There is considerable controversy over whether pre-Columbian (pre-A.D. 1492) Amazonia was largely "pristine" and sparsely populated by slash-and-burn agriculturists, or instead a densely populated, domesticated landscape, heavily altered by extensive deforestation and anthropogenic burning. The discovery of hundreds of large geometric earthworks beneath intact rainforest across southern Amazoni...

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...

Detailed and precise information of land-use and land-cover (LULC) in rural area is essential for land-use planning, environment and energy management. The confusion in mapping residential and industrial areas brings problems in energy management, environmental management and sustainable land use development. However, they remain ambiguous in the former rural LULC mapping, and this insufficient...

This commentary introduces the term ‘dual facing’ to describe way that Chinese voluntary associations orientate themselves as collectives situated between ancestral land (China) and their countries of settlement. The uses examples in Singapore Myanmar reflect on China's longstanding presence expanding reach Southeast Asia, including through its diaspora engagement with abroad. It argues such ar...

The expansion of agriculture is posited as one of the main dynamics of land cover change globally, and the robust modeling of these processes is important for policy as well as academic concerns. Madagascar’s farmers stand accused as the “proximate agents” of land conversion in one of the world’s “hottest” biodiversity hotspots, and numerous studies have been conducted to describe and model the...

Landslide susceptibility mapping is one of the required activities in landslide prone area. This is intended to recognize the spatial probability of landslide as an action to minimize the upcoming impact. Landslide susceptibility map can be used as supporting information in spatial planning process as well, particularly in restricting landslide prone area as free of development zone . Currently...

Increasing settlement and post-settlement survival during the critical transition from planktonic larvae to benthic juveniles will increase efficiency for sea urchin aquaculture. This study investigated the effects of temperature and settlement cues on the settlement and post-settlement survival of the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla during this phase. The current commercial methodology, which ...