Salinity Intrusion and Seasonal Water Quality Variations in the Tidal Canals of Cochin

The study conducted on the salinity intrusion and seasonal water quality variations in the tidal canals of cochin. The main objectives are, salinity intrusion profile, water quality variation of the surface water of the canals,hierarchical utility of the water bodies and to understand the non-conservative components in the water body. The parameters monitored werepH,temperature,alkalinity,conductivity,DO(dissolvedoxygen),COD(chemical oxygen demand),BOD(biochemical oxygen demand0,chloride, total hardness, calcium hardness, dissolved phosphate, nitrate, total iron, sulphate, turbidity, total coliform and SUVA at 254nm. The tidal canals of GCDA were found to be creeks extending to the interior, canals inter connecting parts of the estuary or canals with seasonally broken segments. Based on utility the canals could be classified as: canals heavely polluted and very saline,canals polluted by urban waste , canals having fresh water for most part of the year and not much polluted, fresh water bodies heavily polluted. During the rainy months carbon fixation by plankton is nonexistent,and during the dry months Chitrapuzha becomes a sink of phosphate. The study indicated abiotic subrouts for dissolved phosphate and revealed the potential pitfalls in LOICZ modeling exercise on sewage ladentidal canals. It was also found that all canals except for the canals of West cochin and chittoorpuzha have fresh water for some part of the year. The water quality index in the durable fresh water stretches was found to be of below average category.

Development of an instrument to assess Human Resource Quality (HRQ) and measuring the impact of TQM efforts on HRQ using the instrument

This research is aimed at developing an instrument for measuring human resource quality in organizations. The researcher has developed the instrument for measuring HRQ based on extensive literature survey and expert opinion. Statistical validity of the Instrument has also been established. This instrument was used to measure the changes in Human Resource Quality in selected organizations wherein quality management practices are being implemented. Data collected was analyzed and presented in this thesis. It has been found that there are significant changes in all the indicators of Human Resource Quality. There is improvement in Cultural Change Index(CCI), Quality of Work Life Index(QWLI) and Employee Satisfaction Index(ESI). The Human Resource Quality index has also increased significantly in all the organizations. It has been observed from the study that implementation of TQM leads to significant changes in Human Resource Quality. This instrument is capable of measuring minor variations in each indicator of HRQ and can be used to identify areas of weakness and strength in the case of Human Resource Quality. The instrument can further be modified by future research. This research work provided excellent opportunities for the researcher for self-development and has made him confident to undertake such activities for the benefit of the learning community.

Assessment of Water Quality along the Coastal Areas of Kerala: A Study of the Tsunami Impact on Groundwater

Everywhere, on the coastal belt it is proved without doubt that the pristine ground water quality was severely deteriorated after the 26 December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. But how far is more relevant, as it is decided by the so-called pre-tsunamic situation of the region. In water quality studies it is this reference finger print which earmarks regional ground water chemistry based on which the monthly variability could rationally be interpreted. This Ph D thesis comprises the testing and evaluation of the facts: whether there is any significant difference in the water quality parameters under study between stations and between months in Tsunami Affected Dug Wells (TADW). Whether the selected water quality parameters vary significantly from BIS and WHO standards. Whether the water quality index (WQI) differ significantly between Tsunami Affected Dug Wells (TADW) and Bore Wells (BW). Whether there is any significant difference in the water quality parameters during December 2005 and December 2008. Is there any significant change in the Water Quality Parameters before 2001 and after tsunami (2005) in TADW.

Prevalencia de obesidad y factores de riesgo cardiovascular en estudiantes de ciencias de la salud - universidad del Quindío - 2013

