Public-Private Partnership: Which Strategy for the Drinking Water and Sanitation Sector in Morocco?

The paper considers the current guidelines and orientations of the Moroccan public authorities, which are converging towards the increasing disengagement of the state in terms of the finance and management of infrastructures. In addition, with a view to the will of the public authorities to attract foreign investments deemed to be a true vector of economic development, the paper sheds light on those recent changes that have affected the water and sanitation sector in Morocco through the analysis of the concept of public-private partnership in so far as the following are concerned: the drinking water and sanitation sector; the strategic features of the drinking water and sanitation industry; and the formulation of a development strategy of public-private partnership in the drinking water and sanitation sector.     

Estimation robuste du canal non stationnaire en mode fdd de la norme utra

One of the most important problems in mobile communication happens when mobile stations are moving at high speed. In fact, we can consider that the movement of terminals can be viewed as a time variation of the channel between the mobile and the base station. In that way the received signal at the base station or at the terminal (if we consider the Uplink and the Dowlink) is corrupted by the fading phenomenon. In this paper, we will analyze this type of problems in the utra/fdd mode of the umts. The restitution of the data requires the evaluation of the channel features. We are interested to receivers for base station in the Uplink case. We will use a time-varying parameters linear model in order to depict the non-stationarities. The classical algorithms of channel equalization, based on the training sequence, suffer from the distortion effect caused by the traffic interferences. This leads to a big data deterioration at the receptor level. We propose in the paper an adaptive technique for channel estimation using Double Kaiman algorithm in order to limit the effect of these interferences. We will compare the obtained results with the classical algorithms in order to illustrate the efficiency of our algorithm.     

Electrochemical oxidation of organyl-2,2-dichlorovinyl sulfides and 1,2-bis(organylchalcogeno)-1,2-dichloroethylenes

Two steps were observed in the electrochemical oxidation of organyl-2,2-dichlorovinyl sulfides RSCHCCl₂. Macroscale electrolyses gives, respectively the sulfoxides (at the first step) and the sulfones (at the second step). This method offers advantage over the chemical oxidation. With 1,2-bis(organylchalcogeno)-1,2-dichloroethylenes RYCClCClYR (Y=S, Se, Te) selectivity was not so high, the main product being the bis-sulf(selen)oxide.     

Application of molecular beam deflection time-of-flight mass spectrometry to peptide analysis

The application of molecular beam deflection time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MBD-TOFMS) to peptide identification is described. The technique permits a simultaneous measurement of molecular mass and electric dipole susceptibility. The mass and susceptibility are not strongly correlated, and the results can be presented as a two-dimensional map. The susceptibility provides a useful way to disperse isobaric and isomeric peptides, and at least for small peptides, the susceptibility is significantly different for different amino acid sequences. Results for peptides in the mass range 1000-2300 Da show that the mass and susceptibility lead to a higher identification score than mass spectra alone.     

Effect of Eccentricity on a Clutch System Under a Harmonically Varying Normal Load

This paper describes a clutch model having eleven degrees of freedom and three types of nonlinearity introduced by dry friction, double-stage stiffness, and spline clearances. The Coulomb friction formulations and spline clearance functions are smoothed before they are applied to the nonlinear system. The calculation of the dynamic response of the clutch is done by the Runge Kutta method. The dynamic behavior of both a healthy clutch system and clutch system containing an eccentricity defect is compared in the time and frequency domains. The effects of a harmonically varying load on the dynamic response of the defective clutch system with nonlinear dry friction and under sinusoidal torque excitation are also reported.     

Experimental Implementation of New Sliding Mode Control Law applied To a DC–DC Boost Converter

The real implementation of sliding mode controllers (SMCs) to a DC–DC boost converter is a challenge due to the nonminimum phase behavior of these kinds of converters and the SMCs chattering problem. In this paper, new integral sliding mode control laws with linear and proposed nonlinear sliding surfaces are developed to overcome these problems. An experimental comparative study between these SMCs and the classical SMC applied for a DC–DC boost converter is presented.     

<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">MiCa</Emphasis>: Lightweight and mobile collaboration across a collaborative editing service in the cloud

Nowadays, we assist to an explosion of mobile applications due to the rapid development of mobile devices, which are becoming the device of choice for people to collaborate with family members, friends and business colleagues and/or customers. Mobile devices (such as smartphones, tablets and laptops) are well-suited for information delivery than sophisticated desktop PCs in many professional areas (e.g. writing reports for disaster management). However, collaboratively editing a shared document in real-time through ad-hoc peer-to-peer mobile networks requires increasing amounts of computation, data storage and network communication. More particularly, preserving the consistency in a decentralized way of the manipulated shared document under constraints of the mobile applications, namely the freshness and the energy consumption, remains still problematic. In this paper, we propose a new cloud service-based approach, called MiCa (Mobile Collaboration in the Cloud), to achieve efficient and scalable real-time editing works by allowing mobile users an online access to abundant computing power and data storage. Our service is a two levels system. The first level provides self-protocol to create clones of mobiles, manage users’ groups and recover failed clones in the cloud. The second level supports safe mechanisms for synchronizing collaborative works in fully decentralized way. On the mobile side, the energy consumption is largely reduced since all procedures for maintaining consistency of shared documents are executed on the clone side. Based on three important criteria (energy consumption, network traffic and responsiveness time), an experimental evaluation demonstrates the efficiency and effectiveness of our service MiCa.     

Influence of alkali metal (Li and Cs) addition to Mo2N catalyst for CO hydrogenation to hydrocarbons and oxygenates

The aim of this work is to understand the catalytic behaviour of Li and Cs promoted Mo₂N for CO hydrogenation to hydrocarbons and oxygenates at the reaction conditions 275–325 °C, 7 MPa, and 30 000 h^?1 GHSV. Molybdenum nitrides were synthesized via temperature programmed treatment of ammonium heptamolybdate (AHM) and alkali metal (AM) precursors under continuous gaseous ammonia flow. Unpromoted Mo₂N and AM‐Mo₂N catalysts were characterized using BET‐pore size, X‐ray diffraction, TPD‐mass of CO, HR‐TEM, and XPS techniques. Nominal loadings of 1, 5, and 10 wt% of Li and Cs were selected for these studies. At a 10 % CO conversion level, the total oxygenate selectivity of 28, 11, and 6.5 % was observed on 5Cs‐Mo₂N, 5Li‐Mo₂N, and unpromoted Mo₂N, respectively. The decreased oxygenate selectivity for unpromoted Mo₂N was mainly associated with CO dissociative hydrogenation on Mo^δ+ sites. On the other hand, improved molecular CO insertion into ?C_xH_y intermediate accelerates the total oxygenate formation on the Cs‐Mo‐N catalyst. However, during nitridation, crystal structure changes were observed in Li‐Mo‐N and the obtained oxygenates selectivity was attributed to the Li₂MoO₄ phases. At lower AM loadings, the active sites corresponding to oxygenates formation were inadequate, and at higher AM loadings, surface metallic molybdenum decreased the total oxygenate selectivity.

     

A posteriori error estimates of finite element method for the time-dependent Darcy problem in an axisymmetric domain

We consider the time dependent Darcy problem in a three-dimensional axisymmetric domain and, by writing the Fourier expansion of its solution with respect to the angular variable, we observe that each Fourier coefficient satisfies a system of equations on the meridian domain. We propose a discretization of these equations in the case of general solution. This discretization relies on a backward Euler’s scheme for the time variable and finite elements for the space variables. We prove a posteriori error estimates that allow for an efficient adaptivity strategy both for the time steps and the meshes. Computations for an example with a known solution are presented which support the a posteriori error estimate.