BACKGROUND Our study analysed the vulnerability of the useful Agave species of the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, considering ecological, cultural and economic aspects, and management types. We hypothesized that management intensity is proportional to the degree of risk of a species in order to decrease its vulnerability. METHODS Distribution of Agave species was monitored in 36 types of plant asso...

Rapid urbanization and industrialization, population growth and economic growth in developing countries make management of municipal solid waste more complex comparing with developed countries. Furthermore, the conventional municipal solid waste management approach often is reductionists, not tailored to handle complexity. Therefore, the need to a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary approach r...

Soil-dwelling insects are severe pests in many agroecosystems. These pests have cryptic life cycles, making sampling difficult and damage hard to anticipate. The management of soil insects is therefore often based on preventative insecticides applied at planting or cultural practices. Wireworms, the subterranean larvae of click beetles (Coleoptera: Elateridae), have re-emerged as problematic pe...

Ocean and coastal ecosystems provide critical fisheries, coastal protection, and cultural benefits to communities worldwide, but these services are diminishing due to local and global threats. In response, place-based strategies involve communities and resource users in management have proliferated. Here, we present a transferable community-based approach to assess the social and ecological fac...

Within the global framework of Sustainable Development, NTFPs (Non-timber Forest Products) draw a great deal of attentions from scholars. However, previous literature and research has mainly placed emphasis on how commercialization of NTFPs contributed to forest management and local livelihood improvement. This is absent in the debate on issues of commercialization impacts on NTFPs management a...

introduction : body is a phenomenon not only biological, but social and cultural and today as signs of personal and cultural identity, that can be socially built so its construction and function are a state of social and cultural beliefs. researchers believe that the body and culture do not exist apart from each other, and the embodiment of body goes to people`s culture and society in which liv...

Translocal spaces are created out of the process of globalization whereby interventions such as electronic media and migration radically change social relations and breakdown the isomorphism of space, place, and culture [1]. This approach is useful in examining the controversy surrounding the mustang. This paper explores how different social constructions influence the management of mustangs as...

We have conducted the first study of sleep in the platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus. Periods of quiet sleep, characterized by raised arousal thresholds, elevated electroencephalogram amplitude and motor and autonomic quiescence, occupied 6–8 h/day. The platypus also had rapid eye movement sleep as defined by atonia with rapid eye movements, twitching and the electrocardiogram pattern of rapid e...