Reading maps in the dark. Route planning for development geography in a post-ist world

The symposium on "Land Management and Sustainable Development in Rural and Urban Environments of the Third World" at the 1996 International Geographical Congress in The Hague focused on geographical research in land society relationships. The range of papers provided a variety of case studies of local land management in terms of livelihood strategies and the wider politico-socio-economic and ecological context in which they operate. They also highlighted the contradictions and tensions between different systems of knowledge about the environment, and the ways in which one may be privileged over others. These are implicit in most of the papers - in some, modernising knowledge is promoted for the solution of the problems of a modernising economy (for example, managing urban pollution in Malaysia), while in others institutional, political and technical knowledge is undergoing profound change, whereby the local continues to resist, adapt to, or be replaced by the forces of globalisation . Most papers in this collection make implicit distinctions between the familiar, and some would say, stereo-typical characterisations of different knowledges (scientific, western and modern on the one hand and indigenous and traditional on the other), although it is a much debated point whether it is useful to make a distinction between them at all (Agrawal 1996)

Laser spectroscopy for breath analysis : towards clinical implementation

Detection and analysis of volatile compounds in exhaled breath represents an attractive tool for monitoring the metabolic status of a patient and disease diagnosis, since it is non-invasive and fast. Numerous studies have already demonstrated the benefit of breath analysis in clinical settings/applications and encouraged multidisciplinary research to reveal new insights regarding the origins, pathways, and pathophysiological roles of breath components. Many breath analysis methods are currently available to help explore these directions, ranging from mass spectrometry to laser-based spectroscopy and sensor arrays. This review presents an update of the current status of optical methods, using near and mid-infrared sources, for clinical breath gas analysis over the last decade and describes recent technological developments and their applications. The review includes: tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy, cavity ring-down spectroscopy, integrated cavity output spectroscopy, cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy, photoacoustic spectroscopy, quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy, and optical frequency comb spectroscopy. A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is presented that describes the laser-based techniques within the clinical framework of breath research and their appealing features for clinical use.Peer reviewe

Paradigms for environment and development

This paper explores some environment and development discourses through the optic of neo-populist developmentalism. Neo-populist approaches to sustainable development and environmental management are arguably the most written about but least funded and is overshadowed by neo-liberal and economic approaches to development and the environment. The paper first examines how theories and styles of development are constructed, where they come from, who promotes them, how they are legitimated, accepted and diffused. It then identifies the specific case of neo-populist developmentalism and its re-assemblage in the 1980s from diverse sources, and in the context of an increasingly strong current of post-modernism in the social sciences. This paradigm is then briefly differentiated from its two rivals (the neo-liberal and classic), and each is located in relation to state, market and civil society, with a focus on the neo-populist one. Neo-populism is in an important sense the most post-modern development paradigm, with all the contradictions which this implies, since much of post-modern social science would wish a plague on all paradigms. It then examines how some post-modern characteristics of social science resonate with the political and practical agendas of neo-populist developmentalism and environmental management. However, for all the talk and attempts to practice a participatory, indigenously based, empowering and just development over the last twenty years also, there are enduring contradictions. The three discussed here are the indigenous/exogenous actor encounter at the 'development interface'; the incompleteness of the neo-populist project in terms of its failure to address necessary linkages between the local and the national and international; and the issue of truth and science (whose knowledge counts?)