Pilot Point Optimization of Mining Boundaries for Lateritic Metal Deposits: Finding the Trade-off Between Dilution and Ore Loss

Natural Resources Research - Geological contacts in lateritic metal deposits (footwall topographies) often delineate the orebody boundaries. Spatial variations seen in such contacts are frequently...     

The chromite deposits associated with ophiolite complexes, Southeastern Desert, Egypt： Petrological and geochemical characteristics and mineralization

1 Introduction The association of massive Fe-Ni-Cu sulfides andchromite is a very unusual feature of podiformchromitites occurring in mantle tectonites of ophioliticcomplexes. It has only been described in theSoutheastern Desert, Egypt, where sulfides a…     

Water availability for the greening of Kuwait

Water resources for agricultural development and landscape enhancement in Kuwait are very scarce; the quality is saline (brackish), and the soil texture is sandy, incapable of holding nutrients and moisture. Most of the rainfall in Kuwait either evaporates due to the high temperatures or percolates through the soil. The rainfall is not sufficient to recharge the underground water supply. A variety of alternative water sources have been studied, including seawater desalination and wastewater treatment. Wastewater treatment proved to be convenient due to the relatively low salinity detected in the treated water. Furthermore, the amount of wastewater is expected to increase as more residential areas are connected to the sewage system as the population increases.

The development of a greenery plan for Kuwait requires intensive water management. This goal can be achieved through manpower training in landscape development, selection of plants tolerant to arid environments, usage of appropriate irrigation and drainage systems, promotion of greenery programs within public and the governmental agencies for their direct participation in urban area beautification, and extension of wastewater treatment techniques.     

浙江花岗岩中斜长石钾交代产生的条纹长石

对研究区内花岗岩类的60个薄片进行了岩相学研究.研究的目的是确定区内岩石中普遍存在的矿物组成及结构类型.     

Air pollution forecasting from sky images with shallow and deep classifiers

Air pollution is one of the most important problems in the new era. Detecting the level of air pollution from an image taken by a camera can be informative for the people who are not aware of exact air pollution level be declared daily by some organizations like municipalities. In this paper, we propose a method to predict the level of the air pollution of a location by taking an image by a camera of a smart phone then processing it. We collected an image dataset from city of Tehran. Afterward, we proposed two methods for estimation of level of air pollution. In the first method, the images are preprocessed and then Gabor transform is used to extract features from the images. At the end, two shallow classification methods are employed to model and predict the level of air pollution. In the second proposed method, a Convolutional Neural Network(CNN) is designed to receive a sky image as an input and result a level of air pollution. Some experiments have been done to evaluate the proposed method. The results show that the proposed 9 method has an acceptable accuracy in detection of the air pollution level. Our deep classifier achieved accuracy about 59.38% which is 10 about 6% higher than traditional combination of feature extraction and classification methods.     

Land use change modeling and the effect of compact city paradigms: integration of GIS-based cellular automata and weights-of-evidence techniques

In recent decades, attaining urban sustainability is the primary goal for urban planners and decision makers. Among various aspects of urban sustainability, environmental protection such as agricultural and forest conservations is very important in tropical countries like Malaysia. In this regard, compact urban development due to high density, rural development containment is known as the most sustainable urban forms. This paper attempts to propose an integrated modeling approach to predict the future land use changes by considering city compactness paradigms. First, the cellular automata (CA) were applied for calculating land use conversion. Next, weights-of-evidence (WoE) which is based on Bayes theory was utilized to calibrate CA model and to support the transitional rule assessment. Several urban-related parameters as well as compact city indicators were utilized to estimate the future land use maps. The results showed how compact development parameters and site characteristics can be combined using the WoE model to predict the probability of land use changes. The modeling approach supports the essential logic of probabilistic methods and indicates that spatial autocorrelation of various land use types and accessibility is the main drivers of urban land use changes.     

