Factors associated with overweight in schoolchildren

Objetivo Identificar variáveis associadas ao sobrepeso em escolares de Cuiabá, MT, Brasil. Métodos Foi feito um estudo de caso-controle a partir de um inquérito antropométrico, aplicado em uma amostra aleatória de alunos da primeira série do ensino fundamental, com idades entre 6 e 11 anos. Foram incluídos, como casos, os 158 escolares que apresentaram sobrepeso (índice de massa muscular ≥P85) e, como controles, 316 crianças sorteadas entre as que apresentaram índice de massa muscular3 salários mínimos (OR= 3,75), que tinham mães de idade entre 25 e 29 anos (OR=1,74) e com nível mais alto de escolaridade (OR=1,91) e com história de apenas uma união conjugal (OR=2,53); também foi maior nos escolares, de sexo feminino (OR=2,15), que possuíam no máximo um irmão (OR=1,94), brincavam ≤10h por semana (OR=2,58), tinham mães e pais com índice de massa muscular ≥30 (OR= 7,27 e 2,65, respectivamente) e nasceram com peso >3500g (OR= 2,27). Conclusão Os resultados apontam que variáveis de diferentes níveis hierárquicos se associam na configuração de contextos favoráveis ao aumento do sobrepeso em escolares e fornecem subsídios para o desenvolvimento de intervenções que considerem os grupos mais vulneráveis à presença de sobrepeso. _______________________________________________________________________________________ ABSTRACTObjective To identify the variables associated with overweight among schoolchildren in Cuiaba, MT, Brasil. Methods A case-control study was conducted in a sample of schoolchildren aging from 6 to 11 years. The study consisted of 158 overweight schoolchildren (body mass index ≥85th percentile) and 316 children with body mass index 3,500g (OR=2.27) and female gender (OR=2.15). Conclusion The results pointed out variables, at different hierarchical levels, correlated with overweight among schoolchildren. Interventions should consider the complex pattern of obesity determination and the groups at higher vulnerability

Hipertensión arterial y estilo de vida en sinop, municipio de la Amazonía legal

BACKGROUND: Hypertension is highly prevalent and is an important cardiovascular risk factor. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the prevalence of hypertension and its association with lifestyle. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional population-based study conducted through a household survey in Sinop-MT (n = 690). The study sample was obtained by simple sampling in two steps. Blood pressure was measured three times and, for the analysis, the average of the last two measures was taken into account. The individuals who had BP > 140/90 mmHg and/or reported use of antihypertensive drugs were considered hypertense. The analysis of hierarchical multiple logistic regression was used to test the association between hypertension and independent variables. RESULTS: The prevalence of hypertension was 23.2% (95% CI: 20.1 - 26.6). The only variable related to lifestyle associated with hypertension was the consumption of alcoholic beverages, and this variable was protective for women who consumed up to 15g ethanol/day (OR = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.26-0.93), and deleterious for men who consumed more than 30g ethanol/day (OR = 2.94, 95% CI: 1.28 to 6.77). CONCLUSION: Hypertension was independently associated with alcohol consumption among men and women.FUNDAMENTO: La hipertensión arterial presenta alta prevalencia y es un importante factor de riesgo cardiovascular. OBJETIVO: Estimar la prevalencia de la hipertensión arterial y su asociación con el estilo de vida. MÉTODOS: Estudio transversal, de base poblacional, por medio de encuesta domiciliaria llevada a cabo en Sinop-MT (n = 690). La muestra de la investigación se obtuvo por muestreo simple en dos etapas. La presión arterial se tomó tres veces y para el análisis, el promedio de las dos últimas mediciones. Se consideró como hipertensos aquellos que presentaron PA > 140/90 mmHg y/o que refirieron uso de fármacos antihipertensivos. El análisis de regresión logística múltiple jerarquizada se utilizó para probar la asociación entre la hipertensión y las variables independientes. RESULTADOS: La prevalencia de hipertensión arterial fue de un 23,2% (IC 95%: 20,1 - 26,6). La única variable relacionada al estilo de vida asociada a la hipertensión arterial fue el consumo de bebidas alcohólicas, siendo protector para las mujeres que consumían hasta 15 g de etanol/día (OR=0,49;IC 95%: 0,26 - 0,93) y deletéreo para los varones que consumían más de 30 g de etanol/día (OR=2,94;IC 95%: 1,28 - 6,77). CONCLUSIÓN: La hipertensión arterial se asoció independientemente al consumo de bebidas alcohólicas, entre varones y mujeres.FUNDAMENTO: A hipertensão arterial apresenta alta prevalência e é um importante fator de risco cardiovascular. OBJETIVO: Estimar a prevalência da hipertensão arterial e sua associação com o estilo de vida. MÉTODOS: Estudo transversal, de base populacional, por meio de inquérito domiciliar realizado em Sinop-MT (n = 690). A amostra da pesquisa foi obtida por amostragem simples em duas etapas. A pressão arterial foi aferida três vezes e para a análise, a média das duas últimas medidas. Considerou-se hipertensos aqueles que apresentaram PA > 140/90 mmHg e/ou que referiram uso de drogas anti-hipertensivas. A análise de regressão logística múltipla hierarquizada foi utilizada para testar a associação entre a hipertensão e as variáveis independentes. RESULTADOS: A prevalência de hipertensão arterial foi de 23,2% (IC 95%: 20,1 - 26,6). A única variável relacionada ao estilo de vida associada à hipertensão arterial foi o consumo de bebidas alcoólicas, sendo protetor para as mulheres que consumiam até 15 g de etanol/dia (OR = 0,49; IC 95%: 0,26 - 0,93) e deletério para os homens que consumiam mais de 30 g de etanol/dia (OR = 2,94; IC 95%: 1,28 - 6,77). CONCLUSÃO: A hipertensão arterial associou-se independentemente com o consumo de bebidas alcoólicas, entre homens e mulheres.Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) Faculdade de EnfermagemUniversidade Federal de Mato Grosso Instituto de Saúde ColetivaUniversidade Federal de Mato Grosso Departamento de Alimentos e NutriçãoUNIFESP, Faculdade de EnfermagemSciEL

