Sustainability Analysis: Large-scale Desalination Implications for Coastal California

In response to prolonged drought, desalination is gaining popularity as an alternative water production method for fresh water. However, water desalting technology poses concerns; the process is energy intensive, creates brine waste, and has the potential to damage sensitive coastal ecosystems. Significant research is available on the technological, economic, and energy efficiency aspects of desalination, while only a small percentage of the current literature focuses on environmental impacts. This research analyzes the desalination literature holistically in terms of both energy consumption and environmental impacts by conducting 1) a historical and current state review of the sector, 2) a technology analysis of current energy standards, and 3) a case study and gap analysis of environmental impacts. This study found that the sustainability of a desalination plant design is heavily dependent on several indicators like renewable energy availability, feedwater intake design, brine disposal method, coastal hydrological conditions, and proximity to sensitive ecosystems. Outcomes for this research include a quantitative/qualitative sustainability index tool, additional sustainability considerations, and design recommendations specific to coastal California for mitigating energy intensity and coastal damage. These findings inform state, regional, and local water stakeholders on the potential impacts of incorporating desalination into a community’s water portfolio

Will People With Type 2 Diabetes Speak to Family Members About Health Risk?

OBJECTIVE—This study aimed to assess the potential for communication of familial risk by patients with type 2 diabetes

Donating breastmilk: Regulated and unregulated practices: A review of the ethical issues

Breastmilk is the optimal source of nutrition for babies although there are a range of situations in which breastfeeding is difficult, including prematurity. Human milk is donated in the UK in both regulated and unregulated ways. A network of human milk banks receive and distribute donor milk, primarily to premature and sick infants, supported by NICE guidance (NICE, 2010) and the UK Association for Milk Banking (UKAMB). Variations in the geographical spread and funding of the banks mean that women who want to donate or receive breastmilk are not always able to do so. Discourse around the ethics of the provision and use of human milk in this way often emphasises issues of risk and safety.There are also ways in which breastmilk is donated informally, often using the terminology of ‘sharing’, usually to full-term infants. Some women feed each other’s babies via friendship groups whilst others contact each other using online (often international) networks specifically set up for the purpose of peer-to-peer human milk sharing. Health bodies in a number of countries (although not in the UK) have issued warnings against obtaining breastmilk in this way, focussing again on ‘danger’ and ‘risk’ and drawing on limited research evidence (Keim et al, 2013; Stuebe et al., 2014, cited in Palmquist and Doehler, 2014). In the UK the issues were raised in a recent BMJ editorial (Steele et al, 2015). Other researchers have compared the risk of sharing breastmilk with the (known) risks of formula feeding (Gribble and Hausman, 2012).These topics have been the subject of a range of academic papers as well as online discussions, raising questions about the ethical issues and obligations in both regulated and unregulated practices of milk donation. These include the nature of donation and whether donors and recipients are viewed differently according to the mode of donation (milk bank vs. milk sharing; donating vs. selling) and the situation of the recipient. Is the ethics of ‘giving’ a body product different when the product is human milk rather than blood or organs? Is this an area which should remain unregulated, as a private practice, or should it be more widely or formally considered? In addition there are a range of Issues relating to the perception of human milk – as both ‘white/liquid gold’ and ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966) – which draw on ideas of cultural unease about women’s bodily fluids. Milk for use in milk banks is depersonalised but there is unease about sharing intimate bodily fluids with known/unknown others. The focus here is on informal milk sharing – why and how it happens (the lived experience of donors and recipients) and how both donation and risk are framed and accounted for. What is known is mostly from the US and Australia; women who use websites for milk sharing talk about ‘informed choice’. Where they examine all the available evidence, share information about milk collection and storage and gather knowledge about the donor (e.g. is the donor breastfeeding her own baby?). Health professionals and non-professionals working with pregnant and lactating women may be asked for advice and need to consider these issues. My conclusion is that breastmilk donation differs from other forms of donation in important ways; donating and sharing breastmilk has increased in prevalence and possibilities but the scale and scope of informal milk sharing in the UK is unknown. Many opportunities to donate and receive breastmilk have arisen in grassroots woman-to-woman ways (in a similar way to other forms of parenting and breastfeeding support). Ideas of risk frame the ‘official’ reaction to sharing breastmilk via the internet (but not in the UK) and little is known about how individual women understand and make sense of these risks

Comparison of landscape approaches to define spatial patterns of hillslope-scale sediment delivery ratio

