Treatment of contaminated Flowback water in shale gas development

Flowback water from shale gas well drilling has a high TDS (total dissolved solids) content, ranging from 5000 ppm to 261,000 ppm, along with a TSS (total suspended solids) content of 300–3000 mg/L. Recently, the rapid expansion of shale gas production in Marcellus Formation has raised serious environmental concerns about the large amount of flowback water in this area. In this project a process based on ceramic membrane filtration and ion-exchange is optimised for the treatment of the flowback water from Marcellus Formation. Mixed bed ion-exchange will then be employed to reduce the high TDS concentration of flowback water. Finally, a preliminary cost estimation of the proposed treatment process will be conducted. The studied process contains a combination of two MF (microfiltration) membranes. After treatment, all TSS and >99% of TDS should be successfully removed from the flowback water to meet the criteria for surface discharge. The cost estimation of the treatment is expected to be around 18.4 $/m

Criteria of selecting appropriate Delay Analysis Methods (DAM) for mega construction projects

Nowadays, one of the major sources of issues in the construction sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is the Extension of time (EOT) claims, which is so hard to resolve. Authors and practitioners have started trials in numerous academic studies to show how to properly deploy Delay Analysis Methods (or "DAMs") and to give practitioners executive guidelines to support them with proper analyses and claim resolution. The awareness of the use of these methods is essential to realize their restrictions and capacity to fit in with various project circumstances and to select appropriate delay analysis methods. The main objective of this research is to provide a guide for the selection of appropriate DAM by defining a list of important criteria that have the most preference in choosing the effective method. These criteria will be rated by collecting feedback from experts in the MENA region through questionnaires. The survey was conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the abundance of multinational firms working on mega construction projects with multicultural backgrounds and diversity of expertise in addition to the availability of carrying out interviews when needed and the widespread adoption of standard international construction contracts. Then, the possibility of ranking is calculated by using the Relative Importance Index (RII). This ranking will be considered as an important tool for the proper selection of convenient delay analysis methods. Ultimately this paper will facilitate the selection of appropriate DAM by Delay analyst through investigating project circumstances by mapping it with current ranked criteria

Measuring performance on the Healthcare Access and Quality Index for 195 countries and territories and selected subnational locations: a systematic analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background: A key component of achieving universal health coverage is ensuring that all populations have access to quality health care. Examining where gains have occurred or progress has faltered across and within countries is crucial to guiding decisions and strategies for future improvement. We used the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016 (GBD 2016) to assess personal health-care access and quality with the Healthcare Access and Quality (HAQ) Index for 195 countries and territories, as well as subnational locations in seven countries, from 1990 to 2016. Methods: Drawing from established methods and updated estimates from GBD 2016, we used 32 causes from which death should not occur in the presence of effective care to approximate personal health-care access and quality by location and over time. To better isolate potential effects of personal health-care access and quality from underlying risk factor patterns, we risk-standardised cause-specific deaths due to non-cancers by location-year, replacing the local joint exposure of environmental and behavioural risks with the global level of exposure. Supported by the expansion of cancer registry data in GBD 2016, we used mortality-to-incidence ratios for cancers instead of risk-standardised death rates to provide a stronger signal of the effects of personal health care and access on cancer survival. We transformed each cause to a scale of 0–100, with 0 as the first percentile (worst) observed between 1990 and 2016, and 100 as the 99th percentile (best); we set these thresholds at the country level, and then applied them to subnational locations. We applied a principal components analysis to construct the HAQ Index using all scaled cause values, providing an overall score of 0–100 of personal health-care access and quality by location over time. We then compared HAQ Index levels and trends by quintiles on the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a summary measure of overall development. As derived from the broader GBD study and other data sources, we examined relationships between national HAQ Index scores and potential correlates of performance, such as total health spending per capita. Findings: In 2016, HAQ Index performance spanned from a high of 97·1 (95% UI 95·8–98·1) in Iceland, followed by 96·6 (94·9–97·9) in Norway and 96·1 (94·5–97·3) in the Netherlands, to values as low as 18·6 (13·1–24·4) in the Central African Republic, 19·0 (14·3–23·7) in Somalia, and 23·4 (20·2–26·8) in Guinea-Bissau. The pace of progress achieved between 1990 and 2016 varied, with markedly faster improvements occurring between 2000 and 2016 for many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia, whereas several countries in Latin America and elsewhere saw progress stagnate after experiencing considerable advances in the HAQ Index between 1990 and 2000. Striking subnational disparities emerged in personal health-care access and quality, with China and India having particularly large gaps between locations with the highest and lowest scores in 2016. In China, performance ranged from 91·5 (89·1–93·6) in Beijing to 48·0 (43·4–53·2) in Tibet (a 43·5-point difference), while India saw a 30·8-point disparity, from 64·8 (59·6–68·8) in Goa to 34·0 (30·3–38·1) in Assam. Japan recorded the smallest range in subnational HAQ performance in 2016 (a 4·8-point difference), whereas differences between subnational locations with the highest and lowest HAQ Index values were more than two times as high for the USA and three times as high for England. State-level gaps in the HAQ Index in Mexico somewhat narrowed from 1990 to 2016 (from a 20·9-point to 17·0-point difference), whereas in Brazil, disparities slightly increased across states during this time (a 17·2-point to 20·4-point difference). Performance on the HAQ Index showed strong linkages to overall development, with high and high-middle SDI countries generally having higher scores and faster gains for non-communicable diseases. Nonetheless, countries across the development spectrum saw substantial gains in some key health service areas from 2000 to 2016, most notably vaccine-preventable diseases. Overall, national performance on the HAQ Index was positively associated with higher levels of total health spending per capita, as well as health systems inputs, but these relationships were quite heterogeneous, particularly among low-to-middle SDI countries. Interpretation: GBD 2016 provides a more detailed understanding of past success and current challenges in improving personal health-care access and quality worldwide. Despite substantial gains since 2000, many low-SDI and middle-SDI countries face considerable challenges unless heightened policy action and investments focus on advancing access to and quality of health care across key health services, especially non-communicable diseases. Stagnating or minimal improvements experienced by several low-middle to high-middle SDI countries could reflect the complexities of re-orienting both primary and secondary health-care services beyond the more limited foci of the Millennium Development Goals. Alongside initiatives to strengthen public health programmes, the pursuit of universal health coverage hinges upon improving both access and quality worldwide, and thus requires adopting a more comprehensive view—and subsequent provision—of quality health care for all populations

