BACKGROUND A systematic review on the use of incentives to promote questionnaire return in clinical trials suggest they are effective, but not all studies have sufficient funds to use them. Promising an incentive once data are returned can reduce the cost-burden of this approach, with possible further cost-savings if the offer were restricted to reminder letters only. This study aimed to evalua...

The distribution of grain size parameters along 11 km stretch of the beach sediments between Karikal and Nagore, reveals that the mean grain size exhibits a marked decreasing trend on either side of the mouth of the Tirumalairajanar River which flow from west to east. The sediments are mainly of medium to coarse grained, moderately sorted, near-symmetrical skewed to fine skewed and leptokurtic ...

The use of sediment settling velocity based on mineral grain size distribution in erosion models ignores the effects of aggregation on settling velocity. The alternative approach, wet-sieved aggregate size distribution, on the other hand, cannot represent all destructive processes that eroded soils may experience under impacting raindrops. Therefore, without considering raindrop impact, both me...

an experiment was conducted as a split plot based on complete randomized block design with three replications in the fall of 2010 at the farm of lorestan university, khorramabad, iran. four winter wheat cultivars (marvdasht, azar, shiraz and line m-79-7) as the main plot and levels of iron oxide nanoparticles (ion) along with control treatment were the subplot. iron fertilizer spraying was done...

Sediments are found in the epilithic algal matrix (EAM) of all coral reefs and play important roles in ecological processes. Although we have some understanding of patterns of EAM sediments across individual reefs, our knowledge of patterns across broader spatial scales is limited. We used an underwater vacuum sampler to quantify patterns in two of the most ecologically relevant factors of EAM ...

An increasing number of studies have emphasized the need to bridge the disciplines of ecology and geomorphology. A large number of case studies show that organisms can affect erosion, but a comprehensive understanding of biological impacts on sediment transport conditions is still lacking. We use meta-analysis to synthesize published data to quantify the effects of the abundance, body size, and...

Among the impacts of coastal settlements to estuaries, nutrient pollution is often singled out as a leading cause of modification to the ecological communities of soft sediments. Through sampling of 48 sites, distributed among 16 estuaries of New South Wales, Australia, we tested the hypotheses that (1) anthropogenic nutrient loads would be a better predictor of macrofaunal communities than est...