A sediment delivery ratio (SDR) is that fraction of gross erosion that is transported from a given catchment in a given time interval. In essence, a SDR is a scaling factor that relates sediment availability and deposition at different spatial scales. In this paper, we focus on hillslope-scale SDR, i.e. the ratio of sediment produced from hillslopes to that delivered to the stream network. Factors that affect hillslope water movement, and thus entrainment or deposition of sediments, ultimately affecting the SDR, include upslope area, climate, topography, and soil cover. In erosion models, SDR is usually treated as a constant parameter. However, the use of spatially variable SDRs could improve the spatial prediction of the critical sources of sediment, i.e. identification of those areas directly affecting stream water quality. Such information would improve prioritisation of natural resource management effort and investment. Recent literature has described several landscape approaches to represent SDR variability in space, some of which account only for topography, whilst others consider topography and soil cover characteristics. The aim of this study was to evaluate four landscape approaches for their ability to depict spatial patterns of SDR in the Avon-Richardson catchment in the semi-arid Wimmera region (Victoria, South-east Australia). Erosion was assessed using a semi-distributed model (CatchMODS) with disaggregation based in subcatchments of around 40 km2 area. Hillslope gross erosion was assessed with a RUSLE approach. By applying the four landscape approaches using DEM and estimates of land use cover, four landscape index subcatchment distributions were calculated. These were normalised into standard distributions. Then, a sigmoid function was used to transform the standardised indices into SDR-index distributions ranging from zero to one. Finally, subcatchment SDRs were estimated as the product of the SDR-index by a whole-of-catchment SDR value that was estimated by calibration against sediment loads measured at five gauging stations of the study area. The major sources of hillslope erosion were modelled to be located in the southern hilly areas of the catchment. However, a topographic convergence approach predicted as well important contribution of hillslope-erosion sediment loads coming from the eastern flatter cropping land. The introduction of landscape-variable SDRs improved the overall goodness-of-fit of modelled versus observed sediment loads at five gauging stations located in the catchment for only the topographic convergence approach. However, the limited number of observations (11), the location of some gauging stations downstream of active gully erosion, and the lack of gauging stations monitoring the north-eastern part of the catchment hindered the assessment of which spatial distribution of hillslope erosion best represented the real catchment conditions. Further research is needed to define the relationship between landscape indices and SDR; and to evaluate the spatial distribution of erosion against more complete field evidence

SMOG 2: A versatile software package for generating structure-based models

Molecular dynamics simulations with coarse-grained or simplified Hamiltonians have proven to be an effective means of capturing the functionally important long-time and large-length scale motions of proteins and RNAs. Originally developed in the context of protein folding, structure-based models (SBMs) have since been extended to probe a diverse range of biomolecular processes, spanning from protein and RNA folding to functional transitions in molecular machines. The hallmark feature of a structure-based model is that part, or all, of the potential energy function is defined by a known structure. Within this general class of models, there exist many possible variations in resolution and energetic composition. SMOG 2 is a downloadable software package that reads user-designated structural information and user-defined energy definitions, in order to produce the files necessary to use SBMs with high performance molecular dynamics packages: GROMACS and NAMD. SMOG 2 is bundled with XML-formatted template files that define commonly used SBMs, and it can process template files that are altered according to the needs of each user. This computational infrastructure also allows for experimental or bioinformatics-derived restraints or novel structural features to be included, e.g. novel ligands, prosthetic groups and post-translational/transcriptional modifications. The code and user guide can be downloaded at http://smog-server.org/smog2

Routinely collected infant feeding data:Time for global action

The importance of breastfeeding is clear. However, global action to support breastfeeding is hindered by the lack of reliable standard data, which continues to impede progress. Routinely collected data can monitor the effectiveness of health policy, evaluate interventions, and enhance international research collaboration and comparisons. Use of routine data to support effective public health initiatives such as smoking cessation has been demonstrated. However, the data collected about infant feeding practices worldwide is inconsistent in timing, methods, definitions, detail, storage, and consistency. Improvements to the reach and quality of routinely collected data about infant feeding are needed to strengthen the global evidence and policy base. An international collaborative effort is called for to progress this

