Eastern Libya Research Articles

Incidence of mandibular fractures in eastern Libya

The objective of this retrospective study is to evaluate the incidence of mandibular fractures in the eastern part of Libya and to present our experience in treating this type of facial fracture. We analyzed factors such as the incidence of age, sex, time distribution, cause and site of the fracture and the associated injuries in 493 patients presenting a total of 666 mandibular fractures. These patients were treated at Al-Jala Trauma Hospital, Benghazi-Libya between 2000 and 2006. The results were obtained from 432 males and 61 females, for which the ages ranged from 8 months to 72 years. The maximum number of the patients was recorded in 2004, and the busiest month was May. The most common cause of fracture was road traffic accidents and the most common site was the parasymphysis. Among those treated with closed reduction were 241 patients, whereas 201 patients were treated with open reduction. In conclusion, we found that the results were similar to most studies from developing countries and were in contrast to other studies. This may be due factors such as geography, socioeconomic trends, religion, road traffic legislation and seasons, which differ from one country to another. The period during which there was an embargo in Libya also appears to have affected the results.

Mapping of a major paleodrainage system in eastern Libya using orbital imaging radar: The Kufrah River

Over the last few decades, remote sensing has revealed buried river channels in a number of regions worldwide, in many cases providing evidence of dramatic paleoenvironmental changes over Cenozoic time scales. Using orbital radar satellite imagery, we mapped a major paleodrainage system in eastern Libya, that could have linked the Kufrah Basin to the Mediterranean coast through the Sirt Basin, possibly as far back as the middle Miocene. Synthetic Aperture Radar images from the PALSAR sensor clearly reveal a 900 km-long river system, which starts with three main tributaries (north-eastern Tibesti, northern Uweinat and western Gilf Kebir/Abu Ras) that connect in the Kufrah oasis region. The river system then flows north through the Jebel Dalmah, and forms a large alluvial fan in the Sarir Dalmah. The sand dunes of the Calanscio Sand Sea prevent deep orbital radar penetration and preclude detailed reconstruction of any possible connection to the Mediterranean Sea, but a 300 km-long link to the Gulf of Sirt through the Wadi Sahabi paleochannel is likely. If this connection is confirmed, and its Miocene antiquity is established, then the Kufrah River, comparable in length to the Egyptian Nile, will have important implications for the understanding of the past environments and climates of northern Africa from the middle Miocene to the Holocene.

Palaeohydrology of the Fazzan Basin and surrounding regions: The last 7 million years

We have integrated information on topography, geology and geomorphology with the results of targeted fieldwork in order to develop a chronology for the development of Lake Megafazzan, a giant lake that has periodically existed in the Fazzan Basin since the late Miocene. The development of the basin can be best understood by considering the main geological and geomorphological events that occurred thought Libya during this period and thus an overview of the palaeohydrology of all Libya is also presented. The origin of the Fazzan Basin appears to lie in the Late Miocene. At this time Libya was dominated by two large rivers systems that flowed into the Mediterranean Sea, the Sahabi River draining central and eastern Libya and the Wadi Nashu River draining much of western Libya. As the Miocene progressed the region become increasingly affected by volcanic activity on its northern and eastern margin that appears to have blocked the River Nashu in Late Miocene or early Messinian times forming a sizeable closed basin in the Fazzan within which proto-Lake Megafazzan would have developed during humid periods. The fall in base level associated with the Messinian desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea promoted down-cutting and extension of river systems throughout much of Libya. To the south of the proto Fazzan Basin the Sahabi River tributary know as Wadi Barjuj appears to have expanded its headwaters westwards. The channel now terminates at Al Haruj al Aswad. We interpret this as a suggestion that Wadi Barjuj was blocked by the progressive development of Al Haruj al Aswad. K/Ar dating of lava flows suggests that this occurred between 4 and 2 Ma. This event would have increased the size of the closed basin in the Fazzan by about half, producing a catchment close to its current size (~ 350,000 km 2). The Fazzan Basin contains a wealth of Pleistocene to recent palaeolake sediment outcrops and shorelines. Dating of these features demonstrates evidence of lacustrine conditions during numerous interglacials spanning a period greater than 420 ka. The middle to late Pleistocene interglacials were humid enough to produce a giant lake of about 135,000 km 2 that we have called Lake Megafazzan. Later lake phases were smaller, the interglacials less humid, developing lakes of a few thousand square kilometres. In parallel with these palaeohydrological developments in the Fazzan Basin, change was occurring in other parts of Libya. The Lower Pliocene sea level rise caused sediments to infill much of the Messinian channel system. As this was occurring, subsidence in the Al Kufrah Basin caused expansion of the Al Kufrah River system at the expense of the River Sahabi. By the Pleistocene, the Al Kufrah River dominated the palaeohydrology of eastern Libya and had developed a very large inland delta in its northern reaches that exhibited a complex distributary channel network which at times fed substantial lakes in the Sirt Basin. At this time Libya was a veritable lake district during humid periods with about 10% of the country underwater.

