مقالة في عمون

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لقد قرأت بأسى قرار مجلس التربية و التعليم تخفيض أهمية دراسة منهج علوم الأرض و البيئة، بحيث يتم احتساب النجاح فيه دون إدراجه في المعدل العام لطلبة الفرع العلمي في امتحان التوجيهي. و هذ ا سيؤدي الى عدﻢ ايلاء دراسة المادة الاهتمام اللازم و يبدو أن أعضاء المجلس لم يدرسوا هذا الأمر بشكل متأني، و لم يراعوا حاجة الطلبة لفهم أساسيات علم الجيولوجيا. و يبدو أيضا أنهم لا يدركون الأهمية الإستراتيجية لهذا العلم، بحيث يمنع الطلبة العرب في إسرائيل من دراسة هذا التخصص.

إن المواطن الفاعل بحاجة إلى معرفة جوانب متعددة من علوم الأرض و البيئة. فهذا المواطن يجب أن يتفهم مواضيع مثل أسباب الكوارث الطبيعية ( مثل البراكين و الزلازل و الفيضانات و الانهيارات الأرضية) و مخاطرها و طرق تجنب هذه المخاطر. كما يجب عليه أن يدرك أهمية و طبيعة الموارد المائية و المخاطر التي تهددها.  كما انه بحاجة إلى معرفة شيء عن الموارد الطبيعية و المتوفرة من صخور و معادن صناعية و فلزية و تواجدها و استخدامها.  و بالطبع فان معرفة معلومات عن مصادر الطاقة التقليدية و المتجددة قد تكون ذات فائدة للمواطن المثقف.  عدا عن معلومات حول البيئة الطبيعية وأهميتها و المخاطر التي تهددها و طرق حمايتها. هذا جزء يسير مما يمكن سرده في هذا المجال.

كما أن المجلس قد لا يكون مدرك بان المشاريع التنموية الكبرى التي تخطط لها الدولة لها جوانب جيولوجية و بيئية لا يمكن إنكارها.  فمشاريع قناة البحرين و ناقل الديسي و الطاقة الذرية و الصخر الزيتي أمثلة واضحة على ذلك.  كما أن مشاريع التطوير السياحي و مكاب النفايات الصلبة و الخطرة و الحصاد المائي و البنية التحتية و غيرها يجب إشراك الجيولوجيين فيها لإثرائها و إنجاحها.

إن الوعي الجيولوجي و البيئي سوف يشجع الطلبة على الانخراط في دراسة الجيولوجيا في الجامعات و سد الحاجة المتزايدة للمختصين في هذا المجال. كما أن وجود جمهور واعي سوف يساعد على التأسيس لحوارات عقلانية عند طرح مشاريع ذات طابع جيولوجي و بيئي و ما أكثرها.

لذا، أرجو أن يتم إعادة النظر في هذا القرار بشكل يحقق مصلحة الطلبة طويلة الأمد و مصلحة الوطن كذلك

This is the question that can be raised when reading something like this. It says that the USA is to design and construct a national storage facility for storage of nuclear waste in Amman. It is supposed to last for “five decades”.

Almost everybody knows that nuclear waste is dangerous for a lot more than 50 years. Moreover, what is the waste that is to be stored? There are three classes of nuclear waste, ranging from low, intermediate and high level. What is this facility to be designed for? Why in Amman? What happens after 50 years?

As I read this, I get the distinct feeling that this is not being treated with the seriousness it deserves, whether on the political or on the technical levels. Anybody who is skeptical about the nuclear program in Jordan will not be reassured by this piece of “information”.

There has been a large response to a research paper published in Environmental Science and Technology by Avner Vengosh at Duke and a group of researchers, including ones in Jordan (Omar Rimawi, Abdallah Zoubi and Emad Akkawi at Al Balqa Applied University). The paper reports a finding of very high concentrations of the natural isotopes of radium in the water of the Disi Aquifer in the south of the country.

From a psychological perspective, the news is very bad, as it combines peoples’ extreme fear of all things radioactive with a concern that the long awaited savior (the Disi conduit) may never be implemented. But, what do the findings mean and what don’t they mean?

The ministry of water and irrigation put out a statement denying that there are abnormal amounts of radiation in the water used for drinking. It is important to note the difference between having high total radiation and having high concentrations of radium. The confusion caused by the name of the isotope should not be used to change the subject. The total radioactivity may be low, but at the same time individual isotopes may be higher than standards set as limits for them by regulators.

Radium falls in the second column of the periodic table, making it an alkali earth, like calcium. As such, it may be absorbed into calcium-bearing tissue in the body (mostly bone), which means that it would pose a danger as an internal radiation source at high enough concentrations. Radium is also worrisome because it emits alpha particles, which cause the most damage when absorbed internally.

But how are “high enough” concentrations determined? There are various ways to determine this. Some claim that there is no such thing as a “safe exposure level”. If this is the case, then everybody is in trouble, because we are all exposed to various types of ionizing radiation all the time. The average human being is exposed to about 300 millirems per year, which varies according to latitude, altitude and geology of where he/she lives. It is impossible to get away from this minimal exposure no matter what a person does.

