Paleofluid Flow, Fracturing and Reservoir Implications in Foreland basins: an example from the Cretaceous Qamchuqa Formation, Kurdistan Iraq

Gali Ali Bag Gorge is located in W-NW Zagros Fault Thrust Belt, Kurdistan Region, northern Iraq. The gorge exposes shallow marine Lower Cretaceous Qamchuqa carbonates along more than 5km. The investigated outcropped carbonate strata and equivalent subsurface sections consist of several dolostone bodies with unique and complex arrays of saddle and zebra dolomite textures especially in fractured intervals. Such carbonates are structurally controlled and affected by hydrothermal fluid flow and represent one of the major and important reservoir rocks in the High Folded oilfields. An integrated study combining field observations, core descriptions, microstructural analysis, petrographic study, stable C, O and Sr isotopes, fluid inclusion data, mineralogical and geochemical investigations reveals at least two main phases of multiple fluxes of hydrothermal fluid circulation during the Zagros Orogeny at the end of the Cretaceous and in Miocene to Pliocene time. These fluids were responsible for the formation of early regional non-focused, strata-bound hydrothermal dolomitization followed by localized fault- and fracture-focused hydrothermal dolomitization. These hydrothermal fluid flows caused variable textural and compositional alteration, overgrowth and zonation in dolomite occurred in a fairly open diagenetic system. The host dolostone was affected by shortening, folding, fracturing, and thrust faulting. Saddle dolomite pipes are associated with enéchelon folding. The morphology and areal extent of the zebra dolomite was controlled by the pore geometry of the host dolostone in relationship to fracturing and faulting. Five types of pervasive dolomites, three types of saddle dolomites and four types of calcite cements have been identified. Compositionally, the pervasive and saddle dolomites are dominantly poorly ordered, non-ferroan and non-stoichiometric. Both matrix and saddle dolomite cements have comparable, overlapping stable isotopic values and slightly radiogenic 87Sr/86Sr ratios. The primary fluid inclusion microthermometry of pervasive and saddle dolomites reveal saline and moderate to high homogenization temperatures. Pervasive dolomites moderately display comparable saddle dolomite REE patterns, light REE (LREE) enrichment, and moderate to low (∑REEs) content. These geochemical attributes suggest hydrothermal saline brines mixed with connate marine fluids caused the dolomitization and precipitation of dolomite cements. These processes modified the original pore system and, in combination with fracturing, generated areas of excellent porosity and permeability, as exemplified by the presence of porous saddle dolomite and variety of zebra textures. Both host and cement dolomite fabrics show a wide variability of diagenetic alteration that modified the original pore system. These alterations resulted from the incursion of multiple, earlier hydrothermal and saline fluid fluxes and later meteoric fluids during uplift and exposure. These alteration processes include dissolution, cementation and karst formation. Excellent intervals of reservoir facies and well-developed porous and permeable intervals are found in association with hydrothermal dolomites. In the outcropped section, the best reservoir properties encountered in the central gorge around thrust faults. In these zones zebra textures crossed cut by late extensional semi-vertical joints, especially when dissolution along these fractures led to the development and enlargement of the vuggy pores and fractures. This study demonstrates the linkage between fluid flux history and related diagenesis during the tectonic evolution of Zagros Basin, and provides an ideal example of the role of thrusting and tectonics in controlling diagenetic fluids and modifying reservoir characteristics. The improved understanding of porous saddle dolomite and HZDs may aid future exploration for hydrocarbon reservoir in the Zagros Fold Thrust Belt Basin

