Algunas consideraciones éticas acerca de la medicalización de la mutilación/corte genital femenina (circuncisión femenina).

According to each society’s condition the ethical attitude of the individual may be colored by the attitude of the society. It is therefore not surprising to find what is ethical in one society might not be ethical in another. Female Genital Cutting, as an example, is seen in some societies as a must and something good for the whole community in general and for girls in particular, while in others, it is seen as mutilation and violation of human rights. The practice of female genital cutting is a complex issue that ties the traditional gender roles, superstition, local concepts on health and sexuality, as well as several other social relations. Worldwide, an estimated 130 million girls and women have undergone FGC. The current paper examines medicalization of female genital cutting from ethical point of view. The paper discusses the issue in the following themes: definition of the practice, the justifications of the practice, the complications and lastly the ethical reflections. The paper argues that laws that prohibit the practice would not work, without wide socio-cultural change; any effort to eradicate the practice would not succeedDe acuerdo a las condiciones sociales la actitud ética del individuo puede ser matizada por la actitud de la sociedad. Por lo tanto no es sorprendente encontrar, que algo que es ético en una sociedad no lo sea para otra sociedad. La mutilación genital femenina, es un ejemplo de esto, ésta mutilación es vista en algunas sociedades como lo debido y algo bueno para toda la comunidad en general y para las niñas en particular; mientras que en otras sociedades, esto es visto como mutilación y violación de los derechos humanos. Esta práctica, es un aspecto complejo que ata los roles tradicionales de género, la superstición, los conceptos locales en cuanto a sexualidad, salud, así como otras relaciones sociales. En el mundo se tiene un estimado de 130 millones de niñas y mujeres que han sido sometidas a la mutilación genital femenina (FGC) El presente artículo examina la medicalización de ésta práctica, desde un punto de vista ético. Este documento discute el tópico en los siguientes temas : definición de la práctica, justificación de la misma, sus complicaciones y finalmente las reflexiones éticas. Este artículo argumenta que las leyes que prohiben esta práctica no funcionarían sin un amplio cambio sociocultural; cualquier esfuerzo para erradicar dicha práctica no será exitos

Improving water resources management using different irrigation strategies and water qualities: Field and modelling study

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of two different irrigation strategies, regulated deficit irrigation, RDI and partial root drying, PRD using surface freshwater (SW) and brackish treated wastewater (TWW) for maize and potato crops. The SALTMED model has been applied using the field measurements of two cropping seasons 2013 and 2014 at the Canale Emiliano Romagnolo, CER’s experimental farm located in Mezzolara di Budrio (Bologna, Italy). In 2013, PRD irrigated potato received 17% less irrigation water than RDI but produced nearly the same yield as under RDI. The water productivity, o naverage, was 11% higher for PRD compared with RDI. For maize 2014 season, the PRD strategy received almost 15% less irrigation water, but produced a yield only 6% lower than that of RDI and gave equal water productivity to RDI. Given that the two strategies received the same amount of rainfall the results favour the PRD over RDI. Had the site not received above average rainfall (258 mm in 2013 and 259 mm during the 2014 growing seasons), PRD might have produced higher yield and water productivity than RDI. In terms of model simulations, overall, the model showed a strong relationship between the observed and the simulated soil moisture and salinity profiles, total dry mater and final yields. This illustrates SALTMED model’s ability to simulate the dry matter and yield of C3 and C4 crops as well as to simulated different water qualities and different water application strategies. Therefore, the model can run with “what if” scenarios depicting several water qualities, crops and irrigation systems and strategies without the need to try them all in the field. This will reduce costs of labour and investment

Stability of compressible boundary layers over a smooth backward-facing step

An investigation is conducted into the determination of the credibility of interacting boundary layers in predicting compressible subsonic flows over smooth surface imperfections. The case of smooth backward-facing steps is considered. The predicted mean flows are compared with those obtained using a Navier-Stokes solver. Moreover, the linear 2-D compressible stability characteristics of both mean flows are compared. The results show that the interacting boundary-layer formulation produces accurate mean flows that yield accurate linear stability characteristics, such as growth rates and amplification factors

Evaluating the productivity potential of chickpea, lentil and faba bean under saline water irrigation systems

The information on salinity threshold levels for food legumes when irrigating with saline water is limited and old. In a multi-year study at two sites in the Euphrates Basin, we aimed at (i) evaluating the potential of saline water irrigation for chickpea, faba bean and lentil production; and (ii) using the SALTMED model to determine threshold crop yields based on irrigation water salinity in equilibrium with ambient soil solution salinity. To evaluate 15 accessions each of lentil and chickpea, and 11 accessions of faba bean, three irrigation treatments were used with salinity levels of 0.87, 2.50 and 3.78 dS m-1 at Hassake and 0.70, 3.0 and 5.0 dS m-1 at Raqqa. Aggregated grain yields showed significant differences (p < 0.05) among crop accessions. Calibration and validation of the SALTMED model revealed a close relationship between actual grain yields from the field sites and those predicted by the model. The 50% yield reduction (π50 value) in chickpea, lentil, and faba bean occurred at salinity levels of 4.2, 4.4 and 5.2 dS m-1, respectively. These results suggest that of the three food legume crops, faba bean can withstand relatively high levels of irrigation water salinity, followed by lentil and chickpea

