Search

Egregious, unfair, unethical, and immoral are all adjectives that the public and shareholder activists use to describe separation payments, which are payments made to executives who leave firms for various reasons. Such complaints often cite corporate governance issues as well, noting the potentially problematic relationships between executives’ and board members’ compensation levels. However, some studies of separation pay agreements suggest a lack of any significant relationship between the quality of corporate governance and separation payments. Using a unique, hand-collected data set pertaining to actual payouts received by the top executives who left their posts between 2002 and 2013 in Italy, this study reveals instead that better quality corporate governance, in both internal and external dimensions, helps regulate the level of separation payments. In turn, it can offset stakeholders’ perceptions of unfairness and the resulting negative consequences for the firm; such governance also can help minimize the prevalence of pay-for-failure cases.

BACKGROUND Despite the availability of effective treatment, the control of hypertension remains insufficient. Telemonitoring in the management of hypertension would be an effective way to improve blood pressure control. OBJECTIVE The aim of our study will be to evaluate the effects of telemonitoring with antihypertensive treatment titration on blood pressure control in Tunisian patients with hypertension. METHODS Our trial will be a prospective, rater-blinded randomized controlled trial carried out with primary care physicians in the Sahel region of Tunisia. Patients will be eligible for enrollment if they are aged over 35 years, are newly diagnosed with hypertension, or are known to be poorly controlled on antihypertensive therapy. Participants will be randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to the telemonitoring arm or usual care arm. The telemonitoring arm will involve a weekly telephone call for the collection of the home blood pressure measurements, therapeutic education, and treatment compliance assessment as well as a monthly call for treatment titration and a side effect check. Randomization will be done via the use of an interactive web responsive system, and patients will be stratified by investigation center. Neither participants nor investigators will be masked to the group assignments. The primary outcome will be the change in mean 24-hour systolic blood pressure from baseline to the 6-month follow-up in the 2 groups. All randomized patients who attend the follow-up visit at 6 months and have no missing data for the primary outcome will be included in the analysis. RESULTS Recruitment to the trial started in July 2020. The study was initiated with 17 primary care physicians. We expect the inclusion period to last for approximately 6 months. We expect to complete data collection by the end of 2021 and plan to disseminate the results subsequently. CONCLUSIONS The HOROSCOPE (Home Telemonitoring of Arterial Hypertension With Antihypertensive Treatment Titration: Randomized Controlled Prospective Trial) study will provide important new evidence that could shed some light on the feasibility and impact of telemonitoring and self-monitoring in a Tunisian population of patients with hypertension who consult primary care physicians. CLINICALTRIAL ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04607239; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04607239 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT DERR1-10.2196/26184

Background Despite the availability of effective treatment, the control of hypertension remains insufficient. Telemonitoring in the management of hypertension would be an effective way to improve blood pressure control. Objective The aim of our study will be to evaluate the effects of telemonitoring with antihypertensive treatment titration on blood pressure control in Tunisian patients with hypertension. Methods Our trial will be a prospective, rater-blinded randomized controlled trial carried out with primary care physicians in the Sahel region of Tunisia. Patients will be eligible for enrollment if they are aged over 35 years, are newly diagnosed with hypertension, or are known to be poorly controlled on antihypertensive therapy. Participants will be randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to the telemonitoring arm or usual care arm. The telemonitoring arm will involve a weekly telephone call for the collection of the home blood pressure measurements, therapeutic education, and treatment compliance assessment as well as a monthly call for treatment titration and a side effect check. Randomization will be done via the use of an interactive web responsive system, and patients will be stratified by investigation center. Neither participants nor investigators will be masked to the group assignments. The primary outcome will be the change in mean 24-hour systolic blood pressure from baseline to the 6-month follow-up in the 2 groups. All randomized patients who attend the follow-up visit at 6 months and have no missing data for the primary outcome will be included in the analysis. Results Recruitment to the trial started in July 2020. The study was initiated with 17 primary care physicians. We expect the inclusion period to last for approximately 6 months. We expect to complete data collection by the end of 2021 and plan to disseminate the results subsequently. Conclusions The HOROSCOPE (Home Telemonitoring of Arterial Hypertension With Antihypertensive Treatment Titration: Randomized Controlled Prospective Trial) study will provide important new evidence that could shed some light on the feasibility and impact of telemonitoring and self-monitoring in a Tunisian population of patients with hypertension who consult primary care physicians. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04607239; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04607239 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) DERR1-10.2196/26184

