Effects of sugarcane expansion on surface runoff and evapotranspiration in the Rio Grande basin

The demand for sugarcane has increased in recent years as more countries desire to reduce its dependence of fossil fuels. Therefore, the number of sugarcane plantations has rapidly increased in Brazil which raises concerns for what effect these conversion of original land to sugarcane plantations have on local hydrology and climate. In this thesis, the effects of sugarcane expansion on surface runoff and evapotranspiration in the Rio Grande basin, Brazil were evaluated. Rio Grande basin is an area of great importance for the country in terms of hydropower generation and sugarcane cultivation. For the numerical experiments carried out in this thesis, several sugarcane scenarios were generated based on topographic features and mapping of areas suitable for growing sugarcane made by the Brazilian Institute for Agricultural Research (EBRAPA). A distributed hydrological model was used to estimate surface runoff and evapotranspiration rates in the river basin. Surface runoff and evapotranspiration rates were compared to a control scenario that corresponded to land use observed before sugarcane expansion. Results from simulations implied a reduction of 10.8% in surface runoff and an increase in evapotranspiration rate by 9.0% for the most severe scenario, which occurred at the Funil hydropower plant.Efterfrågan på sockerrör har de senaste åren ökat i takt med att fler länder strävar efter att minska sitt beroende av fossila bränslen. Som en följd har antalet sockerrörsodlingar kraftigt ökat i Brasilien vilket medfört en oro inför vilka effekter denna omvandling av ursprunglig mark till sockerrörsodling har på lokala hydrologin och klimatet. I det här arbetet har påverkan av sockerrörs expansion på ytavrinning och avdunstning i Rio Grandes avrinningsområde, Brasilien, utretts. Rio Grandes avrinningsområde är av stor betydelse för landets vattenkraftproduktion och sockerrörsodlingar. För de numeriska experimenten i studien genererades ett flertal sockerrörs scenarion baserade på topografiska egenskaper och, enligt forskningsinstitutet EMBRAPA, lämpliga områden för framtida sockerrörsodlingar. En distribuerad hydrologisk modell användes för att uppskatta ytavrinningen och avdunstningen för avrinningsområdet. Ytavrinningen och avdunstningen jämfördes med ett kontrollscenario som motsvarade markanvändningen före sockerrörsexpansionen. Resultaten från simuleringarna visade på en minskning med 10.8 % i ytavrinning och ökning i avdunstning med 9 % för det mest allvarliga scenariot, vilket inträffade vid vattenkraftverket Funil

The Second Triennial Systematic Literature Review of European Nursing Research: Impact on Patient Outcomes and Implications for Evidence-Based Practice

Written on behalf of the European Academy of Nursing Science REFLECTION review group: José Amendoeira, Polytechnic Institute of Santarem, Santarem, Portugal; (…) p.9European research in nursing has been criticized as overwhelmingly descriptive, wasteful and with little relevance to clinical practice. This second triennial review follows our previous review of articles published in 2010, to determine whether the situation has changed.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Implementation of Psychological Therapies for Anxiety and Depression in Routine Practice: Two Year Prospective Cohort Study

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleCopyright © 2011 Elsevier. NOTICE: This is the author’s version of a work accepted for publication by Elsevier. Changes resulting from the publishing process, including peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting and other quality control mechanisms, may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published Journal of Affective Disorders, 2011, Vol. 133, Issue 1, pp. 51 - 60 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2011.03.024Introduction: Worldwide, health systems are improving access to empirically supported psychological therapies for anxiety and depression. Evaluations of this effort are limited by the cross sectional nature of studies, short implementation periods, poor data completeness rates and lack of clinically significant and reliable change metrics. Objective: Assess the impact of implementing stepped care empirically supported psychological therapies by measuring the prospective outcomes of patients referred over a two year period to one Improving Access to Psychological Therapies service in the UK. Method: We collected demographic, therapeutic and outcome data on depression (PHQ-9) and anxiety (GAD-7) from 7,859 consecutive patients for 24 months between1st July 2006 and 31st August 2008, following up these patients for a further one year. Results: 4,183 patients (53%) received two or more treatment sessions. Uncontrolled effect size for depression was 1.07 (95% CI: 0.88 to 1.29) and for anxiety was 1.04 (0.88 to 1.23). 55.4% of treated patients met reliable improvement or reliable and clinically significant change criteria for depression, 54.7% for anxiety. Patients received a mean of 5.5 sessions over 3.5 hours, mainly low-intensity CBT and phone based case management. Attrition was high with 47% of referrals either not attending for an assessment or receiving an assessment only. Conclusions: Recovery rates for patients receiving stepped care empirically supported treatments for anxiety and depression in routine practice are 40 to 46%. Only half of all patients referred go on to receive treatment. Further work is needed to improve routine engagement of patients with anxiety and depression

Risk exchange as a market or production game

Risk exchange is considered here as a cooperative game with transferable utility. The set-up fits markets for insurance, securities and contingent endowments. When convoluted payoff is concave at the aggregate endowment, there is a price-supported core solution. Under variance aversion the latter mirrors the two-fund separation in allocating to each agent some sure holding plus a fraction of the aggregate.securities; mutual insurance; market or production games; transferable utility; extremal convolution; core solutions; variance or risk aversion; two-fund separation; CAPM.

