Introduction: Buruli ulcer, caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, is endemic in more than 30 countries worldwide, with Côte d'Ivoire being among the most affected countries. Methodology: We used seven variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) markers and analyzed 114 samples from 11 Ivorian localities consisting of 33 bacterial strains and 81 clinical samples. Complete data sets at loci 1, 6, 9 and 33 were obtained for 18 of these strains (n = 15) and samples (n = 3) collected in each of the localities. Results: All the strains had allelic profile [3113], corresponding to the previously described Atlantic Africa genotype. Conclusion: Sequencing of PCR products at all loci showed no variation in sequence or repeat number, underlining the genetic monomorphism of M. ulcerans in Côte d'Ivoire.

Mycobacterium ulcerans infections are a public health problem in Céte d'Ivoire. The etiological diagnosis of this disease made by culture remains a big concern due to the slowness and difficulties encountered. This detection by culture of M. ulcerans represents a big interest as it allows obtaining the circulating strains for research. The purpose of this study was to determine on a routine basis in a poorly equipped laboratory, in vitro culture of M. ulcerans from exudates of skin ulcerations and from biopsy of patients with suspected Buruli ulcer. A particular attention was paid to the conditioning of the sample forwarded to the laboratory and inoculation in Lowenstein-Jensen medium supplemented with glycerol. The results of the three methods for the analysis showed 26.7, 57.4 and 17.8% positive rate respectively in the microscopy examination by nested PCR and by culture. In all the analysis, the positive rate from biopsy is higher than that obtained from exudates. The overall contamination rate by invasion of the three tubes of culture by fungi is 15.8 with 14.3 and 19.4% respectively,from exudates and biopsies. All positive samples in Ziehl-Neelsen staining and in culture were also positive by nested PCR. The nested PCR confirmed the positive strains found in culture, which were responsible for skin ulcerations. After culture, only one strain was nPCR negative. This strain was identified as Mycobacterium Gordonae. Our culture conditions showed that M. ulcerans was not the only strain identified and that other strains were present in the culture. We can conclude that the culture of M. ulcerans, in spite of the growth difficulties of the bacterium can be performed in laboratory in developing countries despite the lack of reagent and consumables. The implementation of this culture is the only way to determine sensitivity tests in vitro and in vivo in order to treat patients with Buruli ulcer.

Low-resource languages present unique challenges to (neural) machine translation. We discuss the case of Bambara, a Mande language for which training data is scarce and requires significant amounts of pre-processing. More than the linguistic situation of Bambara itself, the socio-cultural context within which Bambara speakers live poses challenges for automated processing of this language. In this paper, we present the first parallel data set for machine translation of Bambara into and from English and French and the first benchmark results on machine translation to and from Bambara. We discuss challenges in working with low-resource languages and propose strategies to cope with data scarcity in low-resource machine translation (MT).

Resume -Les resultats des travaux de recherche sur la biologie deThinophilus guineensis Coul. et Neg. (Diptera, Dolichopodidae) confirment l'importance de la predation dans le comportement alimentaire de certaines especes de Dolichopodidae comme Medetera fisch, Hydrophorus fallen, Sciapus fallen, Diaphonus meigen, etc. La mortality larvaire de certaines insectes nuisibles des ecosystemes forestiers (moustiques, simulies, scolytes) peut attelndre 83 a 99%. De par leur extraodinairre ubiguite et leur importance biocoenotique, ces especes de Dolichopodidae pourraient bien etre utilisees dans des programmes de contrdle biologique de certaines insectes vecteurs de maladies ou ravageurs de cultures. Abstract-Results of research on biology of Thinophilus guineensis Coul. et Neg. (Diptera, Dolichopodidae) confirm the importance of predaceous feeding behaviour of some other species of Dolichopodidae such as Medeterafisch, Hydrophorus fallen, Sciapus fallen, Diaphorus meigen, etc. Larval mortality of some pests (mosquitoes, blackflies, scolytes, etc.) reach 83 to 99%.These species, because of their extraodinary ubiquity and their biocoenotical importance, could well be used in biological control programmes of vectors of pathogens affecting man and other animals or pests in agroforestry.