Researchers use different approaches at determining “safe exposure limits”. In my opinion, the most satisfying is the use of epidemiological data, where a large population living under certain conditions is compared statistically with the general population. Based on such data, US standards for combined ²²⁶Ra and ²²⁸Ra in drinking water is 5 pCi (picocuries) per liter. This works out to 73 mrem after an exposure of 30 years.

Setting standards is not an exact science, and in the case of radiation, exposure limits are typically set along the ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) principle. Beyond that, linking the disease with an environmental factor by plotting the amount of exposure and the number of cancer cases on a scatter diagram. If there is a link between exposure and cancer increases, a correlation can be seen between increasing exposure and increasing cancer rates. Typically, the correlation is very distinct at high exposures and less so at low exposures. At some point, when cancer incidence reaches background levels, the relationship between exposure and cancer incidence becomes questionable.

In the case of radium, studies of exposure are extensive and have been summarized in book published by Argone National Laboratories in the US under the title “Radium in Humans: A review of US studies” (available here). This book well illustrates how epidemiological studies work. It describes exposures to dial paint workers, people who drank radium spiked water for “medicinal” purposes as well as people who lived in areas with high radium water supplies. The conclusion (on page 112) is that a threshold can be set at 1000 cGy (equivalent to 10 Grey or 1000 rad). This is echoed in page 2 of the book, which states that “No symptoms from internal radium have been recognized at levels lower than those associated with radium-induced malignancy. Radium levels 1,000 times the natural ²²⁶Ra levels found in all individuals apparently do little or no recognizable damage. These statements may suggest that a threshold exists for radium-induced malignancies; at least, they recognize that the available data demonstrate a steep dose response, with the risk dropping very rapidly for lower radium doses”.

Thus, it is no surprise to read cases like the town in Illinois that had to set up an expensive radium removal facility to remedy its high radium waters, only to see the EPA change the drinking water standard by a factor of 10, which would have made the facility pointless. The EPA seems to have kept the old standard, but it is illustrative that a good case could have been made to set the standards at 50 pCi instead of 5 pCi.

So, how does the Disi water stack up? According to the published paper, ²²⁶Ra concentrations range from 0.1 to 1.13 Bq/l (2.7 to 30.5 pCi/l), with a median of about 0.9 Bq/l (24.3 pCi). For ²²⁸Ra, the concentrations range from 0.12 to 2.14 Bq/l (3.2 to 37.8 pCi/l). The waters thus range from meeting the EPA standards to those reaching 20 times the said standards.

Thus, in dealing with questions related to radium content in the water of the Disi aquifer, three points need to be made. The first is that the science and data used to formulate the standards needs to be critically evaluated, as the standards may be too stringent and the benefits derived from removing the radium from the water may be questionable. The second point is that the water from the various sources of the aquifer will be mixed together and with those from other sources, and so the water reaching the consumer will have lower radium contents, depending on the mixing ratios and the contents of the different sources. The third point is that radium can be removed from the water if epidemiological data justifies the cost of doing so.

This year Professor Talal Akasheh has received the prestigious Rolex award for his work on documentation and preservation of the various monuments of Petra. Professor Akasheh is a chemist who became interested in Petra when he worked at Yarmouk University. He later moved to the Hashemite University, but maintained his interest in cultural heritage and its preservation. There, he established the Queen Rania Institute of Tourism and Heritage.

Anyway, the Rolex awards website details the substantial work and significant contribution the Professor Akasheh made towards sustainable development and management of Petra. Clearly, this work is of significant practical importance to Jordan, and the international recognition of this effort is well deserved. Congratulations to Talal and to Jordan.

A few days ago, the German Jordanian University hosted Dr. Herman Winick to talk about the various uses of synchrotron radiation. This came as part of the activities to introduce SESAME as a significant new research tool for Jordan and the region.

Synchrotron radiation is a very high intensity, highly tunable electromagnetic radiation. In the sciences, x-rays are typically produced using special cathode tubes. In most cases, these are sufficient for various analytical purposes, i.e. determination of chemical (by X-ray fluorescence) and crystal structures (by X-ray diffraction) of various materials. However, x-rays produced by cathode tubes are low intensity and can not be tuned to specific frequencies. This places limitation on studying complex crystal structures and intricacies of the distribution of elements within various biological, archaeological and environmental samples. Synchrotron radiation overcomes these limitations and more.

Until Dr. Winick’s talk, I have been somewhat skeptical about what use it would be, as it seemed to me that that generating x-rays using synchrotron radiation was expensive overkill. However, during the talk, it became clear that such radiation offers a whole different level of scientific investigation, which could never be achieved in existing facilities in Jordan. I think that Winick pointing out how many Nobel prizes have been won by scientists through the use of synchrotron radiation brought this point home.

Sesame is a regional project by UNESCO to establish a synchrotron light source in Jordan. Building is underway in ‘Allan near Salt, and the project is expected to be up and running in 2012. This will provide a significant boost to science in Jordan, and I look forward to witnessing it and hopefully being part of it.

