Drivers Of Global Waterborne Disease Transmission Following Extreme Precipitation Events: A Systematic Review

Precipitation events such as hurricanes, typhoons, and heavy rainfall can have devastating impacts on water and sanitation infrastructure around the world and have led to large-scale waterborne outbreaks. As climate change amplifies the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, it is also triggering an increase in waterborne disease transmission. This master’s thesis consists of a systematic review of academic literature pertaining to extreme precipitation events and the pathways by which they trigger waterborne outbreaks. A systematic review of the literature in PubMed was conducted to identify waterborne disease outbreaks associated with extreme precipitation. The initial search yielded 3,248 results for title and abstract screening, of which 173 full-text articles were subsequently retrieved and screened on inclusion criteria of extreme precipitation, waterborne disease outcomes, and importantly, discussion of mediators and mechanisms driving the association. Ultimately, 57 studies were included in the review, representing study locations in 73 countries. The waterborne diseases studied were primarily gastrointestinal illnesses and were caused by bacteria, viruses, and parasites. The most common pathogens studied included bacteria of the genera Leptospira (23%) and Shigella (11%), as well as parasites of the genus Cryptosporidium (11%). Heavy rainfall (33%) and flooding (32%) were the most common events associated with waterborne disease outbreaks. Ultimately, the most common mediators of waterborne transmission following an extreme precipitation event were (1) hydro-ecological risk factors, related to runoff from industrial, agricultural, or environmental sources (2) infrastructural risk factors, resulting from damage to or disruption of WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) infrastructure, (3) socio-behavioral risk factors, arising from existing vulnerabilities or from changes in activities and behaviours, and (4) physical risk factors, due to contact with contaminated storm water or floodwaters. By examining and understanding these climate-related drivers of waterborne disease transmission, we can begin to envision better mitigation and prevention strategies to protect public health around the globe

Les expériences des CDEC montréalaises et du budget participatif de Porto Alegre à la lumière de leur contribution au renouvellement de la démocratie urbaine

Dans le contexte actuel, marqué par la mondialisation et son corollaire la métropolisation, les métropoles se transforment. Pour répondre à la fragmentation sociospatiale des agglomérations métropolitaines, les mouvements urbains de Montréal et de Porto Alegre au Brésil ont mené, à partir du milieu des années 1980, des expériences qui, chacune à leur façon, contribuent à la démocratie urbaine. À Montréal, les corporations de développement économique communautaire, mieux connues sous le sigle CDEC, ont adopté une approche de concertation qui rassemble des acteurs locaux autour d’un objectif commun : la revitalisation socioéconomique d’un territoire en déclin. À Porto Alegre au Brésil, le mouvement urbain adoptait une tout autre démarche. Voulant s’attaquer à la dualisation de la métropole et aux pratiques politiques clientélistes, il innovait en proposant à l’administration municipale un processus permettant aux citoyens organisés et non organisés de participer à l’exercice de priorisation des investissements de la municipalité. Dans cet article, nous présentons les spécificités de chacun de ces modèles et les discutons à la lumière de leur contribution au renouvellement de la démocratie urbaine.In the context of globalization and metropolization, cities are changing. Faced with sociospatial fragmentation of metropolitan areas, urban movements in Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Montreal have initiated, from the 1980s onwards, new approaches to urban democracy. In Montreal, local development corporations (CDEC) have sprung up bringing together various stakeholders to revitalize the urban social tissue and stop the decline of the territory. In Porto Alegre, urban movements have resisted the dualization of their city and opposed patronage politics. They have forced on the municipal administration new practices where organized and non-organized citizens are deciding on investment priorities. This article focuses on these two experiments and raises some fundamental issues regarding the renewal of urban democracy

L’émergence des sommets citoyens de Montréal : vers la construction d’un programme autour du droit à la ville ?

