Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Politics of Local Biology in Transnational Drug Testing: Creating (Bio)Identities and Reproducing (Bio)Nationalism Through Japanese “Ethnobridging” Studies

Next to the United States, Japan is the second-largest pharmaceutical market in the world in terms of expenditures. However, the regulatory issues and long clinical testing and approval time for drugs to be marketed in Japan continue to be stumbling blocks for foreign drugs in the Japanese market. In 1998, adoption of the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) E5 guidelines by the United States, European Union, and Japan cleared the way for the use of data generated in one member region to be used in another for drug regulatory approval purposes—a practice termed “bridging. ” In particular, the ICH E5 focused on a type of study termed “ethnobridging,” studies conducted on a drug-by-drug basis to look at the sensitivities of a drug to “ethnic factors. ” Ethnobridging studies are drug trials specific to ethnic populations to assure safety, effectiveness, and dose specificity. In the last twenty years, such studies have almost always been required as part of the clinical data package needed for approval of Western drugs in the Japanese market. We examine the ways in which ethnobridging studies, based on an anthropologically questionable concept of ethnic factors as defined in ICH E5, have become a proxy for long-held cultural perceptions of “local biology” based on a notion of ethnic uniqueness and bioidentity in Japan. Ethnobridging studies, we argue, are more than venues for the production of scientific and clinical data. They produce data in concert with what Latour has termed “matters of concern,” are techniques of governmentality that advance the nationalist agenda of the state in citizens' everyday lives, use pharmaceuticals as boundary objects and focal points of communication between researchers and policy makers in receptive environments, and justify state regulation of transnational flows of pharmaceuticals in a lucrative market. This is achieved through a renewed sense of bioidentity of what it means to be Japanese among both in-country and overseas Japanese. We also call attention to emergent patients' rights groups in Japan exerting pressure on the government to reduce the drug lag and provide wider access to lifesaving treatments available elsewhere but not in Japan because of its onerous clinical trials system and ethnobridging requirements.
Promoting student engagement with teacher feedback through rebuttal writing

Abstract Teacher feedback is of little use without student engagement. Few studies have, however, empirically considered how direct interventions may enhance student engagement with feedback. This study explored whether and to what extent the use of a rebuttal-writing task can serve as a learning tool to promote student engagement with teacher feedback. Data were collected from 118 undergraduates through multiple sources, including a structured questionnaire, students’ first drafts and revised essays, and a retrospective interview. The results showed that although the students did not really enjoy devoting more time and effort to writing rebuttals while making revisions, they seemed to welcome the rebuttal task, especially when they became more familiar with it, or when they began to see the value of having the task. We discuss these results, suggesting how writing rebuttals promotes student engagement, and argue that students have a key role to play in making teacher feedback work.
Effects of Channelisation, Riparian Structure and Catchment Area on Physical Habitats in Small Lowland Streams

Rivers and streams form a longitudinal network in which physical conditions and biological processes change through the river system. Geomorphology, topography, geology and hydraulic conditions change from site to site within the river system, thereby creating a complex network of reaches that are dominated by a hierarchy of physical processes. The complexity is further enhanced by local human alteration of the physical structure, natural processes and alteration of the riparian areas. The aim of the study was to analyse variations in land use and riparian characteristics along small Danish streams and to determine the effect of channelisation on physical habitats. Physical stream characteristics were measured in 149 stream small and medium sized Danish streams (catchment area: 0.1 to 67.2 km 2 ). The measured physical parameters included discharge, stream slope, width, depth, current velocity, substrata and coverage of macrophytes. Riparian land use, valley form and information on channelisation and channel dredging were also collected. Small headwater streams were either dominated by forests or semi-natural land use. In contrast, the riparian areas of the streams in the larger streams were dominated by agricultural or semi-natural / meadow land use. The results suggest that a combination of within-system variations in geomorphological, hydrological and geological conditions as well as human alterations of the natural environment in small Danish catchments facilitate discontinuous changes to the stream bed substrata and in-stream habitats. The physical habitats and substratum characteristics of the channelised streams were significantly different from the structure in natural streams unaffected by physical modifications. Riparian land use and valley form potentially influence the degree of channelisation, i.e. a confined and steep valley (V-shaped) is less likely to be used for agricultural production compared to a broad valley. The results are useful to water managers, who seek to identify natural and impacted physical conditions in large river systems.
Representative Bureaucracy and Public Hiring Preferences: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment among German Municipal Civil Servants and Private Sector Employees

