Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Particulate matter exposure during domestic work in Nepal.

AIMS To measure particulate matter (PM) exposure of people involved in domestic work (i.e. housework by a resident, not paid work) in urban and rural Nepal, with exposure to biomass smoke in the rural areas, and to examine the performance of photometric devices in collecting these data. This paper details the results of these measurements and derives calibration factors for two photometric devices compared to gravimetric measures. METHODS Between April 2006 and February 2007, respirable dust and PM(2.5) levels were measured over a 24-h period in 490 households in a range of urban and rural settings in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. Sampling was carried out by photometric and gravimetric methods with the co-located gravimetric data used to derive a calibration factor for the photometric devices. RESULTS The time-weighted average (TWA) (24 h) respirable dust levels measured by gravimetric sampler ranged from 13 to 2600 microg m(-3) in the rural settings and 3 to 110 microg m(-3) in the urban settings. The co-located photometric and gravimetric devices indicate that the SidePak Personal Aerosol Monitor device required a calibration factor of 0.48 and 0.51 for rural and urban data, respectively, whereas the DustTrak device required a factor of 0.31 and 0.35 for rural and urban settings to correct for the particle size and density of the biomass smoke. The photometric devices provide time history data on PM concentration levels and generally indicate two distinct peaks around a morning and early evening cooking time. CONCLUSIONS Those involved in domestic work in rural Nepal are exposed to average respirable dust concentrations of approximately 1400 microg m(-3). Converted to an 8-h TWA, this equates to more than the current UK limit for respirable dust (4000 microg m(-3)). Homemakers, primarily women, spend a large proportion of their lives indoors in these high respirable dust concentrations and these exposures are likely to produce respiratory illness. Exposure can be controlled by the use of different fuel types and/or the use of flued stoves.
Chemoprevention of colorectal cancer in ulcerative colitis: digging deep in current evidence

ABSTRACT Introduction: Patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) have an increased risk of developing colorectal cancer (CRC). Surveillance colonoscopy is currently recommended for patients with long-standing extensive colitis for reducing CRC risk. Chemoprevention is an attractive complementary strategy. Areas covered: Inflammation is a major determinant of CRC risk and is potentially modifiable. Reducing inflammation is supposed to reduce CRC risk. Several medications have been evaluated in this setting: 5-ASA, thiopurines, anti-TNFα agents and ursodeoxycholic acid (UCDA) in patients with associated primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). This review offers a critical evaluation of current evidence of the potential chemopreventive effect of such medications. Expert commentary: No randomized controlled trials have been performed and the available evidence come from observational studies. Although biological plausibility supports a chemopreventive role of the aforementioned agents, the overall evidence of efficacy is weak because of several methodological limitations of the studies. Indirect epidemiological evidence, biologic plausibility and results of meta-analyses reasonably support a potential chemopreventive effect of 5-ASA. Available evidence does not support a specific chemopreventive effect of purine analogues and anti-TNFα medications, despite their efficacy in the management of inflammatory bowel disease. Data addressing UDCA and folate supplementation are inconclusive. Limited data are available for statins.
Nitric oxide regulates antagonistically phagocytic and neurite outgrowth inhibiting capacities of microglia

Traumatic injury or the pathogenesis of some neurological disorders is accompanied by inflammatory cellular mechanisms, mainly resulting from the activation of central nervous system (CNS) resident microglia. Under inflammatory conditions, microglia up‐regulate the inducible isoform of NOS (iNOS), leading to the production of high concentrations of the radical molecule nitric oxide (NO). At the onset of inflammation, high levels of microglial‐derived NO may serve as a cellular defense mechanism helping to clear the damaged tissue and combat infection of the CNS by invading pathogens. However, the excessive overproduction of NO by activated microglia has been suggested to govern the inflammation‐mediated neuronal loss causing eventually complete neurodegeneration. Here, we investigated how NO influences phagocytosis of neuronal debris by BV‐2 microglia, and how neurite outgrowth of human NT2 model neurons is affected by microglial‐derived NO. The presence of NO greatly increased microglial phagocytic capacity in a model of acute inflammation comprising lipopolysaccharide (LPS)‐activated microglia and apoptotic neurons. Chemical manipulations suggested that NO up‐regulates phagocytosis independently of the sGC/cGMP pathway. Using a transwell system, we showed that reactive microglia inhibit neurite outgrowth of human neurons via the generation of large amounts of NO over effective distances in the millimeter range. Application of a NOS blocker prevented the LPS‐induced NO production, totally reversed the inhibitory effect of microglia on neurite outgrowth, but reduced the engulfment of neuronal debris. Our results indicate that a rather simple notion of treating excessive inflammation in the CNS by NO synthesis blocking agents has to consider functionally antagonistic microglial cell responses during pharmaceutic therapy. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol 76: 566–584, 2016
Multi-level user support through adaptive hypermedia: a highly application-independent help component