Fluoride and oral health

The discovery during the first half of the 20th century of the link between natural fluoride, adjusted fluoride levels in drinking water and reduced dental caries prevalence proved to be a stimulus for worldwide on-going research into the role of fluoride in improving oral health. Epidemiological studies of fluoridation programmes have confirmed their safety and their effectiveness in controlling dental caries. Major advances in our knowledge of how fluoride impacts the caries process have led to the development, assessment of effectiveness and promotion of other fluoride vehicles including salt, milk, tablets, toothpaste, gels and varnishes. In 1993, the World Health Organization convened an Expert Committee to provide authoritative information on the role of fluorides in the promotion of oral health throughout the world (WHO TRS 846, 1994). This present publication is a revision of the original 1994 document, again using the expertise of researchers from the extensive fields of knowledge required to successfully implement complex interventions such as the use of fluorides to improve dental and oral health. Financial support for research into the development of these new fluoride strategies has come from many sources including government health departments as well as international and national grant agencies. In addition, the unique role which industry has played in the development, formulation, assessment of effectiveness and promotion of the various fluoride vehicles and strategies is noteworthy. This updated version of ‘Fluoride and Oral Health’ has adopted an evidence-based approach to its commentary on the different fluoride vehicles and strategies and also to its recommendations. In this regard, full account is taken of the many recent systematic reviews published in peer reviewed literature

Extended morphometric analysis of neuronal cells with Minkowski valuations

Minkowski valuations provide a systematic framework for quantifying different aspects of morphology. In this paper we apply vector- and tensor-valued Minkowski valuations to neuronal cells from the cat's retina in order to describe their morphological structure in a comprehensive way. We introduce the framework of Minkowski valuations, discuss their implementation for neuronal cells and show how they can discriminate between cells of different types.Comment: 14 pages, 18 postscript figure

The metallicity-luminosity relation at medium redshift based on faint CADIS emission line galaxies

The emission line survey within the Calar Alto Deep Imaging Survey (CADIS) detects galaxies with very low continuum brightness by using an imaging Fabry-Perot interferometer. With spectroscopic follow-up observations of MB>~-19 CADIS galaxies using FORS2 at the VLT and DOLORES at TNG we obtained oxygen abundances of 5 galaxies at z~0.4 and 10 galaxies at z~0.64. Combining these measurements with published oxygen abundances of galaxies with MB<~-19 we find evidence that a metallicity-luminosity relation exists at medium redshift, but it is displaced to lower abundances and higher luminosities compared to the metallicity-luminosity relation in the local universe. Comparing the observed metallicities and luminosities of galaxies at z<3 with Pegase2 chemical evolution models we have found a favoured scenario in which the metallicity of galaxies increases by a factor of ~2 between z~0.7 and today, and their luminosity decreases by ~0.5-0.9mag.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A; 12 pages, 9 figure

The Acid Test of Fluoride: How pH Modulates Toxicity

Background: It is not known why the ameloblasts responsible for dental enamel formation are uniquely sensitive to fluoride ($F^−$). Herein, we present a novel theory with supporting data to show that the low pH environment of maturating stage ameloblasts enhances their sensitivity to a given dose of $F^−$. Enamel formation is initiated in a neutral pH environment (secretory stage); however, the pH can fall to below 6.0 as most of the mineral precipitates (maturation stage). Low pH can facilitate entry of $F^−$ into cells. Here, we asked if $F^−$ was more toxic at low pH, as measured by increased cell stress and decreased cell function. Methodology/Principal Findings: Treatment of ameloblast-derived LS8 cells with $F^−$ at low pH reduced the threshold dose of $F^−$ required to phosphorylate stress-related proteins, PERK, eIF2α, JNK and c-jun. To assess protein secretion, LS8 cells were stably transduced with a secreted reporter, Gaussia luciferase, and secretion was quantified as a function of $F^−$ dose and pH. Luciferase secretion significantly decreased within 2 hr of $F^−$ treatment at low pH versus neutral pH, indicating increased functional toxicity. Rats given 100 ppm $F^−$ in their drinking water exhibited increased stress-mediated phosphorylation of eIF2α in maturation stage ameloblasts (pH<6.0) as compared to secretory stage ameloblasts (pH∼7.2). Intriguingly, $F^−$-treated rats demonstrated a striking decrease in transcripts expressed during the maturation stage of enamel development (Klk4 and Amtn). In contrast, the expression of secretory stage genes, AmelX, Ambn, Enam and Mmp20, was unaffected. Conclusions: The low pH environment of maturation stage ameloblasts facilitates the uptake of $F^−$, causing increased cell stress that compromises ameloblast function, resulting in dental fluorosis