Villages Project Research Articles

Prescribing exercise in general practice Encourage active community life

EDITOR, - Steve Iliffe and colleagues advocate caution in prescribing exercise from primary care but argue that “exercise is good for us, especially as we get older.”1 They cite the benefits of physical activity in a practice population, which include lower rates of cardiovascular disease, reduced depression and anxiety, and improved functional ability in elderly people as well as a lower risk of osteoporosis and fractured hips. Campbell et al evaluated a controlled trial of a community health promotion exercise programme that used a questionnaire and a motivated general practitioner and showed that general practitioners can influence exercise habits.2 Ten years later, with exercise promotion continuing in the general practice, the annual report of the director of public health showed a significant reduction in the all cause standardised mortality ratio in the campaign village compared with the control village.3 I agree that referral to leisure centres alone is not enough. My rural community of Brockenhurst does not have a leisure centre. We promote “active living” and refer patients to appropriate community activities, including activities for young and old people, held in the village hall, church hall, schools, and hotels. We are evaluating the project with the Wessex Institute of Public Health Medicine, the Southampton Health Commission, and New Forest District Council. The “Brockenhurst healthy village project” has a community coordinator, who receives referrals from any member of the …

OCLC Users Council Meeting Report: October 4–6, 1992

The Users Council's theme for the 1992/93 year is Transforming Technologies: Reconstructing Libraries for the New Information Community. To begin this, the October Users Council meeting focused on telecommunications (Internet/NREN specifically), with a presentation on the ambitious Blacksburg Electronic Village project.

Ravenspurn South Field, Blocks 42/29, 42/30, 43/26, UK North Sea

Abstract The Ravenspurn South Gas Field is located in the Sole Pit Basin of the Southern North Sea in UKCS Block 42/30, extending into Blocks 42/29 and 43/26. The gas is trapped in sandstones of the Permian Lower Leman Sandstone Formation, which was deposited by aeolian and fluvial processes in a desert environment. Reservoir quality is poor, and variations are mostly facies-controlled. The best reservoir quality occurs in aeolian sands wth porosities of up to 23% and permeabilities up to 90 md. The trap is a NW-SE-striking faulted anticline: top seal is provided by the Silverpit Shales directly overlying the reservoir, and by Zechstein halites. Field development began early in 1988 and first gas was delivered in October 1989. Production is in tandem with the Cleeton Field, about 5 miles southwest of Ravenspurn South, as the Villages project. Initial reserves are 700 BCF and field life is expected to be 20 years.

Predictors of success in a participatory village development project in Thailand

AbstractParticipatory development strategies are known to mobilize rural resources, but their effectiveness depends on local conditions. This article evaluates the potential importance of three facilitating factors: competing opportunities, development experience, and local leadership. The impact of these factors on project outcome is examined through study of a rural development project undertaken from 1982 to 1985 in southern Thailand. The project used participatory techniques to build self‐guided problem‐solving groups in 21 poor villages. The village groups launched income‐generating, health, education and related efforts that attracted the participation of large numbers of village residents. Comparison of the village project experiences confirms that: participatory strategies are more effective in villages that (1) are relatively isolated from competing urban opportunities (villagers are more prepared to invest their own resources in the community); (2) have prior experience with development efforts and community endeavours (villagers are more open to learning new approaches); (3) hold greater confidence in traditional village leaders and local government agents. When local leadership is not held in great confidence, participatory strategies are found to encourage the emergence of new leadership that can successfully guide project efforts.

Agricultural reconstruction in a consumer society: The Mboza Village project1

While this paper draws upon research conducted in northern Natal, it has general relevance for rural development debates in South Africa today. The authors argue that it is imperative that agricultural development be located within the context of socio‐economic factors that prescribe relations of consumption and development of labour supply. Agricultural performance and the potential for agricultural development should be assessed within the context of the interrelationship between different spheres of economic exchange as well as the differential management of risk within a narrow range of marginal economic options. Serious attention should be given to the structural causes of rural poverty and the high social and economic costs associated with rural life in South Africa. Such issues are not necessarily addressed in attempts to increase rural productivity through reforming indigenous land tenure systems.

Aspects of prehistory in the present world: Observations gathered in Syrian villages from 1980 to 1985

Abstract The subject reported on is a combined archaeological and ethnographic village project. Dead and living settlements in two disparate geographical areas of Syria are currently being investigated: sites in the northern river valleys of the Euphrates and Khabur and in the southern lavalands of the Hawran. Several examples of aspects of prehistory in present‐day agricultural villages are described: methods of construction and patterns of disintegration of domestic architecture, inbuilt household structures and features and essential movable items. Their particular import for understanding silent archaeological data and contexts is discussed. Conclusions deal with the relevance and necessity of combined research projects of this type for the comprehension of rural societies past and present.

