Sustainable water cycle design for urban areas.

This paper presents the argument that the environmental, social and economic benefits of decentralised systems are such that they should present a serious alternative to centralised systems in existing and future planned urban developments. It will be shown that the combination of technical, social and regulatory factors that influenced the popularity of centralised systems has altered, and that decentralised systems should now be considered as well. The environmental, social and economic advantages and disadvantages of several sustainable watercycle case studies are examined and compared with centralised systems. The studies examined will go from large scale down to designs suitable for typical residential houses on standard urban blocks.

[Sore throat: an analysis of medical management in a community clinic].

The diagnostic approach to sore throat and its treatment by 7 doctors was studied in 692 community clinic patients. Redness of the throat, the commonest clinical feature in all age groups, was present in 88%. The prevalence of other clinical findings varied in the different age groups. 54% of the patients, most of whom were less than 13 years old, were treated initially with antibiotics. Most of the physicians prescribed penicillin V (average, 8.4 days). From 11 (13%) of the throat cultures taken from children under the age of 4, beta hemolytic streptococci (BHS) were grown. Based on throat cultures, antibiotics had been given unnecessarily in 53% of those in whom it was initially prescribed, and wrongly withheld in 10% of those who initially did not receive them. This study reveals an urgent need for a rapid and accurate method of detecting BHS in patients with sore throat.