City Of Tunis Research Articles

The Execution of Family Law Court Rulings in Jewish Communities in Tunisia and Libya in the Early Twentieth Century: The Challenge of Enforcement Without Sustenance Ronel Atia

The article examines the enforcement of verdicts by Jewish courts in two early entiethcentury Jewish communities: in Tunisia, particularly the capital city of Tunis, as it transitioned from Muslim rule to an European protectorate, and in Libya during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. It analyzes three documents that reflect the ways in which various Jewish courts handled cases related to family law and used sanctions to uphold Jewish law. The situations described in these documents raise questions about the Jewish courts’ authority to execute judgments in matters under their immediate jurisdiction. This article may provide a basis for the study of similar issues in other Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire and in other periods throughout history.

Preliminary results from the Tunisian monitoring program on POPs in air under the Stockholm Convention

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been measured using passive air samplers (PASs) over two years (2017–2018) in the city of Tunis within the framework of the UNEP/GEF GMP2 projects to support Stockholm Convention implementation. Several POPs, although banned for a long time from Tunisia, were registered in relatively high amounts in the atmospheric compartment. The most unexpected compound is hexachlorobenzene (HCB), with concentrations ranging from 5.2 ng/PUF to 16 ng/PUF. Furthermore, the current results seem to confirm the presence of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its transformation products and hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs) at relatively high concentrations (4.6 ng/PUF to 9.4 ng/PUF and 2.7 ng/PUF to 5.1 ng/PUF, respectively), followed by hexabromocyclododecane (HCBD), which varies from 1.5 ng/PUF to 7.7 ng/PUF. Nondioxin-like PCB (ndl-PCB) concentrations in Tunis were very high (62.0 ng/PUF to 419.3 ng/PUF), higher than those in other African countries participating in this project. Uncontrolled combustion seems to be one of the most important sources of the emanation of dioxin compounds dl-PCBs and Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins PCDD/polychlorinated dibenzofurans PCDF. Toxic equivalents (TEQs) ranged from 4.1 pg WHO-TEQ/PUF to 6.4 pg WHO-TEQ/PUF. The perfluorinated compounds (PFAS) and congeners of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) show relatively low amounts that remain below the African continent average. The PFAS pattern suggests a local source rather than long-range transport. These results constitute the first exhaustive work capable of providing an overview of the levels of POPs in the air in Tunis. As a result, it will be possible to set up an adequate monitoring program with specific investigations and experimental studies.

A Context-Aware, Computer-Vision-Based Approach for the Detection of Taxi Street-Hailing Scenes from Video Streams.

With the increasing deployment of autonomous taxis in different cities around the world, recent studies have stressed the importance of developing new methods, models and tools for intuitive human-autonomous taxis interactions (HATIs). Street hailing is one example, where passengers would hail an autonomous taxi by simply waving a hand, exactly like they do for manned taxis. However, automated taxi street-hailing recognition has been explored to a very limited extent. In order to address this gap, in this paper, we propose a new method for the detection of taxi street hailing based on computer vision techniques. Our method is inspired by a quantitative study that we conducted with 50 experienced taxi drivers in the city of Tunis (Tunisia) in order to understand how they recognize street-hailing cases. Based on the interviews with taxi drivers, we distinguish between explicit and implicit street-hailing cases. Given a traffic scene, explicit street hailing is detected using three elements of visual information: the hailing gesture, the person's relative position to the road and the person's head orientation. Any person who is standing close to the road, looking towards the taxi and making a hailing gesture is automatically recognized as a taxi-hailing passenger. If some elements of the visual information are not detected, we use contextual information (such as space, time and weather) in order to evaluate the existence of implicit street-hailing cases. For example, a person who is standing on the roadside in the heat, looking towards the taxi but not waving his hand is still considered a potential passenger. Hence, the new method that we propose integrates both visual and contextual information in a computer-vision pipeline that we designed to detect taxi street-hailing cases from video streams collected by capturing devices mounted on moving taxis. We tested our pipeline using a dataset that we collected with a taxi on the roads of Tunis. Considering both explicit and implicit hailing scenarios, our method yields satisfactory results in relatively realistic settings, with an accuracy of 80%, a precision of 84% and a recall of 84%.

