 5GB vehicular networks. The proposed framework emerged from combining 5GB technologies, namely, Federated Learning (FL), blockchain, and smart contracts to ensure fair and trusted interactions between FL servers (edge nodes) with FL workers (vehicles). Moreover, it also provides an efficient consensus algorithm with an intelligent incentive mechanism to select the best FL workers that deliver highly accurate local ML models. Our experiments demonstrate that the framework achieves higher accuracy on a well-known vehicular dataset with a lower blockchain consensus time than related solutions. Specifically, our framework enhances the accuracy by 14% and decreases the consensus time, at least by 50%, compared to related works. Finally, this article discusses the framework's key challenges and potential solutions.

Building accurate Machine Learning (ML) attack detection models for 5G and Beyond (5GB) vehicular networks requires collaboration between Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) nodes. However, while operating collaboratively, ensuring the ML model's security and data privacy is challenging. To this end, this article proposes a secure and privacy-preservation on-demand framework for building attack-detection ML models for 5GB vehicular networks. The proposed framework emerged from combining 5GB technologies, namely, Federated Learning (FL), blockchain, and smart contracts to ensure fair and trusted interactions between FL servers (edge nodes) with FL workers (vehicles). Moreover, it also provides an efficient consensus algorithm with an intelligent incentive mechanism to select the best FL workers that deliver highly accurate local ML models. Our experiments demonstrate that the framework achieves higher accuracy on a well-known vehicular dataset with a lower blockchain consensus time than related solutions. Specifically, our framework enhances the accuracy by 14% and decreases the consensus time, at least by 50%, compared to related works. Finally, this article discusses the framework's key challenges and potential solutions.

This joint anthropological study is about security and safety chal­lenges seen and experienced from below, notably the perceptions and perspectives of Burkinabe citizens. Eight researchers document and make a qualitative analysis of security at the local level, in 13 municipalities across the country. Two points of departure guided this work: firstly, the importance of integrating citizens’ perceptions of security and insecurity in a global analysis of security and safety challenges; and secondly, the security from below approach conceives of military and police security as one perspective among several others. The study forms part of a series of anthropological team research publications that seek to describe, analyse and put into perspective how daily realities are “seen and lived” by local actors and the general public, or simply “ordinary citizens”, as well as relevant social and political actors on the local level. A large part of this English version is a translation of the French version published in 2019, with some important exceptions: the concluding chapter integrates the more recent developments in terms of insecurity and political turbulence of Burkina Faso; and an epilogue co-authored by Sten Hagberg and Ludovic Kibora sheds further light on security from below in 2023.

This joint anthropological study is about security and safety chal­lenges seen and experienced from below, notably the perceptions and perspectives of Burkinabe citizens. Eight researchers document and make a qualitative analysis of security at the local level, in 13 municipalities across the country. Two points of departure guided this work: firstly, the importance of integrating citizens’ perceptions of security and insecurity in a global analysis of security and safety challenges; and secondly, the security from below approach conceives of military and police security as one perspective among several others. The study forms part of a series of anthropological team research publications that seek to describe, analyse and put into perspective how daily realities are “seen and lived” by local actors and the general public, or simply “ordinary citizens”, as well as relevant social and political actors on the local level. A large part of this English version is a translation of the French version published in 2019, with some important exceptions: the concluding chapter integrates the more recent developments in terms of insecurity and political turbulence of Burkina Faso; and an epilogue co-authored by Sten Hagberg and Ludovic Kibora sheds further light on security from below in 2023.

Deploying Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) on top of 5G and Beyond networks (5GB) makes them vulnerable to increasing vectors of security and privacy attacks. In this context, a wide range of advanced machine/deep learning-based solutions have been designed to accurately detect security attacks. Specifically, supervised learning techniques have been widely applied to train attack detection models. However, the main limitation of such solutions is their inability to detect attacks different from those seen during the training phase, or new attacks, also called zero-day attacks. Moreover, training the detection model requires significant data collection and labeling, which increases the communication overhead, and raises privacy concerns. To address the aforementioned limits, we propose in this paper a novel detection mechanism that leverages the ability of the deep auto-encoder method to detect attacks relying only on the benign network traffic pattern. Using federated learning, the proposed intrusion detection system can be trained with large and diverse benign network traffic, while preserving the CAVs’ privacy, and minimizing the communication overhead. The in-depth experiment on a recent network traffic dataset shows that the proposed system achieved a high detection rate while minimizing the false positive rate, and the detection delay.

