Nature and human impact on Nile Delta coastal sand dunes,Egypt

This paper deals with the types, distribution and origin, of recent sand dunes in the coastal sector extending between El Burullus Lake and the Damietta Nile River branch, Egypt. Sand samples were studied for grain size distribution and mineralogical composition. It has been found that most of the dunes in the study area have been subjected to deterioration and removal due to the construction of summer resort buildings and making the international coastal highway. The remnant constitutes a belt of foredunes on the shore of Baltium extending westward to Burg El Burullus village.The dunes origin is interpreted as the result of coastal drifting and the subsequent transport of the former Sebennitic Nile branch sediments eastward by the predominant longshore current and by Aeolian processes. The blown sand grains accumulated to form a belt of coastal sand dunes with longitudinal and crescentic forms. Urbanization of the coast has severely altered the landscape. Gaps and damaged dunes are included within the dune belt. The dunes natural cycle of advance and retreat is upset and attains its destruction phase. The consequences of its destruction are numerous and lead to hazardous impacts on the shoreline, coastal building and the nearby international highway.     

Genetic responses to metal contamination in two clams: Ruditapes decussatus and Ruditapes philippinarum

Coastal ecosystems are subjected to a wide variety of disturbances, including those due to xenobiotics of agricultural and industrial origin. These pollutants as heavy metals can modify the genetic diversity of populations by favouring or counter-selecting certain alleles or genotypes by differential mortality. In the present study, two genetic markers (phosphoglucomutase and glucosephosphate isomerase) and a protein marker (metallothionein) were monitored in order to determine the impact of heavy metals in different clam populations. Analysis of the genetic structure of the clam populations examined reveals that those inhabiting environments contaminated by heavy metals exhibit a higher allelic diversity and possess alleles at PGM loci that could be selected by the presence of heavy metals. The evaluation of metallothionein levels using a specific polyclonal antibody developed in the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) demonstrated the existence of a relationship between metallothionein concentrations and the level of metal pollution for clam populations sampled from different sites. An inter-specific difference was also detected between Ruditapes decussatus and Ruditapes philippinarum living in sympatry at the same site, suggesting a differential response of these two species upon exposure to an identical heavy metal concentration.     

Geospatial cryptography: enabling researchers to access private,spatially referenced,human subjects data for cancer control and prevention

Journal of Geographical Systems - As the volume, accuracy and precision of digital geographic information have increased, concerns regarding individual privacy and confidentiality have come to the...     

Nonstationary frequency analysis of extreme daily precipitation amounts in Southeastern Canada using a peaks-over-threshold approach

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - In this paper, a statistical inference of Southeastern Canada extreme daily precipitation amounts is proposed using a classical nonstationary...     

Development tendencies and future prospects of recreation geography in Russia

It is pointed out that the conceptual basis for the shaping of Soviet recreation geography was provided by the logical-graphical model of a territorial recreation system as developed in the early 1970s. We emphasize that the fundamentally novel concepts of the functioning and development of the territorial recreation system built upon the adaptive and synergic research approaches began emerging and evolving in the Soviet Union during the 1980s. At a later time, this greatly enhanced the understanding of the mechanisms of market competition in the sphere of tourism business evolving in the country. The findings obtained in this study are in good agreement with internationally recognized achievements of other countries in the realm of tourism geography, more specifically in the study of cross-cultural interactions in terms of the home–destination and guest–host models. It is confirmed that the increasing current importance of economic synergy is attendant by a growth of research interest in the ethnopsychological aspects of tourism. A rationale is given to the sustainability criteria of recreation-geographical processes from the perspective of the problems of preserving the uniqueness of tourist destinations and ensuring the progressive dynamics of their main components: natural environment, population, economy, culture, and self-management bodies.     

Micromechanical aspects of the shear strength of wet granular soils

This paper presents a micromechanical model for the analysis of wet granular soils at low saturation (below 30%). The discrete element method is employed to model the solid particles. The capillary water is assumed to be in a pendular state and thus exists in the form of liquid bridges at the particle‐to‐particle contacts. The resulting inter‐particle adhesion is accounted for using the toroidal approximation of the bridge. Hydraulic hysteresis is accounted for based on the possible mechanism of the formation and breakage of the liquid bridges during wetting and drying phases. Shear test computational simulations were conducted at different water contents under relatively low net normal stresses. The results of these simulations suggest that capillary‐induced attractive forces and hydraulic hysteresis play an important role in affecting the shear strength of the soil. These attractive forces produce a tensile stress that contributes to the apparent cohesion of the soil and increases its stiffness. During a drying phase, capillary‐induced tensile stresses, and hence shear strength, tend to be larger than those during a wetting phase. The proposed model appears to capture the macroscopic response of wet granular materials and revealed a number of salient micromechanical mechanisms and response patterns consistent with theoretical considerations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Production optimization and quality assessment of biodiesel from waste vegetable oil

