CLIMATE CHANGE-HOW READY IS AFRICA AND ZAMBIA TO MITIGATE AND ADAPT?

Climate change has been acknowledged as a real challenge in Zambia by both practitioner and farming communities for example through experiencing the full brunt of floods and droughts in some districts. One area of opportunity for policy implementation would be to link sustainable agriculture policies to the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) wherein the beneficiaries should practice conservation agriculture in using the inputs as a way of mitigation. To do this, Government would have to redesign the entire extension service with the skills and competencies to teach farmers about conservation agriculture. Similarly, sustainable agriculture systems can place people on better food security status if applied properly. The use of sustainable agriculture as a strategy for climate change adaptation in different areas should recognize that even if the principles and practices are uniform, their application must be location specificClimate change is not only an environmental injustice, but a humanitarian and development emergency of global proportions. It is poised to significantly impact food security, livelihoods, health and other basic services. Those affected most will be the poorest and most vulnerable economies, which have the least cause to the problem. It is therefore not surprising that climate change has become a subject of local, national, regional and international importance, it is scientifically accepted that it has already began to have negative impacts on the global environment. Studies on the economic impact of climate change have been conducted in many African countries. These inquiries, are seeking to establish the present magnitude of the impact of climate change and the scale of adaptation measures required to address CC’s negative impacts. A recent study by Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) indicated that specifically the Southern Africa region (including Zambia) is responsible for a tiny percentage of the world’s carbon emissions but is likely to one of the worst effected area. The United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to which Zambia is a party has met for the past 17 years and has still not agreed to binding reduction commitments or to a process that will effectively combat climate change

Sandia Lightning Simulation Facility Building 888. Hazards assessment document

The Department of Energy Order 5500.3A requires facility-specific hazards assessments be prepared, maintained, and used for emergency planning purposes. This hazards assessment document describes the chemical and radiological hazards associated with the Sandia Lightning Simulation Facility, Building 888. The entire inventory was screened according to the potential airborne impact to onsite and offsite individuals. The air dispersion model, ALOHA, estimated pollutant concentrations downwind from the source of a release, taking into consideration the toxicological and physical characteristics of the release site, the atmospheric conditions, and the circumstances of the release. The greatest distance at which a postulated facility event will produce consequences exceeding the Early Severe Health Effects threshold is 23 meters. The highest emergency classification is a Site Area Emergency. The Emergency Planning Zone is 65 meters

Hydrogen Trailer Storage Facility (Building 878). Consequence analysis

The Department of Energy Order 5500.3A requires facility-specific hazards assessments be prepared, maintained, and used for emergency planning purposes. This consequence analysis documents the impact that a hydrogen accident could have to employees, the general public, and nearby facilities. The computer model ARCHIE was utilized to determine discharge rates, toxic vapor dispersion analyses, flammable vapor cloud hazards, explosion hazards, and flame jets for the Hydrogen Trailer Storage Facility located at Building 878. To determine over pressurization effects, hand calculations derived from the Department of the Air Force Manual, ``Structures to Resist the Effects of Accidental Explosions,`` were utilized. The greatest distances at which a postulated facility event will produce the Lower Flammability and the Lower Detonation Levels are 1,721 feet and 882 feet, respectively. The greatest distance at which 10.0 psi overpressure (i.e., total building destruction) is reached is 153 feet

Etiology and antibiotic susceptibility pattern of community-acquired urinary tract infection in Jos metropolis

Community-acquired urinary tract infections occur in individuals not admitted in hospital prior to development of the symptoms of the infection. It occurs mostly in women and caused by Escherichia coli. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of urinary tract infection among individuals residing within Jos metropolis. A single voided aseptically collected mid-stream urine (MSU) was obtained from 276 patients at the outpatient unit of Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH). These samples were processed immediately using standard wire loop method in medical microbiology laboratory in JUTH. Demographic data were collected by administering a structured questionnaire to the study participants. Data collected were analyzed by EPI info statistical package version 3.5.1. Out of the 276 individuals who participated in the study 52 (18.8%) were positive for urinary tract infection. The study revealed that female participants had the highest occurrence 40 (21.3%) of infection, while male participants had 12 (13.6%). Escherichia coli was the most frequently isolated uropathogen with a prevalence of 20 (38.5%). Married individuals 35 (27.3%) had a higher occurrence of infection compared to singles 17 (11.5%), there was no significant difference in occurrence of infection between married and singles p=0.101 (P>0.05) in the study. The present study revealed a prevalence of 18.8%, with female participants having the highest occurrence of infection. Streptomycin showed the highest susceptibility to bacteria isolates while the least susceptibility was observed with augmentin. Rational use of antibiotics with regular antibiotics susceptibility surveillance studies is recommended to maintain high antibiotic therapeutic profile.Keywords: Community-acquired urinary tract infections, Escherichia coli, Significant isolate

A nurse‐led intervention improves detection and management of AKI in Malawi

BACKGROUND: Acute kidney injury is common and has significant impact on mortality and morbidity. There is a global drive to improve the lack of knowledge and understanding surrounding the recognition, diagnosis and management of patients with AKI in resource poor healthcare systems. OBJECTIVES: We propose a nurse‐led education programme to medical and nursing staff of the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre, Malawi, will improve the overall care and understanding of patients with AKI that will still be effective 3 months later. METHODS: This was a three phase, prospective interventional pilot study which evaluated base line knowledge and clinical practice amongst healthcare workers, provided a comprehensive combination nurse‐led class room and ward based teaching programme and evaluated the change in knowledge and clinical management of patients in the high dependency areas of the hospital immediately, and 3 months, after the teaching intervention. RESULTS: The nurse‐led intervention significantly improved the healthcare workers attitudes towards detecting or managing patients with suspected AKI (p < 0.0001). There were also significant improvements in the completion of fluid charts and recording of urine output (p < 0.0001), corner stones of AKI management. Knowledge and clinical intervention was still present three months later. There was however little change in the understanding that AKI could be a significant clinical problem in QECH and that it may have a major impact on mortality and working practice and this needs to be addressed in future teaching programmes. CONCLUSIONS: A low cost, nurse‐led AKI educational intervention improved the knowledge and management of AKI at QECH, which was still evident 3 months later

Suppl: A Flexible Language for Policies

Abstract. We present the Simple Unified Policy Programming Lan-guage (Suppl), a domain-neutral language for stating, executing, and analyzing event-condition-action policies. Suppl uses a novel combina-tion of pure logic programming and disciplined imperative programming features to make it easy for non-expert users to express common policy idioms. The language is strongly typed and moded to allow static detec-tion of common programming errors, and it supports a novel logic-based static analysis that can detect internally inconsistent policies. Suppl has been implemented as a compiler to Prolog and used to build several network security applications in a Java framework.