91 research outputs found
Urban Horticulture: Reducing Food Miles to Improve Cities Microclimate and Environmental Sustainability
Human population growth rates determine future population and cities sizes. By gathering together people and production, cities also concentrate the demand for fresh water and other natural resources, food included. In addition, because the urban sprawl has destroyed agricultural land, it is necessary to move some of the production from rural to urban areas. This means that it is necessary to re-think our cities, our productive cities.
In this dissertation are explored major strategies for contributing to the challenge of feeding people in urban areas. Particular emphasis is placed on local low-input cultivation systems. The environmental profile of different food supply chains, based on different ‘food miles’, was assessed. ‘Food miles’, first coined in ‘90s, measure the distance that food travels from where it is grown or raised to where it is consumed. The selected methodology to assess the environmental impact was the life cycle assessment (LCA). The impact category chosen was the global warming potential (GWP), through midpoint methods, the IPCC 2013 100a. It contains the climate change factors of IPCC in a time-frame of 100 years; it is expressed in Kg CO2 eq.
Nevertheless it was also used to evaluate the urban garden’s climate mitigation using ENVI-met software and the predicted mean vote indicator.
Here, it was confirmed the important value of gardens and horticultural activities in urban contexts. That, because there is an environmental improvement and the generation of ecosystem services
Quantum sensors for dynamical tracking of chemical processes
Quantum photonics has demonstrated its potential for enhanced sensing.
Current sources of quantum light states tailored to measuring, allow to monitor
phenomena evolving on time scales of the order of the second. These are
characteristic of product accumulation in chemical reactions of technologically
interest, in particular those involving chiral compounds. Here we adopt a
quantum multiparameter approach to investigate the dynamic process of sucrose
acid hydrolysis as a test bed for such applications. The estimation is made
robust by monitoring different parameters at once
The Patient Safety Culture of a Nursing Team From a Central Ambulatory / A Cultura de Segurança do Paciente da Equipe de Enfermagem de um Ambulatório Centra
Objetivo: identificar a cultura de segurança do paciente dos profissionais da equipe de enfermagem de um Ambulatório Central. Métodos: estudo de abordagem quantitativa do tipo Survey transversal. A coleta dos dados foi realizada no primeiro semestre de 2015, com auxílio do questionário Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. A amostra foi composta por três enfermeiros e cinco técnicos de enfermagem. Resultados: nenhuma das dimensões alcançou a média mínima (75 pontos) para uma cultura de segurança do paciente adequada. Conclusão: percebe-se a necessidade de uma mudança cultural, sendo necessária uma atuação conjunta entre a equipe e gestores para alcançar índices adequados. A cultura de segurança do paciente deve ser constantemente avaliada. Sugere-se a aplicação do SAQ em todas as equipes deste ambulatório, uma vez que o cuidado multidisciplinar proporciona uma assistência de qualidade à comunidade assistida. Descritores: Segurança do paciente; Enfermagem; Instituições de assistência ambulatorial
The Patient Safety Culture of a Nursing Team From a Central Ambulatory / A Cultura de Segurança do Paciente da Equipe de Enfermagem de um Ambulatório Centra
Objetivo: identificar a cultura de segurança do paciente dos profissionais da equipe de enfermagem de um Ambulatório Central. Métodos: estudo de abordagem quantitativa do tipo Survey transversal. A coleta dos dados foi realizada no primeiro semestre de 2015, com auxílio do questionário Safety Attitudes Questionnaire. A amostra foi composta por três enfermeiros e cinco técnicos de enfermagem. Resultados: nenhuma das dimensões alcançou a média mínima (75 pontos) para uma cultura de segurança do paciente adequada. Conclusão: percebe-se a necessidade de uma mudança cultural, sendo necessária uma atuação conjunta entre a equipe e gestores para alcançar índices adequados. A cultura de segurança do paciente deve ser constantemente avaliada. Sugere-se a aplicação do SAQ em todas as equipes deste ambulatório, uma vez que o cuidado multidisciplinar proporciona uma assistência de qualidade à comunidade assistida.
Descritores: Segurança do paciente; Enfermagem; Instituições de assistência ambulatorial
ANTIMONY ACCUMULATION RISK IN LETTUCE GROWN IN BRAZILIAN URBAN GARDENS
More than 80% of the Brazilian population inhabits urban areas. Diffused poverty and the lack of fresh vegetables have generated malnutrition and unbalanced diets. Thus, the interest in growing food locally, in urban allotments and community gardens, has increased. However, urban agriculture may present some risks caused by the urban pollution. Road traffic is considered the biggest source of heavy metals in urban areas. Hence, the objective of the study was the assessment of the accumulation of heavy metals in an urban garden in the city of Recife, at different distances from a road with high traffic burden. The results showed that the distance from the street decreased the accumulation of many potentially toxic elements. Furthermore, the human health risk was estimated, revealing that greater danger was associated with the accumulation of antimony. Concentration of other elements in the leaf tissues were within previously reported thresholds
Towards regenerated and productive vacant areas through urban horticulture: lessons from Bologna, Italy
Multiple sclerosis genomic map implicates peripheral immune cells and microglia in susceptibility
Low-Frequency and Rare-Coding Variation Contributes to Multiple Sclerosis Risk
Multiple sclerosis is a complex neurological disease, with 3c20% of risk heritability attributable to common genetic variants, including >230 identified by genome-wide association studies. Multiple strands of evidence suggest that much of the remaining heritability is also due to additive effects of common variants rather than epistasis between these variants or mutations exclusive to individual families. Here, we show in 68,379 cases and controls that up to 5% of this heritability is explained by low-frequency variation in gene coding sequence. We identify four novel genes driving MS risk independently of common-variant signals, highlighting key pathogenic roles for regulatory T cell homeostasis and regulation, IFN\u3b3 biology, and NF\u3baB signaling. As low-frequency variants do not show substantial linkage disequilibrium with other variants, and as coding variants are more interpretable and experimentally tractable than non-coding variation, our discoveries constitute a rich resource for dissecting the pathobiology of MS. In a large multi-cohort study, unexplained heritability for multiple sclerosis is detected in low-frequency coding variants that are missed by GWAS analyses, further underscoring the role of immune genes in MS pathology
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