Urban Development of Bayn Al-Haramayn Zone Based on 25-Year Estimation of Al-Arbaeen Crowd Density

Karbala city is known to host one of the largest annual human gatherings in the world, where a diverse group of visitors congregates in the Karbala old city to participate in the Al-Arbaeen rites. This significant event peaked on Safar 19th, resulting in mobility issues, particularly in the Bayn Al-Haramayn zone. To address this concern, this study proposes a plan that estimates the number of visitors over the next 25 years and presents a solution for the vertical expansion of the zone while maintaining its urban fabric. The proposal includes estimating the areas required to accommodate the visitors based on an average crowd density of 3.5 individuals per square meter. The authors predict that the number of pilgrims will continue to increase over the next 25 years, and by 2046, an area of 148 square kilometers will be necessary to accommodate them. Expanding the Bayn Al-Haramayn zone is crucial as it is a vital destination for many visitors, and its spiritual significance adds value to the experience of performing the Ziyarat-Alarbaeen rituals. The proposed solution focuses on vertical expansion, providing a total area of 10, 116 m2 and can accommodate up to 35, 500 capita. Moreover, the proposed solution also integrates mobility paths that align with the urban scene of the area

Unexpected sequences and structures of mtDNA required for efficient transcription from the first heavy-strand promoter

Human mtDNA contains three promoters, suggesting a need for differential expression of the mitochondrial genome. Studies of mitochondrial transcription have used a reductionist approach, perhaps masking differential regulation. Here we evaluate transcription from light-strand (LSP) and heavy-strand (HSP1) promoters using templates that mimic their natural context. These studies reveal sequences upstream, hypervariable in the human population (HVR3), and downstream of the HSP1 transcription start site required for maximal yield. The carboxyterminal tail of TFAM is essential for activation of HSP1 but not LSP. Images of the template obtained by atomic force microscopy show that TFAM creates loops in a discrete region, the formation of which correlates with activation of HSP1; looping is lost in tail-deleted TFAM. Identification of HVR3 as a transcriptional regulatory element may contribute to between-individual variability in mitochondrial gene expression. The unique requirement of HSP1 for the TFAM tail may enable its regulation by post-translational modifications. © Uchida et al

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

On the chemistry of epitaxial Ti3SiC2 formation on 4H-SiC using Al-Ti annealing

International audienc

On the chemistry of epitaxial Ti3SiC2 formation on 4H-SiC using Al-Ti annealing

International audienc

Parametric investigation of the formation of epitaxial Ti3SiC2 on 4H-SiC from Al-Ti annealing

International audienceThe growth of Ti3SiC2 thin films was studied onto 4H-SiC (0 0 0 1) 8° and 4°-off substrates by thermal annealing of TixAl1−x (0.5 ≤ x ≤ 1) layers. The annealing time was fixed at 10 min under Argon atmosphere. The synthesis conditions were also investigated according to the annealing temperature (900–1200 °C) after deposition. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) show that the layer of Ti3SiC2 is epitaxially grown on the 4H-SiC substrate. In addition the interface looks sharp and smooth with evidence of interfacial ordering. Moreover, during the annealing procedure, the formation of unwanted aluminum oxide was detected by using X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS); this layer can be removed by using a specific annealing procedure

On the chemistry of epitaxial Ti3SiC2 formation on 4H-SiC using Al-Ti annealing

International audienc