Pharaonic monuments represent the most valuable source of ancient Egypt, covering the period of approximately 3000-300 B.C. Karnak and Luxor temples represent the monuments of the east bank of Thebes, the old capital of Egypt. These monuments are currently threatened due to rising groundwater levels as a result of agricultural expansion after construction of the High Dam in the 1970s.Deterioration of archaeological sites at Luxor includes disintegration and exfoliation of stones, dissolution of building materials, loss of moral paintings, crystallization of salts in walls and columns, stone bleeding, destruction of wall paintings and texts, decreasing the durability of monumental stones, and discoloring.The hydrogeologic and climatic conditions combined with irrigation practices facilitated the weathering processes to take part in deterioration of archaeological sites at Luxor area. Many varieties of salt species are found in groundwater at the study area which react with country rocks including the archaeological foundations. These salts are not in equilibrium but in a dissolution and/or dissolution-precipitation phases which are responsible for the different types of deterioration features of Luxor and karnak temples including dissolution of the salts or minerals of the building stones and/or precipitation and crystallization of new salts. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.

Water resources in Egypt are becoming scarce and the demand for clean drinking water supply is one of the most important priorities of the Egyptian government in recent years. Analyzing water use and future demand forecasting is a primitive clue for water demand management. Water in Luxor is used for agricultural, residential, institutional, commercial, and touristic purposes. The results of water use analysis indicated that for the time period from 1983 to 2012, agriculture is the highest consumer of water which reached about 94.76-97.38 % followed by residential water consumption (1.90-3.05 %), institutional water consumption (0.71-1.75 %), and touristic water consumption (0.02-0.43 %), respectively. The future demand forecasting results revealed that the present situation may continue to rise in the next 50 years which will increase the water demand with a water deficit ranging between 15 and 114 MCM/year. To fill the gap between the present water consumption and future residential, institutional, commercial, and touristic water demand, additional municipal facilities, and improvement and management of water supply/demand are needed. To cope with the predicted future water demand, it is recommended to improve the on-farm irrigation, reduce the demand for irrigation water, rationalize the irrigation water use, and enhance the integrated role of water users in integrated water resources management. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Nanocellulose is increasingly considered for applications; however, the fibrillar nature, crystalline phase, and surface reactivity of these high aspect ratio nanomaterials need to be considered for safe biomedical use. Here a comprehensive analysis of the impact of cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) and nanocrystals (CNC) is performed using materials provided by the Nanomaterial Health Implications Research Consortium of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. An intermediary length of nanocrystals is also derived by acid hydrolysis. While all CNFs and CNCs are devoid of cytotoxicity, 210 and 280 nm fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled CNCs show higher cellular uptake than longer and shorter CNCs or CNFs. Moreover, CNCs in the 200-300 nm length scale are more likely to induce lysosomal damage, NLRP3 inflammasome activation, and IL-1β production than CNFs. The pro-inflammatory effects of CNCs are correlated with higher crystallinity index, surface hydroxyl density, and reactive oxygen species generation. In addition, CNFs and CNCs can induce maturation of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells and CNCs (and to a lesser extent CNFs) are found to exert adjuvant effects in ovalbumin (OVA)-injected mice, particularly for 210 and 280 nm CNCs. All considered, the data demonstrate the importance of length scale, crystallinity, and surface reactivity in shaping the innate immune response to nanocellulose.