As the rapid development of broadband Internet access services continues, particularly fiber to the home (FTTH) services, the digital divide between provincial and urban areas is becoming a big social issue in Japan. We classify the issue into two problems: access to high-speed Internet, and service utilization of high-speed Internet access. We focus on the latter problem by quantitatively and ...

In agroecosystems, local and landscape features, as well as natural enemy abundance and richness, are significant predictors of predation services that may result in biological control of pests. Despite the increasing importance of urban gardening for provisioning of food to urban populations, most urban gardeners suffer from high pest problems, and have little knowledge about how to manage the...

Ecological research targeting sustainable urban landscapes needs to include findings and methods from many lines of ecological research, such as the link between biodiversity and ecosystem function, the role of humans in ecosystems, landscape connectivity, and resilience. This paper reviews and highlights the importance of these issues for sustainable use of ecosystem services, which is argued ...

This paper analyses the possibility of receiving high data rate multimedia services in the non-stationary urban mobile scenario using the digital video broadcast standard DVBT2. The work focuses on the complex urban mobile environment and presents a comparison between the different configuration parameters and the data rates associated to different video services. The study is based on the expe...

Adequate health care services are often not available in rural and remote areas, and this problem is expected to grow worse in the near future. "Telehealth" interventions represent a strategy for addressing access to care problems. We examined and compared attitudes toward medical and mental health care delivered via telehealth applications among adult rural (n = 112) and urban (n = 78) primary...

OBJECTIVES This study examines whether there is a difference between urban versus suburban and rural adolescents in their use of health services following two types of self-harm distinguished as self-harm with or without suicide intent. SETTING A nationwide cross-sectional school survey of 11 406 Norwegian adolescents aged 13-19 years in 73 Norwegian junior and senior high schools. PARTICIP...

As the global urban population surpasses the rural, continuing growth in most developing countries means an inevitable increase in urban births. The majority of births in many countries will not be in remote rural areas, but in towns and cities [1]. Far from being good news for the twin Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of maternal and child health—neither of which is currently on track for s...

The main urban issue that sub-Saharan Africa is facing is rapid growth in its urban population without the urban governance structures in place that can meet their responsibilities and manage the change. This has created very large deficits in infrastructure and service provision which exposes much of the urban population to high levels of risk. Without competent, effective and accountable urba...

Urban lakes, especially those of natural origin, provide ecosystem services, recreation being one of the most important and highly valued by the city dwellers. Fulfilling the need of city residents to relax and have contact with nature has become a priority in urbanized areas and has been proved to positively affect people’s health and well-being. The recreational potential of water bodies was ...