Chemical speciation of selected toxic metals and multivariate statistical techniques used to assess water quality of tropical Mexican Lake Chapala.

Mexican Lake Chapala is used as water supply for human consumption. Consequently, water quality of this lake is of paramount importance for the lake's wellbeing. The contribution presented in this paper investigates monitoring and assessment of lake water quality using water quality index (WQI), metal chemical speciation, and multivariate statistical techniques. Descriptive statistics shows total metal concentrations undetected conferring the lake a healthy status. Dissolved Cd and Pb exceed criterion continuous concentration limit, whereas Zn is below this limit indicating that water quality is satisfactory for aquatic life. However, WQI indicates poor water quality attributed to failure of conductivity, total solids, nitrogen, and phosphates, due to industrial and agro-industrial effluents. Metal speciations indicate that the presence of low concentrations of dissolved metals reflect interactions with gills of fish through metal-biotic ligand complexes affecting water quality. Positive correlations are obtained between conductivity and nitrates, indicating that agricultural activities and fertilizer runoffs increase the conductivity and that the environmental state of lake is being altered by human activities. Factors F1 (31%), F2 (19%), and F3 (11%) represent 61% of variability; F1 and F2 corroborate the pressure exerted by pollutants related with fertilizers and agrochemicals; F3 contains Zn and Pb with positive loads attributed to influx of tourist visitors. Sites S4, S5, S6, and S9 are identified as the most environmentally affected by COD, Alk*, pH, Cl-, nitrites, phosphates, and TS. Multivariate techniques permit to conclude that environmental stress of Lake Chapala is caused by variables pertaining to agrochemical, fertilizers and municipal wastes.

Flows of financial resources for health research and development in Brazil, 2000-2002.

OBJECTIVE: To map and measure the flows of financial resources for health research and development in Brazil for the years 2000-2002. METHODS: After adapting the methodology developed for the Center for Economic Policy Research, data were collected on the sources and uses of resources for health research and development. RESULTS: The annual average value of resources apportioned to health research and development was approximately 573 million US dollars. The public sector as a whole invested 417.3 million US dollars and the health department 51.1 million US dollars. Expressed in percentages, the public sector invested 4.15% of the health department's budget although the Ministry of Health assigned only 0.3% of its budget to health research in the country. The universities and the research institutes are the main users of the resources allocated to health research and development, receiving 91.6% of the total public spending, while the private sector receives a small share of around 0.69% of the total. The private sector invested 135.6 million US dollars per year, and the international organizations 20.1 million US dollars per year. CONCLUSION: Besides measuring the financial resources made available for health research and development, the results allowed the filling of gaps in national information; the identification of the flows of applied financial resources; and the testing and adaptation of the proposed methodology, generating information suitable for international comparisons.

Acondroplasia e hipocondroplasia. Datos clínicos y radiológicos / Achondroplasia and hypochondroplasia. Clinical and radiographic findings

Se revisaron los datos clínicos y radiológicos de nueve pacientes con diagnóstico de hipocondroplasia y 10 con acondroplasia. Los resultados mostraron que en tanto las manifestaciones clínicas y radiológicas en la acondroplasia con graves y constantes, las de la hipocondroplasia, aunque semejantes, son leves y muestran variedad más amplia. El perfil somatométrico en ambos grupos fué similar, si bien la desproporción fué más notoria en las acondroplásicos. Se proponen criterios para el diagnóstico de hipocondroplasia