Socioeconomic factors are extrinsic factors that drive spatial variability. They play an important role in land resource systems and sometimes are more important than that of the natural setting. The study aims to build a comprehensive framework for assessing unconsolidated cultivated land (UCL) in the south-central and southwestern portions of Hubei Province, China, which have not experienced ...

Report keratoconus in two patients with a long history of wrestling without any risk factor for corneal ectasia and reviewing the possible pathogenesis. To confirm suspicion of keratoconus, corneal topography was performed using scanning slit topography system and Orbscan. In two wrestlers with the complaint of visual loss in their eyes and IOP raising, corneal topography was performed and de...

Micro manipulations of objects between 10μm and 1mm by contact are often disturbed by adhesion between the handled object and the gripper. This is due to the presence of the surface forces which overcome gravity and prevent the release of the object. Capillary, electrostatic and van der Waals forces are the main surface forces responsible for this adhesive phenomenon. Several factors may influe...

Coastal dunes, in particular foredunes, support a resilient ecosystem and reduce coastal vulnerability to storms. In contrast to dry desert dunes, coastal dunes arise from interactions between biological and physical processes. Ecologists have traditionally addressed coastal ecosystems by assuming that they adapt to preexisting dune topography, whereas geomorphologists have studied the properti...

Arctic plant communities are altered by climate changes. The magnitude of these alterations depends on whether species distributions are determined by macroclimatic conditions, by factors related to local topography, or by biotic interactions. Our current understanding of the relative importance of these conditions is limited due to the scarcity of studies, especially in the High Arctic. We inv...

1. Our objective was to investigate the associations between benthic macroinvertebrate communities and environmental factors described at three spatial scales: local, reach and catchment. Differences in these associations, because of local topography, were determined by categorising sites into those having a large or small ‘reach contributing area’ (RCA), which is the lateral area of land contr...

Landscape evolution is driven by abiotic, biotic, and anthropic factors. The interactions among these factors and their influence at different scales create a complex dynamic. Landscapes have been shown to exhibit numerous scaling laws, from Horton's laws to more sophisticated scaling of heights in topography and river network topology. This scaling and multiscaling analysis has the potential t...