Digital Advertising and promotional e-campaigns have been a basic pillar of marketing. One of the main challenges marketers face nowadays is about associating the right promotion to the right customer. Making the product-customer assignment accurate is crucial to satisfy customer needs. However, manually analyzing qualitative data for the purpose of defining the right target audience is exhausting and time consuming, especially when the number of costumers is high. In this paper, our aim is to automatically assign personalized campaigns that match specific customer desire, therefore making promotional campaigns consistent with their interests. Automating the process of assigning the right promotion to the right customer according to its specific needs is appealing as customers often show little to no interest in random ads. Our solution, referred to as "AdRobot", aims at overcoming these challenges by gathering complex data and insights into the target audience using data collected from conversations via the designed chatbot. Our strategy consists of performing fine-grained audience classification by segmenting profiles based on some profiling and conversational constraints, so that the audience is matched with the right promotional campaign. In order to achieve this goal, we propose an algorithm that investigates profiling and conversational data collected along with the customers' intents using artificial intelligence heuristics. Results show that "AdRobot" accurately matches promotional campaigns with the right customers according to their needs.

International audience

The traditional education in which the teacher introduces the concepts to be studied and students passively try to absorbthe knowledge has been questioned. At the same time, the collaborative and inductive students-centred approaches, suchas the Project-Based Learning (PBL), are gaining importance as students are increasingly concerned with obtaining competencies to deal with real-life situations, proposing solutions to problems and/or getting the most of theopportunities, by working in teams. In this context, a structured peer evaluation process is required to measure students competences and create a solid feedback flow. However, the teachers have difficulties to effectively detect the student’sstrengths and weaknesses, making it challenging for them to help their students to develop the required competences. Inthis paper, it is presented the development of a digital solution for a structured, methodological and continuous processof Peer Assessment for students. This tool, denominated Peer-Assessment for Holistic Student Development (PAHSD), willbe a module of the Platform for Unifying Methodologies of Active learning (PUMA), which is a platform for centralizationand automation of PBL processes for university courses. With the PAHSD module, historical data from peer evaluation areused to identify which student’s competences need to be improved and to measure which were already improved duringhis academic journey. The PAHSD indicates the specific training for personal improvement and allows students to comparethemselves and also for the professor to make a complete analysis on students results. The PAHSD will be tested on PBLengineering projects in Brazil and Tunisia and could be extended to any education institution that adopt the PBLmethodology in any area.

Project-Based Learning (PBL) has been widely used in education, helping students to develop technical knowledge within a critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and communication environment. Thus, PBL has the students as the main object, enabling them to decide on real-life focus situations, proposing, through teamwork, solutions to problems and/or getting the most of the opportunities. PBL promotes enjoyable learning, allowing the direct mandatory participation of students, teachers and the owners of the real-life situations under consideration, as well as the eventual participation of other relevant stakeholders. However, in most cases, the choice of teams is made manually by the teacher, through criteria that many times result in lack of coherence and equity between the project teams. This undesirably affects the overall group performance due to conflicts, communication gaps and lack of transparency. In this paper, a flexible module is proposed to digitize and automate team-building processes, based on students’ preferences and competences. This module, called Team Building through Student’s Preferences and Competences (TBSPC), may be applied to any type of PBL project and offers to students the possibility to contribute in the PBL team pre-creation phase, allowing their decision-making based within some settings previously established by teachers. This makes PBL teams coherent, complementary and congruent with the project. The effectiveness of the mechanisms for creating teams and their impact on the teams’ performance in PBL courses are a focus for the TBSPC module development in the context of the Brazil and Tunisia partnership. This module will be part of the Platform for Unifying Methodologies of Active learning (PUMA) which is a platform for centralization and automation of PBL processes for university courses.