Staging Arts in the Historic City: Development Funding, Social Media Images, and Tunisia's Contemporary Public Art Scene

AbstractIn this paper, I examine how public art projects in the Medina of Tunis “stay in the game,” a reference to the (social) media management strategies that projects pursue to attract and keep funding. Following the 2011 “Arab Spring,” revolution, known locally as the thawra, a vibrant public art scene has formed centered in the Medina of Tunis, the highly visible but economically marginalized historic center of the city of Tunis. The formation of this public art scene is due largely to a post‐revolution influx of foreign development funding. The public art scene in the Medina of Tunis, bolstered by social media, has been widely articulated as providing visibility to marginalized communities through participatory methods. I argue that this claim paradoxically obscures the diverse lifestyles and imaginaries of the communities that public art projects aim to benefit. This paradox is rooted in both a history of mediating the historic city as an image of a modern nation, and public art's dependency on foreign funding, which draws it into maintaining foreign neoliberal interests while expressing these interests as essentially local. Meanwhile, improvements in the material conditions for residents of the Medina, expressed in terms of mirtah(comfort), remain elusive.

You Really Affect Me: The Role of Social Influence in the Relationship between Procedural Justice and Turnover Intention.

This research aims to test the impact of procedural justice on employees’ turnover intention via their intention to stay or give up their positions by putting social influence in the spotlight as a mediating variable. Although the topic dealing with the relationship linking organizational justice to turnover intention has taken some wrinkles, there has been no published research, to the best of researchers’ knowledge, that integrates social influence as a mediating variable between the aforementioned relationships. A questionnaire survey was administered to 558 employees working in a renowned banking institution located in the capital city of Tunis, Tunisia. Structural equation modeling (SEM) results using AMOS software, IBM, version 23, showed that social influence partially mediated the relationship between procedural justice and turnover intention. More specifically, procedural justice has a significant negative effect on turnover intention (β = −0.30, p < 0.01) and a significant positive effect on social influence (β = +0.54, p < 0.01), which will have a significant positive effect on turnover intention (β = +0.91, p < 0.01). The results confirm that procedural justice is necessary for any organization; however, it is not enough to eliminate the turnover intention, especially with the presence of social influence. Social influence alters the judgments of those caught in its nets. This intangible aspect and power is even more enigmatic and harmful, which can lead to a change in cognitive references and behaviors. Social influence heavily affects the spontaneity of individuals and they became subject to dominant forces, which has to be properly controlled by management.

Towards an efficient collection and transport of COVID-19 diagnostic specimens using genetic-based algorithms

The speed by which the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the world makes the emergency services unprepared to answer all the patients’ requests. The Tunisian ministry of health established a protocol planning the sample collection from the patients at their location. A triage score is first assigned to each patient according to the symptoms he is showing, and his health conditions. Then, given the limited number of the available ambulances in each area, the location of the patients and the capacity of the nearby hospitals for receiving the testing samples, an ambulance scheduling and routing plan needs to be established so that specimens can be transferred to hospitals in short time. In this paper, we propose to model this problem as a Multi-Origin–Destination Team Orienteering Problem (MODTOP). The objective is to find the optimal one day tour plan for the available ambulances that maximizes the collected scores of visited patients while respecting duration and capacity constraints. To solve this NP-hard problem, two highly effective approaches are proposed which are Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) and Memetic Algorithm (MA). The HGA combines (i) a k-means construction method for initial population generation and (ii) a one point crossover operator for solution recombination. The MA is an improvement of HGA that integrates an effective local search based on three different neighborhood structures. Computational experiments, supported by a statistical analysis on benchmark data sets, illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approaches. HGA and MA reached the best known solutions in 54.7% and 73.5% of instances, respectively. Likewise, MA reached a relative error of 0.0675% and performed better than four existing approaches. Real-case instances derived from the city of Tunis were also solved and compared with the results of an exact solver Cplex to validate the effectiveness of our algorithm.

Effects of atmospheric pollutants on human health and deterioration of medieval historical architecture (North Africa, Tunisia)

Air pollution is a factor of concern on a global scale, accelerating the deterioration of historic medieval architecture and having harmful effects on human health. The general objective of this study is to understand the risks of atmospheric contamination that contribute to the degradation of the medieval historical heritage of (1) Bab El Bhar, (2) the Tunis Train Station and (3) the Bardo National Museum, in the City of Tunis, capital of Tunisia, located in North Africa. Sequentially, 64 samples were collected in SMPSs and 64 of dust particles in sites 1, 2 and 3, from 2015 to 2019. Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) was utilized together with High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HR-TEM) and the coupled with an Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDS), which allowed a better characterization and identification of NPs in images, using Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDS). The Bab El Bhar SMPS samples yielded a higher proportion of ultrafine and organic particles. Sedimented dusts showed high proportions of organometallic particles (Al, As, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Ni, Pb, S, Sb, Se, Si, Sn, Ti, V and Zn). The need to create public policies to protect both human health and physical historic infrastructure is noted, as this study identified dangerous elements harmful to human health in ultrafine particles, easily suspended by the wind and highly corrosive to historical buildings from the medieval period in the air of a busy metropolitan tourist site.