In nearly all cases of underwater adhesion, water molecules typically act as a destroyer. Thus, removing interfacial water from the substrate surfaces is essential for forming super-strong underwater adhesion. However, current methods mainly rely on physical means to dislodge interfacial water, such as absorption, hydrophobic repulsion, or extrusion, which are inefficient in removing obstinate hydrated water at contact interface, resulting in poor adhesion. Herein, we present a unique means of reversing the role of water to assist in realizing a self-strengthening liquid underwater adhesive (SLU-adhesive) that can effectively remove water at contact interface. This is achieved through multiscale physical-chemical coupling methods across millimeter to molecular levels and self-adaptive strengthening of the cohesion during underwater operations. As a result, strong adhesion over 1,600 kPa (compared to ~100 to 1,000 kPa in current state of the art) can be achieved on various materials, including inorganic metal and organic plastic materials, without preloading in different environments such as pure water, a wide range of pH solutions (pH = 3 to 11), and seawater. Intriguingly, SLU-adhesive/photothermal nanoparticles (carbon nanotubes) hybrid materials can significantly reduce the time required for complete curing from 24 h to 40 min using near-infrared laser radiation due to unique thermal-response of the chemical reaction rate. The excellent adhesion property and self-adaptive adhesion procedure allow SLU-adhesive materials to demonstrate great potential for broad applications in underwater sand stabilization, underwater repair, and even adhesion failure detection as a self-reporting adhesive. This concept of water helper has potential to advance underwater adhesion and manufacturing strategies.

Neoantigens are peptides derived from non-synonymous mutations presented by human leukocyte antigens (HLAs), which are recognized by antitumour T cells1-14. The large HLA allele diversity and limiting clinical samples have restricted the study of the landscape of neoantigen-targeted T cell responses in patients over their treatment course. Here we applied recently developed technologies15-17 to capture neoantigen-specific T cells from blood and tumours from patients with metastatic melanoma with or without response to anti-programmed death receptor 1 (PD-1) immunotherapy. We generated personalized libraries of neoantigen-HLA capture reagents to single-cell isolate the T cells and clone their T cell receptors (neoTCRs). Multiple T cells with different neoTCR sequences (T cell clonotypes) recognized a limited number of mutations in samples from seven patients with long-lasting clinical responses. These neoTCR clonotypes were recurrently detected over time in the blood and tumour. Samples from four patients with no response to anti-PD-1 also demonstrated neoantigen-specific T cell responses in the blood and tumour to a restricted number of mutations with lower TCR polyclonality and were not recurrently detected in sequential samples. Reconstitution of the neoTCRs in donor T cells using non-viral CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing demonstrated specific recognition and cytotoxicity to patient-matched melanoma cell lines. Thus, effective anti-PD-1 immunotherapy is associated with the presence of polyclonal CD8+ T cells in the tumour and blood specific for a limited number of immunodominant mutations, which are recurrently recognized over time.

As the automotive industry grows, modern vehicles will be connected to 5G networks, creating a new Vehicular-to-Everything (V2X) ecosystem. Network Slicing (NS) supports this 5G-V2X ecosystem by enabling network operators to flexibly provide dedicated logical networks addressing use case specific-requirements on top of a shared physical infrastructure. Despite its benefits, NS is highly vulnerable to privacy and security threats, which can put Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) in dangerous situations. Deep Learning-based Intrusion Detection Systems (DL-based IDSs) have been proposed as the first defense line to detect and report these attacks. However, current DL-based IDSs are processing and memory-consuming, increasing security costs and jeopardizing 5G-V2X acceptance. To this end, this paper proposes a lightweight intrusion detection scheme for 5G-V2X sliced networks. Our scheme leverages DL and Knowledge Distillation (KD) for training in the cloud and offloading knowledge to slice-tailored lightweight DL models running on CAVs. Our results show that our scheme provides an optimal trade-off between detection accuracy and security overhead. Specifically, it can reduce security overhead in computation and memory complexity to more than 50% while keeping almost the same performance as heavy DL-based IDSs.

Breast cancer is a malignant tumor that originates in the cells of the breast. It is the second leading cause of women’s death, after lung cancer. Moreover, the availability of medical data facilitates the development of related Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS). The diagnosis (or classification) of breast cancer is a delicate task, which requires efficient and robust classifiers. However, classical classification methods (in which a single basic classifier ( estimator )) are generally confronted with the “bias-variance” dilemma. This, very often, affects seriously their efficiency and robustness. In this article, to mitigate this problem, we propose a new learning model called Triple-Stacking. This technique is composed of three (3) methods of statistical learning (Logistic Regression, Voting and Stacking) and a meta-learner (Decision Stump). The proposed model outperformed the existing ones on two different databases: Breast Cancer Wisconsin Original Data Set and Breast Cancer Wisconsin Diagnostic Data Set, with accuracies of 99.57% and 99.64%, respectively.