International audience; Heterogeneous electro-Fenton mineralization of Acid Red 18 (AR18) in aqueous solution was studied with magnetite FeO (MNPs) and hematite FeO (HNPs) nanoparticles as catalysts. High mineralization yields of AR18 were obtained with magnetite, 81% TOC removal after 180 min of electrolysis in 40 mg.L FeO pH 3.0, at 50 mA of current intensity and in 50 mM NaSO. In order to explain the obtained mineralization yield achieved with MNPs, the quantification of hydrogen peroxide (HO), hydroxyl radical (•OH) and iron leaching were performed at 50 and 100 mA. From the high iron concentration found in the bulk solution and the slight impact of the catalyst mass concentration on TOC removal, the formation of hydroxyl radicals occurs mainly through homogeneous process. In the presence of hydroxyl radical scavenger, degradation remained total after 15 min showing the involvement of a direct electrochemical oxidation of the dye at the electrode surface. The hydroxyl radical oxidation is responsible for at least 50% of mineralization.

This panel aims to engage scholars in current debates about entrepreneurial teams – are they better? How can we better study them? What theoretical developments are needed to integrate the field? A...

This paper aims at identifying the main determinants of earnings, estimating the private returns to education and highlighting the main sources of heterogeneity in these returns in Tunisia. The estimation results show that education is an important determinant of private earnings. However, the private rate of return to schooling is relatively low by international standards, especially for basic education. It is argued that in addition to the limited capacity of the economy to create high-productivity jobs, institutional factors such as the low quality of education, rigid tracking system after secondary education, inadequacy of the available skills for the need of the private sector and nepotism may explain the low and heterogeneous returns to education in Tunisia. The returns to schooling are found to increase by level of education showing a systematic bias toward higher levels of education at the expense of basic education, due to credentialism and focus on certification. We find evidence of heterogeneity of returns to higher education across varying regions and socioeconomic backgrounds, which undermines the role of education as a social elevator. Regional disparities by place of residence, both in earnings and returns to higher education, may be explained by the lack of economic opportunities and low exposure to market forces in many inland regions, which is reminiscent of an unbalanced regional development. These disparities may also be attributed to information failure as good employment opportunities are less visible to jobseekers in rural and inland areas. We also argue that rural-urban disparity in returns to higher education by place of birth may be explained by differentiated early-life conditions in terms of socio-economic and family backgrounds as well as inequality of opportunity in access to quality education. Moreover, educational wage differentials are found to be significant between the formal private sector and the informal sector, between the public and private sectors and across occupational categories. These results are used to suggest directions to strengthen the role of public policies in reducing inequality of opportunities in both schooling and earnings.

Penser le patrimoine, c’est l’engager dans une dialectique avec l’expérience, plurielle, diachronique, ou singulière éthérée. L’évoquer, fait remonter en moi des images : plusieurs d’entre-elles sont intriquées avec mon expérience universitaire, éclairées par les diverses connaissances que j’ai pu acquérir au cours de ma formation. D’autres, en revanche, s’inscrivent dans une autre temporalité vaporeuse : celle de ma petite enfance.Ce projet a pour but de trouver des solutions au pillage et au trafic illicite de pièces archéologiques en Tunisie, par la mise en place d’actions oeuvrant pour la persévération de ce patrimoine ancien. Un premier volet se veut comme une action de valorisation via la création d’une association loi 1901. Un deuxième volet concernera la mise en place d’opérations de rachat puis le rapatriement des pièces en provenance des places mercantiles internationales. Un troisième volet implique la création d’un musée : un lieu, que nous voulons pionnier, sera ainsi destiné au rassemblement de l’ensemble des pièces que nous aurons rapatrié, et il permettra, en amont, de matérialiser l’idée d’un art émancipateur, à travers l’accomplissement de manifestations artistiques et de stratégies culturelles, oeuvrant dans ce sens.

Dans le domaine des sciences de l’education, le terme de mobilite renvoie souvent a la mobilite geographique et institutionnelle (la mobilite de l’etudiant d’une ville a une autre ou d’une institution a une autre). Dans ce premier cas, nous parlons d’une mobilite interne dans laquelle l’etudiant est le principal acteur. Sa mobilite depend d’une combinaison de choix et de contraintes institutionnelles et sociales. Ces choix et ces contraintes justifient le changement d’etablissement, d’univers...

Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have been widely used in the web over the last decade as they were found to be responsive and user-friendly compared to traditional web applications. RIAs use client-side scripting such as JavaScript which allows for asynchronous updates on the server-side using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). Due to the large size of RIAs and therefore the long time required for crawling, distributed RIA crawling has been introduced with the aim to decrease the crawling time. However, the current RIA crawling systems are not scalable, i.e. they are limited to a relatively low number of crawlers. Furthermore, they do not allow for fault tolerance in case that a failure occurs in one of their components. In this research, we address the scalability and resilience problems when crawling RIAs in a distributed environment and we explore the possibilities of designing an efficient RIA crawling system that is scalable and fault-tolerant. Our approach is to partition the search space among several storage devices (distributed databases) over a peer-to-peer (P2P) network where each database is responsible for storing only a portion of the RIA graph. This makes the distributed data structure invulnerable to a single point of failure. However, accessing the distributed data required by crawlers makes the crawling task challenging when the number of crawlers becomes high. We show by simulation results and analytical reasoning that our system is scalable and fault-tolerant. Furthermore, simulation results show that the crawling time using the P2P crawling system is significantly faster than the crawling time using both the non-distributed crawling system and the distributed crawling system using a single database.

In this work, we used gold labeled multiwall carbons nanotubes for peroxidase biosensor. The gold labeling on multiwall carbon nanotubes can be achieved with Pressure vapor Deposition (PVD) technique. The obtained carbon nanotubes can be immobilized on gold electrode with the airbrushing technique. The stability and the molecular structure of the labeled multiwall carbon nanotubes were characterized with cyclic voltammetry, impedance spectroscopy and Fourrier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy (FTIR). It shows a higher conductivity and a good stability in water interface. For streptavidin-HRP immobilization, the labeled gold nanotubes were activated over night with thiol-acid (16 carbons). An activation procedure was achieved with EDC/NHS for HRP-streptavidin immobilization. The development of biosensor for H2O2 detection was observed with the impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry techniques. This method could be used to determine total H2O2 concentration in the range 4 μM - 160 μM. The results show that the biosensor response depends on the conductivity and the large surface-to-volume ratio attained with multiwall carbon nanotubes. The response of the developed biosensors was reproducible with higher stability.

The binary liquid mixture of triethylamine + water (TEA–W) has a lower consolute point at a critical composition of 32.27 mass % triethylamine. Starting at a temperature within the one-phase region, the electrical conductivity of a sample of this mixture with addition of (K + , Cl − ) ions was measured and found to be accurately described by the Vogel–Fulcher–Tammann (VFT) law. Before that, for the pure system, in a temperature range Δ T = T c − T T c is the critical temperature, the electrical conductivity ( σ ) exhibits a monotonous deviation from the VFT behaviour. This anomaly is finite at T c . The asymptotic behaviour of the electrical conductivity anomaly is described by a power law t 1−α , where t is the reduced temperature ( T − T c ) / T c and α is the critical exponent of the specific heat anomaly at constant pressure. For the electrolyte mixtures, by combining the viscosity and the electrical conductivity data, the value of the computed Walden product has been determined and the salt dissociation degrees as well as the Debye screening length have been estimated.

Densities ρ, refractive indices n, excess molar volumes VE , refractive index deviations Δn, molar refractions Rm and excess molar refractions ΔRm were determined over the full range of compositions for the triethylamine–water binary mixture. The experimental measurements of these properties were carried out at atmospheric pressure and temperatures ranging from 283.15 to 291.35 K. The excess molar volumes VE , excess molar refractions ΔRm and refractive index deviations Δn have been fitted to the fourth-order Redlich–Kister polynomial equation. These quantities have been discussed in terms of intermolecular interactions between the compounds of the mixtures. Refractive indices were compared with those predicted using several mixing rules.

Densities ρ and viscosities η, for the binary mixture triethylamine–water have been measured over the entire range of mole fractions at different temperatures, both near and far away from the critical temperature Tc (0.076 K ≤ (T − Tc) ≤ 8.276 K). By calculating the corresponding activation parameters ΔH* and ΔS*, it has been shown that a possible connection may be presented between the evolution of these parameters and the critical region. Furthermore, in the one-phase region just below Tc of the critical (TEA–W) binary fluid, the viscosity measurements yield an enhancement as expected for Ising criticality with a crossover to regular behaviour. The regular background is obtained by interpolation from the measurements at non-critical concentrations. Shear viscosity data are consistent with a power law divergence η = η0(Qξ0)zt−yF predicted by the mode-coupling and the dynamic renormalization group theories. Different equations are used in order to determine the critical exponent y, the obtained values are in good agreement with the renormalization group-predicted value. The best fit gives y = νz = 0.0391 ± 0.0002 (i.e., z = 0.0679). Moreover, the resulting value for the wave number Q = 1.0152 ± 0.0016 nm−1 is in the region found for many other systems.

