according to the unccd definition, “desertification” is land degradation in arid, semi-aridand dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climatic variations andhuman activities. it has been recognized as a major economic, social, and environmentalproblem in many countries of the world. the medalus methodology is a practical approachto assess the present status of desertifica...

maharlou-bakhtegan catchment in the southern part of iran is faced with water scarcity.this problem is exacerbated by environmental degradation, climate change effects, mismanagementof water resources, along with a major dependence of water demand supplies on the limitedgroundwater resources. in this study, a combined approach of dpsir model along with the scenarioanalysis was employed to deriv...

Soil degradation is an unavoidable phenomenon that poses a real threat, as it limits soil utility and reduces its resources. Early assessment of can prevent further deterioration. Various parameters microbial activity may be helpful in this evaluation. Therefore, the purpose study was to assess usefulness microbiological (total abundance oligotrophic bacteria filamentous fungi), biochemical (so...

Indicators, for groundwater resources, have mostly been employed to define the present status and the degradation tendency, regarding both quantity (under- or overexploitation) and quality (natural and anthropic contamination). This work presents the application of indicators in order to draw a picture of the groundwater resources situation in the 22 Water Resource Management Units (WRMU) of th...

Housing can be considered as one of the most important needs of each family and the provision ofsuitable housing for people has always been considered as one of the indicators of progress in any country. Because ofthe specific attitude to the issue of housing in Iran, in other words, turning it into an investment, the major part of thehouseholds' income has been accounted for housing. Given the...

In this study, diagnosis of a 300-MW combined cycle power plant under faulty conditions was performed using a thermoeconomic method called modified productive structure analysis. The malfunction and dysfunction, unit cost of irreversibility and lost cost flow rate for each component were calculated for the cases of pre-fixed malfunction and the reference conditions. A commercial simulating soft...

Land degradation has expanded in the Mediterranean region as a result of a variety of factors, including economic and population growth, land-use changes and climate variations. The level of land vulnerability to degradation and its growth over time are distributed heterogeneously over space, concentrating on landscapes exposed to high human pressure. The present study investigates the level of...

Soil enzyme activities are considered to be sensitive to pollution and have been proposed as indicators for measuring the degree of soil degradation. In this work we found that in three galician soils exposed to various degrees of pollution by tanning effluent, hydrocarbons or landfill effluent, the changes in the activities of individual enzyme did not allow precise quantification of soil degr...

Following up on prior work on assessment of quality of speech in laboratory environments, this paper introduces two recently released mobile crowdsourcing paradigms. In comparison to web-based crowdsourcing, mobile crowdsourcing is carried out on smartphones or tablets in the field. Firstly, because involved hardware such as headphones cannot be known in this paradigm, we focus on the effect of...

BACKGROUND Urinary concentrations of thymine, uracil, and their degradation products are useful indicators of deficiencies of enzymes of the pyrimidine degradation pathway. We describe a rapid, specific method to measure these concentrations to detect inborn errors of pyrimidine metabolism. METHODS We used urine or urine-soaked filter-paper strips as samples and measured thymine, uracil, and ...