Evaluating citizens concern about the quality of their drinking water

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Contu ◽  
M. Carlini ◽  
A. Maccioni ◽  
P. Meloni ◽  
M. Schintu
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
General Public ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
General Information ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Experimental Protocol ◽  
Online Queries

Citizens' concern about the quality of their drinking water stems especially from poor or wrong information. A tool allowing consumers to consult the Internet for the “label characteristics” of the tap water they are drinking, and to look for general information on water for human consumption has been developed. The tool allows to carry out online queries contributing to optimising management and using the water resource. Thanks to the implementation of an experimental protocol in secondary schools in Sardinia (Italy), it has been possible to test the efficacy of the tool by adapting its content to a large scale of users and to carry out a didactic-educational drill on the theme of water resources. To assess the weight of the aesthetics (taste, colour, and odour) in determining the degree of acceptability of the water, two tests were carried on both resident and non-resident assessors. This study allowed to survey the perception of the general public and the concerns arising from them.

scholarly journals Assessment of bacteriological quality of drinking water from various sources in Amritsar district of northern India

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (08) ◽  
pp. 844-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sita Malhotra ◽  
Shailpreet K Sidhu ◽  
Pushpa Devi
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Safe Water ◽  
Bacteriological Quality ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Quality Of Water ◽  
The Government ◽  
High Level

Introduction: Safe water is a precondition for health and development and is a basic human right, yet it is still denied to hundreds of millions of people throughout the developing world. Water-related diseases caused by insufficient safe water supplies, coupled with poor sanitation and hygiene, cause 3.4 million deaths a year, mostly in children. Methodology: The present study was conducted on 1,317 drinking water samples from various water sources in Amritsar district in northern India. All the samples were analyzed to assess bacteriological quality of water for presumptive coliform count by the multiple tube test. Results: A total of 42.9% (565/1,317) samples from various sources were found to be unfit for human consumption. Of the total 565 unsatisfactory samples, 253 were from submersible pumps, 197 were from taps of piped supply (domestic/public), 79 were from hand pumps, and 36 were from various other sources A significantly high level of contamination was observed in samples collected from submersible pumps (47.6%) and water tanks (47.3%), as these sources of water are more exposed and liable to contamination. Conclusions: Despite continuous efforts by the government, civil society, and the international community, over a billion people still do not have access to improved water resources. Bacteriological assessment of all sources of drinking should be planned and conducted on regular basis to prevent waterborne dissemination of diseases.

scholarly journals Curriculum Learning for Natural Answer Generation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cao Liu ◽  
Shizhu He ◽  
Kang Liu ◽  
Jun Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Full Advantage ◽  
Real World ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Question Answering ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Basic Model ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Learning Data

By reason of being able to obtain natural language responses, natural answers are more favored in real-world Question Answering (QA) systems. Generative models learn to automatically generate natural answers from large-scale question answer pairs (QA-pairs). However, they are suffering from the uncontrollable and uneven quality of QA-pairs crawled from the Internet. To address this problem, we propose a curriculum learning based framework for natural answer generation (CL-NAG), which is able to take full advantage of the valuable learning data from a noisy and uneven-quality corpus. Specifically, we employ two practical measures to automatically measure the quality (complexity) of QA-pairs. Based on the measurements, CL-NAG firstly utilizes simple and low-quality QA-pairs to learn a basic model, and then gradually learns to produce better answers with richer contents and more complete syntaxes based on more complex and higher-quality QA-pairs. In this way, all valuable information in the noisy and uneven-quality corpus could be fully exploited. Experiments demonstrate that CL-NAG outperforms the state-of-the-arts, which increases 6.8% and 8.7% in the accuracy for simple and complex questions, respectively.

scholarly journals Pop-Science on the Internet: How ULISSE Makes the Ends Meet

10.28945/2459 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Cerrato
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
General Public ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
High Technology ◽  
The Internet ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
Set Up

There is an increasing demand for what we can call pop-science that is pertinent scientific information dedicated to the non-specialists. This demand comes both from professional categories and the general public. Simultaneously in the scientific community there is an increasing consciousness that diffusion of the scientific information is an asset the scientific community cannot afford to overlook. The Internet is a perfect tool to meet this demand. It reaches a large and ever-increasing number of people and permits an interactive and detailed exchange of information. As an experiment of how to combine high quality services and the information technology, we have set up Ulisse - In the net of science (http://ulisse.sissa.it), an innovative Italian project for the popularisation of science via the Internet. Its main purpose is to establish a connection between scientists and the general public. Ulisse is based on three major characteristics: a) high technology to create an efficient and friendly system, b) customisation of the services, c) a network of scientists, which guaranteed the quality of the materials.

scholarly journals Low-Pressure Membrane for Water Treatment Applications

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Huda AlFannakh ◽  
Heba Abdallah ◽  
S. S. Ibrahim ◽  
Basma Souayeh
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Properties ◽  
Tensile Strength ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Humic Acid ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Permeate Flux ◽  
Membrane Performance ◽  
Polyethersulfone Membrane ◽  
Contaminated Drinking Water

Three ultrafiltration membranes were prepared using phase separation techniques. The membranes were characterized by scan electron microscope, porosity, pore size distribution measurement, and mechanical properties. The membrane performance was carried out using synthetic solutions from humic acid and tap water to express the contaminated drinking water. The polyvinylidene difluoride (M2) has the highest tensile strength 33.2 MPa with elongation of 52.3%, while polyacrylonitrile (M3) has the lowest mechanical properties, tensile strength 16.4 MPa with elongation of 42.7%. Polyethersulfone membrane (M1) provides the highest removal of humic acid, which was 99.5, 98.8, and 98.2% using feed concentrations 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 g/l, respectively, while M3 provides the highest permeate flux which was 250, 234.4, and 201.4 l/m2 h using feed concentrations 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 g/l, respectively. Analysis of water samples indicates that the prepared membranes can be used to treat the contaminated drinking water which produced the high quality of drinking water after treatment.