Una rappresentazione diplomatica e di parte: il ritratto (geo)letterario della Tunisi di Guglielmo Collotti (1876)

The paper aims to retrace the (geo)-literary portrait of the city of Tunis by analysing the work Tunisi e il suo popolo. Studi impressioni e ricordi (Tunis and its people. Studies, impressions and memories), written by Guglielmo Collotti and published in Catania in 1876. This work is a travel report of a journey planned by Collotti with the excuse of presenting a “philanthropic” award to the sovereign of the Regency of Tunis. In fact, it gave the Sicilian nobleman the opportunity to visit the places inhabited by a large Italian community. The epistemological approach being adopted in the study, which is a geographical one, takes into consideration the historical and cultural context in which the author’s political beliefs developed: his interpretation of the landscape and the places he describes mirrors his choice of sometimes favouring colonial propaganda “Occidental” over the narration of events.

Creating Cultural Capital: The Education of Jewish Females at the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the City of Tunis, 1882–1914

Abstract Based on rarely viewed images from the fin de siècle, this article will contribute to the burgeoning field of Jewish women in the world of Islam. At the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) School for Girls in the city of Tunis, 1882–1914, after a seven-year course of study, Jewish and non-Jewish girls acquired certification of their academic or vocational skills through a certificate or diploma of couture. Such credentials, according to Bourdieu (1986), constitute “cultural capital.” Furthermore, “cultural capital … is convertible … into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications.” A young woman could create cultural capital and transform it into economic capital through employment. Reading the sources, the influence of the Tunisian Muslim woman on the Jewess becomes apparent. Moreover, cultural capital could afford the Jewish female wage earner increased economic independence and social mobility, as she journeyed on the road to modernity.

The recently introduced Aedes albopictus in Tunisia has the potential to transmit chikungunya, dengue and Zika viruses.

The mosquito Aedes albopictus was detected for the first time in Tunisia in 2018. With its establishment in the capital city of Tunis, local health authorities fear the introduction of new human arboviral diseases, like what happened in Europe with unexpected local cases of chikungunya, dengue and Zika. Even though this mosquito is competent to transmit the arboviruses mentioned above, the transmission level will vary depending on the couple, mosquito population and virus genotype. Here, we assessed the vector competence of Ae. albopictus Tunisia by experimental infections with chikungunya (CHIKV), dengue (DENV), and Zika (ZIKV) viruses. We found that Ae. albopictus Tunisia was highly competent for CHIKV (transmission efficiency of 25% at 21 post-infection) and to a lesser extent, for ZIKV (8.7%) and DENV (8.3%). Virus was detected in mosquito saliva at day 3 (CHIKV), day 10 (ZIKV) and day 21 (DENV) post-infection. These results suggest that the risk of emergence of chikungunya is the highest imposing a more sustained surveillance to limit Ae. albopictus populations in densely populated urban dwellings and at the entry points of travelers returning from CHIKV-endemic regions.

Commercial relations between the Hafsids and Christian powers under the reign of al-Mustansir

ABSTRACT The crusade of 1270 should not undermine the importance and the significant development of trade relations with Christian powers during the reign of al-Mustansir. Tunis had already, since the twelfth century, a tradition of trade with Italian city-states such as Genoa, Pisa or Venice, but from the middle of the thirteenth century Provencal and Catalan merchants also made of the Hafsid capital one of their most important destinations. Immediately after the end of the crusade, which can be considered – and was probably considered by many – as an anachronistic parenthesis, new peace treaties were signed with the most important Christian powers of the Mediterranean, in order to promote maritime trade. This policy had an obvious economic dimension, and contributed to the development of the city of Tunis and, more generally, of the Hafsid sultanate. But it was also a political choice: by making of Tunis a major hub in Mediterranean trade and one of the most prosperous cities of the Islamic world, the active Hafsid diplomacy reinforced the imperial and caliphal project of al-Mustansir.

High temperature effect on daily all-cause mortality in Tunis 2005-2007.