Officially, there is no exhaustive inventory of Sites of Geological Interest (SGI) in Morocco. Nonetheless, the Geological Service of Morocco started identification of these sites a few years ago, and published 9 volumes on the subject as geological and mining guides of Morocco. This was only limited to identification of SGI without their characterization and assessment, or identification of the threats that could affect them. In the last few years several PhD Thesis and research papers have dealed with this subject. Unfortunately, these initiatives are sporadic and far from establishing a global strategy for geoconservation and valorization of the Moroccan geological heritage. This paper proposes a global methodology for the inventory of geoheritage in Morocco by: i) providing a detailed synthesis of the research work on geoheritage in the world; ii) proposing the ways for assessing the Moroccan geoheritage at different scales (scientific education, geotourism, sustainable development, etc.); and iii) applying them to a wide variety of landscapes in Morocco. The obtained results and conclusions can be further extended to other African regions., No existe un inventario exhaustivo oficial de Sitios de Interés Geológico (SGI) en Marruecos. El Servicio Geológico de Marruecos ha promovido en los últimos años iniciativas para identificar estos sitios y las ha publicado, en 9 volúmenes, en forma de guías geológicas y mineras de Marruecos. Esta iniciativa sólo se limitaba a identificar los SGI sin caracterizarlos, evaluarlos o reconocer las amenazas que pudieran afectarles. En los últimos años varias tesis doctorales y trabajos de investigación han abordado esta cuestión. Desafortunadamente, han sido iniciativas esporádicas que no pueden cumplir el ambicioso reto de establecer una estrategia global de geoconservación y valorización del patrimonio geológico marroquí. En este trabajo se propone una metodología global para inventariar el geopatrimonio marroquí mediante: i) una síntesis detallada de trabajos de investigación llevados a cabo sobre geopatrimonio en el mundo; ii) la propuesta de criterios para evaluar estos resultados a diferentes escalas (educación científica, geoturismo, desarrollo sostenible, etc.); y iii) su aplicación a una gran variedad de paisajes de Marruecos. Los principales resultados y conclusiones obtenidos se pueden aplicar a otras regiones africanas.

Terrorism poses a serious threat in the world today. Although it does not affect all countries to the same extent, the international community must cooperate to develop measures to effectively eradicate this common enemy. Despite the increasing number of international treaties aimed at regulating the fight against terrorism and terrorism-related acts, terrorism continues to thrive around the world, and as a result, has a significant impact on human rights. This article examines some anti-terrorist measures at the universal level and aims to determine to what extent they may infringe upon fundamental human rights. This article also highlights the importance of fundamental human rights and the risk of them being violated in the global fight against terrorism. There is no doubt that terrorism has devastating consequences on the exercise of human rights, including the right to live, the right to liberty and the physical integrity of victims as well as the individuals suspected of committing terrorist acts. The research was conducted using primarily the dogmatic method, followed by an analysis of international legal instruments. The analysis proved that the measures taken internationally in response to terrorism-related attacks may not only violate fundamental human rights but also undermine the rule of law and hinder the protection of some basic human rights. It is important, therefore, that States find a right balance between fulfilling their two obli gations: ensuring security of their citizens and fighting terrorism.

Population-based prevalence surveys are essential for decision-making on interventions to achieve trachoma elimination as a public health problem. This paper outlines the methodologies of Tropical Data, which supports work to undertake those surveys. Tropical Data is a consortium of partners that supports health ministries worldwide to conduct globally standardised prevalence surveys that conform to World Health Organization recommendations. Founding principles are health ministry ownership, partnership and collaboration, and quality assurance and quality control at every step of the survey process. Support covers survey planning, survey design, training, electronic data collection and fieldwork, and data management, analysis and dissemination. Methods are adapted to meet local context and needs. Customisations, operational research and integration of other diseases into routine trachoma surveys have also been supported. Between 29 February 2016 and 24 April 2023, 3373 trachoma surveys across 50 countries have been supported, resulting in 10,818,502 people being examined for trachoma. This health ministry-led, standardised approach, with support from the start to the end of the survey process, has helped all trachoma elimination stakeholders to know where interventions are needed, where interventions can be stopped, and when elimination as a public health problem has been achieved. Flexibility to meet specific country contexts, adaptation to changes in global guidance and adjustments in response to user feedback have facilitated innovation in evidence-based methodologies, and supported health ministries to strive for global disease control targets.

