National Cancer Informatics Program — NCIP PART 3. MINIMIZING HEALTH RISKS 8. Wastewater Treatment for Pathogen Removal and Nutrient Conservation: Suitable Systems for Use in Developing Countries: International Development Research Centre Document(s) 12 of 23 Blanca Jiménez, Duncan Mara, Richard Carr and François Brissaud1 This chapter summarizes the main characteristics of wastewater treatment processes, especially those suitable for use in developing countries, from the perspective of their potential to produce an effluent suitable for safe agricultural irrigation; it thus concentrates on pathogen removal and nutrient conservation. Wastewater treatment processes are divided into two principal categories: ‘natural’ systems which do not rely on the consumption of large amounts of electrical energy and which are therefore more suitable for use in developing countries; and conventional electromechanical systems which are wholly energy-dependent and which, if used in low income regions, require high levels of financial investment for their construction and skilled manpower for their successful operation and maintenance. Table 8.1 Concentrations of micro-organisms in wastewater and wastewater sludge in different countries
BusinessDay - Get SA’s gambling house in order JUDGE NB Tuchten's judgment in the North Gauteng High Court last week, declaring online gaming illegal, is a major victory for SA's gaming authorities. For the past six years, online casino group Piggs Peak has maintained that because its online casino is operated outside SA, it is not breaking any laws. However, Judge Tuchten ruled that section 11 of the National Gambling Act prohibits gaming as a whole, and it does not matter that the casino is based outside the country. While Piggs Peak plans to appeal the judgment, the groundbreaking ruling has forced the group and its rival, Silversands, to suspend the online services they offer to South Africans until their appeal has been heard. That is exactly what the Gauteng and national gambling boards have been fighting for all these years. However, it may prove to be a pyrrhic victory, as the enforcement of prohibition fails to grasp the very prickly nettle that is online gambling.
NCIP Launch Meeting Attendees — NCIP The NCIP Open-Development Initiative The NCIP is committed to improving biomedical informatics through broad community participation. To this end, NCIP has deposited a large volume of open-source code for biomedical informatics software applications to GitHub , a widely used code-hosting site. GitHub allows community developers to easily access and modify the code for applications of interest, and to contribute these modifications back to the primary repository for broader community dissemination. Most of these projects are available under the standard BSD 3-clause license to encourage both open-source and commercially viable derivatives of these projects. The NCI Biomedical Informatics Blog The NCI Biomedical Informatics Blog provides a forum for the exploration of ideas and knowledge sharing across the NCI and throughout the wider biomedical-informatics and cancer-research community. Wikis Events Archive > News Publications
Object moved Contamination of soil with helminth eggs in the samples of fields, kitchen gardens, yards and composts in rural areas of Lodz district (Poland) was investigated. In this study, helminth eggs were found in 60–100 % of field samples, in 20–100 % of yards samples, in 0–20 % of kitchen gardens samples and in 10–100 % of composts. The highest average density of helminth eggs in 100 g of soil was detected in composts (44.0), then fields (28.5) and yards (18.0). In samples taken from kitchen gardens the average density of eggs was 0.4/100/g of soil. These results showed a considerable infestation of soil with geohelminth eggs of the examined rural areas of Lodz district which is a potential source of antropozoonosis.
Talking to the Police All the Time I started writing this entry while thinking about the "if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear" fallacy. What do you say to someone who says that they have nothing to hide, or that some information about them is worthless anyway, so they don't care about some violation of their privacy? What do you say to a police officer who says that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear by answering questions? It implies that if you refuse to answer then you're probably "not innocent". That "pleading the 5th" is now used as a joke to admit guilt in light banter, is a sign of how pervasive the fallacy has become. Those kind of statements expose naïveté or, if intended as a manipulative statement, perversity. You may buy some time by mentioning anecdotes such as the man falsely accused of arson because by coincidence, he bought certain things in a store at a certain time (betrayed by his grocery loyalty card) [1]. [6] Mark Nestmann (2009) Stupid Facebook Tricks.
SCOTUS: Individual mandate is a tax, constitutional In a stunning blow to opponents of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court today ruled in a 5 to 4 vote that the most reviled portion of the health reform law – the so-called individual mandate requiring all Americans to buy health insurance or face a fine – is constitutional, since it falls within the power of Congress to impose a tax. In what was a surprise to many court watchers, the deciding vote to uphold the individual mandate came from Chief Justice John Roberts, instead of the more center-leaning Justice Anthony Kennedy. In rendering the decision the court did find the individual mandate to be unconstitutional when viewed through the lens of the Interstate Commerce clause, but that finding became moot once five of the jurists concluded that the fine levied against those individuals who refused to comply is a tax. "The Affordable Care Act's requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax.
Removal of helminth eggs and fecal colifor... [Water Sci Technol. 2002 Twittersquatting. « Vendorprisey I’m not a lawyer. This is just my musing, not any sort of formal legal advice. I was reviewing answers to my Software and Law survey last night when I saw a tweet where someone was wondering how to claim the company name back from a Twitter user. The user doesn’t work for the company and was apparently bad mouthing the company. Several years ago I wrote an LLM paper on domain names. Well, what about cybersquatting in Twitter? Take this case: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. With domain names, there is a procedure. ICANN has a dispute resolution policy (UDRP), and there is also specific anti-cybersquatting legislation (ACPA) in the US, and there is case law and specific statute in other countries about domain name disputes. Is a Twitter handle a domain name? Twitter has responsibilities to trademark holders. The lawyers are stirring. Twitter has become a cesspool of trademark infringement and copyright infringement claims. According to this post from Steve Poland they still have a lot to learn. 1. 2. 3.
patient generated data My son’s high school graduation trumped going to D.C. this week, so I couldn’t atend the Health Data Initiative Forum or ONC’s Patient Generated Data Public Forum. Yesterday I was able to hear some presentation at the ONC panel. There’s a white paper by RTI and written testimony of the Patient Generated Data (PGD) speakers here. Anyone pumped about PGD wants to change the culture of care AND disrupt electronic record design & development. I’ve written before about Data Generación! – the complement to sharing all data in the EHR….allowing direct contribution by patients & families. One of the best comments was by Nikolai Kirienko, Project Director at Crohnology.MD, a Project Design effort at the University of California, Berkeley: We, the people providers call patients, most often navigate care by voice. Nikolai continued, “Patients are a vital source of knowledge, not always included in the medical record. ONC did a nice job at this early stage. Like this: Like Loading...
Helminth eggs removal by microscreening fo... [Water Sci Technol. 2008 Congress OKs Port Security Bill WASHINGTON — Congress early this morning approved and sent to President Bush a bill aimed at shoring up anti-terrorism defenses at U.S. ports. The port security measure, which would bring millions of federal dollars to the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex and other harbors, became a GOP priority after a political flap earlier this year over a Dubai company's ill-fated attempt to manage facilities at several U.S. ports. The measure, which Bush is expected to sign, authorizes $400 million a year in federal grants to ports for the next five years, requires minimum security standards for the nearly 11 million cargo containers that enter U.S. ports each year and establishes a pilot program at three foreign ports to scan all U.S.-bound cargo. It also sets up security training for waterfront workers and mandates radiation detectors at major ports by the end of next year. And it establishes deadlines for special identification cards to be issued to port workers after background checks. Rep.