ANTECEDENTES: En Colombia, reportes del año 2010 de la Encuesta Nacional de la Situación en Nutrición ENSIN 2010(2), muestran uno de cada dos colombianos, presentan un índice de masa corporal mayor al esperado (3) METODO: El presente estudio de corte transversal, determino la prevalencia de obesidad y otros factores de riesgo cardiovascular en una población de estudiantes de Ciencias de la Salud de una Universidad regional en el primer periodo académico del año 2013. El tamaño de muestra fue n=113 sujetos que corresponden 60,5% a la carrera de medicina y 39,95% a enfermería. Con el fin de conocer su comportamiento con respecto a hábitos y estilos de vida específicos como el consumo de alcohol, el consumo de tabaco y el sedentarismo, así como su asociación a eventos inflamatorios relacionados con la fisiopatología de los procesos de salud asociados al peso, por medio de instrumentos de medición clínica, antropométrica y sérica, determino un modelo estadístico propicio para entender el comportamiento de la obesidad y la enfermedad Cardiovascular RESULTADOS: La prevalencia estimada de sobrepeso y obesidad por Índice de Masa Corporal (IMC), fue del 27,7% (IC 95%: 19.9%,37.2%); por el perímetro abdominal (OBPABD) se encontró una prevalencia estimada del 27,4% (IC 95%: 19,9% – 36,4%), y la prevalencia con el Índice Cintura Cadera (OBICC) fue de 3,5% (IC 95%:1,3% – 9,3%). CONCLUSIONES: La presencia de hábitos no saludables y la presencia de sobrepeso y obesidad se considera que es necesario en primera instancia una valoración general de estado nutricional de los universitarios de las diferentes facultados y plantear estrategias preventivas ya que la literatura documenta los efectos de los hábitos no saludables sino además documenta los efectos de la prevención de la misma ya que en si se ha encontrado asociación para enfermedades cardiovasculares. Se propone que para obtener mayor información del comportamiento de los factores de riesgo cardiovasculares se deberían realizar estudios retrospectivos en el que intervengan las demás carreras de la universidad y poder evaluar la totalidad de población universitaria

Rapid assessment of historic, current and future habitat quality for biodiversity around UK Natura 2000 sites

Changes in landscape composition and structure may impact the conservation and management of protected areas. Species that depend on specific habitats are at risk of extinction when these habitats are degraded or lost. Designing robust methods to evaluate landscape composition will assist decision- and policy-making in emerging landscapes. This paper describes a rapid assessment methodology aimed at evaluating landcover quality for birds, plants, butterflies and bees around seven UK Natura 2000 sites. An expert panel assigned quality values to standard Coordination of Information on the Environment (CORINE) landcover classes for each taxonomic group. Quality was assessed based on historical (1950, 1990), current (2000) and future (2030) land-cover data, the last projected using three alternative scenarios: a growth applied strategy (GRAS), a business-as-might-beusual (BAMBU) scenario, and sustainable European development goal (SEDG) scenario. A quantitative quality index weighted the area of each land-cover parcel with a taxa-specific quality measure. Land parcels with high quality for all taxonomic groups were evaluated for temporal changes in area, size and adjacency. For all sites and taxonomic groups, the rate of deterioration of land-cover quality was greater between 1950 and 1990 than current rates or as modelled using the alternative future scenarios (2000– 2030). Model predictions indicated land-cover quality stabilized over time under the GRAS scenario, and was close to stable for the BAMBU scenario. The SEDG scenario suggested an ongoing loss of quality, though this was lower than the historical rate of c. 1% loss per decade. None of the future scenarios showed accelerated fragmentation, but rather increases in the area, adjacency and diversity of high quality land parcels in the landscape.

Expansion quality of epidemic protocols

Epidemic protocols are a bio-inspired communication and computation paradigm for large and extreme-scale networked systems. This work investigates the expansion property of the network overlay topologies induced by epidemic protocols. An expansion quality index for overlay topologies is proposed and adopted for the design of epidemic membership protocols. A novel protocol is proposed, which explicitly aims at improving the expansion quality of the overlay topologies. The proposed protocol is tested with a global aggregation task and compared to other membership protocols. The analysis by means of simulations indicates that the expansion quality directly relates to the speed of dissemination and convergence of epidemic protocols and can be effectively used to design better protocols.

Fat mass-and obesity-associated genotype, dietary intakes and anthropometric measures in European adults: the Food4Me study

The interplay between the fat mass- and obesity-associated (FTO) gene variants and diet has been implicated in the development of obesity. The aim of the present analysis was to investigate associations between FTO genotype, dietary intakes and anthropometrics among European adults. Participants in the Food4Me randomised controlled trial were genotyped for FTO genotype (rs9939609) and their dietary intakes, and diet quality scores (Healthy Eating Index and PREDIMED-based Mediterranean diet score) were estimated from FFQ. Relationships between FTO genotype, diet and anthropometrics (weight, waist circumference (WC) and BMI) were evaluated at baseline. European adults with the FTO risk genotype had greater WC (AAv. TT: +1·4 cm; P=0·003) and BMI (+0·9 kg/m2; P=0·001) than individuals with no risk alleles. Subjects with the lowest fried food consumption and two copies of the FTO risk variant had on average 1·4 kg/m2 greater BMI (Ptrend=0·028) and 3·1 cm greater WC (Ptrend=0·045) compared with individuals with no copies of the risk allele and with the lowest fried food consumption. However, there was no evidence of interactions between FTO genotype and dietary intakes on BMI and WC, and thus further research is required to confirm or refute these findings.