The interface between religion and science is always fascinating. On the other hand, it is a dangerous mix that deserves much scrutiny. This statement is especially valid with this recent article in Newsweek, with the misleading title “Found? King Solomon’s Mines”. The article is based on this paper authored by Thomas Levy and his co-workers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Some local web sites eagerly picked up the story, with less critical review that the story warrants.
Both the story and the original article try to make the case that the Bible might be a credible source of historical information, largely due to the confluence of other historical texts with it (i.e. Pharonic records from the period of Sheshonq I). The scholarly article simply provides evidence that copper extraction in southern Jordan took place at the time of Sheshonq I (10^th century BC), with the assertion that Sheshonq I is the same as Shishaq in the Bible.

Now, it is well established that copper mining and smelting in southern Jordan began during the Chalcolithic period (~3000 BC), and continued into the Roman and Islamic periods (up to and beyond 1000 AD). Thus, the findings reported by Levy and his co-workers falls within the time frame where known copper mining and extraction occurred, and are not particularly surprising. The implication that somehow the scale of extraction increased during the Iron Age is not demonstrated, and no quantification is offered.

More importantly, none of the artifacts found at the site point to Israelite presence at the site. Pottery and other artifacts are clearly either Edomite or Egyptian. Thus, the article title, and it’s closing line “They hope to figure out who actually controlled the copper industry at Khirbat en-Nahas: David and Solomon, or Edomite leaders?” are really catchy but misleading.

It is clear that journalism is largely concerned with excitement and marketing, and so a generous interpretation is that the marketing of Biblical Archaeology benefits both the publication and the researcher, who is interested in keeping funding flowing. On the other hand, Zionists would love to prove that the Israelites had a presence here, even with no facts to back it up. This is a less generous but equally plausible explanation to how this issue is presented.

This year, Professor Zuhair Amr won the distinguished researcher award in the field of basic sciences (biology, geology and environmental sciences).Professor Amr is a biologist who works at the Jordan University of Science and Technology. He has an impressive CV, with a large volume of research on Jordanian fauna. I first mentioned his work when I was stung by a scorpion, and a paper which he co-authored helped me learn more about scorpions in Jordan.

Besides scorpions, Professor Amr has worked on butterflies, hyenas, birds, rodents, jungle cat among things. He has also worked on human health issues, such as the problem of head lice

The study and documentation of biodiversity and habitat characteristics is of vital importance to our environment. Many people sense that this biodiversity is being lost as urbanization, hunting, and pesticides are altering our ecosystem and the diversity it once supported.  This work provides a good base towards better management and conservation of our natural environment, and I believe that the judges made an excellent choice in awarding Professor Amr.

The ministry of higher education and scientific research has announced the winners of this year’s distinguished research and distinguished researchers awards. While having such awards is an important step in celebrating and rewarding our scientists and researchers, it is unfortunate that none of the media outlets is bothering to explain what the awards are for, specifically. The value of the awards is in publicizing achievements, and not specific names.  Thus, lack of publicity on the achievements diminishes the value.

In this and the next few posts, I will explore some of the achievements of this year’s winners.

As I mentioned yesterday, tomorrow I am going to Aswan to attend a workshop. This workshop is related to a project I am involved in titled “Quarryscapes”. The European Union funded Quarryscapes project started in 2005 and is now almost finished. Our meeting in Aswan is the final one of this project.

The project is basically an effort to study and raise awareness about ancient quarries in the eastern Mediterranean area. In this context, we in Jordan studied ancient Bronze aged quarries in the Jafr area, Nabatean quarries in Petra and Roman quarries in Jerash. In the upcoming meeting, I will present some of our work in Jerash.

Most people who are impressed by ancient monuments give little thought to where the stones that were used were brought from. When one thinks about it, it is obvious that the sources of stone are integral components of the archaeological context, and helps to understand more on the story of how the site was built.

The presentation I am planning to present on Jerash includes maps of the most important remaining quarry sites, the geological context, the most interesting features and the threats that these sites face. Unfortunately, there is little awareness about this issue, and for the most part, these sites are unprotected. Jordanian law does not extend protection to these quarries. Protection and proper presentation of these sites will add both depth and texture to the tourists’ experience. Moreover, it is an important component of our heritage that we should strive to bequeath to future generations.

The sites show tool marks, evidence of the techniques used for stone extraction, and unfinished columns. In the case of Jerash, there is a striking landscape as well. Here are some pictures that will help explain what I mean.

See you when I get back.

There are a couple of potentially interesting conferences scheduled over the next couple of weeks. Yarmouk University is organizing a symposium on the peaceful use of nuclear energy (October 14-16). I would like to attend, but I am scheduled to go to a meeting in Aswan next week (more on that later). There are a number of questions that I would like to ask, given the chance. The keynote address to by given by Khaled Toukan should be very informative.

The following week has an international congress on biodiversity scheduled in Aqaba (October 20-23). This will probably be very interesting as well. Loss in biodiversity is rarely given enough play in Jordan, despite it being a significant problem.

Anyway, if anybody attends and would like to give me some highlights, they are most welcome.