The Work Environment of Immigrant Employees in Sweden—a Systematic Review

The aim of this systematic review was to summarize and synthesize research results focusing on the work environment of employees with an immigrant background in Sweden. We focus on the main conditions identified in the working environment of immigrant employees and how these conditions may affect their health and well-being. The concept of “minority stress” and the attachment theory are used to understand and interpret the findings. We systematically searched for literature published between the years of 1990 and 2020 in four databases, Web of Science, PubMed, SocIndex, and Academic Search Elite. We started the selection process by reading title and abstracts, then proceeded to read a selection of full-text studies and eliminated those that did not fulfil the inclusion criteria. We did a quality assessment on the full-text studies based on the MMAT-tool, and then performed a narrative synthesis of the results. The results show that immigrants experience several stressors in their work environment, including physical, psychological, and social risks. These risks are, among other things, associated with the nature of the jobs that immigrants are overrepresented in, with minority-related stressors such as discrimination, harassment, and threats on the basis of ethnic background, and with the lack of social support from managers and colleagues. Results also highlight beneficial factors in the immigrants’ working environment and show the importance of a supportive, inclusive, and empowering management. Our main conclusion is that Swedish workplaces need to introduce more active measures to raise awareness of and combat workplace discrimination, work harder to promote inclusion at the workplace, and eliminate physical, psychological, and social health hazards specific to immigrant employees. The leadership and management have an important role to play here, as does the employees’ trade unions and its special functions.

Integrated Dissection of lncRNA-miRNA-mRNA Pairs and Potential Regulatory Role of lncRNA PCAT19 in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the main cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Long noncoding RNAs have been reported to play an important role in various cancers due to their special functions. Therefore, identifying the lncRNAs involved in LUAD tumorigenesis and development can help improve therapeutic strategies. The TCGA-LUAD RNA expression profile was downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas, and a total of 49 differential lncRNAs, 112 differential miRNAs, and 2,953 differential mRNAs were screened. Through Kaplan–Meier curves, interaction networks, hub RNAs (lncRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs) were obtained. These hub genes are mainly involved in cell proliferation, cell cycle, lung development, and tumor-related signaling pathways. Two lncRNAs (SMIM25 and PCAT19) more significantly related to the prognosis of LUAD were screened by univariate Cox analysis, multivariate Cox analysis, and risk model analysis. The qPCR results showed that the expression levels of SMIM25 and PCAT19 were downregulated in clinical tissues, A549 and SPC-A1 cells, which were consistent with the bioinformatics analysis results. Subsequently, the PCAT19/miR-143-3p pairs were screened through the weighted gene co-expression network analysis and miRNA-lncRNA regulatory network. Dual luciferase detection confirmed that miR-143-3p directly targets PCAT19, and qPCR results indicated that the expression of the two is positively correlated. Cell function tests showed that overexpression of PCAT19 could significantly inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasion of A549 and SPC-A1 cells. In contrast, knockout of PCAT19 can better promote the proliferation and migration of A549 and SPC-A1 cells. The expression of PCAT19 was negatively correlated with tumor grade, histological grade, and tumor mutation load in LUAD. In addition, co-transfection experiments confirmed that the miR-143-3p mimic could partially reverse the effect of PCAT19 knockout on the proliferation of A549 and SPC-A1 cells. In summary, PCAT19 is an independent prognostic factor in patients with LUAD that can regulate the proliferation, migration, and invasion of LUAD cells and may be a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of LUAD. PCAT19/miR-143-3p plays a very important regulatory role in the occurrence and development of LUAD.

Fractional Model and Exact Solutions of Convection Flow of an Incompressible Viscous Fluid under the Newtonian Heating and Mass Diffusion

In this paper, we consider a natural convection flow of an incompressible viscous fluid subject to Newtonian heating and constant mass diffusion. The proposed model has been described by the Caputo fractional operator. The used derivative is compatible with physical initial and boundaries conditions. The exact analytical solutions of the proposed model have been provided using the Laplace transform method. The obtained solutions are expressed using some special functions as the Gaussian error function, Mittag–Leffler function, Wright function, and G -function. The influences of the order of the fractional operator, parameters used in modeling the considered fluid, Nusselt number, and Sherwood number have been analyzed and discussed. The physical interpretations of the influences of the parameters of our fluid model have been presented and analyzed as well. We use the graphical representations of the exact solutions of the model to support the findings of the paper.

Size Effect of the Number of Parallel Joints on Uniaxial Compressive Strength and Characteristic Strength

The number of parallel joints has an impact on the size effect of the uniaxial compressive strength and characteristic strength of a rock; however, the relationships between them are yet to be derived. We studied the influence of the number of joints and rock size on the uniaxial compressive strength of the rock. This study established ten numerical simulation programs using numerical simulations and the RFPA software. Stress–strain curves of different numbers of parallel joints and sizes of rocks were analyzed. Relationships between the uniaxial compressive strength and number of parallel joints and rock size were proposed, and their special functions were obtained. Mathematical models between rock characteristic size, rock characteristic strength and the number of parallel joints were established. Simulations of the verification program confirmed that these relationships are still applicable after the angle of parallel joints changes.