The Changing Libyan Economy: Causes and Consequences

Once the United Nations suspended its sanctions regime in April 1999, Libya began to introduce socioeconomic reforms aimed at liberalizing its economy. Greeted with some skepticism, the liberalization movement gained momentum as Libya first resolved the Lockerbie dispute and then renounced unconventional weapons. Considerable progress was made in the ensuing years; however it was notably uneven, with reform to the oil and gas industry outstripping initiatives in other economic sectors. Liberalization efforts continue but they are increasingly threatened by resistance to political reform. Following more than three decades of socialist experimentation and two earlier attempts at reform, Libya at the turn of the century began to implement sweeping changes to its stagnant command economy. The promise of economic liberalization generated considerable enthusiasm for the hydrocarbon sector where a new round of exploration and production sharing agreements, modified to provide bidders a more transparent and competitive milieu, generated substantial new investment. In other economic sectors, the checkered progress to date in implementing reforms suggests that progress will be slower and more difficult. Moreover, ongoing resistance to political reform appears to pose real limits to the broader implementation of the new economic strategy. POLICY REVOLUTION In 1959, American prospectors announced the discovery of petroleum deposits in commercially viable quantities in eastern Libya. The following decade witnessed dramatic increases in both production and revenues, but not in the posted price of oil, the basis of taxable income for producing countries. Like most oil-producing states, Libya considered the posted price to be undervalued and unjust. Nevertheless, it accepted a volume-oriented as opposed to a price-oriented policy because it feared that a confrontation with the oil companies over posted price levels might slow industry development. From the beginning, revenues from petroleum exports increased rapidly, growing more than fifteen-fold from $40 million in 1962 to $625 million in 1967. Within eight years of its first shipment, Libya was the world's fourth largest exporter of crude oil, a rate of expansion previously unknown anywhere in the industry's history. In the process, Libya moved from a stagnant to an exploding economy, from a capital-deficit state to a capital-surplus state, from an aid recipient to an aid extender. By the time King Idris I was overthrown in 1969, Libyan oil exports exceeded 3 million barrels per day (bpd); however, the revenue received per barrel of oil remained one of the lowest in the world.1 Immediately after the Free Unionist Officers seized power on September 1, 1969, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), headed by Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, began to implement a socioeconomic and political revolution in Libya. In early 1970, the RCC opened negotiations with the oil companies working in Libya, eventually gaining a majority control in all of them through modified participation agreements or outright nationalization. Thereafter, it pursued a two-pronged policy of controlled production to conserve reserves and price escalation to maximize revenues. The RCC was notably aggressive in its oil-pricing policy, even when higher prices were not necessarily in its best interests, because it viewed petroleum as its most effective political weapon.2 With the oil companies, the RCC pursued a strategy of confrontation to call the bluff of the international oil cartels and the Western consuming nations. In so doing, it was successful in wrestling from them additional taxes and revenues. Unfortunately, the RCC misinterpreted the political lessons to be drawn from its confrontation with the oil industry to the detriment of economic policy in other areas. Pleased with the results of its confrontational approach, it applied the same management style elsewhere only to find that none of the nation's other resources were amenable to such aggressive policies. …

Cancer incidence in eastern Libya: The first report from the Benghazi Cancer Registry, 2003

Cancer registration in Northern Africa is still limited and, until now, there have been no population-based data available for Libya. In this paper, we present the first data collected and analyzed by the Benghazi Cancer Registry. Registration was carried out by active data collection; the registry staff routinely visited all hospitals and pathological laboratories in eastern Libya (1.6 million inhabitants) and collected information from all death registration offices. A huge archive of prevalent cases was established before the 2003 data were collected. A total of 997 cases of primary cancers were registered among residents in 2003. The world age-standardized incidence rate for all sites combined (except nonmelanoma skin) was 118 per 100,000 for men and 95 per 100,000 for women. The most frequently diagnosed malignancies in males were lung cancer (19%) and colorectal cancer (10%), followed by cancers of the head and neck (9%) and bladder (9%). Among females, they were breast cancer (26%), cancer of the colon and rectum (9%), uterus (7%) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (5%). Our study provides data on cancer incidence in eastern Libya, and confirms that cancer incidence is much lower than in western countries. Moreover, observed patterns indicate that the incidence of many cancers, including those of the lung, breast, colon, rectum and bladder is quite different from previous estimates based on the data available from the neighboring countries.

