living in satisfying urban environments is important for an individual’s well-being. in order to create such environments, planners, designers, and policy makers need to understand the structures that cause residents to feel satisfied with their environments. this paper focuses on the perceived quality of urban residential environments: dwellings and neighborhoods. first, literature review was ...

Cynara cardunculus.L exhibits an important adaptability to arid and semi-arid regions where high salinity is frequently present. Aiming to introduce its cultivation in the Mediterranean environment especially in Tunisia, it seemed interesting to study seed germination of eight populations of cardoon in four concentrations of NaCl: 0g/L, 2g/L, 4g/L, and 8g/L. Our results showed a good variabilit...

Aeolian processes are tightly linked to soil and vegetation change in arid and semi-arid systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Wind influences patterns of vegetation and soil within the landscape, and these patterns control wind erosion at patch to landscape scales. Aggregated at larger scales, patterns in soil and vegetation distributions influence global distributions of dust and i...

Increased water scarcity implies that residents of arid, heavily populated regions of the U.S. will have to increase water conservation or else face the consequence of water shortfalls. Voluntarily conserved water is an impure public good since it is non-excludable and rival in consumption. This means that water conservation benefits are subject to free-riding behavior. This paper considers a d...

There has been much discussion in recent years of the question of the future wheat supply of the world, and in some quarters fears have been expressed that by the end of the next thirty years we may experience a universal wheat famine, provided that the present rate of increase of the bread-eating population and the present yield of wheat per acre shall continue.^ It is not the purpose to enter...

We assembled a molecular phylogeny for the arid-zone members of the Egernia whitii species group to test Pianka's [Zoogeography and speciation of Australian desert lizards: an ecological perspective, Copeia (1972) 127-145] hypothesis that habitat specificity to the three major arid-zone vegetation communities is the primary cause of lizard speciation within the arid interior of Australia. This ...

The Siberian elm (Ulmus pumila L.) is one of the most commonly found tree species in arid areas of northeast Asia. To understand the morphological and physiological characteristics of Siberian elms in arid regions, we analyzed leaves from seven study sites (five arid or semi-arid and two mesic) in China, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea, which covered a wide range of average annual precipitat...

The Asian interior arid zone is the largest desert landform system in the Northern Hemisphere, and has high biodiversity. Little is currently known about the evolutionary history of its biota. In this study, we used Zygophyllum, an important and characteristic component of the Asian interior arid zone, to provide new insights into the evolution of this biota. By greatly enlarged taxon sampling,...

SWI/SNF complexes are ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes that are highly conserved from yeast to human. From yeast to human the complexes contain a subunit with an ARID (A-T-rich interaction domain) DNA-binding domain. In yeast this subunit is SWI1 and in human there are two closely related alternative subunits, p270 and ARID1B. We describe here a comparison of the DNA-binding propert...

interest in arid ecosystems as a source of food supply for rapidly increasing population of the world, on the one hand, and the problems pertaining to the climatic characteristics, water shortages and soil sensitivity for the inhabitants in such areas, on the other have prompted efforts at both national and international levels to develop a better understanding of these problems as well as to f...