From local watershed management to integrated river basin management at national and transboundary levels

Watersheds face a range of degradation challenges associated with human activities, such as pollution, deforestation and changes in sediment generation. The way they are managed has a profound cascading effect on natural resources and communities in the wider basin. Although watersheds play a critical role as the basic hydrological unit within a river basin they are often neglected in river basin management. Over the past decade, principles and practices have evolved to ensure that integrated water resources management (IWRM) approaches used at the broader basin level to address sustainable development and management of land and water resources also apply at the smaller watershed level. This technical report is a synthesis of the knowledge, lessons learned and good practices presented and discussed at the International Conference on Watershed Management held in Chiang Mai, Thailand 9-11 March 2011

Understanding the barriers to integrating maternal and mental health at primary health care in Vietnam

The prevalence of common perinatal mental disorders in Vietnam ranges from 16.9% to 39.9%, and substantial treatment gaps have been identified at all levels. This paper explores constraints to the integration of maternal and mental health services at the primary healthcare level and the implications for the health system’s responsiveness to the needs and expectations of pregnant women with mental health conditions in Vietnam. As part of the RESPONSE project, a three-phased realist evaluation study, we present Phase One findings which employed systematic and scoping literature reviews, and qualitative data collection (focus groups and interviews) with key health system actors, in Bac Giang province, Vietnam, to understand the barriers to maternal mental healthcare provision, utilisation, and integration strategies. A four-level framing of the barriers to integrating perinatal mental health services in Vietnam was used in reporting findings, which comprised individual, socio-cultural, organisational, and structural levels. At the socio-cultural and structural levels, these barriers included: cultural beliefs about the holistic notion of physical and mental health, stigma towards mental health, biomedical approach to healthcare services, absence of comprehensive mental health policy, and a lack of mental health workforce. At the organisational level, there was absence of clinical guidelines on the integration of mental health in routine antenatal visits, a shortage of staff, and poor health facilities. Finally, at the provider level, a lack of knowledge and training on mental health was identified. The integration of mental health into routine antenatal visits at the primary care level has the potential help to reduce stigma towards mental health and improve health system responsiveness by providing services closer to the local level, offering prompt attention, better choice of services, and better communication while ensuring privacy and confidentiality of services. This can improve the demand for mental health services and help reduce the delay of care-seeking

Rings all of whose finitely generated ideals are automorphism-invariant

Rings in which each finitely generated right ideal is automorphism-invariant (rightfa-rings) are shown to be isomorphic to a formal matrix ring. Among other results it is also shown that (i) if R is a right nonsingular ring and n > 1 is an integer, then R is a right self injective regular ring if and only if the matrix ring Mn(R) is a right fa-ring, if and only if Mn(R) is a right automorphism-invariant ring and (ii) a right nonsingular ring R is a right fa-ring if and only if R is a direct sum of a square-full von Neumann regular right self-injective ring and a strongly regular ring containing all invertible elements of its right maximal ring of fractions. In particular, we show that a right semiartinian (or left semiartinian) ring R is a right nonsingular right fa-ring if and only if R is a left nonsingular left fa-ring

Low risk for helminth infection in wastewater-fed rice cultivation in Vietnam

In Raschid-Sally, Liqa; Jayakody, Priyantha (Eds.). Proceedings of Workshop on Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture in Vietnam: Water Management, Environment and Human Health Aspects, Hanoi, Vietnam, 4 May 2006. In English and Vietnamese. Hanoi, Vietnam: Agriculture Publishing House; Hanoi, Vietnam: Center for Participatory Irrigation Management (CPIM) of Vietnam Institute for Water Resources Research; Hanoi, Vietnam: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

Skin problems among farmers engaged in wastewater-fed agriculture in Namdinh Province, Vietnam

In Raschid-Sally, Liqa; Jayakody, Priyantha (Eds.). Proceedings of Workshop on Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture in Vietnam: Water Management, Environment and Human Health Aspects, Hanoi, Vietnam, 4 May 2006. In English and Vietnamese. Hanoi, Vietnam: Agriculture Publishing House; Hanoi, Vietnam: Center for Participatory Irrigation Management (CPIM) of Vietnam Institute for Water Resources Research; Hanoi, Vietnam: International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

Decision support for the general aviation pilot

Increasing air traffic control (ATC) requirements raises the workload of pilots. Required tasks dictate more "head-in-the-cockpit" computation, which can easily distract a pilot from safe airplane operation. Following eight years of research, we present an on-board PC-based computational system that increases pilot situational awareness, decreases diversion to routine computations, and anticipates upcoming needs. The key to anticipatory flight management is an expert system that uses knowledge of ATC procedures, aircraft operating procedures and limitations, and aircraft performance to infer current flight operating "mode" without direct pilot intervention or input. A flight mode interpreter (FMI) enables automatic display selection, pilot advice, and warning. This paper reports the development of an FMI-based flight management system, called General Aviation Pilot Advisory and Training System (GAPATS), that is being developed jointly by Texas A&M University and Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. Software development is carried out using a fixed-base engineering flight simulator. Pilot participation in all phases of development and evaluation is the norm. Flight tests have begun on an instrumented research light twin

Identifying new resistance to Cassava Mosaic Disease and validating markers for the CMD2 locus

Open Access Journal; Published online: 30 Aug 2021Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a crucial staple crop, and provides carbohydrate energy to more than half a billion people in the tropics. Cassava mosaic disease (CMD) is the most important disease of cassava in Africa. Since Sri Lanka Cassava Mosaic Virus (SLCMV) was first reported in South East Asia in 2015, establishing sustainable solutions to CMD has become a top priority for the cassava program at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and its partners. In the present study, we screened two populations for CMD resistance: VNM142, 142 clones collected from farms throughout Vietnam, and CIAT102, 102 clones resistant to CMD or mites, which were introduced from CIAT. High broad-sense heritability was observed in all the trials (>0.80). From the population VNM142, eight clones showed high CMD resistance with CMD severity scores less than 2.0. Two resistant clones had the same DNA fingerprinting with the accessions CR63 (PER262 or TAI9) and KM57 (VNM8) in the genebank, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report of CMD resistance in the genebank at CIAT. We also used the two populations to validate the CMD markers S12_7926132 and S14_4626854. Both markers explained 51% of the population variance in the segregating population CIAT102, but only 11% in the diverse population VNM142. Thus, we concluded that the two CMD markers could not be used to select for CMD resistance in diverse populations, but could predict the CMD resistance in segregating populations when the susceptible parents do not have resistant marker alleles and the resistance of the CMD2 donors is confirmed