Farming communities in water-scarce regions increasingly practice the use of urban wastewater in agriculture. Untreated urban wastewater is generally considered unacceptable for direct use because of potential health risks. However, in many parts of the world, poor farmers in peri-urban areas use untreated wastewater. This situation is considered likely to continue even in the foreseeable future due to the high investment cost associated with the installation of treatment facilities.
The transmission of malaria in Sri Lanka is unstable; its incidence greatly fluctuates from year to year and exhibits important variations within a year. Identification of the underlying risk factors of malaria is important to target the limited resources for the most-effective control of the disease. This report presents the first results of a project on malaria risk mapping to investigate whether this tool could be utilized to forecast malaria epidemics. It documents the key malaria risk factors for the Uda Walawe region of Sri Lanka, where monthly malaria incidence data were available over a 10-year period. In the study, data on aggregate malaria-incidence rates, land-use and water-use patterns, socioeconomic features and malaria-control interventions were collected and analyzed in a geographical information system. Malaria cases were mapped at the smallest administrative level and relative risks for different variables were calculated employing multivariate analyses. The findings of the study call for malaria-control strategies that are readily adapted to different ecological and epidemiological settings.
De fonologie beschouwt het als haar taak, de klanksystemen der verschillende talen alsmede de functies van elk hunner elementen te bestuderen. En die taak vloeit voort uit het inzicht, dat de klanken ener taal een geordend systeem vormen, waarin elk hunner een bepaalde plaats inneemt. (N. van Wijk, Phon%gie een hoofdstuk uit de structurele taalwetenschap) 1. 1. Het onderwerp van dit boek De bekende Amerikaanse fonoloog James Harris begint in zijn laatste boek (Harris 1983) een uiteenzetting over de Spaanse lettergreep als voIgt: "Consider the word huey 'ox' ". Zo'n mooie openingszin hebben wij voor dit boek niet kunnen bedenken, maar we zijn het weI met Harris eens dat een inleiding het gemakkelijkst begonnen kan worden met een voorbeeld. We beginnen daarom met de volgende zin: (1) De groep praatte als een stelletje gladiolen over de dwarsdruknorm. Aan de hand van deze zin kan een grote hoeveelheid taalkunde worden geillustreerd. Met een deel daarvan benje ongetwijfeld bekend, met een deel misschien een beetje, en met een groot deel (kunnen we zonder schroom aannemen) totaal niet. In het deel waarmee je redelijk goed bekend bent, huist hoogstwaarschijnlijk bijvoorbeeld de simpele observatie dat het eerste woord van de zin een zogenaamd lidwoord is; ook dat het eerste zelfstandig naamwoord van de zin bestaat uit de opeenvolging van klanken g. r. oe en p; dat het werkwoord be staat uit de klanken t, p, r, a en de zwakke klinker e, maar dan in een andere volgorde, enzovoort.
More irrigated land is devoted to rice than to any other crop. A method to save water in irrigated rice cultivation is the intermittent drying of the rice fields, known as alternate wet/dry irrigation (AWDI). This report reviews previous studies in AWDI, with a focus on mosquito vector control, water saving, and rice yields. Examples are provided from a number of countries.
Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680–1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart a more autonomous path. The loss of Brazil and New Netherland were twin blows to Dutch imperial pretensions. Yet the Dutch Atlantic hardly faded into insignificance. Instead, the influence of the Dutch remained, as they were increasingly drawn into the imperial systems of Britain, Spain, and France. In their synthetic and comparative history, Klooster and Oostindie reveal the fragmented identity and interconnectedness of the Dutch in three Atlantic theaters: West Africa, Guiana, and the insular Caribbean. They show that the colonies and trading posts were heterogeneous in their governance, religious profiles, and ethnic compositions and were marked by creolization. Even as colonial control weakened, the imprint of Dutch political, economic, and cultural authority would mark territories around the Atlantic for decades to come. Realm between Empires is a powerful revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and provides a much-needed counterpoint to the more widely known British and French Atlantic histories.
The objective of this paper is to provide a review of the characteristics of wastewater used for irrigation, and the reasoning behind the international guidelines presently used in regulating wastewater reuse for agriculture. This paper presents various systems of wastewater treatment available and discusses their benefits and shortcomings. A selective review of recent empirical studies identifies major impacts both positive and negative impacts of wastewater irrigation. Finally, the paper provides the review of environmental valuation techniques for analyzing impacts of wastewater uses in agriculture, and suggest a framework for application of some of these techniques. This framework will be applied to a developing country case study (Faisalabad area in Pakistan), in the ongoing IWMI research program.
Thousands of small irrigation reservoirs (tanks) exist in rice ecosystems in malarious regions of south Asia. The potential of these tanks to generate malaria-transmitting mosquitoes has not been adequately evaluated. Through a study of nine small irrigation tanks in north-central Sri Lanka, this report provides an assessment of the capacity of tanks to generate malaria and nuisance mosquitoes, factors that contribute to mosquito generation, and measures that could ameliorate the problem.
This paper presents an approach for analyzing the socioeconomic, health, and environmental aspects of urban wastewater use in peri-urban agriculture, using typical characteristics of a major city in a developing country. Peri-urban area of Faisalabad is chosen to represent this context.
The practice of using untreated wastewater for irrigation is widespread but has been largely ignored because the norm has always been that wastewater should be treated before use. Increasing water scarcity, lack of money for treatment and a clear willingness by farmers to use untreated wastewater have led to an uncontrolled expansion of wastewater use. It is therefore important to better document the practice of irrigation with untreated wastewater in order to find out how it can be improved within the financial possibilities of very low-income countries.
This study was carried out in the southern Punjab, Pakistan to outline the causes of childhood iarrhea as perceived by mothers and, especially, to assess perceptions of mothers on childhood diarrhea in relation to hygiene practices and drinking water and sanitation facilities. Two hundred households in ten villages were randomly selected. Information was obtained from mothers, through a questionnaire, in-depth interviews, and direct observations. The focus was on obtaining information from mothers of children that were below five years of age. Causes of diarrhea reported by mothers were categorized in seven different domains. Causes relating to the digestive system, especially consumption of too much food were the most important, followed by causes pertaining to contamination and those pertaining to the humoral theory of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’. The mother’s health status was perceived as determining the health of her child through her breast milk. Through in-depth interviews, diarrhea as a symptom of envy and malice was brought up. The study draws the attention to the complexity and heterogeneity of beliefs, attitudes and practices concerning diarrhea and hygiene. This makes it difficult to come up with general rules for health education campaigns. Rather, in health education, the outstanding ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behavior should be selected and should be the focus. On the other hand, the heterogeneity in beliefs, attitudes and practices prevailing in the community could make mothers more receptive to new ideas than when a small set of rigid cultural norms would dominate the thinking on disease transmission and hygiene. The study found that despite the mother’s central role as caretaker one should not operate on the traditional mother-child relationship but also include the husband-wife relationship, and target other individuals involved in setting norms within the household or within the nearby community.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.