Effect of different pretreatments on egyptian sugar-cane bagasse saccharification and bioethanol production

AbstractSugar-cane processing generates large amount of bagasse. Disposal of bagasse is critical for both agricultural profitability and environmental protection. Sugar-cane bagasse is a renewable resource that can be used to produce ethanol.In this study, twelve microbial isolates, five bacteria, four yeasts and three filamentous fungi were isolated from sugar-cane bagasse. Bacterial and yeast isolates were selected for their ability to utilize different sugars and cellulose. Chipped and ground bagasse was subjected to different pretreatment methods; physically through steam treatment by autoclaving at 121°C and 1.5bar for 20min and/or different doses of gamma γ irradiation (50 and 70Mrad). Autoclaved pretreated bagasse was further biologically treated through the solid state fermentation process by different fungal isolates; F-66, F-94 and F-98 producing maximum total reducing sugars of 18.4., 26.1 and 20.4g/L, respectively.Separate biological hydrolysis and fermentation (SHF) process for bagasse was done by the two selected fungal isolates; Trichoderma viride F-94 and Aspergillus terreus F-98 and the two yeast isolates identified as Candida tropicalis Y-26 and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y-39. SHF processes by F-94 and Y-26 produced 226kg of ethanol/ton bagasse while that of F-98 and Y-39 produced 185kg of ethanol/ton bagasse

Towards accurate estimation of crop water requirement without the crop coefficient Kc: new approach using modern technologies

Modern technologies to measure actual evapotranspiration, ETa, were implemented at an experimental farm near Bologna, Italy. Large-aperture scintillometer and eddy covariance instruments were installed. The results showed significant differences between actual evapotranspiration measured by eddy covariance and scintillometer when compared with the potential reference evapotranspiration, ET0, calculated from meteorological data using the Penman–Monteith equation and the crop potential evapotranspiration, ETc, which is based on the ET0 and the crop coefficient, Kc. The ETc and ET0 showed higher values than those of ETa obtained by eddy covariance and scintillometer. On average the actual evapotranspiration measured by eddy covariance and scintillometer for the cropping seasons 2014 and 2015 represented 45 and 35% of the ET0 or the ETc, respectively. The ET0, or the ETc, represent the atmospheric water demand while, fundamentally, the crop water requirement should be based on crop water demand better represented by the actual evapotranspiration. At present, the results indicate that the actual crop water requirement based on modern technologies could save at least 50% of irrigation water for this region. Another benefit is that these modern technologies do not need the crop coefficient Kc, which for many irrigation practitioners is difficult to obtain

The Cosmic-ray Soil Moisture Observation System (Cosmos) for estimating the crop water requirement: new approach

Soil moisture is a crucial parameter to determine the crop water requirement for irrigation. The soil moisture deficit (SMD) of the root zone is an indicator that can be used to determine the exact crop water requirement. Application of the recent technology of COsmic-ray Soil Moisture Observation System (Cosmos) provides continuous, integrated, area-based values, with a measurement radius of up to 400 m, whilst being non-invasive. In a field experiment in Italy, the Cosmos probe was used over a mixed crop area during the cropping seasons of 2014 and 2015. The results showed that soil moisture values obtained by Cosmos were comparable with those obtained for the top 0–60 cm layer soil moisture measured by sensors, soil cores, profile probes and with values simulated by the SALTMED model. This indicates that the Cosmos probe's effective depth of sensing is within the top 0–60 cm. Knowing that almost 80% of the crop root system is accommodated within the top 0–60 cm, the Cosmos measurement could be useful for monitoring the soil water status and SMD in the root zone in irrigated agriculture. The Cosmos system could be made operational for irrigation managers to determine when and how much to irrigat

Exploring the Impact of Preprocessing Techniques on Retinal Blood Vessel Segmentation Using a Study Group Learning Scheme

The segmentation of retinal vessels in retinal images is vital for automated diagnosis of retinal diseases. This is a challenging task because it requires accurate manual labeling of the vessels by expert clinicians and the detection of tiny vessels is difficult due to limited samples, low contrast, and noise. In this study, we explore the use of preprocessing techniques such as contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE), grad-cam analysis and min-max contrast stretching to improve the performance of a study-group learning (SGL) segmentation model. We evaluate the impact of these preprocessing techniques on the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, AUC, IoU, and Dice scores using four publicly available datasets, DRIVE, CHASE, HRF and IOSTAR. Our findings indicate that the utilization of the Min-Max technique resulted in a notable enhancement in the accuracy of both the DRIVE and CHASE datasets, with an approximate increase of 3% and 2% respectively. Conversely, the impact of the CLAHE method was discernible solely in the DRIVE dataset, demonstrating an improvement in accuracy of 1%. In addition, our results demonstrated superior accuracy performance for both the DRIVE and CHASE datasets compared to the findings of the reviewed studies. The GitHub repo for this project is available at Link