The relationship between thermal stress and health has been only marginally investigated in North Africa. This study aimed to estimate the short-term effect of heat on total mortality, in the city of Tunis in 2005-2007, using time series analysis. The study period was restricted to the summer season (May-October) and heat effect was assessed using maximum temperature as exposure variable. We estimated the breakpoint above which heat-related mortality begins to increase using a segmented linear regression. A Poisson Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) model was then used to estimate the impact of heat on daily mortality. Models were adjusted for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), trend, calendar month, day of the week, the Ramadan period, and holidays. The estimated breakpoint was 31.5°C (standard deviation: 0.9°C). After adjustment for potential confounders, the daily mortality increased significantly by 2.00% [95% confidence interval: 0.68-3.16] for a 1°C increase in daily maximum temperature above the breakpoint. An increase of 10mg/m3 in NO2 was associated with a significant increase in daily mortality (0.48% [0.08-0.88]). There is an important effect of heat on daily mortality in the city of Tunis. This is the first evaluation of such an association in a North African city with hot and dry summers and a lower middle economy.

Application of the GIS based multi-criteria decision analysis and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) in the flood susceptibility mapping (Tunisia)

Flooding is considered as the most dangerous natural catastrophe in the world. This paper develops a spatial multi-criteria decision production prototype for the evaluation of flooding susceptibility for the city of Tunis. Eight criterions were considered in order to identify and assess the spatial distribution of hazardous zones and were integrated in the Geographical Information System (ArcGIS). The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is a mathematical technique for flood hazard modeling and decision support based on the weight and rank of each flood factor in order to calculate Flood Hazard Index (FHI) to generate a flood susceptibility map. This was classified from very low to very high classes flood potential. Five classes are observed: 2.85% (very low), 7.5% (low), 17.95% (moderate), 20.63% (high), and 51.06% (very high). FHI was coupled with a sensitivity analysis to derive the Flood Hazard Index with sensitivity (FHIS). This index evaluates the effect of each criteria which allows for better assessment of the role of each parameter in flood susceptibility. The results of this study provide a basis to limit the impacts of flood and protect urban zone against inundation.

Comparing Road User Charging Acceptability in the City of Tunis and Damascus

Worldwide, multiple studies have been trying to reduce traffic issues without physically changing the road network, this is when the congestion fees strategy has been considered as a favorable solution for the urban traffic issues. A fundamental condition that needs to be checked before the implementation of the road-pricing scheme is the acceptability of both the political and the public parties. The acceptability is so variable and depends on many features and differs from one individual to another, thus, a survey with a set of variant questions might help to understand the expectations and the worries of the citizens and aim to improve them for better effectiveness of the road-pricing project. This report aims, through analyzing the responses of a distributed survey, to evaluate the acceptability of the citizens of Tunis, Tunisia and Damascus, Syria in order to draw a comparison between the two cities. Moreover, it assesses the degree of acceptability and the variable expectations of the implementation of the congestion fees of the two societies.

Mapping of Sewer Lines Using GPR: A Case Study in Tunisia

Many infrastructure enhancement projects require underground utility mapping before starting any excavation processes, especially in urban areas. In fact, mapping of an area provides a general overview of the infrastructure above and underground. This mapping can be done by Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), which is commonly used as a Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) technique that allows, among others, the detection and localization of buried utilities without any damage to the surface. This paper presents the results of mapping sewer lines in an urban region of the city of Tunis, Tunisia, using GPR. In this study a ground-coupled GPR system with a frequency of 400MHz was used to detect and locate the sewer lines in the study area. In order to reduce the amount of collected data over the large study area, some subareas were selected where GPR testing was conducted and data were analyzed. Then, sewer lines were interpolated over the whole area using the GPR results and the locations of manholes visible from the surface. It was shown that using this technique mapping of the pipes in the entire area can be achieved. All data presented in this study were collected by the Office of Topography and Cadastre (OTC) in Tunisia.

Using methane biological oxidation in soil as a tool to finance closure of dumpsites across the Mediterranean Basin

The main objective of the study is to propose a methodology to estimate the potential carbon credit that could be obtained by Mediterranean countries to finance the placement of soil caps on their dumpsites, through carbon offset credits that take advantage of methane emission reduction associated with methane oxidation in soil caps. This study consisted of using a numerical model that combines water balance with gas transport and oxidation to simulate methane emission and oxidation through simulated soil caps for dumps located in the Mediterranean Basin. Seventeen locations were selected to capture the variability of microclimatic conditions throughout the region. For each location, several simulations were performed using different methane loading into the bottom of each soil cap (2–200 g/m2/day). As expected, results of these simulations show that methane loading and climatic conditions influence methane oxidation. The modeling results were then used to develop expressions to estimate methane oxidation for a 1-m-thick soil cap under climatic conditions at any location in the Mediterranean region. A bio-climatic index was then used to generalize the estimation of methane oxidation for the proposed 1-m-thick soil caps. Finally, the methane oxidation correlation to estimate the carbon credit for a 4-ha municipal solid waste dump assumed to be located near the city of Tunis, Tunisia. The placement of 1-m-thick soil cap on the assumed dump can generate an $80,000 carbon credit during the first year of placement. The estimated carbon credit decreases to $40,000 after 46 years of cap placement. These potential numbers are very encouraging in terms of motivating developing countries to close their waste dumps using soil caps.

