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Egypt has one of the largest and fastest growing populations in the world. However, nearly 96% of the total land area is uninhabited desert and 96% of the population is concentrated around the River Nile valley and the Delta. This unbalanced distribution and dramatically rising population have caused severe socio-economic problems. In this research, 24 land use/land cover (LULC) maps from 1992 to 2015 were used to monitor LULC changes in the Nile Delta and quantify the rates and types of LULC transitions. The results show that 74,600 hectares of fertile agricultural land in the Nile Delta (Old Lands) was lost to urban expansion over the 24 year period at an average rate of 3108 ha year−1, whilst 206,100 hectares of bare land was converted to agricultural land (New Lands) at an average rate of 8588 ha year−1. A Cellular Automata-Markov (CA-Markov) integrated model was used to simulate future alternative LULC change scenarios. Under a Business as Usual scenario, 87,000 hectares of land transitioned from agricultural land to urban areas by 2030, posing a threat to the agricultural sector sustainability and food security in Egypt. Three alternative future scenarios were developed to promote urban development elsewhere, hence, with potential to preserve the fertile soils of the Nile Delta. A scenario which permitted urban expansion into the desert only preserved the largest amount of agricultural land in the Nile Delta. However, a scenario that encouraged urban expansion into the desert and adjacent to areas of existing high population density resulted in almost the same area of agricultural land being preserved. The alternative future scenarios are valuable for supporting policy development and planning decisions in Egypt and demonstrating that continued urban development is possible while minimising the threats to environmental sustainability and national food security.

Global land cover (LC) changes threaten sustainability and yet we lack a comprehensive understanding of the gains and losses of LC types, including the magnitudes, locations and timings of transitions. We used a novel, fine-resolution and temporally consistent satellite-derived dataset covering the entire Earth annually from 1992 to 2018 to quantify LC changes across a range of scales. At global and continental scales, the observed trajectories of change for most LC types were fairly smooth and consistent in direction through time. We show these observed trajectories in the context of error margins produced by extrapolating previously published accuracy metrics associated with the LC dataset. For many LC classes the observed changes were found to be within the error margins. However, an important exception was the increase in urban land, which was consistently larger than the error margins, and for which the LC transition was unidirectional. An advantage of analysing the global, fine spatial resolution LC time-series dataset is the ability to identify where and when LC changes have taken place on the Earth. We present LC change maps and trajectories that identify locations with high dynamism, and which pose significant sustainability challenges. We focused on forest loss and urban growth at the national scale, identifying the top 10 countries with the largest percentages of forest loss and urban growth globally. Crucially, we found that most of these ‘worst-case’ countries have stabilized their forest losses, although urban expansion was monotonic in all cases. These findings provide crucial information to support progress towards the UN’s SDGs.

Detection and monitoring land use/land cover (LULC) changes using historical multi-temporal remote sensing data is greatly important for providing an effective and robust assessment of the human-induced impacts on the environmental conditions. It is extremely recommended for LULC studies related to evaluating the sustainability of changing areas over time. The agricultural sector in Egypt is one of the crucial pillars of the national economy. The amount of traditional agricultural land (Old Lands) in the Nile Delta had a significant decline over the past few decades due to urban encroachment. Consequently, several land reclamation initiatives and policies have been adopted by the Egyptian government to expand agricultural land in desert areas (New Lands) adjacent to both fringes of the Nile delta. Tiba district is one of those newly reclaimed areas located in the western Nile Delta of Egypt with a total area of 125 km2. The primary objective of this article was to identify, monitor and quantify historical LULC changes in Tiba district using historical multi-temporal Landsat imageries for six different dates acquired from 1988 to 2018. The temporal and historical changes that occurred were identified using supervised maximum likelihood classification (MLC) approach. Three major LULC classes were distinguished and mapped: (1) Agricultural land; (2) barren land; and (3) urban land. In 1988, Tiba district was 100% barren land; however, during the 1990s, the governmental reclamation projects have led to significant changes in LULC. The produced LULC maps from performing the MLC demonstrated that Tiba district had experienced significant agricultural land expansion from 0% in 1988 to occupy 84% in 2018, whilst, barren land area has decreased from 100% in 1988 to occupy only 7% in 2018. This reflects the successful governmental initiatives for agricultural expansion in desert areas located in the western Nile Delta of Egypt.

