Don't Poo-Poo the Toilet: Architectural Contributions to Human Waste

<p>Eliminating waste is a natural bodily function, common to all, yet its protocols are evidence of a strange discomfort in society. This thesis investigates the ways in which this discomfort manifests in the architecture of the toilet, suggesting in the process that the toilet is space that is more significant than the architecture profession might acknowledge. A toilet and its accompanying infrastructure are not typically considered architecture. While a necessary feature of a building, a typical toilet must be discrete, private, with an emphasis on functionality; any particular design flair - unless it is of service to concealment - is considered unusual. Such architectural tendencies cannot be separated from attitudes to excrement, which is generally considered disgusting, worthless or dangerous. These negative attitudes are not strictly scientific or rational in their foundation ; instead, attitudes to excrement and the toilet are culture and context specific. Accordingly, the architecture of the toilet in the West is neither inherently 'correct', nor 'desirable'- rather, it is the product of specifically Western perceptions of waste, which are shrouded in negativity. In this light, this thesis argues that the architecture of the toilet should not be viewed as an unquestionable norm. Instead, the profession should be considering its responsibility to interrogate the place of waste in our society. Don't poo-poo the toilet: architectural contributions to human waste reveals that the toilet is an architectural manifestation of broader societal attitudes towards what is considered dirty. The toilet unifies all of human kind at a common, base level, and yet it reveals much about how the human world is divided into categories of clean and dirty, proper and improper, good and bad. This thesis thus offers a lens for viewing the world we live in, through the dirt of this architecturally neglected space.</p>

Don't Poo-Poo the Toilet: Architectural Contributions to Human Waste

<p>Eliminating waste is a natural bodily function, common to all, yet its protocols are evidence of a strange discomfort in society. This thesis investigates the ways in which this discomfort manifests in the architecture of the toilet, suggesting in the process that the toilet is space that is more significant than the architecture profession might acknowledge. A toilet and its accompanying infrastructure are not typically considered architecture. While a necessary feature of a building, a typical toilet must be discrete, private, with an emphasis on functionality; any particular design flair - unless it is of service to concealment - is considered unusual. Such architectural tendencies cannot be separated from attitudes to excrement, which is generally considered disgusting, worthless or dangerous. These negative attitudes are not strictly scientific or rational in their foundation ; instead, attitudes to excrement and the toilet are culture and context specific. Accordingly, the architecture of the toilet in the West is neither inherently 'correct', nor 'desirable'- rather, it is the product of specifically Western perceptions of waste, which are shrouded in negativity. In this light, this thesis argues that the architecture of the toilet should not be viewed as an unquestionable norm. Instead, the profession should be considering its responsibility to interrogate the place of waste in our society. Don't poo-poo the toilet: architectural contributions to human waste reveals that the toilet is an architectural manifestation of broader societal attitudes towards what is considered dirty. The toilet unifies all of human kind at a common, base level, and yet it reveals much about how the human world is divided into categories of clean and dirty, proper and improper, good and bad. This thesis thus offers a lens for viewing the world we live in, through the dirt of this architecturally neglected space.</p>

Budaya Tabu pada Masyarakat Banyumas

This research aims to know taboo cultures in Banyumas Society. Banyumas is one of the regencies in Central Java. The method that is used is qualitative descriptive. This method does not use numeric or mathematical and statistical count in the interpretation of data. The source of the data are from the interview and literature review about taboo culture in Banyumas and surrounding. The result of the research shows that there are six kinds of taboo cultures in Banyumas based on Wardhaugh’s classification, which are sex, death, excretion, bodily function, religious matters and politics. Religious matter is the most taboos that appear in Banyumas culture. The society believe that those taboo cultures are prohibited to do because those who violate that taboo will get unexpected sanction and punishment.

Amino Acid-Induced Impairment of Insulin Signaling and Involvement of G-Protein Coupling Receptor

Amino acids are needed for general bodily function and well-being. Despite their importance, augmentation in their serum concentration is closely related to metabolic disorder, insulin resistance (IR), or worse, diabetes mellitus. Essential amino acids such as the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) have been heavily studied as a plausible biomarker or even a cause of IR. Although there is a long list of benefits, in subjects with abnormal amino acids profiles, some amino acids are correlated with a higher risk of IR. Metabolic dysfunction, upregulation of the mammalian target of the rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, the gut microbiome, 3-hydroxyisobutyrate, inflammation, and the collusion of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are among the indicators and causes of metabolic disorders generating from amino acids that contribute to IR and the onset of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This review summarizes the current understanding of the true involvement of amino acids with IR. Additionally, the involvement of GPCRs in IR will be further discussed in this review.

Eye blink detection using CNN to detect drowsiness level in drivers for road safety

<span><span>Blinking is a regular bodily function and it is the semiautomatic fast closing of the eyelid. A specific blink is examined by dynamic folding of the eyelid. It is a vital function of the eye which helps in spread of tears across and eliminates irritants from the shallow of cornea. In this research work we made use of convolution neural network, the deep learning concepts and image processing to detect drowsiness level in drivers. To train the blink detection model the mobilenet V2 is used as base. The loss function used for training was RMSprop and the optimizer is binary cross entropy. The dlib facial landmark was exploited to perceive and pre-process the detected faces. The dataset used for the training model is selected from the “Xiaoyang Tan” of nanjing university of aeronautics and astronautics. Based on the experimental outcome the projected method achieves an accuracy of 97%. The prototype developed serves as a base for further development of this process to achieve better road safety</span>.</span>

