Polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) is an electrically switchable smart window, that can provide privacy and control solar radiation, resulting in a potential energy saving. The optical properties of the PDLC window be altered from translucent to transparent when alternating current power supply applied. However, little attention has been paid terms overall building performance. Therefore, ...

Substantial tracts of land in the southwestern and western U.S. are undergoing or will require ERA. Toxicity bioassays employed in baseline ERAs are, for the most part. representative of mesic systems, and highly standardized test species (e.g., lettuce, earthworm) are generally not relevant to arid system toxicity testing. Conversely, relevant test species are often poorly characterized with r...

Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry has been utilised to acquire high-resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) with wide coverage, particularly for persistently cloud-covered regions where stereophotogrammetry is hard to apply. Since the discovery of sand buried drainage systems by the Shuttle Imaging Radar-A (SIR-A) L-band mission in 1982, radar images have been exploite...

knowledge about low flow statistics is essential for effective water resource planning and management in ungauged orpoorly gauged catchment areas, especially in arid and semi-arid regions such as iran. we employed a data set of 20 riverflow time-series from the iranian central plateau river basin, iran to evaluate the low-flow series using several frequencyanalysis methods and compared the resu...

in arid and semi-arid rangelands, grazing as one of the natural or human induced processes has direct and indirect effects on structure and dynamics of plant community and ecosystems. a study was done to analyze the effects of grazing on plant species diversity and plant functional types‘ (pfts) diversity of arid and semi-arid rangelands. we analyzed plant richness and diversity data from 75 sa...

this study aims to assess the effect of grazing intensity on vegetation structure, soil nutrient concentrations and soil physical properties. the study was carried out in steppe rangelands of saveh, markazi province, iran. four sites with four grazing intensities including very high, high, moderate and non-grazed with the same ecological conditions were selected. to study various vegetation and...

During the summer months, wet (hyporheic) soils associated with ephemeral streams and lake edges in the Antarctic Dry Valleys (DVs) become hotspots of biological activity and are hypothesized to be an important source of carbon and nitrogen for arid DV soils. Recent research in the DV has focused on the geochemistry and microbial ecology of lakes and arid soils, with substantially less informat...

abstract earthworms are an important component of soil fauna, and play a crucial role in the improvement of soil properties. however, very little is known of the interactive influence of earthworms and organic materials on soil enzyme activities, particularly in arid and semi-arid soils. the low organic matter content and the significant role of earthworms in stimulating microbiological and bio...

abstract erosion and sedimentation are the most complicated problems in hydrodynamic which are very important in water-related projects of arid and semi-arid basins. for this reason, the presence of suitable methods for good estimation of suspended sediment load of rivers is very valuable. solving hydrodynamic equations related to these phenomenons and access to a mathematical-conceptual model ...