Background: Extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae represent a major clinical and public health concern due to their ability to confer resistance to multiple classes of antibiotics. Data on the molecular epidemiology of ESBL-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae remain limited in many regions of Burkina Faso, particularly outside the Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso. This study aimed to determine the frequency of ESBL-producing Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae and to characterize the ESBL resistance genes circulating in the Boucle du Mouhoun region. Methods: A total of 1,845 clinical samples (urine, pus, blood, and semen) collected from patients attending two major healthcare facilities in Dédougou were processed during the study period. From these samples, 247 non-duplicate Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneum...

This study analyses the floristic composition and phytosanitary condition of woody species in Razoutenga forest, Burkina Faso. Using 20 randomly placed circular plots (1250 m2 each), research-ers inventoried trees ≥15 cm in diameter across 2.5 ha. The forest hosts 71 woody species from 18 genera and 9 families, with Mimosaceae, Combretaceae and Anacardiaceae being most abundant. Health assessments show 92.95% of trees are defect-free, with no desiccated crowns or dead specimens. Regeneration includes 137 juvenile plants in 20 genera. While species diversity is moderate and locally adapted, signs of anthropogenic degradation are evident. Sustainable management is urgently needed to conserve biodiversity and restore ecosystem integrity.

L’Afrique, et en particulier le Burkina Faso, est confrontée ces dernières années aux problématiques liées au terrorisme et à l’extrémisme violent. Fort de cela, la problématique de la violence devient un leitmotiv thématique dans les imaginaires dramaturgiques des auteurs africains, au nombre desquels Jean-Pierre GUINGANÉ. Depuis 2015, le Burkina Faso subit une crise marquée par des attaques terroristes multiformes, accompagnées de lourdes pertes humaines et de dégâts considérables À travers l’esthétique de la banalisation, et dans une tentative de « tourner la face au soleil », pour reprendre le thème de la 13ᵉ édition des Récréâtrales du 26 octobre au 2 novembre 2024, l’un des festivals de théâtre les plus renommés en Afrique, nous proposons d’explorer la problématique de la tolérance telle qu’elle est mise en scène dans La malice des hommes de Jean-Pierre GUINGANÉ.

Valorization of agricultural residues into biochar for soil applications offers dual ben-efits of waste management and sustainable agriculture. However, the mechanisms governing sandy soil and lettuce response to biochar under deficit irrigation are not well understood. TheThis study evaluated the effects of biochar types on sandy soil physio-chemicalphysiochemical properties and lettuce (Lactuca sativa L.) yield at different irrigation levels. A field experiment was performed using a randomized com-plete block design with four treatments (soil only, cotton stalk biochar, cashew nut-shells biochar, and a mix of cotton stalks+ cashew nutshells biochar) and three irriga-tion regimes (100%, 80, and 60% of crop water requirements ETc) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The results showed that biochar -amended soils had consistently higher water retention and macro nutrientsmacronutrients, resulti...

Cowpea is an essential crop in Burkina Faso’s agriculture, but its production must cope with the consequences of climate change, particularly drought, which significantly reduces yields. The mechanisms of adaptation to drought vary between species and varieties and need to be understood to develop more drought-tolerant varieties. Seven cowpea genotypes were subjected to a 21-day water deficit induced before flowering under a screen house, using plastic pots. A split-plot design with three replications was used. The water regimes included continuous watering and induction of a 21-day water deficit initiated from the 30th day after sowing (DAS). Physiological, morphological, and productivity parameters were measured before and during the water deficit application. The results demonstrated a significant depressive effect of stress conditions on the evaluated parameters. The water deficit re...

Malaria, caused by the parasite Plasmodium falciparum, remains a major public health priority in tropical regions. The Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) for detecting anti-Plasmodium antibodies is an essential diagnostic tool. However, its sensitivity and specificity are closely dependent on the concentration of antigens used. This study aimed to determine the optimal antigen concentration for seven P. falciparum antigens (AMA1, MSP1, GLURP, CSP, EBA175, MSP3, and EXP1) in order to optimize the signal-to-background noise ratio of indirect ELISA tests. To achieve this, titration microplates were coated with serial dilutions of each antigen (from 2 μg/ml to 0.0625 μg/ml), incubated with patient sera, and then developed using conjugated secondary antibodies. Each antigen concentration was tested in duplicate wells (n=2), using Hyper-Immune Tanzanian (HIT) plasma at antigen-specific...

This work focuses on neural machine translation between French and Mooré, leveraging the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in a low-resource language context. Mooré is a local language widely spoken in Burkina Faso but remains underrepresented in digital resources. Alongside Mooré, French, now a working language, remains widely used in administration, education, justice, etc. The coexistence of these two languages creates a growing demand for effective translation tools. However, Mooré, like many low-resource languages, poses significant challenges for machine translation due to the scarcity of parallel corpora and its complex morphology.The main objective of this work is to adapt LLMs for French–Mooré translation. Three pre-trained models were selected: No Language Left Behind (NLLB-200), mBART50, and AfroLM. A corpus of approximately 83,000 validated sentence pairs was compi...

Most of African low-resource languages are primarily spoken rather than written and lack large, standardized textual resources. In many communities, low literacy rates and limited access to formal education mean that text-based translation technologies alone are insufficient for effective communication. As a result, speech-to-speech translation systems play a crucial role by enabling direct and natural interaction across languages without requiring reading or writing skills. Such systems are essential for improving access to information, public services, healthcare, and education. The goal of our work is to build powerful transcription and speech synthesis models for Mooré language. Then, these models have been used to build a cascaded voice translation system between French and Mooré, since we already got a French-Mooré machine translation model. We collected Mooré audio-text pairs, rea...

Intermediate-band solar cells require an intermediate electronic manifold that is both confined and sufficiently dispersive to enable sub-bandgap transitions. Here we study a three-dimensional quantum-dot superlattice based on tensile-strained dots embedded in a relaxed ​ matrix, selected to provide electron confinement through the conduction-band offset. We solve a single-band BenDaniel-Duke effective-mass Schrödinger equation using a 3D finite-difference discretization with Bloch boundary conditions, and compute electron miniband dispersions across the Brillouin zone. Energies are referenced to the conduction-band edge of the strained-Si dot, set to zero. We analyze the first three electron minibands as functions of dot size , barrier thickness , and Ge fraction (restricted to within the adopted empirical parameterization). The results show that primarily shifts the miniband botto...

Ce travail de recherche a permis de caractériser pour la première fois les propriétés fonctionnelles, physico-chimiques et microbiologiques du Djir, une farine fermentée traditionnelle à base de mil perlé (Pennisetum glaucum) largement consommée au Tchad. Quatre-vingt-dix échantillons ont été collectés dans trois villes tchadiennes (Abéché, Guéréda et Oum-Hadjer), aussi bien sur des sites de production que sur des marchés. Les résultats ont montré que le Djir présente un pH acide (3,39 à 3,93) et une faible teneur en humidité (2,50 à 10,68 %), deux facteurs favorables à sa conservation. Les propriétés fonctionnelles varient considérablement d’un échantillon à l’autre, avec des capacités d’absorption d’eau comprises entre 68 et 128 %, des capacités d’absorption d’huile entre 60 et 109 %, et une stabilité de la mousse particulièrement élevée (88 à 99 %). L’analyse microbiologique a révélé...