This paper considers how habitat geometry affects New Zealand bird distributions on land-bridge islands, oceanic islands, and forest patches. The data base consists of distributions of 60 native land and freshwater bird species on 31 islands. A theoretical section examines how species incidences should vary with factors such as population density, island area, and dispersal ability, in two case...

Members of the genus Diporiphora are slender perching agamid lizards from Australasia, with a conservative morphology and some outstanding taxonomic issues. Here we assess morphological variation in the morphologically similar D. pindan, D. valens, and D. winneckei from the western deserts of Australia. A reassessment of morphological differences that included the presence or absence of a gular...

Recent research on conversational agents emphasises the need to build affective conversational systems with social intelligence. Politeness is an integral part of socially appropriate and affective conversational behaviour, e.g. consider the difference in the pragmatic effect of realizing the same communicative goal with either “Get me a glass of water mate!” or “I wonder if I could possibly ha...

Accurately assessing free ranging animals’ patterns of surface activity and refuge use is critical, yet fundamentally challenging for biologists and wildlife managers. We evaluate the accuracy of an automated technique temperature based activity estimation (TBAE) in estimating surface activity and refuge use patterns of two sympatric reptiles, the western diamond backed rattlesnake (Crotalus at...

In this paper, we aim at finding a cultural explanation of the controversy around the introduction of electronic voting, especially Internet voting. In her PhD thesis, Martijntje Smits (2002b) argues that controversies surrounding the introduction of new technologies can often be explained in terms of a clash between cultural categories. Whereas traditional cultures may for example see twins as...

providing of landing use maps and detecting of land capacity are required to manage of natural resources and environment and planning of land use. on the other hand, it is necessary to detect of the human deriving forces affecting land use change. in this research, we selected seyed mohaleh and drasara villages in tonekabon city. first, were provided the land use maps in 1987 and 2008 by using ...

abstract the effect of land use type on soil functioning within an ecosystem can be assessed and monitored using soil quality attributes. such studies, which are carried out to create a balance between the biological production and the maintenance and improvement of land resource quality, provide a framework for land degradation control and also for identification of sustainable management. in ...

How does aspirin reduce pain and inflammation? How does it prevent heart attacks? Why does it upset the stomach? How do scientists discover the answers? This article examines research and development in the history from willow bark to aspirin to “super aspirins” Celebrex and Vioxx. Scientists adopt various approaches: trial and error, laboratory experiment, clinical test, elucidation of underly...

This essay defines the visual approach through a review of leisure-related literature and draws insights from scholars across the social sciences. Visual leisure is the collection of several approaches to research that recognizes the relevance of vision to ways we make sense of leisure in our lives. It is not about more data or incremental advancement, but on providing a different kind of data ...