Currently available genetic and archaeological evidence is generally interpreted as supportive of a recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa. However, this is where the near consensus on human settlement history ends, and considerable uncertainty clouds any more detailed aspect of human colonization history. Here, we present a dynamic genetic model of human settlement history couple...

We study the terms of credit in a competitive market in which sellers (lenders) are willing to repeatedly …nance the purchases of buyers (borrowers) by engaging in a credit relationship. The key frictions are: (i) the lender is unable to observe the borrower’s ability to repay a loan; (ii) the borrower cannot commit to any long-term contract; (iii) it is costly for the lender to contact a borro...

Payment systems are one of the key Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) and have showed remarkable progress over the past two decades. The first half of this chapter focuses on the evolutionary process of payment systems, starting with the Deferred Net Settlement (DNS) system and progressing to the RealTime Gross Settlement (RTGS) system. Subsequently, much more sophisticated payment systems...

Processes occurring early in the life stages of corals can greatly influence the demography of coral populations, and successful settlement of coral larvae that leads to recruitment is a critical life history stage for coral reef ecosystems. Although corals in Singapore persist in one the world's most anthropogenically impacted reef systems, our understanding of the role of coral settlement in ...

The significant objective of this paper is to describe how Cellular Automata (CA) can be used to predict land use land change in the settlement growth and show the advantage of integrating the Neural Network with CA. Cellular automata have been utilized as a prediction technique in the study of an impressively wide range of dynamic phenomena. A spatial simulation model comprises an assortment o...

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...

Tropical reefs are dynamic ecosystems that host diverse coral assemblages with different life-history strategies. Here, we quantified how juvenile (<50 mm) coral demographics influenced benthic coral structure in reef flat and reef slope habitats on the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Permanent plots and settlement tiles were monitored every six months for three years in each habitat. T...

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...