This work is concerned with evaluating and studying the possibilities of enhancing natural ventilation performance and its use as a passive cooling strategy in walk-up public housing blocks within the Egyptian desert climatic region. This research attempts to maximize the benefits from the vast investments made in housing projects in Egypt through providing thermally comfortable housing prototypes that could use by contrast less energy for cooling purposes. This is considered essential in the light of the current concerns about energy all over the world. Egypt was devided to seven different climatic regions by the Egyptian organization for energy conservation and planning. The Egyptian desert climatic region, which was chosen as the research context, is the largest climatic region of Egypt. Most of the Egyptian new cities that accommodate the majority of the recent public housing projects are located within this desert climatic region that represents the typical hot arid climate characteristics. Nationally, the problem of the misuse of the housing prototyping was spotted. According to previous researchers, the same basic prototypical designs are being built all over the country without giving enough consideration to the actual effects of different climates and the diversity in the residents social needs. Regionally, within the Egyptian desert climatic region, the harsh climatic conditions rate the problem of achieving thermal comfort within these housing prototypes as the most urgent problem that needs to be examined in depth. A pilot study that used observation and monitoring methods was conducted in the New Al-Minya city (The representative city of the desert climatic design region) in order to closely investigate this problem and identify its dimensions. The results confirmed thermal discomfort conditions of the housing prototypes built there, especially during the hot summer period. The passive design strategies analysis of the climatic context indicated that night purge ventilation is the most effective passive strategy that could enhance thermal comfort. These results go along with the rule of natural ventilation in reducing the used energy for cooling and the actually massive national income spent on these housing prototypes encourage this work so to concentrate on natural ventilation. Different studies using multi-approaches research techniques were employed in order to achieve the main aim of the research. These techniques included; literature review, monitoring, questionnaire and computer simulation.A critical literature review was conducted including; the physical science of natural ventilation, its strategic design as well as the design measures that control natural ventilation and the airflow in; the macro, intermediate and micro design levels. The results of the investigations were discussed and interpreted in the light of this review. A representative case study was chosen for the study. The natural ventilation performance in the case study was quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated through conducting field objective and subjective assessment respectively. In evaluation study, the thermal performance of the case study under different ventilation scenarios was monitored, the airflow inside it was simulated using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) software “FloVent” and a sample of residents were questioned. This study identified many problems associated natural ventilation uses and indicated its poor performance within the case study. A number of design measures were formulated based on the literature review and considering the evaluation study results along with the research context nature. The proposed natural ventilation design measures were applied to the case studies and their effectiveness in terms of enhancing the natural ventilation performance was quantified using “FloVent”. Results reported that the proposed natural ventilation design measures could significantly enhance the natural ventilation performance inside the case study quantitatively and qualitatively. This in turn maximizes the potential of providing thermal comfort by using both natural ventilation strategies; comfort ventilation and night purge ventilation. However, all the applied measures could not achieve neither an acceptable airspeed at any of the case study spaces nor a good airflow circulation at some of its spaces. It can be concluded that the current design of the case study can not achieve quality airflow without the use of the mechanical assisted ventilation. In general, it seems very difficult to optimize the air velocity within all spaces in a very dense multi-space design like this case study. A new design that considers natural ventilation and its drivers has to be introduced.

