State-space estimation methods are increasingly used in ecology to estimate productivity and abundance of natural populations while accounting for variability in both population dynamics and measurement processes. However, functional forms for population dynamics and density dependence often will not match the true biological process, and this may degrade the performance of state-space methods....

Human populations have put pressure on their natural surroundings throughout history. Yet the world is now facing truly global environmental challenges and rapid population growth in the final half of the twentieth century is a critical component to understanding these phenomena. In his article, Ambassador Richard Benedick examines a host of population dynamics and their complex interlinkages...

Explaining variation in population growth rates is fundamental to predicting population dynamics and population responses to environmental change. In this study, we used matrix population models, which link birth, growth and survival to population growth rate, to examine how and why population growth rates vary within and among 50 terrestrial plant species. Population growth rates were more sim...

The present study uses structural equation modeling to explore the structural relationship of child behavior type and its evaluation during dental treatment. The study population consisted of 33 children at their first visit to a pediatric dentist at the Dental Hospital of Tsurumi University. Child behavior was evaluated by the Frankl Behavior Rating Scale and the behavior evaluation scale deve...

Individual learning and social learning are two primary abilities supporting cultural evolution. Conditions for their evolution have mostly been studied by investigating gene frequency dynamics, which essentially implies constant population size. Predictions from such "static" models may only be of partial relevance to the evolution of advanced individual learning in modern humans, because mode...

In this paper, we consider a stoichiometric population model of two producers and one consumer. It is a generalization of the Rosenzweig-MacArthur population growth model, which is a one-producer, one-consumer population model without stoichiometry. The generalization involves two steps: 1) adding a second producer which competes with the first, and 2) introducing stoichiometry into the system....

African cities face immense challenges over the coming decades. As countries urbanize, African cities must maintain service provision for rapidly increasing populations, yet with limited resources. In particular, urban food systems must be able to cope with regional food shortages and catalyze (or at least enable) the distribution of food from diverse sources in order to ensure that the cost of...

Dynamic thermal ratings have the potential to offer a costeffective alternative to network reinforcement for Distribution Network Operators looking to accommodate load growth or distributed generation connections. A review of the state of the art regarding dynamic thermal rating technologies around the world is presented. Focusing on overhead lines, a survey and evaluation of the various techno...

T he Netherlands is a small country in Western Europe, located on the North Sea coastal area at the mouth of the rivers Rhine and Meuse, bordering Belgium and Germany. The territory of the Netherlands covers 41,574 km of which 7,636 km are water. About one-quarter of the country, especially the western part where land has been reclaimed from the sea since the 16th century, actually lies below s...