1,935 research outputs found

    Association between long-term air pollution exposure and COVID-19 mortality in Latin America

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    Recent studies have shown a relationship between air pollution and increased vulnerability and mortality due to COVID-19. Most of these studies have looked at developed countries. This study examines the relationship between long-term exposure to air pollution and COVID-19-related deaths in four countries of Latin America that have been highly affected by the pandemic: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. Our results suggest that an increase in long-term exposure of 1 ÎĽg/m3 of fine particles is associated with a 2.7 percent increase in the COVID-19 mortality rate. This relationship is found primarily in municipalities of metropolitan areas, where urban air pollution sources dominate, and air quality guidelines are usually exceeded. By focusing the analysis on Latin America, we provide a first glimpse on the role of air pollution as a risk factor for COVID-19 mortality within a context characterized by weak environmental institutions, limited health care capacity and high levels of inequality

    A Software Engineered Voice-Enabled Job Recruitment Portal System

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    The inability of job seekers to get timely job information regarding the status of the application submitted via conventional job portal system which is usually dependent on accessibility to the Internet has made so many job applicants to lose their placements. Worse still, the epileptic services offered by Internet Service Providers and the poor infrastructures in most developing countries have greatly hindered the expected benefits from Internet usage. These have led to cases of online vacancies notifications unattended to simply because a job seeker is neither aware nor has access to the Internet. With an increasing patronage of mobile phones, a self-service job vacancy notification with audio functionality or an automated job vacancy notification to all qualified job seekers through mobile phones will simply provide a solution to these challenges. In this paper, we present a Voice-enabled Job Recruitment Portal (JRP) System. The system is accessed through two interfaces – the voice user’s interface (VUI) and web interface. The VUI was developed using VoiceXML and the web interface using PHP, and both interfaces integrated with Apache and MySQL as the middleware and back-end component respectively. The JRP proposed in this paper takes the hassle of job hunting from job seekers, provides job status information in real-time to the job seeker and offers other benefits such as, cost, effectiveness, speed, accuracy, ease of documentation, convenience and better logistics to the employer in seeking the right candidate for a job

