All major agencies intervening in community-based and carbon forestry – such as international development agencies, conservation institutions, and national governments – state that their interventions must engage local participation in decision making. All say they aim to represent local people in the design and implementation of their interventions. In practice, decision-making processes are rarely 'free', barely 'prior' poorly 'informative' and seldom seek any form of democratic 'consent' or even 'consultation'.

Tackling undernutrition is a global priority. It is the single largest risk factor influencing the burden of disease estimates at the global level. The Annapurna Project was undertaken by Government of Maharashtra to provide nutritious meals to Ashram/residential tribal school students through a centralized kitchen for achieving optimal growth and development and to prevent morbidity. Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to ascertain whether the provision of nutritious meals through centralized kitchens improves the proportion of underweight and stunted children.

Exposure to fine particles is measured using metrics such as mass concentration (MC), number concentration (NC) and surface area concentration (SAC). This study aims to find correlation between the three metrics in outdoor environments of a city – city periphery, city centre and on-road. Simultaneous real-time mass, number and surface area concentration measurements were conducted in these environments. Arithmetic means, peak concentration values, and regression coefficients were determined to find relation between the three metrics.

Experimental evidence and preliminary clinical evidence suggest that environmental air pollution adversely effects kidney health. Previous work has examined the association between fine particulate matter and risk of kidney disease; however, the association between ambient coarse particulate matter (PM10; ≤10 µm in aerodynamic diameter), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) and risk of incident chronic kidney disease, chronic kidney disease progression, and end-stage renal disease is not clear.

This study is the first record of the use of animal products in traditional medicine in Angola. Data were obtained by performing interviews with the users of these products who use parts derived from wild mammals to treat 12 diseases. It was found that one or more products that were derived from the same species can be used to treat a variety of diseases, showing the versatility of the species. All the taxa used for animal-derived therapies in the study area are also used in other African countries, often for the treatment of the same illnesses.

A simulation experiment was used to understand the importance of riparian vegetation density, channel orientation and flow velocity for stream energy budgets and river temperature dynamics. Water temperature and meteorological observations were obtained in addition to hemispherical photographs along a ∼1 km reach of the Girnock Burn, a tributary of the Aberdeenshire Dee, Scotland. Data from nine hemispherical images (representing different uniform canopy density scenarios) were used to parameterise a deterministic net radiation model and simulate radiative fluxes.

The household is a potentially important but understudied unit of analysis and intervention in chronic disease research. We sought to estimate the association between living with someone with a chronic condition and one’s own chronic condition status.

Original Source

Increased intestinal hydration by activation of the epithelial enzyme linked receptor guanylate cyclase C (GC-C) is a pharmacological principle for treating constipation. Activating mutations in the GUCY2C gene encoding GC-C cause Familial GUCY2C diarrhea syndrome (FGDS) which has been diagnosed with severe dysmotility.

Debris flows are one of the natural disasters that frequently occur in mountain areas, usually accompanied by serious loss of lives and properties. One of the most used approaches to mitigate the risk associated to debris flows is the implementation of early warning systems based on well calibrated rainfall thresholds. However, many mountainous areas have little data regarding rainfall and hazards, especially in debris flow forming regions.

An estimated 4.5 billion people are currently exposed to particulate matter (PM) levels at least twice the concentration that the WHO considers safe. Existing evidence linking health to air pollution is largely based on populations exposed to only modest levels of PM and almost entirely composed of observational studies, which are likely to confound air pollution with other unobserved determinants of health.