desertification is one of the major issues threatening human communities. manymethods have been developed for assessment and mapping of desertification hazards. in thisresearch, multi-criteria evaluation method was used to investigate desertification process introuti watershed, golestan province, iran. at the first step, major desertification factors weredetermined by doing field surveys. they ...

We present a compilation of over 1700 focal mechanisms for nearly 1300 earthquakes in metropolitan France and bordering regions Western Europe. It is based on both published unpublished sources (articles, reports, observatory websites) which the mechanism solutions have been verified internal consistency, corrected cases minor errors rejected major inconsistencies between parameters. The databa...

Introduction: The detailed interpretations of chondrule thermal histories are difficult and controversial. The olivine in Type IA chondrules may be relicts of granular olivine aggregates or formed by fractional crystallization [1,2]. Type IIA chondrules may have been heated and cooled once or multiple times [3,4]. Criteria in addition to texture would be useful for determining the extent of mel...

In vitro liver models have been important tools for more than 40 years for academic research and preclinical toxicity screening by the pharmaceutical industry. Hepatocytes, the highly metabolic parenchymal cells of the liver, are efficient at different metabolic chemistries depending on their relative spatial location along the sinusoid from the portal triad to the central vein. Although replic...

Zonation of organisms in soft-bottom intertidal habitats is mainly a consequence of the tidal sorting of the substrate and how benthic organisms respond to it, with predation and competition also playing a role. Although parasites are ubiquitous in these habitats and known agents of community structure, their impact on zonation is rarely considered. Here, using observational and experimental da...

Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to cause widespread biodiversity loss due to shifts in species' distributions, but these predictions rarely incorporate ecological associations such as zonation. Here, we predict the decline of a diverse assemblage of mid-latitude salt marsh plants, based on an ecosystem warming experiment. In New England salt marshes, a guild of halophytic forbs occupi...

Functional zonation of the adrenal cortex is a consequence of the zone-specific expression of P450c17 (CYP17A1) and its cofactors. Activin and inhibin peptides are differentially produced within the zones of the adrenal cortex and have been implicated in steroidogenic control. In this study, we investigated whether activin and inhibin can function as intermediates in functional zonation of the ...

Although the zonation of the adrenal cortex has a clear functional role, the mechanisms that maintain it remain largely conjectural. The concept that an outer proliferative layer gives rise to cells that migrate inwards, adopting sequentially the zona glomerulosa, fasciculata and reticularis phenotypes, has yet to be explained mechanistically. In other tissues, Eph receptor (EphR)/ephrin signal...

A previously described digitonin-perfusion technique [Quistorff, Grunnet & Cornell (1985) Biochem. J. 226, 289-297], by which intracellular material of rat liver could be liberated, has been refined, now allowing release of cytosol of high purity from both periportal and perivenous parts of the same liver. The cytosolic fractions are obtained by perfusing the liver for short intervals (10-20 s)...