Promotion of a Healthy Weight and Lifestyle among Children: The ‘Be Active, Eat Right’ Study

Overweight and obesity among children has become a public health issue. This thesis aimed to describe interventions promoting a healthy weight and lifestyle among children and provide insight in elements that may be related to intervention improvement. Health care has an important role in early detection of overweight and obesity among children. The prevention protocol is an intervention that can be implemented in the youth health care setting. The in this thesis described evaluation of the prevention protocol showed limited effects of the intervention on health behaviors and BMI of the children. However, the prevention protocol may be used to create awareness of the child’s overweight among parents and motivate them to change health behavior. The prevention protocol offers the opportunity to discuss potential negative health outcomes such as insecure feelings the child may be experiencing, which was shown in two studies in this thesis. Also, parents may be assisted in learning skills to promote healthy behavior of the child and to create a healthy home environment. Individual focused interventions such as the prevention protocol, should be implemented in combination with interventions targeting the general population. A study in this thesis showed that interventions among the general population of children can help decrease sedentary behavior and BMI. A local integrated approach to prevent and care for children with overweight and obesity is recommended; care providers have working arrangements with regard to detection, care and follow-up of children with overweight and obesity and all health care professionals are committed to providing local prevention and care. This integrated approach will promote sustainable health behavior change and the development of a healthy lifestyle among children and their families

Exploring Environmental-Economic Benefits from Agri-Industrial Diversification in the Sugar Industry: An Integrated Land Use and Value Chain Approach

The sugar industry in Queensland (Australia) is confronted with increasing economic pressure and environmental constraints. To explore whether agri-industrial diversification of the sugar industry provides a sustainable development pathway for the region, we develop a spatial environmental-economic approach that integrates a land use and value chain model with a hydrological model. Results indicate that agri-industrial diversification can lead to substantial increases in regional income, while at the same time increasing the resilience of a sugar industry facing decreasing sugar prices. Agri-industrial diversification drives land use diversification, which under current sugar prices does not lead to a reduction in sugarcane production. Water quality benefits from this land use diversification are mixed, and depend on the economic viability and erosion characteristics of the concerned production systems.spatial economics, environmental economics, value chains, agri-industries, water quality, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, C6, O18, Q13, Q53,

Modification of chiral dimethyl tartrate through transesterification : immobilisation on POSS and enantioselectivity reversion in Sharpless asymmetric epoxidation

Modification of dimethyl tartrate has been investigated through transesterification with aminoalcohols to provide reactive functionalities for the covalent bonding of chiral tartrate to polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes. The transesterification of dimethyl tartrate has been widely studied by means of using different catalytic systems and reaction conditions. Through the proper selection of both, the catalytic system and the reaction conditions, it is possible to achieve the mono- or the bis-substituted tartrate derivative as sole products. All the intermediate chiral tartrate-derived ligands were successfully used in the homogeneous enantioselective epoxidation of allylic alcohols providing moderate enantiomeric excess over the products. Attached amine groups have been used to support the modified tartrate ligands onto a haloaryl-functionalized silsesquioxane moiety. This final chiral tartrate ligand displays enantioselectivity reversion in the asymmetric epoxidation of allylic alcohols with regards to the starting dimethyl tartrate ligand, having both molecules them the same chiral sign. However, the POSS-containing ligand can be easily recovered in almost quantitative yield and reused in asymmetric epoxidation reactions. In addition, recovered silsesquioxane-pendant ligand, though displaying decreasing catalytic activity in recycling epoxidation tests, showed very stable enantioselective behavior

Trace metal fractionation effects between sea water and aerosols from bubble bursting

Laboratory experiments were performed using radioactive tracers of 65Zn, 75Se, 22Na, 137Cs and 152Eu added to natural sea water to determine differences in elemental composition between sea water and aerosol droplets as a function of particle size. The experiments were conducted using a flow of air as a stream of bubbles rising and bursting at the surface of a vessel containing sea water with added radioactive tracers at pH 8. The resultant aerosol cloud was drawn through a cascade impactor which separated particle size fractions for analysis. In a typical experiment 30 ml of sea water, collected in polyethylene no more than a few hours before along a sandy Gulf of Mexico beach, and a stream of clean air, giving bubbles with a rise distance through the water of 1 to 10 cm, were used, and two or more sequential samplings, usually 12 to 24 hours in duration, were made by cascade impactor. The impaction surfaces were then counted by gamma ray spectrometer. Enrichments relative to Na in general vary systematically with particle size and may exceed a factor of 10 but appear to depend on the particular conditions of each experiment, such as the rise distance of the bubbles and the equilibration time between the added tracers and natural constituents in sea water. Fractionation effects, often quite large, appear to be the rule rather than the exception. Consequently, effects transfer of pollutants from water to air is a distinct possibility and should be documented for each substance of interest under varying conditions. At the very least, our results indicate that in the absence of data it is unwise to assume the composition of the marine aerosol, even as a first approximation, to be the same as sea water

Explorando el costo-efectividad de instrumentos basados en el mercado para la mejora de la calidad del agua: una modelación espacial económico-ambiental

