Universidad Antonio Nariño

About: Universidad Antonio Nariño is a education organization based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Medicine & Chemistry. The organization has 7 authors who have published 12 publications receiving 4 citations.

Elimination of contaminants of emerging concern and their environmental risk in world-real municipal wastewaters by electrochemical advanced oxidation processes

Abstract: In this study, sixteen contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), present in the effluent of the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) “Salitre” (Bogotá – Colombia), were subjected to several electrochemical advanced oxidation processes (EAOPs). Thus, the elimination of the pharmaceuticals diclofenac, carbamazepine, venlafaxine, Irbesartan, losartan, metronidazole, sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim, clindamycin, norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, clarithromycin, erythromycin, and azithromycin, the illicit drug cocaine, and its major metabolite benzoylecgonine was assessed by electro-Fenton (EF), photo-electro-Fenton (PEF), and photo-electro-Fenton in the presence of added oxalic acid (PEFox). A boron-doped diamond and a gas diffusion electrode were used as anode and cathode. After 1 h of treatment, the total concentration of CECs decreased by 36% when PEFox was applied. In the case of EF and PEF, the degradation percentages were lower (29% and 19%, respectively). The highest degradation by using PEFox was due to the enhanced availability of soluble iron ions by forming Fe(III)-oxalate complexes at near-neutral pH values. This allows the Fenton reaction to yield additional HO• radicals. Finally, the effect of EAOPs to reduce the environmental risk associated with the CECs in the WWTP was evaluated. The best system, PEFox, lowered by more than ten times the environmental hazard of the tested CECs in the effluent. This work shows the high potential of PEFox, as tertiary treatment, to eliminate emerging pollutants and reduce their risk in effluents from WWTP. In this system, the added oxalic acid, which has a biodegradable character, could be eliminated in a subsequent biological step. • The Photo-electro-Fenton process led to high removal of emerging pollutants present in the wastewater of Bogotá–Colombia. • UV light action increased the concentration of some pollutants. • Presence of oxalic acid considerably enhanced the degradation efficiency. • Photo-electro-Fenton with oxalic acid lowered by more than ten times the environmental hazard of the tested pollutants.

ViCTool: An open-source tool for vegetation indices computation of aerial raster images using python GDAL 

Abstract: <p>For precision agriculture (PA) applications that use aerial platforms, researchers are likely to be interested in extracting, study and understanding biophysical and structural properties in a spatio-temporal manner by using remotely sensed imagery to infer variations of vegetation biomass and/or plant vigor, irrigation strategies, nutrient use efficiency, stress, disease identification, among others. This requires measuring spectral responses of the crop at specific wavelengths by using, for instance, Vegetation Indices (VI). However, for the analysis of this spectral response and its heterogeneity and spatial variability, a large amount of aerial imagery (data) must be collected and processed using a photogrammetry software. Data extraction is often performed in a Geographic Information System (GIS) software and then analyzed using (in general) statistical software. On the one hand, a GIS is used for the collection of resources to manipulate, analyze, and display all forms of geographically referenced information. In this regard, Quantum GIS (QGIS) is one of the most well-known open-source software used which provides an integration of geoprocessing tools from a variety of different software libraries. QGIS is widely used to obtain VI computations through the raster calculator, although, this computation is performed with band rasters manually provided by the user; one by one, which is time-consuming. On the other hand, QGIS provides a Python interface to efficiently exploit the capabilities of a GIS to create similar plugins, but this can be a non-trivial task. In this work, we developed a specific and QGIS independent semi-automatic tool called <strong>ViCTool (Vegetation index Computation Tool) </strong>as a free open-source software (FOSS) for large amount of data extraction to derive VIs from aerial raster images in a certain region of interest. This tool has the option of extracting several multispectral and RGB VIs employing Blue, Green, Red, NIR, LWIR, or Red edge bands. The user must provide the input folder path containing one or more raster band folders, the shapefile with the regions of Interests, an output path to store the output VI rasters, and the file containing the VI computations. ViCTool was developed using Python PyQT for designing the User Interface (UI) and Python GDAL for raster processing to simplify and speed up the process of calculating a large amount of data intuitively.</p>

Characterization and contextualization of transgender women population and condom use in the HIV syndemic framework: Scoping review

Abstract: Objective: To characterize and contextualize condom use in the transgender women (TW) population utilizing the HIV syndemic framework. Methods: Studies reported condom-use frequency and syndemic factors associated with HIV risk in the TW population were searched in databases. We followed the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews checklist. Results: Social factors have a proven relationship with using condoms and HIV among TW. Syndemic factors, and how some of them reinforce others, deserve a specific analysis to develop strategies to face HIV among TW. Conclusions: Analyzing a syndemic perspective allows to generate specific health intervention and prevention policies to protect the TW.