constructed upon a height (by footing) or breaking in to the ground, in a building, making a close relation between earth and soil is of great importance. in addition, earth as a prior factor in creation of a shade and residence, plays a crucial role in architecture history. throughout the different area, earth is paid attention differently: as a source of cool (in china), a source of heat (cap...

Although, grapevines do not have a high chilling requirement, its fulfillment is critical for normal development of the vines. In tropical and subtropical regions such as Farrashband, in the south of Iran, there is no adequate winter chilling to release bud dormancy in grapevines. So it is necessary to consider the effect of chemical dormancy–breaking agents on bud dormancy. In the present rese...

The production of morphologically different seeds or fruits by the same individual plant is known as seed heteromorphism. Such variation is expected to be selected for in disturbance-prone environments to allow germination into inherently variable regeneration niches. However, there are few demonstrations that heteromorphic seed characteristics should be favored by selection or how they may be ...

The premise for the work described in this paper is that the public understanding of the application of soil micromorphology methods is limited; commonly only people working in the subject domains of soil science and, more recently, archaeology, readily appreciate the benefits of developing pedogenetic and archaeological under­ standings of soils through microscopic evidence. In this paper we d...

BACKGROUND The extremely halophilic archaea are present worldwide in saline environments and have important biotechnological applications. Ten complete genomes of haloarchaea are now available, providing an opportunity for comparative analysis. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We report here the comparative analysis of five newly sequenced haloarchaeal genomes with five previously published one...

Most Chinese archaeologists assume that the scapular implements used in the Hemudu culture in eastern China (7000-5000 BP) were the si agricultural implements (tools for breaking ground and turning soils over to assist in seeding) recorded in ancient Chinese literatures and, accordingly, assume the Hemudu culture was a farming society. However, ethnographic and historical literatures worldwide ...