BACKGROUND The introduction of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) has improved the diagnosis and treatment of malaria. However, any successful control of malaria will depend on socio-economic factors that influence its management in the community. Willingness to pay (WTP) is important because consumer responses to prices will influence utilization of services and revenues collected. Also the consume...

For a long time as a result of accommodating car traffic, planning ideologies in the past put a low priority on public space, pedestrianism and the role of city space as a meeting place for urban dwellers. In addition, according to authors such as Jan Gehl, market forces and changing architectural perceptions began to shift the focus of planning practice from the integration of public space in ...

The growing urbanization of poverty poses a significant challenge to governments and donors alike, particularly in Asia, which houses 60 per cent of the world’s slum dwellers. Donors have been slow to respond to the urban challenge, however, both in their funding patterns and their priorities. There remains, therefore, significant scope for tangible benefits for the urban poor through greater f...

Urban green spaces play a significant and varied role for preserving high quality of urban life in increasingly urbanized societies. They provide wide range of advantages that support health and subjective well-being of city residents. In many cases, however, these benefits are not fairly distributed across diverse urban populations. This paper presents an overview of the role of urban greenery...

According to the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the effective conventions therein, every citizen should enjoy equal right of social security. But in reality, a peasant has much less such right than an urban dweller, only because of their different hukou. Peasants, as part of the investors of state-owned property, should have the rights of owners and enjoy the benefits from t...

Improving quality of life in the slum is one of the development goals for new millennium. The existence of slums is essentially a manifestation of poverty, along with the economic and industrial development-slums will continue to exist and grow further. The experience of Kerala shows that the condition of the people can be improved even at low levels of economic development through appropriate ...

BACKGROUND Rural-urban disparities in health and healthcare are often attributed to differences in geographic access to care and health seeking behavior. Less is known about the differences between rural locations in health care seeking and outcomes. This study examines how commuting patterns in different rural areas are associated with perforated appendicitis. RESULTS Controlling for age, se...

Artificial light at night is one of the most apparent environmental changes accompanying anthropogenic habitat change. The global increase in light pollution poses new challenges to wild species, but we still have limited understanding of the temporal and spatial pattern of exposure to light at night. In particular, it has been suggested by several studies that animals exposed to light pollutio...