Drawing on Weber, this study tests whether the normative principles of merit orientation and impartiality are more prevalent in shaping public hiring preferences among civil servants—both junior and senior—than among private sector employees. In a conjoint experiment, respondents are asked to compare two hypothetical applicants for an office job in a municipal administration and to decide which they would hire. The application profiles vary with respect to a set of meritocratic and nonmeritocratic attributes. The empirical findings suggest that first, in all three samples, hiring decisions are primarily based on meritocratic attributes. Second, there is evidence of ethnic discrimination in the private employee sample, while there is no such effect in either of the two civil servant samples. Third, private employees’ hiring preferences are influenced by personal political beliefs, while civil servants are less likely to let political attitudes affect their hiring choices. Thus, while civil servants hiring preferences are largely consistent with passive representation and nondiscrimination, support for a representative bureaucracy among citizens should be improved.
Adaptive Output Feedback Tracking Control for a Class of Nonlinear Time-Varying State Constrained Systems With Fuzzy Dead-Zone Input

This article proposes an adaptive fuzzy controller for a class of uncertain strict-feedback nonmatching nonlinear single-input single-output systems with fuzzy dead zone and full time-varying state constraints. The states considered here are immeasurable and full states of the systems are constrained in a bounded set with time-varying regions. Following the adaptive backstepping design framework, the tangent barrier Lyapunov functions are introduced to the integrated design to address the problems in such systems. Fuzzy logic systems are used to identify the unknown smooth functions and unknown parameters. An input-driven observer is designed to estimate the immeasurable states. To distinguish the conventional deterministic dead zone models, the output of dead zone is uncertainty. The form of indeterminate dead zone as a combination of a liner and a disturbance-like term is extended by the fuzzy algorithms. Even though the output of dead zone is fuzzy and adopting the integrated design, the proposed fuzzy controller can ensure that all the signals in the closed-loop systems are semiglobal uniformly ultimately bounded and guarantee the tracking performance. Finally, simulation results are shown to verify the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed approach.
Multifocal osteoarticular tuberculosis in a systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patient: a rarity or an underdiagnosed condition?

Abstract Tuberculosis (TB) and its association with rheumatic diseases have been widely recognised. Occurrence of multifocal skeletal involvement constitutes <5% of all skeletal TB cases. We present a Malay patient with multifocal osteoarticular TB (OATB). A 35 year-old SLE woman with background usage of corticosteroid therapy and Azathioprine presented with lupus nephritis flare. Renal biopsy revealed diffuse proliferative lupus nephritis and intravenous (IV) Cyclophosphamide 0.5 g/m2 (850 mg) was initiated. One week later, patient complained dorsum of left hand and right knee swelling. On physical examination, patient was afebrile and the left hand swelling was cystic in consistency while right knee was warm and tender. Erythrocyte Sedimentation Rate (ESR) was 50 mm/hr and C-Reactive Protein (CRP) was 9.4 mg/L. Her Mantoux test was positive with 20 mm induration. Wrist radiograph and chest radiograph was normal. Musculoskeletal ultrasound showed 4th extensor compartment tenosynovitis with Doppler signal and right knee effusion with synovial proliferation. Extensor tenosynovectomy and right knee aspiration was performed. Left hand excised tissue and right knee synovial fluid for acid-fast bacilli (AFB) stain, TB PCR, bacterial and fungal cultures were negative. Urgent histopathological examination of the excised tissue showed necrotising granulomatous inflammation. Patient was empirically started on TB treatment and subsequent mycobacterial culture confirmed the diagnosis of TB. The joints swelling resolved after one month of TB treatment. Multifocal OATB is an infrequent form of extrapulmonary TB and diagnosing OATB requires high index of suspicion particularly in SLE patient on immunosuppression. Prompt investigations are essential to the diagnosis of this rare condition for early initiation of anti-tuberculous therapy.
Properties of food webs

On the assumption that systems of interacting species, when perturbed from equilib- rium, should return to equilibrium quickly, one can predict four properties of food webs: (1) food chains should be short, (2) species feeding on more than one trophic level (omnivores) should be rare, (3) those species that do feed on more than one trophic level should do so by feeding on species in adjacent trophic levels, and (4) host-parasitoid systems are likely to be exceptions to (1)-(3) when interaction coefficients permit greater trophic complexity. By generating random, model food webs (with many features identical to webs described from a variety of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial systems), it is possible to generate expected values for the number of trophic levels and the degree of omnivory within webs. When compared with these random webs, real world webs are shown to have fewer trophic levels, less omnivory, and very few omnivores feeding on nonadjacent trophic levels. Insect webs are shown to have a greater degree of omnivory than other webs. The confirmation of all these predictions from stability analyses suggests that system stability places necessary, though not sufficient, limitations on the possible shapes of food webs.
Facilitation, augmentation, and potentiation of synaptic transmission at the superior cervical ganglion of the rabbit