Global, regional, and national burden of meningitis, 1990-2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

Background Acute meningitis has a high case-fatality rate and survivors can have severe lifelong disability. We aimed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the levels and trends of global meningitis burden that could help to guide introduction, continuation, and ongoing development of vaccines and treatment programmes.AA received funding from Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, New Delhi, through INSPIRE Faculty Award Scheme. HB was financially supported by Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran. AB received support for research from the Project of Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of the Republic of Serbia (No. III45005). TWB was supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the Alexander von Humboldt Professor award, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. FC reports European Union (FEDER funds POCI/01/0145/FEDER/007728 and POCI/01/0145/ FEDER/007265) and National Funds (FCT/MEC, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and Ministério da Educação e Ciência) under the Partnership Agreements PT2020 UID/MULTI/04378/2013 and PT2020 UID/QUI/50006/2013. HF was financially supported by Urmia University of Medical sciences, Urmia, Iran. EF reports European Union (FEDER funds POCI/01/0145/FEDER/007728 and POCI/01/0145/FEDER/007265) and National Funds (FCT/MEC, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia and Ministério da Educação e Ciência) under the Partnership Agreements PT2020 UID/MULTI/04378/2013 and PT2020 UID/QUI/50006/2013. JK has received research funding from Merck Pharmaceuticals. AM acknowledges that Imperial College London is grateful for support from the NW London National Institute of Health and Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care. UOM acknowledges funding from the German National Cohort Study Federal Ministry of Education and Research Grant #01ER1511/D. AMS was supported by a fellowship from the Egyptian Fulbright Mission Program. MSM acknowledges the support from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Republic of Serbia (Contract No. 175087). KBT acknowledges funding supports from the Maurice Wilkins Centre for Biodiscovery, Cancer Society of New Zealand, Health Research Council, Gut Cancer Foundation, and the University of Auckland. CSW’s work is funded by the South African Medical Research Council and the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Numbers: 106035 and 108571)

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, andyears lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematicanalysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2017) includes a comprehensive assessment of incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 354 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2017. Previous GBD studies have shown how the decline of mortality rates from 1990 to 2016 has led to an increase in life expectancy, an ageing global population, and an expansion of the non-fatal burden of disease and injury. These studies have also shown how a substantial portion of the world’s population experiences non-fatal health loss with considerable heterogeneity among different causes, locations, ages, and sexes. Ongoing objectives of the GBD study include increasing the level of estimation detail, improving analytical strategies, and increasing the amount of high-quality data.Research reported in this publication was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Melbourne, Public Health England, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the National Institute on Ageing of the National Institutes of Health (award P30AG047845), and the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health (award R01MH110163)

Global, Regional, and National Disability-Adjusted Life-Years (DALYs) for 359 Diseases and Injuries and Healthy Life Expectancy (HALE) for 195 Countries and Territories, 1990–2017: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