Psychological issues affecting patients living with a stoma

Stoma surgery is an intrusive operation, with outcomes that can impact seriously on daily life, not just in the immediate postoperative and recovery period, but for the rest of the patient's life. There are changes in bodily function, altered body image, physicality and personal care needs. These changes require acceptance and adaptation and can necessitate a re-ordering of daily life, socially, emotionally and in terms of work. Assessing the patient's needs through the trajectory of diagnosis, surgery and a stoma, is not just important during the treatment phase but needs to continue throughout the lifespan. Traditionally, patient outcome measures after bowel surgery have included overall self-efficacy, checking for stoma complications, clinical health status, function and psychological status. However, over the past three decades there has been increasing recognition that quality of life (QoL), which is now regarded as a key measurement, needs further consideration. Patients report difficulties when explaining to health professionals the challenges they face, and their reactions as they try to make the adjustments to their new normal of life with a stoma. This article examines stoma patients' perceptions of their outcomes from recent research. It discusses how more can be done by health professionals to support stoma patients through their initial transition to life with a stoma and for the rest of their life.

Protein intake and loss of proteostasis in the eldery

Ageing is a process of declining bodily function and a major risk factor of chronic diseases. The declining bodily function in ageing can cause loss of proteostasis (protein homeostasis), which is a balance between protein synthesis, folding, modification and degradation. For the elderly, adequate protein intake is necessary to prevent sarcopenia, frailty, fracture and osteoporosis as well as reduced resistance to infection. However, increasing the protein intake can enhance the risk of oxidized protein formation, loss of proteostasis and degenerative disorder occurrence. On the other hand, several studies show that protein restriction would increase longevity. The aim of this review was to explain the importance of determining the right amount and composition of protein intake for the elderly. Oxidative stress and molecular mechanism of proteostasis loss in ageing cells as well as its suppression pathway by protein restriction are discussed in this review. Keywords: ageing, dietary proteins, mTOR, oxidative stress, proteostasis loss

Resistance Training in Hypoxia as a New Therapeutic Modality for Sarcopenia—A Narrative Review

Hypoxic training is believed to be generally useful for improving exercise performance in various athletes. Nowadays, exercise intervention in hypoxia is recognized as a new therapeutic modality for health promotion and disease prevention or treatment based on the lower mortality and prevalence of people living in high-altitude environments than those living in low-altitude environments. Recently, resistance training in hypoxia (RTH), a new therapeutic modality combining hypoxia and resistance exercise, has been attempted to improve muscle hypertrophy and muscle function. RTH is known to induce greater muscle size, lean mass, increased muscle strength and endurance, bodily function, and angiogenesis of skeletal muscles than traditional resistance exercise. Therefore, we examined previous studies to understand the clinical and physiological aspects of sarcopenia and RTH for muscular function and hypertrophy. However, few investigations have examined the combined effects of hypoxic stress and resistance exercise, and as such, it is difficult to make recommendations for implementing universal RTH programs for sarcopenia based on current understanding. It should also be acknowledged that a number of mechanisms proposed to facilitate the augmented response to RTH remain poorly understood, particularly the role of metabolic, hormonal, and intracellular signaling pathways. Further RTH intervention studies considering various exercise parameters (e.g., load, recovery time between sets, hypoxic dose, and intervention period) are strongly recommended to reinforce knowledge about the adaptational processes and the effects of this type of resistance training for sarcopenia in older people.

Nutritional value and health benefits of horticulture.

Daily consumption of fruit and vegetables is encouraged as important for human health and nutrition because the vitamins, minerals, essential micronutrients, fibre, vegetable proteins and bio-functional components they provide are crucial for bodily function. The FAO/WHO expert consultation (2004) on diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases recommended a daily intake of 400 g (five portions) of fruits and vegetables (excluding potatoes and other starchy tubers) to prevent heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. However, despite this recognition, world-wide per capita consumption of fruits and vegetables is estimated to be 20-50% short of the minimum recommended level. In 2013 an estimated 5.2 million deaths worldwide were attributable to inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption. Adhering to the WHO recommendations for fruit and vegetable intake can prevent morbidity and mortality caused by micronutrient deficiencies, birth defects, mental and physical retardation, weakened immune systems, blindness and even death. Improving the dietary diversity through horticulture-based food intake is an effective and sustainable approach to combating micronutrient malnutrition in both developed and developing countries (Kennedy et al., 2003).

Quantifying neurotransmitter secretion at single-vesicle resolution using high-density complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor electrode array

Neuronal exocytosis facilitates the propagation of information through the nervous system pertaining to bodily function, memory, and emotions. Using amperometry, the sub-millisecond dynamics of exocytosis can be monitored and the modulation of exocytosis due to drug treatment or neurodegenerative diseases can be studied. Traditional single-cell amperometry is a powerful technique for studying the molecular mechanisms of exocytosis, but it is both costly and labor-intensive to accumulate statistically significant data. To surmount these limitations, we have developed a silicon-based electrode array with 1024 on-chip electrodes that measures oxidative signal in 0.1 millisecond intervals. Using the developed device, we are able to capture the modulation of exocytosis due to Parkinson’s disease treatment (L-Dopa), with statistical significance, within 30 total minutes of recording. The validation study proves our device’s capability to accelerate the study of many pharmaceutical treatments for various neurodegenerative disorders that affect neurotransmitter secretion to a matter of minutes.