How to mitigate flood events similar to the 1979 catastrophic floods in the lower Tagus

The floods that struck the lower Tagus valley in February 1979 correspond to the most intense floods in this river and affected the largest number of people in a river flow event in Portugal during the last 150 years. In fact, the vast area affected significantly impacted circa 10 000 people in the lower Tagus sector (and an additional 7000 in other regions of Portugal), including thousands of people evacuated or made homeless. In this context, the present study focuses on an in-depth analysis of this event from a hydrodynamic perspective by means of the Iber+ numerical model and on developing strategies to mitigate the flood episodes that occur in the lower section of the Tagus River using the exceptional floods of February 1979 as a benchmark. In this sense, dam operating strategies were developed and analyzed for the most important dam along the Tagus River basin in order to propose effective procedures to take advantage of these infrastructures to minimize the effect of floods. Overall, the numerical results indicate a good agreement with watermarks and some descriptions of the 1979 flood event, which demonstrates the model capability to evaluate floods in the area under study. Regarding flood mitigation, results obtained indicate that the frequency of floods can be reduced with the proposed strategies, which were focused on providing optimal dam operating rules to mitigate flooding in the lower Tagus valley. In addition, hydraulic simulations corroborated an important decrease in water depth and velocity for the most extreme flood events, and also a certain reduction in the flood extension was detected. This confirms the effectiveness of the proposed strategies to help in reducing the flood impact in the lower Tagus valley through the efficient functioning of dams.</p

ViDa1: The Development and Validation of a New Questionnaire for Measuring Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with Type 1 Diabetes

IGTPAltres ajuts: Funding was provided by the Canarian Agency for Research,Innovation and Information Society (ACIISI) (DA predoctoralfellowship TESIS20120050) and the V Guido Ruffino Grantfor Research in Therapeutic Education for Diabetes (SpanishDiabetes Society 2015)This study describes the development of a new questionnaire to measure health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with type 1 diabetes (the ViDa1 questionnaire) and provides information on its psychometric properties. For its development, open interviews with patients took place and topics relevant to patients' HRQoL were identified and items were generated. Qualitative analysis of items, expert review, and refinement of the questionnaire followed. A pilot study (N = 150) was conducted to explore the underlying structure of the 40-item ViDa1 questionnaire. A Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was performed and six of the items that did not load on any of the factors were eliminated. The results supported a four-dimensional structure for ViDa1, the dimensions being Interference of diabetes in everyday life, Self-care, Well-being, and Worry about the disease. Subsequently, the PCA was repeated in a larger sample (N = 578) with the reduced 34-item version of the questionnaire, and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was performed (N = 428). Overall fit indices obtained presented adequate values which supported the four-factor model initially proposed [(2(df =554) = 2601.93) (p < 0.001); Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.060 (CI = 0.056 −0.064)]. As regards reliability, the four dimensions of the ViDa1 demonstrated good internal consistency, with Cronbach's alphas ranging between 0.71 and 0.86. Evidence of convergent-discriminant validity in the form of high correlations with another specific HRQoL questionnaire for diabetes and low correlations with other constructs such as self-efficacy, anxiety, and depression were presented. The ViDa1 also discriminated between different aspects of clinical interest such as type of insulin treatment, presence of chronic complications, and glycemic control, temporal stability, and sensitivity to change after an intervention. In conclusion, the ViDa1 questionnaire presents adequate psychometric properties and may represent a good alternative for the evaluation of HRQoL in type 1 diabetes

Outcomes from elective colorectal cancer surgery during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

This study aimed to describe the change in surgical practice and the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on mortality after surgical resection of colorectal cancer during the initial phases of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

Some extensions of the notion of loop Grassmannians

We report an ongoing attempt to establish in algebraic geometry certain analogues of topological ideas, The main goal is to associate to a scheme X over a commutative ring k its “relative motivic homology” which is again an algebro geometric object over the base k. This is motivated by Number Theory, so the Poincaré duality for this relative motivic homology should be an algebro geometric incarnation of Class Field Theory