The effect of repetitive stimulation on synaptic transmission was studied in the isolated superior cervical ganglion of the rabbit under conditions of reduced quantal content. Excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSP) were recorded with the sucrose gap technique to obtain estimates of transmitter release. Four components of increased transmitter release, with time constants of decay similar to those observed at the frog neuromuscular junction at 20 degrees C, were found in the ganglion at 34 degrees C: a first component of facilitation, which decayed with a time constant of 59 +/- 14 ms (mean +/- SD); a second component of facilitation, which decayed with a time constant of 388 +/- 97 ms; augmentation, which decayed with a time constant of 7.2 +/- 1 s; and potentiation, which decayed with a time constant of 88 +/- 25 s. The addition of 0.1-0.2 mM Ba2+ to the Locke solution increased the magnitude but not the time constant of decay of augmentation. Ba2+ had little effect on potentiation. The addition of 0.2-0.8 mM Sr2+ to the Locke solution appeared to increase the magnitude of the second component of facilitation. Sr2+ had little effect on augmentation or potentiation. These selective effects of Ba2+ and Sr2+ on the components of increased transmitter release in the rabbit ganglion are similar to the effects of these ions at the frog neuromuscular junction. Although the effects of Ba2+ and Sr2+ are similar in the two preparations, the magnitudes of augmentation and the second component of facilitation after a single impulse were about 6-10 times greater in the rabbit ganglion than at the frog neuromuscular junction. These results suggest that the underlying mechanisms in the nerve terminal that give rise to the components of increased transmitter release in the rabbit ganglion and frog neuromuscular junction are similar but not identical.
AWARENESS OF OCULAR-RELATED EFFECTS OF WELDING AMONG WELDERS IN KAKAMEGA, KENYA

Purpose: To determine welders’ awareness on ocular-related problems and the importance of using safety measures in workplace in Kakamega, Kenya. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design involving 100 welders from Kenya Industrial Estate in Kakamega, was conducted and semi-structured interview schedule was applied on selected participants who gave written consents to participate in a face-to-face interview. Details of the interview varied from nature and duration of engagement in welding activities, through levels of awareness of ocular effects and extent of actual use of eye protections at work. Results: Seventy-five percent of welders had form of injuries related to metallic foreign bodies due to welding activities. Religion was the most influential factor (61%). Majority of welders had better understand of risk related to compliance to Personal protective Eye equipment (PPEE), with male (65) and female (1) being aware and utilize the PPEE. There was association ( X 2 (1, N = 100) = 48.454, p 0.05) between welder’s awareness and use of PPEE. Conclusions: Given the nature of welding activities among low income earners, there is a gap between the knowledge of welders regarding awareness of hazards and PPEE and the actual use of PPEE at work by the same welders. Article visualizations:
Work-Life Balance and Employee Performance: A Literature Review

This paper is a review of literature on work life balance and employee performance in Nigeria as an attempt at knowledge building. This is a secondary research which sought to review literature in assessing work life balance in Nigeria and suggest suitable solutions for overcoming the problem of work life imbalance and its associatednegative spill over in order to enhance employee performance for optimum organizational output. We posit that employees who have balanced work and non-work roles are more likely to perform better, thusit is essential for employers to promote policies and structures that enhance work life balance of employees in their organisations.We conclude that there are systemic barriers that hinder the implementation of work life balance policies in Nigeria, such as leadership failure which has birthed political, economic and social challenges that are the primary sources of work life conflict, they include corruption, weak institutions that lack the capacity to monitor and enforce employment standards, high unemployment ratios, poverty, inflation and a plethora of others. We recommend that organisations provide flexible work arrangements to be enforced by government legislations that will statutorily empower employees to request for atypical work patterns, that the awareness of organisations be raised to the advantages of protecting workers’ rights to various leave initiatives that will improve employee wellbeing and managerial training to ensure managerial support for the demands of these policies.
Phylogenetic Relationships of Esocoid Fishes (Teleostei) Based on Partial Cytochrome b and 16S Mitochondrial DNA Sequences

