Detailed analysis of continuous time-series data from regions undergoing rapid urbanization can accurately reveal spatial variations on short time scales. This study used the city of Changchun in Jilin Province, China, as a case study to analyze total and annual changes in area—especially decreases in rural settlement area—as well as regional differences in these changes and driving forces of r...

INTRODUCTION In December 2003, the residents of Bam, Iran experienced an earthquake that measured 6.6 on the Richter scale and destroyed more than 90% of the city. PROBLEM The purpose of this study was to assess the status of the rescue, evacuation, and transportation of the casualties during the early stages following the earthquake. METHODS A cross-sectional study of 185 casualties who we...

We developed a benthic standard monitoring unit for recruitment of fishes (SMURF) to sample fishes that settle in coral rubble and tested it on three fringing reefs on the west coast of Barbados, West Indies. These rubble SMURFs are inexpensive to construct and permit newly settled fishes, including cryptic, secretive and small species, to be quickly and fairly completely (>83%) removed by dive...

Establishing if species contractions were the result of natural phenomena or human induced landscape changes is essential for managing natural populations. Fishers (Martes pennanti) in California occur in two geographically and genetically isolated populations in the northwestern mountains and southern Sierra Nevada. Their isolation is hypothesized to have resulted from a decline in abundance a...

arge-value payments systems, used by banks to settle financial and commercial transactions, play a key role in the financial system. The importance of these payments systems can be illustrated by the large amounts they settle. Every year in the United States, the systems process value equal to approximately 100 times GDP. Innovations in the design of large-value payments systems have led to man...

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Chalcolithic period (5th–4th millennium BCE) in the southern Levant was a time of significant settlement expansion and increasing social complexity. Important technological and social developments during this era set the stage for the later rise of fortified sites and nascence of urbanization in the Early Bronze Age. Controversy surrounding the chronolo...

The propagules of most species of reef fish are advected from the reef, necessitating a return to reef habitats at the end of the pelagic stage. There is increasing evidence of active attraction to the reef but the sensory abilities of reef fish larvae have not been characterized well enough to fully identify cues. The electrophysiological methods of auditory brainstem response (ABR) and electr...

Water flow affects settlement of marine larvae on several scales. At the smallest scale local flow regime may control the probability of adhesion to the substrate. Our aim was to mechanistically understand the transition from suspended to attached larvae in turbulent flow. Recently it was proposed that opportunities for larval settlement in turbulent boundary layers depend on time windows with ...

Marine benthic communities face multiple anthropogenic pressures that compromise the future of some of the most biodiverse and functionally important ecosystems in the world. Yet one of the pressures these ecosystems face, night-time lighting, remains unstudied. Light is an important cue in guiding the settlement of invertebrate larvae, and altering natural regimes of nocturnal illumination cou...

Due to urbanization and population increase, need for metro tunnels, has been considerably increased in urban areas. Estimating the surface settlement caused by tunnel excavation is an important task especially where the tunnels are excavated in urban areas or beneath important structures. Many models have been established for this purpose by extracting the relationship between the settlement a...