57 research outputs found

    The Ancient Hydraulic Infrastructure of Wādi eṣ-Ṣader near Petra, Southern Jordan

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    Intensive investigations of the archaeological remains at agricultural sites and water springs may provide a wealth of information. The remains, recently revealed in the vicinity of eṣ-Ṣader spring, inspired the authors to investigate the area in and around Wādī eṣ-Ṣader. These explorations have enhanced our knowledge about the importance of this spring in the lives of the inhabitants of Wādī Moūsā as early as the Nabataean period. The existing archaeological evidence in this region, which will be discussed in this paper, includes remains of Nabataean terracotta water pipelines as well as Islamic water mills. In addition, the paper includes a discussion on some of the ancient toponyms either mentioned in the Petra archive and other place names which are of Aramaic origin. The latter indicates that these were used when Aramaic was the lingua franca in the region during the Nabataean period. Additionally, the inherited water traditions in the study area are presented in an attempt to trace their historical origin. Finally, the importance of terrace cultivation in this region through ages is also highlighted

    New Nabataean Inscriptions from Umm al-Jimāl

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    This article presents four new Nabataean inscriptions from Umm el-Jimāl in north-eastern Jordan. The first text, which is dedicatory, is dated to year fifty-five of the Roman Province of Arabia, ad 161. The second one mentions the dedication of a mqrtʾ ‘hollow basin’, a word that is not at- tested previously in the Nabataean inscriptions. The remaining two texts are tombstones whose shape and contents are similar to the previously published tombstones from the Ḥawrān region.Wetensch. publicati

    A New Dedicatory Nabataean Inscription Dated to AD 53

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    This paper presents a new Nabataean inscription dedicated to the Nabataean chief god Dushara and dated to the thirteenth year of the reign of the Nabataean king Malichus II (ad 40–70). It mentions the dedication of ʿlyʾ, a cultic feature rarely attested in Nabataean.Wetensch. publicati

    The Effect of Using the Six Thinking Hats Method on the Development of EFL Female Eleventh- Grade Students' Reading Comprehension Skills in Petra Directorate of Education

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    The study aimed to explore the impact of using the six hats method on reading comprehension skills of female EFL eleventh-grade students in Petra Directorate of Education during the academic year 2022/2023. The study's goal aimed to assess the influence of a teaching technique based on six thinking hats on the development of English language reading comprehension compared to a conventional method. The research was guided by the books of Dr. Edward de Bono, who coined the phrase "lateral thinking," produced many books on thinking, including Six Thinking Hats, and pushed for teaching thinking as a subject in schools. The quasi-experimental design was used to achieve the above objective. The study sample consisted of (54) female eleventh grade students from Wadi Mousa Secondary School for Girls, who were selected purposefully and assigned randomly to two groups: an experimental group of (27) students and a control group of (27) students. To achieve the objectives of the study, all of the text topics were chosen from the eleventh grade textbook for the first semester, the instrument of the study was designed according to the characteristics of the six thinking hats, and then it was assessed for validity and reliability, to guarantee the equivalence of the two groups, the researcher administrated a writing ability pre-test, and then the experimental group was taught using the six thinking hats, whereas the control group was taught according to the conventional method. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and One Way ANOVA. The  findings of the study  revealed statistically significant differences at  (α≤0.05) between students' mean scores in reading comprehension as a result of using the six thinking hats method compared to the conventional method and in favor of the experimental group, which indicates that  the six thinking hats method was effective. Based on the findings, the study recommends that supervisors should encourage teachers to use the six thinking hats method to help them produce successful questions based on good question specifications and write and create models that simulate Tawjihi exams. Keywords:The Six Thinking Hats Method, Reading comprehension,  Eleventh Grade, Conventional Method DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-12-03 Publication date: April 30th 202

    Strategies for cloning ion transporters in salt-resistant plants

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    Most crop species upon which we depend are glycophytes, which lack the mechanisms required to tolerate ion excesses present in high concentration in saline soils. Therefore, it is important to understand how salt-resistant plants respond to external salinity. What is known is that a number of physiological processes are involved in salt-tolerance and each of these processes requires the co-ordinated expression of a number of genes. One way to identify putative genes encoding Na+ and Cl- transporters from salt-resistant plants is to use an approach involving heterologous probes. Genomic Southern blots of barley and sugar beet were performed using a range of H+-ATPase, Na+ / H+ antiporter and Cl- channel sequences as probes. Some sequence homology to both p-type and v-type H+-ATPases, and to clc-0 (a voltage gated Cl- channel) was found. However, Northern analysis showed that only in barley was the clc-0 homologue expressed; the transcript was ~ 1.4 kb and probably not poly-adenylated. Attempts to isolate a voltage gated Cl- channel from barley genomic library constructed in lambda Dash II by colony hybridization using clc-0 as probe were unsuccessful. In 1996 the first plant voltage-gated Cl- channel, clc-nt1 was cloned from tobacco using an RT-PCR approach. A similar strategy was then adopted in this study. Seventeen putative CLC sequences were found in the databases and these were aligned. Three regions of consensus were identified that were suitable for designing degenerate PCR primers. Two PCR approaches were used, conventional PCR and RT-PCR, to identify clc homologues in sugar beet, barley and red beet. The conventional PCR approach used cDNA libraries and genomic DNA as template, but failed to identify any clc homologues. RT-PCR was performed on oligo dT - and random primed cDNA from root and leaf tissues of high-salt-grown plants. A 600 bp fragment, bv600, from sugar beet leaves, and two shorter fragments, bv160 and bv163, from red beet cell suspension cultures, were amplified and demonstrated to be authentic plant sequences. These fragments were then sequenced and this information used to interrogate the databases using BLAST searches. The fragment bv600 was identified by BLAST as homologous to an ATP-dependent protease. Similar comparisons using the bv160 and bv163 sequences suggested that they are almost identical, but BLAST failed to identify any homologues in the databases. The red beet fragment bv160 was used to identify a 7 kb sugar beet genomic fragment, bvFAS1.7. This fragment was sequenced and analyzed by a range of computer programs. The bvFAS1.7 fragment, containing the bv160 sequence, probably encodes a reverse transcriptase although this is by no means certain. More recent alignments of all of the clc sequences, and of the six plant sequences deposited in the databases, suggests that better (i.e. less degenerate) primers can now be designed which should improve the success of an RT-PCR approach in cloning clc homologues in salt-resistant plants