Analysis of the influence of river discharge and wind on the Ebro turbid plume using MODIS-Aqua and MODIS-Terra data

The turbid plume formed at many river mouths influences the adjacent coastal area because it transports sediments, nutrients, and pollutants. The effects of the main forcings affecting the Ebro turbid plume were analyzed using data obtained from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard the Aqua and Terra satellites over the period 2003–2011. Composite images were obtained for days under certain river discharge conditions (different flow regimes) and different types of wind (alongshore and cross-shore winds) in order to obtain a representative plume pattern for each situation. River discharge was the main driver of the Ebro River plume, followed by wind as the secondary force and regional oceanic circulation as the third one. Turbid plume extension increased monotonically with increased river discharge. Under high river discharge conditions (N355 m3 s−1), wind distributed the plume in the dominant wind direction. Seaward winds (mistral) produced the largest extension of the plume (1893 km2), whereas southern alongshorewinds produced the smallest one (1325 km2). Northern alongshore winds induced the highest mean turbid value of the plume, and southern alongshore winds induced the lowest one. Regardless of thewind condition,more than 70% of the plume extensionwas located south of the river mouth influenced by the regional oceanic circulation

Biotic and abiotic dissipation of tetracyclines using simulated sunlight and in the dark

Veterinary antibiotics reaching soils and water bodies are considered emerging pollutants deserving special attention. In this work, dissipation of tetracycline (TC), oxytetracycline (OTC) and chlortetracycline (CTC) is investigated. Dissipation experiments in filtered water, using simulated sunlight, resulted in the following degradation sequence: TC < OTC ≈ CTC, with half-life values of 229, 101 and 104 min, respectively; however, no dissipation took place in the dark. Dissipation of the three tetracyclines in culture medium and with simulated sunlight was much higher, giving the sequence TC ≈ OTC < CTC, with half-lives of 9, 10 and 7 min, respectively; in the dark, TC and OTC did not suffer dissipation, but it was around 28% for CTC at the end of the experiment (480 min). The variable explaining a higher dissipation in culture medium and with light was pH, as this parameter caused changes in the distribution of species of tetracyclines, affecting degradation. Adding bacterial suspensions extracted from soil and poultry manure increased dissipation, giving the sequence: TC ≈ OTC < CTC, which is attributed to the presence of humic acids, which adsorb these antibiotics. These results could facilitate understanding the fate of antibiotics reaching environmental compartments and causing public health hazards.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, with FEDER funds [grant numbers CGL2015-67333-C2-1-R and CGL2015-67333-C2-2-R]. M. Conde-Cid holds a pre-doctoral FPU contract (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports). D. Fernández-Calviño holds a Ramon y Cajal contract (Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness). The sponsor had not involvement in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report, and in the decision to submit the article for publication

Degradation of sulfadiazine, sulfachloropyridazine and sulfamethazine in aqueous media

