BACKGROUND Numerous researchers have posited that there should be a strong negative relationship between the evolutionary distance among species and their ecological similarity. Alternative evidence suggests that members of adaptive radiations should display no relationship between divergence time and ecological similarity because rapid evolution results in near-simultaneous speciation early in...

Service life assessment of three historical building envelopes constructed using different types of sandstone is presented. At first, experimental measurements of material parameters of sandstones are performed to provide the necessary input data for a subsequent computational analysis. In the second step, the moisture and temperature fields across the studied envelopes are calculated for a rep...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS This study aimed to identify and characterize the ontogenetic, environmental and individual components of forest tree growth. In the proposed approach, the tree growth data typically correspond to the retrospective measurement of annual shoot characteristics (e.g. length) along the trunk. METHODS Dedicated statistical models (semi-Markov switching linear mixed models) were...

While in the historic urban fabric of Iran's cities, there are numerous traditional buildings that have stood up for more than one hundred years, today's buildings, in spite of advanced construction technologies, are not comparable with those traditional ones in terms of resiliency and durability. The sustainable vernacular strategies in design and construction of these traditional houses are t...

extended abstract introduction rainfall prediction at regional and global scales is mostly as principle component of hydro-meteorological studies in un-gauged regions. ground-based measurements of precipitation are available with high accuracy in synoptic stations. spatial distribution of operational stations is now as one of the biggest problems in the developing countries such as iran, which ...