Adaptive help components are an essential extension for complex systems that aim to provide usability to a broad range of users with different levels of expertise. The increasing availability of distributed hypermedia information generates new challenges for the development of adaptive help systems, including the realization of appropriate presentation, navigation, user modeling, and the integration with existing applications. After identifying the shortcomings of current hypermedia systems, we present an adaptive hypermedia help system that supports context-sensitive and user-adaptive presentation of hypermedia help variants on different levels of the user’s dialog with the application. The system supports user-controlled help adaptation and agent-based retrieval of additional hypermedia help information, and can easily be integrated into new and existing applications. This has already been realized with sample application systems in the area of medical imaging and CAD.
Mammalian NOTCH-1 Activates β1 Integrins via the Small GTPase R-Ras*

Notch is a central regulator of important cell fate decisions. Notch activation produces diverse cellular effects suggesting the presence of context-dependent control mechanisms. Genetic studies have demonstrated that Notch and integrin mutations have related phenotypes in key developmental processes such as vascular development and somitogenesis. We show that the intracellular domain of mammalian Notch-1 activates integrins without affecting integrin expression. Integrin activation is dependent on γ-secretase-mediated intramembranous cleavage of membrane-bound Notch releasing intracellular Notch that activates R-Ras, independent of CSL-transcription. Notch also reverses H-Ras and Raf-mediated integrin suppression without affecting ERK phosphorylation. Membrane-bound Notch mutants that are inefficiently cleaved or intracellular Notch mutants lacking the ankyrin repeat sequence do not activate R-Ras or integrins. Co-expression of Msx2-interacting nuclear target (MINT) protein with Notch or expression of intracellular Notch-1 truncation mutants lacking the C-terminal transactivation/PEST domain suppresses Notch transcriptional activity without affecting integrin activation. Notch ligand, Delta-like ligand-4, stimulates R-Ras-dependent α5β1 integrin-mediated adhesion, demonstrating the physiological relevance of this pathway. This new CSL-independent Notch/R-Ras pathway provides a molecular mechanism to explain Notch, integrin, and Ras cross-talk during the development of multicellular organisms.
Cognitive learning style: a review of the field dependent-field independent approach

Abstract This article reviews the relevant literature in the area of cognitive style as it impacts on individual, vocational and organizational learning. The focus is applied to one specific, well-documented dimension of cognitive style, which has been researched and written about for almost 30 years. This is the domain of field dependence-field independence: a concept that relates to the relatively persuasive way individual learners acquire, structure and process information. It concerns how people perceive, think, solve problems and learn. This approach to cognitive style or so it has been claimed, has implications for the effectiveness of individual and organisational learning. Consequently, the available literature in this area was examined to review the development of current thinking about this concept, as well as to describe and critically evaluate the implications of the outcomes of theory and research in this area for vocational education and training.
Social Capital and Community Group Participation: Examining ‘Bridging’ and ‘Bonding’ in the Context of a Healthy Living Centre in the UK

Social capital has been widely advocated as a way of understanding and building community participation in the interest of health improvement. However, the concept as proposed by Putnam, has been criticised for presenting an overly romanticised account of complex community relations. This paper presents analysis from a qualitative evaluation of a Healthy Living Centre (HLC) in the North of England, to examine the utility of the concept of social capital in this context. We found the concepts of ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ social capital were useful – though not without limitations – in helping to make sense of the complexities and contradictions in participants’ experiences of community group participation. 'Bridging' helped provide an understanding of how the decline in shared social spaces such as local shops impacts on social relationships. 'Bonding' highlighted how community group membership can have positive and negative implications for individuals and the wider community. It was found that skilled group leadership was key to strengthening bridging capital. Politically, in the UK, community participation is seen as having an essential role in social change, for example, its centrality to the coalition government's idea of the ‘Big Society’. A micro-examination of this HLC using the lens of social capital provides a valuable critical insight into community participation. It shows that this kind of initiative can be successful in building social capital, given conditions such as an appropriate setting and effective leadership. However, they cannot substitute for other kinds of investment in the physical infrastructure of a community.
The Personal Paradigms in Baure and Other Southern Arawakan Languages