588 POSTER Colorectal cancer in Eastern Libya

Evaluar la actividad de cuatro fluoroquinolonas (ciprofloxacino, clinafloxacino, norfloxacino y pefloxacino) frente cepas clínicas de Pseudomas aeruginosa con diferentes patrones de sensibilidad a ceftazidima e imipenemSe estudiaron 156 cepas de P. aeruginosa aisladas en el Hospital Universitario Virgen Macarena de Sevilla en los años 1998 y 1999. La actividad in vitro de cuatro fluoroquinolonas se determinó mediante microdilución en caldo Mueller Hinton suplementado con cationes siguiendo las recomendaciones del NCCLSPara el total de cepas evaluadas, los valores de concentración mínima inhibitoria (CMI)90 de clinafloxacino (4 mg/l) fueron significativamente inferiores a los de ciprofloxacino (64 mg/l). Para las 76 cepas resistentes a ciprofloxacino, las CMI90 de clinafloxacino y ciprofloxacino fueron de 16 y > 128 mg/l respectivamente. Clinafloxacino fue más activa que ciprofloxacino, norfloxacino y pefloxacino, con independencia del patrón de sensibilidad o resistencia a ceftazidima e imipenemClinafloxacino fue más activa in vitro que ciprofloxacino frente a P. aeruginosaTo evaluate the activity of four fluorquinolones (ciprofloxacin, clinafloxacin, norfloxacin and perfloxacin) against clinical strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa with different sensitivity patterns to ceftazidime and imipenem156 strains of isolated P. aeruginosa were studied at the Virgin Macarena University Hospital in Seville during 1998 and 1999. The in vitro activity of four fluorquinolones was determined by microdilution in Mueller Hinton bouillon, supplemented with cations, following the NCCLS guidelinesFor all the strains evaluated, the minimum inhibitory concentration values (MIC90) of the clinafloxacin (4 mg/l) were significantly less than those for ciprofloxacin (64 mg/l). In the 76 strains resistant to ciprofloxacin, the clinafloxacin and ciprofloxacin MCI90 were 16 and >128 mg/l respectively. Clinafloxacin was more active than ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin and pefloxacin, independent to the sensitivity pattern or the resistance to ceptazidime and imipenemClinafloxacin was more active in vitro than ciprofloxacin against P. aeruginosa

P124 Breast cancer profile in Eastern Libya

P124 Breast cancer profile in Eastern Libya

A very large scale GIS-based groundwater flow model for the Nubian sandstone aquifer in Eastern Sahara (Egypt, northern Sudan and eastern Libya)

A three-dimensional GIS-based groundwater flow model for the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in the eastern Sahara was developed and calibrated under steady-state and transient conditions. The model was used to simulate the response of the aquifer to climatic changes that occurred during the last 25,000 years. The simulation results indicated that the groundwater in this aquifer was formed by infiltration during the wet periods 20,000 and 5,000 years b.p. The recharge of groundwater due to regional groundwater flow from more humid areas in the south was excluded. It also indicates that the Nubian Aquifer System is a fossil aquifer, which had been in an unsteady state condition for the last 3,000 years.

Myth and history in ancient Greece: the symbolic creation of a colony

Surely the ancient Greeks would have been baffled to see what we consider their mythology. Here, Claude Calame mounts a powerful critique of modern-day misconceptions on this front and the lax methodology that has allowed them to prevail. He argues that the Greeks viewed their abundance of narratives not as a single mythology but as an archaeology. They speculated symbolically on key historical events so that a community of believing citizens could access them efficiently, through ritual means. Central to the book is Calame's rigorous and fruitful analysis of various accounts of the foundation of that most mythical of the Greek colonies--Cyrene, in eastern Libya. Calame opens with a magisterial historical survey demonstrating today's misapplication of the terms myth and mythology. Next, he examines the Greeks' symbolic discourse to show that these modern concepts arose much later than commonly believed. Having established this interpretive framework, Calame undertakes a comparative analysis of six accounts of Cyrene's foundation: three by Pindar and one each by Herodotus (in two different versions), Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes. We see how the underlying narrative was shaped in each into a poetically sophisticated, distinctive form by the respective medium, a particular poetical genre, and the specific socio-historical circumstances. Calame concludes by arguing in favor of the Greeks' symbolic approach to the past and by examining the relation of mythos to poetry and music.