Magnetic treatment of brackish water for sustainable agriculture

Egypt and most of the MENA countries are suffering from physical water scarcity. The abundance of fresh water is very limited; consequently, it is needed to rethink about the use of non-conventional water resources as a source of water for agricultural purposes. This study investigated the influence of magnetic treatment on brackish water, and its application for sustainable agriculture practices. The experimental work was divided into four main categories: The first category was the physical analysis of magnetically treated brackish water; including surface tension investigation, salt solubility test, and nutrients solubility test. The second category was the chemical analysis; including TDS, pH, nutrients and dissolved oxygen. The third category was the application of magnetically treated brackish water on soil enhancement; including soil desalinization test, and nutrients release in soil. The fourth category was the application of magnetically treated brackish water for crops irrigation; including seed germination test, and pilot scale cultivation. The results of this study proved the positive influence of magnetic treatment on brackish water; it reduced the surface tension of brackish water by 26%, and this change in surface tension lasted for 2 days after magnetic treatment, in addition to the significant increase of salt and nutrients solubility. The chemical properties of water did not change significantly; nevertheless the dissolved oxygen of magnetically treated brackish water was increased significantly. The application of magnetic treatment of brackish water enhanced the soil desalinization up to 25% and increased the soil’s nutrient content in the plant root zone by 33-53%. The barely seeds irrigated with magnetically treated brackish water had a significant increase in germination rate up to 30%, and an increase in crop yield by 25%. The magnetic treatment of brackish water improved its quality and productivity for irrigation, which will open the door for different agricultural applications. Further studies and applications are needed in this field to come up with optimized design values for the key variables of magnetic treatment, leading to maximizing the benefits of the abundant brackish water in Egypt

The Language of Evaluation in Jose Saramago's Blindness via Appraisal Theory

Appraisal theory is developed out of systemic functional linguistics as a discourse semantic resource that is concerned with how text producers express their attitudes. The current study is an attempt to expand appraisal framework applicability to a fictional text as modern linguistic studies in the field of appraisal theory have typically been applied to the limited scope of political speeches and debates. The present study strives to illuminate appraisal theory as a tool for analysing the novel Blindness by José Saramago by carrying out three hypotheses. First, appraisal theory can be applied to fictional texts to reveal its genre. Second, in Blindness, appraisal theory shows how the novel’s opening displays a high frequency of pessimistic attitudes. Third, Saramago's most prominent attitude in the beginning of Blindness is judgement. To investigate these hypotheses, the study applied Martin and White’s (2005) framework of appraisal theory to an analysis of 30 extracts as the most representative of the apocalyptic genre. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied. Consequently, this study has proven that appraisal framework can be applied to fictional texts to determine the stance and the genre of the text. The findings have also demonstrated that Saramago used an explicit judgment rather than affect or appreciation. Examining the apocalyptic genre and Saramago's attitudes through appraisal theory has led to a new linguistic reading of Blindness unfolding the stances towards the perspectives in the texts and the alignments made to the audience

Evaluation of Glomus mosseae as Biocontrol Agents against Rhizoctonia solani on Tomato

R. solani is one of the phytopathogens that attack tomato cultivated causing seed decay, root and crown rot. The ability of arbuscular mycorrhiza (AM) to suppress root diseases caused by soilborne pathogens has been intensively studied in the last thirty years. The efficacy of AM (Glomus mosseae) as biological agents was assayed against R. solani on tomato seeds and seedling in greenhouse and field. The results appeared ability of AM (Glomus mosseae) for the suppression of R. solani at transplant time (day 30) in greenhouse experiment (76%) and field experiment results appeared significant differences at disease index and disease severity of tomato plants in mycorrhiza treatment (21%, 1 respectively). The mycorrhiza treatment results was positive influenced on plant growth and health indicators too (tomato seeds germination, fresh weight, dry weight, roots volume and fruit weight). Keywords: Rhizoctonia solani, Glomus mosseae, Biological agent, Tomato

Determination the genotyping diversity between biofilm forming and collagenase producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains

A total of 82 Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated from four hospitals in Baghdad. The isolates were studied by repetitive element based PCR (rep-PCR) using BOX primer.Methode: Biofilm determination method was used to screen the 82 isolates of forming biofilm .Collagenase production assay was used to screen the 28 isolates that were strong biofilm formers Collagenase production assay was used to screen the 28 isolates that were strong biofilm formers.Results: collagenase production increases when bacteria switch from a planktonic to biofilm phenotype. This indicates that biofilms and collagenase are more virulent and have a greater ability to cause tissue destruction . The REP-PCR analysis using BOX-primer, showed a clusters genetic relatedness among the isolates. The isolates were grouped according to the REP-PCR in 9 different genotypes, named cluster 1 to 3 which included  C1, C2 ,C3 with relatedness  :8 (80%), 8 (86%) ,3 (80%) respectively . A19 and A20 both of them were not included in any cluster , they have 78% similarity .The REP-PCR analysis showed that the genotypic relatedness is consistently high between the 8 producer isolates and non producer isolates (13),showed similarity reached 86% between collagenase and biofilm producers . Keywords: Genotyge ,rep-PCR,Collagenase,Biofilm,Pseudomonas aeruginosa,BOX prime

