Ramadan fasting influences on food intake consumption, sleep schedule, body weight and some plasma parameters in healthy fasting volunteers

This study examines the changes in the lifestyle that accompanied Ramadan fasting. For this purpose, we followed the questionnaire programming meals, food consumption and sleep rhythm. We also followed changes in plasma biological parameters. The results show that daily energy consumption was not changed and neither was the body weight. Nevertheless, a decrease in fat mass was detected. Concerning plasma, we found a decrease in blood glucose from the 7th day of fasting. This effect was found also at the 21st day, accompanied by a reduction in insulin levels. Our results on plasma lipids showed a decrease in triglycerides with total cholesterol level unchanged. Furthermore, we noted an increased HDL-C against a decreased LDL-C fraction. Taken together, these results suggest that fasting may induce beneficial effects in blood lipid concentrations.Keywords: Ramadan fasting, food intake consumption, sleep schedule, body weight, plasma parameters, healthy fasting volunteersAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(21), pp. 3327-333

Participatory Irrigation Management : comparing theory with practice a case study of the Beni Amir irrigation scheme in Morocco

International audienceParticipatory Irrigation Management (PIM) and Irrigation Management Transfer (IMT) are studied at three levels : the international literature, the policy and action taken in Morocco and field work in the Beni Amir large scale irrigation system. International literature argues that management will improve if users can take management decisions that are the outcome of local negotiations between stakeholders and based on local knowledge and normative frameworks. Since the 1980s, several governments have adopted these turnover programs, often as part of the requirements of a structural adjustment package negotiated with IMF and international development banks. This shows that in many countries the tight financial situation of governments has been important for introducing PIM/IMT. The management transfer from the State to Water Users Associations (WUAs) has been more successfully achieved in some places (Mexico, Colombia and Turkey), than in other places (India, Pakistan, Philippines). Literature provides explanations as success factors for PIM/IMT like relative strength of economy and central government, higher literacy and standard of living. These factors are largely valid for Morocco and thus raises the question about the Moroccan progress in the domain of PIM in large scale irrigation. PIM policy was introduced by the government in 1990 and specified in 1995 as a policy that should be progressively spread, selective depending on location, adapted to the physical and organizational environment, contractual with the water users as partner and finally provide financial advantages for the water users. Field research took place in the Beni Amir large-scale irrigation system in Morocco, situated 200 km south east of Casablanca, where PIM policy became an issue in 1990. In the context of disengagement of the Moroccan state, objectives of the regional government agency responsible for irrigation management in the area (named ORMVAT, Office régional de mise en valeur agricole du Tadla) are to evolve from a complete State management up to farm level, to a more participatory management.Recent field work in which a check list of management tasks performed by farmers was used, showed that, contrary to the policy objectives, WUAs in the Beni Amir system are weakly involved in decision making and hardly perform tasks in irrigation system management. We found that PIM implementation in Morocco does not comply with the theoretical models that have been developed in Mexico, Turkey, the Philippines or elsewhere. This proves the hypothesis that PIM is context-specific which requires that before attempting to implement major institutional reforms in the irrigation sector, it is necessary to understand the national as well as the local context, the opportunities it offers, and the constraints it places on successful institutional reform. Even though local conditions in Beni Amir somehow fit with some points of the theory related to PIM/IMT (i.e. water scarcity should stimulate irrigation reform, the relatively good performance of the infrastructure should permit that IMT programs take off relatively “quickly”, availability of cash money for farmers to pay water fees), PIM programs did not come off the ground in Beni Amir. Case specific reasons that could explain the hesitance of PIM/IMT implementation are i) the irrigated perimeter of Beni Amir, as it is managed nowadays by the ORMVAT, functions relatively well, ii) the society is characterised by relatively strong central rule, iii) rigid labour relations in the civil service and iv) farmers are hesitant to take over the irrigation management

Structure de verres de silicophosphate dopés europium : analyse par spectroscopie optique et simulation de dynamique moléculaire

National audienc

Europium site symmetry in sol gel silicophosphate glass : FLN spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamics simulation

International audienc

Time resolved and temperature dependence of the radiative properties of thiol-capped CdS nanoparticles films

In this work, we present the temperature-dependence and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) of CdS nanoparticles capped independently with three different ligands thiophenol, thioglycerol, and l-cysteine over a broad temperature range from 10 to 300 K. The respective nanoparticles sizes in the three systems studied in this work are 1.5, 4, and 2 nm as determined from X-ray diffraction (XRD). From the analysis of AFM images, it was found that the lateral particle sizes of capped CdS nanoparticles are greater than those deduced from XRD or optical absorption measurements. The aim of this study is the investigation of the impact of the organic ligands on the radiative recombination dynamics in organically capped CdS nanoparticles. From the PL study and based on the temperature-dependence and time-resolved emission spectroscopy, we conclude that the emission of CdS QDs film originates from recombination of the delocalized carriers in the internal core states with a small contribution of the localized carriers at the interface. The PL decay reveals a biexponential behavior for the entire three samples at all temperatures. One of the two exponential components decays rapidly with a time τ(1) in the range 0.5–0.8 ns, whereas the other decays much more slowly, with a time τ(2) in the range 1–3 ns. The weak activation energy (32–37 meV) deduced from the temperature dependence of the PL intensity suggests the involvement of shallow traps. The analysis of the experimental results reveals a relatively narrow size distribution, an efficient surface passivation, and a satisfactory thermal stability of CdS nanocrystals

