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This is the true story of Gordon Pearce, an English truck driver determined to get the job done. Told in Gordon's ironic, modest style and illustrated with photos from that time, Where's Sharawah? is a captivating book for vehicle enthusiasts and anyone who is passionate about truck adventures. Three articulated trucks loaded in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Their destination was Sharawrah, somewhere south of The Empty Quarter. They were to travel a distance of a thousand kilometres of which the last three hundred was open desert. There were two Volvo 4X2 European road artics, and a Mercedes 6 X6 desert artic. \"You might have to tow the Volvos on the desert soft bits\", was the instruction. \"And don't tell anyone what you have loaded, just keep a low profile\". It all sounded easy enough. They should all be back in a week at most. Not so! It took two months fraught with difficulties. This is the true story of an English truck driver in 1978 determined to get the job done. With the help of Bedouins he crossed three hundred kilometres of unpredictable desert, south of The Empty Quarter at the height of summer. To say it was not easy is a bit of an understatement.

This book illuminates a previously unstudied phenomenon: the large-scale employment of people of African ancestry as slaves in agricultural oases within the Arabian Peninsula. The key to understanding this unusual system is the prevalence of malaria within Arabian Peninsula oases and drainage basins, which rendered agricultural lands in Arabia extremely unhealthy for people without genetic or acquired resistance to malarial fevers. In this way, Arabian slave agriculture had unexpected similarities to slavery as practiced in the Caribbean and Brazil. This book synthesizes a body of historical and ethnographic data about slave-based agriculture in the Arabian Peninsula. Reilly uses an innovative methodology to analyze the limited historical record and a multidisciplinary approach to complicate our understandings of the nature of work in an area that is popularly thought of solely as desert.

The timing and abruptness of the initiation and termination of the Early Holocene African Humid Period are subjects of ongoing debate, with direct consequences for our understanding of abrupt climate change, paleoenvironments, and early human cultural development. Here, we provide proxy evidence from the Horn of Africa region that documents abrupt transitions into and out of the African Humid Period in northeast Africa. Similar and generally synchronous abrupt transitions at other East African sites suggest that rapid shifts in hydroclimate are a regionally coherent feature. Our analysis suggests that the termination of the African Humid Period in the Horn of Africa occurred within centuries, underscoring the nonlinearity of the region's hydroclimate.

Ultramafic rocks exposed at the Earth's surface generally record multiple stages of evolution that may include melt extraction, serpentinization, carbonatization, and metamorphism. When quantitative thermometry based on mineral chemistry is applied to such rocks, it is often unclear what stage of their evolution is being observed. Here, in peridotites with extensive replacement of silicate minerals by carbonates (listwaenites), we present a case study that addresses the timing of carbonate formation relative to closure of exchange reactions among relict primary minerals. Massive and schistose serpentinized peridotites of Neoproterozoic age outcrop at Gabal Sirsir, South Eastern Desert, Egypt (northwestern corner of the Arabian-Nubian Shield or ANS). Petrography, bulk composition, and mineral chemistry are all consistent with a strongly depleted mantle harzburgite protolith for the serpentinites. Bulk compositions are low in Al2O3 and CaO and high in Mg# [molar Mg/(Mg+Fe) = 0.89-0.93]. Relict spinel has high Cr# [molar Cr/(Cr+Al)] and low Ti, while relict olivine has high Mg# and NiO contents. Based on compositions of coexisting relict olivine and chromian spinel, the protolith experienced 19 to 21% partial melt extraction. Such high degrees of partial melting indicate a supra-subduction zone environment, possibly a forearc setting. Along thrust faults and shear zones, serpentinites are highly altered to form talc-carbonate rocks and weathering-resistant listwaenites that can be distinguished petrographically into Types I and II. The listwaenitization process took place through two metasomatic stages, associated first with formation of the oceanic crustal section and near-ridge processes (∼750-700 Ma) and subsequently during obduction associated with the collision of East and West Gondwana and escape tectonics (∼650-600 Ma). In the first stage, Mg# of chromian spinel in the serpentinites continuously changed due to subsolidus Mg-Fe2+ redistribution, while the Mg# of chromian spinel in the Type I listwaenites was frozen due to the absence of coexisting mafic silicates. During the second stage, the Type II listwaenites formed along shear zones accompanied by oxidation of relict chromian spinel to form ferritchromite and Cr-bearing magnetite in both serpentinites and listwaenites. The high Cr# of chromian spinel relics in both serpentinites and listwaenites preserves primary evidence of protolith melt extraction, but divalent cations are more easily mobilized at low temperature. Hence, relict chromian spinel in listwaenites shows significantly higher Mg# and lower MnO than that in serpentinite, suggesting that nearly complete alteration of ultramafic rocks to form listwaenite took place prior to re-equilibration between chromian spinel and the surrounding mafic minerals in serpentinites. Furthermore, the ferritchromite in the serpentinites has higher Mn content (1.1-2.1 wt%) than that in the listwaenites (0.6-0.9 wt%), indicating its formation after carbonatization since carbonate minerals are a favorable sink for Mn.