À partir des années 2000 à Montréal, quatre sommets citoyens ont permis à des citoyens organisés et non organisés de discuter d’enjeux urbains et de démocratie participative dans une « perspective citoyenne, indépendante et non partisane ». S’inspirant de la notion du droit à la ville développée par Henri Lefebvre, les sommets mettent de l’avant le droit des citoyens et des citoyennes à définir la ville, et ce peu importe leur statut. Dans le cadre de cet article, nous posons l’hypothèse que ces sommets contribuent à la construction d’un agenda citoyen et d’un espace politique autonome. Toutefois, dans un contexte marqué par la globalisation, le néolibéralisme et la diversification des populations qui habitent les métropoles, les nouvelles formes organisationnelle et politique expérimentées par les sommets citoyens de Montréal posent un certain nombre de défis auxquels devra réagir le mouvement urbain.Since the year 2000 in Montreal, four citizen’s summits gave opportunities to organized and non organized citizens to debate about urban issues and participatory democracy. Inspired by the notion of Right to the City, developed by Henri Lefebvre, the citizens summits pointed out the right of the citizens to define the city, whatever their status. In this article, I argue that those citizen’s summits allow participants to build a citizen’s agenda and an autonomous political space outside the municipal structure. In spite the context caracterized by the globalization, the neoliberalism and the diversity of the population concentrated in metropolitan areas, the new organizational and political forms experimented by the citizen’s summit raise a number of challenges to the urban movement

Binge Eating Disorder Mediates Links between Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety and Caloric Intake in Obese Women

Despite considerable comorbidity between mood disorders, binge eating disorder (BED), and obesity, the underlying mechanisms remain unresolved. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine models by which internalizing behaviors of depression and anxiety influence food intake in overweight/obese women. Thirty-two women (15 BED, 17 controls) participated in a laboratory eating-episode and completed questionnaires assessing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Path analysis was used to test mediation and moderation models to determine the mechanisms by which internalizing symptoms influenced kilocalorie (kcal) intake. The BED group endorsed significantly more symptoms of depression (10.1 versus 4.8, P=0.005 ) and anxiety (8.5 versus 2.7, P=0.003). Linear regression indicated that BED diagnosis and internalizing symptoms accounted for 30% of the variance in kcal intake. Results from path analysis suggested that BED mediates the influence of internalizing symptoms on total kcal intake. The associations between internalizing symptoms and food intake are best described as operating indirectly through a BED diagnosis. This suggests that symptoms of depression and anxiety influence whether one engages in binge eating, which influences kcal intake. Greater understanding of the mechanisms underlying the associations between mood, binge eating, and food intake will facilitate the development of more effective prevention and treatment strategies for both BED and obesity

Web-based metabolic network visualization with a zooming user interface

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Displaying complex metabolic-map diagrams, for Web browsers, and allowing users to interact with them for querying and overlaying expression data over them is challenging.</p> <p>Description</p> <p>We present a Web-based metabolic-map diagram, which can be interactively explored by the user, called the <it>Cellular Overview</it>. The main characteristic of this application is the zooming user interface enabling the user to focus on appropriate granularities of the network at will. Various searching commands are available to visually highlight sets of reactions, pathways, enzymes, metabolites, and so on. Expression data from single or multiple experiments can be overlaid on the diagram, which we call the Omics Viewer capability. The application provides Web services to highlight the diagram and to invoke the <it>Omics Viewer</it>. This application is entirely written in JavaScript for the client browsers and connect to a Pathway Tools Web server to retrieve data and diagrams. It uses the OpenLayers library to display tiled diagrams.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This new online tool is capable of displaying large and complex metabolic-map diagrams in a very interactive manner. This application is available as part of the Pathway Tools software that powers multiple metabolic databases including <monospace>Biocyc.org</monospace>: The Cellular Overview is accessible under the <monospace>Tools</monospace> menu.</p

Yeats and water imagery

Surprisingly little of Yeatsian scholarship deals with the cluster of images that forms one of the basic building blocks of the poet's philosophical system, water and its related imagery. This thesis intends to remedy this neglect. The centrality of water imagery stems from the fact that Yeats had identified both himself and the Irish people (his subject, as he was trying to build a national body of symbols) with water. Water--sea, lake, ice, well--and its related imagery--moon, water birds, fish and dolphins, blood and alcohol as related liquids--pervades the poetical and dramatical work of Yeats. Water imagery is one half of the system that provided Yeats with his subjects, a religion of opposites; the other half is absence of water or fire. Water and fire, wet and dry, the Moon and the Sun symbolize Yeatsian opposites that either unite (Unity of Being) or clash (opposite characters or ages). In the late works, when Yeats concentrates on the Great Wheel, water and fire are fixed as a key concept of the gyre, its poles. All the images that had been paired with or related to water or the absence of water in the earlier works (stone, garden, tree, bird, woman) converge as correspondences for the two poles, each feeding off the other (the clashing opposites are alternate aspects of the one reality that is the gyre). The imagery is crunched around the wet and dry poles of the Great Wheel, making water imagery and its eloquent absence essential to understanding Yeats's symbolism

