Indonesia, for example, is more than 3,000 miles from west to east (exceeding the west-east extent of the continental United States) and more than 1,000 miles from north to south; the area of Laos is only slightly smaller than that of the United Kingdom; and Myanmar is considerably larger than France.
In southern Australia, the arid Nullarbor Plain with a West-East-extent of more than 1200 kilometres acts as a very potent geographical barrier for freshwater organisms due to its arheic conditions and its virtual lack of surface water [48].
It extends for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) to within 500 miles (800 km) of both the North Pole and the Equator and has an east-west extent of 5,000 miles.
The maximum east-west extent of the sea is about 730 miles (1,175 km), and the shortest distance between the tip of Crimea and Cape Kerempe to the south is about 160 miles (260 km).
The lowland has an east-west extent of 1,850 miles (3,000 km) and a width of up to 375 miles (600 km) and lies at 165 230 feet (50 70 m) above sea level.
Extending nearly halfway around the Northern Hemisphere and covering much of eastern and northeastern Europe and all of northern Asia, Russia has a maximum east-west extent of some 5,600 miles (9,000 km) and a north-south width of 1,500 to 2,500 miles (2,500 to 4,000 km).
This choice of direction restricts the hydrodynamic possibilities to those bodies of water near Sinai that have a long East-West extent.
This difference may be explained by observing that the Tanis basin provides a much longer East-West extent for the wind stress to act (80 km vs. 30 km for the Pelusiac arm).
Contemplating the environmental and economic dereliction of 45 years of communist rule, Helmut Kohl, then chancellor, envisaged "blooming landscapes" in the east.A generation on, Germans still debate whether they have grown together and to what extent the east has bloomed.
In the former country of East Germany, the Stasi, the state secret police agency, relied on vast numbers of informers for intelligence on the activities of East German citizens; the extent of the cooperation it obtained was so great that it tore the social fabric of the country apart when the agency's files were opened to the public after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Furthermore, the results of the interviews show that goods that are currently shipped from ports on the Swedish east coast to some extent will be moved by land-based transport to ports on the west coast and shipped from there instead.
