Key drivers of renewable energy deployment in the MENA Region: Empirical evidence using panel quantile regression

With the growing pressure from the adverse impact of environmental pollution and climate change, the deployment of renewable sources is becoming one of the economic priorities for governments worldwide. Despite potential gains of renewable sources, little evidence is provided in the literature about the determinants of renewable energy deployment in the MENA region. In particular, whether political stability, governance quality and financial development matter or not for unleashing the potentials of renewable energy programs. To this end, this paper aims to fill the gap by examining the impact of political stability, quality of governance and institutions, and financial development on the deployment of renewable energy production in 9 selected MENA countries using annual data over the period 1984-2014. Accordingly, an innovative panel quantile regression model with non-additive fixed effect has been developed to tackle this issue. Our findings confirm that the effect of political stability is clearly heterogeneous and supports earlier claims about the importance of political stability to foster investments in the renewable energy sector. Findings also show that financial development has a positive impact on renewable energy production. In addition, we also find that the interaction term between governance effectiveness and financial development is negative for the lower quantiles but positive for the highest quantiles. These findings support our hypotheses and suggest that political stability, governance effectiveness, and financial development are essential drivers for promoting renewable energy production in the MENA region

A structural approach for library references recognition

This paper presents a library references recognition system for retrospective conversion of catalogues . The system is guided by a structure model of a reference class, described by an attribute grammar. The analysis method is based on prediction and verification of segmentation hypotheses proposed by the model . The result, given in UNIMARC format, contains the different sub-fields of the reference with their confidence score . This method is enough general to be adapted on any document having a micro-structure. This method has been also used on other kind of documents such as author index and subjects .Cet article présente un système de reconnaissance de la structure logique de notices bibliographiques en vue de la conversion rétrospective de catalogues de bibliothèques. Le système est guidé par un modèle de structures de la classe des notices, construit sur la base de spécifications détaillées par la bibliothèque. Le modèle fait intervenir aussi bien des connaissances sur la macro-structure des notices que sur la micro-structure de leur contenu. La reconnaissance de la structure d'une notice consiste à retrouver, à partir d'un flux OCR (Optical Character Recognition), sa structure logique spécifique, conformément aux descriptions du modèle. Le résultat est un flux structuré hiérarchiquement, présentant dans le format UNIMARC, les différents champs de la notice, accompagnés de leur score de confiance. Ce travail a été réalisé dans le cadre du projet européen LIB-MORE associant la société JOUVE et la Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique

Use of many classifiers for multifont text recognition

We present in this paper a character recognition system using many classifiers . Each classifier gives an answer and the final result is selected by majority-vote . The system uses six classifiers built around first and second order hidden Markov models (HMM) as well as nearest neighbor considerations . The majority-vote is chosen so as to give becter results than each of the other systems applied individually. The recognition process is followed by a post-processing which employs combinations ofstochastic and dictionary verification methods forword recognition and error-correction .Nous présentons dans cet article un système de reconnaissance de caractères multifontes utilisant plusieurs classifieurs. Chaque classifieur fournit une réponse puis le résultat final est obtenu par vote majoritaire. Les classifieurs sont de deux types: stochastique et plus proche voisin. Les classifieurs stochastiques sont des modèles de Markov cachés du premier et du second ordre. La reconnaissance des caractères est suivie d'un module de vérification lexicale qui utilise un modèle de Markov caché pour les mots dont les paramètres sont déterminés à partir de statistiques sur la langue et d'un dictionnair

On the Use of Attention Mechanism in a Seq2Seq based Approach for Off-line Handwritten Digit String Recognition

International audienceIn this work, we investigate the use of the attention mechanism in deep learning for a better reading of handwritten digit strings in digitized images. The proposed recognition system built upon a CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) and two RNNs (Recurrent Neural Networks), acting as Encoder and Decoder and using the attention mechanism. We used a 1D mechanism for attention location with a "soft" alignment attention which has the peculiarity of having an easily calculable gradient and thus to integrate well with the network. Experimental results on data from ORAND-CAR A, ORAND-CAR B and CVL HDS databases compare favorably to other published methods

The intercontinental schizophrenia outpatient health outcomes (IC-SOHO) study: baseline clinical and functional characteristics and antipsychotic use patterns in the North Africa and Middle Eastern (AMEA) region: original article

Objective: To describe the baseline findings of the Intercontinental Schizophrenia Outpatient Health Outcomes (IC-SOHO) study in the North Africa and Middle Eastern sub-region (AMEA-SOHO) Method: The IC-SOHO study is an ongoing prospective, three-year, non-interventional observational study of schizophrenia treatment, clinical characteristics and mental health services utilization in two North African and two Middle Eastern countries. The study population consists of non-hospitalised patients who had initiated treatment with or changed to a new antipsychotic. Results: The baseline findings of the IC-SOHO study (AMEA Subset) appear to reflect clinical practice in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Algeria (N=1, 398). Overall, the patients were moderately to markedly ill and either overweight (46%) or obese (8%) when they entered the study. Functionally, the majority of patients were not involved in social activities, could not care for themselves and were unemployed. Substance and alcohol dependency/abuse was not a problem in this study population. At baseline the majority of patients were treated with typical antipsychotics (oral and depot); and anticholinergics were the most commonly prescribed concomitant medication. Sexual side effects were most frequently reported among the surveyed adverse events. Overall compliance/adherence to medication was good. Conclusion: The baseline IC-SOHO data highlighted various clinical and functional characteristics and antipsychotic use patterns in a group of outpatients with schizophrenia in a naturalistic setting. Once completed, the IC-SOHO study will add further to this knowledge base. SA Psychiatry Rev. Vol.7(3) 2004: 27-3