Développement d'un biocapteur combinant la plasmonique et l'électrochimie

Les biocapteurs sont des outils de détection extrêmement puissants, utiles pour une grande variété d’applications dans plusieurs domaines tels que la recherche biomédicale, le système de santé, l’industrie pharmaceutique et plusieurs autres. Les techniques plasmoniques et électrochimiques possèdent chacune leurs avantages et leurs inconvénients pour les applications de biodétection. Un biocapteur combinant les deux types de mesures a été fabriqué dans le cadre de ce projet. Un peigne d’électrodes interdigitées en or sert de surface pour la résonance des plasmons de surface (SPR) et pour les mesures d’impédance. Différentes mesures simultanées peuvent être prises en temps réel dans une cellule de mesure fermée avec un système d’impédance à 2 électrodes et un système SPR. La limite de détection SPR est dans le même ordre de grandeur que les systèmes en vente sur le marché. Dans le cadre de ce projet, un laser ultrarapide (impulsions de 120 femtosecondes) a été utilisé pour le prototypage rapide du peigne d’électrodes interdigitées sur une lamelle de verre (BK7) recouverte de 50 nm d’or. Le procédé de fabrication a été optimisé afin qu’il soit possible de contrôler la largeur des électrodes et que la qualité de surface soit idéale pour la résonance des plasmons de surface. La période de l’échantillon utilisé est de 30 μm et la distance entre les électrodes est de 6 μm. Les dimensions obtenues sont compatibles avec des techniques de microfabrication, ce qui permettrait une fabrication à faibles coûts pour une entrée sur le marché. Une fois les échantillons optimisés, deux montages optiques basés sur la configuration Kretschmann ont été réalisés dans le but de faire des mesures SPR spectrales. Le premier de ces systèmes se servant de la réflexion spéculaire sur l’échantillon et le deuxième se servant du premier ordre de diffraction en réflexion de l’échantillon qui agit comme un réseau. Des limites de détections de 7.9×10-7 RIU (refractive index units) et 7.2×10-6 RIU ont étés obtenus pour ces deux systèmes respectivement pour des expériences avec de l’éthanol. Un modèle électrique est présenté pour le peigne d’électrodes interdigitées du système de mesure d’impédance. La compatibilité du modèle est vérifiée, basée sur des changements dans la résistance de la solution. La limite de détection pour des solutions de NaCl est de 1.3×10-3 mg/100ml. La combinaison des deux systèmes a permis de montrer que le système SPR est plus---------- Abstract Biosensors are powerful tools that are used for a wide range of applications in fields like biomedical research, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and many more. Plasmonic and electrochemical techniques have each their advantages and their weaknesses for biodetection applications. A biosensor combining both these measurement techniques was fabricated for this project. Gold interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) were used as a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) propagation surface and as electrodes for impedance measurements. Different types of measurements are enabled in real time within a closed measuring cell with a two-electrode impedance system. The limit of detection of the SPR system compares well with commercial systems. For this project, an ultrafast laser (120 femtosecond pulses) was used for fast prototyping of the interdigitated electrodes on a glass slide on which a 50 nm thin film was previously deposited. The fabrication process was optimized in order to obtain the optimal electrode width and a good surface quality for the propagation of surface plasmons. The period of the sample that was used is 30 μm and the distance between the electrodes is of 6 μm. These dimensions are compatible with standard microfabrication techniques, which would enable fabrication at a low price for a market entry. Two optical setups based on the Kretschmann configuration were realised in order to take spectral SPR measurements once the sample was fabricated. The first of these systems used the specular reflection on the sample and the second used the first order of diffraction from the interdigitated electrodes which acts as a grating. The limit of detection of those systems, measured with a change between water and ethanol solution are 7.9×10-7 RIU (refractive index units) and 7.2×10-6 RIU respectively. An equivalent circuit model is presented for the electrical impedance system. Based on changes between solutions with different salt concentrations, the model was verified. The limit of detection for a NaCl solution is 1.3×10-3 mg/100ml. The combination of these two types of measurements showed that the SPR system as a better sensitivity to variations in ethanol concentration and the impedance system to variations in salt concentrations