This article compares the person paradigms of Baure, a Southern Arawakan language of Bolivian Amazonia, to those of other Southern Arawakan languages. It is argued that, in spite of the phonetic variations found in the Arawakan languages, the person paradigms in the various languages trace back to a single person paradigm, which is proposed here for Southern Arawakan. The person formatives were presumably free forms or clitics, which appeared in different positions to fulfill different functions. In many Arawakan languages, the same forms further grammaticalized into more bound affixes. The proto-forms had a CV structure, which is not present in all Arawakan languages today, due to phonetic erosion. The paradigm most likely distinguished 1sg, 2sg, 3sgm, 3sgf, 1pl, 2pl, and 3pl forms. In addition, there may have been an unspecified third-person subject marker.
The anatomical basis of prosopagnosia

Evidence is presented that patients with prosopagnosia have right anterior inferior occipital lesions in the region of the occipital temporal junction. Many if not all cases have an additional lesion in the left hemisphere; this is often but apparently not always symmetrical with the right hemisphere lesion. This evidence is discussed in relation to the anatomical connections of these regions and the results of experiments in animals.
Aspects of Homophobia in Italian High Schools: Students' Attitudes and Perceptions of School Climate

This study investigated Italian high school students' negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians and their exposure to aspects of homophobia in their schools. Female students viewed gay men and lesbians in similar ways. Male students, on the other hand, held more negative attitudes toward gay men than toward lesbians. Participants reported widespread experiences of homophobic behaviors in their schools, especially verbal abuse. Students' perceptions of a homophobic school climate and respondent sex predicted homophobic attitudes among participants. Homophobic school climate mediated the relationship between respondent sex (male) and homophobia against gay men.
Will They Like This? Evaluating Code Contributions with Language Models

Popular open-source software projects receive and review contributions from a diverse array of developers, many of whom have little to no prior involvement with the project. A recent survey reported that reviewers consider conformance to the project's code style to be one of the top priorities when evaluating code contributions on Github. We propose to quantitatively evaluate the existence and effects of this phenomenon. To this aim we use language models, which were shown to accurately capture stylistic aspects of code. We find that rejected change sets do contain code significantly less similar to the project than accepted ones, furthermore, the less similar change sets are more likely to be subject to thorough review. Armed with these results we further investigate whether new contributors learn to conform to the project style and find that experience is positively correlated with conformance to the project's code style.
The nature of cross-language activation in late Chinese-English bilinguals : a behavioural and event-related potential investigation

The present thesis explores the cognitive operations underlying word recognition and production of late bilingual adults in their second language (L2). Experimental psychology and electrophysiology have made a case for the activation ofthe first language (Ll) when bilingual individuals process words in L2. Evidence for cross-language activation has shaped current models of bilingual lexical processing and influenced our conception ofthe bilingual lexicon. However, previous studies have made extensive use of interlinguallexical stimuli (e.g., cognates, interlingual homographs) and/or translation equivalents to compare L1 and L2 processing in bilingual individuals. Experiments mixing stimuli from two languages create an artificial context which may differ significantly from real-life situations and bias behavioural performances toward a language-nonselective processing pattern. In the present thesis we tested bilingual participants reading, listening to, and producing words exclusively in their L2. In the first experiment series, Chinese-English bilinguals read and listened to pairs of English words, half of which shared a character repetition in their Chinese translations. Evidence of event-related potentials (ERPs)showed that Chinese translations were accessed automatically and unconsciously. In the second experiment series, the same paradigm was used except that phonological and orthographic repetitions in, Chinese translations were independently tested. Significant priming was found for phonological but not orthographic repetitions,independently of the input modality (visual or aud~ory), demonstrating that cross-language activation is mediated by phonology. In the third experiment series, speech production was studied using a covert picture naming paradigm involving rhyming decisions. Here again, L1 access was detected but it was delayed in comparison to reading and listening in L2. Moreover, cross-language activation in picture naming was asymmetric, featuring strong influences of L1 on L2, but no effect of L2 on Ll. Findings of the thesis shed new light on the dynamic nature ofhilinguallanguage processing, as well as constraints affecting cross-language activation. Implications for current models ofhilinguallexical access are discussed.
Cholinergic system regulation of spatial representation by the hippocampus