Antibiotics discharged to the environment constitute a main concern for which different treatment alternatives are being studied, some of them based on antibiotics removal or inactivation using by-products with adsorbent capacity, or which can act as catalyst for photo-degradation. But a preliminary step is to determine the general characteristics and magnitude of the degradation process effectively acting on antibiotics. A specific case is that of sulfonamides (SAs), one of the antibiotic groups most widely used in veterinary medicine, and which are considered the most mobile antibiotics, causing that they are frequently detected in both surface- and ground-waters, facilitating their entry in the food chain and causing public health hazards. In this work we investigated abiotic and biotic degradation of three sulfonamides (sulfadiazine –SDZ-, sulfachloropyridazine –SCP-, and sulfamethazine –SMT-) in aqueous media. The results indicated that, in filtered milliQ water and under simulated sunlight, the degradation sequence was: SCP > SDZ ≈ SMT. Furthermore, the rate of degradation clearly increased with the raise of pH: at pH 4.0, half-lives were 1.2, 70.5 and 84.4 h for SCP, SDZ and SMT, respectively, while at pH 7.2 they were 2.3, 9.4 and 13.2 h for SCP, SMT and SDZ. The addition of a culture medium hardly caused any change in degradation rates as compared to experiments performed in milliQ water at the same pH value (7.2), suggesting that in this case sulfonamides degradation rate was not affected by the presence of some chemical elements and compounds, such as sodium, chloride and phosphate. However, the addition of bacterial suspensions extracted from a soil and from poultry manure increased the rate of degradation of these antibiotics. This increase in degradation cannot be attributed to biodegradation, since there was no degradation in the dark during the time of the experiment (72 h). This indicates that photo-degradation constitutes the main removal mechanism for SAs in aqueous media, a mechanism that in this case was favored by humic acids supplied with the extracts from soil and manure. The overall results could contribute to the understanding of the environmental fate of the three sulfonamides studied, aiding to program actions that could favor their inactivation, which is especially relevant since its dissemination can involve serious environmental and public health risks.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, with FEDER funds [grant numbers CGL2015-67333-C2-1-R and CGL2015-67333-C2-2-R]. M. Conde-Cid holds a pre-doctoral FPU contract (Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, Spain). D. Fernández-Calviño holds a Ramon y Cajal contract (Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, Spain). The sponsor had not involvement in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report, and in the decision to submit the article for publication

pH-dependent copper release in acid soils treated with crushed mussel shell

The aim of this study was to assess the influence of pH on copper mobilization in two copper-rich acid soils (from vineyard and mine) amended with crushed mussel shell. Crushed mussel shell amended soils (0-48 Mg ha-1) were subjected to the effect of several acid and alkali solutions in a batch experiment in order to study their copper release. Copper distribution was studied in decanted soils from batch experiments using a sequential extraction procedure, whereas the effect of crushed mussel shell on copper release kinetics was studied using a stirred flow reactor. When soils were treated with acid solutions, the copper mobilization from non-amended soils was significantly higher than from the amended samples. Major changes in copper fractionation were an increase of the acid soluble fraction in acid-treated vineyard soil samples with shell dose. For the mine soil, the oxidable fraction showed a relevant diminution in acid-treated samples at the highest crushed mussel shell dose. For both soils, copper desorption rates diminished up to 86 % at pH 3 when crushed mussel shell was added. At pH 5, copper release rate was very slow for both soils decreasing up to 98 % for the mine soil amended with the highest shell dose, whereas no differences were observed at pH 7 between amended and non-amended soils. Thus, crushed mussel shell addition could contribute to reduce potential hazard of copper-enriched soils under acidification events

Observation of a turbid plume using MODIS imagery: the case of Douro estuary (Portugal)

The Douro is one of the longest rivers in the Iberian Peninsula and represents the most important freshwater input into the Atlantic Ocean in the northwestern Portuguese coast. In order to fill the gaps on the comprehension of the spatial variability of the Douro estuarine plume, an innovative methodology was applied to observe and characterize this plume and its spatial and temporal variability. Using images of normalized water-leaving radiance at 555 nm from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) in combination with long-term concurrent wind, tidal and river discharge data (2003-2011), this work evaluates the effect of the main drivers (river discharge, wind and tide) on the plume features. Expected strong relationships between river discharge and turbid levels were detected. A circular pattern is well distinct off Douro estuary when the flow exceeds 500 m3 s-1. Under upwelling favorable winds and high river discharge regime, an offshore expansion is observed. During southerly winds, there is a plume confinement to the coast. Easterlywinds produce a bulge formation with an offshore detachment from the coast while westerly winds tend to confine freshwater close to the shoreline and decrease the cross-shore advection. Under high river discharges, a remarkable tidal influence in the near-field regions is observed close to the coast and near the river mouth

Mean water-leaving radiance (mWcm^-2μm^-1sr^-1) composite at 645 nm for all MODIS images under high river discharge (> 66^th percentile) during 2003.

<p>Results compare the effect of atmospheric corrections using NIR (a) and SWIR_NIR (b) channels. Scatterplot (c) of corresponding available pixels in each image.</p