Memphis is considered to have been the main metropolis of dynastic Egypt. For more than 3000 years the settlement played a primary role in political, economic and cultural life of the state, functioning as capital for long periods. Nonetheless, little is known about the setting and archaeology of the city itself, even when compared to other Egyptian settlements. This work investigates the context and archaeology of Memphis, recognising distinctive development phases, and examines potential reasons for historical changes. Sedimentary records of 77 boreholes taken in the area of Mit Rahina are analysed to detect palaeoenvironmental conditions and palaeo-landscape features. Their interpretation is sustained by a multidisciplinary approach drawing together prior archaeological, historical and geomorphological studies. A model reflecting the transformations of Memphis is formulated and multi-scale landscape and environmental changes in the Memphite region over the last 5000 years are established. According to this new model, a settlement was founded during the Early Dynastic Period on a complex of sandbanks which were separated and surrounded by three branches of the Nile. After its foundation and during the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom, the city grew on the western cluster of sandbanks while the West Channel was losing flow. During the First Intermediate Period and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom extreme floods significantly affected the settlement. It recovered during the Middle Kingdom when large-scale landscape management initiatives and strong interventions on the margins of the Central Channel were undertaken. By the New Kingdom, the Middle Birka was already dry land, mainly as a result of human intervention. The East Channel became the only active branch of the Nile serving the city and the Eastern Koms were intensively settled. In the Late Period the city had expanded to the Northern Koms and the North Birka silted up. During the Ptolemaic Period, the city reached its maximum extension, despite important changes in its status and social-economic background. Subsequently, the importance of the city declined with the end of the dynastic state, while the East Channel started to migrate slowly eastward. The city decayed and was abandoned after a few centuries. Some landscape and environmental changes are positively associated both with urban mutation and with different social, economic and political phases of Memphis' history. Human interventions actively induced the evolution of both landscape and local environment. Events at the supra-regional level, both natural and especially anthropic, also had impact and are linked to changes at Memphis. Conversely, contingencies restricted to the Memphite region influenced the development of the state. Local situations at Memphis-e.g., crisis, disaster, conflict, prosperity, or affluence-could be magnified to the extent that they have been perceived as having affected the state as a whole. The foundation and development of Memphis were tightly interconnected with the fortunes of state and power. The city embodied the cultural and political identity of the state and maintained its prominence through dynastic Egyptian history. Triangular complex cause-effect relations between local changes in Memphis, historical change in Egypt, and climatic and environmental evolution both at regional and supra-regional scales are recognised. The significance of each varied with time, determining the evolution of Memphis and also of dynastic Egypt.

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis involved the various discourses around Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz's representation of women in four of his most well-known novels, which were originally written in Arabic. At the one extreme, he is described as a feminist writer who takes up an aggressive anti-patriarchal stance, delivering a multi-faceted critique on Egyptian society. Mahfouz's personal milieu, as well as the broader social context in which he finds himself, was given careful consideration. It was also considered whether the genre in which the four novels have been written has a significant influence on the manner in which Mahfouz has represented his female characters. / South Africa

Cette thèse cherche à étudier les rapports entre le pouvoir et les soufis en Syrie et en Égypte à l'époque de Nûr al-Dîn (1154-1174) et de son successeur Saladin (1174-1193). En cette seconde moitié du XIIe siècle, les croisades et la lutte contre les Fatimides et leur idéologie firent de la présence des soufis et des mystiques sur ces territoires une opportunité pour les gouvernants en quête de légitimité. Différents groupes de soufis originaires d'Iran, du Caucase, de Jazîra, du Maghreb et d'al-Andalus convergèrent alors vers ces territoires centraux du dâr al-Islam pour participer à la vie religieuse et soutenir la politique religieuse de ces princes. Les contacts entre le pouvoir et les shaykh; soufis furent alors nombreux et ces derniers se virent confier un certain nombre de missions, notamment diplomatiques, les impliquant directement dans la vie politique. Une politique de construction de lieux d'accueil (ribât et khânqâh) pour les soufis financés par des waqf mobilisa les souverains ainsi que les hommes et les femmes de leur entourage. L’histoire de ces fondations soutenues par le pouvoir est au centre de cette thèse qui cherche aussi à comprendre le mode de vie de ces populations et à étudier les conséquences qu’eut cette ingérence du pouvoir sur la vie matérielle des mystiques au sein de leur structure d'accueil. / This thesis seeks to study the relationship between the authorities and the Sufis in Syria and Egypt in the time of Nûr al-Dîn (1154-1174) and his successor Saladin (1174-1193). In the second half of the twelfth century, the Crusades and the conflict against the Fatimids and their ideology made of the presence of the Sufis and Mystics on these territories an opportunity for rulers in search of legitimacy. Different groups of Sufis from Iran, the Caucasus, the Jazîra, the Maghreb and al-Andalus converged to these central territories of the dâr al-Islâm to take part in religious life and support the religious policy of these princes. Contacts between the authorities and the Sufi shaykh were numerous and the latter were entrusted with a number of missions, including diplomatic missions, directly involving them in political life. A building policy of hosting structures (ribât and khânqâh) for the Sufis, supported by the waqf, mobilized the rulers as well as the men and women of their entourage. The history of these foundations supported by the authorities is at the center of this thesis which also seeks to understand the way of life of these populations and to study the consequences that the interference of the authorities had on the material life of the mystics within their hosting structures.