Design of a self contained indoor vertical farming

LAUREA MAGISTRALELa coltivazione tradizionale sta affrontando crescenti difficoltà a causa di fattori come l’industrializzazione, l’urbanizzazione, i disastri naturali, i cambiamenti climatici e l’uso eccessivo di sostanze chimiche, che portano all’esaurimento della fertilità e della qualità del suolo, oltre che alla riduzione della disponibilità di terreno coltivabile. In risposta, i metodi di coltivazione verticale senza terreno, come l’idroponica e l’aeroponica, sono emersi come alternative sostenibili. Questi metodi offrono vantaggi significativi, come il riutilizzo fino al 99% di acqua rispetto ai metodi tradizionali, l’eliminazione della necessità di pesticidi e l’accelerazione dei tempi di crescita di circa il 20%, con l’aeroponica che raggiunge una crescita fino al 40% più veloce. Queste tecniche stanno guadagnando popolarità a livello mondiale, specialmente in aree con terra coltivabile limitata e in ambienti in cui le condizioni climatiche avverse renderebbero difficile la coltivazione tradizionale, oltre che per applicazioni nella ricerca spaziale. Questa tesi ha l’obiettivo di progettare e costruire un sistema automatizzato indoor isolato che integra due tecniche indipendenti: Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) ed Aeroponica. I parametri chiave del sistema—umidità all’interno delle camere di crescita aeroponiche (dove sono supportate le piante), pH, funzionamento della pompa e pressione—sono gestiti e controllati tramite un setup IoT. Il sistema implementato ha dimostrato una gestione efficace di questi parametri, mante nendoli all’interno di intervalli ottimali per la crescita delle piante con alta precisione e stabilità. Inoltre, ha mostrato potenziale per la scalabilità e l’adattabilità, suggerendo che potrebbe essere implementato efficacemente in diversi contesti e ampliato per operazioni più grandiSoil-based cultivation is increasingly challenged by factors such as industrialization, ur banization, natural disasters, climate change, and excessive use of chemicals, which lead to the depletion of soil fertility and quality, as well as a reduction in the availability of cultivable land. In response, vertical farming has emerged as sustainable alternative. This method, including hydroponics and aeroponics, offer significant advantages such as reusing up to 99% of water compared to traditional methods, eliminating the need for pesticides, and accelerating growth phases by approximately 20%, with aeroponics achieving up to 40% faster growth. These techniques are gaining popularity worldwide, especially in areas with limited available land and in environments where adverse climatic conditions would make traditional cultivation difficult, as well as for applications in space research. This thesis aims to design and construct an isolated indoor automated system that inte grates two independent techniques: Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) and Aeroponics. The system’s key parameters are: humidity within the aeroponic growing chambers (where the plants are supported), pH, pump operation, and pressure—are managed and controlled through an IoT setup. The implemented system demonstrated effective management of these parameters, main taining them within optimal ranges for plant growth with high precision and stability. Additionally, it showed potential for scalability and adaptability, suggesting that it could be effectively implemented in various settings and scaled up for larger operations

Assessment of antenna parameters for current drive in thermonuclear reactors by radio-frequency power

