White Desert Research Articles

Carcinogenic and Non-Carcinogenic Health Risk Evaluation of Heavy Metals in Water Sources of the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in the El-Farafra Oasis (Egypt)

Expanding anthropogenic activities, globally and in Egypt, have increased concentrations of heavy metals in surface and ground waters. Contamination of drinking water may threaten public health. In the present study, the concentrations of 10 heavy metals were analyzed from natural springs (6) and drilled wells (10) in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer of the El-Farafra Oasis and the White Desert National Park, Egypt. The average concentrations of heavy metals were in most cases below critical values of the WHO drinking water standard, except for Fe and Mn (average values were 495 and 107 µg·L−1, respectively). There is a surface circulation that develops within limestone (Post-Nubian Aquifer System—PNAS) and feeds the springs, while the water present in the wells (at least for the deeper ones) comes from the ferruginous sandstone (Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System—NSAS). This double circulation could account for the differences in the EC and TDS values (typical of a circulation in limestone-type aquifers for springs) and the Fe and Mn enrichment coming from the ferruginous sandstone of the NSAS. The average chronic daily intake (CDI) values for heavy metals in the study area are listed in decreasing order in the following: Fe > Mn > Zn > Co > Ni > Cr > As > Pb > Co > Cd. The total hazard quotient (HQtotal = HQoral + HQdermal) and Hazard Index (HI) values calculated for different heavy metals were well below the acceptable limit, indicating no significant non-carcinogenic health risks to the residents of both areas via oral and dermal absorption of drinking water. Furthermore, the results obtained for the total risk to human health showed that oral ingestion is the major pathway. Carcinogenic risk analysis indicated that the Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risk (ILCR) values for Pb, Cd, Ni, and Cr were well below the acceptable limits.

Sea-Ice Organisms Face Human Threats

Sea ice, frozen seawater, is more than a “white desert” in the Earth’s polar regions. The solid part of sea ice is mostly pure ice, similar to what you could make by putting tap water in a freezer. It also contains an intricate network of pores, pockets, and channels—known as a brine network—which develops each season. The brine network is filled with a very salty solution that contains nutrients that ice-associated organisms (bacteria, algae, and small animals) use as food. Algae are especially important because they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide some of the oxygen we breathe every day. However, ice organisms are witnessing the consequences of human pollution and climate change. Although the polar regions are located far from human areas, the ocean circulation carries pollutants to the poles. This article examines what is happening in the seemingly inhospitable but crowded brine network, including the latest observations on the accumulation of human pollution.

Karst Rock Relief of Qara and White Desert (Western Desert of Egypt)

The karst rock relief clearly reveals the ways in which the karst surface and caves have been shaped and how they have developed. The oldest traces are the rock features of old karst caves, which were formed under climate conditions entirely different from the current ones, i.e., in the Pleistocene, and which have been dry for a longer period of time. Today, the wind is the prevailing factor in shaping the rock on the surface and in the karst of the White Desert near Farafra in particular, where we can witness the development of an entire range of wind rock features which helps us sort and classify them logically. However, in the wadis near the Qara Oasis a unique rock relief is forming, in which traces of water flow and dissolution of the rock under the sandy deposits are utterly predominant. The rainfall volume is low, however, the heavy rainfall events lasting short periods of time are enough to shape the less resistant rock. The rock features dominating the walls are co-shaped by dissolution and aeolian erosion. Crust forms on those parts of the rock surface that come in contact with water. The bare surfaces, on the other hand, are carved out by the wind. In the places where the crust has flaked off, the wind carves out cups.