Wound healing treatment with a nanofibrous matrix is a serious demand to avoid associated complications, including bacterial infections. Magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) were encapsulated into electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds of ε -polycaprolactone (PCL) containing graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets. The structural and morphological behaviors of the obtained scaffolds were investigated. The modification of nanofibers via the addition of MNPs generated a slight change of morphology, whereas the fibers’ diameters were around 0.2–0.5, 0.1–0.3, 0.1–0.2, and 0.1–0.3 μ m for 0.0NPs-GO@PCL, 0.1NPs-GO@PCL, 0.2NPs-GO@PCL, and 0.3NPs-GO@PCL, respectively. Moreover, the roughness average (Ra) increased from 119 nm to be about 169 nm from the lowest and the highest contributions of MNPs. The Human fibroblasts cell line (HFB4) reached around 98.4 ± 3.1% cell viability for 0.2MNPs-GO@PCL composition. The antibacterial activity of the highest contribution of MNPs reached about 11.4 ± 1.6 mm and 12.3 ± 1.2 mm against S. aureus and E. coli , respectively. The in-vitro cells’ attachment of HFB4 showed that cells were adhered to and proliferated through the nanofibrous scaffolds. Cells also spread and grew significantly as the modification via MNPs. Thus, indicating that designing of new scaffold for wound healing and disinfection utilization could be reached via tailoring of electrospun products encapsulating with biocompatible substances such as graphene oxide and magnetite.

A few special chaotic systems without unstable equilibrium points have been investigated recently. It is worth noting that these special systems are different from normal chaotic ones because the classical Shilnikov criterion cannot be used to prove chaos of such systems. A novel unusual chaotic system without equilibrium is proposed in this work. We discover dynamical properties as well as the synchronization of the new system. Furthermore, a physical realization of the system without equilibrium is also implemented to illustrate its feasibility.

[...]the fractional order memristor no equilibrium system is realized using FPGA.[...]low-thermal budget MIM based memories using Al/Al2O3/Al structures have been fabricated and the memristor effect has been observed for the bipolar and unipolar switching modes, which are dependent on the amount of electrons tunneling through the device.[...]we would like to thank the journal’s Editorial Board for being very encouraging and accommodative regarding this special issue.

Background The cotton leafworm, Spodoptera littoralis (Boisd.), is one of the most dangerous pests in Egypt and Africa, causing significant economic loss of cotton crop yield. The frequent use of insecticides to control this insect has led to the development of a generation’s resistance to them. The need of a new, safe control method and effective insecticides has become necessary after the recent increases in environmental pollution and insect resistance. This study is devoted to developing a novel synthetic scheme to produce a pesticide nanocomposite of very high efficiency compared to the originals. The nature of its chemical binding has been investigated via Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Results In this work, the method is based on using silver nanoparticles (AgNPS) as a pesticide carrier by loading the organophosphorus pesticide profenofos on to their surface. The profenofos, AgNPS alone and nanocomposite profenofos (AgNPS@P) have been tested against second- and fourth-instar larvae of laboratory and field cotton leafworm. Our findings indicate that the AgNPS@P is more effective on cotton leafworm larvae than each of profenofos and nanosilver alone. The activity of AgNPS@P (LC 50 = 0.94 and 5.15 ppm) was increased to 85 and 69 times more than that of profenofos (LC 50 = 79.52 and 356.97 ppm) against second- and fourth-instar larvae of field cotton leafworm. Conclusions This method may be successful for reducing environmental pollution and the resistance of this pest to many pesticides.

Additionally, chaotic systems have been recently used to analyze financial models trying to predict the complexity of the markets with a huge effect in the global economy. [...]the overall purpose of this special issue lies in gathering the latest scientific trends on the topics of chaotic systems with emphasis on real-world engineering applications. [...]the dynamic behaviors of the new system are explored by theoretical analysis by using the bifurcation diagrams and phase portraits. [...]the hyperchaotic financial system has been simulated and implemented to confirm the results of the numerical integrations and its real contribution to engineering. [...]a series coupled PSO algorithm (PP algorithm) based on multimodal function is constructed, which is optimized by multipeak solution on the basis of the standard PSO algorithm. First the authors present some results about the abscissa of stability of characteristic polynomials from linear differential equations systems; that is, they consider Hurwitz polynomials.

Wound healing treatment with a nanofibrous matrix is a serious demand to avoid associated complications, including bacterial infections. Magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) were encapsulated into electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds of -polycaprolactone (PCL) containing graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets. The structural and morphological behaviors of the obtained scaffolds were investigated. The modification of nanofibers via the addition of MNPs generated a slight change of morphology, whereas the fibers' diameters were around 0.2-0.5, 0.1-0.3, 0.1-0.2, and 0.1-0.3 m for 0.0NPs-GO@PCL, 0.1NPs-GO@PCL, 0.2NPs-GO@PCL, and 0.3NPs-GO@PCL, respectively. Moreover, the roughness average (Ra) increased from 119 nm to be about 169 nm from the lowest and the highest contributions of MNPs. The Human fibroblasts cell line (HFB4) reached around 98.4 3.1% cell viability for 0.2MNPs-GO@PCL composition. The antibacterial activity of the highest contribution of MNPs reached about 11.4 1.6 mm and 12.3 1.2 mm against S. aureus and E. coli, respectively. The in-vitro cells' attachment of HFB4 showed that cells were adhered to and proliferated through the nanofibrous scaffolds. Cells also spread and grew significantly as the modification via MNPs. Thus, indicating that designing of new scaffold for wound healing and disinfection utilization could be reached via tailoring of electrospun products encapsulating with biocompatible substances such as graphene oxide and magnetite.