City Of Lebanon Research Articles

Hormones residues in bovine animals: Sampling, analysis and health risk assessment

The use of hormones for breeding animal livestock has been banned since 1981 under the Council Directive 81/602/EC. So far, each country should monitor the use of anabolic hormones in animal production to protect the consumer's health against these unwanted residues. This paper presents the research results on steroid and non-steroid hormones residues carried out in Lebanon from 2018 to 2020. Using a newly developed and validated LC-MS/MS method, the detection and the quantification of hormones in bovine matrices were done. The targeted matrices were muscle, liver, kidney, and bile. A total of two-hundred and forty-seven samples were collected from different slaughterhouses located in six different cities in Lebanon. Interestingly, only four hormones were found: testosterone, progesterone, epitestosterone, and 6 propyl 2thiouracil. Based on the obtained data, the estimated daily intake, hazard quotient, and hazard index were calculated to evaluate an exposure assessment.

Redesigning Informal Beirut: Shaping the Sustainable Transformation Strategies

Lebanon is distinguished by its strategic geographical location among the Arab countries. Beirut, as the capital city and the major commercial and cultural centre of the country, is a point of interest for migrants. The region has witnessed many changes since the end of World War II, which have resulted in internal and external conflicts, migrations, the centralization of the country’s economy, etc. Furthermore, the city has witnessed many periods of urbanization, destruction, reconstruction, and regeneration, which has contributed to the complex nature of the city’s population and a blurring of the boundaries between settlements which are quite different in their natures. As a result, Beirut has become a home to mixed communities and societies of different origins and natures. The extensive inflow of migrants combined with economic crises has contributed to the appearance of informal settlements. They are located in different areas of the city and its surroundings, known as Greater Beirut. These settlements face various challenges, including spatial organization, socioeconomic standing, and environmental concerns. The current situation in Lebanon (resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic combined with the 4th of August 2020 blast in the port of Beirut) makes these challenges even more appalling. Some of the key issues discussed in this article are associated with the origin, current state, and prospects for improving the urban quality of these informal settlements considering their unplanned development and underused potentials. The article includes an inventory and speculates about the best possible strategies derived from three local interventions which are based on published reports. These examples represent rehabilitation and reconstruction activities in different cities in Lebanon. They can be applied to the specific situation of Beirut, given the variety of possible contexts there. The authors’ initial intention is to deal with the possible scope of the physical improvement in these settlements which will lead to socio-economic and environmental development and will also include possible ways of reinventing Beirut’s urban structure.

Downscaled night air temperatures between 2030 and 2070: The case of cities with a complex- and heterogeneous-topography

Global and regional climate models tend to underestimate temperatures over urban areas. This limitation is exacerbated in complex-topography regions, where coarse spatial resolutions of climate models fail to detect large apparent change in cities' microclimates. In this study, a night air temperature downscaling approach was proposed in cities with heterogeneous- and complex-topography. It was developed based on six ground-based national weather station datasets along the 1-km remote-sensing-based MODIS land surface temperature (LST) data, between 2000 and 2020. An ordinary least square (OLS) statistical test was applied, including the 1-km MODIS normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the enhanced vegetation index (EVI), evapotranspiration (ET) and the digital elevation model (DEM) datasets as independent variables. Based on the generated regression relationship and a five-year pixel-based trend analysis, the 25-km NASA NEX-GDDP datasets were downscaled into 1-km spatial resolution night air temperatures between 2030 and 2072 and under two scenarios (i.e. RCP 4.5 and 8.5), averaged from 21 CMIP5 models. Validations were carried out showing good results with an RMSE of 0.49 °C, an AME of 0.42 °C and an R-squared value of 89.5%.Further assessment was made over the largest cities in Lebanon, namely Beirut, Tripoli, Zahle and Baalbeck. Main results showed that, on average, urban night air temperatures under the intermediate RCP 4.5 scenario are expected to increase by 0.12 °C or 0.61% in 2030, 0.36 °C or 1.82% in 2050 and 0.6 °C or 3.07% in 2070. Under the worst-case climate change RCP 8.5 scenario, the average increase would be an overwhelming 7.41 °C or 38.4% by 2070. City and policy makers are invited to implement the proposed straightforward and validated downscaling approach and to use the findings for a more responsive urban planning and design to the particular environemntal and geographic conditions; this isespecially required in cities and agglomorations dominated by complex- and heterogeneous-topographic characteristics.

