Vegetation productivity is an essential variable in ecosystem functioning. Vegetation dynamics of dryland ecosystems are most strongly determined by water availability and consequently by rainfall and there is a need to better understand how water limited ecosystems respond to altered rainfall amounts and variability. This response is partly determined by the vegetation functional response to r...

This paper presents fully automatic approach for information extraction from digitized gray level images of Telecom Egypt diagrams. The information are feed into database system for later use by Telecom Egypt technicians staff. The first step is to separate between the graphic components and the text associated to them. The segmented texts are recognized by OCR system. The diagrams are segmente...

CIOs in Hungary, Romania, and South Africa (SA) are today overcoming disadvantages that their firms suffered during decades of closed national markets. This paper reports on a series of interviews conducted with CIOs in these developing countries focusing on national and organizational strategies used to prepare for international competition and globalization. They achieved competitiveness by i...

With ten-year (2004–2013) ground-based observations of Beijing Forest (BJF) and Beijing City (BJC) sites in North China, we validated the high-quality MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Collection 5 (C5) and Collection 6 (C6) Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) products’ precision and discussed the sensors degradation issues. The annual mean AOD and Angstrom exponent (α) were 0.20 ± ...

background: although numerous studies have found deleterious effects of inbreeding on childhood and pre-reproductive mortality, one question remains inadequately addressed: dose inbreeding lead to increased childhood mortality rates in countries with high level of consanguinity? methods: to evaluate the public health impact of inbreeding on offspring mortality, the association between mean of i...

following the application of simple serological tests for the diagnosis of coeliac disease (cd) in the 1980s, it gradually became clear that the prevalence of cd in different countries in the middle east, north africa and india is almost the same as that in western countries. the prevalence of cd in at-risk populations in these regions is reported to range between 3 and 20% and the prevalence i...

background & aim: chronic subdural hematoma (csdh) is a common neurosurgical pathology. the objective of this study was to describe the epidemiology of this pathology and the results in treating it combined from three hospital centers in benin. methods & materials/patients: from september 2010 to september 2013 a multi-center, retrospective and descriptive study was conducted in three hospital ...

background: the acceptance of hiv testing among patients with tuberculosis (tb) is low in south africa. the aim of this study was to assess the prevalence, associated factors and reasons of non-uptake of human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) testing by tuberculosis public primary care patients in three districts, south africa. methods:   in may-october 2011, this cross-sectional survey was conduct...

mohammed moftahh rajab al-fituri is a major african poet with such an unprecedented sphere of knowledge and artifice who has praised revolutions and immortalized the free spirit of heroism in africa and the arab world. alfiturihas composed odes on many causes covering lebanon, palestine, and iraq wherein he calls upon nations to struggle for their freedom and to fight submission and slavery. al...