Based on the panel data of 22 inland provinces in China from 2010 to 2020, this study constructs and measures the level of rural ecological environment in China. The impact of the financial performance of green-listed companies on the rural ecological environment and its moderating and threshold effects are analyzed. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) During 2010-2020, China's rural ecological environment shows a trend of "fluctuating-decreasing-rising" with significant regional non-equilibrium characteristics. (2) The financial performance of green-listed companies has a significantly negative impact on rural ecology. This negative impact has a crucial heterogeneous feature, with a more significant negative impact in areas with a higher rural ecological environment index and less substantial performance in regions with a lower rural ecological environment index. (3) There is a significant positive moderating effect of education level and digitalization on the relationship between the financial performance of green-listed companies on the level of rural ecological development. As moderating variables, the digitalization and education level weakens the negative impact of green-listed companies' performance on the ecological environment. The positive impact of the financial performance of green-listed companies on the development level of the rural ecological environment is more vital in areas with higher per capita education levels and digitalization in rural areas. (4) There is a significant threshold effect on the financial performance of green-listed companies on the level of rural ecological development. When the financial performance of green-listed companies exceeds a particular threshold value, the impact of the financial performance of green-listed companies on the development level of the rural ecological environment is significantly positive. Based on the above findings, this paper puts forward corresponding countermeasure suggestions.
Many residential areas of Kuala Lumpur are susceptible to landslides; this is seen in the frequency of landslide occurences in these areas. The objective of this study is to delineate landslide risk areas in support of development planning, monitoring and control of unstable areas. In this study, five landslide causative factors were extracted from satellite imagery and maps provided by the Geological Survey Department of Malaysia. Factors included in the study including land use, river density and lineament derived from Landsat ETM image, precipitation amount from rain gauge stations and lithology, were extracted from the geological map of the study area. Layers were analyzed and divided into subclasses. An average weightage score was applied to calculate the subclasses into percentage weights of influence on landslide. Overlay, geo-processing and geo-statistic techniques in GIS were used to discriminate these weighted subclasses into landslide susceptibility at low, medium and high levels of risk areas. Results showed very high susceptible areas covering 0.21% of Kuala Lumpur of which 5.02% were found in the highly urbanized areas. Meanwhile, a landslide susceptibility map was generated to show low, medium and high susceptible areas in Kuala Lumpur. Results were verified using recorded cases of landslides in Kuala Lumpur which showed a 77% agreement with the study.
The practice of development planning does not empower the local authority to prepare a development
plan, as planning and development control is under the jurisdiction of the State Planning Authority
(SPA). Rapid growth in the housing sector shows a positive indicator towards urbanization in Sarawak.
This study showed that the current centralised process is fair to all parties, for it ensures equilibrium in
all areas. Beside that, the study also found that there is some confusion in the roles played by the
involved parties. The study also identified few problems that often occur, among them complicated
procedures, slow approval process, bureaucracy, and risks in planning and marketing. However, the
practice of development planning is concerned with aspects quality and quantity so as not to burden the
purchaser. The state government, through the SPA, controls the price of housing to ensure equilibrium
and to avoid the occurrence of abandoned housing projects.
This concept paper discusses instructional leadership of administrator, school effectiveness and
organizational culture in inner rural of Sarawak. Instructional leadership is the most reliable in
education field. Leadership could directly impact the performance of the organization. In the context
of this study, the organization is a Government-owned school. Thus the effectiveness of a school are
influenced leadership practiced by administrators and civilization rooted in the school. Instructional
leadership is given a priority in development plan Education 2013-2025 in five shifts to accommodate
high-impact leaders in school. Education also did not miss in National Transformation 2020-2050 that
is access to high quality education. Instructional leadership refers to the practice of administrator in
giving guidance to teachers and students to improve and enhance the performance of the self and the
school as a whole, whether in the areas of curriculum and co-curriculum. This performance will lead to school effectiveness from two major areas of the successfulness of students aspiration. However, there
are other factors that play a role in performance improvements, that is the influence of organization
culture formed under the leadership of the administrator.
In the last decade slope failure intensity and frequency has increased. This article investigates slope failure distribution and trend change and the tendency of spatial direction of slope failures in the Klang Valley Region (KVR) of Malaysia. The change in land cover especially for urbanization and population pressure has notably influenced spatial and temporal variations in slope failure occurrences in the KVR. This study recognized two significant impacts of slope failures: increase in intensity and frequency of slope failures from 1991 to November 2011 and spatial direction of slope failures in the KVR. Both of these effects create severe stresses on the population of the KVR. The study observed that the temporal and spatial advances of slope failures would continue to increase in intensity and frequency in the not so distant future as the environment would become more stressful as a result of urbanization. The knowledge generated from the work would be valuable to all stakeholders affected by slope failures in the KVR and lead the way towards achieving a more sustainable slope development planning in the future.