The Second Triennial Systematic Literature Review of European Nursing Research: Impact on Patient Outcomes and Implications for Evidence-Based Practice

This is the final version. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record. Background: European research in nursing has been criticized as overwhelmingly descriptive, wasteful and with little relevance to clinical practice. This second triennial review follows our previous review of articles published in 2010, to determine whether the situation has changed. Objective: To identify, appraise, and synthesize reports of European nursing research published during 2013 in the top 20 nursing research journals. Methods: Systematic review with descriptive results synthesis. Results: We identified 2,220 reports, of which 254, from 19 European countries, were eligible for analysis; 215 (84.7%) were primary research, 36 (14.2%) secondary research, and three (1.2%) mixed primary and secondary. Forty-eight (18.9%) of studies were experimental: 24 (9.4%) randomized controlled trials, 11 (4.3%) experiments without randomization, and 13 (5.1%) experiments without control group. A total of 106 (41.7%) articles were observational: 85 (33.5%) qualitative research. The majority (158; 62.2%) were from outpatient and secondary care hospital settings. One hundred and sixty-five (65.0%) articles reported nursing intervention studies: 77 (30.3%) independent interventions, 77 (30.3%) interdependent, and 11 (4.3%) dependent. This represents a slight increase in experimental studies compared with our previous review (18.9% vs. 11.7%). The quality of reporting remained very poor. Linking Evidence to Action: European research in nursing remains overwhelmingly descriptive. We call on nursing researchers globally to raise the level of evidence and, therefore, the quality of care and patient outcomes. We urge them to replicate our study in their regions, diagnose reasons for the lack of appropriate research, identify solutions, and implement a deliberate, targeted, and systematic global effort to increase the number of experimental, high quality, and relevant studies into nursing interventions. We also call on journal editors to mandate an improvement in the standards of research reporting in nursing journals

The DiReCT study - improving recruitment into clinical trials: a mixed methods study investigating the ethical acceptability, feasibility and recruitment yield of the cohort multiple randomised controlled trials design

This is a freely-available open access publication. Please cite the published version which is available via the DOI link in this record.RESULTS: We obtained a favourable ethical opinion from the UK Health Research Authority. Clinicians approached 131/752 (17%) potentially eligible participants for consent. Of these 131, 84 (64%) initially consented to be contacted by a researcher and all but one consented to being randomised into future trials. We confirmed consent for 71 (54%) of participants approached by clinicians, of whom 69 (53%) consented to being randomised into hypothetical future trials, 9% (69/752) of all potentially eligible patients. The interviewed clinicians described issues impacting on their ability to recruit participants in terms of clinical concerns for patient wellbeing, work pressure, their views of both general research and the specific DiReCT study, and how they viewed patients' responses to being offered participation in the study.NIHREuropean Science Foundation Research Network Programme ‘REFLECTION

Psychosocial predictors of health-related quality of life and health service utilisation in people with chronic low back pain

Psychological and social factors have been shown, separately, to predict outcome in individuals with chronic low back pain. Few previous studies, however, have integrated both psychological and social factors, using prospective study of clinic populations of low back pain patients, to identify which are the most important targets for treatment. One hundred and eight patients with chronic low back pain, newly referred to an orthopaedic outpatient clinic, completed assessments of demographic characteristics, details of back pain, measures of anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, HADS), fearful beliefs about pain (Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire), social stresses (Life Events and Difficulties Schedule) and physical aspects of health‐related quality of life [SF‐36 Physical Component summary Score scale (PCS)]. Six months later subjects completed the SF‐36 PCS and the number of healthcare contacts during follow‐up was recorded. Independent predictors of SF‐36 PCS at 6‐month follow‐up were duration of pain [(standardised regression coefficient (β) = −0.18, p = 0.04), HADS score (β) = −0.27, p = 0.003] and back pain related social difficulties (β = −0.42, p < 0.0005). Number of healthcare contacts over the 6 months ranged from 1 to 29, and was independently predicted by perceived cause of pain [Incident Rate Ratio (IRR) = 1.46, p = 0.03], Fear Avoidance Beliefs about work (IRR = 1.02, p = 0.009) and back pain related social difficulties (IRR = 1.16, p = 0.03). To conclude, anxiety, depression, fear avoidance beliefs relating to work and back pain related stresses predict impairment in subsequent physical health‐related quality of life and number of healthcare contacts. Interventions targeting these psychosocial variables in clinic patients may lead to improved quality of life and healthcare costs

Investigation of river eutrophication as part of a low dissolved oxygen TMDL implementation

In the United States, environmentally impaired rivers are subject to regulation under total maximum daily load (TMDL) regulations that specify watershed wide water quality standards. In California, the setting of TMDL standards is accompanied by the development of scientific and management plans directed at achieving specific water quality objectives. The San Joaquin River (SJR) in the Central Valley of California now has a TMDL for dissolved oxygen (DO). Low DO conditions in the SJR are caused in part by excessive phytoplankton growth (eutrophication) in the shallow, upstream portion of the river that create oxygen demand in the deeper estuary. This paper reports on scientific studies that were conducted to develop a mass balance on nutrients and phytoplankton in the SJR. A mass balance model was developed using WARMF, a model specifically designed for use in TMDL management applications. It was demonstrated that phytoplankton biomass accumulates rapidly in a 88 km reach where plankton from small, slow moving tributaries are diluted and combined with fresh nutrient inputs in faster moving water. The SJR-WARMF model was demonstrated to accurately predict phytoplankton growth in the SJR. Model results suggest that modest reductions in nutrients alone will not limit algal biomass accumulation, but that combined strategies of nutrient reduction and algal control in tributaries may have benefit. The SJR-WARMF model provides stakeholders a practical, scientific tool for setting remediation priorities on a watershed scale