CONTRIBUTION AU DESIGN, STABILITÉ, PERFORMANCE ET OPTIMISATION D’UN UAV

Ce travail porte sur la simulation numérique, l’étude de performance, la stabilité et l’optimisation d’un modèle de drone (PIPER CUB J3).Dans ce but plusieurs logiciels de conception et de dessin assisté par ordinateur ont été utilisés : le modèle de l’UAV est conçu sous le logiciel « SolidWorks », les étapes de maillage et résolution des équations de Navier-Stokes décrivant l’écoulement sous « Ansys 16.0 », l’étude de stabilité et performance de vol par « Advanced Anlysis Aircraft 2.5 ».Pour des fins d’optimisation et d’amélioration en termes de finesse et d’endurance, trois types d’ailette ont été étudié

Sol-Gel Production of Semiconductor Metal Oxides for Gas Sensor Applications

As they are widely utilized in industries including the food packaging industry, indoor air quality testing, and real-time monitoring of man-made harmful gas emissions to successfully combat global warming, reliable and affordable gas sensors represent enormous market potential. For environmental monitoring, chemical safety regulation, and many industrial applications, the detection of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and methane (CH4) gases is essential. To reliably and quantitatively detect these gases, much-improved materials and methods that are adaptable to various environmental factors are needed using low-cost fabrication techniques such as sol–gel. The advantages of employing metal oxide nanomaterials-based chemoresistive for creating high-performance gas sensors are shown by key metrics such as selectivity, sensitivity, reaction time, and detection. The primary sensing methods are also grouped and thoroughly covered. In light of the current constraints, anticipated future developments in the field of sol–gel nanomaterial-based chemoresistive gas sensors are also highlighted

Graphene oxide-induced CuO reduction in TiO2/CaTiO3/Cu2O/Cu composites for photocatalytic degradation of drugs via peroxymonosulfate activation

Contamination of water bodies is a global environmental and human health issue. Conventional water treatment systems cannot efficiently eliminate organic contaminants, particularly drugs. Photocatalysis is a promising, environmentally friendly oxidation process for the removal of such compounds. A key point is the choice of material to be used as photocatalyst. Here, TiO2/CaTiO3/Cu2O/Cu composites were fabricated by adding different amounts (x) of graphene oxide (GO) (x wt% = 1, 3, and 5 %) to CaCu3Ti4O12 powder using the solid-state synthesis method. The produced pellets were sintered under inert nitrogen atmosphere at 1100 °C for 3 h. X-ray diffraction analysis showed that the Cu metal amount was increased upon GO addition, and the UV–Vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy showed that the spectral response was extended to the visible range. Then, high performance liquid chromatography assessment of paracetamol degradation by a photocatalytic cell using TiO2/CaTiO3/Cu2O/Cu composites with different GO amounts showed that the removal efficiency was increased upon introduction of 0.5 mM peroxymonosulfate (PMS) as active component to generate radical dotSO4‾ radicals. After 3 h under visible light, 96 % of 10 ppm paracetamol was degraded by the composite with 3 % of GO (1 cm2 surface photocatalyst) compared with 50 % by the composite without GO in the same experimental conditions (PMS in 210 mL of aqueous solution). Free radical trapping and the acute toxicity of potential degradation by-products were also investigated. Our results indicate that TiO2/CaTiO3/Cu2O/Cu with 3 % GO displays long-term stability and durability for the photocatalytic removal of pharmaceutical pollutants from wastewater

Optimising biogas production from anaerobic co-digestion of chicken manure and organic fraction of municipal solid waste

Abstract: In this study, it was observed that in experimental work under laboratory scale using conventional biochemical methane potential (BMP) assay, the loading rate ratio 4:1 had optimum biodegradability rate than other ratios which were investigated, while the loading rate ratio of 1:1 had optimum biogas and methane yield after 15 days hydraulic retention time. It was concluded that chicken waste (CM) monodigestion has higher biodegradability rate compare to organic fraction municipality solid waste (OFMSW) mono-digestion. Co-digestion of OFMSW and CM stabilizes conditions in digestion process such as carbon to nitrogen (C:N) ratio in the substrate mixtures as well as macro and micronutrients, pH, inhibitors or toxic compounds, dry matter and thus increasing biogas production. It was concluded that the organic waste generated in the municipal landfills could be co-digested with CM to produce methane which can be used as a source of environmentally friendly and clean energy for the transport sector, industries and residential homes