the main purpose of this study was to investigate the factors causing the rural underdevelopment in iran. to fulfill this objective, delphi technique, as a method of refining group opinions and substituting computed consensus for an agreed-upon majority opinion, was used. the study used a series of three steps questionnaires. findings indicated that lack of a coherent strategy for sustainable r...

There’s an old saying: “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.” But do we believe this? Many health care providers sacrifice their time and money to provide medical aid to underserved populations in remote environments. But is this helpful? Underserved populations need more than just another doctor. Short-term medical aid, with the exception of disa...

“Productivity and Capacity Building”, may not be far from the nascent realization of the primacy and centrality of humans in economic development and growth process of a nation an aspect of the problem that falls into the mandates of my organisation – the National Manpower Board (NMB). This, no doubt, agrees with the enfolding major developmental paradigm shift to a new programme with profound ...

As an international legal instrument, the International Health Regulations (IHR) is internationally binding in 196 countries, especially in all the member states of the World Health Organization (WHO). The IHR aims to prevent, protect against, control, and respond to the international spread of disease and aims to cut out unnecessary interruptions to traffic and trade. To meet IHR requirements,...

The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is unusual among eukaryotes in having both unicellular and multicellular stages. In the multicellular stage, some cells, called sentinels, ingest toxins, waste and bacteria. The sentinel cells ultimately fall away from the back of the migrating slug, thus removing these substances from the slug. However, some D. discoideum clones (called farmers) carry...

Building on farmer’s agroecological knowledge to design environmental-friendly agricultural systems is crucial given the environmental impact of industrial agriculture. We investigated the drivers of farmers’ knowledge of agrobiodiversity management and analyzed how farmers’ knowledge and their current farming contexts may guide future farming systems in sub-humid (Bassila) and semi-arid (Bouko...