Pointer-Based Divergence Analysis for OpenCL 2.0 Programs

A modern GPU is designed with many large thread groups to achieve a high throughput and performance. Within these groups, the threads are grouped into fixed-size SIMD batches in which the same instruction is applied to vectors of data in a lockstep. This GPU architecture is suitable for applications with a high degree of data parallelism, but its performance degrades seriously when divergence occurs. Many optimizations for divergence have been proposed, and they vary with the divergence information about variables and branches. A previous analysis scheme viewed pointers and return values from functions as divergence directly, and only focused on OpenCL 1.x. In this article, we present a novel scheme that reports the divergence information for pointer-intensive OpenCL programs. The approach is based on extended static single assignment (SSA) and adds some special functions and annotations from memory SSA and gated SSA. The proposed scheme first constructs extended SSA, which is then used to build a divergence relation graph that includes all of the possible points-to relationships of the pointers and initialized divergence states. The divergence state of the pointers can be determined by propagating the divergence state of the divergence relation graph. The scheme is further extended for interprocedural cases by considering function-related statements. The proposed scheme was implemented in an LLVM compiler and can be applied to OpenCL programs. We analyzed 10 programs with 24 kernels, with a total analyzed program size of 1,306 instructions in an LLVM intermediate representation, with 885 variables, 108 branches, and 313 pointer-related statements. The total number of divergent pointers detected was 146 for the proposed scheme, 200 for the scheme in which the pointer was always divergent, and 155 for the current LLVM default scheme; the total numbers of divergent variables detected were 458, 519, and 482, respectively, with 31, 34, and 32 divergent branches. These experimental results indicate that the proposed scheme is more precise than both a scheme in which a pointer is always divergent and the current LLVM default scheme.

On analytical methods for calculating the steady-state temperature field in a circular cylindrical shell

The present paper presents two analytical methods for calculating the steady-state temperature field in a circular cylindrical shell. The effectiveness of the methods in terms of accuracy in comparison with the classical approach, based on Bessel functions, is analyzed. The proposed analytical algorithms contain relatively simple computational operations. Since they do not use special functions, the algorithms can be used to solve a wide range of problems.

Establishment of the three-dimensional model of the nonwoven structure with fiber scale based on the GAN algorithm

The structure of nonwovens gives special functions, and the establishment of the structure model has important reference significance for the realization of functions. In this work, the two-dimensional configuration of polyester fibers in a spunlaced nonwoven fabric was extracted, and the configurational feature points of 2500 fibers were obtained. Combined with the generative adversarial nets algorithm, the generation model of the two-dimensional configuration of fibers was proposed after learning the configuration feature of 2500 fibers. Based on the assumption that the fibers are randomly distributed in the nonwoven fabric, we established a three-dimensional model of the spunlaced nonwoven fabric on the fiber scale using ABAQUS software. In addition, the water diffusion experiment and simulation were carried out to visualize the diffusion process of a water droplet in the nonwoven fabric, verifying the accuracy of the model. This method provides a novel idea for the modeling of textile structure on the fiber scale, which can be regarded as a model basis for the subsequent simulation analysis and function research.

KARELIAN MYTHOLOGICAL BELIEFS ABOUT ANIMALS AND BIRDS (ON THE EXAMPLE OF FOLK MEDICINE)

In the beliefs of the Karelians, animals and birds act as significant elements of religious and mythological rites and rituals. Many peoples have tales, myths, beliefs and ceremonies that testify of the close relationship of man and the animal world. Traditional medicine, in which animals and birds are endowed with special functions, is no exception. The purpose of the scientific article is to identify the mythological ideas of Karelians about animals and birds in Karelian folk medicine. The studied material was also reflected in the Karelian national classification of diseases, in which, among others, groups of diseases from birds, animals and insects are absolutely clearly distinguished. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the scientific works of domestic and Finnish ethnographers and linguists. The sources for the linguistic analysis are dialect dictionaries of some Baltic-Finnish languages and etymological dictionaries of the Finnish language. All collected lexical and ethnographic material is analyzed in conjunction with closely related Karelian languages, as well as with ethnolinguistic data from the Russian language. As a result of the study, it can be clearly traced that the Karelians identified groups of animals and birds in the fauna and avifauna that could “send” various diseases to humans. However, they could become a means of curing these ailments. In the nomination of diseases, the similarity of the symptoms of the disease to the appearance of animals and birds is significant, which indicates a close relationship of man with the animal world.