Due to its physicochemical properties, nanoparticles titanium dioxide (nTiO₂) is being put into mass production and widespread applications, which inevitably results in their increasing exposure to the water body. After it entering the water body, the chemical properties of nTiO₂ can be influenced by ion compositions, ion strength and pH, which affects their ecological risk. Excess of ammonium (NH₄⁺) fertilizer has contaminated soil and water environments. In this paper, the Zeta potentials and hydrodynamic radius of nTiO₂ were studied in NH₄⁺ solution compared to those in Na⁺ solution. In addition, the sedimentation rate of nTiO₂ was also investigated. The experiment results show that high pH inhibits the sedimentation of nTiO₂. Moreover, NH₄⁺ increases the stability of nTiO₂ more than Na⁺ at the same IS, which was attributed the more negative Zeta potentials and the smaller hydraulic radius. Our results provide a theoretical basis for evaluating the ecological risk of nTiO₂ in aqueous solution containing NH₄⁺.

This article explored mineral resources and their relation to structural settings in the Central Eastern Desert (CED) of Egypt. Integration of remote sensing (RS) with aeromagnetic (AMG) data was conducted to generate a mineral predictive map. Several image transformation and enhancement techniques were performed to Landsat Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data. Using band ratios and oriented principal component analysis (PCA) on OLI data allowed delineating hydrothermal alteration zones (HAZs) and highlighted structural discontinuity. Moreover, processing of the AMG using Standard Euler deconvolution and residual magnetic anomalies successfully revealed the subsurface structural features. Zones of hydrothermal alteration and surface/subsurface geologic structural density maps were combined through GIS technique. The results showed a mineral predictive map that ranked from very low to very high probability. Field validation allowed verifying the prepared map and revealed several mineralized sites including talc, talc-schist, gold mines and quartz veins associated with hematite. Overall, integration of RS and AMG data is a powerful technique in revealing areas of potential mineralization involved with hydrothermal processes.

The project finance scenario has changed significantly around the world after the 2008 financial crisis and following the subsequent Basel III recommendations. Project finance loans from commercial banks and financial institutions have largely dried up, leaving it mostly to the export credit agencies and the bilateral and multilateral development banks to provide the institutional credit. Unfortunately, those sources are not enough, given the huge needs for construction of new infrastructure and renovation of the old ones across Asia, Africa and Latin America. The need for capital markets, through market listed financial products across asset class, unlocking a large part of domestic and corporate savings, has never been felt as strongly before. This article seeks to analyze the development story of various Asian capital markets and examine financial products, which have succeeded in their short history in receiving investor interest. The article also delves into the challenges to market development, policy imperatives and the issues relating to market liquidity and credit rating, which are the most significant influencers for public market float and investor interest.

It has become commonplace to describe publicly provided infrastructure as being in a sorry state and to advance public-private partnership as a possible remedy. This essay adopts a skeptical but not a cynical posture toward those claims. The paper starts by reviewing the comparative properties of markets and politics within a theory of budgeting where the options are construction and maintenance. This analytical point of departure explains how incongruities between political and market action can favor construction over maintenance. In short, political entities can engage in an implicit form of public debt by reducing maintenance spending to support other budgetary items. This implicit form of public debt does not manifest in higher interest rates but rather manifests in crumbling bridges and other infrastructure due to the transfer of maintenance into other budgetary activities.

Phytomediation is an environmentally friendly green rehabilitation technology that is often incorporated with an application to improve calcium peroxide and phytohormones required for the growth of agricultural plants with the expectation to improve the effectiveness of plant rehabilitation. This study mainly consists of two parts: (1) water culture experiment and (2) pot culture experiment. In the water culture experiment, we attempt to understand the influence of the addition of calcium peroxide, phytohormones (IAA and GA₃) and a chelating agent on the growth of sunflower plants. However, in the pot culture experiment, when hormones and the chelating agent EDTA are introduced to different plant groups at the same time, if the nutrition in the water required by plants is not available, the addition of the hormone cannot negate the toxicity caused by EDTA. In terms of calcium peroxide, due to quick release of oxygen in water, this study fails to apply calcium peroxide to the water culture experiment.

When the pot culture experiment is used to examine the influence of hormones at different concentration levels on the growth of sunflowers, GA₃ 10^-8 M is reported to have the optimal effectiveness, followed by IAA 10^-8 M; IAA 10^-12 M has the lowest effectiveness. According to an accumulation analysis of heavy metals at different levels, GA₃ concentrates in leaves to transport nutrition in soil to leaves. This results in an excellent TF value of 2.329G of GA₃ than 1.845 of the control group indicating that the addition of the hormone and chelating agent to GA₃ increases the TF value and the chelating agent is beneficial to the sunflower plant. If we examine phytoattenuation ability, the one-month experiment was divided into three stages for ten days each. The concentration level of heavy metals in the soil at each stage dropped continuously while that of the control group decreased from 31.63 mg/kg to 23.96 mg/kg, GA₃ from 32.09 mg/kg to 23.04 mg/kg and EDTA from 30.65 mg/kg to 25.93 mg/kg indicating the quickest growth period of the sunflowers from the formation of the bud to blossom. During the stage, the quick upward transportation of nutrition results in quick accumulation of heavy metals; the accumulated speed of heavy metals is found higher than that of directly planted plants. This study shows an improvement in the effectiveness of the addition of hormones on plant extraction and when rehabilitation is incorporated with sunflowers with the beginning bud formation, better treatment effectiveness can be reached.