The study of decolonization has long been dominated by political history, focused on formal emancipation of nations at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, societies subject to European colonial administration. The article reveals the reasons for the emancipation of colonised nations and the construction of a new social and economic order in the world. It also presents the relationship between decolonisation and the new global economic hierarchy. In fact, decolonisation did not change anything in the economic and political relations between former metropolises and former colonies, similarly at the cultural level, where the language of the coloniser still dominates in the official sphere and in education., Badanie procesu dekolonizacji przez długi czas było zdominowane przez historię polityczną koncentrującą się na formalnej emancypacji narodów przełomu XIX i XX wieku, społeczeństw podlegających europejskiej administracji kolonialnej. Artykuł ukazuje przyczyny emancypacji skolonizowanych narodów oraz budowy nowego porządku społecznego i gospodarczego na świecie. Przedstawia także związek między dekolonizacją a nową globalną hierarchią gospodarczą. W rzeczywistości dekolonizacja niczego nie zmieniła w stosunkach gospodarczych i politycznych między byłymi metropoliami a byłymi koloniami, podobnie na poziomie kulturowym, gdzie wciąż dominuje język kolonizatora w sferze urzędowej i w edukacji.

Le financement bancaire des activités agricoles au Mali face à la capacité de remboursement des agriculteurs ruraux. Pour mieux étayer notre travail, nous avons pris le cas de la Banque Nationale de Développement Agricole du Mali (BNDA) comme champ d’étude. La question centrale est de savoir si les produits et services offerts par la BNDA sont en adéquation avec le niveau de revenu de la population rurale au Mali. Afin de mener à bien notre recherche, nous avons adopté un positionnement interpretativiste accompagné de démarche qualitative. Nos outils de recueil de données sont : l’observation participante, l’entretien et la revue documentaire. Nous avons dégagé comme résultat que les produits et services offerts par la BNDA sont en adéquation avec le niveau de revenu des populations rurales. Cela étant, nous avons toutefois formulé quelques recommandations qui pourraient bénéficier à la BNDA dans sa mission de financement pour le développement du secteur agricole. Comme principales recommandations l’accent devra être mis sur le pouvoir de louer à bail des matériels agricoles, des entrepôts et des installations de transformation et de pouvoir s’appuyer non seulement sur le recensement agricole, mais aussi sur une analyse plus approfondie de la structure et de la santé institutionnelles des coopératives de producteurs.

This article examines the causal link between foreign direct investment and economic growth in Mauritania during the period 1973-2019 using the ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag model) method developed by Pesaran and Shin in 1998. The stationarity tests have put in highlights a cointegration of order 1 for the growth rate, the schooling rate, the trade openness rate, and the money supply. The empirical results of this study have shown that foreign direct investment, the exchange rate, and education rate have negatively significant effects on economic growth. On the other hand, the development of the financial system and trade openness have a significantly positive effect. As for domestic investment and inflation, they exert negative but statically insignificant effects.

This joint anthropological study is about security and safety chal­lenges seen and experienced from below, notably the perceptions and perspectives of Burkinabe citizens. Eight researchers document and make a qualitative analysis of security at the local level, in 13 municipalities across the country. Two points of departure guided this work: firstly, the importance of integrating citizens’ perceptions of security and insecurity in a global analysis of security and safety challenges; and secondly, the security from below approach conceives of military and police security as one perspective among several others. The study forms part of a series of anthropological team research publications that seek to describe, analyse and put into perspective how daily realities are “seen and lived” by local actors and the general public, or simply “ordinary citizens”, as well as relevant social and political actors on the local level. A large part of this English version is a translation of the French version published in 2019, with some important exceptions: the concluding chapter integrates the more recent developments in terms of insecurity and political turbulence of Burkina Faso; and an epilogue co-authored by Sten Hagberg and Ludovic Kibora sheds further light on security from below in 2023.