    Syndromic surveillance: reports from a national conference, 2003

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    Overview of Syndromic Surveillance -- What is Syndromic Surveillance? -- Linking Better Surveillance to Better Outcomes -- Review of the 2003 National Syndromic Surveillance Conference - Lessons Learned and Questions To Be Answered -- -- System Descriptions -- New York City Syndromic Surveillance Systems -- Syndrome and Outbreak Detection Using Chief-Complaint Data - Experience of the Real-Time Outbreak and Disease Surveillance Project -- Removing a Barrier to Computer-Based Outbreak and Disease Surveillance - The RODS Open Source Project -- National Retail Data Monitor for Public Health Surveillance -- National Bioterrorism Syndromic Surveillance Demonstration Program -- Daily Emergency Department Surveillance System - Bergen County, New Jersey -- Hospital Admissions Syndromic Surveillance - Connecticut, September 2001-November 2003 -- BioSense - A National Initiative for Early Detection and Quantification of Public Health Emergencies -- Syndromic Surveillance at Hospital Emergency Departments - Southeastern Virginia -- -- Research Methods -- Bivariate Method for Spatio-Temporal Syndromic Surveillance -- Role of Data Aggregation in Biosurveillance Detection Strategies with Applications from ESSENCE -- Scan Statistics for Temporal Surveillance for Biologic Terrorism -- Approaches to Syndromic Surveillance When Data Consist of Small Regional Counts -- Algorithm for Statistical Detection of Peaks - Syndromic Surveillance System for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games -- Taming Variability in Free Text: Application to Health Surveillance -- Comparison of Two Major Emergency Department-Based Free-Text Chief-Complaint Coding Systems -- How Many Illnesses Does One Emergency Department Visit Represent? Using a Population-Based Telephone Survey To Estimate the Syndromic Multiplier -- Comparison of Office Visit and Nurse Advice Hotline Data for Syndromic Surveillance - Baltimore-Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area, 2002 -- Progress in Understanding and Using Over-the-Counter Pharmaceuticals for Syndromic Surveillance -- -- Evaluation -- Evaluation Challenges for Syndromic Surveillance - Making Incremental Progress -- Measuring Outbreak-Detection Performance By Using Controlled Feature Set Simulations -- Evaluation of Syndromic Surveillance Systems - Design of an Epidemic Simulation Model -- Benchmark Data and Power Calculations for Evaluating Disease Outbreak Detection Methods -- Bio-ALIRT Biosurveillance Detection Algorithm Evaluation -- ESSENCE II and the Framework for Evaluating Syndromic Surveillance Systems -- Conducting Population Behavioral Health Surveillance by Using Automated Diagnostic and Pharmacy Data Systems -- Evaluation of an Electronic General-Practitioner-Based Syndromic Surveillance System -- National Symptom Surveillance Using Calls to a Telephone Health Advice Service - United Kingdom, December 2001-February 2003 -- Field Investigations of Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance Signals - New York City -- Should We Be Worried? Investigation of Signals Generated by an Electronic Syndromic Surveillance System - Westchester County, New York -- -- Public Health Practice -- Public Health Information Network - Improving Early Detection by Using a Standards-Based Approach to Connecting Public Health and Clinical Medicine -- Information System Architectures for Syndromic Surveillance -- Perspective of an Emergency Physician Group as a Data Provider for Syndromic Surveillance -- SARS Surveillance Project - Internet-Enabled Multiregion Surveillance for Rapidly Emerging Disease -- Health Information Privacy and Syndromic Surveillance SystemsPapers from the second annual National Syndromic Surveillance Conference convened by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the New York Academy of Medicine, and the CDC in New York City during Oct. 23-24, 2003. Published as the September 24, 2004 supplement to vol. 53 of MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report.1571461

    ESSE 2017. Proceedings of the International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Energy

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    Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physical-, biological-, and information sciences to study and solve environmental problems. ESSE - The International Conference on Environmental Science and Sustainable Energy provides a platform for experts, professionals, and researchers to share updated information and stimulate the communication with each other. In 2017 it was held in Suzhou, China June 23-25, 2017

    Toxicological profile for nitrobenzene : draft for public comment : April 2022

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    VERSION HISTORYDate DescriptionApril 2022 Draft for public comment toxicological profile releasedDecember 1990 Final toxicological profile releasedtp132.pdf20221138

    DEVELOPMENT OF TOXICITY MODEL

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    Inherent safety has been recognized as a design approach useful to remove or reduce hazards at the source instead of controlling them with add-on protective barriers. Methods developed to date have largely been for the evaluating the safety of a proposed design. At the moment it seems that the best practice is not adopted quickly enough by the potential practitioners. The aim ofthis project is to develop a toxicity model that can be used in the design stages of chemical producing plants to predict the concentration at a given distance away from the point of release. The scope ofthis project is to create a toxicity model for ammonia. The model consists of two major parts, which are Gaussian Plume Equation and toxicity of ammonia. The information on these two parts need to be merged so user(s) can then find out the severity of the concentration of ammonia at a given distance away from the point of incident. Using Microsoft Excel as the program to run this toxicity model, the interface is arranged to make it as user-friendly as possible. Some of the important parameters to be keyed into the model are molecular weight, density, temperature, pressure, flow rate and distance of leak/rupture from ground level. Overall, this project can be used to evaluate whether it is feasible for a chemical producing plant to be built near housing areas. Further improvements are necessary to commercialize and integrate this project with other riskeffects estimation

    Experiência Profissionalizante na vertente de Farmácia Comunitária, Hospitalar e Investigação