BACKGROUND: How long one lives, how many years of life are spent in good and poor health, and how the population\u27s state of health and leading causes of disability change over time all have implications for policy, planning, and provision of services. We comparatively assessed the patterns and trends of healthy life expectancy (HALE), which quantifies the number of years of life expected to be lived in good health, and the complementary measure of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), a composite measure of disease burden capturing both premature mortality and prevalence and severity of ill health, for 359 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories over the past 28 years. METHODS: We used data for age-specific mortality rates, years of life lost (YLLs) due to premature mortality, and years lived with disability (YLDs) from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017 to calculate HALE and DALYs from 1990 to 2017. We calculated HALE using age-specific mortality rates and YLDs per capita for each location, age, sex, and year. We calculated DALYs for 359 causes as the sum of YLLs and YLDs. We assessed how observed HALE and DALYs differed by country and sex from expected trends based on Socio-demographic Index (SDI). We also analysed HALE by decomposing years of life gained into years spent in good health and in poor health, between 1990 and 2017, and extra years lived by females compared with males. FINDINGS: Globally, from 1990 to 2017, life expectancy at birth increased by 7.4 years (95% uncertainty interval 7.1-7.8), from 65.6 years (65.3-65.8) in 1990 to 73.0 years (72.7-73.3) in 2017. The increase in years of life varied from 5.1 years (5.0-5.3) in high SDI countries to 12.0 years (11.3-12.8) in low SDI countries. Of the additional years of life expected at birth, 26.3% (20.1-33.1) were expected to be spent in poor health in high SDI countries compared with 11.7% (8.8-15.1) in low-middle SDI countries. HALE at birth increased by 6.3 years (5.9-6.7), from 57.0 years (54.6-59.1) in 1990 to 63.3 years (60.5-65.7) in 2017. The increase varied from 3.8 years (3.4-4.1) in high SDI countries to 10.5 years (9.8-11.2) in low SDI countries. Even larger variations in HALE than these were observed between countries, ranging from 1.0 year (0.4-1.7) in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (62.4 years [59.9-64.7] in 1990 to 63.5 years [60.9-65.8] in 2017) to 23.7 years (21.9-25.6) in Eritrea (30.7 years [28.9-32.2] in 1990 to 54.4 years [51.5-57.1] in 2017). In most countries, the increase in HALE was smaller than the increase in overall life expectancy, indicating more years lived in poor health. In 180 of 195 countries and territories, females were expected to live longer than males in 2017, with extra years lived varying from 1.4 years (0.6-2.3) in Algeria to 11.9 years (10.9-12.9) in Ukraine. Of the extra years gained, the proportion spent in poor health varied largely across countries, with less than 20% of additional years spent in poor health in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, and Slovakia, whereas in Bahrain all the extra years were spent in poor health. In 2017, the highest estimate of HALE at birth was in Singapore for both females (75.8 years [72.4-78.7]) and males (72.6 years [69.8-75.0]) and the lowest estimates were in Central African Republic (47.0 years [43.7-50.2] for females and 42.8 years [40.1-45.6] for males). Globally, in 2017, the five leading causes of DALYs were neonatal disorders, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, lower respiratory infections, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Between 1990 and 2017, age-standardised DALY rates decreased by 41.3% (38.8-43.5) for communicable diseases and by 49.8% (47.9-51.6) for neonatal disorders. For non-communicable diseases, global DALYs increased by 40.1% (36.8-43.0), although age-standardised DALY rates decreased by 18.1% (16.0-20.2). INTERPRETATION: With increasing life expectancy in most countries, the question of whether the additional years of life gained are spent in good health or poor health has been increasingly relevant because of the potential policy implications, such as health-care provisions and extending retirement ages. In some locations, a large proportion of those additional years are spent in poor health. Large inequalities in HALE and disease burden exist across countries in different SDI quintiles and between sexes. The burden of disabling conditions has serious implications for health system planning and health-related expenditures. Despite the progress made in reducing the burden of communicable diseases and neonatal disorders in low SDI countries, the speed of this progress could be increased by scaling up proven interventions. The global trends among non-communicable diseases indicate that more effort is needed to maximise HALE, such as risk prevention and attention to upstream determinants of health. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Anemia prevalence in women of reproductive age in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2018

Anemia is a globally widespread condition in women and is associated with reduced economic productivity and increased mortality worldwide. Here we map annual 2000–2018 geospatial estimates of anemia prevalence in women of reproductive age (15–49 years) across 82 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), stratify anemia by severity and aggregate results to policy-relevant administrative and national levels. Additionally, we provide subnational disparity analyses to provide a comprehensive overview of anemia prevalence inequalities within these countries and predict progress toward the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target (WHO GNT) to reduce anemia by half by 2030. Our results demonstrate widespread moderate improvements in overall anemia prevalence but identify only three LMICs with a high probability of achieving the WHO GNT by 2030 at a national scale, and no LMIC is expected to achieve the target in all their subnational administrative units. Our maps show where large within-country disparities occur, as well as areas likely to fall short of the WHO GNT, offering precision public health tools so that adequate resource allocation and subsequent interventions can be targeted to the most vulnerable populations. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 30 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Muhammad Aziz Rahman” is provided in this record*