Settlement size predicts extreme variation in the rates and magnitudes of many social and ecological processes in human societies. Yet, the factors that drive human settlement-size variation remain poorly understood. Size variation among economically integrated settlements tends to be heavy tailed such that the smallest settlements are extremely common and the largest settlements extremely larg...

It has been hypothesized that larvae of benthic marine invertebrates may reduce their risk of post-settlement competition by avoiding superior competitors during settlement. Few studies, however, have directly compared the levels of larval settlement close to and away from established competitors. We conducted experiments in the New England subtidal to determine whether larvae of fouling organi...

The behaviour of semi arid residual soils derived from the weathering of Johannesburg quartzite are difficult to predict because of their heterogeneous particle constitution and weakly bonded structure. The collapse behaviour of undisturbed and remoulded weathered Johannesburg quartzite was investigated; and the reliability of the collapse settlement data was also evaluated. The results showed ...

he use of real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems for the settlement of large-value payments offers considerable advantages, the principal one being the elimination of the credit risk that can arise between participants in deferred net settlement systems. However, in comparison with deferred net settlement systems, RTGS systems require relatively large amounts of liquidity to support payment ...

The problem of estimating the settlement of shallow foundations on granular soils is very complex and not yet entirely understood. The geotechnical literature has included many formulae that are based on several theoretical or experimental methods to obtain an accurate, or near-accurate, prediction of such settlement. However, these methods fail to achieve consistent success in relation to accu...

The increasing needs for environmental friendly antifouling coatings have led to investigation of new alternatives for replacing copper and TBT-based paints. In this study, results are presented from larval settlement assays of the barnacle Amphibalanus (= Balanus) amphitrite on planar, interdigitated electrodes (IDE), having 8 or 25 mum of inter-electrode spacing, upon the application of pulse...

In this study, a settlement measurement device was used to track the settlement of different layers in composting piles, and time courses of settlement velocity, bulk density distribution, and effective bulk density were investigated. Settlement is divided into two stages: the physical compressive settlement and the mass loss settlement. At the end of the former stage, bulk density (rho') and p...

Distinguishing the relative contributions of various processes to variation in recruitment success is central to our understanding of patterns and rates of population replenishment in marine organisms. We monitored settlement and recruitment of a common Caribbean damselfish, the blue chromis Chromis cyanea, to ascertain the extent to which variation in recruitment reflected settlement dynamics....

Spatial planning aims to improve the socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of a region, yet, in the spatial planning framework, it is difficult to capture the environmental impacts of the lifestyle of residents as a whole. We use carbon load as an indicator for environmental pressure and explore the spatial variations in carbon load from transport, domestic energy use, and the consumpt...

There is extensive literature examining changes in divorce rates focusing on the effects of changes in divorce laws. Previous analysis omits reforms that introduced changes in divorce settlements. This might in somehow obscure the impact of unilateral reforms on divorce rates. In this paper, we extend on the previous analyses offering insights on the impact of unilateral divorce on divorce rate...