Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A workforce-based study of occupational exposures and asthma symptoms in cleaning workers

Objectives To study associations between use of cleaning products and asthma symptoms in cleaning workers. Methods Information on respiratory symptoms, history of asthma, workplaces, use of cleaning products and acute inhalation incidents were obtained through a self-administered questionnaire. 917 employees of 37 cleaning companies in Barcelona were studied. 761 (83%) were current cleaners, 86 (9%) former cleaners and 70 (8%) had never worked as cleaners. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate the associations between specific exposures among current cleaners and wheeze without having a cold, chronic cough and current asthma. Associations with an asthma symptom score were also studied using negative binomial regression analyses to report mean ratios. Results After adjusting for sex, age, nationality and smoking status, the prevalence of current asthma was non-significantly higher among current (OR 1.9; 95% CI 0.5 to 7.8) and former cleaners (OR 1.9; CI 0.6 to 5.5) than in never cleaners. Cleaners working in hospitals during the last year had a significantly increased prevalence of wheeze, current asthma and a 1.8 (95% CI 1.2 to 2.8) times higher mean asthma score. Use of hydrochloric acid was strongly associated with asthma score (mean ratio 1.7; 95% CI 1.1 to 2.6). Use of ammonia, degreasers, multiple purpose products and waxes was also associated with asthma score. Conclusions Cleaning work in places with high demand for disinfection, high cleaning standards and use of cleaning products containing respiratory irritants is associated with higher risk of asthma symptoms. This suggests irritants have an important role in cleaning-related asthma.
Beyond the Nation State: Parties in the Era of European Integration

Why do political party families, big and small, without exception, engage increasingly in transnational collaboration, in arenas like the European Parliament and beyond? What do they hope to gain from it, and what might they fear losing? Beyond the Nation State looks below the usual rhetoric of party families to trace some deep-lying historical processes and patterns. Experiences can vary within and between families, but the overall patterns are clear. Based on numerous interviews and studies of national parties, the book shows these parties to be reluctant participants in a process of party integration which they may well have to take further, despite their doubts.
The Effects of Minimum Wages Throughout the Wage Distribution

This paper provides evidence on a wide set of margins along which labor markets can adjust in response to increases in the minimum wage, including wages, hours, employment, and ultimately labor income, representing the central margins of adjustment that impact the economic well-being of workers potentially affected by minimum wage increases. The evidence indicates that workers initially earning near the minimum wage are adversely affected by minimum wage increases, while, not surprisingly, higher-wage workers are little affected. Although wages of low-wage workers increase , their hours and employment decline, and the combined effect of these changes is a decline in earned income. We also delve into the political economy of minimum wages, attempting to understand the vigorous support of labor unions for minimum wage increases. Using the same empirical framework, we find that relatively low-wage union members gain at the expense of the lowest-wage nonunion workers when minimum wages increase.
BAN waste, environmental justice and citizen participation in policy setting

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that the poorest sections of society bear a disproportionate burden of poor environmental quality, including toxicity and pollution. The struggles to address environmental injustice instigated at grassroots level also place the burden of righting the injustice on those who often have the least resources in terms of time, money and access to decision makers. The unfolding story of BAN Waste's sophisticated challenge to the proposed building of a replacement incinerator in a working-class area of Newcastle demonstrates many of the issues and stages common to struggles for environmental justice. The struggle became proactive and built wider alliances and a broad coalition across the city for change. The eventual success in preventing the incinerator being built and in producing a superior waste strategy counters the popular belief that environmental concerns are predominantly those of the middle class.
Plasmodium falciparum Homologue of the Genes for Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium yoeliiAdhesive Proteins, Which Is Transcribed but Not Translated

ABSTRACT The 235-kDa family of rhoptry proteins in Plasmodium yoelii and the two reticulocyte binding proteins of P. vivax comprise a family of proteins involved in host cell selection and erythrocyte invasion. Here we described a member of the gene family found in P. falciparum (PfRH3) that is transcribed in its entirety, under stage-specific control, with correct splicing of the intron, but appears not to be translated, probably due to two reading frameshifts at the 5′ end of the gene.
A role for NF-κB–dependent gene transactivation in sunburn