Impact of Visual Pollution at the Entrances of Coastal Cities in Lebanon

Visual pollution is a term given to unattractive visible elements such as non-thought-out buildings, unregulated architecture, street furniture, and random billboards. All these unattractive components have an effect on human eyes. The paper focuses on shedding light on the impact of visual pollution at the entrances of coastal cities in Lebanon to build a knowledge base for such pollution problem. Photographs were taken of the main entrances of Tyr, Saida, Beirut Byblos, and Tripoli through a camera installed on a car. These entrances were located using maps from Google, the municipality and other sources. The most important findings of this study were that cities’ entrances have been visually polluted in several ways especially with facades of buildings, advertising materials, lack of aesthetic elements, and lack of street furniture. The study recommended that municipalities should carry out several actions in order to improve the visual and aesthetic aspects of the coastal cities’ entrances. Creation of street furniture, organization of advertising boards, imposing of legislation and laws to regulate aesthetic aspects of building facades as well as promoting aesthetic education among the local community could help in mitigating the problems.

New Water for Water Dispute Resolution

Water scarcity often leads to water disputes. New water supplies—such as bulk water imports, desalination, cloud seeding, or increased stream flows from improved forest management—can mitigate water scarcity and thus help avoid water disputes. However, new water supplies can also aggravate water disputes if not developed in concert with legal reforms. This Article evaluates the role of new water in two cases of water disputes in arid regions and proposes legal reforms to promote new water as a means of water dispute resolution. The first case is the adjudication of water rights in the Gila River basin in Arizona. Improved forestry management could increase water supplies and help resolve this decades-old dispute, but Arizona law should reconsider how property rights are assigned to such increased supplies and what legal mechanisms could encourage investment in forestry management. The second case involved disputes over water resources in refugee host communities in Lebanon and Jordan. The influx of Syrian refugees into cities in Lebanon and Jordan can give rise to water disputes. Laws in the countries can be reformed to facilitate water augmentation and thereby provide increased supplies to refugee host communities.

Antibiotic knowledge and self-medication practices in a developing country: A cross-sectional study.

Self-medication is identified by the World Health Organization as a major factor leading to antibiotics overuse, misuse and resistance. This study's objectives were to evaluate the knowledge and self-medication with antibiotics in a sample of the population of Lebanon. This study surveyed a sample of adults (over 18 years of age) residing in 2 major cities in Lebanon about their knowledge and self-medication with antibiotics. Health care professionals were excluded from the study. Four hundred questionnaires were completed. Of the responders, 72% were between 18 and 45 years of age with an overall 86% having completed at least high school. For their knowledge about antibiotics, 61% thought that antibiotics should be taken for common cold and 83% knew that misuse of antibiotics could result in microbial resistance. Self-medication significantly correlated with a lower educational level (P = .036). Those with lower knowledge about antibiotics stopped antibiotics at the inappropriate time (P = .002). Socioeconomic status, gender and age did not correlate with self-medication. Self-medication was associated with a person's educational level and knowledge of antibiotics. Awareness campaigns and enforcing medication dispensing laws are needed in to avoid self-medication with antibiotics.

Mapping Urban Transitions in the Greater Beirut Area Using Different Space Platforms

A particular challenge for undertaking urbanization mapping of Beirut is the absence of a unified understanding of the city. Migration, informal settlements, a lack of urban planning, political corruption, as well as internal conflict have made this task even harder. The population in Lebanon is unevenly distributed among regions, where one third of the population resides in the Greater Beirut Area (GBA), whereas it occupies only 233 km2 (2% of Lebanon’s total area). The Greater Beirut Area is subject to pressures arising from population growth and economic expansion. This study aims to follow the evolution of urbanization from 1963 till 2005 by processing and interpreting topographical maps and satellite images acquired by different space platforms. Satellite imagery change analysis shows that average annual urban growth surpassed 1.8 km2∙yr−1. Actually, a variety of factors triggers urban growth in the GBA (i.e., transportation, public policies, economic activities and environmental variables). The logistic regression method has been applied to model future urban growth in the region of Greater Beirut. Consequently, an urban growth scenario map has been generated. To validate our results, we compared an urban map derived from RapidEye satellite acquired in 2010 to our model’s outcome of the same year. The output shows a satisfactory rate of success (~61%). This research aims to provide policy makers and urban planners in Lebanon an essential decision tool to support upcoming urban planning in this study area or in others major cities in Lebanon.

The Social and Political Identities of the Shi'i Community in Lebanon

Since the early days of the Shi'i presence in Lebanon, the Shi'i community has been considered the most marginalized and underprivileged community. This had been the case of the Shi'ites during the Mamluk period, the Ottoman period, the French mandate period, and again during the post-independence period. This article addresses the Shi'ite presence in Lebanon until the eve of Lebanese Civil War (1975). The article will explore the various aspects of socio-political identities of the Shi'ites and how that changed and developed during the Ottoman period, the French mandate, and the independence period by elaborating on the main actors and processes/phases that shaped this change. It has been argued that the marginalization and the neglect policies that were applied against the Shi'ites opened the wide doors for the Shi'i community to migrate to the urban cities in Lebanon (mainly Beirut) starting from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and this had also been expanded to the rest of the world (mainly America and West Africa). This migration played a key role in developing their contemporary social and political identities in which Musa al-Sadr and his movement played an important part.