A new species of the Acanthodactylus pardalis group (Reptilia: Lacertidae) from Jordan

A new species of the Acanthodactylus pardalis group, A. ahmaddisii sp.n., is described from Jordan, from a single specimen which differs from A. pardalis (Lichtenstein, 1823) of eastern Libya and Egypt, and A. beershebensis Moravec et al., 1999 from Israel. Compared to the latter two populations, A. ahmaddisii is larger with smaller head and shorter appendages and fewer (larger) dorsals. It also differs in qualitative pholidotic characters, especially by having tricarinate subdigitals, and in colour pattern.

A New Palearctic Genus of Melectine Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Thyreomelecta, new genus, is described for seven species of the cleptoparasitic bee tribe Melectini (Apinae). The genus is most similar to Thyreus but differs notably in the structure of the mesoscutellum and the length of the first metasomal segment. Thyreomelecta is distinguished from other melectines and is considered to include the following species: Thyreomelecta bidentata (Kirby), new combination (eastern Turkmenistan and western Afghanistan [likely also eastern Iran]); T. dimidiatipuncta (Spinola), new combination (southern Mediterranean from eastern Libya to eastern Iraq); T. kirghisia, new species (Kyrgyzstan); T. merviensis (Radoszkowsky), new combination (eastern Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan [new record]); T. paucimaculosa (Alfken), new combination (Tajikistan); T. propinquua (Lieftinck), new combination (North Korea west to Manchuria); and T. siberica (Radoszkowsky), new combination (southeastern Siberia). Thyreomelecta merviensis, previously known only from a single, headless male, is here recorded from a second, completely preserved male and the terminalia are figured. The little available information on the biology and immature stages of Thyreomelecta is briefly presented. A key to the Eastern Hemisphere genera of Melectini is provided as well as a preliminary key to the species of Thyreomelecta.

Epidemiology and strain characteristics of Echinococcus granulosus in the Benghazi area of eastern Libya.

The incidence of surgically confirmed cystic echinococcosis in eastern Libya was estimated to be at least 4.2 cases/100,000, with significantly more female cases than male. The prevalences of infection with Echinococcus granulosus among 1087 sheep, 881 goats, 428 camels and 614 cattle from the same region, determined postmortem in abattoirs, were 20%, 3.4%, 13.6% and 11%, respectively. Infection in the livestock was age-dependent and, generally, the female animals were more often infected than the male. The measurements of rostellar hooks on protoscoleces collected from sheep and cattle were similar but significantly different from the corresponding measurements of parasites of human or camel origin. However, when a portion of the cytochrome c-oxidase subunit I (cox1) gene from each of 30 protoscolex samples from Libya (12 from cattle, three from humans, five from camels and 10 from sheep) was sequenced, the sequences were all found to be identical to that published for the common sheep strain of E. granulosus.

Systematics and distribution of the Acanthodactylus pardalis group (Lacertidae) in Egypt and Israel

Examination of 385 specimens of the Acanthodactylus pardalis group from eastern Libya, Egypt and Israel confirmed the occurrence of two allopatric species in this area: Acanthodactylus pardalis (Lichtenstein, 1823) distributed in Egypt And eastern Libya and a hitherto undescribed species endemic to the Negev (Israel). The species differ most markedly in body size, hemipenial structure, colouration and details of sexual dichromatism. Other significant differences involve scalation and biometrics. A simple method for artefact-free use of discriminant analysis in multivariate classification is presented. Redescription of A. pardalis (Lichtenstein, 1823), description of a new species Acanthodactylus beershebensis sp.n. and corrected geographical ranges of the two species are provided. Both species, each endemic to a small area, appear to be markedly endangered by habitat destruction.

Herodotus on the Garamantes: A Problem in Protohistory

The Garamantes first come to our notice with Herodotus' Survey of Libya. Hekataeus of Miletus traveled along the Libyan coast over half a century before Herodotus, but his work is preserved only in fragments. Hekataeus may have mentioned the Garamantes, but if so, that part of his work has not survived. The Histories of Herodotus (iv.174) lists the “Garamantes” among the peoples of eastern Libya, giving to each a brief description; and iv.183 refers to them in another list, this one a sequence of stopping places on a desert trail which includes “the country of the Garamantes.”The earlier paragraph had fewer than half a dozen lines and the later one fewer than two dozen; not very much in total, but as Vansina has recently affirmed, the medievalist's axiom also applies to Africa: “the fewer the sources… the more they are treasured and scrutinized.”The intent of this paper is to attempt to determine how the two references, four paragraphs apart, are related to each other; and thereby to prepare the way to extract as much as we can learn from these two references about the Garamantes in the time of Herodotus, the fifth century BC.

