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Thesis advisor: Daniel J. Harrington / Thesis advisor: Thomas D. Stegman / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

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Försäljare av detoxpreparat hävdar att kroppens reningsmekanismer i vårt moderna samhälle inte längre räcker till och behöver hjälp på vägen, företrädesvis i form av påstått utrensande örtblandningar. Vissa förespråkar även tarmsköljningar och joniserande fotbad. Syftet med den här studien är att kartlägga floran av detoxprodukter i form av kosttillskott: vilka typer det finns, vilka ingredienser som ingår och vilka påståenden som görs. Påståendena har klassificerats efter testbarhet och trovärdigheten har bedömts genom sökningar i PubMed och Web of Science. Några av de testbara påståendena verkar helt sakna evidens, något påstående lutar sig mot studier behäftade med problematiska brister medan vissa påståenden förtjänar vidare studier, då de bygger på studier med preliminärt lovande resultat. Det går inte att utesluta en framtid för evidensbaserade detoxdieter, lika lite som det går att säga att detoxdieter av idag håller vad de lovar. Det krävs fler kliniska, placebokontrollerade studier och en tydligare skiljelinje mellan det som är ren bluff och det som är seriös forskning. Konsumenter bör vara medvetna om bristen på evidens och riskerna som finns, exempelvis i form av kontaminerade produkter och risk för interaktioner med läkemedel. / Sellers of detox preparations argue that in our modern society, the body's purification mechanisms are no longer sufficient and need a little help, preferably in the form of alleged cleansing herbal formulas. Some also advocate colonic irrigation and ionizing foot baths. The purpose of this study is to survey the flora of detox products in the form of nutritional supplements: what types there are, what ingredients are included and which claims are made. The claims have been classified for testability and reliability was assessed through searches in PubMed and Web of Science. Some of the testable assertions seem to completely lack evidence, other claims lean on studies that suffer from problematic deficiencies, while some claims deserve further study since they find support from studies with promising preliminary results. You cannot rule out a future for evidence-based detox diets, no more than you can to say that detox diets today keep their promises. More clinical, placebo-controlled studies are required and a clearer dividing line between what is pure bluff and what is serious research. Consumers should be aware of the lack of evidence and the risks that exist, for example in the form of contaminated products and the potential risk of interactions with medicines.

Data cleansing approaches have usually focused on detecting and fixing errors with little attention to big data scaling. This presents a serious impediment since identify- ing and repairing dirty data often involves processing huge input datasets, handling sophisticated error discovery approaches and managing huge arbitrary errors. With large datasets, error detection becomes overly expensive and complicated especially when considering user-defined functions. Furthermore, a distinctive algorithm is de- sired to optimize inequality joins in sophisticated error discovery rather than na ̈ıvely parallelizing them. Also, when repairing large errors, their skewed distribution may obstruct effective error repairs. In this dissertation, I present solutions to overcome the above three problems in scaling data cleansing. First, I present BigDansing as a general system to tackle efficiency, scalability, and ease-of-use issues in data cleansing for Big Data. It automatically parallelizes the user’s code on top of general-purpose distributed platforms. Its programming inter- face allows users to express data quality rules independently from the requirements of parallel and distributed environments. Without sacrificing their quality, BigDans- ing also enables parallel execution of serial repair algorithms by exploiting the graph representation of discovered errors. The experimental results show that BigDansing outperforms existing baselines up to more than two orders of magnitude. Although BigDansing scales cleansing jobs, it still lacks the ability to handle sophisticated error discovery requiring inequality joins. Therefore, I developed IEJoin as an algorithm for fast inequality joins. It is based on sorted arrays and space efficient bit-arrays to reduce the problem’s search space. By comparing IEJoin against well- known optimizations, I show that it is more scalable, and several orders of magnitude faster. BigDansing depends on vertex-centric graph systems, i.e., Pregel, to efficiently store and process discovered errors. Although Pregel scales general-purpose graph computations, it is not able to handle skewed workloads efficiently. Therefore, I introduce Mizan, a Pregel system that balances the workload transparently during runtime to adapt for changes in computing needs. Mizan is general; it does not assume any a priori knowledge of the graph structure or the algorithm behavior. Through extensive evaluations, I show that Mizan provides up to 84% improvement over techniques leveraging static graph pre-partitioning.

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Through an analysis of the Iraq’s engineered genocides against Kurds during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this work aimed to reveal the weakness of the current political and social situation in Iraq. The purpose was to offer an overview of the dangers posed by the current difficult coexistence between the Federal Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. The birth of a new political system after the fall of Saddam's regime meant that every institutional power had to be built from scratch in a political and social reality new to most Iraqis. This process of renovation, already witnessed in Europe after World War II, in particular in Italy and Germany, implied the writing of a new constitution and of a new set of legal frames with the purpose to give the country a strong and reliable democratic base. In the case of Iraqi Kurds, who suffered discrimination, death and, ultimately genocide, it is important to revisit their recent past in order to feel they are an integral part of the new country born after the last Gulf War in 2003. Despite the international interest in the Kurdish case, Kurdish people did not have the opportunity to see the ones responsible of the crimes committed against them brought to international justice, as happened in the past in the case of Rwanda and Bosnia. The execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006 meant that the charges against him and his commanders related to the Kurdish case were not discussed in court preventing Kurdish people not only from obtaining the justice they were entitled to but, most importantly, from gaining access to the truth about the massacres and human rights abuses carried out by Saddam's regime between 1963 and 2003. Through an analysis of the Iraq’s engineered genocides against Kurds during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this work aimed to reveal the weakness of the current political and social situation in Iraq. The purpose was to offer an overview of the dangers posed by the current difficult coexistence between the Federal Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. The birth of a new political system after the fall of Saddam's regime meant that every institutional power had to be built from scratch in a political and social reality new to most Iraqis. This process of renovation, already witnessed in Europe after World War II, in particular in Italy and Germany, implied the writing of a new constitution and of a new set of legal frames with the purpose to give the country a strong and reliable democratic base. In the case of Iraqi Kurds, who suffered discrimination, death and, ultimately genocide, it is important to revisit their recent past in order to feel they are an integral part of the new country born after the last Gulf War in 2003. Despite the international interest in the Kurdish case, Kurdish people did not have the opportunity to see the ones responsible of the crimes committed against them brought to international justice, as happened in the past in the case of Rwanda and Bosnia. The execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006 meant that the charges against him and his commanders related to the Kurdish case were not discussed in court preventing Kurdish people not only from obtaining the justice they were entitled to but, most importantly, from gaining access to the truth about the massacres and human rights abuses carried out by Saddam's regime between 1963 and 2003.