Traditionally, Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils that cannot be allocated to Homo erectus sensu lato or modern H. sapiens have been assigned to different specific taxa. For example, in eastern Asia, these hominin fossils have been classified as archaic, early, or premodern H. sapiens. An increasing number of Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils are currently being assigned to H. heidelbergensis....

Recent political events in the United States have created a political climate that promotes prejudice against Middle Eastern, Iranian, and Muslim people. In this study, we were interested in investigating two questions: (1) How welcome do Iranian-American men and women from various religious backgrounds (Muslim, Jewish, or no religious affiliation) feel in their new homeland (specifically, how ...

BACKGROUND Due to its biogeographic origins and rapid diversification, understanding the tribe Aphidini is key to understanding aphid evolution. Major questions about aphid evolution include origins of host alternation as well as age and patterns of diversification in relation to host plants. To address these questions, we reconstructed the phylogeny of the Aphidini which contains Aphis, the mo...

Rhythmic sandstone-mudstone-coal succession of the Barakar Formation (early Permian) manifests a transition from lower braided-fluvial to upper tide-wave influenced, estuarine setting. Monospecific assemblage of marine trace fossil Chondrites isp. in contemporaneous claystone beds in the upper Barakar succession from two Gondwana basins (namely, the Raniganj Basin and the Talchir Basin) in east...

Analysis of benthic foraminiferal assemblages was performed in Callovian deposits of the Farsian Formation Northeastern Alborz; Iran. The sequence of Callovian at the Goznawwi area consists mainly of soft marls , which contain high-diversity calcareous assemblages. In this foraminiferal succession nine morphogroups were differentiated according to shell architecture (general shape, mode of coil...

West Carpathian Mesozoic paleogeographic development indicates the effect of a left lateral shift of the Alpine- Carpathian microcontinent along the European shelf since the Early Jurassic. The evolution during Late Triassic/Early Jurassic was controlled by convergence along the border of the Meliata Ocean and by contemporaneous divergence along the Middle Atlantic/Penninic rift. During Mid-Cre...

Using advanced techniques of econometrics and a metaheuristic optimization approach, this study attempts to evaluate the potential advantages of international portfolio diversification for East Asian international investors when investing in the Middle Eastern emerging markets. Overall, the results of both econometric and the metaheuristic optimization methods are supporting each other. Finding...

Paleoclimatic studies with multiple proxy data have increasingly improved our understanding of Holocene climate. A dry and warm climate in the early and middle Holocene has been documented by numerous studies in eastern North America (T. Webb et al., 1983, 1993; COHMAP Members, 1988; Baker et al., 1992; R. Webb et al., 1993). Recent studies show that the classic dry and warm prairie period in m...

introduction oolitic iron formations are sedimentary rocks with >5 vol.% oolites and >15 wt.% iron, corresponding to 21.4 wt.% fe2o3 (young, 1989; petranek and van houten, 1997; mucke and farshad, 2005). in iran, new iron oolite-bearing members have been identified in the lashkarak formation (lower-middle ordovician) in the abarsej, dehmola and simehkuh sections, eastern alborz (ghobadi pour et...