The most challenging conceptual problem of thermonuclear energy research based on deuterium plasmas magnetically trapped in toroidal machines, named tokamaks, consists in how to control and actively shape during operations the current density radial profile of plasma column. To achieve this control is of paramount importance, indeed, for the following reasons: i) to prevent the onset of unstable modes that detriment the figures of stability and fusion power gain from thermonuclear reactions, which are necessary for a reactor; ii) to remove the obstacle of tokamaks of being intrinsically inductive machines, i.e., capable of producing only transient plasma regimes, in front of the reactor’s need of operating in steady- state. In regard to the former problem, data of modelling and experiments available in the last 25 years showed that the growth rate of pernicious unstable plasma modes, of magneto-hydro-dynamic (MHD) nature, is strongly depressed when a relative maximum of the plasma current density is suitably located at radii close to the region that interests the unstable modes. They make challenging the possibility of achieving the desired thermal insulation that is necessary for allowing thermonuclear conditions of high temperatures (∼100 million of degrees) and high density (∼1020 m-3) of plasma. The limitation of pulsed operation was, instead, well known since the assessment (half century ago) of the tokamak concept, and this was soon perceived as the major conceptual obstacle against the development of a thermonuclear fusion reactor. Indeed, at that time, the further problem of the onset of unstable modes (which produces anomalous transport effects, on heat and matter, via micro-turbulence and MHD modes) did not appear yet. The discovery in 1981 at Princeton (USA) of the lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) effect was considered very attractive for facing both the mentioned major problems of a reactor. The LHCD effect consists in the capability of multimegawatt microwave power at several gigahertz, coupled to quasi-electrostatic natural modes of plasma, named lower hybrid (LH) waves, of non- inductively producing current in tokamak plasma. Consequently, the plasma current can flow with continuity in a tokamak under RF power injection. The antenna consists in phased arrays of rectangular waveguides that suitably fit the gaps of the tokamak’s magnet. Via electronic setting of the waveguide phasing, the refractive index (n//, in the direction parallel to the confinement magnetic field) of the RF power spectrum can be usefully determined in order to Landau-resonate with a tail of the electron distribution of plasma electrons, for the temperature that corresponds to the radial layer where the current drive effect would be desirably produced. As further support of attractiveness of the LHCD effect, it should be considered that other methods utilising radiofrequency power in the ion-cyclotron and electron-cyclotron resonant frequencies, as well those that exploit strong power injection of energetic ion beams, present much lower efficiency in driving plasma current than that possible by the LHCD effect. Unfortunately, for long time the LHCD effect was observed to occur successfully only when operating at too low plasma densities – of about a factor three lower than that required by reactor – despite of the many attempts carried out for decades in many laboratories in the world. In these experiments, the RF power was however successfully coupled by the antenna, but remained unexpectedly deposited at the plasma periphery, as a consequence of parasitic effects of plasma edge. Only recently, an original research performed in the ENEA-Frascati Lab. – whose results have been published on Nature Communications: 5,55,2010 – has assessed a new method for enabling the occurrence of the LHCD effect at reactor graded high plasma densities. This method is based on previous theoretical predictions of reduced parasitic effect under higher temperature of plasma edge (ENEA Laboratory work published on Physical Review Letters in 2004). These works demonstrated that the parasitic damping of the coupled RF power is produced by non-linear wave-plasma interaction, named parametric instability (PI), which is capable of strongly altering (namely, broadening) the n// spectrum launched by the antenna. Consequently, the temperature required for Landau-resonance of the RF power spectrum with plasma electrons is strongly diminished, which causes absorption in the cold region of plasma periphery. This Thesis is focused on helping solution of an important conceptual problem, which is part of this challenge, by means of a noticeable application of strong radiofrequency power coupled to quasi- electrostatic plasma waves (LH waves). From the engineering point of view, results produced by an originally developed numerical code (LHPI) have backed solving the problem (existing for decades) of how to enable the antenna parameters determining the deposition of the coupled RF power (of several gigahertz) at a desired radial layer of the plasma column. This task would be ideally required indeed by an antenna. With respect to other current drive tool, based on electron cyclotron resonance (at about 150 GHz), this cannot guarantee the coverage of the outer half radius of plasma necessary for a reactor. Thanks to results reported here, new understanding is provided that for the first time enables a waveguide antenna for current drive in tokamaks to tailor the deposition in the plasma, in different operating conditions, by electronically acting on the launched spectrum (via feeding/phasing of waveguides). In particular, a) in case of too high plasma densities at the plasma edge, as occurs in running experiments, operation with higher temperature of plasma is recommended to avoid parasitic effects of spectral broadening. b) in case of too high plasma temperature at the plasma periphery, as envisaged in a future reactor, the assessment of a new antenna parameter, Δn//, allows however guaranteeing useful penetration of the coupled RF power into the plasma bulk. More specifically, the following issues have been considered in the Thesis. 1) Available data of RF power spectral broadening, kept during experiments carried out on the EAST tokamak (China), have been interpreted on the basis of the parametric instability modelling. This work has been performed thanks to a new version of a numerical code (developed on the basis of a previously version available since 1989 at ENEA-Frascati) having much improved qualities of velocity and precision. 2) The work has also focused on the key problem of how to enable the occurrence of the LHCD effect also in conditions of high electron temperature of reactor plasmas. Indeed, precisely the high temperature that in a reactor is expected to occur even at large radii of the plasma column which usefully prevents the occurrence of the parasitic effects observed in the experiments – would also produce an undesired RF power deposition too far out in the plasma, owing too strong electron Landau damping, as shown by numerical results. This circumstance is in contrast with the primary goal of a reactor of being equipped by current profile control, so that the too high plasma temperature of reactor represents the remaining major conceptual problem preventing the exploitation of the LHCD tool. This problem has been solved by the new outcome described in the Thesis. This result consists in having identified in a sufficiently narrow n// antenna power spectrum the way for reducing the wave-plasma interaction at high temperatures, thus enabling the penetration of the coupled RF power in the hot and dense regions of reactor plasmas. This diminished wave-plasma interaction is consequence of the content of standard quasi-linear theory of plasma waves: this aspect remained singularly undisclosed so far. 3) Finally, the thesis has analysed the problem of how to design an antenna capable of producing the required power spectra necessary for envisaging a current profile control system in a thermonuclear reactor. For carrying out this work, a numerical code has been utilised capable of treating waveguide antenna geometries however complex. Consequently, the desired sufficiently narrow n// power spectrum can be produced, indeed, by suitable array of active and passive phased array of rectangular waveguides. Moreover, the scan of the main antenna parameters (power reflection coefficient, directivity, etc,) performed assuming realistic conditions of plasma edge, has shown that all requirements should be satisfied for envisaging a current profile control system for a tokamak reactor based on the exploitation of the LHCD effect. The lower hybrid current drive tool in now fully supported by know how necessary for enabling the current profile control in the warm and dense plasma of thermonuclear reactor. The current drive method assessed here is of paramount importance for conceiving antennas to be implemented in the system of current profile control, which a reactor mandatorily requires

