ARID is a DNA-binding domain involved in several transcriptional regulatory processes, including cell-cycle regulation and embryonic development. ARID domains are also targets of the Human Cancer Protein Interaction Network. Little is known about the molecular mechanisms related to conformational changes in the family of ARID domains. Thus, we have examined their structural dynamics to enrich t...

The amount and spatial distribution of deep drainage (downward movement of water across the bottom of the root zone) and groundwater recharge affect the quantity and quality of increasingly limited groundwater in arid and semiarid regions. We synthesize research from the fields of ecology and hydrology to address the issue of deep drainage in arid and semiarid regions. We start with a recently ...

Relatively little research has been expended on developing plants for use in urban desert landscapes or “xeriscapes.” However, because of reduced availability and increased cost of water, water conservation needs, and concerns for our environment, increased awareness and demand for arid-adapted landscape plants have developed. An especially important need is for groundcover requiring little wat...

tally a climatic and oceanographic phenomenon, but it has profound effects on terrestrial ecosystems as well. Although the ecological effects of ENSO are becoming increasingly known from a wide range of terrestrial ecosystems (Holmgren et al. 2001; Wright 2005), their impacts have been most intensively studied in arid and semiarid systems. Because inter-annual variability in precipitation is su...

In a conference, considering the packets only f i o m a set of selected clients can reduce the degradation of the quality of speech because mixing packets from all clients can lead to lack of clarity in the speech of any participants. The automatic selection should be smooth arid should not cause frequent interruptions. A method of selecting the clients f o r mixing is suggested here based on a...

Estimation of impervious surface area is important to the study of urban environments and social development, but surface characteristics, as well as the temporal, spectral, and spatial resolutions of remote sensing images, influence the estimation accuracy. To investigate the effects of regional environmental characteristics on the estimation of impervious surface area, we divided China into s...

Marketed livestock offtake rates are commonly low among pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid lands of east Africa. Many donors and policymakers have therefore emphasized the importance of interventions to directly address constraints that limit offtake so as to stimulate greater use of markets as a means both to increase incomes and wealth and to improve pastoralists’ capacity to manage regul...

The paper reports a technique used to construct a reference time series for the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically-active radiation (FAPAR) based on remotely-sensed data in the largest Russian arid wetland territory. For the arid Volga-Akhtuba wetlands, FAPAR appears to be an informative spectral index for estimating plant cover health and its seasonal and annual dynamics. Since FAPAR algo...

The Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (AATSR) land surface temperature (LST) product has a long-term time series of data from 20 May 2002 to 8 April 2012 and is a crucial dataset for global change studies. Accuracy and uncertainty assessment of satellite derived LST is important for its use in studying land–surface–atmosphere interactions. However, the validation of AATSR-derived LST pro...

Grass growth has been encouraged in arid communities globally to improve grazing. Often exotic species are planted, subsequently spreading beyond their plantings to drastically alter cover and negatively impact native species. We evaluated the effects of the invasive, perennial grass Cenchrus ciliaris on the native woody species Cercidium microphyllum over two growing seasons: 2002 and 2003. To...