Sustainable urbanization policies and strategies are posited as a major tool by which to achieve the sustainable development of growing towns and cities. A major challenge for sustainable urbanization policies and strategies is how to address the complexity of urbanization, especially the ongoing growth of informal settlements and slums in developing countries. It is acknowledged that those liv...

BACKGROUND Southwest China is home to more than 30 ethnic minority groups. Since most of these populations reside in mountainous areas, convenient access to medical services is an important metric of how well their livelihoods are being protected. METHODS This paper proposes a medical convenience index (MCI) and computation model for mountain residents, taking into account various conditions ...

Data are analysed for 684 settlements in Ukraine and 458 settlements in Belarus. In each of the settlements more than 10 measurements of the I content in human thyroids had been performed in the period May/June 1986. Based on the measurement data, average thyroid doses due to the Chernobyl accident were assessed for every birth year in the birth-year cohort 1968-85. Census data from 1979 and 19...

The chapter presents a spatial interaction entropy model that addresses the dynamics of urban growth using sites from the Late Uruk period in southern Mesopotamia as examples. The model addresses to what extent geography, transportation, and factors that make locations attractive for trade and settlement affect why some settlements grow while others stabilize or diminish in size through time. T...

The spatial patterns of rural settlements are important for understanding the drivers of land use change and the relationship between human activity and environmental processes. It has been suggested that the clustering of houses decreases the negative effects on the environment and promotes the development of the countryside, but few empirical studies have quantified the spatial distribution p...

In the present paper, we argue that the relative location of peripheral spontaneous settlements is dynamic and changes with the growth of the city. The periphery is a place under constant mutation, always reproducing new extensions of land while the old peripheries are gradually incorporated to the city and occupied by new inhabitants. It focuses on the process of consolidation within the urban...

This paper deals with the study of Holocene geomorphic evolution of rivers around Songshan Mountain in relation to human frequentation in Prehistoric periods. The investigations were performed by means of an integration of GIS data processing; field surveys and particle size analysis. In 8000–3000 aBP; in the Songshan Mountain Region, large-scale river sedimentation occurred. This increased the...

Negar Taleschian Tabrizi, Barmak Yaaghoubian, Fariba Pashazadeh, Sakineh Hajebrahimi. Students’ Research Committee, Iranian Evidence-Based Medicine Center of Excellence, School of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; Iranian Evidence-Based Medicine Center of Excellence, School of Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; Department of Urology, Iran...

Prehistoric archaeological sites in the center of the Iranian Plateau suddenly disappeared around the end of the 4th millennium BCE. At Tepe Sialk, near Kashan, the last cultural period, namely Sialk IV - probably established around 3400 BCE after the last settlements of Sialk III6-7b - was abandoned approximately after 500 years. The material culture of this period, known as Proto-Elamite peri...