National Research and Education Networks to Support Telemedicine and Telehealth

National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) worldwide are expanding capacities, including collaboration amongst teams of health scientists to create academic telehealth communities that bridge science, technology, innovation, education, assistance, and federal health authorities to discuss, seek funding and work together. The World Health Organisation promotes Universal Health Coverage (UHC) as a goal for equitable access to health services without pushing people to poverty. UHC has been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly as one of the health targets under Goal 3 on health. Using information and communication technologies to bring healthcare to people in remote areas and to those who need health services most is one of the objectives of UHC. RUTE is the Brazilian Telemedicine University Network programme, coordinated by the NREN RNP (Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa) . In September 2015 RUTE launched its 118th Telemedicine Unit, all of them located in university and teaching hospitals all over the 27 Brazilian states. Fifty-five special interest groups (SIGs) in health specialties operate over the collaborative network model with 2 to 3 scientific videoconferenced sessions every day, amongst 150 participating institutions. Last year the programme published its second book on its impact in the Brazilian Telehealth initiative as well as in Latin America. As quoted in the foreword: “It is an example of what a country can and has done and what lessons the world can learn from them.” This paper provides insight regarding the development and evaluation of the programme and may provide thoughts and even guidance to policy makers

Soil water-holding capacity and monodominance in Southern Amazon tropical forests

Background and aims: We explored the hypothesis that low soil water-holding capacity is the main factor driving the monodominance of Brosimum rubescens in a monodominant forest in Southern Amazonia. Tropical monodominant forests are rare ecosystems with low diversity and high dominance of a single tree species. The causes of this atypical condition are still poorly understood. Some studies have shown a relationship between monodominance and waterlogging or soil attributes, while others have concluded that edaphic factors have little or no explanatory value, but none has accounted for soil-moisture variation other than waterlogging. This study is the first to explicitly explore how low soil water-holding capacity influences the monodominance of tropical forests. Methods: We conducted in situ measurements of vertical soil moisture using electrical resistance collected over 1 year at 0–5; 35–40 and 75–80 cm depths in a B. rubescens monodominant forest and in an adjacent mixed-species forest in the Amazon-Cerrado transition zone, Brazil. Minimum leaf water potential (Ψmin) of the seven most common species, including B. rubescens, and soil water-holding capacity for both forests were determined. Results: The vertical soil moisture decay pattern was similar in both forests for all depths. However, the slightly higher water availability in the monodominant forest and Ψmin similarity between B. rubescens and nearby mixed forest species indicate that low water-availability does not cause the monodominance. Conclusions: We reject the hypothesis that monodominance of B. rubescens is primarily determined by low soil water-holding capacity, reinforcing the idea that monodominance in tropical forests is not determined by a single factor

Development of Methods for the Determination of PhACs in Soil/Earthworm/Crop System Irrigated with Reclaimed Water

Pharmaceuticals have been becoming a major concern of environmental pollution since the beginning of the century. The ways in which these contaminants are introduced into the environment are very different, but almost always associated with wastewater. In fact, current wastewater treatment plants are not designed for the removal of pharmaceutical products. Indeed, the problem of water scarcity has played an important role in the introduction of pharmaceutical products into the environment, particularly in the agricultural sector. Because of the drought, more and more countries are resorting to the use of treated wastewater to irrigate vegetables for human consumption. Consequently, the reuse of wastewater in agriculture constitutes a continuous introduction of these molecules into the soil. The effects of this practice are not entirely clear. However, the probability that these compounds can enter the food chain directly is high. In fact, through radical absorption, plants could uptake pharmaceuticals from soil and water, leading to the accumulation of drugs in the tissues. The development of analytical methods of solid matrices such as soil or plant tissues requires substantial work due to the great complexity of the matrices and the differences between the physico-chemical properties of analytes of interest. Several multi-class methods have recently been developed to determine a large number of pharmaceutical products in soil or plants using different extraction techniques. This chapter addresses to list all the analytical procedures published so far used for the extraction and analysis of pharmaceutical products from plant tissues and from the soil irrigated with treated wastewater.This study has been financially supported by the EU through the WaterJPI-2015 AWARE project (PCIN-2017-067). This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Project CEX2018-000794-S). The authors thank the Water Challenges for a Changing World Joint Programming Initiative.Peer reviewe