INTRODUCTION The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) describes a food desert as an urban neighborhood or rural town without ready access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. An estimated 2.3 million rural Americans live in food deserts. One goal of the USDA is to eliminate food deserts. However, at a time when some food deserts are being eliminated, hundreds of grocery stores are ...

Patterns of spatial variation in biological diversity represent one of the central themes in modern biogeography and ecology (Rosenzweig, 1995; Gaston & Williams, 1996). Much of the knowledge about these patterns available to date is based strictly on studies of free-living organisms (Rosenzweig, 1995), whereas patterns of parasite diversity have until now attracted Ramon Science Center and Mit...

[1] Soil sulfates are present in arid and hyperarid environments on Earth and have been found to be abundant in soils on Mars. Examination of soil gypsum from the Atacama Desert, Chile, the Mojave Desert, United States, and Al-Jafr Basin, Jordan, revealed endolithic cyanobacteria communities just below the surface of soil gypsum samples. Optical and scanning electron microscope observations of ...

Receptor of Hedgehog ligands but lacks the strong capacity of PTCH1 to inhibit the signaling molecule Smoothened, which, through a series of intracellular events, activates the GLI family of transcription factors. Thus, while PTCH1 regulates Smoothened activity depending on Hedgehog ligand binding, PTCH2 is not. This is despite the fact that the three mammalian Hedgehog ligands Sonic, Desert an...

Arid Land Research and Management Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713926000 Soils and Brine Geochemistry and Mineralogy of Hyperarid Desert Playa, Ouargla Basin, Algerian Sahara Belhadj Hamdi-Aissa a; Vincent Valles b; Alain Aventurier c; Olivier Ribolzi d a Université de Ouargla, L. R. de Prot...

We focus on constraints faced by antelopes reintroductions in arid environments, and propose keys to enhance their success, using the oryx project in Saudi Arabia as example: (1) Monitoring and management of reintroduced populations appear more important than the number of released animals; (2) Because of the low accuracy of population size estimators, we recommend to implement a continuous mon...

In this paper we describe how a well­designed Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) may facilitate initial (immediate) decision making, while establishing a robust foundation and framework for improving effectiveness over time as new data and knowledge becomes available. 'Smart Knowledge Capture' is a set of methods for rapidly developing a strong SDSS for adaptive management. We review som...

Palynomorphs extracted from the mud coffins and plant remains preserved at the archaeological site of Xiaohe Cemetery (Cal. 3980 to 3540 years BP) in Lop Nur Desert of Xinjiang, China were investigated for the reconstruction of the ancient environments at the site. The results demonstrate that the Xiaohe People lived at a well-developed oasis, which was surrounded by extensive desert. The veget...

In this study production, reproduction, population, management and economic parameters resulted from recording of 7 flocks with size 57 to 400 and 721 heads of camels in a cycle of reproduction, during three years from 2011 to 2013 were used to find out of the economic values of important traits in one hump camel in desert areas rearing system. The economic traits that appeared in profit equati...