Drugs and other forms of experience (e.g., complex housing) share the ability to alter the dendritic fields of cortical and subcortical neurons. Although such modifications are typically considered advantageous, recent research has demonstrated that psychomotor stimulants (cocaine and amphetamine) block subsequent experience-dependent structural plasticity in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and pa...

Antipoverty initiatives strive to improve distressed communities by producing outputs, such as housing, new businesses, and enhanced social services, and by building the capacity of communities to address their own problems. Although crucial for addressing the social and cultural factors contributing to community problems and for the sustainability of initiatives, capacity building is frequentl...

Housing has been the basic need of mankind providing not only shelter but also private and dynamic setting for much social activities and interactions. The problem of housing has become an everyday discussion in all quarters of the public and private sectors of the African countries. It has became glaringly clear that most of the urban population lives in dehumanizing housing environment while ...

This paper draws on data from the Monitoring Mt. Laurel Study, a new survey-based study that enables us to compare residents living in an affordable housing project in a middle-class New Jersey suburb to a comparable group of non-residents. Building on the theoretical and empirical contributions of the Gautreaux and Moving to Opportunity studies, we test the hypothesis that living in this housi...

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Chinese cities have experienced the unprecedented housing development and marketization, which has profoundly changed housing consumption. Using the latest census data, this paper provides the first evaluation of housing consumption in Chinese cities during 2000–2010. Not surprisingly, housing consumption has improved significantly over time,...

Increasing housing density is generally assumed to confer negative effects on forest breeding birds. This implies we should build at low density over the landscape to conserve these species. However, for a given human population, low-density development must cover a large area, resulting in sprawl. A pertinent question is then: at what housing density are the impacts of a given human population...

Rapid urbanization and the scale of new buildings constructed in Malaysia demonstrate an urgent need for change in policy and mode of operation. National energy demand increased by 54% since 1994, which subsequently amplified carbon emissions growth by 221% (per head of population), dubbed highest in the world. Malaysia ranked 66 in the 2009 Human Development Index (HDI); and 54 on the Environm...

Energy conservation issues and environmental problems in recent years have increased interest in traditional architecture which is well known for its energy saving designs. This paper thoroughly investigates vernacular housing designs and evaluates on the aspect of building physics. A new research methodology which is adapted to the natural and social context of Vietnam was proposed and applied...