Heinrich Schliemann a Tunisi e Cartagine. I diari

In 1864 Heinrich Schliemann, the future discoverer of Troy, spent six days in Tunis. He referres about this trip in his diaries, written partly in Italian and partly in Arabic, translated and published here for the first time. He had the opportunity to speak with the Prime Minister Khaznadar and to see in the Bardo Palace the sovereign Sadok Bey in his function as judge of peace. He also went to Carthage, visiting the Byrsa hill, the port, the coastal district of Magon, the amphitheater and the cisterns of la M’alga and Dar Saniat, finally he was able to buy cheaply a stone inscription from some excavators.Nel 1864 Heinrich Schliemann, il futuro scopritore di Troia, trascorse sei giorni a Tunisi. Ne riferisce nei suoi diari, scritti in parte in italiano ed in parte in arabo, qui tradotti per la prima volta. Ebbe così occasione di parlare con il primo ministro Khaznadar e di vedere nel palazzo del Bardo il sovrano Sadok Bey nelle sue funzioni di giudice di pace. Ci rende così testimonianza delle gravi turbolenze che stavano agitando il paese. Andò anche a Cartagine, visitando la collina della Byrsa, il porto, il quartiere litoraneo di Magon, l’anfiteatro e le cisterne de la M’alga e di Dar Saniat, comprando a poco prezzo da alcuni scavatori un’iscrizione su pietra

Taxonomic diversity of benthic macroinvertebrates along the Oum Er Rbia River (Morocco): implications for water quality bio-monitoring using indicator species

The macroinvertebrates of the Oum Er Rbia River were studied from samples collected seasonally from September 2015 to September 2016 at 10 sampling sites. The macroinvertebrates found during the sampling period were distributed into twelve orders. The most abundant order was diptera, having 9618 individuals, followed by the order Ephemeroptera with 2985 individuals. Coleoptera, odonates and crustaceans represent only a small fraction of the total fauna. Hydropsyche, Chironomidae sp. and Simuliidae are numerically more inventoried. The composition and distribution of the species were directly or indirectly affected by the physicochemical variables and the quality of the habitat. Correspondence analysis results showed that habitat quality and quality of water represented species distribution patterns and species can be used as indicators to assess the quality of the Oum Er Rbia River system. Habitat management along the Oum Er Rbia river should be aimed at preserving native species, especially during the summer, when the biotope requirements are optimal. The results obtained in this study showed an alarming situation of the water quality of the Oum Er Rbia River and particularly in downstream segment. To solve this problem, we recommend the development of the wastewater discharge of Khenifra and Kasba Tadla and the purification of wastewater before it is discharged into the river

Implementation Aspects of a Transmitted-Reference UWB Receiver

In this paper, we discuss the design issues of an ultra wide band (UWB) receiver targeting a single-chip CMOS implementation for low data-rate applications like ad hoc wireless sensor networks. A non-coherent transmitted reference (TR) receiver is chosen because of its small complexity compared to other architectures. After a brief recapitulation of the UWB fundamentals and a short discussion on the major differences between coherent and non-coherent receivers, we discuss issues, challenges and possible design solutions. Several simulation results obtained by means of a behavioral model are presented, together with an analysis of the trade-off between performance and complexity in an integrated circuit implementation

L’encéphalomyélite aiguë disséminée chez l’enfant

L'encéphalomyélite aiguë disséminée (ADEM) est une maladie inflammatoire, démyélinisante, multifocale intéressant principalement la substance blanche du système nerveux central. Elle est rare mais non exceptionnelle chez l'enfant. Les auteurs rapportent une étude colligeant 9 cas d'ADEM pris en charge au service de Pédiatrie du CHU Hassan II à Fès, sur une période de 4 ans. Il s'agit de cinq garçons et quatre filles ; âgés entre 2 ans et 13 ans. Les antécédents (ATCD) d'infection virale sont notés chez quatre patients. La fièvre est constante. Les convulsions sont présentes dans cinq cas et les troubles de conscience dans cinq cas. L'examen neurologique était anormal. L'étude de liquide céphalo-rachidien a révélé une réaction méningée. On ne notait pas de syndrome inflammatoire biologique. L'imagerie par résonance magnétique (IRM) cérébrale a objectivé des lésions en hyper-signal en T2 et T2 FLAIR chez tous les patients. Pour le traitement, des bolus de corticoïdes intraveineux ont été administrés, relayés par une corticothérapie orale et associés à une kinésithérapie motrice et un traitement antiépileptique pour certains patients. L'évolution de nos malades était favorable globalement et on a déploré le décès d'une patiente. L'ADEM est une affection rare du système nerveux central. Les critères diagnostiques sont fondés sur des éléments cliniques et des données d'imagerie. La prise en charge doit être précoce et multidisciplinaire

Genozip - a universal extensible genomic data compressor

We present Genozip, a universal and fully featured compression software for genomic data. Genozip is designed to be a general-purpose software and a development framework for genomic compression by providing five core capabilities - universality (support for all common genomic file formats), high compression ratios, speed, feature-richness, and extensibility. Genozip delivers high-performance compression for widely-used genomic data formats in genomics research, namely FASTQ, SAM/BAM/CRAM, VCF, GVF, FASTA, PHYLIP, and 23andMe formats. Our test results show that Genozip is fast and achieves greatly improved compression ratios, even when the files are already compressed. Further, Genozip is architected with a separation of the Genozip Framework from file-format-specific Segmenters and data-type-specific Codecs. With this, we intend for Genozip to be a general-purpose compression platform where researchers can implement compression for additional file formats, as well as new codecs for data types or fields within files, in the future. We anticipate that this will ultimately increase the visibility and adoption of these algorithms by the user community, thereby accelerating further innovation in this space. Availability: Genozip is written in C. The code is open-source and available on GitHub (https://github.com/divonlan/genozip). The package is free for non-commercial use. It is distributed as a Docker container on DockerHub and through the conda package manager. Genozip is tested on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.Divon Lan, Ray Tobler, Yassine Souilmi, Bastien Llama

