Spatial Forecasting of the Landscape in Rapidly Urbanizing Hill Stations of South Asia: A Case Study of Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka (1996–2037)

Forecasting landscape changes is vital for developing and implementing sustainable urban planning. Presently, apart from lowland coastal cities, mountain cities (i.e., hill stations) are also facing the negative impacts of rapid urbanization due to their economic and social importance. However, few studies are addressing urban landscape changes in hill stations in Asia. This study aims to examine and forecast landscape changes in the rapidly urbanizing hill station of Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka. Landsat data and geospatial techniques including support vector machines, urban–rural gradient, and statistical analysis were used to map and examine the land use/land cover (LULC) change in Nuwara Eliya during the 1996–2006 and 2006–2017 periods. The multilayer perceptron neural network-Markov model was applied to simulate future LULC changes for 2027 and 2037. The results show that Nuwara Eliya has been directly affected by rapid urban development. During the past 21 years (1996–2017), built-up areas increased by 1791 ha while agricultural land declined by 1919 ha due to augmented urban development pressure. The pressure of urban development on forest land has been relatively low, mainly due to strict conservation government policies. The results further show that the observed landscape changes will continue in a similar pattern in the future, confirming a significant increase and decrease of built-up and agricultural land, respectively, from 2017 to 2037. The changes in agricultural land exhibit a strong negative relationship with the changes in built-up land along the urban–rural gradient (R2 were 0.86 in 1996–2006, and 0.93 in 2006–2017, respectively). The observed LULC changes could negatively affect the production of unique upcountry agricultural products such as exotic vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, and world-famous Ceylon tea. Further, unplanned development could cause several environmental issues. The study is important for understanding future LULC changes and suggesting necessary remedial measures to minimize possible undesirable environmental and socioeconomic impacts

End-of-life Decisions in Albania: The Call for an Ethical Revision

While in Western European countries, the end-of-life decisions have become a matter of public policy, this paper provides a detailed analysis of end-of-life decisions in Albania by focusing on instructional medical directives. The manuscript investigates the Albanian legal system, the documents published by the National Ethics Committee and the National Committee of Health, as the two main advisory public bodies on health issues, as well as the national medical jurisprudence and the Code of Medical Ethics. After emphasizing the importance of instructional medical directives and considering the international literature that has underlined the ethical principle of patient autonomy, this paper provides some policy suggestions. In the conclusion, this contribution highlights the importance of ad hoc rules governing instructional medical directives as well as the ethical principles and international literature as an instrument to fill the gap in the national system. In addition, particular attention is given to the application of ethical principles in end-of-life decisions in the current pandemic situation

weekly bisphosphonate to once-monthly ibandronate

3rd Joint Meeting of the European-Calcified-Tissue-Society/International-Bone-and-Mineral-Society -- MAY 07-11, 2011 -- Athens, GREECEWOS: 000289879800560European Calcified Tissue Soc, Int Bone & Mineral So

A comparison of the degree of implementation of marine biodiversity indicators by European countries in relation to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)

The degree of development and operability of the indicators for the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) using Descriptor 1 (D1) Biological Diversity was assessed. To this end, an overview of the relevance and degree of operability of the underlying parameters across 20 European countries was compiled by analysing national directives, legislation, regulations, and publicly available reports. Marked differences were found between countries in the degree of ecological relevance as well as in the degree of implementation and operability of the parameters chosen to indicate biological diversity. The best scoring EU countries were France, Germany, Greece and Spain, while the worst scoring countries were Italy and Slovenia. No country achieved maximum scores for the implementation of MSFD D1. The non-EU countries Norway and Turkey score as highly as the top-scoring EU countries. On the positive side, the chosen parameters for D1 indicators were generally identified as being an ecologically relevant reflection of Biological Diversity. On the negative side however, less than half of the chosen parameters are currently operational. It appears that at a pan-European level, no consistent and harmonized approach currently exists for the description and assessment of marine biological diversity. The implementation of the MSFD Descriptor 1 for Europe as a whole can therefore at best be marked as moderately successful