Impact of ultrasonication on the contents, profiles and biofunctional properties of free and bound phenolics from white desert truffle (Tirmania nivea) and its protein fractions

The molecular and biofunctional properties of protein and phenolic fractions in edible truffles remain largely unknown. This study examined the effect of ultrasonication on the contents, profiles, and bioactive properties of free and bound phenolics (FP and BP) from desert truffle (Tirmania nivea) and its protein fractions. Protein fractions from the Osborne extraction scheme were biochemically and structurally characterized. The albumin fraction showed the highest abundance (16.8%) and yield (35.8%). Total phenolic contents were the highest in non-sonicated samples (3.5–34.1 mg/g), particularly in the albumin fraction and in whole truffle. FP extracted at 30 °C (FP-30 °C) accounted for the largest proportion of total phenolics in all protein fractions, whereas BP-30 °C and FP-60 °C were predominant in non-sonicated and sonicated truffle, respectively. The highest antioxidant activity was obtained with FP-30 °C extracts from non-sonicated albumins, globulins and truffle (91.9, 72.7 and 30.0%), followed by BP-30 °C from non-sonicated albumins (25.4%) and FP-60 °C from sonicated glutelins-1 (24.2%). High inhibition of α-amylase was evidenced in several extracts, including FP-30 °C from non-sonicated glutelins-1 (99.2%) and FP-30 °C from sonicated globulins (72.4%). Several extracts also displayed high inhibition of angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE), including FP-60 °C from non-sonicated glutelins-1 (65.1%) and sonicated glutelins-1 (71.1%) and globulins (64.7%). Most extracts were rich in epicatechin, gallic acid, chlorogenic acid and catechin. Correlations between phenolic content, antioxidant activity, anti-α-amylase and anti-ACE activities were influenced by sonication. Sonication reduced the particle size of the proteins and modified their structural characteristics. These findings demonstrate that white desert truffle proteins co-occur with bioactive phenolics whose functionalities can be tailored by protein fractionation and sonication.

Comparison of Phenolic Contents and Antioxidant Activities for Black and White Desert Truffles Spread in Syria

Desert truffle is considered as a type of Syrian wild fungi that spreads heavily, and it occupies important rank in folk medicine, where its aqueous extract is used for the treatment of some eye and skin illnesses, and people prefer the use of black truffle. This work interested in studying of the most available species; Terfezia claveryi (black) and Tirmania pinoyi (white). The extracts of the two species of truffle were prepared by maceration with water, methanol, and ethanol 70%. Their total phenolic contents (TPC) and total flavonoid contents (TFC) were analyzed using Folin-ciocalteu and Aluminum chloride methods respectively, and their antioxidant activities was tested using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP) methods, after microscopic examination and detection of phytochemical components. Then, phenolic profile of ethanolic 70% extract of black truffle T.claveryi was studied by using LC-MS/MS. The values of TPC were between 25.3-43.6 mg GAE/g dry extract and TFC were between 2.5-6.8 mg QE/g dry extract. The values of DPPH (IC50) and FRAP were between 5.6-9.0 mg/ml and 90.1-153.4 µmol AAE/g dry extract respectively. There is a great similarity in content and activity of two species, also the aqueous extract is similar to other extracts in content and activity, and this means that the method of extract preparation in traditional medicine is reliable. It has been predicted about 14 phenolic compounds in the extract; as p-Hydroxy benzoic acid, Syringic acid and trans-Cinnamic acid. As a result, both truffle species are a new rich resource of antioxidant compounds which are usable in nutritional, cosmetic, and therapeutic applications.

Karst Heritage as a Tourist Attraction: a Case Study in the White Desert National Park, Western Desert, Egypt