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    The present thesis was elaborated aiming to obtain the master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences. In here, it is described all the scientific investigation work done to reach the proposed objective, as well as all tasks and learnings that I have taken along my community and hospital pharmacy internships. Chapter 1 is related with my scientific investigation work entitled “Bioanalytical method validation of Venlafaxine and Desvenlafaxine in mouse plasma, brain and liver using a MEPS/HPLC assay: a path to study these drugs’ intranasal administration”. Since major depressive disorder is one of the most prevalent psychiatric diseases, its therapeutic successful rate must be increased. Nowadays, the majority of all antidepressants used are given orally, being this route a source of therapeutic problems, mainly in what concerns with the time and dosage required to accomplish the desired effects. So, in order to improve it, intranasal administration route has been investigated, once parts of the nasal cavity directly contacts with brain tissue. Over time, and after some research, it was also understood that Venlafaxine is one of the most successful antidepressants until now, having the advantage of being metabolized to an active metabolite called Desvenlafaxine. So, in order to perform some future studies using intranasally administration of both these drugs and understand what advantages it brings, a reliable bioanalytical quantification method for venlafaxine and desvenlafaxine in mouse plasma, brain and liver matrices must be validated, in this case, using a MEPS/HPLC method. Chapter 2 is related with community pharmacy internship, describing all the performed activities during the 3 month that I have stayed in Pharmacy Alameda. The focus in this chapter is to understand how community pharmacies in general work, taking into account not only drugs dispense and pharmaceutical services but also the best way to manage them. Chapter 3 is about my 2 month of internship in hospital pharmacy services, describing all the duties and tasks performed in each pharmacy section. In here it is also explicit pharmacists’ importance in patients’ pharmaceutical therapies management as well as in controlling all the economic costs related with it.A tese aqui exposta foi elaborada com o intuito de obter o grau de Mestre em Ciências Farmacêuticas. Seguidamente é descrito todo o trabalho efetuado no âmbito da investigação científica, de modo a que o objectivo proposto fosse alcançado. Estão também descritas as tarefas elaboradas e aprendizagens obtidas ao longo dos meus estágios em farmácia comunitária e em farmácia hospitalar. No Capítulo 1 é descrito todo o meu trabalho no âmbito da área de investigação, sendo este intitulado “Validação de um método bioanalítico de Venlafaxina e Desvenlafaxina em plasma, cérebro e fígado de murganho usando MEPS/HPLC: um caminho para o estudo da administração intranasal destes fármacos”. Uma vez que a depressão major é uma das doenças psiquiátricas mais prevalente, a taxa de sucesso do seu tratamento terá obrigatoriamente de ser aumentada. Actualmente, a maioria dos antidepressivos são administrados por via oral, o que é uma fonte de problemas a nível terapêutico, considerando principalmente o tempo e as elevadas doses necessárias para o tratamento da doença. Assim, de modo a melhorar este aspecto, a via intranasal tem vindo a ser estudada, uma vez que existem locais na cavidade nasal que contactam directamente com o tecido cerebral. Ao longo do tempo também se tem percebido que a Venlafaxina é um dos antidepressivos mais eficazes, tendo também a vantagem de ser metabolizada num metabolito activo chamado Desvenlafaxina. Assim, de modo a perceber quais as vantagens da administração por via intranasal da Venlafaxina e da Desvenlafaxina, deve ser antes validado um método bioanalítico usando MEPS/HPLC de modo a que ambos se consigam quantificar em plasma, cérebro e fígado de murganho. O Capítulo 2 está relacionado com o estágio em farmácia comunitária, no qual são descritas todas as actividades realizadas ao longo dos 3 meses que passei na Farmácia da Alameda. Neste capítulo é focado todo o funcionamento em geral de uma farmácia comunitária, tendo sempre em conta não apenas a dispensa de medicamentos e os serviços farmacêuticos, mas também as melhores formas de gestão efetuadas neste âmbito. O Capítulo 3 refere-se aos 2 meses de estágio em farmácia hospitalar, descrevendo-se aqui todas as tarefas e responsabilidades de cada secção da farmácia. Aqui é também focada a importância do farmacêutico hospitalar na gestão das terapêuticas dos doentes e dos custos associados a estas
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