Objectives: To determine the prevalence of tuberculosis (TB) among the household contacts. Methodology: It is a retrospective descriptive study conducted in Ahwaz a city in the southwest of Iran, between October and February 2007. Medical files and epidemiological forms of documented TB cases and their contacts in Ahwaz Health Center over the three years period from 2003 to 2005 were reviewed. ...

C. neoformans is a basidiomycetous, yeast-like fungus that, following inhalation from an environmental source, causes respiratory and neurological infection in humans and animals. This fungus has 5 serotypes (A, B, C, D, and AD), and recently was subdivided into 3 varieties known as C. neoformans var. grubii (serotype A), C. neoformans var. neoformans (serotype D), and C. neoformans var. gattii...

The type section of the Lower Cenomanian Bahariya Formation at Gebel El-Dist (Bahariya Oasis, Western Desert), Egypt, comprises claystones, mudstones, siltstones and sandstones deposited in fluvial-deltaic coastal plain, lagoonal, estuarine and shallow marine environments. The formation is characterized by an abundance of ferruginous sandstones that locally weather to form prominent iron crusts...

The Preah Vihear monument in Cambodia, located close to the border with Thailand, was one of the Khmer temples registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a Cultural Property in 2008. It consists of masonry buildings constructed of siliceous sandstone blocks. In this study, the construction sequence of its buildings was inferred from the chemical composition, magnetic susceptibility, and si...

Estimation of petrophysical properties of the rock formations played decisive role in all the processes of petroleum exploration. The Cambrian sequence is well established as reservoir rocks in the various parts of the world from where petroleum is being tapped. The Cambrian sequence has been encountered in the Potwar area and limited petroleum is being produced from the Adhi Oil Field. The Khe...

Numerical micropermeametry is performed on three-dimensional porous samples having a linear size of approximately 3 mm and a resolution of 7.5 microm. One of the samples is a microtomographic image of Fontainebleau sandstone. Two of the samples are stochastic reconstructions with the same porosity, specific surface area, and two-point correlation function as the Fontainebleau sample. The fourth...

The main purpose of this study was to examine the effect of chalk on the friction coefficient between climber's fingers and two different rock types (sandstone and limestone). The secondary purpose was to investigate the effects of humidity and temperature on the friction coefficient and on the influence of chalk. Eleven experienced climbers took part in this study and 42 test sessions were per...

A closed-form description is proposed to explain nonlinear and slow dynamics effects exhibited by sandstone bars in longitudinal resonance experiments. Along with the fast subsystem of longitudinal nonlinear displacements we examine the strain-dependent slow subsystem of broken intergrain and interlamina cohesive bonds. We show that even the simplest but phenomenologically correct modeling of t...

The present work investigates whether dielectric spectroscopy can be used to detect contamination, which may leach in a natural porous material, due to the spreading of contaminants. For this purpose, dielectric and conductivity measurements, in the frequency range from 10 mHz to 1 MHz, were carried out in sandstone samples, partially filled or saturated with solutions of leachates, at differen...