Towards a Sustainable Management of Mine Wastes: Reprocessing, Reuse, Revalorization and Repository

The need for efficient and sustainable management methods of mine waste is continuously growing all around the world. These waste products often present serious management problems due to their more or less significant amounts and possible environmental threats. This Special Issue highlights the recent and new trends in sustainable mine waste management techniques. Currently, it is essential to sustainably manage mine waste, considering social, economic, environmental and technical aspects. In this Special Issue, insights related to the following issues are highlighted: the problems around mine waste, the fine characterization of mine waste, the latest available technical and environmental solutions to efficiently manage mine waste, including treatment and processing before disposal and high value element recovery, with the view of moving towards defining effective, low-cost and ecofriendly methods, the recycling of mine waste products as alternative resources in different sectors, and finally laboratory, pilot and/or industrial-scale studies related to these topics of research. Scientists and industry and governance stakeholders have to face these new challenges to find the best management practices for the future

Constructing and Norming Arabic Screening Tool of Auditory Processing Disorders: Evaluation in a Group of Children at Risk for Learning Disability

The purposes of this study were to develop and provide the normative data of Arabic screening tool for screening the children with auditory processing disorders: an Arabic version of Adaptive Auditory Speech Test (AAST) in quiet for screening the peripheral hearing in dB SPL units; an Arabic AAST in binaural noise for screening the temporal interaction deficit: listening speech in binaural noise in dB SNR units, then teetaatoo test with a five subtests for screening the Modern Standard Arabic language phonemes identification ability. Participants included 338 children aged from 5 to 7 years old (138 males, 200 females; mean age = 6.08 years with standard deviation = 0.8) from a regular nursery school which called Baroot Summer Club in Beni-Suef in Egypt were recruited to participate in the study. According to the calculated Norms of AAST in quiet and through a meeting with the teachers of children in the nursery school, 129 children were sift out with no hearing loss, negative histories of neurological disorders, head trauma or surgery, dizziness, and attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. 129 children were screened for listening in binaural noise using the Arabic AAST in binaural noise, then the left 94 children, because 35 children couldn`t complete the testing, was screened for phonemes identification ability using teetaatoo test(the five sub tests). For the AAST in quiet, 21 to 33 dB SPL is the normal range of the hearing peripheral loss, especially, for the AAST in binaural noise, there are three different norms; -9 to -13 dB SNR is the normal range of children aged 5 years old, -10 to -13 dB SNR is the normal range of children aged 6 years old, and -10 to -14 dB SNR is the normal range of children aged 7 years old. Finally, for the five subtests (teetaatoo): > 85% (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Cons-A, >62& (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Cons-B1, >76% is the normal percentage of the Cons-B2, >63% (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Cons-B3, and 84% (correct answers) is the normal percentage of the Vow-A. Further, according to the previous norms, 23 children represent 17,8% from the whole sample (N=129) with a normal speech recognition threshold have scored abnormally on the speech listening in bin-noise (AAST in bin-noise) or on at least one subtest from teetaatoo subtests and were considered at risk for learning disability because of their scores on a SIFTER

Implementation Attacks on Post-Quantum Cryptographic Schemes

Post-quantum cryptographic schemes have been developed in the last decade in response to the rise of quantum computers. Fortunately, several schemes have been developed with quantum resistance. However, there is very little effort in evaluating and comparing these schemes in the embedded settings. Low cost embedded devices represents a highly-constraint environment that challenges all post-quantum cryptographic schemes. Moreover, there are even fewer efforts in evaluating the security of these schemes against implementation attacks including side-channel and fault attacks. It is commonly accepted that, any embedded cryptographic module that is built without a sound countermeasure, can be easily broken. Therefore, we investigate the question: Are we ready to implement post-quantum cryptographic schemes on embedded systems? We present an exhaustive survey of research efforts in designing embedded modules of post-quantum cryptographic schemes and the efforts in securing these modules against implementation attacks. Unfortunately, the study shows that: we are not ready yet to implement any post-quantum cryptographic scheme in practical embedded systems. There is still a considerable amount of research that needs to be conducted before reaching a satisfactory level of security

Editorial for Special Issue “Towards a Sustainable Management of Mine Wastes: Reprocessing, Reuse, Revalorization, and Repository”

The mining industry continues to face many challenges due to its potential environmental impacts [...

Pattern of Anorectal malformations in Gzira National Center for Pediatric Surgery (GNCPS)

Background: Anorectal malformations (ARM) are one of the common clinically and socially demanding problems in the world especially in the poorly resourced countries. Patients and Methods: It is a cross-sectional descriptive hospital based study, in the period from June 2009 to December 2011 of 80 patients of ARM in Gezira National Center for Pediatric Surgery (GNCPS). History and examination in addition to invertogram and distal loopogram were the tools of assessment. Results: Eighty children with ARM were studied, 64 males and 16 females. Sixty six patients have delayed presentation. More than 61% presented from rural areas. Twenty-one (26%) patients had one or more associated congenital anomalies, with cardiac and limb anomalies being the most common associated malformation. High anomaly was found in 48.75% of patients, intermediate type was found in 5%, while 43.75% of patients had low anomaly. Conclusion: Delayed presentation entails suboptimal training of midwives and resident doctors in obstetric hospitals and nurseries to evaluate congenital defects in the newborn