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In Morocco, pollution caused by closed mines continues to be a serious threat to the environment, like the generation of acid mine drainage. Mine drainage is produced by environmental and microbial oxidation of sulfur minerals originating from mine wastes. The fundamental role of microbial communities is well known, like implication of Fe-oxidizing and to a lesser extent S-oxidizing microorganism in bioleaching. However, the structure of the microbial communities varies a lot from one site to another, like diversity depends on many factors such as mineralogy, concentration of metals and metalloids or pH, etc. In this study, prokaryotic communities in the pyrrhotite-rich tailings of Kettara mine were characterized using the Illumina sequencing. In-depth phylogenetic analysis revealed a total of 12 phyla of bacteria and 1 phyla of Archaea. The majority of sequences belonged to the phylum of Proteobacteria and Firmicutes with a predominance of Bacillus , Pseudomonas or Corynebacterium genera. Many microbial populations are implicated in the iron, sulfur and arsenic cycles, like Acidiferrobacter , Leptospirillum , or Alicyclobacillus in Fe; Acidiferrobacter and Sulfobacillus in S; and Bacillus or Pseudomonas in As. This is one of the first description of prokaryotic communities in pyrrhotite-rich mine tailings using high-throughput sequencing.

In the present study, numerical investigation of two-dimensional incompressible air flow through a solar air heater (SAH) with a triangular artificial roughness having a curved top corner is performed using ANSYS Fluent 15.0 based finite volume method. The geometrical parameters of the triangular ribs having a curved top corner such as the roughness height ratio (e/D = 0.021, 0.03 and 0.042) and the roughness pitch ratio (p/e =7.14, 10.70, 14.28 and 17.86) have been investigated for a varied Reynolds number between 3800 to 18000. Flow and energy governing equations were solved with the accosiation of two transport equation for the turbulence kinetic energy k and the dissipation rate ɛ. The RNG k-ε turbulent model have been selected to be the more appropriate turbulence model for the present study. Results indicates that the values of Nusselt number and friction factor strongly depend on the roughness relative height e/D, relative pitch p/e and the value of Re number. The best solar air heater performance could be obtained for e/D=0.042 and p/e=7.14.

The use of macro prudential instruments today gives rise to a major debate within the walls of central banks and other authorities in charge of financial stability. Contrary to micro prudential instruments, whose effects remain limited, macro prudential instruments are different in nature and can affect the stability of the financial system. By influencing the financial cycle and the financial structure of financial institutions, the use of such instruments should be conducted with great vigilance as well as macroeconomic and financial expertise. But the experiences of central banks in this area are sketchy, and only some emerging countries have experience using these types of instruments in different ways. This paper presents an analysis of instruments of macro prudential policy and attempts to empirically demonstrate that these instruments should be used only in specific economic and financial situations. Indeed, the results obtained, using modeling bivariate panel, confirm that these instruments are more effective when used to mitigate the euphoria of financial and economic cycles. In this sense, the output gap, describing the economic cycle, and the Z-score are the intermediate variables for the activation of capital instruments. Moreover, the liquidity ratio and changes in bank profitability are the two early warning indicators for activation of liquidity instruments.

Numerical computation of thermally developing laminar flow of viscoelastic FENE-P fluids flowing between two stationary parallel plates is investigated using the finite element technique. The influence of the effect of the solvent contribution as well as the fluid rheology on the flow field and heat transfer enhancement is investigated for the case of imposed constant wall heat flux and neglected viscous dissipation. Numerical results for flow field are compared first against available analytical solutions with and without inclusion of the solvent contribution. The obtained results for the viscoelastic case show that increasing Weissenberg number (We) leads to an increase in Nusselt number (Nu) while high values of the extensibility parameter (L2) decrease the Nusselt number. Fully developed Nusselt number values for FENE-P fluids flowing between two fixed parallel plates are obtained for several values of polymer concentration and the study confirms quantitatively that polymer concentration enhances heat transfer rates in FENE-P fluids.

The aim of this work was using the legume plant Anthyllis vulneraria L. (ecotype metallicolous) as a trap plant, in order to isolate metal-tolerant rhizobial strains from metal-contaminated soils from Morocco, with pollution indexes spanning three orders of magnitude. As bioindicator, soil bacterial density was inversely correlated to the pollution index. Forty-three bulk soil bacteria and sixty two bacteria from nodules were isolated. The resistance of bacteria from nodules to heavy metals was four to ten times higher than that of bulk soil bacteria, reaching high maximum tolerable concentrations for Cd (2 mM), Cu (2 mM), Pb (7 mM), and Zn (3 mM). Besides, some strains show multiple metal-tolerant abilities and great metal biosorption onto the bacterial surface. Amplification and restriction analysis of ribosomal 16S rDNA (ARDRA) and 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequencing were used to assess biodiversity and phylogenetic position among bacteria present in nodules. Our results suggest that a great diversity of non-rhizobial bacteria (alpha- and gamma-proteobacteria) colonize nodules of Anthyllis plants in contaminated soils. Taking together, our results evidence that, in polluted soils, rhizobia can be displaced by non-rhizobial (and hence, non-fixing) strains from nodules. Thus, the selection of metal-resistant rhizobia is a key step for using A. vulneraria symbioses for in situ phytoremediation.

