Pre- & post- bronchodilator pulmonary function test in Indian females: a survey in and around Jaipur

Background: Nonsmoker COPD in people is a continued point of concern. Recent standards prescribe that spirometry should be population specific, recent origin and methodically derived (prescribed by GOLD) with influencing factors specified – which this study aims to do.Methods: From a random sample of 4,500 adults, subjects were invited into study through a 16 point questionnaire. After inclusion/ exclusion criteria applied to 3,733 total responders, 244 rural and 240 urban healthy non-smoker females were enrolled. Spirometry with reproducibility testing before and after bronchodilator (salbutamol) was done as per GOLD prescription. As normality of distribution was disproved, non-parametric methods were used in statistics. Results: Mean FEV1 and FVC were 2.25 and 2.69 liters respectively in rural females, while it was 2.06 and 2.44 liters in urban females. Post-bronchodilator (after 0.3 mg salbutamol) values in rural females were 2.32 and 2.70 liters respectively while the same were 2.13 and 2.45 liters in urban cases.Conclusion: PFT of rural females resulted better on FEV1 and FVC, pre as well as post-bronchodilator. Possibly biomass fuel exposure in the rural females might not be causing a generalized decrease in PFT parameters or urban chemical pollution which might have more than counterbalanced in urban side.

Supersymmetrization of Quaternion Dirac Equation for Generalized Fields of Dyons

The quaternion Dirac equation in presence of generalized electromagnetic field has been discussed in terms of two gauge potentials of dyons. Accordingly, the supersymmetry has been established consistently and thereafter the one, two and component Dirac Spinors of generalized quaternion Dirac equation of dyons for various energy and spin values are obtained for different cases in order to understand the duality invariance between the electric and magnetic constituents of dyons.Comment: Key words: Supersymmetry, quaternion, Dirac equation, dyons PACS No.: 11.30.Pb, 14.80.Ly, 03.65.G

The Cellular Stress Response Interactome and Extracellular Matrix Cross-Talk during Fibrosis: A Stressed Extra-Matrix Affair

Diverse internal and external pathologic stimuli can trigger cellular stress response pathways (CSRPs) that are usually counteracted by intrinsic homeostatic machinery, which responds to stress by initiating complex signaling mechanisms to eliminate either the stressor or the damaged cells. There is growing evidence that CSRPs can have context-dependent homeostatic or pathologic functions that may result in tissue fibrosis under persistence of stress. CSRPs can drive intercellular communications through exosomes (trafficking and secretory pathway determinants) secreted in response to stress-induced proteostasis rebalancing. The injured tissue environment upon sensing the stress turns on a precisely orchestrated network of immune responses by regulating cytokine-chemokine production, recruitment of immune cells, and modulating fibrogenic niche and extracellular matrix (ECM) cross-talk during fibrotic pathologies like cardiac fibrosis, liver fibrosis, laryngotracheal stenosis, systemic scleroderma, interstitial lung disease and inflammatory bowel disease. Immunostimulatory RNAs (like double stranded RNAs) generated through deregulated RNA processing pathways along with RNA binding proteins (RBPs) of RNA helicase (RNA sensors) family are emerging as important components of immune response pathways during sterile inflammation. The paradigm-shift in RNA metabolism associated interactome has begun to offer new therapeutic windows by unravelling the novel RBPs and splicing factors in context of developmental and fibrotic pathways. We would like to review emerging regulatory nodes and their interaction with CSRPs, and tissue remodeling with major focus on cardiac fibrosis, and inflammatory responses underlying upper airway fibrosis

The Uli Dataset: An Exercise in Experience Led Annotation of oGBV

Online gender based violence has grown concomitantly with adoption of the internet and social media. Its effects are worse in the Global majority where many users use social media in languages other than English. The scale and volume of conversations on the internet has necessitated the need for automated detection of hate speech, and more specifically gendered abuse. There is, however, a lack of language specific and contextual data to build such automated tools. In this paper we present a dataset on gendered abuse in three languages- Hindi, Tamil and Indian English. The dataset comprises of tweets annotated along three questions pertaining to the experience of gender abuse, by experts who identify as women or a member of the LGBTQIA community in South Asia. Through this dataset we demonstrate a participatory approach to creating datasets that drive AI systems

Incidencia de los hábitos de estudio y las estrategias de evaluación que implementan los docentes, en el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes de III y IV año de la carrera de Educación Comercial, en las asignaturas de Cálculo Mercantil I y Cálculo Mercantil II, en la Facultad de Educación e Idiomas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), durante el primer semestre del año 2016

La presente investigación tiene como propósito general analizar la Incidencia de los hábitos de estudio y las estrategias de evaluación que implementan los docentes, en el rendimiento académico de los alumnos de III y IV año de la carrera de Educación Comercial, en las asignaturas de Cálculo Mercantil I y Cálculo Mercantil II, en la Facultad de Educación e Idiomas de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), durante el primer semestre del año 2016. La investigación está centrada en un enfoque sociológico cuantitativo, es de tipo ex post facto o no experimental, de corte transversal, descriptiva y correlacional. Tiene una cierta implicación cualitativa porque intenta comprender la realidad del fenómeno, desde la visión de alumnos y docentes que son las unidades de análisis involucradas. El alcance de este estudio considera dos grandes componentes relacionadas con el rendimiento académico, como son los hábitos de estudio y las formas de evaluación, en la revisión bibliográfica se encontró estudios que tratan una u otra componente, pero no las dos simultáneamente. La metodología utilizada consideró una muestra probabilística representativa de treinta y tres alumnos de III y IV año de la carrera de Educación Comercial, a los cuales se les aplicó un instrumento de medición acerca de sus hábitos de estudio, el que fue analizado con técnicas estadísticas descriptivas e inferenciales. También se realizaron dos grupos focales, el primero con una muestra intencional de doce alumnos y el segundo con ocho docentes que han impartido Cálculo Mercantil. Además de una entrevista dirigida al coordinador de la carrera. Entre los principales resultados obtenidos, se obtuvo que en general los alumnos no practican hábitos de estudio, y que estas prácticas tienen una mínima relación lineal con el rendimiento académico. Además que las formas tradicionales de evaluación inciden negativamente en los aprendizajes significativos de los alumno

How is impact factor impacting our research?

The impact factor (IF) of an journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in the journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. However it is not a perfect metric and has its own limitations. Journals are increasingly finding new ways to improve their impact factor by increasing self citation, publishing more review articles. This correspondence discuss the fallacies of the impact factor

Automatic extraction of domain specific hidden data for efficient response by search engine

As large amount of information is growing in web daily, lots of relevant data are available in the form of hypertext in web. Interested users can view publically index able pages of any web site and some information is hidden behind search forms and viewed after filling of the appropriate search interfaces. Lots of information is available behind the search interfaces known as hidden data. Right now unique web crawlers are utilizing distinctive methods for getting such profound data from the web and sent to the clients as per their problems. The purpose of fetching such deep information is to provide a large set of relevant response to the user according to their search query. In this paper a new technique suggested for automatic filling of search interfaces and then submits the form to the World Wide Web and collects the response in the form of web pages which will be send back after automatic submission of the form and then filter out relevant pages from these response pages according to the user specific query