Wind erosion is one of the most important natural processes in arid and semi-arid areas, occurring as a result of erosive winds. Wind speed, frequency and duration should be considered in studies related to wind erosion. Kashan Erg is one of the most important sand dunes complexes in Iran. To study the relationship between the wind characteristics (Uni- directional index, windness index, wind duration and frequency) with Erg morphology and also study the changes of sand flow rate in various regions, anemometers data were obtained from synoptic stations of Kashan, Ardestan, Jangalbani Badrod, Garmsar and Qom. Then, the interpolation map of sand transport and interpolation map of average and maximum wind in Kashan Erg were drawn using GIS software. Finally, the analysis results showed that the interpolation map of sand transport corroborated the results obtained from interpolation map of average wind, because sand transport rate and average wind speed were reduced from east to west of the Erg. Therefore, it is found that wind frequency and duration have more important role in the sand transport and morphology of the study area as compared with the wind speed. In addition, the comparison of Erg morphology and anemometer results in different stations showed that the spring and summer winds had the highest role in the Erg morphology.

Purpose: To evaluate the incidence of Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis (LCA) in low vision children referred to electrophysiology ward of Farabi Eye Hospital, and review the clinical features of disease and Electroretiongraphy (ERG) test values to confirm the diagnosis and severity of the disease in Iran.Design: Prospective observational case series.Methods: Two-hundred and fifteen cases of low vision infants and young children were referred to electrophysiology ward of Farabi Eye Hospital during 18 months. Clinical LCA diagnosis was made and ERG tests were done and LCA diagnosis was confirmed. The symptoms, signs and the results of eye examination and ERG findings were recorded.Results: The mean age of the patients was 27.43 (range, 1-120 months). Among low vision patients fourteen percent of patients had LCA. Fifty-four percent of the patients were female. Nystagmus and low vision were the two most common clinical manifestations of these patients. Hyperopia was the main refractive error (54.80%) and mild abnormalities in fundus examinations were found in 67.70% of cases. In nearly 90% of cases consanguinity was found. ERG was flat or unrecordable in more than 90% of cases, but in less than 10% of cases with recordable curves, severe decrease in amplitude of waves was encountered. ERG confirmed LCA diagnosis in 31 out of 37 patients (positive predictive value of 83.7%).Conclusion: The incidence of LCA in low vision children is similar to other studies. ERG helped in confirmation of presence or absence of overall retinal dysfunction in the majority 31/37 (83.7%) of LCA patients. It can differentiate these cases from other cases with poor vision in infantile age but genetic testing is recommended.

Environmental crises and loss of natural resources are among the main causes of the establishment of environmental management systems. The optimal management of natural resources requires the assessment and classification of environmental and ecological potentials. Sand arrow is one of the most important accumulations landforms in Njarabad Erg in the northeastern of Toroud village. In this research, the morphometric and morphological parameters of the sand arrows and increase of their volume in the one-year period were measured. Then, using the regression analysis method, the type, and intensity of the relationship between the amount of increase in the volume of the sand arrow and the morphometric and morphological parameters of the sand arrows were investigated and the models were presented to estimate the sand volume. Morphometric parameters include the length and maximum width of the sand arrow and morphological parameters include height, canopy diameter and crown diameter of the plant. These models can easily calculate the volume of sand arrows in the study area. The results indicate that the relationship between the amount of volume increase and the morphometric and morphological parameters of the sand arrows follows the linear, power and exponential functions. The results show the maximum linear correlation between the volume of the sand arrows with canopy diameter with the highest R2 (0. 807) and the lowest Std error of the estimation (0. 13). The results of this study, primarily inform environmental managers about the state of the sand arrows system and secondly, as a tool for serving environmental managers, express the trend and extent of the landscape of the sand arrows in different time periods.

Common landforms of Iranian desert zones landscapes are sandy deserts and sand dunes, which cover considerable area of Iranian deserts. These are called ergs. One of these ergs is Kharturan Erg with an area of about 200000 hectares that is located in North East of Iran. The geomorphology studies have been done on Kharturan Erg with morphological view points on sand dunes and the prevailing wind direction. These studies have shown that Kharturan Erg has the active depositional dunes structure and it has two types of sand dunes:1- Crescent and transverse chains, 2- Linear or elongate dunes. The first type contains: a) "prebarchanic landform", b) "barchans", c) "transverse dunes" and the second type contains a) "simple linear dunes (Seif)" and b) "composite forms (silk)".From the view point of spatial distribution, the simple sand dunes are located in the marginal parts of Erg including prebarchanic, barchanic and Seif. The composite sand dunes have occupied the central part of mentioned Erg.

Introduction: Diseases caused by opportunistic pathogen Candida albicans are usually treated with antifungal drugs, but treatment failure is not uncommon especially in profoundly immunocompromised hosts. The aim of this study was to compare erg gene expression profiles of Candida albicans treated with Thymus vulgaris extracts alone and in combination with Mentha spicata.Materials and methods: In this cross- sectional study, using volume based analyses we have conducted a gene expression profiling of ERG11 gene in C. albicans treated with Thymus vulgaris extracts alone and in combination with Mentha spicata.Results: Analysis of gene expression profiles revealed the decrease of ERG11 in C. albicans treated with Thymus vulgaris extracts in combination with Mentha spicata. Incubation with Thymus vulgaris and Mentha spicata extracts alone, however, resulted in a decrease in ERG11 RNA levels less than combination.Discussion and conclusion: These data suggest a common mechanism to find the probable targets e.g., in response to ergosterol depletion in C. albicans treated with Thymus vulgaris extracts alone and in combination with Mentha spicata.

85 % of Total moving sands in the world are in ergs which cover about 32000 Km2. Traditional qualitative methods for geomorphological surveys are based on the field observations which due to harsh condition in deserts are time and money consuming. Lut desert in eastern part of Iran includes the mega dunes which are very interesting landforms but unreachable. This paper presents a new approach using a Self Organizing Map (SOM) as an unsupervised algorithm of artificial neural networks for analysis and identification of Lut mega dunes. The latest version 1 arc second SRTM/X band DEM were re-projected 30 m UTM grid and used to generate 22 morphometric parameters of first order (e. g. slope), second order (e. g cross-sectional curvature, maximum curvatures and minimum curvature) and third order( extreme curvature)by using a bivariate quadratic surface. The five optimum parameters are selected based on Optimum Index factor (OIF) and used in a SOM to identify morphometric features (or landform). The number of landforms was determined by Davies-Bouldin Index. The ETM+ bands of landsat satellite data also included to input data for increasing the potential of SOM to extract features. The result showed that all mega dunes could clearly be recognized and classified by this method when their width is larger than the DEM resolution. The results also demonstrate that a SOM is a very efficient tool for analyzing geomorphometric features as Aeolian landforms under a hyper-arid environmental condition.

The base of analysis of applicative geomorphology is according to systemic standpoint. Systemic geomorphology is based on recognition of geomorphic forms and processes and relationships between them. Efficiency of this stand point, when there are linear and nonlinear reciprocal re-1fitionshipsbetween parts and elements of system, is very important. The studied feature in this research is Barchan dunes in the south of playa Chah Jam. In studied field, hundreds of barchans can be found; generally all of them have same size and shape. These landscapes are mobile dunes, which constitute a considerable threat to infrastructure in study field with their mobile sands….