Collection Of Several Types Research Articles

Vitamin D intake modifies the association of household air pollution exposure with maternal disorders of pregnancy

BACKGROUND AND AIM: To date only two studies conducted in India have investigated the association of household air pollution (HAP) exposure from cooking with pregnancy disorders. The role of garbage burning at home, an important contributor to HAP has never been investigated. The ameliorating role of diet and nutrition in the association of HAP with pregnancy disorders also remains unexplored. We investigated the association of HAP with hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), and examined the effect modifying role of vitamin D (vitD) intake. METHODS: We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study among 799 nursing mothers in Cape Coast Metropolis, Ghana. We assessed HAP exposure from cooking and garbage burning at home using a structured questionnaire through the collection of several types of information. A semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire was used to assess vitD intake. Double-selection lasso logit regression was used to investigate the association between HAP exposure and pregnancy disorders. We performed stratification analysis according to quartiles of vitD intake. RESULTS:HAP exposure due to cooking and garbage burning was associated with 74% (OR=1.74; 95% CI: 0.99, 3.07) and 287% (OR=3.87; 95% CI: 1.86, 8.04) increased odds of GDM and HDP, respectively. Mothers exposed to both HAP exposures had 256% (OR=4.56; 95%: 1.49, 8.49) increased odds of pregnancy disorders compared to mothers cooking with clean fuels. In the stratified analysis, mothers classified in the fourth quartile of vitD intake had reduced odds of pregnancy disorders compared to their counterparts classified in the first to third quartile. All the interaction p values were greater than 0.05. CONCLUSIONS:We provide the first evidence on the ameliorating role of vitD intake on the effect of HAP exposure on pregnancy disorders. The study findings will help to better tailor intervention strategies for addressing the burden of pregnancy disorders in developing countries. KEYWORDS: Vitamin D, Household air pollution, Gestational diabetes mellitus, Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, Ghana

Taxonomy of Citizen Sensing for Intelligent Urban Infrastructures

Citizen sensing is a new sensor-based data collection paradigm and is focused on the extraction of data generated by people. Initiatives based on this concept are becoming crucial for designers of intelligent urban infrastructures, since they enable the collection of several types of relevant data that cannot be properly captured by traditional physical sensors. A large number of articles and projects associated with the topic appeared over the last few years, and with them the need for properly classifying and organizing these works. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy of citizen sensing initiatives and illustrate each of its dimensions through a survey of recent articles in the area. The proposed scheme also supports the identification and stimulates the development of projects addressing data collection methodologies that have not been properly explored so far. In addition, we present a platform capable of aggregating, analyzing, and extracting knowledge from data generated by physical and human sensing techniques. Finally, we report a real-world experiment in which we used our platform to map accessibility conditions of streets and sidewalks located in a four square kilometer area in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Our results show that a full coverage was obtained with the support of eight volunteers after only three hours, hence illustrating the effectiveness of the technology.

Recovery of Cometary Microorganisms from the Stratosphere

The Hoyle-Wickramasinghe theory of cometary panspermia posits that terrestrial life was introduced by comets, and predicts that this process can be tested by the detection of an ongoing incidence onto the Earth of biological entities. Searching the stratosphere for microorganisms began tentatively in the 1960’s but more serious attempts to recover microorganisms from the stratosphere commenced after 2001. Since this time evidence for a continuing microbiological input from space has accumulated but such evidence has tended to be either overlooked or dismissed as contaminants. Our most recent balloon flight of July 2013 to a height of 22-27 km above Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England led to the collection of several types of microorganisms directly onto electron microscope stubs, some leading to the formation of micro-craters and so confirming infall at high speed as well as their extraterrestrial origin. In one instance a sphere of diameter 30 μm was isolated and found to be mainly composed of titanium in its outer layers (with smaller amounts of vanadium). Nano-manipulation and EDX analysis showed that the titanium sphere contains a carbonaceous non-granular interior material which we suggest is a biological protoplast. Other isolates include distinctly biological filaments, a diatom frustule and a few unidentified biological entities. The relatively large sizes of the particles point decisively to their extraterrestrial origin.

Landslide susceptibility assessment in the Peloritani Mts. (Sicily, Italy) and clues for tectonic control of relief processes

Abstract. Many destructive shallow landslides hit villages in the Peloritani Mountains area (Sicily, Italy) on 1 October 2009 after heavy rainfall. The collection of several types of spatial data, together with a landslide inventory, allows the assessment of the landslide susceptibility by applying a statistical technique. The susceptibility model was validated by performing an analysis in a test area using independent landslide information, the results being able to correctly predict more than 70% of the landslides. Furthermore, the susceptibility analysis allowed the identification of which combinations of classes, within the different factors, have greater relevance in slope instability, and afterwards associating the most unstable combinations (with a short–medium term incidence) with the endogenic processes acting in the area (huge regional uplift, fault activity). Geological and tectonic history are believed to be key to interpreting morphological processes and landscape evolution. Recent tectonic activity was found to be a very important controlling factor in landscape evolution. A geomorphological model of cyclical relief evolution is proposed in which endogenic processes are directly linked to superficial processes. The results are relevant both to risk reduction and the understanding of active geological dynamics.

Resolving Syntactic Category Ambiguities in Discourse Context: Probabilistic and Discourse Constraints

Three experiments investigated the resolution of syntactic category ambiguities in a self-paced reading paradigm, using moving window presentation. Sentences containing noun/verb homographs likeduck(e.g.,She saw her duck and chickens/stumble near the barn.) were embedded in short stories. The first experiment reports the collection of several types of norms to measure the degree to which each homograph was biased toward use as a noun or use as a verb, and the strength of the discourse bias for each item. The goal was to determine how probabilistic lexical bias and discourse bias influence the generation and selection of syntactic structure in the ambiguous region, and this was investigated by varying the length of the ambiguous region in Experiments 2–4. The data suggest that only probabilistic lexical bias influenced the generation of structure, while both lexical bias and discourse bias guided selection of the appropriate structure.

Connecticut's residential conservation service: An evaluation

CONN SAVE is a non-profit consortium of electric and gas utilities in Connecticut, established to deliver services mandated by the federal Residential Conservation Service. This article describes a quantitative evaluation of the programme which involved collection of several types of data from CONN SAVE, fuel suppliers and households. Data from home energy audits and on-site home interviews were analysed in terms of conservation potentials as of Spring 1981. Potential for space-heating energy saving was roughly 15% greater in participant homes than in control homes and for water heating energy saving was slightly larger for control homes. Participant homes installed many more retrofit measures than control households and, as a consequence, were expected to cut their annual energy costs by 2–3 times as much as the control households - 18 MBtu vs 7 MBtu ($160 vs $60). Hence, the CONN SAVE audit was effective in stimulating additional retrofit action on the part of participants.