Mineralogy and physico-chemical properties of Wadi Badaa clays (Cairo-Suez district,Egypt): a prospective resource for the ceramics industry

The Wadi Badaa (WB) Upper Miocene clays, Cairo-Suez district, Egypt, represent materials for the ceramic production. The clay raw materials are composed mainly of smectite and kaolinite with minor quartz, calcite, and rare feldspar. The plasticity indices vary between 24 and 30%, suggesting that these clays are plastic raw materials. IR bands of the investigated clays were observed at 3695, 3619, 1032, 916, 794, 690, 534, 466, and 423 cm^?1 for kaolinite; at 3436, 1635, 916, and 466 cm^?1 for smectite; and at 1179, 1104, 794, 690, and 466 cm^?1 for quartz. The <2 μm particle sizes of samples are relatively abundant in clays (～33%), which is adequate for uses of the ceramic products because of containing fine particle sizes. The studied WB clays contain 7.95 and 12.35% moisture water and interlayer water, respectively, with a maximum drying shrinkage of 7.87% at room temperature; therefore, the WB clays could be used in the ceramic manufacture.     

利用瞬变电磁和多频电磁方法监测地下水位及其对Hawara遗址的影响

利用瞬变电磁（TEM）和地面电磁（GEM）方法,本文研究了埃及Hawara遗址区的地下水对遗址的影响.这个遗址包括Hawara金字塔、北区墓地、以及被称作“迷宫”的南区墓葬场所.现今Hawara遗址已经完全荒废,被耕作区和Bahr Wahba运河包围.地表水和地下水会破坏Hawara金字塔和“迷宫”遗址的地基,现在金字塔入口已被淹没至地面下约6 m深处.本文在耕作区、金字塔以及“迷宫”等三个地区进行了TEM勘察;在“迷宫”地区进行了GEM勘察.综合分析以上两种勘察数据,我们发现,农业灌溉是浸入到地下的水的主要来源;本地区地下水位随着观测点及海拔的不同,在地面以下2~7 m之间变化.     

以哈维氏弧菌(Vibrio harveyi)为重点的鱼类细菌病原的诊断与控制(英文)

作者对鱼类细菌病原的诊断与控制作了较全面的综述。细菌病原诊断技术包括酶联免疫吸附技术（ＥＬＩＳＡ）及蛋白印迹法（Ｗｅｓｔｅｒｎｂｌｏｔｉｎｇ）。细菌病原控制技术包括化学疗剂的应用,有益微生物的应用,营养添加剂,β－葡萄糖苷增强免疫抗病力,及免疫保护作用等。     

Groundwater Chemistry of the Mornag Aquifer System in NE Tunisia

The present paper investigates hydrochemical processes and water quality in the Mornag aquifer in NE Tunisia. Groundwater samples were collected during a field campaign, and were analysed for major and trace elements. The collected waters have a chemical facies rich in Ca²⁺, Na⁺ and Cl^-. Piper diagram shows a progressive increase in chloride ions along with increasing salinity. Saturation indexes calculated by using PHREEQC (USGS) show that the Mornag waters are slightly saturated with respect to carbonates (calcite and dolomite), while undersaturated with respect to gypsum, halite and other evaporitic minerals. The current composition of waters takes place via dissolution of halite and Ca-sulfates, where the increase in calcium is partially balanced by possible calcite precipitation. The relevant recorded pollutant is nitrate, which was likely dispersed from agricultural soils, while heavy metals were generally far below values of pollution thresholds, indicating no influence by mining activity.     

Urban flood hazard mapping using change detection on wetness transformed images

ABSTRACT

The present study demonstrates the use of a new approach for delineating the accurate flood hazard footprint in the urban regions. The methodology involves transformation of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery to a three-dimensional feature space, i.e. brightness, wetness and greenness, then a change detection technique is used to identify the areas affected by the flood. Efficient thresholding of the normalized difference image generated during change detection has shown promising results in identifying the flood extents which include standing water due to flood, sediment-laden water and wetness caused by the flood. Prior to wetness transformations, dark object subtraction has been used in lower wavelengths to avoid errors due to scattering in urban areas. The study shows promising results in eliminating most of the problems associated with urban flooding, such as misclassification due to presence of asphalt, scattering in lower wavelengths and delineating mud surges. The present methodology was tested on the 2010 Memphis flood event and validated on Queensland floods in 2011. The comparative analysis was carried out with the widely-used technique of delineating flood extents using thresholding of near infrared imagery. The comparison demonstrated that the present approach is more robust towards the error of omission in flood mapping. Moreover, the present approach involves less manual effort and is simpler to use.

Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz; Associate editor A. Viglione     

Mathematical expression of discharge capacity of compound open channels using MARS technique

In this paper, analytical methods, artificial neural network (ANN) and multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) techniques were utilised to estimate the discharge capacity of compound open channels (COC). To this end, related datasets were collected from literature. The results showed that the divided channel method with a coefficient of determination (R ²) value of 0.76 and root mean square error (RMSE) value of 0.162 has the best performance, among the various analytical methods tested. The performance of applied soft computing models with R ²=0.97 and RMSE = 0.03 was found to be more accurate than analytical approaches. Comparison of MARS with the ANN model, in terms of developed discrepancy ratio (DDR) index, showed that the accuracy of MARS model was better than that of MLP model. Reviewing the structure of the derived MARS model showed that the longitudinal slope of the channel (S), relative flow depth (H _r ) and relative area (A _r ) have a high impact on modelling and forecasting the discharge capacity of COCs.     

Understanding groundwater chemistry in Mediterranean semi-arid system using multivariate statistics techniques and GIS methods: case of Manouba aquifer (Northeastern Tunisia)

The rapid urbanization and industrialization of the Manouba plain (Northeastern Tunisia), the extensive agricultural expansion and the succession of dry years during recent decades have exerted greatly load on the water needs and lead to groundwater quality degradation. The aim of this study is to evaluate the processes controlling the groundwater mineralization of the shallow aquifer for determining its suitability for drinking and agricultural purposes. For establishing that, we combine several geological, hydrological and hydrochemical data with geostatistical techniques. The samples were collected at 17 sites covering 230 km² of the study area and analyzed for major and trace components. The total dissolved solid (TDS) content ranges from 1372 to 3999 mg/l. The results of Piper diagram indicate that Na⁺/Cl^? and Ca²⁺?>?Na⁺/SO₄ ^2? were the main dominant water types localized in the sloping sides of the watershed and near the saline depression; the suitability for irrigation use was also evaluated. The high concentrations of nitrates and chlorides are indicators of anthropogenic pollution, like the agricultural over application of nitrogen fertilizers and the discharge of domestic and industrial wastewater. Saturation indexes calculated by using PHREEQC (USGS) program show that groundwaters are undersaturated with evaporitic minerals (halite, gypsum) and saturated with carbonates (calcite, aragonite). The use of principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis has shown that two main factors accounting 67.13% of the information of variability within the dataset confirm the existence of dissolution of evaporitic minerals and the mechanisms of nitrate increasing the salinity of the Manouba groundwater.     

Embryonic development of Pelteobagrus fulvidraco （Richardson, 1846）

1 INTRODUCTION Pelteobagrus fulvidraco (Richardson, 1846) or yellow catfish is slender and scaleless with a gently sloping dorsal profile from anterior to posterior. It is generally black-brown to black-yellow on the back, light yellow on the belly, with …