The Essential Oil from Bupleurum fruticosum L. of the Cyrenaica Region of Eastern Libya and the Problem of Bupleurol

The composition of the essential oil obtained from epigean parts of Bupleurum fruticosum L., found in Cyrenaica (Libya), was studied by GC and GC/MS. The oil was found to be rich in α-pinene (15.3%) and β-phellandrene (49.3%). A comparison of the qualitative/quantitative composition of our oil with those of oils of the same origin studied previously highlighted several differences which, although not of a substantial nature, definitively confirmed that bupleurol must not be considered a naturally occurring compound but rather an artificial one.

Reflections on the role of the Sanusi in the central Sahara

Traditional Islamic constitutional theory is ideological, rather than political, territorial or ethnic in nature, and closely connected with the concept of community. The Sanusi Order in eastern Libya and the central Sahara organised a system of control that approximated to the traditional Islamic view of the state, although the ways in which it did this do not correspond to the analytical paradigms put forward by Evans‐Pritchard. Since it maintained relations with other states, it acted as a precursor to the modern states in the region, although it acknowledged Ottoman suzerainty because of the increased threat of French penetration into the central Saharan region. The region was not, in short, a terra nullius under international law as has been claimed.

Psychiatry in eastern Libya: people's attitudes towards psychiatric disorders

Psychiatry in eastern Libya: people's attitudes towards psychiatric disorders

Psychiatry in Libya: eastern region

Libya occupies an approximate area of 1.8 million sq. km in the northern part of Africa, with a population of 4.5 million. of the population, 97% are Muslims, 46.5% are under 15 years and only 2.3% are over 65 years of age. Sixty-four per cent of the population live in urban areas and the literacy rate is 60%. Tripoli, situated in the west, is the capital city of Libya and Benghazi, the second biggest city, is situated in the east of the country and the distance between the two cities is about 1000 km. The population of Benghazi and eastern Libya is about 2 million.

Depositional Sequence Evolution, Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic of the Central Saharan Platform, North Africa

Over 30 depositional sequences have been identified in the Paleozoic and lower Mesozoic of the Ghadames basin of eastern Algeria, southern Tunisia, and western Libya. Well logs and lithologic information from more than 500 wells were used to correlate the 30 sequences throughout the basin (total area more than 1 million km{sup 2}). Based on systematic change in the log response of strata in successively younger sequences, five groups of sequences with distinctive characteristics have been identified: Cambro-Ordivician, Upper Silurian-Middle Devonian, Upper Devonian, Carboniferous, and Middle Triassic-Middle Jurassic. Each sequence group is terminated by a major, tectonically enhanced sequence boundary that is immediately overlain (except for the Carboniferous) by a shale-prone interval deposited in response to basin-wide flooding. The four Paleozoic sequence groups were deposited on the Saharan platform, a north facing, clastic-dominated shelf that covered most of North Africa during the Paleozoic. The sequence boundary at the top of the Carboniferous sequence group is one of several Permian-Carboniferous angular unconformities in North Africa related to the Hercynian orogeny. The youngest sequence group (Middle Triassic to Middle Jurassic) is a clastic-evaporite package that onlaps southward onto the top of Paleozoic sequence boundary. The progressive changes from the Cambrian to themore » Jurassic, in the nature of the Ghadames basin sequences is a reflection of the interplay between basin morphology and tectonics, vegetation, eustasy, climate, and sediment supply.« less

Groundwater resources development in the eastern Sahara

Aspects of the regional hydrogeology of the Nubian Sandstone aquifer system in the Sudan, Egypt and eastern Libya and the associated Tertiary aquifers of the Sirte Basin, Libya are described. It is concluded that major groundwater resources are present that can be developed by abstraction adjacent to the River Nile, by groundwater mining or by abstraction from throughflow. Examples of aquifer control parameters and potential resources development are given. The problems of in situ groundwater development in the harsh desert environment are discussed and it is indicated that such development is not constrained by groundwater resources potential but by socioeconomic factors. The solution of groundwater conveyance adopted in Libya is detailed.