Landscape ecology starts from the assumption that diversity and spatial arrangement of ecosystem mosaics have ecological implications and tries to understand the interactions between diversity and structure of large spatially heterogeneous areas and their ecological functions. These assumptions imply effective use of earth observation techniques and geographic information systems, enabling a gl...

Typically a search problem is posed as an optimisation task in which a cost, or fitness, function must be maximised or minimised, subject to various parameter constraints. This paper discusses “the shape of space”, in terms of search algorithms. We point out that it is the combination of representation and traversal operators that define an algorithm's view of a given search problem, and hence ...

Animals use and select habitat at multiple hierarchical levels and at different spatial scales within each level. Still, there is little knowledge on the scale effects at different spatial levels of species occupancy patterns. The objective of this study was to examine nonlinear effects and optimal-scale landscape characteristics that affect occupancy of the Siberian flying squirrel, Pteromys v...

In a recent issue of Science, Greenleaf et al. (2008) report single-molecule force measurements to explore the sequential folding landscape of an adenine riboswitch aptamer domain. This study provides an exceptionally quantitative view of how an RNA molecule folds.

In this paper we address a frontier topic in the humanities, namely how the cultural and natural construction that we call landscape affects well-being and health. Following an updated review of evidence-based literature in the fields of medicine, psychology, and architecture, we propose a new theoretical framework called "processual landscape," which is able to explain both the health-landscap...

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