BACKGROUND Ecological monitoring and sampling optima are context and location specific. Novel applications (e.g. biodiversity monitoring for environmental service payments) call for renewed efforts to establish reliable and robust monitoring in biodiversity rich areas. As there is little information on the distribution of biodiversity across the Amazon basin, we used altitude as a proxy for bio...

In image search based on chromatic similarity, the e.ectiveness of retrieval can be improved by taking into account the spatial arrangement of colors. This can serve both to distinguish images with the same colors in di.erent arrangement, and to capture the similarity between images with di.erent colors but similar arrangements. We propose a model of representation and comparison which attains ...

Brain connectivity is often considered in terms of the communication between functionally distinct brain regions. Many studies have investigated the extent to which patterns of coupling strength between multiple neural populations relates to behaviour. For example, studies have used 'functional connectivity fingerprints' to characterise individuals' brain activity. Here, we investigate the exte...

The spatial pattern of branches within axonal or dendritic arbors and the relative arrangement of neighboring arbors with respect to one another impact a neuron's potential connectivity. Although arbors can adopt diverse branching patterns to suit their functions, evenly spread branches that avoid clumping or overlap are a common feature of many axonal and dendritic arbors. The degree of overla...

Though arrangement knowledge is well suited for qualitative representations of spatial situations, if we only use this kind of knowledge, we cannot do interesting inferences about relative positions of points in the plane. For example, if we know the orientation of two triangles over four points, we cannot say anything about the orientation of the other two triangles. In this paper, we show tha...

The unsaturated zone consists of a complex arrangement of solid, liquid, and gaseous phases, most of them interconnected. The spatial distribution and geometrical arrangement of each phase, and the partitioning of solutes between phases, are controlled by physical, chemical, and biological processes. Since the upper part of the vadose zone is the most dynamic region, and controls the further do...

There is considerable interest in cell biology in determining whether, and to what extent, the spatial arrangement of nuclear objects affects nuclear function. A common approach to address this issue involves analyzing a collection of images produced using some form of fluorescence microscopy. We assume that these images have been successfully pre-processed and a spatial point pattern represent...