Association of respiratory symptoms and lung function with occupation in the multinational Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study

Background Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been associated with exposures in the workplace. We aimed to assess the association of respiratory symptoms and lung function with occupation in the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease study. Methods We analysed cross-sectional data from 28 823 adults (≥40 years) in 34 countries. We considered 11 occupations and grouped them by likelihood of exposure to organic dusts, inorganic dusts and fumes. The association of chronic cough, chronic phlegm, wheeze, dyspnoea, forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)/FVC with occupation was assessed, per study site, using multivariable regression. These estimates were then meta-analysed. Sensitivity analyses explored differences between sexes and gross national income. Results Overall, working in settings with potentially high exposure to dusts or fumes was associated with respiratory symptoms but not lung function differences. The most common occupation was farming. Compared to people not working in any of the 11 considered occupations, those who were farmers for ≥20 years were more likely to have chronic cough (OR 1.52, 95% CI 1.19–1.94), wheeze (OR 1.37, 95% CI 1.16–1.63) and dyspnoea (OR 1.83, 95% CI 1.53–2.20), but not lower FVC (β=0.02 L, 95% CI −0.02–0.06 L) or lower FEV1/FVC (β=0.04%, 95% CI −0.49–0.58%). Some findings differed by sex and gross national income. Conclusion At a population level, the occupational exposures considered in this study do not appear to be major determinants of differences in lung function, although they are associated with more respiratory symptoms. Because not all work settings were included in this study, respiratory surveillance should still be encouraged among high-risk dusty and fume job workers, especially in low- and middle-income countries.publishedVersio

Cohort Profile: Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study

The Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) study was established to assess the prevalence of chronic airflow obstruction, a key characteristic of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and its risk factors in adults (≥40 years) from general populations across the world. The baseline study was conducted between 2003 and 2016, in 41 sites across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, the Caribbean and Oceania, and collected high-quality pre- and post-bronchodilator spirometry from 28 828 participants. The follow-up study was conducted between 2019 and 2021, in 18 sites across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Caribbean. At baseline, there were in these sites 12 502 participants with high-quality spirometry. A total of 6452 were followed up, with 5936 completing the study core questionnaire. Of these, 4044 also provided high-quality pre- and post-bronchodilator spirometry. On both occasions, the core questionnaire covered information on respiratory symptoms, doctor diagnoses, health care use, medication use and ealth status, as well as potential risk factors. Information on occupation, environmental exposures and diet was also collected

The influence of subhaloes on host halo properties

Within the ΛCDM cosmology, dark matter haloes are composed of both a smooth component and a population of smaller gravitationally bound subhaloes. These components are often treated as a single halo when properties, such as density profiles, are extracted from simulations. Recent work has shown that density profiles change substantially when subhalo mass is excluded. In this paper, we expand on this result by analysing three specific host halo properties - concentration (cNFW), spin (λB), and shape (c/a) - when calculated only from the smooth component of the halo. This analysis is performed on both Milky Way-mass haloes and cluster-mass haloes in high-resolution zoom-in N-body simulations. We find that when subhaloes are excluded, the median value of (1) cNFW is enhanced by and for Milky Way-mass () and cluster-mass () haloes, respectively, (2) λB is reduced for Milky Way-mass by and cluster-mass haloes by. Additionally, with the removal of subhaloes, cluster-mass haloes tend to become more spherical as the ratio of minor-to-major axis, c/a, increases by, whereas Milky Way-mass haloes remain approximately the same shape with c/a changed by. Fractional changes of each of these properties depend primarily on the amount of mass in subhaloes and, to a lesser extent, mass accretion history. Our findings demonstrate that the properties of the smooth components of dark matter haloes are biased relative to the total halo mass. © 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.Immediate accessThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Evolution of collective object behavior in presence of simultaneous client-specific view

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Custom-made novel biomimetic composite scaffolds for the bone regenerative medicine

