The effect of oral rehydration solution and recommended home fluids on diarrhoea mortality

Background Most diarrhoeal deaths can be prevented through the prevention and treatment of dehydration. Oral rehydration solution (ORS) and recommended home fluids (RHFs) have been recommended since 1970s and 1980s to prevent and treat diarrhoeal dehydration. We sought to estimate the effects of these interventions on diarrhoea mortality in children aged <5 years

Beach representation in morphodynamic predictions: Coupling models to improve beach behavior applied to Anmok beach

Numerical process-based morphodynamic models are widespread in coastal engineering practice and have become the new standard when it comes to assessing the impact of natural or man-made structures on coastal environments. The most common practice among engineers is to focus on a single spatial and time scale, which means either neglecting certain processes under the assumption that they will average out, or performing detailed simulations for short time-spans in order to optimize the normally limited computational resources. Despite the efforts from several authors, at the moment there is a lack of a clear methodology which would allow incorporating the relevant physical phenomena only when required, hence optimizing the computational effort.The above leads to the main research objective of this thesis: to gain insight in what is the added value of coupling process based morphodynamic models, regarding the morphological impacts near the beach. For this purpose two models that were originally conceived to resolve different timescales are selected; XBeach as a storm model, and the new suite from Deltares, Delft3D-Flexible Mesh (D3D-FM) as a long-term morphodynamic model. The area selected as study site is Anmok beach, located at the east coast of South Korea. The coastal erosion at this location is not yet well understood (mainly due to human interventions and storms) plus the micro-tidal wave-dominated environment makes this location ideal for this study. Recent researches on this site have found that there is a delicate balance between the stormy and calm periods, where the high energy wave events are the main drivers of local morphology. One of the main findings in this thesis is that the coupling of independently calibrated models does not necessarily provide better morphodynamic results than the results obtained by running each model separately. Including different processes such as infragravity waves or Eulerian mass transport (which enhances the offshore sediment transport in the surf zone) during highly energetic events tend to generate large supratidal beach erosion. However, the post-storm recovery mechanisms present in long-term morphodynamic models are not sufficient to bring the sediment back to the beach. Therefore, it is recommended to include all the relevant physical processes (storm erosion and post storm recovery mechanisms) when following a coupling approach in order to have a coherent morphodynamic balance. Furthermore, the coupling of models can play an important role in identifying which processes are missing or are not fully represented by the different modelling packages. The erosive effect of cumulative storms was shown to be relevant in the short to medium term and might become a key parameter when defining, for instance, the worst case scenario regarding shoreline retreat. Despite the fact that uncoupled long-term morphodynamic models produce better average results in the case of Anmok beach, the implementation of a coupled scheme was proven to be important when the erosion due to cumulative storm effects cannot be neglected. Among the advantages of using D3D-FM for this work is the implementation of the Basic Model Interface, which meant an important reduction in bookkeeping efforts and the possibility to seamlessly couple D3D-FM with XBeach. This procedure allowed for the incorporation of more complex phenomena (such as infragravity waves) with an acceptable increase in computational time. A research version of Delft3D (D3D) with specialized sediment transport equations in the swash zone was tested in an attempt to enhance the post-storm recovery mechanisms. The results obtained are promising in the sense that the accretion of the shoreline and lower dry beach was reasonably enhanced, especially when considering all the limitations involved in modelling the morphodynamics of the swash zone with a stationary wave model. Another important conclusion is that these models were capable of depositing the sediments at the lower backshore at best. Hence, there is still the need of a mechanism/process capable of transporting the sediments farther upslope into the dry beach or dunes, such as aeolian transport. The decision to undergo with a coupled or uncoupled approach depends on case-by-case basis. For current practice, it is recommended to develop a coupled simulation in the medium-term, where both storms and calm periods have significant effects and where the intra seasonal variation could be a parameter of interest. For short-term simulations, an uncoupled storm model (e.g. XBeach) is recommended as is the most accurate for such a time span. For long-term simulations, the general recommendation is to run an uncoupled long-term model such as D3D. In this case the storm erosion and post-storm recovery processes are expected to average out, being the long-term model the most suitable package to obtain average morphological results. For future work it is recommended to add an aeolian process-based model and incorporate the swash zone sediment transport module into D3D-FM as this would move us one step closer towards the development of a fully coupled model where all the relevant processes (storm erosion, post storm recovery and aeolian transport) are included. <br/

Mechanical pruning of winegrapes

Memoria para optar al Título Profesional de Ingeniero AgrónomoA partir de los documentos revisados para la elaboración de la presente monografía es posible señalar que la poda mecánica de vides surge hace más de 60 años, con el fin de reducir los costos de producción y aumentar la rentabilidad de viñedos. Si bien la poda mecánica permite podar vides a menor costo que la poda manual tradicional, lo hace en forma menos precisa. Esto se traduce en un aumento del número de yemas retenidas por planta, lo que activa una serie de respuestas fisiológicas que, de no ser abordadas, pueden complicar el manejo del viñedo y perjudicar la calidad de la uva y del vino. En la actualidad existen diversas experiencias que validan la correcta adecuación a la poda mecánica bajo ciertas condiciones agroecológicas. Sin embargo, la complejidad del análisis ha conducido a generar una resistencia a su implementación, siendo posible encontrar muchos casos donde, a pesar de las presiones económicas, la poda mecánica es aun parcial o definitivamente no se aplica. La recopilación de antecedentes realizada indica que entender el comportamiento de la vid y los factores que interactúan al imponer algún tipo de poda mecánica es clave para lograr una adecuada adaptación a dicho sistema y de ese modo rentabilizar la producción de uva para elaboración de vino