El uso agrícola de la tierra en cuencas costeras conduce a la contaminación del agua y degradación subsecuente de recursos costeros y marinos. Para asegurar el desarrollo económico sostenible de las regiones costeras, es necesario balancear los beneficios marginales de la contaminación (agrícola) del agua con los costos marginales asociados a la degradación de los recursos costeros y marinos. La contaminación del agua en cuencas costeras es usualmente considerada una externalidad, por lo que se podrían utilizar Instrumentos Basados en el Mercado (IBMs) para internalizar esta externalidad, de tal forma que el comportamiento del mercado pueda conducir a un máximo bienestar social. Se emplea un acercamiento espacial económico-ambiental que integra un modelo de uso de la tierra con un modelo hidrológico, para explorar el costo-efectividad de varios IBMs en promover la adopción de tecnologías de producción agrícolas para mejorar la calidad del agua. Con base en los costos de disminución, los resultados del estudio de caso demuestran que impuestos y subsidios sobre la emisión de contaminantes son costo-eficientes y, además, más costoefectivos que los impuestos sobre un proxy de emisión y que los impuestos sobre insumos contaminantes. Finalmente, los impuestos sobre insumos contaminantes son dos veces más costo-efectivos que los impuestos sobre un proxy de emisión.Agricultural land use in coastal catchments is shown to lead to (diffuse source) water pollution and subsequent resource degradation in the downstream coastal and marine environment. To ensure sustainable economic development of coastal regions, we need to balance marginal benefits from terrestrial (agricultural) water pollution and associated marginal costs from coastal and marine resource degradation. Water pollution from coastal catchments is, however, considered an externality and, consequently, market-based instruments can be used to internalize this externality such that market behavior could lead to social welfare maximizing outcomes. We employ a spatial environmental-economic modeling approach that integrates a land use model with a hydrological model, to assess the cost-effectiveness of various marketbased instruments in promoting industry adoption of management practices for water quality improvement. Based on abatement costs alone, results from our case-study catchment show that emission based taxes and subsidies are costefficient and more cost-effective than emission proxy taxes and input taxes, while input taxes are more than twice as costeffective as emission proxy taxes

Fast analysis of decabrominated diphenyl ether using low-pressure gas chromatography electron-capture negative ionization mass spectrometry

Peer reviewe

Characterization of surface layers on individual marine CaCO₃ particles, using "variable energy" electron probe microanalysis (poster)

The ocean constitutes a large sink for anthropogenic CO2, and thus plays a significant role in the global biogeochemical cycle of carbon and its perturbations. There remain, however, large uncertainties concerning the uptake of anthropogenic carbon by the ocean, mainly due to insufficient knowledge of processes controlling the pCO2 in surface waters. Most of the previous research efforts have been concentrated on the study of CO2 exchange at the air-sea interface due to temperature effects related to the general circulation of water masses or to the biological activity in terms of new production of organic matter and export to deep waters. The effect of precipitation of calcium carbonate by calcifying organisms in the euphotic zone and the redissolution of their skeletons has not been fully taken into account yet. This precipitation-dissolution process affects both the concentration of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and alkalinity and plays thus a significant role in the buffering capacity of seawater and its potential to act as a sink or a source of CO2 for the atmosphere. Quantification of the processes affecting the inorganic carbon cycle is fundamental, not only for the understanding of the present day situation, but also for the predictive studies in the context of global warming. The anthropogenic CO2 can be transferred into or out of the ocean via air-sea exchange as a result of various processes. They include dissolution of CO2 (g) in seawater, photosynthesis and respiration, and precipitation of carbonate particles. During photosynthesis, CaCO3 is precipitated and this carbonate sinks out of the surface layer along with the exported organic carbon. The calcification process modifies the dissolved inorganic carbonate system according to the following reaction:Ca2+ + 2HCO3- CaCO3 + CO2 (g) + H2OThe production of CaCO3 will thus consume alkalinity, increase pCO2 and reduce total DIC in the surface layer of the ocean, driving CO2 from the ocean to the atmosphere.We aim to study the processes associated with the oceanic production and dissolution of CaCO3 in order to quantify the role of calcifying phytoplanktonic organisms in sequestering CO2.Electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) was used for characterization of individual particles for their composition, morphology and dissolution features. Most attention is paid to the concentration of Mg and Sr in CaCO3 particles, because of their effect on the solubility of carbonates and because of the fact that they are characteristic for their origin. In June 2001, a mesocosm experiment: “Biological responses to CO2 - related changes in seawater carbonate chemistry during a bloom of Emiliana huxleyi” was set up at the Large Scale Facility for Marine Pelagic Food Chain Research, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. Three different pCO2’s (200 ppm, 380 ppm, 700 ppm) were generated in different mesocosms where cultures were grown. Organisms from each of these cultures were analysed using optimised low-Z EPMA technology to examine the difference in calcification. “Variable-energy” EPMA was applied for the characterization of surface layers of the CaCO3-scales of Emiliana huxleyi