Climate Change: Human Health, the Developing World and the Global Response

Changes to the Earth’s biophysical system will extend and exacerbate the rates of vector-borne infectious disease, non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and lung disease, and mental health disorders. Developing nations face the greatest burden of climate sensitive human health impacts while also having the lowest capacity to adapt to these changes. Addressing these global ethical challenges cannot be accomplished without supporting organizations like UNEP or the IPCC. However, these organizations cannot achieve global sustainability alone. Human beings collectively taking responsibility for climate change will be vital to this process

Prevention of recurrent sudden cardiac arrest: role of provocative electropharmacologic testing

This study evaluates the usefulness of serial provocative electropharmacologic testing for predicting the efficacy of prophylactic antiarrhythmic treatment regimens in patients resuscitated from sudden cardiac arrest in the absence of acute myocardial infarction. Testing was carried out in 34 consecutive patients (28 men and 6 women) who required cardiopulmonary resuscitation and direct current countershock for treatment of primary ventricular fibrillation (28 patients), ventricular tachycardia (5 patients) or excessively rapid heart rate during atrial fibrillation with preexcitation (1 patient).In 8 (24%) of the 34 patients, drug testing either was not feasible because of absence of inducible arrhythmia or was incomplete because of patient withdrawal from study; and 3 of these 8 patients had recurrent sudden cardiac arrest within 10 to 19 months. In an additional five patients, treatment regimens failed to prevent initiation of sustained ventricular tachyarrhythmias in the catheterization laboratory, and two of these five patients had cardiac arrest recurrences within 2 weeks to 25 months of follow-up. In the remaining 21 (62%) of the 34 patients, including 3 patients with preexcitation syndrome, a drug regimen or surgical treatment, or both, was found that prevented inducible life-threatening tachyarrhythmias in the laboratory. Subsequently, only 1 (5%) of these 21 patients died suddenly within a 7 to 38 month (mean ± standard deviation, 18 ± 8.3) follow-up period. Thus, provocative electropharmacologic testing appears to be useful in predicting response to therapy in survivors of sudden cardiac arrest

Microgrid architectures for low voltage distributed generation

[EN] The high penetration of distributed generators, most of them based on renewable energy sources, is modifying the traditional structure of the electric distribution grid. If the power of distributed generators is high enough to feed the loads of a certain area, this area could be disconnected from the main grid and operate in islanded mode. Microgrids are composed by distributed generators, energy storage devices, intelligent circuit breakers and local loads. In this paper, a review of the main microgrid architectures proposed in the literature has been carried out. The microgrid architectures are first classified regarding their AC or DC distribution buses. Besides, more complex microgrid architectures are shown. Both advantages and disadvantages of each one of the microgrid families are discussed.This work is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Grant ENE2012-37667-C02-01.Patrao Herrero, I.; Figueres Amorós, E.; Garcerá Sanfeliú, G.; González Medina, R. (2015). Microgrid architectures for low voltage distributed generation. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 43:415-424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.11.054S4154244