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Abstract In malaria-endemic countries, prioritizing intervention deployment to areas that need the most attention is crucial to ensure continued progress. Global and national policy makers increasingly rely on epidemiological data and mathematical modelling to help optimize health decisions at the sub-national level. The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program is a critical data source for understanding subnational malaria prevalence and intervention coverage, which are used for parameterizing country-specific models of malaria transmission. However, data to estimate indicators at finer resolutions are limited, and surveys questions have a narrow scope. Examples from the Nigeria DHS are used to highlight gaps in the current survey design. Proposals are then made for additional questions and expansions to the DHS and Malaria Indicator Survey sampling strategy that would advance the data analyses and modelled estimates that inform national policy recommendations. Collaboration between the DHS Program, national malaria control programmes, the malaria modelling community, and funders is needed to address the highlighted data challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of credit, liquidity and operational risks in six Indonesian’s islamic banking financing products namely mudharabah, musyarakah, murabahah, istishna, ijarah and qardh, in order to try to discover whether or not Indonesian islamic banking is based on the “risk-sharing” system. This paper relies on a fixed effect model test based on the panel data analysis method, focusing on the period from 2007 to 2013. The research is an exploratory and descriptive study of all the Indonesian islamic banks that were operating in 2013. The results of this study show that the Islamic banking system in Indonesia truly has banking products based on “risk-sharing.” We found out that credit, operational and liquidity risks as a whole, have significant influence on mudarabah, musyarakah, murabahah, istishna, ijarah and qardh based financing. There is a correlation between the credit risk and mudarabah based financing, and no causal relationship between the credit risk and musharaka, murabahah, ijarah, istishna and qardh based financing. There is also correlation between the operational risk and mudarabah and murabahah based financing, and no causal relationship between the operational risk and musharaka, istishna, ijarah and qardh based financing. There is correlation between the liquidity risk and istishna based financing, and no causal relationship between the liquidity risk and musharaka, mudarabah, murabahah, ijarah and qardh based financing. A major implication of this study is the fact that there is no causal relationship between the credit risk and musharakah based financing, which is the mode of financing where the islamic bank shares the risk with its clients, but there is an influence of credit risk toward mudarabah mode financing, a financing mode where the Islamic bank bears all the risk. These findings can lead us to conclude that the Indonesian Islamic banking sector is based on the “risk sharing” system.

Global industry is undergoing major transformations with the genesis of a new paradigm known as the Internet of Things (IoT) with its underlying technologies. Many company leaders are investing more effort and money in transforming their services to capitalize on the benefits provided by the IoT. Thereby, the decision makers in public waste management do not want to be outdone, and it is challenging to provide an efficient and real-time waste management system. This paper proposes a solution (hardware, software, and communications) that aims to optimize waste management and include a citizen in the process. The system follows an IoT-based approach where the discarded waste from the smart bin is continuously monitored by sensors that inform the filling level of each compartment, in real-time. These data are stored and processed in an IoT middleware providing information for collection with optimized routes and generating important statistical data for monitoring the waste collection accurately in terms of resource management and the provided services for the community. Citizens can easily access information about the public waste bins through the Web or a mobile application. The creation of the real prototype of the smart container, the development of the waste management application and a real-scale experiment use case for evaluation, demonstration, and validation show that the proposed system can efficiently change the way people deal with their garbage and optimize economic and material resources.

Nunavik Inuit (northern Quebec, Canada) reside along the arctic coastline where for generations their daily energy intake has mainly been derived from animal fat. Given this particular diet it has been hypothesized that natural selection would lead to population specific allele frequency differences and unique variants in genes related to fatty acid metabolism. A group of genes, namely CPT1A, CPT1B, CPT1C, CPT2, CRAT and CROT, encode for three carnitine acyltransferases that are important for the oxidation of fatty acids, a critical step in their metabolism.Exome sequencing and SNP array genotyping were used to examine the genetic variations in the six genes encoding for the carnitine acyltransferases in 113 Nunavik Inuit individuals.Altogether ten missense variants were found in genes CPT1A, CPT1B, CPT1C, CPT2 and CRAT, including three novel variants and one Inuit specific variant CPT1A p.P479L (rs80356779). The latter has the highest frequency (0.955) compared to other Inuit populations. We found that by comparison to Asians or Europeans, the Nunavik Inuit have an increased mutation burden in CPT1A, CPT2 and CRAT; there is also a high level of population differentiation based on carnitine acyltransferase gene variations between Nunavik Inuit and Asians.The increased number and frequency of deleterious variants in these fatty acid metabolism genes in Nunavik Inuit may be the result of genetic adaptation to their diet and/or the extremely cold climate. In addition, the identification of these variants may help to understand some of the specific health risks of Nunavik Inuit.

