BACKGROUND Parks are valuable resources for physical activity (PA) given their widespread availability and low cost to maintain and use. Both proximity to parks and the availability of particular features are important correlates of PA. However, few studies have explored multiple measures of proximity simultaneously or the specific facilities associated with park use and park-based PA among adu...

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Effective and acceptable preventive dental services are hard to achieve in conjunction with treatment services. The Oral Health Office of Fars Province in Iran established the Oral Health Park in a deprived part of the city of Shiraz to attract families and school children to receive preventive services. No other treatment was provided in the setting. The aim of this study w...

Urban green spaces provide a context where constant association with these spaces can result in reducing the incidence or diminishing the effect of many diseases. Different studies assessed the relationship between using urban green spaces and health benefits considering influential quantitative aspects. This research tries to look differently at this issue by connecting the urban green spaces ...

The carabid genus Orthogonius MacLeay is treated, based mainly on materials collected in Thailand through the TIGER project (the Thailand Inventory Group for Entomological Research). Among 290 specimens, 20 species are identified in total, 10 of them are new species: Orthogonius taghavianaesp. n. (Nakhon Nayok: Khao Yai National Park), Orthogonius coomanioidessp. n. (Phetchabun: Thung Salaeng L...

city parks play an important role in the welfare of metropolitan people. higher species richness of birds can be considered as a reflection of the health of the park and may satisfy visitors to a higher extent being in a more natural environment. we studied the influence of area and shape of city parks on bird species richness and diversity. 13 parks from among the 35 main city parks in isfahan...

The generation of ecosystem services depends on both social and ecological features. Here we focus on management, its ecological consequences, and social drivers. Our approach combined (1) quantitative surveys of local species diversity and abundance of three functional groups of ecosystem service providers (pollinators, seed dispersers, and insectivores) with (2) qualitative studies of local m...

In this paper, we investigate whether people's knowledge of the past influences their preferences and values towards future landscape change. "Knowledge of the past" is one aspect of the information set held by individuals, and a well-established finding in economics is that changes in information can change preferences and values. The particular aspects of knowledge of the past we work with he...

Ice has been a serious obstacle and problem for the construction of hydraulic and marine structures, lighthouses, and the like in cold regions. For these structures, ice forces are the major design criteria. Because the ice loads caused by sea ice on offshore structures have been fully reviewed a few times, they are purposely set aside in this paper. Instead, two major problems are discussed he...

This paper analyzes the question: what does it take for science parks and technology districts to evolve and grow? We propose an analytical framework to examine the gestation, evolution and sustainability of science parks and related but broader regional phenomena such as technology districts. The framework comprises three aspects of a science park’s development: growth mechanisms, level of tec...