Importance of estimating matrix quality for modeling species distribution in complex tropical landscapes: a test with Atlantic forest small mammals

Information to guide decision making is especially urgent in human dominated landscapes in the tropics, where urban and agricultural frontiers are still expanding in an unplanned manner. Nevertheless, most studies that have investigated the influence of landscape structure on species distribution have not considered the heterogeneity of altered habitats of the matrix, which is usually high in human dominated landscapes. Using the distribution of small mammals in forest remnants and in the four main altered habitats in an Atlantic forest landscape, we investigated 1) how explanatory power of models describing species distribution in forest remnants varies between landscape structure variables that do or do not incorporate matrix quality and 2) the importance of spatial scale for analyzing the influence of landscape structure. We used standardized sampling in remnants and altered habitats to generate two indices of habitat quality, corresponding to the abundance and to the occurrence of small mammals. For each remnant, we calculated habitat quantity and connectivity in different spatial scales, considering or not the quality of surrounding habitats. The incorporation of matrix quality increased model explanatory power across all spatial scales for half the species that occurred in the matrix, but only when taking into account the distance between habitat patches (connectivity). These connectivity models were also less affected by spatial scale than habitat quantity models. The few consistent responses to the variation in spatial scales indicate that despite their small size, small mammals perceive landscape features at large spatial scales. Matrix quality index corresponding to species occurrence presented a better or similar performance compared to that of species abundance. Results indicate the importance of the matrix for the dynamics of fragmented landscapes and suggest that relatively simple indices can improve our understanding of species distribution, and could be applied in modeling, monitoring and managing complex tropical landscapes.

A quadtree driven image fusion quality assessment

In this paper a new method to compute saliency of source images is presented. This work is an extension to universal quality index founded by Wang and Bovik and improved by Piella. It defines the saliency according to the change of topology of quadratic tree decomposition between source images and the fused image. The saliency function provides higher weight for the tree nodes that differs more in the fused image in terms topology. Quadratic tree decomposition provides an easy and systematic way to add a saliency factor based on the segmented regions in the images.

Sleep quality and depression during pregnancy: a prospective study

For the first time, the relationship between depressive symptoms and sleep quality was explored prospectively during pregnancy. Participants (n = 273) completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and Beck Depression Inventory at three 8-week intervals, starting from 15–23 weeks gestation. In addition to sleep quality and depression remaining relatively stable during pregnancy, findings revealed that sleep quality earlier in pregnancy predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms at later stage in pregnancy (after controlling for prior depression levels). In contrast, there was no evidence to suggest that depressive symptoms earlier in pregnancy impacted on sleep quality later on. Given that depressive symptomatology can lead to major depression and given the prevalence of pre- and postnatal depression, our findings suggest that screening for sleep problems during pregnancy may be of clinical significance.

Examination of a multi-factorial model of body-related experiences during pregnancy : the relationships among physical symptoms, sleep quality, depression, self-esteem, and negative body attitudes

The aim of this cross-sectional study was to investigate relationships among women's body attitudes, physical symptoms, self-esteem, depression, and sleep quality during pregnancy. Pregnant women (N = 215) at 15–25 weeks gestation completed a questionnaire including four body image subscales assessing self-reported feeling fat, attractiveness, strength/fitness, and salience of weight and shape. Women reported on 29 pregnancy-related physical complaints, and completed the Beck Depression Inventory, Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. In regressions, controlling for retrospective reports of body image, more frequent and intense physical symptoms were related to viewing the self as less strong/fit, and to poorer sleep quality and more depressive symptoms. In a multi-factorial model extending previous research, paths were found from sleep quality to depressive symptoms to self-esteem; self-esteem was found to be a mediator associated with lower scores on feeling fat and salience of weight and shape, and on higher perceived attractiveness.