The aim of this pilot study was to test a new customized biomimetic composite scaffolds to restore bone defects using CAD–CAM technology. The new biomaterial was synthesized using biomimetic mineralized collagen, and poly (ɛ-caprolactone) (PCL). The mold used in scaffolding, the surgical guide, and the bony plate used during the surgery, were rapid prototyped (CAD–CAM technology). Our in vitro results showed that sheep mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) seeding efficiency was very high (>94%). Furthermore, cells can adhere, grow and maintain cell viability up to 7 days of in vitro cultivation on the scaffold as revealed by SEM and confocal laser scanning microscope analysis. These results are indicative of good scaffold biocompatibility. The use of the sheep experimental model allowed exploring the efficacy of the customized bony plate used to give extra mechanical support to the scaffold, the potential of CAD–CAM technology in customization of the scaffold, and the in vivo biomimetic properties of the composite biomaterial

Relational Database Support for Aspect-Oriented Programming

Code repositories play a central role in the reuse and mining of existing assets when engineering large, complex software systems. It is, therefore, essential that database support be extended to new programming paradigms as and when they emerge. This paper proposes an approach to support the storage, reuse and mining of aspects - constructs used in AspectOriented Programming (AOP) to separate crosscutting concerns - in AspectJ (an aspect language for Java) using a relational database. The approach is based on mapping an aspect's anatomy to the relational model hence allowing finegrained queries to be composed. This results in greater flexibility during search and retrieval in contrast with most existing code repositories which store the code as BLObs complemented by meta-data about the code

Generic Wrappers

Component software means reuse and separate marketing of pre-manufactured binary components. This requires components from different vendors to be composed very late, possibly by end users at run time as in compound-document frameworks. To this aim, we propose generic wrappers, a new language construct for stronglytyped class-based languages. With generic wrappers, objects can be aggregated at run time. The aggregate belongs to a subtype of the actual type of the wrapped object. A lower bound for the type of the wrapped object is fixed at compile time. Generic wrappers are type safe and support modular reasoning. This feature combination is required for true component software but not achieved by known wrapping and combination techniques, such as the wrapper pattern or mix-ins. We analyze the design space for generic wrappers, e.g. overriding, forwarding vs. delegation, and snappy binding of the wrapped object. As a proof of concept, we add generic wrappers to Java and report on a mechanized type soundness proof of the latter

A Model for Developing Component-Based and Aspect-Oriented Systems

Abstract. Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) offer solutions to improve the separation of concerns and to enhance a program structure. If the integration of AOP into CBSE has already been proposed, none of these solutions focus on the application of CBSE principles to AOP. In this paper we propose a twofold integration of AOP and CBSE. We introduce a general model for components and aspects, named Fractal Aspect Component (FAC). FAC decomposes a software system into regular components and aspect components (ACs), where an AC is a regular component that embodies a crosscutting concern. We reify the aspect domain of an AC and the relationship between an AC and a component, called an aspect binding, as first-class runtime entities. This clarifies the architecture of a system where components and aspects coexist. The system can evolve from the design to the execution by adding or removing components, aspects or bindings.

A Hybrid Approach to Separation of Concerns: The Story of SADES

A number of approaches have been proposed to achieve separation of concerns. Although all these approaches form suitable candidates for separating cross-cutting concerns in a system, one approach can be more suitable for implementing certain types of concerns as compared to the others. This paper proposes a hybrid approach to separation of concerns. The approach is based on using the most suitable approach for implementing each cross-cutting concern in a system. The discussion is based on using three different approaches: composition filters, adaptive programming and aspect-oriented programming to implement cross-cutting concerns in SADES, a customisable and extensible object database evolution system

From Object-Oriented to Aspect-Oriented Databases

Over the recent years aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has found increasing interest among researchers in software engineering. Aspects are abstractions which capture and localise cross-cutting concerns. Although persistence has been considered as an aspect of a system aspects in the persistence domain in general and in databases in particular have been largely ignored. This paper brings the notion of aspects to object-oriented databases. Some cross-cutting concerns are identified and addressed using aspects. An aspect-oriented extension of an OODB is discussed and various open issues pointed out