ABSTRACT:The present work aims to find the epidemiological profile of snakebites in Morocco through a retrospective study of 1,423 snakebite cases that occurred between 1992 and 2007. Data were obtained from medical charts of envenomation at the Poison Control and Pharmacovigilance Center of Morocco. Results revealed that 86% of the snakebites had occurred in rural areas and that males were significantly more affected than females at a sex ratio of 23:20. Furthermore, 35% of the bites happened during the summer, with a peak of 215 cases in June (15.1%). We also discovered that 67.3% of the patients were bitten during the day. The age group that comprised the most agriculturally active persons, from 20 to 44 years old, was the most affected by snakebites (551 cases). In terms of evolution, patients who were at least 60 years of age (8.89%) as well as those who were less than 10 years old (7.50%) presented higher mortality. According to clinical severity grades, the data revealed a 70% predominance of grade 2 cases (430). Deaths had occurred only in patients with grades 3 and 4. Furthermore, grade 4 patients presented 100% mortality whereas grade 3 registered 10.7%. The distribution of snakebites according to administrative regions in Morocco showed a predominance of the Souss-Massa-Daraa region both in terms of frequency (32%) and mortality (72.1%). Our study clearly displayed the severity and extent of the snakebite problem in the country, thus revealing that public health authorities should give more attention to this serious situation.

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ABSTRACT:The present study aims to elucidate the risk factors involved in deaths caused by scorpion envenomation. A retrospective study was carried out in the province of Kelâa des Sraghna from 2003 to 2004. The hospital charts of scorpion envenomation cases treated in the Essalama Hospital in Kelâa des Sraghna were exhaustively analyzed. Our study contains 31 cases of death among 470 hospitalization cases. Most stings had occurred during the hot period peaking in July and August (54.6%). Moreover, the scorpion stings occurred at night in 60.1% of the cases, between 6:00 pm and 6:00 am. In addition, all age groups were affected by envenomation, with a higher frequency in children aged less than 15 years (68.3%). The envenomation rate (class II + class III) was 70.9%. The statistical analysis of the data shows that being less than 15 years old, having been stung during the night and belonging to class III are risk factors that aggravate vital prognosis of hospitalized patients. Furthermore, clinical severity factors, elicited by relative risk analysis, are cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological vital distresses, with relative risks of 14.84, 11.92 and 48.33, respectively. The results of our study clearly displayed the severity and extent of the scorpion envenomation problem. Thus, great attention must be paid to this region of Morocco by the national health authorities.

Introduction this work aims to bring out the epidemiological characteristics of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB) in the province of Larache (Morocco) and to investigate the effect of gender and age on its localization and treatment outcome. Methods it consists in a retrospective study based on 2962 cases of EPTB, reported during the period 2000 to 2012. Results the mean age was 31.74 ± 18.83 years, with a median age of 26. Males are more affected by this form of tuberculosis, with a male to female sex-ratio of 1,15. The EPTB affects particularly the young population whose age is between 15 and 34 years. The pleural and lymph node localizations are the most common with 45% and 28% respectively. The statistical analysis reveals that younger patients are preferentially affected by lymph node tuberculosis whereas oldest ones are more likely to suffer from urogenital and pericardial tuberculosis. Regarding the treatment outcome, we demonstrated that age is significantly associated with the treatment outcome and that deaths occur preferentially in the oldest patients. Finally, we found out a significant association between males and pleural ETB localization, and between females and lymph node and peritoneo-itestinal ETB localizations. Conclusion special attention must be paid to the mentioned most vulnerable categories of EPTB patients.

Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communications (URLLC) is deemed to be an essential service in 5G systems and beyond (also called 6G) to accommodate a wide range of emerging applications with stringent latency and reliability requirements. Coexistence of URLLC alongside other service categories calls for developing spectrally efficient multiplexing techniques. Specifically, coupling URLLC and conventional enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB) through superposition/puncturing naturally arises as a promising option due to the tolerance of the latter in terms of latency and reliability. The idea here is to transmit URLLC packets (typically sporadic and of short size) over resources occupied by ongoing eMBB transmissions while minimizing the impact on the eMBB transmissions. In this paper, we propose a novel downlink URLLC-eMBB multiplexing technique that exploits possible similarities among URLLC and eMBB symbols, with the objective of reducing the size of the punctured eMBB symbols. We propose that the base station (BS) scans the eMBB traffic' symbol sequences and punctures those that have the highest symbol similarity with that of the URLLC users to be served. As the eMBB and URLLC may use different constellation sizes, we introduce the concept of symbol region similarity to accommodate the different constellations. We assess the performance of the proposed scheme analytically, where we derive closed-form expressions for the symbol error rate (SER) of the eMBB and URLLC services. We also derive an expression for the eMBB loss function due to puncturing in terms of the eMBB SER. We demonstrate through numerical and simulation results the efficacy of the proposed scheme where we show that 1) the eMBB spectral efficiency is improved by puncturing fewer symbols, 2) the SER and reliability performance of eMBB are improved, and 3) the URLLC data is accommodated within the specified delay constraint while maintaining its reliability, 4) and the proposed strategy has polynomial time complexity making it an efficient solution to be used in practice.

Mental skills and motivation are key factors in learning and performance. This study aims to model their influence on performance in physical education and sport among Moroccan high school students. Material: A sample of 202 high school students including 100 boys and 102 girls participated in this study. In order to assess mental skills, we used the Ottawa Mental Skills Assessment Tool (OMSAT-3) test and to assess different forms of motivation, we used the Sport Motivation Scale (SMS-28). To evaluate the performance in physical education and sport, we chose an individual sport that is the high jump. Results: The multiple linear regression has as a dependent variable performance in physical education and sport and as explanatory variables mental skills and motivational forms retained only commitment. Conclusions: The commitment, as basic mental skill, is determinant in student's performance in physical education and sport.

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