Geotourism is a form of maintainable tourism that emphasizes the geoheritage characteristics of a district. Karst landforms are one of the most imperative appealing aspects of the theme of nature-based tourism. The geomorphological regionalization of the karst landforms contributes to a better understanding of Earthʼs evolution and provides the necessary provincial knowledge for resource utilization, ecological protection, and general economic improvement. To achieve this goal, an integrated geomorphological approach for inventorying, appraising, and evaluating sites of karst geoheritage within the framework of geomorphosite assessment method convoyed by SWOT analysis has been performed in the White Desert National Park (WDNP), Western Desert, Egypt. The paper aims to highlight the geotourism potential of the WDNP and offer strategic plans for identifying geotourist resources to a larger community through geoeducation and geoconservation. The WDNP is covered by Upper Cretaceous-Late Tertiary karstified carbonate successions and fluvioclastic rocks that host an interesting assemblage of diverse karst landforms (geodiversity) and amazing flora (bioturbation mangrove roots) together with fauna (biodiversity), revealing a geological open-air museum. The karst sites, which offer several phenomena with significant lithological, morphological, and paleogeographic features, embrace aesthetic, educational, scientific/scenic, and touristic values that will endure spectators of the geological evolution of this province. The brilliant conspicuousness, scientific excellence, innovative appeal, and distinctiveness of karst geomorphosites involving poljes/uvalas, karst lakes, natural sculptures, mushrooms, inselbergs, towers/bridges, dolines/sinkholes, cones/domes, and speleothems deliberate resources for the progress of geotourism. These landscapes can be considered tools for science and education because they give knowledge about rock/soil types and rock permeability, and paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic circumstances. Most of their landforms can be used as habitats for endangered bird species, which attract several sightseers, an indicative of ecological significance. This excellent karst geodiversity provides an appreciated tool for geotourism and geopark development that is preferred to raise the local economy for populations and reinforce rural growth in neighboring towns and cities. The paper’s findings reveal a comprehensive base for the improvement, planning, and management of the WDNP in order for it to become a geotourism endpoint. Furthermore, they improve the position of the WDNP in the tourist market and contribute to the local maintainable progress via giving socio-economic assistance to the local community for the advancement of geotourism through geoconservation and sustainability.

New insights into stratigraphy and paleoenvironment of the Upper Cretaceous–Eocene succession, Farafra Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt

Detailed field, litho-, bio-, sequence stratigraphy, and paleoenvironmental studies are carried out on the Aqabaat section, Farafra Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt. Lithostratigraphically, the Khoman Formation is here differentiated for the first time into three new distinctive members, which are easily detected at the field: the White Desert (at base), the Gunna (at middle), and the Aqabaat (at top). Biostratigraphically, six planktonic foraminiferal zones and subzones are here identified ranging in age from Maastrichtian to Ypresian. The foraminiferal indices, as well as the benthonic foraminiferal biofacies, indicated an outer neritic paleoenvironmental condition of the Maastrichtian rocks interrupted with shallowing of the relative sea-level at some intervals, especially at the upper parts. These shallowing settings are due to the impact of three syn-sedimentary tectonic events (I, II, and III), which are related to the Syrian Arc orogeny. The Tectonic Event I had a regional impact and led to form a positive structure in the sedimentary basin at the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary. The Tectonic Event II and III synchronized with the Danian/Selandian (D/S) and Paleocene/Eocene (P/E) boundaries, respectively. Four depositional sequences (SQ1–SQ4) are defined separated by four sequence boundaries (SB1–SB4) covering the Maastrichtian–Eocene sequence.

Geodiversity of Karst landforms with high priority conservation areas for Sooty Falcon (Falco concolor) in the White Desert National Park, Western Desert, Egypt

Geodiversity of Karst landforms with high priority conservation areas for Sooty Falcon (Falco concolor) in the White Desert National Park, Western Desert, Egypt

Weathering Processes Acting on Chalky Limestone Composing Geo Heritage at The White Desert, Farafra Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt

Weathering Processes Acting on Chalky Limestone Composing Geo Heritage at The White Desert, Farafra Oasis, Western Desert, Egypt

Geo tourism and mechanisms of developing Geopark in Egypt as pplyied to The White Desert protected area

Egypt has own many elements of natural and human tourism attraction that qualify it to be one of the first tourist countries in the world, and Geo tourism is one of the most important tourism patterns based on the principle of sustainability , There are many natural reserves in Egypt that contain rare geological formations and structures, the most important of which is the White Desert protected area at Farafra within the Western Desert. The idea of research in studying the tourism potential of the reserve, which qualifies it to be present under the umbrella of UNESCO as the first Egyptian geo park and to adopt a sustainable environmental marketing pattern for it. The study aimed to identify the Geo tourism, the Geo parks and the criteria for joining the global network of geological parks also, the most important economic and social benefits of exploiting this pattern. The study recommended the need to intensify efforts by the responsible authorities to provide all services that do not conflict with the nature of the place and preserve its identity, increase awareness campaigns for visitors, provide guiding signs inside the reserve, preserve the absorptive capacity of the place, and make tourist advertising comparable to the global importance of the place.

