The spatial deconcentration of population during the 20th century and the resulting expansion of human settlements has been a significant cause of anthropogenic landscape change in the United States and many other countries. In the seven-state North Central Region, as in other regions of the US, changing human settlement patterns are most prominent at the outlying fringe of metropolitan areas a...

The modified law of Iranian Administrative divisions has greatly altered the pattern of settlement in recent decades. The promotion of rural areas to urban areas has shifted from mere population standard to combined population-administrative standards. However, all censuses suggest that many rural areas reported as smaller than the minimum population standard have been promoted to urban areas. ...

The study was conducted to determine the prevalence of goiter and hypothyroidism in two groups of the population at various stages of social development and to determine its association with malnutrition and dietary intake. Aboriginal inhabitants (Orang Asli), a resettlement rural village (Betau Post), a traditional village in the jungle (Lanai Post) and a modern village settlement near Kua...

THE 1959 Mental Health Act emphasises the need to integrate psychiatric patients with the community at large rather than to isolate them from it, as hitherto. This identification with the normal community has been the Ministry of Labour's approach to the employment of disabled people since the time of the Disabled Persons (Employment) <4ct of 1944. For the past 17 years all disabled people, whe...

BACKGROUND As part of a larger dermatological investigation undertaken in 1999 - 2001 involving the Department of Dermatology, Groote Schuur Hospital (Cape Town, South Africa) and Nottingham University (UK), household pesticide use was investigated among Xhosa-speaking families living in three areas in South Africa (a rural area, an urban township and an informal settlement). OBJECTIVES The a...

PURPOSE The World Health Organization aims to eliminate blinding trachoma by 2020 using the SAFE strategy: Surgery for trichiasis, Antibiotics, Facial cleanliness and Environmental improvement. Trachoma is hyperendemic on the remote Bijagos Archipelago of Guinea-Bissau, West Africa. Sociocultural factors remain unexplored here, despite their potential impact on disease control, particularly thr...