Fake news and misinformation have been increasingly used to manipulate popular opinion and influence political processes. To better understand fake news, how they are propagated, and how to counter their effect, it is necessary to first identify them. Recently, approaches have been proposed to automatically classify articles as fake based on their content. An important challenge for these approaches comes from the dynamic nature of news: as new political events are covered, topics and discourse constantly change and thus, a classifier trained using content from articles published at a given time is likely to become ineffective in the future. To address this challenge, we propose a topic-agnostic (TAG) classification strategy that uses linguistic and web-markup features to identify fake news pages. We report experimental results using multiple data sets which show that our approach attains high accuracy in the identification of fake news, even as topics evolve over time.

The lower intra-abdominal adiposity could have more beneficial effects in a short term, since it can be associated with a better insulin sensitivity and lipid profile, than the small reduction in femur and lumbar vertebra density. However, it has to be considered the incremental effect of this reduction along the aging process.

OBJECTIVES:A low ratio of omega-6/omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids is associated with healthy bone properties. However, fatty diets can induce obesity. Our objective was to evaluate intra-abdominal adiposity, insulin, and bone growth in rats fed a high-fat diet containing low ratios of omega-6/omega-3 provided in canola oil.METHODS:After weaning, rats were grouped and fed either a control diet (7S), a high-fat diet containing soybean oil (19S) or a high-fat diet of canola oil (19C) until they were 60 days old. Differences were considered to be significant if p<0.05.RESULTS:After 60 days, the 19S and 19C groups showed more energy intake, body density growth and intra-abdominal fat mass. However, the 19S group had a higher area (200%) and a lower number (44%) of adipocytes, while the 7S and 19C groups did not differ. The serum concentrations of glucose and insulin and the insulin resistance index were significantly increased in the 19C group (15%, 56%, and 78%, respectively) compared to the 7S group. Bone measurements of the 19S and 19C groups showed a higher femur mass (25%) and a higher lumbar vertebrae mass (11%) and length (5%). Computed tomography analysis revealed more radiodensity in the proximal femoral epiphysis and lumbar vertebrae of 19C group compared to the 7S and 19S groups.CONCLUSIONS:Our results suggest that the amount and source of fat used in the diet after weaning increase body growth and fat depots and affect insulin resistance and, consequently, bone health.

Resumo: Sendo o saneamento básico um serviço de infraestrutura fundamental na promoção da saúde pública em uma localidade, este trabalho foi realizado com o objetivo de relacionar os impactos na saúde da população e os custos gerados, devido à ineficiência do serviço de saneamento ambiental no Brasil. Destacam-se para a elaboração desse estudo duas etapas: 1) análise do número de casos, por região geográfica, de 10 dentre as principais doenças de veiculação hídrica no período de 2001 a 2010; e 2) comparação entre o número de casos das mesmas doenças com as informações de gastos/investimentos em saúde e saneamento e crescimento populacional no mesmo período. Pode-se verificar que o número de casos ao longo dos anos não sofreu retrocesso significativo, como seria de se esperar. Isso pode ser justificado pela falta de investimentos adequados em saneamento gerando, portanto, uma má prestação dos serviços de coleta e tratamento de esgoto sanitário, de gestão de resíduos sólidos urbanos, de manejo de águas pluviais urbanas e de abastecimento público de água. A ineficiência destes serviços implica diretamente no aumento dos gastos com a saúde pública para tratar os sintomas das doenças de veiculação hídrica, gerando um modelo de gestão insatisfatório. Assim, o estudo afirma a importância do saneamento, como forma preventiva e eficaz, na melhoria dos índices de saúde pública no Brasil. Palavras-chave: Saneamento, Saúde pública, Esgoto sanitário, Abastecimento de água. Preliminary evaluate of inefficiency of sanitation services effects in brazilian public health Abstract: Sanitation is a fundamental infrastructure service of public health promotion in a community. This article demonstrates the impacts of the lack of sanitation services on its population's health considering the costs involved in Brazil. This study is divided in two segments: 1) analysis of the number of cases by geographic region of the top 10 most expressive waterborne diseases from 2001 to 2010; and 2) comparison between the number of cases of the same diseases with the spending/investments information on health and sanitation according government sources, considering population growth in same period. The results indicate that the number of cases over the years did not suffer a significant setback as expected. This situation can be explained by the lack of adequate investment in sanitation, expressed by poor services in sewage and solid waste treatments, faulty management of urban rainwater and deficient monitoring and maintenance of public water supply installations. The inefficiency of these services directly affects the increase on health spending from waterborne diseases treatments, consequently being an unsatisfactory management model. Therefore, this study affirms the importance of sanitation as a preventive and effective way on the improvement of public health rates in Brazil.