Exposure of skin to ultraviolet (UV) radiation is known to induce NF-κB activation, but the functional role for this pathway in UV-induced cutaneous inflammation remains uncertain. In this study, we examined whether experimentally induced sunburn reactions in mice could be prevented by blocking UV-induced, NF-κB-dependent gene transactivation with oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) containing the NF-κB cis element (NF-κB decoy ODNs). UV-induced secretion of IL-1, IL-6, TNF-α, and VEGF by skin-derived cell lines was inhibited by the decoy ODNs, but not by the scrambled control ODNs. Systemic or local injection of NF-κB decoy ODNs also inhibited cutaneous swelling responses to UV irradiation. Moreover, local UV-induced inflammatory changes (swelling, leukocyte infiltration, epidermal hyperplasia, and accumulation of proinflammatory cytokines) were all inhibited specifically by topically applied decoy ODNs. Importantly, these ODNs had no effect on alternative types of cutaneous inflammation caused by irritant or allergic chemicals. These results indicate that sunburn reactions culminate from inflammatory events that are triggered by UV-activated transcription of NF-κB target genes, rather than from nonspecific changes associated with tissue damage.
Foreword: Transforming Universities: The Uncertain, Erratic Path

The idea of the university has undergone significant change in recent years, particularly with the widening of access to a greater range of socio-economic groups, the greater internationalisation of university provision which extends beyond exchange schemes, and the recruitment of student populations from overseas to partnerships and franchising agreements between institutions. Those pressures for high volumes of activity may be accentuated by the emergence of new competitor institutions: the ‘business’ university in which industrial organisations use their expertise to compete with traditional universities and the ‘virtual’ university with the burgeoning interest in internet-based learning. These factors are changing the landscape of university education and forcing the pace of change within traditional universities in a manner which accentuates the visibility of accounting and performance management (Lapsley, 2003). The two particular dimensions of these changes which are discussed here are (1) calculative practices and the individual (2) organisational forms and change.
A Scalable AWGR-Based Optical Switch

The energy-per-bit efficiency has quickly become the ultimate limiting factor in the design of a switching fabric for routers and data center networks. People are now turning to optics for solutions. If switch fabrics can be implemented with optics, many E/O and O/E conversions will be removed and tremendous power saving can be achieved. Arrayed waveguide grating routers (AWGRs) provide the most promising solution in this regard. But AWGRs have one fundamental limitation: poor scalability. While the realistic port count of an AWGR is likely to be less than 50, a switch for a data center network may need to interconnect one thousand racks, or more. This paper presents a novel AWGR-based switch architecture which, without using wavelength converters, can expand the switch size from N to $N^{2}$, where N is the number of wavelengths in the AWGR. Each port can transmit up to N wavelengths simultaneously. This makes the total capacity of the switch close to ($N^{3}$ × bandwidth of a wavelength channel). A detailed analysis of the performance of the switch is provided in this paper.
Hospital-Acquired Infections in the Surgical Intensive Care: Epidemiology and Prevention

Hospital-acquired infections affect 7% to 10% of hospitalized patients and account for approximately 80,000 deaths per year in the United States. Of all infections acquired in the hospital, more than 20% occur in intensive care unit patients. As the number of ICU beds increases, the proportion of ICU infections is likely to increase. The focus of this paper is to review the epidemiology of hospital-acquired infections that occur in the surgical ICU, particularly ventilator associated pneumonia, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, and catheter-related bloodstream infection, and to discuss ICU-related prevention strategies. By implementing effective preventative measures and maintaining strict surveillance of ICU infections, we hope to affect the associated morbidity, mortality, and cost that our patients and society bare.
Improving the collection of knowledge, attitude and practice data with community surveys: a comparison of two second-stage sampling methods.

