Turning dilemmas into opportunities: a UNU/SCN capacity development network in public nutrition in Central and Eastern Europe

Capacity development in nutrition is a process whereby individuals, groups, institutions, organizations and societies enhance their abilities to identify and meet challenges in a sustainable manner. To address these issues, in 2001 the UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) established a Working Group on Capacity Development under die joint coordination of the United Nations University (UNU) and the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. Several regional professional networks have developed under this working group, the latest for the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) Countries. Ten CEE Countries formed a network in 2006 and identified major nutritional challenges in the region, which included: irregular meal patterns; low consumption of fruits/vegetables, milk products and fish; low intake of some micronutrients; and high intakes of fat, Sugar and salt. Public policies in nutrition were either weak or absent. Some countries had recently developed nutrition plans. Higher education in nutrition was seen as very important for public nutrition work by professionals in the region, who considered it a prerequisite for reversing the negative trend of the nutrition transition. The network will continue to work on issues that are still not covered adequately. Its activities to date and prospects for the future are assessed against ten principles for good capacity development suggested by the United Nations Development Programme

A Tractable Stochastic Model of Correlated Link Failures Caused by Disasters

In order to evaluate the expected availability of a service, a network administrator should consider all possible failure scenarios under the specific service availability model stipulated in the corresponding service-level agreement. Given the increase in natural disasters and malicious attacks with geographically extensive impact, considering only independent single link failures is often insufficient. In this paper, we build a stochastic model of geographically correlated link failures caused by disasters, in order to estimate the hazards a network may be prone to, and to understand the complex correlation between possible link failures. With such a model, one can quickly extract information, such as the probability of an arbitrary set of links to fail simultaneously, the probability of two nodes to be disconnected, the probability of a path to survive a failure, etc. Furthermore, we introduce a pre-computation process, which enables us to succinctly represent the joint probability distribution of link failures. In particular, we generate, in polynomial time, a quasilinear-sized data structure, with which the joint failure probability of any set of links can be computed efficiently.Embedded and Networked System

Probabilistic Shared Risk Link Groups Modeling Correlated Resource Failures Caused by Disasters

To evaluate the expected availability of a backbone network service, the administrator should consider all possible failure scenarios under the specific service availability model stipulated in the corresponding service-level agreement. Given the increase in natural disasters and malicious attacks with geographically extensive impact, considering only independent single component failures is often insufficient. This paper builds a stochastic model of geographically correlated link failures caused by disasters to estimate the hazards an optical backbone network may be prone to and to understand the complex correlation between possible link failures. We first consider link failures only and later extend our model also to capture node failures. With such a model, one can quickly extract essential information such as the probability of an arbitrary set of network resources to fail simultaneously, the probability of two nodes to be disconnected, the probability of a path to survive a disaster. Furthermore, we introduce standard data structures and a unified terminology on Probabilistic Shared Risk Link Groups (PSRLGs), along with a pre-computation process, which represents the failure probability of a set of resources succinctly. In particular, we generate a quasilinear-sized data structure in polynomial time, which allows the efficient computation of the cumulative failure probability of any set of network elements. Our evaluation is based on carefully pre-processed seismic hazard data matched to real-world optical backbone network topologies.Accepted author manuscriptEmbedded and Networked System

Children’s and adolescents’ rising animal-source food intakes in 1990–2018 were impacted by age, region, parental education and urbanicity

Animal-source foods (ASF) provide nutrition for children and adolescents’ physical and cognitive development. Here, we use data from the Global Dietary Database and Bayesian hierarchical models to quantify global, regional and national ASF intakes between 1990 and 2018 by age group across 185 countries, representing 93% of the world’s child population. Mean ASF intake was 1.9 servings per day, representing 16% of children consuming at least three daily servings. Intake was similar between boys and girls, but higher among urban children with educated parents. Consumption varied by age from 0.6 at <1 year to 2.5 servings per day at 15–19 years. Between 1990 and 2018, mean ASF intake increased by 0.5 servings per week, with increases in all regions except sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, total ASF consumption was highest in Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Turkey, and lowest in Uganda, India, Kenya and Bangladesh. These findings can inform policy to address malnutrition through targeted ASF consumption programmes.publishedVersio

Incident type 2 diabetes attributable to suboptimal diet in 184 countries

The global burden of diet-attributable type 2 diabetes (T2D) is not well established. This risk assessment model estimated T2D incidence among adults attributable to direct and body weight-mediated effects of 11 dietary factors in 184 countries in 1990 and 2018. In 2018, suboptimal intake of these dietary factors was estimated to be attributable to 14.1 million (95% uncertainty interval (UI), 13.8–14.4 million) incident T2D cases, representing 70.3% (68.8–71.8%) of new cases globally. Largest T2D burdens were attributable to insufficient whole-grain intake (26.1% (25.0–27.1%)), excess refined rice and wheat intake (24.6% (22.3–27.2%)) and excess processed meat intake (20.3% (18.3–23.5%)). Across regions, highest proportional burdens were in central and eastern Europe and central Asia (85.6% (83.4–87.7%)) and Latin America and the Caribbean (81.8% (80.1–83.4%)); and lowest proportional burdens were in South Asia (55.4% (52.1–60.7%)). Proportions of diet-attributable T2D were generally larger in men than in women and were inversely correlated with age. Diet-attributable T2D was generally larger among urban versus rural residents and higher versus lower educated individuals, except in high-income countries, central and eastern Europe and central Asia, where burdens were larger in rural residents and in lower educated individuals. Compared with 1990, global diet-attributable T2D increased by 2.6 absolute percentage points (8.6 million more cases) in 2018, with variation in these trends by world region and dietary factor. These findings inform nutritional priorities and clinical and public health planning to improve dietary quality and reduce T2D globally.publishedVersio

Fotografía Personal

Dramaturg

Catalogo de los tipos depositados en las Colecciones del Departamento de Zoolog\ueda de la Universidad de Concepci\uf3n (MZUC) parte v: Junio, 1981 - Diciembre 1992

Volume: 64Start Page: 47End Page: 8

A Tractable Stochastic Model of Correlated Link Failures Caused by Disasters

In order to evaluate the expected availability of a service, a network administrator should consider all possible failure scenarios under the specific service availability model stipulated in the corresponding service-level agreement. Given the increase in natural disasters and malicious attacks with geographically extensive impact, considering only independent single link failures is often insufficient. In this paper, we build a stochastic model of geographically correlated link failures caused by disasters, in order to estimate the hazards a network may be prone to, and to understand the complex correlation between possible link failures. With such a model, one can quickly extract information, such as the probability of an arbitrary set of links to fail simultaneously, the probability of two nodes to be disconnected, the probability of a path to survive a failure, etc. Furthermore, we introduce a pre-computation process, which enables us to succinctly represent the joint probability distribution of link failures. In particular, we generate, in polynomial time, a quasilinear-sized data structure, with which the joint failure probability of any set of links can be computed efficiently.</p