Obesity and osteoporosis may have their origins in early postnatal life. This study was designed to evaluate whether flaxseed flour use during lactation period bears effect on body adiposity and skeletal structure of male rat pups at weaning. At birth, male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to control and experimental (FF) groups, whose dams were treated with control or flaxseed flour diet, respectively, during lactation. At 21 days of age, pups were weaned to assess body mass, length and composition by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. The animals were then sacrificed to carry out analysis of serum profile, intra-abdominal adipocyte morphology and femur characteristics. Differences were considered significant when P<0.05. The FF group displayed the following characteristics (P<0.05): higher body mass, length, bone mineral content, bone area and concentrations of osteoprotegerin, osteocalcin and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol; higher levels of stearic, α-linolenic, eicosapentaenoic and docosapentaenoic acids and lower levels of arachidonic acid and cholesterol; smaller adipocyte area; and higher mass, epiphysis distance, diaphysis width, maximal load, break load, resilience and stiffness of femur. Flaxseed flour intake during lactation period promoted adipocyte hypertrophy down-regulation and contributed to pup bone quality at weaning.

The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of flaxseed flour in the intake on adiposity and femur structure of the lactating rats during the post-weaning period. After weaning, the lactating rats were divided into control (C, n = 6) and experimental (F, n = 6) groups treated with a diet containing flaxseed flour. Serum hormone and fatty acids composition, morphology of intra-abdominal adipocytes, computed tomography and biomechanical analyses of femur were determined. Food intake, body mass and hormone analysis have shown similar results. The F group showed the following (p < 0.05): lower arachidonic acid (-60%), total polyunsaturated fatty acids (-30%) and retroperitoneal adipocytes (-36%) area. Higher radiodensity of femoral head region (+29%) and higher maximum force (+18%), breaking strength (+18%) and rigidity (+31%). Fatty acid composition of flaxseed flour decreased the area of adipocytes and improved the bone quality, which may be associated with lower serum levels of arachidonic acid levels, during the post-weaning period.

Em Minas Gerais, a crise hídrica dos últimos anos corroborou a necessidade de adoção de tecnologias eficientes para a diminuição dos desperdícios e o reuso de água. Vistas as experiências de reuso em vários países, o objetivo deste estudo é analisar o uso potencial de esgoto doméstico tratado na agricultura irrigada na bacia hidrográfica do rio Paracatu, região com Declarações de Área de Conflito – DAC formalizadas. A metodologia consistiu em: avaliar os usos e comparar o volume de água bruta demandado para irrigação com o volume gerado no tratamento de efluentes na bacia do rio Paracatu; estimar o custo do transporte do efluente para reuso, por caminhão pipa; e comparar o valor de cobrança pelo uso dos recursos hídricos com o custo estimado do transporte de água de reuso. A demanda de água bruta para a irrigação é de aproximadamente 182 x 106 m3/ano e o volume de água de esgotos tratados é de 8,36 x 106 m3/ano, cerca de 4,6% da demanda para fins de irrigação. A comparação entre o valor de cobrança da água bruta outorgada e o custo estimado do transporte de água, aponta para uma relação entre 12 e 2%.

Flaxseed flour has been described as an excellent alpha-linolenic acid source. This study was designed to evaluate the effects of flaxseed flour on body adiposity and bone health in rats fed a flaxseed flour diet during lactation until 90 days. At birth, male Wistar rats were randomly assigned to control (C) and experimental (FF) groups, whose dams were treated with a control or flaxseed flour diet, respectively, during lactation. At 21 days, pups were weaned and fed a control and experimental diet until 90 days. Food intake, body mass and length were evaluated during a 21-90 day period. At 90 days, composition by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, serum hormonal profile, intra-abdominal fat mass, and lumbar vertebra and femur analyses was determined. Differences were deemed significant at p < 0.05. The FF group displayed the following (P < 0.05): a higher total lean mass (+7%), a lower total (-16%) and intra-abdominal (-24%) fat mass, a smaller adipocyte area (-30%), a higher femoral mass (+5%), bone mineral density (+5%) and radiodensity (+20%), and a higher maximum force (+10%) and breaking strength (+11%). The flaxseed flour diet displayed functional properties related to body growth maintenance associated with a lower risk of developing metabolic alterations, obesity and bone fragility.