BACKGROUND Second-stage sampling techniques, including spatial segmentation, are widely used in community health surveys when reliable household sampling frames are not available. In India, an unresearched technique for household selection is used in eight states, which samples the house with the last marriage or birth as the starting point. Users question whether this last-birth or last-marriage (LBLM) approach introduces bias affecting survey results. METHODS We conducted two simultaneous population-based surveys. One used segmentation sampling; the other used LBLM. LBLM sampling required modification before assessment was possible and a more systematic approach was tested using last birth only. We compared coverage proportions produced by the two independent samples for six malaria indicators and demographic variables (education, wealth and caste). We then measured the level of agreement between the caste of the selected participant and the caste of the health worker making the selection. RESULTS No significant difference between methods was found for the point estimates of six malaria indicators, education, caste or wealth of the survey participants (range of P: 0.06 to >0.99). A poor level of agreement occurred between the caste of the health worker used in household selection and the caste of the final participant, (Κ = 0.185), revealing little association between the two, and thereby indicating that caste was not a source of bias. CONCLUSIONS Although LBLM was not testable, a systematic last-birth approach was tested. If documented concerns of last-birth sampling are addressed, this new method could offer an acceptable alternative to segmentation in India. However, inter-state caste variation could affect this result. Therefore, additional assessment of last birth is required before wider implementation is recommended.
Outcome of cytomegalovirus infections in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study was to determine the outcome of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections complicating the course of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). METHODS:The records and clinical courses were reviewed for all IBD patients who were evaluated at the IBD Center of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and who developed CMV infection.RESULTS:Ten patients with severe, medically refractory IBD (five ulcerative colitis, three Crohn's colitis, and two indeterminate colitis) developed CMV infection. All but two were hospitalized with exacerbation of their underlying disease and were receiving immunosuppressive treatment with steroids, thiopurines, and/or cyclosporine at the time CMV infection was recognized. Eight patients had documented colonic CMV (one had concurrent upper GI tract involvement), one developed interstitial CMV and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, and one developed primary CMV mononucleosis. Prompt treatment with ganciclovir and withdrawal of immunosuppressive treatment resulted in gradual improvement and induction of remission of the underlying IBD in five patients. The patient with concomitant CMV and P. carinii pneumonitis died. In two patients, treatment with ganciclovir did not alter the clinical course of their IBD, and one of them underwent colectomy. In one patient CMV was found on the resected colonic specimen. One patient with primary CMV infection responded also to ganciclovir treatment.CONCLUSIONS:CMV infection may aggravate the course of seemingly refractory IBD in patients who either fail to respond or experience worsening of symptoms despite immunosuppressive therapy. Expedient evaluation, prompt treatment intervention with ganciclovir, and withdrawal of immunosuppressive treatment may avoid complications and mortality. This regimen leads to improvement of the underlying IBD in most patients.
The policy-relevance of sustainability indicators reports: case study of the neutrality strategy of the CTSIP report

This paper examines the policy-relevance of sustainability indicators reports (SR), through the lens of a particular SR, Central Texas Sustainable Indicators Project report (CTSIP). It especially focuses on SR authors' strategy to make their report policy-relevant when policy makers are not their only targeted audiences. Theoretical and empirical results have been used, among them personal data collected from interviews with 25 Central Texans. Two opposite kinds of strategy emerged and are confronted here, that we call the neutrality strategy (CTSIP's actual strategy) and the advocacy strategy. While the neutrality strategy strives for credibility and legitimacy by remaining policy-neutral and independent of political entities, the advocacy strategy tries to influence the current political sphere by advocating for specific policies or goals and cooperating with policy makers. These two strategies have implications we will try to clarify, among them trade-offs SR authors are confronted to. This discussion results in suggestions for improving CTSIP's policy-relevance, and the trade-offs they involve.
Towards a Property Market Paradigm of Urban Change

Conventional treatments of urban change almost uniformly ignore the role of land and property markets as essential mediators of such change. The urban built environment is assumed to be a passive adapter to structural change. However, given the complexity of property market process—in particular the disparate nature of market actors, decision rules, and institutions, the immutable characteristics of property, and the obvious constraints imposed by the existing built environment—simple adaptive adjustment is unlikely to take place. These factors can themselves be expected to play an important part in shaping urban growth and development outcomes. In response to these concerns, we propose a property market paradigm of urban change and examine its relevance in the context of six major European urban regions. The results suggest that this approach can provide a more holistic understanding of contemporary urban change than that offered by conventional analysis.
Quality care for persons experiencing dementia

The degree of success in creating quality care for people suffering from dementia is limited despite extensive research. This article describes healthcare providers’ experience with the ethical challenges and possibilities in the relationship with patients suffering from dementia and its impact on quality care. The material is based on qualitative, in-depth individual narrative interviews with 12 professional healthcare providers from two different nursing homes. The transcribed interview texts were subjected to a phenomenological–hermeneutical interpretation. To provide quality care to patients with dementia, the healthcare providers emphasized the importance of sensing and understanding the patients’ emotional and bodily expressions through sentient attentiveness and recognition of the patient as a person. They also described reciprocity of expressions in the relationship where the patient recognized them both as persons and healthcare providers. The analyses of the findings are, inter alia, discussed in light of Løgstrup’s relational philosophy of ethics.
Tempest in a teapot: The exaggerated problem of transport-related residential self-selection as a source of error in empirical studies

While numerous studies have investigated influences of built environment characteristics on travel behavior, many scholars are concerned about the confounding effect of residential self-selection. This paper argues that the existence of transport-attitude-based residential self-selection hardly represents any threat to the validity of the basic knowledge on how residential location within urban contexts influences travel behavior. The causal mechanisms by which residential location influences travel behavior exist regardless of whether or not transport-related residential self-selection occurs. Moreover, the cases presented in this paper suggest that residential self-selection based on attitudes to travel is unlikely to represent any great source of error for parameter estimates of the effects of residential location variables on travel behavior as long as “traditional” demographic and socioeconomic variables have already been accounted for. The doubts raised by certain scholars about the implications of attitude-based residential self-selection for the validity of the knowledge base of land use and transportation policies thus appear to be not very well-founded.
Iatrogenic gastric acid suppression and the risk of nosocomial Clostridium difficile infection.