There have been an increasing number of studies conducted on community preparedness, particularly on changing individual health behaviors in ways that minimizes individual risk to cope with the stress of a natural disaster. A variety of behavioral change theories and models used by disaster academics scrutinize the manner in which individual behavior is sought and transformed into disaster preparedness. This reflects the lack of knowledge about how these models identify certain behaviors regarding natural disaster preparation. This article seeks to address this lack of knowledge. It presents a set of health behavioral change models that can be used by scholars to comprehend variation in the nature and extent of individual disaster preparedness. The purpose of this study is to provide a review of the existing models on the subject, and also to present a comparative analysis of the models that may contribute to ways of understanding the investigation on natural disaster preparedness behaviors.
A "supermarket revolution" has occurred in developing countries in the past 2 decades. We focus on three specific issues that reflect the impact of this revolution, particularly in Asia: continuity in transformation, innovation in transformation, and unique development strategies. First, the record shows that the rapid growth observed in the early 2000s in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand has continued, and the "newcomers"--India and Vietnam--have grown even faster. Although foreign direct investment has been important, the roles of domestic conglomerates and even state investment have been significant and unique. Second, Asia's supermarket revolution has exhibited unique pathways of retail diffusion and procurement system change. There has been "precocious" penetration of rural towns by rural supermarkets and rural business hubs, emergence of penetration of fresh produce retail that took much longer to initiate in other regions, and emergence of Asian retail developing-country multinational chains. In procurement, a symbiosis between modern retail and the emerging and consolidating modern food processing and logistics sectors has arisen. Third, several approaches are being tried to link small farmers to supermarkets. Some are unique to Asia, for example assembling into a "hub" or "platform" or "park" the various companies and services that link farmers to modern markets. Other approaches relatively new to Asia are found elsewhere, especially in Latin America, including "bringing modern markets to farmers" by establishing collection centers and multipronged collection cum service provision arrangements, and forming market cooperatives and farmer companies to help small farmers access supermarkets.
BACKGROUND: Malaysia has achieved universal health coverage since 1980s through the expansion of direct public provision, particularly in rural areas. However, no systematic examination of the rural-urban distribution of primary care services and resources has been conducted to date for policy impact evaluation.
METHODS: We conducted a national cross-sectional survey of 316 public and 597 private primary care clinics, selected through proportionate stratified random sampling, from June 2011 through February 2012. Using a questionnaire developed based on the World Health Organization toolkits on monitoring health systems strengthening, we examined the availability of primary care services/resources and the associations between service/resource availability and clinic ownership, locality, and patient load. Data were weighted for all analyses to account for the complex survey design and produce unbiased national estimates.
RESULTS: Private primary care clinics and doctors outnumbered their public counterparts by factors of 5.6 and 3.9, respectively, but the private clinics were significantly less well-equipped with basic facilities and provided a more limited range of services. Per capita densities of primary care clinics and workforce were higher in urban areas (2.2 clinics and 15.1 providers per 10,000 population in urban areas versus 1.1 clinics and 11.7 providers per 10,000 population in rural areas). Within the public sector, the distribution of health services and resources was unequal and strongly favored the urban clinics. Regression analysis revealed that rural clinics had lower availability of services and resources after adjusting for ownership and patient load, but the associations were not significant except for workforce availability (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 0.82; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.71-0.96).
CONCLUSIONS: Targeted primary care expansion in rural areas could be an effective first step towards achieving universal health coverage, especially in countries with limited healthcare resources. Nonetheless, geographic expansion alone is inadequate to achieve effective coverage in a dichotomous primary care system, and the role of the private sector in primary care delivery should not be overlooked.
Malaysian economy relies on palm oil industries as a driver for rural development. However, palm oil mill effluent
(POME) that is generated from palm oil processing stages causes major environmental challenges. Before being
released to the environment, POME treatment is crucial to comply with standard discharge limit. Microalgae have
demonstrated excellent potential for phycoremediating POME and capturing CO2
. In this study, local microalgae isolate
such as Chlamydomonas sp. UKM 6 and Chlorella spp. UKM 8 were used for POME treatment in 21 days with different
inoculum sizes (5%, 10% and 15%). In addition, an integrated treatment process was performed by taking the treated
POME supernatant for cultivation of Chorella spp. UKM 2, Chorella sorokiniana UKM 3 and Chlorella vulgaris for CO2
sequestration study. Different CO2
concentrations (5%, 10% and 15%) were used and the experiments were carried
out in 10 days under continuous illumination. The results showed that among two species involves in POME treatment,
Chlamydomonas sp. UKM 6 showed a great potential to remove pollutant such as COD (56%), nitrogen (65%) and
phosphorus (34%). The biomass after POME treatment and CO2
biofixation content high lipid (90 mg lipid/g biomass)
which can be the potential source for biodiesel production. In CO2
sequestration study, C. sorokininana UKM3 able
to takes up to 15% CO2
with CO2
uptake rate of 273 mgL-1d-1. In this study, the integrated system of POME treatment
and CO2
sequestration were feasible using microalgae.