Tunisian Women’s Reflections upon Solidarity: Yesterday and Today

This study compares the literary and historical perspectives on solidarity among Tunisian women that developed in the 1980s with those that emerged after the 2011 revolution. Evelyne Accad’s autobiographical account Blessures des Mots: Journal de Tunisie (1993) and Neila Jrad’s historical essay Memoire de l’oubli: Reflexion critique sur les experiences feministes des annees quatre-vingt (1996) illustrate the sociopolitical climate of the earliest period. Azza Filali’s novel Les Intranquilles (2014), portraying the city of Tunis in the aftermath of the January 14, 2011 revolution, will be interpreted in conjunction with the works of sociopolitical feminist critics in order to give an overview of the manifold tensions and conflicting belief systems that characterize the conditions of women living in post-revolution Tunisia. Both Accad and Filali emphasize the importance of reconstructing a forgotten link with the inner self while simultaneously establishing new personal and social practices. It is suggested that self-disclosure and meaningful communication should complement personal reflection and examination. This process entails a reclaiming of the original sense of communication, intended here as communion, commonality, and the ability to share and to accomplish together. At the core of both works lies an urgent call to women to create a new language in order to build confidence and to establish meaningful, supportive relationships and to develop more nurturing and secure social structures. These new forms of solidarity initiated by women will ultimately serve to defy oppressive societal conformity and inertia, reconfigure interpersonal relationships, and reinforce female solidarity.

Performance evaluation of a solar ejector-vapour compression cycle for cooling application

This study deals with the performance of the ejector-vapour compression cycle assisted by solar. The effect of operating conditions on the combined cycle performance is examined. Also, a comparison of the system performance with environment friendly refrigerants (R134a, R600, R123, R141b, R142b, R152a, R290, and R245fa) is made. This performance is calculated using an empirical correlation. Thermodynamic properties of functioning fluids are obtained with package REFPROP 8. Using the typical meteorological year file containing the weather data of the city of Tunis, the system performance is computed for three collector types. The theoretical results show that the R290 offers the highest coefficient of performance, COP=3.75, for generator temperature TB = 78°C, condenser temperature Tc = 30°C and the intercooler temperature Te = 15°C.

Mining spatiotemporal association rules from spatiotemporal databases between two different fixed dates

Mining frequent itemsets from large spatiotemporal databases is a hard task due to the existence of hidden spatiotemporal relationships. The aim of our proposal is to look for spatiotemporal association rules that relate properties of reference objects like large towns with properties of other spatial task-relevant objects. The extracted patterns are different relationships relating the spatial objects during time periods. We propose a four-step approach; the core step is to extract the spatiotemporal relationships. The second and third steps are devoted respectively to frequent spatiotemporal itemsets generation and spatiotemporal association rules extraction. The fourth step is the refinement of the extracted rules. To prove the applicability of our method, we conduct experimentation on a spatiotemporal database describing the city of Tunis in the dates 1987 and 2001. On the basis of our proposed measures namely the spatial closeness relevance and the time subsequence, only interesting spatiotemporal association rules are retained.

An inventory of buildings in the city of Tunis and an assessment of their vulnerability

Tunis is a densely populated city. Its building stock was constructed without any seismic design code and mostly over soft soils. These facts make a seismic risk assessment of the city necessary. To prepare a large-scale vulnerability assessment of the buildings of Tunis, the following methodology was employed: (1) a collection of data based on a rapid visual screening procedure was gathered using an inventory form. These data were composed of files and information placed at the disposal of the authors by the municipality of Tunis. The data also contained information gathered by surveys carried out by engineering departments and information gathered from building owners. (2) A classification of building typologies was carried out considering construction material, structural system, age, height, function and state of maintenance. A measure of seismic vulnerability was assigned to each typology considering the first two parameters. (3) A large-scale vulnerability assessment using two methods was conducted for buildings for which few data were available. Vulnerability methods inspired by the EMS98 concepts and the Italian GNDT concepts were modified and applied to pilot-scale buildings located in the downtown zone (Habib Bourguiba Avenue) and in the old zone (Medina). The data analysis, through the application of the two methods, suggests that the vulnerability of buildings surveyed in Tunis is significant and risk mitigation efforts are necessary.