METHODS: Ocular wavefront maps were obtained from 19 normal eyes using a ShackHartmann aberrometer. The tenth Zernike order fit was considered to be the real wavefront of the eyes. Different fittings from second to ninth Zernike orders were computed and compared with the tenth order. The ratio of the root mean square (RMS) error between the different fittings and the original wavefront was calc...

PURPOSE To improve the reliability of corneal topographic data through the development of a method to estimate the magnitude of misalignment between successive corneal videokeratography (VK) maps and eliminate the effect of misalignment on the repeatability of topography data. METHODS Anterior and posterior topography maps were recorded twice for 124 healthy eyes of 124 participants using a P...

We edited, redrew, and evaluated four unpublished historical vegetation maps of the Western Pamirs (Tajikistan) by the Soviet geobotanist Okmir E. Agakhanjanz. These maps cover an area of 5,188 km2 and date from 1958 to 1960. The purpose of this article is to make the historic vegetation data available to the scientific community and thus preserve a hitherto non available and up to now neglecte...

Radar rainfall data are affected by several types of error. Beside the error in the measurement of the rainfall reflectivity and its transformation into rainfall intensity, random errors can be generated by the temporal spacing of the radar scans. The aim of this work is to analize the sensitivity of the estimated rainfall maps to the radar sampling interval, i.e. the time interval between two ...

In this study, we simulated the expansion of the São Paulo Metropolitan Area (SPMA)— the largest metropolitan area in Brazil — by the year 2030 using the Dinamica EGO software with data extracted from Landsat TM 7 (orbit point 219 076, resolution 30 × 30 m). Based on the urban area in 2008, we used an urban growth scenario to analyze urban expansion up to 2030. Subsequently, we used ArcGIS to i...

This study focuses on avoiding negative effects on surface waters using new techniques for identifying wet areas near surface waters. This would aid planning and designing of forest buffer zones and off-road forestry traffic. The temporal variability in the geographical distribution of the stream network renders this type of planning difficult. A field study was performed in the 68 km2 Krycklan...

Wilderness areas, defined as areas free of industrial scale activities and other human pressures which result in significant biophysical disturbance, are important for biodiversity conservation and sustaining the key ecological processes underpinning planetary life-support systems. Despite their importance, wilderness areas are being rapidly eroded in extent and fragmented. Here we present the ...

In this paper, we consider a map labeling problem where the points to be labeled are restricted on a line. It is known that the 1d-4P and the 1d-4S unit-square label placement problem and the Slope-4P unit-square label placement problem can both be solved in linear time and the Slope-4S unit-square label placement problem can be solved in quadratic time in [7]. We extend the result to the follo...

Quantification of global forest change has been lacking despite the recognized importance of forest ecosystem services. In this study, Earth observation satellite data were used to map global forest loss (2.3 million square kilometers) and gain (0.8 million square kilometers) from 2000 to 2012 at a spatial resolution of 30 meters. The tropics were the only climate domain to exhibit a trend, wit...

Let G be a countable Abelian group with Zd as a subgroup so that G/Zd is a locally finite group. (An Abelian group is locally finite if every element has finite order.) We can construct a rank one action of G so that the Z-subaction is 2-simple, 2-mixing and only commutes with the other transformations in the action of G. Applications of this construction include a transformation with square ro...