Seasonal wetlands and exuberant crop growth present challenges to systematic archaeological survey in alluvial settings, particularly in the tropical lowlands. Lidar can reduce the time and cost required to survey such areas by allowing targeting of elevated features not buried under recent alluvium, but demographic interpretation requires estimating post-abandonment alluvial depths. The broad alluvial plain between the Papaloapan delta and the Tuxtla Mountains in southern Veracruz, Mexico, offers a valuable case study, featuring seasonally inundated marshes, lakes, and vast fields of sugar cane, a crop infamously obstructive to lidar mapping. Undertaken to reconstruct demographic and organizational change in the Tres Zapotes polity, this study evaluates the benefits and limitations of lidar for archaeological survey in tropical alluvial settings based on overlap between lidar and systematic pedestrian survey and estimates of alluvial depth obtained by auger testing and underscores the importance of timing for lidar mapping in sugar cane.

Hearing impairment is a major public health problem in Nepal. The present service delivery, however, is mainly hospital based and is limited to large towns. Those people residing in rural areas lack many basic needs including ear care services. The collaborative community volunteer-based ear care pilot programme implemented in Banke, Nepal aims to reach out to those rural areas by establishing sustainable primary ear care services, empowering and utilizing local resources. The focus of the programme is to promote multi-sector improvement in sanitation, nutrition, immunization, breast-feeding and timely care and support to ear patients to help prevent hearing impairment mainly from the sequelae of otitis media.