Coral reef ecosystems thrive in tropical oligotrophic oceans because of the relationship between corals and endosymbiotic dinoflagellate algae called Symbiodinium. Symbiodinium convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into organic carbon and oxygen to fuel coral growth and calcification, creating habitat for these diverse and productive ecosystems. Light is thus a key regulating factor shaping the p...

The structure of coral reef habitat has a pronounced influence on the diversity, composition and abundance of reef-associated fishes. However, the particular features of the habitat that are most critical are not always known. Coral habitats can vary in many characteristics, notably live coral cover, topographic complexity and coral diversity, but the relative effects of these habitat character...

The percentage cover and distribution of scleractinian corals were studied at two Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf. Survey techniques involved the use of 20-m line transects placed at 4-9 m depth interval, parallel to the shore. GIS based maps were employed to show the distribution of hard corals. In Farurgan Island, hard coral cover was concentrated in the west and north-west of the island,...

For six random splits, one-variable models of rat toxicity (minus decimal logarithm of the 50% lethal dose [pLD50], oral exposure) have been calculated with CORAL software (http://www.insilico.eu/coral/). The total number of considered compounds is 689. New additional global attributes of the simplified molecular input line entry system (SMILES) have been examined for improvement of the optimal...

Dredging activities inevitably cause sediment dispersion. In certain locations, where there are important ecological areas such as mangroves or coral reefs, carefully planning the dredging can significantly reduce negative impacts. This article utilizes the dredging at Phuket port, Thailand, as a case study to demonstrate how computer simulations can be helpful to protect existing coral reefs. ...

In this paper we present an architecture to develop editors for user-defined visual languages that supports OMG modeling standards. We will present a visual language editor architecture based on generic, configurable components integrated with a model repository. This architecture has a strong separation of abstract and concrete syntax and uses change propagation mechanisms to propagate changes...

Coral disease has emerged over recent decades as a significant threat to coral reef ecosystems, with declines in coral cover and diversity of Caribbean reefs providing an example of the potential impacts of disease at regional scales. If similar trends are to be mitigated or avoided on reefs worldwide, a deeper understanding of the factors underlying the origin and spread of coral diseases and ...

Determining the shape of coral structures is an essential step for coral biologists to classify and compare corals. Currently, coral biologists analyze shape by performing manual measurements on photographs of coral colonies. In this paper we describe an interactive visualization system for measuring coral shapes in a robust and quantitative way. The input of the system is a CT scan of the cora...

Optical modeling was applied for obtaining absorbance spectra and band gap values for different morphology of ZnO semiconductor. In optical modeling, the relative permittivity scalars of zinc oxide coral like nanorods were calculated using the Bruggeman homogenization formalism. ZnO nano rods (ZONRs) as a nucleus layer were fabricated on the Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) by chronoamperometry (CA) in a...