Since the late 1970s, Southern Hemisphere semi-arid regions such as southern-coastal Chile, southern Africa, and southeastern Australia have experienced a drying trend in austral autumn, predominantly during April and May. The rainfall reduction coincides with a poleward expansion of the tropical belt and subtropical dry zone by around 2°-3° in the same season. This has raised questions as to w...

1 EPhysLab, Departamento de Física Aplicada, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidade de Vigo, Ourense, Spain, 2 Departamento de Geofísica y Meteorología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 3 Instituto de Geociencias, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 4 Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South...

BACKGROUND/OBSECTIVE Airway inflammation by eosinophils, neutrophils and alveolar macrophages is a characteristic feature of asthma that leads to pathological subepithelial thickening and remodeling. Our previous study showed that oxidative stress in airways resulted in eosinophilia and epithelial apoptosis. The current study investigated whether glutathione-containing dry yeast extract (dry-YE...

Hyperpnoea with dry air could lead to a reduction in depth and hyperosmolarity of the periciliary fluid layer (PFL) as a consequence of evaporative water loss. We investigated whether mucociliary clearance (MCC) is likely to be affected by dry air hyperpnoea, which also results in airway narrowing in asthmatics. MCC was measured by radioaerosol technique, for about 1 h, in 10 asthmatic and 8 he...

background: the phenomenon of dust is a serious environmental problem in dry and semi dry regions. it has a destructive effect for the residents of such regions. over two-thirds of iran is in areas of dry and semi-dry climate conditions. methods: in this research, dust fall measurements were taken in 41 stations across yazd city using a marble dust collector (mdco) located in different parts of...

Despite the fact that many plant-feeding insects are pests, little effort has been made to identify key evolutionary trait transitions that allow taxa to acquire or lose pest status. A large proportion of species in the genus Callosobruchus are economically important pests of stored, dry postharvest beans of the tribe Phaseoleae. However, the evolution of this feeding habit is poorly understood...

Traumatic cataract was induced in rat and rabbit. The progression of the posterior subcapsular cataract and the wound healing were followed by quantitative microradiography. This method makes it possible to determine the dry mass content and to calculate the refractive indices in the lens. In the injured rat lens a reduced dry mass concentration was determined in both the wound region and the p...

The Pantanal is a large savanna wetland (138,183 km2 in Brazil), important for its wildlife, fed by tributaries of the upper Paraguay River, center of South America (Brazil, touching Bolivia and Paraguay). Uplands are plateaus (250-1,200 m high, 215,000 km2 in Brazil) and flatland is the Pantanal (80-150 m high, 147,574 km2 in Brazil). Rivers are slow moving when they meet the flatland (slope 0...

The paper reports very important findings on long term rain chemistry data from dry remote savanna site in Africa. The interesting part of observations is that the site has unique characteristics regarding chemical composition of rain water. In most of the temperate regions where acid rain is common phenomenon, the acidity is mainly reported due to very high non sea salt SO42-. The major role p...