Breast cancer image classification using pattern-based Hyper Conceptual Sampling method

The increase in biomedical data has given rise to the need for developing data sampling techniques. With the emergence of big data and the rise of popularity of data science, sampling or reduction techniques have been assistive to significantly hasten the data analytics process. Intuitively, without sampling techniques, it would be difficult to efficiently extract useful patterns from a large dataset. However, by using sampling techniques, data analysis can effectively be performed on huge datasets, to produce a relatively small portion of data, which extracts the most representative objects from the original dataset. However, to reach effective conclusions and predictions, the samples should preserve the data behavior. In this paper, we propose a unique data sampling technique which exploits the notion of formal concept analysis. Machine learning experiments are performed on the resulting sample to evaluate quality, and the performance of our method is compared with another sampling technique proposed in the literature. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and competitiveness of the proposed approach in terms of sample size and quality, as determined by accuracy and the F1-measure. 2018This contribution was made possible by NPRP-07-794-1-145 grant from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors.Scopu

Optical and structural properties of Eu3+ doped silicophosphate glasses

National audienc

Effect of CdS nanocrystals on the photoluminescence of Eu3+-doped silicophosphate sol gel glass

In this work, we investigate the effect of co-doping with CdS nanoparticles on the photoluminescence properties of Eu3+ doped silicophosphate glass prepared via the sol gel method. Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) revealed the insertion of phosphorus within the silicate network. XRD and TEM analyses revealed the presence of CdS nanoparticles dispersed in the glass matrix. Based on the optical study and the effective mass theory for spherical quantum dots, it was found that CdS nanocrystals have a gap of nearly 3.53 eV and a size of 2.42 nm. The enhancement of Eu3+ emission induced by CdS nanocrystals and thermal annealing was assigned to either an energy transfer via defect states or structural alteration of the glass network around the rare earth ions

Possibilistic classifiers for numerical data

International audienceNaive Bayesian Classifiers, which rely on independence hypotheses, together with a normality assumption to estimate densities for numerical data, are known for their simplicity and their effectiveness. However, estimating densities, even under the normality assumption, may be problematic in case of poor data. In such a situation, possibility distributions may provide a more faithful representation of these data. Naive Possibilistic Classifiers (NPC), based on possibility theory, have been recently proposed as a counterpart of Bayesian classifiers to deal with classification tasks. There are only few works that treat possibilistic classification and most of existing NPC deal only with categorical attributes. This work focuses on the estimation of possibility distributions for continuous data. In this paper we investigate two kinds of possibilistic classifiers. The first one is derived from classical or flexible Bayesian classifiers by applying a probability–possibility transformation to Gaussian distributions, which introduces some further tolerance in the description of classes. The second one is based on a direct interpretation of data in possibilistic formats that exploit an idea of proximity between data values in different ways, which provides a less constrained representation of them. We show that possibilistic classifiers have a better capability to detect new instances for which the classification is ambiguous than Bayesian classifiers, where probabilities may be poorly estimated and illusorily precise. Moreover, we propose, in this case, an hybrid possibilistic classification approach based on a nearest-neighbour heuristics to improve the accuracy of the proposed possibilistic classifiers when the available information is insufficient to choose between classes. Possibilistic classifiers are compared with classical or flexible Bayesian classifiers on a collection of benchmarks databases. The experiments reported show the interest of possibilistic classifiers. In particular, flexible possibilistic classifiers perform well for data agreeing with the normality assumption, while proximity-based possibilistic classifiers outperform others in the other cases. The hybrid possibilistic classification exhibits a good ability for improving accuracy

Investigation of the local environment of Eu3+ in a silicophosphate glass using site-selective spectroscopy and Molecular Dynamics simulations

Silicophosphate glasses (SiO2-P2O5) doped with Eu3+ ions were synthesized by the sol-gel process. Optical properties of these glasses were investigated by means of emission spectra and lifetime measurements. The Fluorescence Line Narrowing (FLN) technique was also used to explore the local structure around the Eu3+ ions in this host and to understand the role of phosphate as a codopant. As it is the case for aluminum, the ability of phosphate to avoid the rare earth clustering was investigated, and the role of this codopant in modifying the local order around the rare earth ion was evidenced. The analysis of the FLN spectra and lifetime measurements is consistent with this interpretation. Molecular Dynamics simulations were performed to evaluate and confirm these structural features. Two classes of europium sites were distinguished in agreement with the experimental characterization