This paper presents a review of recently acquired knowledge on the physico-chemical properties of mineral dust from Africa and Asia based on data presented and discussed during the Third International Dust Workshop, held in Leipzig (Germany) in September 2008. Various regional field experiments have been conducted in the last few years, mostly close to source regions or after short-range transport. Although significant progress has been made in characterising the regional variability of dust properties close to source regions, in particular the mineralogy of iron and the description of particle shape and mixing state, difficulties remain in estimating the range of variability of those properties within one given source region. As consequence, the impact of these parameters on aerosol properties like optical properties, solubility, hygroscopicity, etc. - determining the dust impact on climate - is only partly understood. Long-term datasets in remote regions such as the dust source regions remain a major desideratum. Future work should also focus on the evolution of dust properties during transport. In particular, the prediction of the mineral dust size distribution at emission and their evolution during transport should be considered as a high-priority. From the methodological point of view, a critical assessment and standardisation of the experimental and analytical techniques is highly recommended. Techniques to characterize the internal state of mixing of dust particles, particularly with organic material, should be further developed.

Various types of cyanobacterial mats were predominant in a wetland, constructed for the remediation of oil-polluted residual waters from an oil field in the desert of the south-eastern Arabian Peninsula, although such mats were rarely found in other wetland systems. There is scarce information on the bacterial diversity, spatial distribution and oil-biodegradation capabilities of freshwater wetland oil-polluted mats. Microbial community analysis by Automated Ribosomal Spacer Analysis (ARISA) showed that the different mats hosted distinct microbial communities. Average numbers of operational taxonomic units (OTUsARISA) were relatively lower in the mats with higher oil levels and the number of shared OTUsARISA between the mats was <60% in most cases. Multivariate analyses of fingerprinting profiles indicated that the bacterial communities in the wetland mats were influenced by oil and ammonia levels, but to a lesser extent by plant density. In addition to oil and ammonia, redundancy analysis (RDA) showed also a significant contribution of temperature, dissolved oxygen and sulfate concentration to the variations of the mats' microbial communities. Pyrosequencing yielded 282,706 reads with >90% of the sequences affiliated to Proteobacteria (41% of total sequences), Cyanobacteria (31%), Bacteriodetes (11.5%), Planctomycetes (7%) and Chloroflexi (3%). Known autotrophic (e.g. Rivularia) and heterotrophic (e.g. Azospira) nitrogen-fixing bacteria as well as purple sulfur and non-sulfur bacteria were frequently encountered in all mats. On the other hand, sequences of known sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRBs) were rarely found, indicating that SRBs in the wetland mats probably belong to yet-undescribed novel species. The wetland mats were able to degrade 53-100% of C12-C30 alkanes after 6 weeks of incubation under aerobic conditions. We conclude that oil and ammonia concentrations are the major key players in determining the spatial distribution of the wetland mats' microbial communities and that these mats contribute directly to the removal of hydrocarbons from oil field wastewaters.

A narrative review on the interlinking effects of climate change and air pollution, and their impacts on human health in the Arabian Peninsula and its Neighbouring Regions (APNR) is provided. The APNR is experiencing the direct impacts of climate change through increasingly extreme temperatures in the summer season, increasing maximum and minimum temperatures, and increased frequency and severity of dust events. The region is also experiencing significant air pollution, of which particulate matter (PM), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) are of specific concern. Air pollution in the APNR is mainly caused by unprecedented industrial, population and motorization growth. The discovery of oil in the early 20th century has been the major economic driving force behind these changes. Climate change and air pollution impact human health in the region, primarily respiratory and cardiovascular health. Despite an increase in research capacity, research intensity was found to be inconsistent across the APNR countries, with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Iraq publishing more research articles than the other countries. In this review article, the existing research gaps in the region are investigated and the lack of synthesis between the interacting effects of air pollution and climate change upon human health is highlighted.

Landsat-8 and ASTER images were utilized to derive geological information and mapping of a hyper-arid mountainous region. Principal component analyses and band rationing techniques in conjunction with petrography and field investigations enabled to produce a modified new geologic map of Gabal Batoga area, along the Red Sea coast of Egypt. The area is built by non-consanguineous diverse Pan-African basement rock units. These rock units are widely distributed in the Arabian-Nubian Shield. ASTER principal component images (PC2, PC5, PC7) and (PC2, PC3, PC8) as well as band ratio images (b4/b7, b3/b4, b2/b1) were effective in accurate lithological discrimination of the exposed rock units in the study area. The process was also enhanced and emphasized by Landsat-8 principal component images (PC2, PC4, and PC7) and band ratio (b6/b2, b6/b7, b6/b5 × b4/b5). The used methodology and techniques can be applicable in many similar arid and hyper-arid areas in the Arabian-Nubian Shield and elsewhere.