From a White Desert to the Largest World Deposit of Lithium: Symbolic Meanings and Materialities of the Uyuni Salt Flat in Bolivia

AbstractThe Uyuni salt flat (Salar de Uyuni) in Bolivia possesses the largest lithium deposit in the world. Over the past 40 years, this location has been commodified and radically transformed. This paper examines how a landscape, understood from its material attributes and qualities, shapes and is shaped by social relations unfolding in a process of commodification and mining expansion. Based on primary qualitative data, the paper explores two elements: (1) how the symbolic meaning of this landscape has changed over time for the surrounding indigenous communities; and (2) how the different materialities of the salt flat as landscape, as ulexite and as lithium allow understanding of the drivers of socio‐environmental change and conflict in this region. The paper argues that social relations and governance frameworks are interlinked with changing symbolic meanings and the different materialities of the Uyuni salt flat.

Harvesters of the White Desert

Grueling work on the economic and social margins.

Untangling Palimpsest Landscapes in Conflict Zones: A “Remote Survey” in Spin Boldak, Southeast Afghanistan

ABSTRACTRemote survey using high-resolution satellite images allows archaeologists to study ancient landscapes in regions made inaccessible by ongoing conflict as well as in regions located between zones of better archaeological knowledge. Such studies frequently suffer from a lack of chronological information. This paper presents the results of remote landscape survey in the territory of Spin Boldak (“white desert”) in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, and methodological efforts to detangle the chronology of a landscape made inaccessible by conflict. The studied region crosscuts several environmental zones (desert, alluvial plain, river, and hills) and lies within an important corridor of movement toward mountain passes on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. Morphological comparisons of surveyed sites to better-documented examples and synthesis of data from a variety of sources allow us to draw chronological and taphonomic conclusions about three types of documented sites: fortified enclosures, caravanserai, and mobile pastoral camps. These methods provide time depth to our understanding of the remotely-mapped landscape and allow us to consider Spin Boldak as a place shaped by local and regional historical processes rather than merely as a timeless thoroughfare between more intensively inhabited locales.

Sense of place relationship with tourist satisfaction and intentional revisit: Evidence from Egypt

AbstractSense of place is a multidimensional concept. It implies an emotional relationship between an individual and a setting. The current study aims to explore the predictors of place attachment, and measure the effect of place attachment and its predictors on tourist satisfaction, and how this satisfaction could affect tourist future revisits. Using structural equation modelling, this study provides evidence from two distinct places in Egypt: Bahariya Oasis/the White Desert and Fayoum. A questionnaire was used to collect data from repeat tourists to both places. The findings revealed that repeat tourists are place attached. This attachment is positively influencing tourist satisfaction and their intentional repeat visit. The findings of the study could be used to develop marketing strategies of destinations with sense of place dimensions. Tour operators and travel agents are requested to include sense of place dimensions in their tour packages. National authorities are invited to focus on sense of place dimensions in their destinations.

ファシスト政権期イタリア映画における「白」の視覚 : 「白い電話」と白い砂漠

ファシスト政権期イタリア映画における「白」の視覚 : 「白い電話」と白い砂漠

Giant viruses of the Kutch Desert.

The Kutch Desert (Great Rann of Kutch, Gujarat, India) is a unique ecosystem: in the larger part of the year it is a hot, salty desert that is flooded regularly in the Indian monsoon season. In the dry season, the crystallized salt deposits form the "white desert" in large regions. The first metagenomic analysis of the soil samples of Kutch was published in 2013, and the data were deposited in the NCBI Sequence Read Archive. At the same time, the sequences were analyzed phylogenetically for prokaryotes, especially for bacteria. In the present work, we identified DNA sequences of recently discovered giant viruses in the soil samples from the Kutch Desert. Since most giant viruses have been discovered in biofilms in industrial cooling towers, ocean water, and freshwater ponds, we were surprised to find their DNA sequences in soil samples from a seasonally very hot and arid, salty environment.