A new record and a new ichnospecies of Arachnostega from the Middle Miocene of Egypt

The ichnogenus Arachnostega Bertling, 1992 is recorded for the first time from a bioeroded, coral-rich, Middle Miocene limestone bed in the middle Siwa Escarpment Member (Marmarica Formation) at Siwa Oasis, northern Western Desert of Egypt. These burrowing traces are preserved on the surface of a few internal moulds of bivalves and gastropods. Until now, the ichnogenus Arachnostega included a single ichnospecies, A. gastrochaenae Bertling, 1992. In the material studied herein, two ichnospecies are identified, described, illustrated and compared with other, similar traces. One of these is a new ichnospecies of Arachnostega; this is here named A. siwaensis ichnosp. nov. It is distinguished from A. gastrochaenae in the possession of tunnels that usually branch in a V-pattern; intervals of ramification are longest in the main branch and decrease in second- and third-order branches. Arachnostega traces were produced in a warm, low-energy, shallow-marine (<10?m water depth) environment. Polychaetes are the most likely producers of marine Arachnostega, which are commonly occurred in the same studied bed. This new occurrence is significant in extending the known stratigraphical and geographical ranges of Arachnostega into the Middle Miocene of Egypt.     

Red Sea faulting and salt diapirism as a potential geotechnical hazard in Jazan,southwest Saudi Arabia: inferences from gravity data

Natural Hazards - The main objective of this study is to detect the subsurface extension of salt diapirs and structural deformations in the city of Jazan and its suburbs using gravity data. Salt...     

Kinetics of copper desorption from soils as affected by different organic ligands

Desorption of Cu and low molecular weight dissolved organics are the primary factors that impact fate and transport of Cu in soils. To improve predictions of the toxicity and threat from Cu contaminated soil, it is critical that time-dependent desorption behavior be understood. In this paper, the effect of organic ligands citrate, malate, and succinate on the kinetics of Cu desorption from contaminated soils varying widely in soil characteristics was investigated at 25° C and the soils used were referred to as clay, calcareous and sandy soils. The amount of Cu released by the used organic ligands varied greatly with physicochemical properties of the soils. The rate of Cu release by different extractants was in the order citric > malic > succinic, which was consistent with the stability constants of Cu complexes with these ligands. The modified Freundlich and the Elovich and Parabolic diffusion models were used to describe dsorption of Cu²⁺ from the three studied soils as affected by the organic ligands. All of the models fit the data well with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.83 to 1.00 (P < 0.01). Each Model has a set of assumptions for the different physical and chemical properties of the systems to which they are being applied. The uses of these equations yield different magnitudes for the calculated variable, but the relationships between the soil + organic ligands and their effect (i.e., increase or decrease) on these variables are the same. Such information is critical, since Cu is used in a variety of industrial and manufacturing processes and is one of the most common contaminants found at hazardous waste sites.     

Geology and rare-earth element geochemistry of highly evolved, molybdenite-bearing granitic plutons, Southeastern Desert, Egypt

The field relations, mineralogy, and major and trace elements (including REE analyses of whole-rock samples and minerals) of granites and their associated molybdenite uranium mineralized aplites in Southeastern Desert, Egypt, have been studied. The granites are leucocratic and mostly peraluminous in nature with muscovite increasing at the expense of biotite. The chemical and mineralogical characteristics of the granitic rocks indicate that their melts originated from the LILE-enriched mantle wedge by partial melting and are contaminated by crustal melts, followed by thermogravitational processes. Leucogranites with higher Na2O/K2O ratios from Um Dargag and Um Maiat crystallized under H2O-saturated equilibrium conditions in which the exsolved vapor continuously migrated away. The REE patterns of the granites studied are characterized by LREE enrichments and negative Eu anomalies. In comparison, the potassic aplites and the more sodic leucogranites are depleted in LREE, enriched in HREE and show more remarkable negative Eu anomalies. Allanite and monazite are the most important REE carriers in the granites. These minerals are strongly enriched in LREE, whereas fluorite and xenotime, which are more abundant in the aplites, are enriched in HREE. The average Lu/Ce ratio represents the fractionation trend with respect to HREE. It is 0.71 for radioactive fluorite, and it increases to 1.22 for non-radioactive fluorite. The high REE contents of molybdenite represent re-deposition of the mobilized Mo and REE. Due to the strong control of accessory minerals, the REEs are of limited use in petrogenetic modelling of highly evolved granitic systems.