This dissertation explores interchanges and connections between Rome and Egypt that occurred during the four decades immediately following Egypt’s annexation into the Roman Empire in 30 B.C.E. The dissertation focuses on five temple precincts that were expanded under the first Roman emperor, Augustus (27 B.C.E.–14 C.E.), who as new ruler of Egypt, continued the venerable practice of building cult temples. In order to gauge the level of imperial support and analyze how local and imperial precedents were combined at temple sites, the dissertation compares the built space at sacred sites in three regions. The comparison reveals programmatic emphasis on areas where public worship occurred over inaccessible areas reserved for the gods, and that the combination of local and imperial elements strengthened cultic connections to each region’s center. Five chapters demonstrate temples in the Augustan period were created to encourage continued public use and worship by forming space where public veneration could be carried out, and by integrating pharaonic and imperial elements appropriate for the temple precincts’ transcultural local and visiting audience. This analysis indicates that temples in Augustan Egypt, like those in other areas of the Roman world, were tied to the existing traditions of the local community, engaged with new imperial elements, and were designed to encourage public involvement and continued use. Through encouragement by Augustus and his advisors, religion and culture mediated change as Egypt was annexed as a Roman province.

The Fayúm Province of Egypt covers an almost continuous time span from the middle Eocene through the early Oligocene and has produced a number of vertebrate fossils important to evolutionary history. This area includes early crocodylids inaccurately assigned to crown-group Crocodylus, which has been shown through molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses to have diverged during the Miocene. We reviewed two taxa from the early Oligocene Gebel Qatrani Formation, Crocodylus megarhinus Andrews 1905 and Crocodylus articeps Andrews 1905, which had previously been synonymized, with C. articeps thought to be based on a juvenile specimen of C. megarhinus. Crocodylus megarhinus outwardly resembles most living species of Crocodylus, however it is a basal crocodylid lacking diagnostic features for the crown genus. The holotype of C. articeps is now lost, but based on a cast and published images of the original material, it was a slender-snouted form that can be distinguished from smaller specimens of C. megarhinus. Although not synonymous with C. megarhinus, C. articeps cannot be diagnosed or scored for existing character matrices sufficiently to allow precise phylogenetic placement. Previous analyses of C. megarhinus included information from C. articeps; recoding C. megarhinus based only on material referable to that species does not change its phylogenetic position, but it forces a reconsideration of the polarity of character states in clades leading to the origin of crown-genus Crocodylus which, in turn, may inform efforts to resolve the relationships among living crocodylid lineages. Based on its confirmed phylogenetic position as a basal crocodylid, C. megarhinus provides insight into the ancestral conditions of all crocodylids and supports an African origin for Crocodylidae.

The management of international waterways presents riparian nations with a challenging set of political, economic, environmental, and geographic difficulties. Historically, the Nile Basin has exemplified many of these problems as witnessed by inter-basin conflict, devastating floods, crippling drought, and unstable political and economic development. Despite their tumultuous past the ten riparian nations of the Nile Basin established a supranational water management institution in 1999, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), in order to develop collective solutions to their common water related problems. However, serious challenges to the cooperative process threaten to derail the NBI and enflame underlying causes of conflict. This thesis seeks to determine how the NBI has affected water related decision making in the Nile Basin. This will be achieved by examining patterns of decision-making before and after the establishment of the NBI. Specifically, the impact of the NBI will be tested by examining patterns of decision-making within three measures of conflict, namely the allocation of water resources, the sharing of technical data and expertise, and the financing of water related projects and programs.

In this paper, I will reflect on the challenges I faced from the first idea to the final export of 40 Meters Down, and how I overcame these.