BACKGROUND The incidence and severity of Clostridium difficile infections are increasing. Acid-suppressive therapy has been suggested as a risk factor for C difficile, but this remains controversial. METHODS We conducted a pharmacoepidemiologic cohort study, performing a secondary analysis of data collected prospectively on 101 796 discharges from a tertiary care medical center during a 5-year period. The primary exposure of interest was acid suppression therapy, classified by the most intense acid suppression therapy received (no acid suppression, histamine(2)-receptor antagonist [H(2)RA] therapy, daily proton pump inhibitor [PPI], and PPI more frequently than daily). RESULTS As the level of acid suppression increased, the risk of nosocomial C difficile infection increased, from 0.3% (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.21%-0.31%) in patients not receiving acid suppressive therapy to 0.6% (95% CI, 0.49%-0.79%) in those receiving H(2)RA therapy, to 0.9% (95% CI, 0.80%-0.98%) in those receiving daily PPI treatment, and to 1.4% (1.15%-1.71%) in those receiving more frequent PPI therapy. After adjustment for comorbid conditions, age, antibiotics, and propensity score-based likelihood of receipt of acid-suppression therapy, the association persisted, increasing from an odds ratio of 1 (no acid suppression [reference]) to 1.53 (95% CI, 1.12-2.10) (H(2)RA), to 1.74 (95% CI, 1.39-2.18) (daily PPI), and to 2.36 (95% CI, 1.79-3.11) (more frequent PPI). Similar estimates were found with a matched cohort analysis and with nested case-control techniques. CONCLUSIONS Increasing levels of pharmacologic acid suppression are associated with increased risks of nosocomial C difficile infection. This evidence of a dose-response effect provides further support for the potentially causal nature of iatrogenic acid suppression in the development of nosocomial C difficile infection.
THE DETERMINANTS OF AUDIT FEES: SOME EMPIRICAL MODELS

This paper proposes a model of audit fee determination based upon size and other characteristics of the auditee and the auditor, and upon whether there has been a recent change of auditor (which might lead to a low-balling effect). A novel feature of the model is that auditee size is measured in two dimensions, sales and assets, and is allowed to have a quadratic relationship with audit fee. The model was estimated for a sample of large listed UK companies for the years 1981 to 1988. The results support the low-balling hypothesis and also provide insights into the distinctive role of the Big 8 firms in the audit market.
All the Related Therapeutic Methods of Traditional Chinese Medicine for Neck Pain and Low Back Pain

Neck pain (NP) and low back pain (LBP) are common symptoms bothering people in daily life. In developed countries, more than 70% of people experience LBP, whereas approximately two-thirds of people experience NP at some point in their lifetimes [1]. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat various diseases in China and even throughout East Asia for more than 2000 years, and it still remains the choice for many people. Although acupuncture is a typical representative of TCM, it is only one of the various general therapies for NP and LBP, many other TCM therapeutic methods are still used extensively in China.
The use of foresight information in small and medium-sized enterprises - the role of intermediary organisations

In order to successfully compete in the market, firms have to keep track of the changes in the operational environment and use this information in their innovation processes. Future-oriented information is gathered by various agents, but firms still struggle to find relevant information and transform it into profitable businesses and innovations. Intermediary organisations play an important role in the interfacing of knowledge producers and knowledge exploiters. This paper studies the role of intermediary organisations in promoting the use of foresight information in small and medium-sized enterprises. A qualitative case study approach is used. The study emphasises the importance of interpreting foresight information through communicative processes and combines these ideas at the system level, providing new insights not only on the theoretical level but also for developing the innovation policy practice.
Estimating bus operators' short-run, medium-term and long-run marginal costs

This paper develops a simple cost model for bus operators that enables the estimation of short-, medium-, and long-run marginal costs. The relationship between these marginal costs and trip lengths are examined. The model is estimated with cross sectional data from 138 bus companies in Norway. The Norwegian bus fare system is compared with the model's results. Assuming that bus fares should be set in line with marginal costs, ordinary bus fares are found to be too high for short distance trips and too low for long distance trips, while the discounted fares are too high for all trips.