This paper underlines, in a comparative perspective, the presence of social sciences in the Middle East and North Africa. Several gaps appear on different levels: in the management of research, harmony between quantitative and qualitative growth, geographical imbalance in terms of support and funding opportunities, discrepancies between the act of education and accumulation of knowledge (forming research skills), the generational gap (senior and junior researchers) and the digital gap (employing digital means in research).

A neural network model was used to treat thermal conductivity data obtained from Middle Valley. This technique was able to separate the effects of different parameters such as porosity, grain density, bulk density and water content on the thermal conductivity. Predicted curves showed good agreement with the experimental results.

In this work, we used carboxyl multiwall carbons nanotubes for immunosensor application. The carbon nanotubes functionalisation can be achieved with Pressure Vapor Deposition (PVD) technique. The obtained carbon nanotubes can be immobilized on gold electrode with the airbrushing technique. The morphology of the deposited carboxyl carbon nanotubes was observed with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). The electrochemical characterization of the carboxyl multiwall carbon nanotubes was achieved with cyclic voltammetry and impedance spectroscopy. It shows a higher resistance and a good stability in water interface. For anti-rabbit IgG immobilization, the carboxyl carbon nanotubes were activated with EDC/NHS and non-specific sites was blocked with Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA). The development of immunosensor for IgG detection was observed with the impedance spectroscopy. The results show that the immunosensor response depends on the conductivity and the large surface-tovolume ratio attained with multiwall carbon nanotubes. The response of the developed immunosensor was reproducible, with higher stability and with limit detection of 10 pg/ml antigen.

Au Nord comme au Sud, les politiques libérales censées répondre aux contraintes de la mondialisation économique et aux évolutions du marché du travail ont partout eu pour effet de modifier les politiques publiques de l’enseignement supérieur, les hiérarchies des disciplines et les stratégies des étudiants. L’application généralisée de nouveaux instruments de gestion, l’harmonisation des cursus et la libéralisation mondiale du marché éducatif ne doivent pas masquer la disparité des stratégies régionales et la diversité de leurs modalités d’action. Dans un cadre fixé par les pays du Nord, le Maghreb doit trouver la réponse à la crise de son université, tout en tentant de conquérir sa part de marché. Dans la présente publication, sont analysées les transformations dans la mobilité étudiante Nord-Sud et Sud-Sud sous l’angle des effets de la concurrence de l’enseignement supérieur. Les contributions concentrées sur des expériences de pays du Nord (Canada, France) et du Sud (Égypte, Burkina Faso) sont autant de pistes de réflexion qui permettent d’éclairer la particularité des pays du Maghreb (Algérie, Maroc, Tunisie) dans leur gestion étatique des réformes éducatives d’inspiration libérale, et finalement dans la redistribution des rôles entre État et marché.

Dans le domaine des sciences de l’éducation, le terme de mobilité renvoie souvent à la mobilité géographique et institutionnelle (la mobilité de l’étudiant d’une ville à une autre ou d’une institution à une autre). Dans ce premier cas, nous parlons d’une mobilité interne dans laquelle l’étudiant est le principal acteur. Sa mobilité dépend d’une combinaison de choix et de contraintes institutionnelles et sociales. Ces choix et ces contraintes justifient le changement d’établissement, d’univers...

10.1016/j.carbon.2014.07.032 Oxygen plasma functionalized multiwall carbon nanotubes and iron oxide decorated multiwall carbon nanotubes are studied for detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at room temperature. Alumina substrates with interdigitated gold electrodes are employed as transducers and the air-brushing method is used to coat them with a thin film of the differently treated carbon nanotube samples. The electrical characterization of the sensors in the presence of benzene, toluene, acetone, methanol and ethanol vapors is carried out. The different treatments allow for tuning the response of carbon nanotubes and it is found that combining the responses of two sensors (i.e., one decorated with iron oxide and the other treated in an oxygen plasma) enables discriminating the aromatic hydrocarbons from the other VOCs tested. Additionally, discriminating benzene from toluene also appears to be possible. Sensors as the ones presented here, which are operated at room temperature, may led to a new generation of affordable, mass produced portable/wearable detectors with important applications in the selective detection of benzene.