Depression, diet and exercise

Unhealthy lifestyle behaviour is driving an increase in the burden of chronic non-communicable diseases worldwide.

Recent evidence suggests that poor diet and a lack of exercise contribute to the genesis and course of depression.

While studies examining dietary improvement as a treatment strategy in depression are lacking, epidemiological evidence clearly points to diet quality being of importance to the risk of depression.

Exercise has been shown to be an effective treatment strategy for depression, but this is not reflected in treatment guidelines, and increased physical activity is not routinely encouraged when managing depression in clinical practice.

Recommendations regarding dietary improvement, increases in physical activity and smoking cessation should be routinely given to patients with depression.

Specialised and detailed advice may not be necessary. Recommendations should focus on following national guidelines for healthy eating and physical activity.

The impact of interventions to prevent obesity or improve obesity related behaviours in children (0-5 years) from socioeconomically disadvantaged and/or indigenous families: a systematic review

Background
Children from disadvantaged families including those from low socioeconomic backgrounds and Indigenous families have higher rates of obesity, making early intervention a priority. The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature to examine the effectiveness of interventions to prevent obesity or improve obesity related behaviours in children 0-5 years from socioeconomically disadvantaged or Indigenous families.

Methods
Searches of major electronic databases identified articles published from 1993–2013 targeting feeding practices, anthropometric, diet, activity or sedentary behaviour outcomes. This was supplemented with snowballing from existing reviews and primary studies. Data extraction was undertaken by one author and cross checked by another. Quality assessments included both internal and external validity.

Results
Thirty-two studies were identified, with only two (both low quality) in Indigenous groups. Fourteen studies had a primary aim to prevent obesity. Mean differences between intervention and control groups ranged from -0.29 kg/m2 to -0.54 kg/m2 for body mass index (BMI) and -2.9 to -25.6% for the prevalence of overweight/obesity. Interventions initiated in infancy (under two years) had a positive impact on obesity related behaviours (e.g. diet quality) but few measured the longer-term impact on healthy weight gain. Findings amongst pre-schoolers (3–5 years) were mixed, with the more successful interventions requiring high levels of parental engagement, use of behaviour change techniques, a focus on skill building and links to community resources. Less than 10% of studies were high quality. Future studies should focus on improving study quality, including follow-up of longer-term anthropometric outcomes, assessments of cost effectiveness, acceptability in target populations and potential for implementation in routine service delivery.

Conclusion
There is an urgent need for further research on effective obesity prevention interventions for Indigenous children. The findings from the growing body of intervention research focusing on obesity prevention amongst young children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families suggest intervention effects are modest but promising. Further high quality studies with longer term follow up are required.

'Better health choices' by telephone: a feasibility trial of improving diet and physical activity in people diagnosed with psychotic disorders

The study objective was to evaluate the feasibility of a telephone delivered intervention consisting of motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioural strategies aimed at improving diet and physical activity in people diagnosed with psychotic disorders. Twenty participants diagnosed with a non-acute psychotic disorder were recruited. The intervention consisted of eight telephone delivered sessions targeting fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption and leisure screen time, as well as smoking and alcohol use (as appropriate). F&V frequency and variety, and overall diet quality (measured by the Australian Recommended Food Score, ARFS), leisure screen time, overall sitting and walking time, smoking, alcohol consumption, mood, quality of life, and global functioning were examined before and 4-weeks post-treatment. Nineteen participants (95%) completed all intervention sessions, and 17 (85%) completed follow-up assessments. Significant increases from baseline to post-treatment were seen in ARFS fruit, vegetable and overall diet quality scores, quality of life and global functioning. Significant reductions in leisure screen time and overall sitting time were also seen. Results indicated that a telephone delivered intervention targeting key cardiovascular disease risk behaviours appears to be feasible and relatively effective in the short-term for people diagnosed with psychosis. A randomized controlled trial is warranted to replicate and extend these findings.

The impact of whole-of-diet interventions on depression and anxiety: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Non-pharmacological approaches to the treatment of depression and anxiety are of increasing importance, with emerging evidence supporting a role for lifestyle factors in the development of these disorders. Observational evidence supports a relationship between habitual diet quality and depression. Less is known about the causative effects of diet on mental health outcomes. Therefore a systematic review was undertaken of randomised controlled trials of dietary interventions that used depression and/or anxiety outcomes and sought to identify characteristics of programme success.