SETTING Rural settings of Sidama Zone in southern Ethiopia. OBJECTIVE To investigate the association between exposure to biomass fuel smoke and tuberculosis (TB). DESIGN A matched case control study in which cases were adult smear-positive pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) patients on DOTS-based treatment at rural health institutions. Age-matched controls were recruited from the community. RES...

The increasing awareness that there are limits to the availability of nonrenewable resources, as well as that there are limits to the biosphere’s ability to absorb wastes, are at the basis of the growing interest about Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) technology, with particular regards to their application to wastes treatment. MFCs, in fact, couple the direct electric power production to the degrad...

This paper describes the application of innovative hydrothermal technology on local municipal solid waste (MSW) to produce low chlorine content solid co-firing fuel with coal. Raw MSW was treated at temperatures ranging from 210 to 235°C with 30 to 90 minutes holding period. The process yielded slump products which were then naturally dried to 5% moisture content, resulted in dry products with ...

This paper describes results of FTM–West model solutions for a set of hypothetical future fuel treatment scenarios, which include stand-density-index (SDI) and thin-from-below (TFB) treatment regimes at alternative levels of harvest administrative fees or subsidies. The paper briefly describes estimates of harvestable wood (upper bounds) and acreage treatable under the different thinning regime...

The primary theme of this study is the cost-effectiveness of fuel treatments at multiple scales of investment. We focused on the nexus of fuel management and suppression response planning, designing spatial fuel treatment strategies to incorporate landscape features that provide control opportunities that are relevant to fire operations. Our analysis explored the frequency and magnitude of fire...

Understanding the longevity of fuel treatments in terms of their ability to maintain fire behavior and effects within a desired range is an important question. The objective of this study was to determine how fuels, forest structure, and predicted fire behavior changed 7-years after initial treatments. Three different treatments: mechanical only, mechanical plus fire, and prescribed fire only, ...

A 48-h period of fasting inhibits estrous cycles in Syrian hamsters, and fasting-induced anestrus can be prevented by intracerebroventricular treatment with leptin during the fasting period. In the present experiment, the effects of intracerebroventricular leptin were blocked by systemic treatment with inhibitors of metabolic fuel oxidation. Leptin was infused continuously into the lateral vent...

reduction of exhaust emissions is a major research task in diesel engine development in view of increasing concerns regarding environmental protection and stringent exhaust gas regulations. simultaneousreduction of nox emissions and particulate matter is quite difficult due to the soot/nox trade-off and isoften accompanied by fuel consumption penalties. towards this aim, automotive engineers ha...