Middle–late Pleistocene and Holocene chronostratigraphy and climate history of the Tamala Limestone, Cooloongup and Safety Bay Sands, Nambung National Park, southwestern Western Australia

The Pleistocene Tamala Limestone outcrops for ~1000 km along the southwestern Australian coast. Detailed mapping of excellent exposures at Nambung National Park and surrounding areas, together with mineralogical analyses and dating, identified five members: White Desert, Nambung, Stockyard Gully, Pinnacles Desert and Grey members (in stratigraphic order). The two youngest members can be easily recognised because they partly retain the original aragonite and high-Mg calcite mineralogy of the bioclasts (the youngest Grey Member to the greatest extent). Each member consists of an eolian calcarenite/calcrete-microbialite/paleosol cycle. The eolianites were deposited during interglacial highstands (MIS 5, 7, 9, 11 and possibly 13), under the influence of strong south to southwesterly winds that blew the sand well inland and up to over 100 m above sea-level. This scenario continued during the Holocene transgression, showing that dune activity in this region was a characteristic of the relatively humid interglacial climates rather than the drier glacial periods. Towards the end of most interglacial episodes, the rainfall was sufficiently high that the dunes were stabilised by vegetation, and there was significant subsoil dissolution of the eolianite, forming a karst surface. In the following glacial climates, laminated microbialites were deposited in the karst voids within some members; in others a calcrete layer is present, probably reflecting a semiarid climate. The paleosols capping each member contain an eolian input of silt and some clay owing to the increased wind activity associated with the glacial climates when they were deposited. The laterally extensive quartzose Cooloongup Sand was deposited on top of the Tamala Limestone during the glacial climate of MIS 2–4, reflecting the low rainfall and strong winds. The quartz sand was derived from dissolution of the eolianites during preceding periods of karstification.

Introduction

Introduction Kathryn Hellerstein (bio) In 1890, the Hebrew Haskalah poet Judah Leib Gordon asked, "Jewish woman, who knows your life? / In darkness you have come, in darkness do you go." Nashim no. 19 offers an illuminating response to this poetic pronouncement of 120 years ago. During the centuries that they were muses, subjects, addressees and readers of poetry by men, Jewish women themselves wrote poems that revealed their lives and endure as living artifacts of Jewish culture. They wrote and published in the Jewish languages—Yiddish, Ladino and Hebrew among them—as well as in the languages of the wider world—including English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic and Persian. However, as late as the mid-twentieth century, Jewish women poets rarely found large audiences, and most of their poetry survived in obscurity. Until recently, too, this vast body of work was ignored as a topic of scholarship; but, once studied, its value becomes evident. Poems by Jewish women record the lives they led, their religious beliefs, aesthetic and political ideologies, sexual practices, education and work in the world. Far beyond their contributions to socio-historical knowledge, however, the poems survive as works of art that expand the range of Jewish culture. Nashim 19 presents nine scholarly articles that engage issues of gender across languages, cultures, and historical periods. We also feature previously unpublished poems and translations by nine women poets and translators. The issue opens with literary tradition. Anne Lapidus Lerner's "Back to the Beginning" explores the roles played by Eve and the Garden of Eden in four contemporary poems, by two American and two Israeli women poets. Each reclaims Eve and reinterprets Genesis. In sequences of poems about Eve in Eden, American poets Linda Pastan and Kim Chernin invoke traditions of English poetry through gendered tropes of gardens and eroticism. In contrast, Israeli poets Techiyah Bat-Oren and Ruḥama Weiss summon classical Jewish literature. Thus, in Bat-Oren's "She Finally Speaks," Eve [End Page 5] challenges the rabbinic condemnation, conveyed in the seventeenth-century Yiddish midrashic compilation Tsenerene, that threatened women with death in childbirth unless they lit the Sabbath candles to atone for her disobedience. Wendy Zierler's "Race and Gender in Modern Hebrew Poems about Numbers 12" extends the dialogue between modern poets and biblical texts into a political discourse, by way of three Hebrew poets who reread Numbers 12, where Miriam responds to Moses' "taking" a Cushite woman. A ballad-sermon by the American Hebrew poet Ephraim Lisitzky, modeled both on "Negro sermons" and on Jewish midrash, "indicts Miriam" as a racist of the American South. Two poems by the Israeli Yokheved Bat-Miriam champion Miriam as an icon for modern Jewish women and celebrate her demand for recognition as a prophet. A 1988 poem by the Israeli Rivka Miriam comments on the Cushite woman as a marker of clarity against the Israelites' wanderings in the white desert—and perhaps also as a symbol of the struggles of the Ethiopian Jews then arriving in Israel. In "A Boat of Light: Zoharic Images in Zelda's Poetry," Nitza Kann considers how Jewish mystical imagery figures in the poems of the twentieth-century Israeli poet Zelda. Through close readings of Zelda's modern poems in conjunction with the kabbalistic texts of the Zohar, Kann discusses the role of both types of texts in "aspir[ing] to express the inexpressible." Through hermeneutics, Kann argues that Zelda's poems call forth "the diverse character of the divine female, the Shekhinah," as a trope for "the female's vantage point upon herself." Naomi Brenner expands Jewish literary tradition to include Yiddish and Hebrew modernism in her article "Slippery Selves: Rachel Bluvstein and Anna Margolin in Poetry and in Public." Brenner interrogates the perceptions and self-representations of women poets through the works of modernist poets Rachel Bluvstein, in Hebrew, and Anna Margolin, in Yiddish, who, she argues, are "remembered … first and foremost as women." Yet both poets used the minimalist aesthetics of Russian Acmeism to create "sophisticated lyric personas," which contemporary critics, blinded by conventional ideas of femininity, mostly failed to perceive. Developing the question of how women Yiddish poets are perceived, Rebecca Margolis, in "Remembering Two...