Performance Characteristics of 350 kW Photovoltaic Power System for Saudi Arabian Villages

The performance characteristics of the Saudi Solar Village Project, one of several projects sponsored by the Saudi Arabian-United States Program for Cooperation in the Field of Solar Energy (SOLERAS), a five-year jointly-funded $100M program, are presented in this paper. It is original and far reaching with respect to the scope and variety of solar technologies involved as well as the unique joint and cooperative manner in which the technology involved is developed and transferred. One of the program's objectives is to enhance the quality of life in rural areas within traditional ways of life. The Saudi Solar Village Project thus seeks to determine the feasibility of utilizing solar power to generate electricity in remote areas not served by existing electric power grid facilities. Details of the design of the 350 kW photovoltaic power system and its various subsystems are presented and the performance of the system and subsystems during initial acceptance testing of the system are discussed in this paper. The system, which to date has performed very well and in accordance with design specification, has combined both standard hardware and state-of-the-art concentrator photovoltaic subsystems, to yield the largest stand-alone tracking concentrator photovoltaic system in the world.

The economics of the satisfaction of needs

This paper is a proposal for the development of an economics that would be based on satisfaction of the unvarying and universal human needs and not of desires or wants, which are easily manipulable and change, not only from one society to another, but also from one individual to another and even for the same individual at different moments of his or her life. This economics would deal with the production, distribution, and use or consumption of all those entities – goods, services, relations, self-expressions – that satisfy human needs. It is suggested that in order to achieve stability in social and economic growth, all needs should be simultaneously satisfied, not only the so-called basic needs – food, shelter, clothing, health care, and education. It is claimed that technological development is making this proposal possible, particularly because the satisfaction of most of the psychological and sociocultural needs relies mainly on gratuitous relations and self-expressions that only make use of the body and freely available elements of nature. The satisfaction of needs such as those for psychological support and protection; emotional, intellectual, and physical communication; participation; and autonomy does not require goods and services from the market. These needs have nevertheless been those most often repressed in the course of human history because primitive technological patterns required that the energy consumed by relationships and self-expression be saved for productive purposes. Examples are given from the author's experience on ways in which an approach that would simultaneously take into account psychological and sociocultural needs and the biological requirements for survival could be used for the analysis of problems in village development, population growth, technological design, and project implementation.

The Arhus, Denmark Village Project: Applied Geography in the Service of the Municipality

EXPANDING cities devour their adjacent rural lands; geographers study this appetite and advance proposals for curbing it.1 In 1974 and 1975 the Geographical Institute of the University of Aarhus, Demark, executed for the municipality of Arhus a research project which examined the social and physical milieu characteristics of 105 villages and hamlets dotting the hinterland of this city of a quarter million. The collected data and our analyses were subsequently forwarded to the city council in the form of a handsome research report,2 which was augmented by two public exhibitions of portions of the project findings. The purpose of the village project was to collect and present data and analyses to the city council and the planning offices of the municipality so that their deliberations about planned urban expansion would be more consciously informed regarding the habitational resources of the adjacent great and small suburban and rural satellites. This article indicates, first, how this large project was organized and carried out. Thereafter, the study of the physical milieu of the villages is discussed in detail before a more summary description of the parallel survey of social conditions is presented. The results of combining these two parts of the project so as to describe the total village milieu are sketched; and in conclusion some of our findings are outlined.

The Dying Village and Some Notions about Urban Growth

dying, but are continuing to grow in population, despite their obvious loss of many of their erstwhile economic functions. The present paper, which is based upon extensive field interviews in more than 30 villages scattered over four states, and upon less highly structured field work in scores of other villages, examines some of the implications of the fact of village growth for theories about urban growth.4 We have been somewhat puzzled by 1 John Fraser Hart and Neil E. Salisbury: Population Change in Middle Western Villages: A Statistical Approach, Annals Assn. of Amer. Geogrs., Vol. 55, 1965, pp. 140-160. 2 Defined as incorporated places with a total population of less than one thousand persons in 1960. 3 Defined as a group of nine contiguous states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. 4 Reports published on the village project, an outgrowth of the First Big Ten Faculty Field Seminar in Geography sponsored by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, include: John Fraser Hart: Smithville, Amo, Coatesville, Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, Vol. 72, 1962, pp. 228-235; Neil E. Salisbury and Gerard Rushton, Growth and Decline of Iowa Villages: A Pilot Study (Iowa City: State University of Iowa Studies in Geography, No. 4, 1963); and John Fraser Hart, Vermontville and Augusta: A Study of Two Michigan Villages, Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, Vol. 49, 1964, pp. 413-421. the fact that scholars generally have failed to observe that villages are growing. Perhaps part of the explanation lies in the fact that many villages actually did lose population between 1920 and 1930, when the automobile was starting to wreak havoc with the traditional economic functions of small rural service centers. Failure to note