With a case fatality rate higher than the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza represents a threat to global public health. Efforts to identify locations with the greatest potential for pandemic emergence, as well as how the virus is spreading, may help minimize this threat. First detected in Egypt in 2006, H5N1 viruses have resulted in the deaths of millions of birds in both commercial and backyard poultry flocks, and more than 350 human infections, the most of any country, have been confirmed. Human outbreaks have been so far constrained by poor viral adaptation to non-avian hosts. There are two evolutionary mechanisms by which the H5N1 avian influenza virus could acquire pandemic potential: 1) via reassortment as a result of coinfection with another subtype (such as low pathogenic avian influenza H9N2); and/or 2) via antigenic drift and the accumulation of randomly occurring genetic changes found to improve viral fitness, herein called key substitutions (KS). Both mechanisms were investigated using geospatial methods including ecological niche modeling and hot spot analyses to predict locations with elevated potential for pandemic emergence. Using ecological niche modeling environmental, behavioral, and population characteristics of H5N1 and H9N2 niches within Egypt were identified, with niches differing markedly by subtype. Niche estimates were combined using raster overlay to estimate co-infection potential, with known occurrences used for validation. Co-infection was successfully predicted with high accuracy (area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) 0.991). 41 distinct KS in H5N1 were detected in Egyptian isolates, including 17 not previously reported in Egypt. Phenotypic consequences of detected KS were varied, but the majority have been implicated in improving mammalian host adaptation and increasing virulence. Statistically significant spatial clustering of high KS rates was detected in the northwestern portion of the Nile River delta in the governorates of Alexandria and Beheira. To investigate how the virus spreads between poultry farms, landscape genetics techniques were employed. Viral genetic sequences were evaluated using phylogenetics to determine viral relatedness between samples, then distance models representing competing diffusion mechanisms were created using road networks and a least-cost path model designed to approximate wild waterbird travel using niche modeling and circuit theory. Spatial correlations were evaluated using Mantel tests, Mantel correlograms, and multiple regression of distance matrices within causal modeling and relative support frameworks. Samples from backyard farms were most strongly correlated with least cost path distances, implicating wild bird diffusion, while samples from commercial farms were most strongly correlated with road network distances, implicating human-mediated diffusion. Results were largely consistent across gene segments. Identifying areas at risk of co-infection can help target spaces for increased surveillance. Similarly, detecting spatial hot spots of KS highlight areas of concern for pandemic emergence from antigenic drift. Demonstration of different diffusion mechanisms by farm type should inform both surveillance and biosecurity practices. Knowledge of where to focus intervention efforts, both spatially and strategically, allows limited public health resources to be targeted most effectively. By detecting where in the country pandemic influenza is likely to emerge and identifying how the virus is spreading between farms, this work contributes to efforts to predict and prevent the next influenza pandemic.

Unable to enact change through the existing political institutions of their authoritarian regimes, and consistently repressed by state security forces (the mukhabarat), activists in Egypt and Syria relied on street activism to challenge their conditions. This study analyzes the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Syria through the conceptual lens of a rhizome. Rhizomatic movements are horizontal, grassroots, and allow for the networking of local community-specific grievances, into larger national movements. This networking allows opposition members groups to build solidarity, construct collective identities, and develop a set of shared goals, strategies, and tactics. Furthermore, it provides for the transcendence of existing societal divides (such as religious, ideological, political, socio-cultural, and class), allowing participants to unite as a single force. Since a rhizome is horizontal and lacks a fixed structure, they are significantly more difficult to dismantle, as there is not a set leadership or hierarchy to target. Importantly, this rhizomatic logic integrates itself within the notion of viewing movements within larger cycles of protest or waves of contention. Rhizomatic movements are built through the praxis of networking, rather than through ideological networking. As such, the conditions and history of opposition movements provides important analytical considerations. This study, using process tracing, argues that the Egyptian revolution was rhizomatic in nature and thus able to pose a significant enough force to challenge Mubarak's regime. Although faced with brutal repression, activists remained coordinated, interconnected, and continued to mobilize. Conversely, the Syrian opposition, plagued by years of in-fighting among activists, was unable to develop as a rhizomatic force. Activists failed to sufficiently network, build collective identities, and develop common tactics. This hindered their ability to appeal to and mobilize large segments of the population that were discontent with Assad but still viewed him as the best option for their own interests. When faced with systematic suppression by Assad's regime, the opposition faltered, returning to their own respective individual self-interests and goals, allowing the regime to fragment their attempts at mobilization.