The Relationship between Teachers’ Knowledge and Beliefs about Science and Inquiry and Their Classroom Practices

The purpose of this study was to investigate relationships between teachers' attitudes toward science, knowledge and beliefs about inquiry, and science classroom teaching practices. Specifically, the study addressed three questions: What are teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about inquiry? What are teachers’ teaching related classroom practices? Do teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about inquiry relate to their science classroom practices? The sample consisted of 34 teachers drawn randomly from schools in the city of Lebanon. To answer the first question, teachers responded to two questionnaires: Views of Science Inquiry which gauged teachers’ views about science and how science is conducted and Attitudes and Beliefs about the Nature of and the Teaching of Science which measured teacher's attitudes and beliefs about the nature of and the teaching of science. To answer the second question, classroom observations documented actual teaching practices. Results from the questionnaires and the observation were used to construct individual teacher’s profiles which were used to identify relationships between teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and teaching practices. Results showed that most teachers had restricted views of nature of science and unfavorable beliefs and attitudes about inquiry. Moreover, no consistent relationships between teachers’ beliefs, views of nature of science, and classroom practices were found.

Economic value of cedar relics in Lebanon: An application of contingent valuation method for conservation

The cedar forests in Lebanon give shelter to a rich biodiversity and they constitute important mountainous relic habitats harboring a wide range of endemic, rare and threatened species, and species with economic potential. These forests, once covering the Eastern and Western mountain chains, have been the providers of quality timber for the region in historical times. The ancient practices have left the country with only 12 forest relics distributed on the Mount Lebanon chain. Even though recognized worldwide as flagship species and sites of cultural, religious and historical values, these forests have attracted limited international funds for their conservation. These funds proved not to be sustainable for long-term conservation plans; therefore a system for securing local funds for the protection of cedar forest is needed. In this context, this research study was designed having three main objectives which are firstly to illustrate the differences in the value of cedar forests between citizens and villagers, users and non-users. Secondly to identify the best ways to collect local funds and design other tools (involving for example public participation) needed in setting out a sound strategy for the conservation of the cedar forests. Thirdly to use the findings of this study as a tool to investigate in further studies and to inform and influence decision makers about the importance of a long-term conservation and sustainable use program as well as to consider a strategic approach for its sustainable use. Using an open-ended questionnaire, contingent valuation method is applied to highlight the importance of well informed population, to obtain the Willingness to Pay (WTP) for a scenario to conserve cedar forests in Lebanon; to increase their surface areas; to promote sustainable activities and to explore the degree of importance of their attributes and of the option, bequest and existence values as perceived by the Lebanese population. The WTP is tested by using a regression model relating WTP to all socio-demographic variables. The questionnaires (416) were performed in three main cities in Lebanon and in villages surrounding two nature reserves. The difference in the individual WTP value for users and non-users was approximately US$20 per household for both villagers and city dwellers. The frequency of the zero WTP value was higher for non-users. The results obtained encouraged a national initiative to create a national trust fund and to integrate symbolic fees on the amenity services associated with cedar forests.

Assessment of public vs private MSW management: a case study

Public–private partnerships in urban environmental services have witnessed increased interest in recent years primarily to reform the weak performance of the public sector, reduce cost, improve efficiency, and ensure environmental protection. In this context, successful public–private partnerships require a thorough analysis of opportunities, a deliberate attention to process details, and a continuous examination of services to determine whether they are more effectively performed by the private sector. A comparative assessment of municipal solid waste collection services in the two largest cities in Lebanon where until recently municipal solid waste collection is private in one and public in the other is conducted. While quality of municipal solid waste collection improved, due to private sector participation, the corresponding cost did not, due to monopoly and an inadequate organizational plan defining a proper division of responsibilities between the private and the public sector.

Fertility Levels and Differentials in Beirut During Wartime: An Indirect Estimation Based on Maternity Registers

In this paper, total fertility estimates for Greater Beirut in the mid-eighties and early nineties are presented, and changes in socio-religious differentials of fertility across time are explored. The baseline information was recorded from registration details for all maternities in Beirut and its inner suburbs in 1984 and 1991: age of mother, number of children ever-born, hospital class, and religion of newborn. An indirect method was used to estimate total fertility from the joint distribution of mothers by age and parity, and, using hospital class as a proxy for social class, differentials in fertility were investigated by Poisson regression. The estimates of total fertility for Beirut shifted from 2.60 in 1984 to 2.52 in 1991, and were higher for Muslims than for Christians in the two periods. The regression analysis showed that: (1) the difference between the two religious groups persisted after control for social class, and in fact applied to the lower social class; (2) fertility dropped between the two dates in the lower social class, and more so for Muslims than for Christians. In comparison with other countries of the region, the decline in Beirut was found to be relatively modest. If the trends assessed in this study were to continue, the religious-based fertility differentials would taper off progressively in the capital city of Lebanon.