Biodiesel production is worthy of continued study and optimization of production procedures because of its environmentally beneficial attributes and its renewable nature. In Egypt, millions L. of oil used for frying foods are discarded each year into sewage systems. Thus, it adds to the cost of treating effluent or pollutes waterways. This study is intended to consider aspects related to the feasibility of the production of biodiesel from waste/recycled oils in an attempt to help reduce the cost of biodiesel and reduce waste and pollution coming from waste oils. The variables affecting the yield and characteristics of the biodiesel produced from used frying oil were studied, the achieved results were analyzed and a set of recommendations was proposed. From the obtained results, the best yield percentage was obtained using a methanol/oil molar ratio of 6:1, potassium hydroxide as catalyst (1%) and 65 °C temperature for one hour. The yield percentage obtained from waste vegetable oil was comparable to that obtained from neat vegetable oil which reached 96.15% under optimum conditions. From the results it was clear that the produced biodiesel fuel, whether from neat vegetable oil or waste vegetable oil, was within the recommended standards of biodiesel fuel.     

Cross-Wavelet Analysis: a Tool for Detection of Relationships between Paleoclimate Proxy Records

Cross-wavelet transform (XWT) is proposed as a data analysis technique for geological time-series. XWT permits the detection of cross-magnitude, phase differences (= lag time), nonstationarity, and coherency between signals from different paleoclimate records that may exhibit large stratigraphic uncertainties and noise levels. The approach presented herein utilizes a continuous XWT technique with Morlet wavelet as the mother function, allows for variable scaling factors for time and scale sampling, and the automatic extraction of the most significant periodic signals. XWT and cross-spectral analysis is applied on computer generated time-series as well as two independently sampled proxy records (CO₂ content approximated from plant cuticles and paleotemperature derived from δ ¹⁸O from marine fossil carbonate) of the last 290 Ma. The influence of nonstationarities in the paleoclimate records that are introduced by stratigraphic uncertainties were a particular focus of this study. The XWT outputs of the computer-models indicate that a potential causal relationship can be distorted if different geological time-scale and/or large stratigraphic uncertainties have been used. XWT detect strong cross-amplitudes (∼200 ppm ‰) between the CO₂ and δ ¹⁸O record in the 20–50 Myr waveband, however, fluctuating phase differences prevent a statistical conclusion on causal relationship at this waveband.     

Microfacies analysis and cyclostratigraphy of the upper cretaceous- lower paleogene succession of Bir Dakhl section,north eastern desert,Egypt

The Bir Dakhl section which is located in the southern Galala plateau, north eastern desert was sampled for microfacies analysis of the upper Cretaceous–lower Paleogene succession. Microfacies analysis led to the recognition of eight mixed clastic-carbonate facies types (black shale lithofacies MF-1, pure shale lithofacies MF-2, sandy shale lithofacies MF-3, marly shale lithofacies MF-4, mudstone microfacies MF-5, foraminiferal wackestone microfacies MF-6, bioclastic wackestone microfacies MF-7, and bioclastic packstone microfacies MF-8) of the studied interval. These microfacies can be grouped into three depositional environments: inner, middle and outer ramp. The interpreted depositional environments have been suggested to range from neritic to middle bathyal (~ 700 m). Based on cyclostratigraphy, five deepening upward cycles and three shallowing upward cycles have been differentiated in Bir Dakhl section.     

A pan-sharpening method based on NSCT and formulated as compressive sensing problem

In this paper, a pan-sharpening method, using non-subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) and the theory of compressive sensing (CS), is proposed. The NSCT is used for sparse image representation to perform a multiscale and directional decomposition of source images in order to express their detail and express the sparsity of their high frequency. The CS is used to merge the multispectral (MS) and panchromatic (pan) images from partial random measurements. Two different fusion rules are then applied. The final pan-sharpened image is obtained by inverse NSCT. Experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed method, compared with pan sharpening based on standard NSCT, in terms of visual quality and objective assessment. Moreover, the proposed technique is very effective when the storage and transmission bandwidth are limited.