The role of the basal forebrain cholinergic system in hippocampal spatial representation was explored by examining the effects of immunotoxic lesions of the septo‐hippocampal cholinergic neurons on the firing patterns of hippocampal place cells as rats explored familiar and novel environments. In a highly familiar environment, the basic qualities and stability of place fields were unaffected by the lesion. When first exposed to a set of novel environmental cues without otherwise disorienting the animals, place cells in both normal and lesioned animals responded with similar alterations in their firing patterns. Upon subsequent repetitive exposures to the new environment, place cells of normal rats developed a spatial representation distinct from that of the familiar environment. By contrast, place cells of lesioned animals reconverged in the direction of the representation associated with the familiar environment. These results suggest that cholinergic input may determine whether new visual information or a stored representation of the current environment will be actively processed in the hippocampal network. Hippocampus 2002;12:386–397. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Towards more constructive reviewing of SIGCOMM papers

Many people in CS in general, and SIGCOMM in particular, have expressed concerns about an increasingly "hypercritical" approach to reviewing, which can block or discourage the publication of innovative research. The SIGCOMM Technical Steering Committee (TSC) has been addressing this issue, with the goal of encouraging cultural change without undermining the integrity of peer review. Based on my experience as an author, PC member, TSC member, and occasional PC chair, I examine possible causes for hypercritical reviewing, and offer some advice for PC chairs, reviewers, and authors. My focus is on improving existing publication cultures and peer review processes, rather than on proposing radical changes.
Stigma, Culture, and HIV and AIDS in the Western Cape, South Africa: An Application of the PEN-3 Cultural Model for Community-Based Research

HIV- and AIDS-related stigma has been reported to be a major factor contributing to the spread of HIV. In this study, the authors explore the meaning of stigma and its impact on HIV and AIDS in South African families and health care centers. They conducted focus group and key informant interviews among African and Colored populations in Khayelitsha, Gugulethu, and Mitchell’s Plain in the Western Cape province. The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and coded using NVivo. Using the PEN-3 cultural model, the authors analyzed results showing that participants’ shared experiences ranged from positive/nonstigmatizing, to existential/ unique to the contexts, to negative/stigmatizing. Families and health care centers were found to have both positive nonstigmatizing values and negative stigmatizing characteristics in addressing HIV/AIDS-related stigma. The authors conclude that a culture-centered analysis, relative to identity, is central to understanding the nature and contexts of HIV/AIDS-related stigma in South Africa.
Common Property Resource Theory and the Kuhl Irrigation Systems of Himachal Pradesh, India

This article analyzes the differential stresses of increasing nonfarm employment on 39 gravity flow irrigation systems (kuhls) in Himachal Pradesh, India. By fragmenting common dependence on agriculture, increasing nonfarm employment has created stresses within kuhl regimes which manifest as declining participation, increased conflict, and the declining legitimacy of customary rules and authority structures. However, these effects are not evenly distributed across all kuhl regimes. To explain how and why some kuhl regimes have persisted without changing, most have transformed and endure, and a few have collapsed and are now managed by the state irrigation department, I use insights from current theories of common property resource systems to guide the development of an inductively derived explanatory framework. I demonstrate how the relative degree of differentiation of the regime members and the extent of members' reliance on kuhl water interact to influence the degree and nature of stress on kuhl regime.
The study of trunk and pelvic movement on mediolateral ramps of various ramp angles during one-legged standing

The purpose of this study was to identify the instability of the trunk and the pelvis of subjects who were standing on differently angled ramps under conditions in which the ramps were crossed. Changes in the trunk and the pelvis while each subject was standing on one leg in the direction of the cross ramps at four angles (0°, 5°, 10°, and 15°) were measured. To identify instability, the trunk inclination, trunk imbalance, pelvic position, pelvic rotation, and pelvic torsion of 20 healthy male subjects were measured. The measurement was conducted using a three-dimensional spinal diagnostic imaging system (Back Mapper). According to the results of the measurement, trunk imbalance, pelvic position, pelvic rotation, and pelvic torsion differed between the medial and lateral ramps and with different ramp angles. This study’s results suggested that different mediolateral ramp conditions altered the pelvic and trunk alignment. With the 15° ramp, the anterior tilt and lateral tilt of the pelvis increased regardless of ramp direction. The 10° ramp condition altered the pelvic rotation to the contralateral side. In addition, the lateral trunk tilt was elevated with the lateral down foot condition.
On the Design of Self-Checking Controllers with Datapath Interactions

We consider the problem of designing self-checking controllers for controller/datapath architectures. We introduce the concept of intrinsically secure states. We present six alternative schemes based on parity checking, on 1-out-of-n checking, as well as on the observation that a self-checking sequential datapath can also be employed for control path self-checking by exploiting the concept of intrinsically secure control states. A high-level synthesis tool has been modified to automatically insert self-checking controllers and datapath units and is able to trade this self-checking property against other design objectives. We discuss the properties of each configuration and present experimental results and conclusions