Scalable and cost-effective NGS genotyping in the cloud

Background: While next-generation sequencing (NGS) costs have plummeted in recent years, cost and complexity of computation remain substantial barriers to the use of NGS in routine clinical care. The clinical potential of NGS will not be realized until robust and routine whole genome sequencing data can be accurately rendered to medically actionable reports within a time window of hours and at scales of economy in the 10’s of dollars. Results: We take a step towards addressing this challenge, by using COSMOS, a cloud-enabled workflow management system, to develop GenomeKey, an NGS whole genome analysis workflow. COSMOS implements complex workflows making optimal use of high-performance compute clusters. Here we show that the Amazon Web Service (AWS) implementation of GenomeKey via COSMOS provides a fast, scalable, and cost-effective analysis of both public benchmarking and large-scale heterogeneous clinical NGS datasets. Conclusions: Our systematic benchmarking reveals important new insights and considerations to produce clinical turn-around of whole genome analysis optimization and workflow management including strategic batching of individual genomes and efficient cluster resource configuration.Yassine Souilmi, Alex K. Lancaster, Jae-Yoon Jung, Ettore Rizzo, Jared B. Hawkins, Ryan Powles, Saaïd Amzazi, Hassan Ghazal, Peter J. Tonellato and Dennis P. Wal

La maladie de Wilson chez l’enfant: à propos de 20 cas

La maladie de Wilson ou dégénérescence hépato-lenticulaire est une affection génétique autosomique récessive caractérisée par une accumulation toxique de cuivre dans l'organisme, essentiellement dans le foie, le système nerveux central et la cornée. L'objectif de ce travail était de soulever les difficultés diagnostiques et thérapeutiques dans la prise en charge de la maladie de Wilson dans notre contexte. Nous avons réalisé une étude rétrospective portant sur 20 cas de maladie de Wilson colligés au sein du service de pédiatrie du CHU HASSAN II de Fès sur une période de 7 ans et demi. Il s'agit de 13 garçons et 7 filles dont l'âge moyen est de 9 ans avec des extrêmes allant de 5 à 13 ans. La consanguinité est retrouvée chez 13 malades. Sur le plan clinique, l'ictère est noté dans 13 cas, un syndrome oedémateux est retrouvé dans 13 cas aussi et un syndrome hémorragique dans 6 cas. Les signes neurologiques sont présents dans 7cas. Trois enfants étaient asymptomatiques diagnostiqués à l'occasion d'un dépistage. Sur le plan biologique les signes d'insuffisance hépatocellulaire sont retrouvés chez 17 malades avec une cytolyse dans 8 cas. Une anémie hémolytique est retrouvée chez 8 malades (soit 40%). La céruléoplasminémie est abaissée chez 17 malades, la cuprurie réalisée chez 19 malades s'est révélée augmentée chez 17 soit 89,4%. L'anneau de Kayser- Fleischer est retrouvé chez 14 patients. L'échographie abdominale a montré des signes d'hypertension portale (HTP) sur foie de cirrhose chez 16 malades soit 80%. La D pénicillamine est instaurée chez 17 patients et trois sont mis sous sulfate de zinc. Trois malades ont bénéficié de la vitamine B6. L'évolution est favorable chez 11 malades avec un recul moyen de 3 ans. Nous déplorons 4 décès chez des malades ayant consulté au stade de cirrhose décompensé. Le pronostic de la maladie de Wilson dépend de la précocité du traitement. Le dépistage chez les membres de la famille est une démarche importante et obligatoire pour un diagnostic précoce.Pan African Medical Journal 2013; 14:

COSMOS: Python library for massively parallel workflows

Summary: Efficient workflows to shepherd clinically generated genomic data through the multiple stages of a next-generation sequencing pipeline are of critical importance in translational biomedical science. Here we present COSMOS, a Python library for workflow management that allows formal description of pipelines and partitioning of jobs. In addition, it includes a user interface for tracking the progress of jobs, abstraction of the queuing system and fine-grained control over the workflow. Workflows can be created on traditional computing clusters as well as cloud-based services. Availability and implementation: Source code is available for academic non-commercial research purposes. Links to code and documentation are provided at http://lpm.hms.harvard.edu and http://wall-lab.stanford.edu. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online

Admixture has obscured signals of historical hard sweeps in humans (advance online)

The role of natural selection in shaping biological diversity is an area of intense interest in modern biology. To date, studies of positive selection have primarily relied on genomic datasets from contemporary populations, which are susceptible to confounding factors associated with complex and often unknown aspects of population history. In particular, admixture between diverged populations can distort or hide prior selection events in modern genomes, though this process is not explicitly accounted for in most selection studies despite its apparent ubiquity in humans and other species. Through analyses of ancient and modern human genomes, we show that previously reported Holocene-era admixture has masked more than 50 historic hard sweeps in modern European genomes. Our results imply that this canonical mode of selection has probably b een underappreciated in the evolutionary history of humans and suggest that our current understanding of the tempo and mode of selection in natural populations may be inaccurat