Background The spread of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) presents a global crisis and is a major barrier to achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). WHO identifies six important risk factors that are associated with NCDs: tobacco use, physical inactivity, overweight/ obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and high blood glucose levels. Alert village is an Indones...

This paper analyzes the semiotic structure of rural space in a traditional Japanese village, with an economic base of agriculture and forestry, mainly before the end of the country’s era of rapid economic growth. This examination defines the interrelationships among the domains of spatial classifications within the village: social space, land-use zones, folk taxonomy, places, village boundaries...

Bengkala is an Indonesian village located on the north shore of Bali that has existed for over 700 years. Currently, 2.2% of the 2185 people in this village have profound congenital deafness. In response to the high incidence of deafness, the people of Bengkala have developed a village specific sign language which is used by many of the hearing and deaf people. Deafness in Bengkala is congenita...

With China's urbanization continuing to accelerate, a amount of rural people flood into China's cities in recent years, and the issue of agriculture, rural areas and farmers is getting more and more serious. In 2005, the Chinese government put forward a plan for “the construction of new rural village”, in order to coordinate the development of both urban and rural areas. The planning method of ...

The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) The Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) is a global network of organizations that propel entrepreneurship in emerging markets. ANDE members provide critical financial, educational, and business support services to small and growing businesses (SGBs) based on the conviction that SGBs will create jobs, stimulate long-term economi...

Officials in China claim that voting rates in rural village elections are high. However, the true voting rate is lower, especially for women. We postulate that women are less likely to vote owing to insufficient knowledge about their rights. The objective of this paper is to test whether the knowledge levels of women and village leaders about women’s voting rights can affect women’s voting beha...

An outbreak of acute diarrhoeal disease in a village in southern India was investigated through personal interviews of all households. Maps were drawn using geographic information system (GIS) tools of the water supply system, sewage channels and areas with observed faecal contamination of soil within and around the village. Geographic coordinates for each house in the village were extracted fr...

Spatial distributions of soil contamination by 137Cs (89 sampling points) and 239+240Pu (76 points) near and within Dolon village were analyzed. An essential exponential decrease of contamination was found in Dolon village: the distance of a half reduction in contamination is about 0.87-1.25 km (in a northwest-southeast direction from the supposed centerline of the radioactive trace). This fact...

In the 1980s, the hegemony of the large US advertising networks has been challenged by a new breed of London-based agencies who pioneered what is known in the trade as `second wave'. On the one hand, second wave implied the emancipation of Soho from an `outpost of Madison Avenue' to the `advertising village' on the basis of momentous product and process innovations. On the other hand, a few Lon...

This paper evaluates the impact of village-level land reallocations in China on household economic outcomes. Since land was decollectivized in China in 1983, village leaders have implemented regular forced reallocations of land designed to enhance intravillage equity and attain other policy goals. I estimate the impact of insecure tenure using the past history of land shifts as an instrument fo...