Extracorporeal devices to cleanse septic blood from infecting bacteria, PAMPs and excess cytokines are based upon the use of hemofiltration membranes or adsorbent surfaces, but the current generation of devices has variable and inconclusive therapeutic efficacy. Nanostructured surfaces are consistently called “promising” to control bacterial adhesion and therewith also classify as potential adsorbent surfaces in extracorporeal blood cleansing. Therefore, we first review the interactions between bacteria and nanostructured surfaces. An easy distinction between nanostructured surfaces can be made on basis of periodic- or random-occurrence of nanostructured features, although often nanostructured surfaces are microstructured due to merging of their nanofeatures. Characterization of nanostructured surfaces is not trivial due to the myriad of different nanoscaled morphologies. Both superhydrophobic and hydrophilic, nanostructured surfaces generally yield low bacterial adhesion as compared with smooth surfaces. This thesis is based on the hypothesis that nanostructured surfaces will also impact the properties of adsorbed cell membranes due to their small adhesion forces and may therewith yield a highly biomimetic surface. It aims to verify the hypothesis that (bacterially-)activated macrophage membranes with natural recognition abilities for bacteria, pathogen-associated molecular patterns, cytokines and endotoxins, adsorbed to a nanostructured surface can be used as adsorbent surfaces in a microfluidic device for extracorporeal cleansing of blood.

Sidi Dun,* Chunying Liu,* Na Li Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Daqing Oilfield General Hospital, Daqing, Heilongjiang, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Sidi Dun, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Daqing Oilfield General Hospital, No. 9, Zhongkang Road, Saertu District, Daqing, Heilongjiang, 163000, People’s Republic of China, Email dsd2018123456@163.comBackground: Reproductive tract infection is one of the important causes of intrauterine adhesions (IUA). The evaluation of vaginal microecology could provide significant guidance for the treatment of reproductive tract infection. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between IUA and vaginal microecology.Methods: Patients who came to the gynecology department of our hospital from March 2020 to February 2022 and were diagnosed with IUA were selected as the research subjects (n=150). Patients with normal uterine cavity were selected as the control group (n=150). All research subjects underwent hysteroscopy and vaginal microecological examination. The vaginal pH, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), leukocyte esterase (LE), sialidase (SNA), 3-glucuronidase (GUS), and acetylglucosidase (NAG) of the participants were recorded and analyzed, respectively. Vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), trichomonas vaginitis (TV), and bacterial vaginosis (BV) were evaluated and diagnosed separately.Results: The incidence of abnormal vaginal microecological morphological and functional indicators in the IUA group was remarkably higher than that in the control group, mainly manifested as relatively high pH value, reduction of Lactobacillus, increased ratio of flora density I, IV and flora diversity I, IV, higher detection rate of TV and BV. In addition, the increase in the positive rate of H2O2, LE, SNA, and NAG were observed in IUA patients.Conclusion: Vaginal microecological imbalance is closely related to the occurrence of IUA, which should ca

Group living has various benefits, but it also carries costs, such as risk of cannibalism. Molting is a vulnerable period of being cannibalized in juvenile arthropods, but how gregarious arthropods avoid this threat is poorly understood. Here, we examined how actively migrating gregarious nymphs of desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria, avoid cannibalism during molting, in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania. In the field, gregarious nymphs cyclically march and feed on grass during the day. Our field observations found that marching behavior helped separating pre-molting and cannibalistic non-molting nymphs. Cannibalistic non-molting nymphs marched away from roost plants, leaving sedentary pre-molting nymphs behind, creating cannibal-free spaces. Some non-molting nymphs reached a pre-molting state after daytime marching, thus both pre- and non-molting nymphs roosted on same plants at night. However, pre-molting nymphs moved away from conspecifics prior to molting. Starvation experiments confirmed that food-satiation decreased cannibalistic necrophagy. Physiological surveys of diel feeding and molting patterns revealed that nymphs molted at times when conspecifics were food-satiated rather than hungry. Hence, our results indicate that behavioral and physiological traits of gregarious locusts could function to spatiotemporally separate molting locusts from cannibalistic conspecifics, thus reducing molting-associated cannibalism. This is the first report of migration-dependent molting synchrony as a mechanism reducing costs of aggregation in gregarious arthropods.

Breast cancer is a malignant tumor that originates in the cells of the breast. It is the second leading cause of women’s death, after lung cancer. Moreover, the availability of medical data facilitates the development of related Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS). The diagnosis (or classification) of breast cancer is a delicate task, which requires efficient and robust classifiers. However, classical classification methods (in which a single basic classifier ( estimator )) are generally confronted with the “bias-variance” dilemma. This, very often, affects seriously their efficiency and robustness. In this article, to mitigate this problem, we propose a new learning model called Triple-Stacking. This technique is composed of three (3) methods of statistical learning (Logistic Regression, Voting and Stacking) and a meta-learner (Decision Stump). The proposed model outperformed the existing ones on two different databases: Breast Cancer Wisconsin Original Data Set and Breast Cancer Wisconsin Diagnostic Data Set, with accuracies of 99.57% and 99.64%, respectively.