Evaluation and improvement of sustainable supply chains in the travel and tourism industry

Since the creation of long-distance modes of transportation, travel and tourism has been considered a significant industry for discretionary spending. There are also significant questions surrounding the sustainable of both the companies themselves, but more so the supply chains and how they are sourcing said materials and products. The aim of the study is to determine the current state of the travel and tourism industry from the perspective of hotel and airline companies. The secondary aim of this study is to determine where improvement can be as well as delving into the potential solutions and looking into the future of sustainable supply chain management in this industry. A literature review reveals that even though some sustainable changes in the supply chains of these companies have been introduced, they are still not where they need to be for the future. Empirical data was collected through a survey sent out to corporate airline and hotel supply chain and procurement executives (if available) in order to gain insight on these company’s sustainable successes, weaknesses, and proposed solutions. The survey revealed that even though these supply chains are still running subpar there is still room to have a cautious optimism in the future. In addition, key areas of concern were revealed such as Covid-19 recovery, lack of visibility in the upstream supply chain and the expansion of luxury class. Some areas of solutions are having a more multitier approach to evaluating the supply chain, getting over the Covid-19 sustainability plateau and have a leaner supply chain. The future of this industry looks like an advocation for decreasing the luxury class offerings and increased transparency along the supply chain

The Effects of Vasopressin on Aquaporin-1 Expression and Localization in the Presence and Absence of VACM-1/Cul5

The vasopressin-activated calcium mobilizing (VACM-1/Cul-5) protein plays a role in the E3 ubiquitin ligase system which is involved in the destruction of specific proteins. Our focus is on the impact that the (VACM-1/Cul-5) protein has on other proteins\u27 expression and localization within human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC). One of the proteins of interest to us is aquaporin-1 (AQP1). AQP1 is a water transporter that impacts cell growth and angiogenesis. To evaluate how the presence of VACM-1/Cul5 impacts AQP1, cells with and without the VACM-1/Cul5 gene are analyzed in the presence of increased vasopressin. VACM-1/Cul5 is knocked out of the genome using CRISPR. Results were analyzed using immunostaining to determine the concentration and localization of AQP1. The immunostaining process involves incubating treated cells with fluorescent antibodies that attach to AQP1. Preliminary results are inconclusive with respect to the impact of knocking out VACM-1 on AQP1 expression