Caves and karsts of Northeast Africa

At least potentially karstifiable rocks cover much of the surface of Egypt and northern Libya. Study of caves and other karstic features of this region has been hampered by lack of roads, rapid disintegration of the surface of friable, poorly consolidated limestone, wind-blown sand and other factors. Interbedding with marly aquicludes hampers speleogenesis locally. Calcareous and evaporite karsts are present, however, and their waters are important albeit generally limited resources. Large quantities of fresh water are lost through submarine springs downslope from Libya’s Gebel al Akhdar range; the caves and karst of that range may be among the world’s greatest. A recent attempted compendium of caves and karsts of Egypt and Libya contains several important errors; the supposed 5+ km Ain Zayanah Cave does not exist and the Zayanah System includes several smaller caves. The Bir al Ghanam gypsum karst of northwest Libya, however, has caves up to 3.5 km long. In Egypt, the Mokattam, South Galala, Ma’aza, Siwa and Western Desert karsts and the “White Desert” chalk karst of Farafra Depression are especially important. Qattara and nearby depressions may be karstic rather than structural in origin. Unique Wadi Sannur Cave is the world’s largest gour and a potential World Heritage site. Little known sandstone karsts or pseudokarsts in southwestern Egypt may contain analogues of features recently identified on Mars. The well-publicised Uweinat caves of northwestern Sudan are talus caves.

Antarctic Sea ice--a habitat for extremophiles.

The pack ice of Earth's polar oceans appears to be frozen white desert, devoid of life. However, beneath the snow lies a unique habitat for a group of bacteria and microscopic plants and animals that are encased in an ice matrix at low temperatures and light levels, with the only liquid being pockets of concentrated brines. Survival in these conditions requires a complex suite of physiological and metabolic adaptations, but sea-ice organisms thrive in the ice, and their prolific growth ensures they play a fundamental role in polar ecosystems. Apart from their ecological importance, the bacterial and algae species found in sea ice have become the focus for novel biotechnology, as well as being considered proxies for possible life forms on ice-covered extraterrestrial bodies.