In a wide range of the central boundaries of the Iranian plateau, encompassing an important part of the arid areas in Asia, the phenomenon of desertification is a long his tory. In this arid and waterless expanse, living conditions are fully dependent on access to water due to the supremacy of the Kavirs and deserts. The most important and oldest ways of obtaining water have been Qanat or Kariz...

The ability to achieve ecological sustainability and the sustainable development of marine and estuarine ecosystems constitutes a complex major challenge and depends on many driving forces, often conflicting with each other. In particular, there are three major drivers: (a) the search for human well-being, health and safety, (b) the maintenance of ecological sustainability and environmental equ...

In a work of Just, Miller, Scheepers and Szeptycki it was asked whether certain diagonalization properties for sequences of open covers are provably closed under taking finite or countable unions. In a recent work, Scheepers proved that one of the properties in question is closed under taking countable unions. After surveying the known results, we show that none of the remaining classes is prov...

Prevention researchers have found that drinking in different contexts is related to different alcohol problems. Where and with whom people drink affects the types of alcohol-related problems they experience. Consequently, identifying those contexts that result in the greatest number of problems provides a novel opportunity to target new prevention efforts aimed at those contexts. However, ident...

We can gain biomechanical insights if we couple knowledge of the environments, ecological roles and life history strategies of organisms with our laboratory analyses of their mechanical function or fluid dynamics, as illustrated by studies of the mechanical design of bottom-dwelling marine organisms. Obviously, measurements of the spatial and temporal distribution of loads on an organism in nat...

Hybridization can be an important evolutionary force by generating new species and influencing evolution of parental species in multiple ways, including introgression and the consequences of hybrid vigor. Determining the ecological processes underlying evolution in hybrid zones is difficult however because it requires examining changes in both genotypic frequencies over time and corresponding e...

The science of morality has drawn heavily on well-controlled but artificial laboratory settings. To study everyday morality, we repeatedly assessed moral or immoral acts and experiences in a large (N = 1252) sample using ecological momentary assessment. Moral experiences were surprisingly frequent and manifold. Liberals and conservatives emphasized somewhat different moral dimensions. Religious...