    A New Nabataean Inscription from the Moab Plateau

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    This paper deals with a new unpublished Nabataean inscription found in al-ʿAdnāniyah town, which is located to the north of Muʾtah in the Governorate of Karak in southern Jordan. The inscription represents a new addition to the corpus of Nabataean inscriptions from the Moab Plateau. The text, which is dated to the 29th year of Aretas IV, mentions the construction of rbʿyʾ, a term that has not been attested previously in Nabataean.Wetensch. publicati

    Evidence from a Nabataean Inscription Regarding Water and Cult in Nabataea, with Some Remarks on the Nabataean Royal Family

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    The article presents a Nabataean text inscribed in raised relief on a bronze plate and dated to the seventh year of the Nabataean king Aretas IV (3 BC). The text is significant since it mentions the dedication of a water well/cistern by Aretas, to his god Dushara, the God of Gaia “for the life of himself and his wife ḥldw, queen of the Nabataeans, and their daughter pṣʾl.” The paper includes a commentary on the vocabulary of the text and sheds some light on water and its association with the cult in Nabataea. In addition, it provides some details about ḥldw, queen of the Nabataeans and pṣʾl, the daughter of Aretas and ḥldw, allowing an update of the Nabataean royal family tree

    A New Dedicatory Nabataean Inscription Dated to AD 53

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    This paper presents a new Nabataean inscription dedicated to the Nabataean chief god Dushara and dated to the thirteenth year of the reign of the Nabataean king Malichus II (ad 40–70). It mentions the dedication of ʿlyʾ, a cultic feature rarely attested in Nabataean

    Benthic foraminifera as indicators of pollution by heavy metals in the eastern Mediterranean Sea

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    Benthic foraminifera have been investigated and used for the first time to assess the impact of pollution especially by heavy metals, in a part of eastern Mediterranean Sea From the study a total of 168 benthic foraminiferal species belonging to 75 genera and 35 families has been identified. The dead specimens where used for taxonomic purposes and as a base line against which the deformed forms can be compared. The majority are essentially shallow water species with few deep water forms. The Rotaliina represents the highest percentage of the assemblage followed by the Miliolina, whereas the Lagenina and the agglutinated forms constitute the lowest percentage in the study area. There was a clear seasonality in benthic foraminiferal populations reflected in the reduction of foraminiferal abundance, species diversity and number of species in winter compared to spring assemblages. By observing the changes in foraminiferal populations from contaminated sites and comparing these with populations from noncontaminated sites, inferences regarding the impact of pollution on the environment can be drawn. Changes in foraminifera populations expressed in their abundance, diversity, and richness, particularly when compared with populations from relatively noncontaminated sites suggest changes due to pollution, rather than effects of oceanographic parameters such as temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen. These parameter are generally seen to be relatively constant within the study area. Only parameters such as depth, type of substrate and heavy metals concentration in the sediments have a clear effect on the distribution of certain species. For example, Ammonia tepida. distribution is effected by depth and heavy metals concentration. On the other hand Asterigerinata mamilla doesn't show any preference to water depth and Amphistegina lobifera shows a preference to the type of substrate and the change in heavy metals concentration rather than to depth. Species considered sensitive to heavy metal pollution such as: Ammonia tepida, Amphistegina lobifera and Peneroplis pertusus are dominant in the contaminated sites and represent the highest percentage of morphological deformations. Analysis of available data, showed that two types of morphological deformations could be distinguished and have been categorised or grouped into mechanical and chemical deformations. Chemical deformation is here interpreted as due to ionic exchange resulting in high Mg/Ca ratios. Mechanical deformation includes: the presence of more than one aperture, the presence of residual chambers. On the other hand, the presence of scars and specimens exhibiting fragment extensions are interpreted as predominantly due to physical abrasion and are completely unrelated to the effect of pollution. The chemically induced deformations, on the other hand, include: abnormal chamber enlargement, distorted chambers and overall test outline, lopsided pseudo-high trochospiral test and lopsided low trochospiral test whorl etc. These have been interpreted as due mainly to pollution caused by increasing heavy metal such as Cadmium, Lead, Zinc, Arsenic, Cobalt, Chromium, Lithium, and Vanadium above threshold values
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