Estudio experimental de la resuspensión viscosa en flujo laminar

Ingeniero CivilEl presente trabajo de título es un estudio experimental acerca del fenómeno de la resuspensión viscosa de partículas bajo la acción de un flujo laminar inducido por un gradiente de presiones dentro de un conducto cerrado. Este fenómeno está presente en ciertas instalaciones industriales tales como sedimentadores de flujo inclinado o equipamiento de microfiltración. El objetivo principal del trabajo es verificar cómo se comportan algunos modelos físicos propuestos por otros autores para un flujo de Poiseuille, y proponer eventuales mejoras. Los experimentos se realizaron en un conducto cerrado, de paredes transparentes, con área transversal cuadrada, el cual se encontraba dentro de una cámara oscura y fue llenado con una mezcla de glicerina con agua y partículas esféricas de boyancia negativa a distintas concentraciones. Mediante la instalación de una cámara de alta velocidad normal a las paredes verticales e iluminación adecuada, fue posible medir un plano de intensidades de luz una vez que el fenómeno se encontrara en régimen permanente, a partir del cual se obtuvieron perfiles de concentraciones y alturas de resuspensión para distintas condiciones de alturas iniciales sedimentadas. Se realizaron experiencias para concentraciones en volumen entre 5% al 30% para lechos monodispersos y ligeramente bidispersos (d_max/d_min=1.4) y para caudales de mezclas glicerina-agua entre 3,2 y 10,8 ml/s. Al comparar los resultados experimentales de alturas de resuspensión viscosas con los teóricos, obtenidos con el modelo de Leighton y Acrivos (1986) y el modelo de Shauly et al. (2000) se determinó que el primero se ajustaba bien a los resultados empíricos para el caudal alto y razonablemente bien para el caudal bajo. Sin embargo, el comportamiento general puede considerarse aceptable si se considera que el modelo de Leighton y Acrivos no contiene parámetros ajustables. Por su parte el modelo de Shauly et al. no se ajustaba bien a los datos experimentales, pero contiene una constante empírica K, la cual originalmente fue calibrada para flujos de Couette en geometrías anulares. Mediante un análisis dimensional y posterior calibración con los datos de la presente memoria, se obtuvo una relación entre el coeficiente K, la concentración en volumen de partículas ϕ_s y el número de Shields modificado, Ψ, que representa la relación entre fuerzas viscosas y gravitatorias sobre las partículas. Con el coeficiente K, expresado en función del flujo se obtuvieron buenos ajustes teórico-experimentales para el modelo de Shauly et al., inclusive mejor que para el modelo de Leighton y Acrivos. En cuanto a los perfiles de concentración, los resultados basados en ambos modelos presentan diferencias apreciables al compararlos con los resultados experimentales. Las alturas de la interfaz del material resuspendido obtenidas a partir de perfiles de velocidad predichos por los modelos de Leighton y Acrivos y Shauly et al. concuerdan con las medidas en los experimentos de esta memoria, así como los perfiles de velocidad obtenidos experimentalmente por Schaflinger et al. (1995) en una geometría similar

A Multicenter Study Evaluating the Stages of Change in Food Consumption with Warning Labels among Chilean University Students

Objective. To analyze the stage of change in food consumption with warning labels among Chilean university students. Materials and Methods. Cross-sectional study which applied surveys in universities from all over the country. Study included 4807 participants of 18 to 40 years of both sexes who were asked about the level of knowledge of the new food law and food consumption with warning signals, including questions regarding their willingness to behavior change according to Prochaska's transtheoretical model. To compare continuous variables, Student's t-test was used in the statistical package SPSS 22.0, and p Results. Of the total number of respondents, 99.3% of the students indicated that they know about the food law, classifying foods with signals in the precontemplation stage. Compared by sex, we observed that women give greater importance to behavior change in all of foods (p <0.001). Underweight students give less importance to change in unhealthy foods, while obesity students give more importance but do not show more confidence in behavior change (p <0.05). Conclusion. The university students show a low importance and confidence to make behavior change, aspects associated with sex and nutritional status. It is necessary to strengthen nutritional food education and not just talk about structural measures

Stages of change in the purchase of ultra-processed snacks among university students after the implementation of the chilean food law; a multi-center study

The Objective is to determine the stages of change in the behavior of university students regarding the purchase of ultra-processed snacks consumed. Multi-center study (14 Chilean universities). The participants (4,807 students) evaluated were applied a survey to determine the stage of change of behavior regarding the purchase of foods with warning signs. The students were evaluated and classified as (a) Nutrition Students, (b) Healthcare-related Students and (c) Other degree Students. More than 90% of the students were aware of the food regulation and knew the warning signs. More than 60% of Healthcare-related and Other degree students are in the stage of pre-contemplation or contemplation regarding purchase intent of sugary drinks, juices, cookies, sweet snacks and potato chips; this value is twice the percentage of Nutrition students in this stages (Chi(2), p<0.001). In conclusion there is a high proportion of pre-contemplation and contemplation with respect to purchase intent among the students