Genetics is believed to have an important role in intellectual disability (ID). Recent studies have emphasized the involvement of de novo mutations (DNMs) in ID but the extent to which they contribute to its pathogenesis and the identity of the corresponding genes remain largely unknown. Here, we report a screen for DNMs in subjects with moderate or severe ID. We sequenced the exomes of 41 probands and their parents, and confirmed 81 DNMs affecting the coding sequence or consensus splice sites (1.98 DNMs/proband). We observed a significant excess of de novo single nucleotide substitutions and loss-of-function mutations in these cases compared to control subjects, suggesting that at least a subset of these variations are pathogenic. A total of 12 likely pathogenic DNMs were identified in genes previously associated with ID (ARID1B, CHD2, FOXG1, GABRB3, GATAD2B, GRIN2B, MBD5, MED13L, SETBP1, TBR1, TCF4, WDR45), resulting in a diagnostic yield of ∼29%. We also identified 12 possibly pathogenic DNMs in genes (HNRNPU, WAC, RYR2, SET, EGR1, MYH10, EIF2C1, COL4A3BP, CHMP2A, PPP1CB, VPS4A, PPP2R2B) that have not previously been causally linked to ID. Interestingly, no case was explained by inherited mutations. Protein network analysis indicated that the products of many of these known and candidate genes interact with each other or with products of other ID-associated genes further supporting their involvement in ID. We conclude that DNMs represent a major cause of moderate or severe ID.

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Introduction. Tamarindus indicaest une espèce fruitière d’intérêt économique. Sa domestication au Sahel impose d’évaluer en préalable la variabilité de ses caractères phénotypiques sur l’ensemble de son aire de répartition. L’objectif de notre étude a été de caractériser différentes provenances de tamarinier à partir des caractères phénotypiques de leurs graines et plantules. Matériel et méthodes. L’étude menée en pépinière au Burkina Faso a porté sur l’étude des graines et germinations issues de neuf provenances dont deux d’Afrique de l’Est, deux d’Afrique de l’Ouest, deux d’Asie et trois de zones insulaires. Nous avons mesuré la longueur, la largeur, l’épaisseur et le poids de 100 graines de chaque provenance, et la hauteur, le diamètre au collet et le poids sec de la tige, ainsi que la longueur de la racine principale, le nombre de racines secondaires et le poids sec du système racinaire de 50 plantules âgées de 3 mois. Nous avons effectué une analyse de variance, puis une analyse en composantes principales sur les données centrées réduites de toutes les variables, enfin une classification hiérarchisée ascendante basée sur des indices de similarité. Résultats et discussion. Les différences entre variables ont été hautement significatives. Lors de l’étude des graines, nous avons obtenu un groupe lié à la provenance d’Inde et d’Afrique de l’Est, un autre lié aux provenances ouest-africaines et un groupe intermédiaire en provenance de Thaïlande. Lors de l’étude des plantules, il est apparu un groupe avec croissance aérienne forte et racine principale courte, fortement ramifiée et un groupe avec croissance aérienne faible, racine principale très longue, mais faiblement ramifiée. Le dendrogramme obtenu à partir des ressemblances phénotypiques (variables des graines et plantules) montre une structuration par aire géographique. Conclusion. La variabilité phénotypique inter provenance des plantules et des graines combinée aux corrélations entre variables pourrait permettre de sélectionner de façon précoce les provenances en fonction des objectifs définis pour la sélection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]