The farming and grazing interlocked transitional zone along the Great Wall in northern Shaanxi Province is particularly vulnerable to desertification due to its fragile ecosystem and intensive human activity. Studies reveal that desertification is both a natural and anthropogenic process. Four desertification indicators (vegetative cover, proportion of drifting sand area, desertification rate, ...

The maintenance of low-intensity farming is important for the conservation of habitats and species and is a particular issue in Europe as areas under extensive farming regimes continue to diminish. Current proposals for agricultural reform in Europe are seeking to retain and encourage extensive farming partly by seeking to redirect farm workers into non-farm activities such as leisure activitie...

We review MIT research in manufacturing systems engineering, and we describe current and possible future research activities in this area. This includes advances in decomposition techniques, optimization, token-based control systems analysis, multiple part types, inspection location, data collection and several other topics.

Rural economy has an important role in rural sustainable development in every region or country. However, the rural economy in Iran is too much depending on agriculture and development of other rural economy in particular nonfarm activities, has been neglected by Iranian rural communities. Therefore, the aim of this study was to identify the role of non-farm business on rural sustainable develo...

An industrial sector uses more energy than any other end-use sectors and currently this sector is consuming about 37% of the world’s total delivered energy. Energy is consumed in the industrial sector by a diverse group of industries includingmanufacturing, agriculture, mining, and construction and for a wide range of activities, such as processing and assembly, space conditioning, and lighting...

Identifying role of extension system in adoption of new technologies have important role to developing favorable extension systems. For supporting sustainable agriculture in Iran needs extension systems to be carefully thought and accurately implemented. The purpose of this is analyzing role of extension activities in adoption of sustainable agriculture. Based on the results the attending agric...

BACKGROUND Most children in the United States receive far less physical activity (PA) than is optimal. In rural, under resourced areas of Appalachian Kentucky, physical inactivity rates are significantly higher than national levels. We sought to understand children's perceptions of PA, with the goal of developing culturally appropriate programming to increase PA. METHODS During 11 focus group...

The industrial agriculture system consumes fossil fuel, water, and topsoil at unsustainable rates. It contributes to numerous forms of environmental degradation, including air and water pollution, soil depletion, diminishing biodiversity, and fish die-offs. Meat production contributes disproportionately to these problems, in part because feeding grain to livestock to produce meat--instead of fe...