Farish Noor, a professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, argues that in many instances, these conflicts are caused by old customs butting up against arbitrary modern national boundaries.

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"If the buyer is a marginal member of a royal family or a businessman it can go either way but tends to turn out less well, " says Mr Dorsey, a senior fellow at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

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The study was authored by researchers at Emory University, Rutgers, the University of Washington and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

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Meanwhile, scientists from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have invented a new toilet that turns human waste into electricity while reducing the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90 percent.

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"This implies that the main purpose of establishing CIC...still has a long way to go, " said Friedrich Wu, an adjunct associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore who has written several research papers on the fund.

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