Abstract The phylogenetic systematics of esocoid fishes are examined using comparisons of partial DNA sequences of the mitochondrial genes coding for the transmembrane protein cytochrome b and the 16S RNA ribosomal subunit. Nucleotide sequences from all species of umbrids, three species of esocids, and salmonid, osmerid, cypriniform, and neoteleostean outgroups were compared to determine patterns of molecular evolution and uncover evidence of phylogenetic relationships. Multiple sequence alignments for each of the two DNA regions examined were used to characterize the amount and type of change shown by the data. The sequences were analyzed under different models of molecular evolution using maximum-parsimony and maximum-likelihood optimality criteria of phylogenetic reconstruction. The phylogenetic analyses revealed previously undiscovered affinities between species of umbrids and esocids that imply the paraphyly of the Umbridae as currently defined. The following set of esocoid interrelationships is proposed: (((Esox, Novumbra), Dallia), Umbra). Esocoid classification is revised based on present findings.
Satiation effects in piscivore prey size selection

We present a functional response model that primarily evaluates effects of satiation in piscivore prey-size selection. The model also includes other passive processes, such as prey-size-dependent encounter rate and prey-size-dependent capture success, where capture success decreases and encounter rate increases with prey size. The model generates a wide variety of outcomes, where small, intermediate or large prey is positively selected for. These very different selectivity patterns are generated without any active prey choice included in the model. The results stress the importance of controlling for satiation and other passive processes in empirical studies on prey-size selection, especially if the aim is to test active prey choice in piscivores.
The Correlation of the Perception of Early Detection Cervical Cancer with Attitude to do Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid

Cervical cancer is a malignant tumor that grows in the uterus / cervix which is the lowest part of the uterine core and is attached to the top of the vagina. The high incidence of cervical cancer in Indonesia is due to a lack of knowledge and perception of women to prevent the development of cervical cancer. The incomprehensive information about IVA test exposure is as the cause of the women didn't want to do the test. Lack of knowledge about the process of IVA test, feel fear and shame including feeling against to religion principles as the inhibitor factors to do test. Method :The research design uses correlational design with a cross-sectional approach. The study population is 30 respondents and the sample consisted of 27 respondents using purposive sampling technique. Data were analyzed using Spearman rank. Results: The research data showed that there was a relationship between the level of perception of mothers about cervical cancer and the attitude of mothers to carry out the IVA test (Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid) p value = 0,000, so the p value = 0,000 <0.05 while r = 0.678. The relationship of perception with attitude shows that more than half of the respondents 66% have a positive perception in early detection of cervical cancer and they are positive about IVA (Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid).
Variation in Total and Differential Haemocyte Count of Busseola fusca (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) Parasitized by Two Biotypes of Cotesia sesamiae (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) and Larval Growth Responses

Abstract Cotesia sesamiae (Cameron) is an indigenous larval endoparasitoid that attacks mid- to late-stage gramineous stem borer larvae in Africa. Two biotypes of C. sesamiae have been reported with differential abilities to suppress the immune system of Busseola fusca Fuller. Eggs of a C. sesamiae population from Mombasa were encapsulated, whereas eggs of a population from Kitale were not. Total and differential hemocytes were counted in larvae of B. fusca at six times (2 h, 14 h, 24 h, 72 h, 120 h, 168 h) after being exposed to parasitoids from Kitale and Mombasa. The total numbers of hemocytes in a larva parasitized by the C. sesamiae population from Mombasa were higher as compared with larvae parasitized by the C. sesamiae population from Kitale. Plasmatocytes, in particular, were reduced in larvae parasitized by C. sesamiae from western Kenya from 72 to 168 h after oviposition. Our results suggest that plasmatocytes probably play an important role in the immune response of B. fusca. Significant proportions of the host larvae were still at the larval stage for those parasitized by C. sesamiae from Mombasa and another species of Cotesia, Cotesia flavipes Cameron at day 12. A reduction of B. fusca larval weight was observed on day 12 after oviposition by C. sesamiae from Kitale.
Acute Toxicity of 5% Rotenone to Northern Snakeheads

Abstract The confirmation of northern snakeheads Channa argus caught by an angler in a private pond in Maryland resulted in significant media attention and generated numerous resources for risk identification and the development of action plans to prevent the introduction of this nonnative species into state waters. Rotenone was selected as an eradication option, and a bioassay was conducted with captured northern snakehead juveniles to determine toxicity and application dose. The lowest rotenone concentration evaluated, 0.075 mg of active ingredient per liter of water, resulted in 100% mortality within 1 h. Pond treatment was highly successful; 8 adult and 834 juvenile snakeheads were recovered. Study results show that northern snakeheads are susceptible to normal doses of rotenone and that standard pond treatment techniques are effective in eradicating this invasive species.