Bacterial quality of drinking water sources and antimicrobial resistance profile of Enterobacteriaceae in Bahir Dar city, Ethiopia

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayeh Abera ◽  
Mulugeta Kibret ◽  
Goraw Goshu ◽  
Mulat Yimer
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Antimicrobial Resistance ◽  
Water Samples ◽  
Multiple Drug Resistance ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
World Health ◽  
Most Probable Number ◽  
Bahir Dar ◽  
Probable Number

A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the bacterial quality and antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of Enterobacteriaceae from drinking water in Bahir Dar city. A total of 140 water samples were collected in the wet and dry periods from springs (n = 4), reservoirs (n = 10) and private tap water at households (n = 126). Bacteriological analysis of water was conducted using multiple tube method. Overall, 21.4%, 18.6% and 17.8% of drinking water samples had total coliforms (TC), faecal coliforms (FC) and Escherichia coli, respectively. All spring water samples and 29.2% of private tap water had the highest TC load (18 most probable number/100 mL, 95% CI: 100). For FC, 81.4% of the drinking water supplies tested complied with both World Health Organization and Ethiopian Standards. High levels of resistance (98–100%) were observed for ampicillin by Enterobacteriaceae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. All P. aeruginosa isolates and 20 (66.7%) of E. coli revealed multiple drug resistance. Enterobacteriaceae and P. aeruginosa isolates exhibited high levels of antimicrobial resistance. The bacterial quality of drinking water in Bahir Dar city was poor. Microbial surveillance and monitoring with periodic assessment on physical integrity of the water pipelines need to be undertaken.

scholarly journals An evaluation of YouTube in disseminating dementia knowledge to older Chinese in Britain

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (10) ◽  
pp. 1575-1575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin K.P. Woo
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Health Information ◽  
General Public ◽  
Chinese Immigrants ◽  
Normal Aging ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Youtube Videos ◽  
Older Chinese

Chinese immigrants may dismiss pathological decline of dementia as part of normal aging (Woo and Mehta, 2017). While the internet may be a source of health information for Chinese immigrants, the quality of online dementia information was lower in Chinese than in English (Tsiang and Woo, 2017). Recent studies have demonstrated feasibility of YouTube videos in disseminating health information to the Chinese-speaking general public (Lam et al., 2017; Zheng and Woo, 2017). Therefore, we evaluated the performance of YouTube in targeting Chinese-speaking individuals in Britain who are in the high risk age group (e.g. aged 55 years and above) of developing dementia.

Disinfection of bacteria in water systems by using electrolytically generated copper:silver and reduced levels of free chlorine

1990 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moyasar T. Yahya ◽  
Lee K. Landeen ◽  
Maria C. Messina ◽  
Susan M. Kutz ◽  
Richard Schulze ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Total Coliform ◽  
Water Systems ◽  
Free Chlorine ◽  
Drinking Water Standards ◽  
Indoor And Outdoor

As an alternative disinfectant to chlorination, electrolytically generated copper:silver (400 and 40 μg/L copper and silver, respectively) with and without free chlorine (0.3 mg/L) was evaluated over a period of 4 weeks in indoor and outdoor water systems (100 L tap water with natural body flora and urine). Numbers of total coliform, pseudomonas, and staphylococci were all less than drinking water standards in systems treated with copper:silver and free chlorine and systems treated with free chlorine alone (1.0 mg/L). No significant differences (p ≤ 0.05) in bacterial numbers were observed between systems with copper:silver and free chlorine and those with free chlorine alone. Overall, free-chlorine treatments (0.3 or 1.0 mg/L) showed significantly lower heterotrophic plate numbers than those without free chlorine. When challenged with a natural Staphylococcus sp. isolate, water with copper:silver and free chlorine had a 2.4 log10 reduction in bacterial numbers within 2 min, while free chlorine alone or copper:silver alone showed 1.5 and 0.03 log10 reductions, respectively. Addition of copper:silver to water systems may allow the concentration of free chlorine to be reduced while still providing comparable sanitary quality of the water. Key words: disinfection, water, copper, silver, chlorine.

scholarly journals The health-related microbiological quality of bottled drinking water sold in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

2006 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel R. Kassenga
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Heterotrophic Bacteria ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Microbiological Quality ◽  
Total Coliform ◽  
Dar Es Salaam ◽  
Bottled Water ◽  
Faecal Coliform ◽  
Coliform Bacteria

The consumption of bottled and plastic-bagged drinking water in Tanzania has increased largely because of the deteriorating quality of tap water. It is uncertain whether these water products are safe for drinking. In this study, the microbiological quality of bottled and plastic-bagged drinking water sold in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was investigated. One hundred and thirty samples representing 13 brands of bottled water collected from shops, supermarkets and street vendors were analysed for total coliform and faecal coliform organisms as well as heterotrophic bacteria. These were compared with 61 samples of tap water. Heterotrophic bacteria were detected in 92% of the bottled water samples analysed. Total and faecal coliform bacteria were present in 4.6% and 3.6%, respectively, of samples analysed with a tendency for higher contamination rates in plastic-bagged drinking water. Microbiological quality of tap water was found to be worse compared with bottled water, with 49.2% and 26.2% of sampling points showing the presence of total coliform and faecal coliform organisms, respectively. The results suggest caution and vigilance to avert outbreaks of waterborne diseases from these types of drinking water.

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