The heliostat structure and shape must deliver the essential rigidity to accurately reflect solar radiation onto the target under several working conditions. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the effect of various rectangular heliostat shape aspect ratios ε =L/W on the spiral layout performance considered by keeping the same heliostat area. Here 'L' and 'W' are the length and width of the rectangular heliostat shape respectively. A combination of an-inhouse developed computer code based on the vector geometry to design different heliostat models with the TracePro optical software are used to quantify the effect of the introduced aspect ratio changes on the efficiency of the spiral heliostat field layout. Results are presented and showed that the field efficiency can importantly affected when using different values for this heliostat aspect ratio. The chosen calculation period during the day may also affect the average calculated total flux per day and affects in general the efficiency of the heliostat field.

Numerical investigations of purely-elastic instabilities occurring in creeping flows are reported in planar cross-slot geometries with both sharp and round corners. The fluid is described by the upper-convected Maxwell model, and the governing equations are solved using the finite element technique based on a steady (non-iterative) direct solver implemented in the POLYFLOWcommercial software (version 14.0). Specifically, extensive simulations were carried out on different meshes, with and without the use of flow perturbations, for a wide range of rheological parameters. Such simulations show the onset of flow asymmetries above a critical Deborah number (De). The effect of rounding the comers is also addressed. The numerical results obtained are found to be in good quantitative agreement with previously published numerical results

Cytogenetic, molecular genetic, and functional analyses have implicated chromosome 17 genes in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). To further characterize the contribution of chromosome 17 genes in EOC, the Affymetrix U133A GeneChip was used to perform transcriptome analyses of 15 primary cultures of normal ovarian surface epithelial (NOSE) cells and 17 malignant ovarian tumor (TOV) samples of the serous histopathologic subtype. A two-way comparative analysis of 776 known genes and expressed sequences identified 253 genes that exhibited at least a threefold difference in expression in at least one TOV sample compared to the mean of NOSE samples. Within this data set, 99 of the 253 (39.1%) genes exhibited similar patterns of expression across all tested samples, suggesting a high degree of concordance in the chromosome 17 transcriptome. This observation was supported by hierarchical clustering analysis that segregated the TOV and NOSE samples into two separate groups. There were 77 genes that were differentially expressed in at least 50% of the TOV samples. Five genes (AdoRA2B at 17p12, CCL2 at 17q12, ACLY at 17q21.2, WIPI1 at 17q24.2, and SLC16A3 at 17q25.3) were significantly (P< 5.13E−11) differentially expressed at least threefold in all serous TOV samples, and all five genes were underexpressed in these TOV samples as compared to the NOSE samples. Interestingly, several of these differentially expressed genes have been previously associated with response to hypoxia.

Available epidemiological information seems to indicate that Balkan endemic nephropathy is associated with consumption patterns involving foodstuffs contaminated with ochratoxin A (OTA) and with a higher frequency of OTA-positive blood samples. The aim of this preliminary study was to assess OTA concentrations in human plasma in Morocco. Therefore, samples from 309 healthy volunteers (213 males, 96 females) were analysed. The analyses revealed that 60% of the human plasma sampled was positive for OTA (61.5% in the male and 56% in the female population), and an average concentration of 0.29 ng// /mL (0.31 ng///mL in males, 0.26 ng// /mL in females). The highest concentration found was 6.59 ng// /mL. The results suggest that the Moroccan population is exposed to OTA, even though the OTA plasma levels are lower than that reported in some North African countries.

Background and Objectives. It has been shown that Myrtus communis and Marrubium vulgare have antibacterial activity against bacterial and fungal strains of different diseases. This study aimed to evaluate in vitro the antibacterial activity of aqueous and methanolic extracts of Myrtus communis and Marrubium vulgare leaves against selected periodontal pathogens. Materials and Methods. Clinical strains of Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans and Eikenella corrodens and two reference strains of A. actinomycetemcomitans were tested. The antibacterial activity of each studied plant extract was evaluated using agar diffusion and broth microdilution assays. Results. Both aqueous and methanolic extracts of M. communis exhibited high antibacterial activity against periodontal pathogens as compared to M. vulgare extracts. At concentrations of 2.5-0.32 mg/disc, inhibition zones of the methanolic extract of M. communis ranged from 19.66 ± 0.57 to 12.33 ± 0.57 mm. The methanolic extract of M. vulgare showed at concentrations of 5-0.63 mg/disc inhibition zones ranging from 15.66 ± 0.57 to 12 ± 0.00 mm. Its aqueous extract at concentration of 0.63 mg/disc showed no antimicrobial activity against the clinical and reference strain of A. actinomycetemcomitans. Conclusion. This study showed that methanolic and aqueous extracts of M. communis and M. vulgare have in vitro an antibacterial activity against periodontal pathogens. They could be use as ingredients of an oral antimicrobial agent for prevention or treatment of periodontal diseases. Further research on isolating the compounds from these plant extracts and their toxicity effect could be conducted.