Southern Mediterranean Coast Research Articles

Epidemiology of childhood tuberculosis in the Ashkelon region in Israel, 1958-1994.

The incidence rates of tuberculosis (TB) in Israel decreased steadily up to 1984, but rose again between 1985 and 1991, mainly due to immigration waves from Ethiopia. The epidemiology of TB in children was surveyed in the Ashkelon region. The regional TB register of Barzilai Medical Centre, kept since 1958, was used as the source for our data. Two hundred and fifty TB cases in children were reported between 1958 and 1994, constituting 9.7% of the total 2565 cases reported in the whole population of Israel's southern Mediterranean coast. While in the late 1950s and early 1960s the majority of reported cases occurred in children of North African origin, reflecting the large wave of immigration from North Africa at that time, in 1985-94 at the time of the Ethiopian immigration wave, Ethiopian children constituted the majority of the patients. They were diagnosed up to 9 years after arrival. None of the reported cases was HIV-positive.

Desalination in israel: emerging key component in the regional water balance formula

As a result of rapid population growth, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian entity are experiencing a worsening water shortage, which, unless properly addressed., threatens to cripple their future development. Thirty-year projections of water demand indicate that even if all marginal water resources were to be effectively utilized and conservation measures fully implemented, chronic shortages will be deferred only 10–5 years. Conservation by restructuring sectoral water use through economic policy is impeded by the ideological primacy of agriculture, commitment to food self-sufficiency, and prospects of social and political destabilization. Importation of water by short land conveyances can provide only near-term solutions, while most long-distance, inter-basinal transfers are impractical because of a combination of economic, political and water rights issues. Marine conveyance, though attractive on paper, is as yet an unproven concept. Desalination of Mediterranean or Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba) seawater will satisfy future water demands and guarantee security of supply through joint management. The latest notions of “Two-Seas” (Mediterranean Sea-Dead Sea and Red Sea-Dead Sea) desalination schemes envision fueling by hydropower and/or solar energy, the co-generation of electricity, and aquacultural and tourist spin-offs. An alternative scheme proposes a jointly-managed Israeli-Egyptian (and possibly Palestinian) plant, to be located on the southern Mediterranean coast, that would be powered either by coal or by gas piped from the Suez fields. This study explores the relative merits of the proposed desalination schemes. The estimated costs of producing desalined seawater are about two to three times the average cost of water from conventional sources. However, fossil and renewable energy cost trends, introduction of innovative power generating technologies, and economies of size may all combine to reduce desalination costs 15–25% by the beginning of the next decade. The predicted higher costs of desalinated seawater will limit its use to satisfy domestic needs and to raising high value-added crops. Massive desalination would also facilitate the redistribution of disputed water resources, boost the regional industrial capacity by co-generating clean energy, and expand the recreational potential of the region. The regional cooperation necessitated by the need to pool financial resources and ensure optimal water allocation between Israel and some of its neighbors heralds the potential of making water in this troubled area of the Middle East a catalyst for peace, rather than a subject of protracted conflict.

Bacterial Die-Off from Sewage Discharged through Submarine Outfalls

The decrease of the concentrations of the indicator microorganisms of faecal pollution from the discharge point of sewage was studied in the marine area affected by the sewage discharges through three submarine outfalls located in the Southern Mediterranean coast of Spain. A noticeable decrease of the concentrations of the microbial indicators was observed after sewage disposal to the sea. Although the physical dilution affects the bacterial population levels, this process is not enough to justify the microbial decrease observed; for this, the biological inactivation process plays an important role in the microbial die-off in seawater. A bacterial reduction higher than 98% during the wastewater ascent towards the marine surface was achieved. These values imply a high bacterial inactivation during the initial dilution in addition to the physical process. Also, a fast decrease of the bacterial concentrations was observed from the upwelling point of wastewater at the sea surface; however faecal streptococci show a clearly longer survival than coliforms in the sea environment. On the other hand, the highest values of T90 and K were observed in summer.

Ancient wells and their geoarchaeological significance in detecting tectonics of the Israel Mediterranean coastline region

Eight ancient water wells, representing the late Bronze Age to the Crusades period (ca. 3100–700 B.P.), have recently been excavated (six by the authors) and reopened at archaeological sites (tels) along the southern and central Mediterranean coast of Israel. Evidence of ancient freshwater levels directly reflects on possible neotectonics of the region and on eustatic changes of sea level. There is substantial disagreement about the tectonic stability of the Israel Mediterranean coastal region during the past 3500 yr, whether there was a large-magnitude tectonic event (one of the largest known for recent times) during the period in discussion or whether the region was tectonically quiet. We tested the instability hypothesis by using geoarchaeological data from the wells and found no evidence for significant tectonic deformation of the central and southern Israel coast in the past 3100 yr. The “ancient water-well” method can, with appropriate modifications, be used all around the Mediterranean and other coasts elsewhere in the world where ground-water-sea-level relations are alike.

Genetic variability and divergence between cave dwelling populations of Typhlocirolana from majorca and sicily

The genus Typhlocirolana includes six species discontinuously distributed in underground freshwater systems throughout southern Mediterranean coasts. The recent discovery of a Sicilian population of Typhlocirolana morphologically close to T. moraguesi from the Balearic Islands raised two issues: the taxonomic status of the Sicilian population and the evolutionary history leading to the present distribution of Typhlocirolana species which are thought to descend from a Cirolana-like marine ancestor. Electrophoretic analysis of eighteen gene loci encoding for enzymes and other proteins revealed a consistently high value of genetic distance ( D=0.815) between the Sicilian sample and the two Majorcan population samples, strongly suggesting their status as separate species. Both genetic distance data and the low levels of heterozygosity detected in all samples suggest a relatively recent age for the Typhlocirolana species so far examined. Results from this study support the hypothesis by Stock according to which Typhlocirolana, as well as other ‘thalassoid’ hypogean Crustaceans, colonized ground-waters in connection with the sedimentary cycles of the Mediterranean coastal lines during the Upper Miocene or Lower Pliocene.

Prevalence and pattern of multiple sclerosis in Benghazi, North-Eastern Libya

A search for Libyan patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) was made in Benghazi, located on the southern Mediterranean coast at a latitude of 32°N. Twenty-one clinically definite and probable cases were detected during the period July 1982–June 1984. On the basis of 2 probable incidental cases, the incidence for 1983 was 0.8 per 100 000 of the population at risk (10–50 years). On July 1st, 1984, the rough prevalence rate for the total population was 4 per 100 000 and the age-adjusted prevalence rate was 5.9 per 100 000. This study suggests that Benghazi falls within the medium frequency band for MS. High prevalence of brainstem involvement and cerebellar dysfunction and infrequent occurrence of the severe optic-spinal form and sphincter disturbance indicates that the present group of patients resembles Western pattern of MS as opposed to Asian MS.

Macrobenthic Communities of the Eastern Mediterranean Continental Shelf

Abstract. The results of a year long study in which soft-bottom epibenthic invertebrates were collected by grab, dredge and beam-trawl, along the southern Mediterranean coast of Israel, are described in this paper. The classificatory analysis used for both normal and inverse analyses used two measures of dissimilarity - Canberra metric and Bray-Curtis, and both group-average and nearest-neighbour clustering. The results were displayed as dendrograms. Four site groups and five species groups characterised a total of 58 site samples and 245 species. The prominent species in each of the five species groups are mentioned. The applicability of “community concepts” and the effects of sediment properties on community structure are discussed.