Cross-lingual Emotion Detection

Emotion detection is of great importance for understanding humans. Constructing annotated datasets to train automated models can be expensive. We explore the efficacy of cross-lingual approaches that would use data from a source language to build models for emotion detection in a target language. We compare three approaches, namely: i) using inherently multilingual models; ii) translating training data into the target language; and iii) using an automatically tagged parallel corpus. In our study, we consider English as the source language with Arabic and Spanish as target languages. We study the effectiveness of different classification models such as BERT and SVMs trained with different features. Our BERT-based monolingual models that are trained on target language data surpass state-of-the-art (SOTA) by 4% and 5% absolute Jaccard score for Arabic and Spanish respectively. Next, we show that using cross-lingual approaches with English data alone, we can achieve more than 90% and 80% relative effectiveness of the Arabic and Spanish BERT models respectively. Lastly, we use LIME to interpret the differences between models

Prediction of the optimum asphalt content using artificial neural networks

The performance of the asphalt mix is significantly influenced by the optimum asphalt content (OAC). The asphalt content is responsible for coating the aggregate surface and filling the voids between the aggregate particles. Thus, the aggregate gradation has a significant influence on the required asphalt content. The Marshall design process is the most common method used for estimating the OAC, and this process is called the asphalt mix design. However, this method is time consuming, labor intensive, and its results are subjected to variations. Thus, this paper employs the artificial neural network (ANN) to estimate the OAC from the aggregate gradation for the two most common gradations used in asphalt mixes in Egypt (3D, 4C). Results show that the proposed ANN can predict the OAC with a coefficient of correlation of 0.98 and an average error of 0.026%. As a result, a new approach for the Marshall test can be adopted using results of the proposed ANN, and only three specimens, instead of fifteen, are prepared and tested for estimating the remaining parameters. This approach saves the time, effort, and resources required for estimating the OAC. Additionally, the ANN was validated with previously developed models, and the ANN shows promising results

Performance Assessment of Screw Piles Embedded in Soft Clay

Screw piles are widely used in a variety engineering applications supplying stability against compression, overturning moment, uplift tension, and horizontal loads. Screw pile is a famous solution for support light structures, roads and rail signs which have relatively low-capacity foundation. In this study, the behavior of circular (10) mm solid screw pile models embedded in a bed of soft clay soil covering a layer of sandy soil has been studied. The 200 mm thick sand layer was compacted in a steel container with a diameter of 300 mm into four sublayers. The sandy soil layer was compacted at a relative density of 70%. The 300 mm thick soft clay soil bed with Cu (30) kPa was compacted in six sub-layers on the sandy bottom layer. Model tests are carried out with screw piles with a length of 300 mm, 350 mm and 400 mm and a helix diameter of 30 mm. Also, single and double helix and different S/Dh ratio were used for these piles and a comparative study between screw piles and ordinary piles (without helices) is accomplished. This study revealed that introducing screw pile of double helix increases its bearing capacity in soft clay soil by up to a (4-8) % as compared to a single helix screw pile. The results showed that the behavior of screw pile essentially depends on the geometric properties of the pile. According to the achievements, compressive load capacity of screw piles depends on embedded length, spacing ratio (S/Dh) and number of helical plates

Performance simulation of passive Q-switched laser system with intracavity Raman conversion medium

The system performance of intra-cavity Stimulated Raman Scattering SRS with passive Q-switching has been simulated.  Neodymium  :Gadolinium  Vanadium  ( Nd:GdVO4), Chromium : Yttrium Aluminum Garnet( Cr+4:YAG),  and Barium Nitrate Ba(NO3)2 are utilizing as a active medium(AM), saturable absorber material (SAM), and Raman medium (RM) respectively. Mathematical model of rate equations has been formulated in this study. The model solved numerically by  Rung –Kutta- Fehalberg method. Significant passive Q-switching and Stokes pulses to be simulated, also the effect of optical length on characteristics(duration and energy) of these pulses has been investigated. The study conclude that the power decrease while the optical length increase. Keyword: Physics, Laser, passive Q- switching , Raman conversio