The interaction between information technology and phys ical world makes Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) vulnerable to malicious attacks beyond the standard cyber attacks. This has motivated the need for attack-resilient state estimation. Yet, the existing state-estimators are based on the non-realistic assumption that the exact system model is known. Consequently, in this work we present a method for state estimation in presence of attacks, for systems with noise and modeling errors. When the the estimated states are used by a state-based feedback controller, we show that the attacker cannot destabilize the system by exploiting the difference between the model used for the state estimation and the real physical dynamics of the system. Furthermore, we describe how implementation issues such as jitter, latency and synchronization errors can be mapped into parameters of the state estimation procedure that describe modeling errors, and provide a bound on the state-estimation error caused by modeling errors. This enables mapping control performance requirements into real-time (i.e., timing related) specifications imposed on the underlying platform. Finally, we illustrate and experimentally evaluate this approach on an unmanned ground vehicle case-study.


ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of a series of detailed, small-scale geological studies on the continental slope off the northeastern United States. These studies show that slumping and turbidity currents are active and effective erosional agents in the area. Massive large-scale failure has occurred where the slope steepens from a gradient of 1.4° to 7.6°, producing scarps hundreds of meters in relief. Smaller scale slumps have occurred on other parts of the continental slope. Some of the material removed by slumping is emplaced at the foot of the continental slope as relatively intact blocks of 1 to more than 100 meters in thickness. Turbidity currents apparently initiated by slumping have eroded V-shaped gullies on the lower portions of the slope. Bottom current activity is most influential at the shelf break, where it has sorted bottom sediments and resuspended fine material. Laboratory flume experiments and direct observations of the bottom, (using ALVIN and ALCOA SEAPROBE) indicate that the sediments on much of the continental slope generally are not normally affected by bottom currents. Biological activity, however, can cause both roughening and smoothing of the sediment surface, and the irregularities made by organisms will be reworked by currents. Biological production of fibrous structures can, on the other hand, make the sediment surface more resistant to erosion by bottom currents.


This review of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) and bone health uses the current literature to summarise the clinical and research effectiveness of QUS. QUS has been demonstrated to have the ability to predict fracture, particularly at the hip. However, the magnitude of prediction is fracture-site, measurement-site and device dependent. The correlations between dual X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and bone mineral density (BMD) are weak to moderate, resulting in different subjects being identified as being at risk of fracture by the two different methods. QUS is sensitive to age and menopause-related changes and to clinical risk factors and lifestyle factors associated with osteoporosis. Whilst a limited ability of QUS to monitor therapeutic intervention has been demonstrated, this is still an area where it's poorer precision, in comparison to DXA, results in limited applicability. Whilst DXA remains the gold standard for the diagnosis of osteoporosis, QUS may be of use for the prediction of those at risk of future fracture in areas where there is limited availability of DXA.


Between the Middle Jurassic and Holocene, birds evolved an enormous diversity of behaviours. The distribution and antiquity of these behaviours is difficult to establish given a relatively poor fossil record. Rare crop, stomach and gut contents typically reveal diets consistent with morphology but stem-members of some lineages (including Cariamae and Coraciiformes) seem to have been different in ecology from their extant relatives. Most of our ideas about the behaviour of fossil birds are based on analogy (with skull form, limb proportions and claw curvature being used to guide hypotheses). However, this has limitations given that some extinct taxa lack extant analogues and that some extant taxa do not behave as predicted by osteology. Reductionist methods have been used to test predation style and running ability in fossil taxa including moa, Gastornis and phorusrhacids. Virtually nothing is known of nesting and nest-building behaviour but colonial nesting is known from the Cretaceous onwards. Rare vegetative nests demonstrate modern nest-building from the Eocene onwards. Ornamental rectrices indicate that sexually driven display drove some aspects of feather evolution and evidence for loud vocal behaviour and intraspecific combat is known for some taxa. Our knowledge of fossil bird behaviour indicates that 'modern' behaviours are at least as old as crown birds. Stem-members of extant lineages, however, may sometimes or often have differed from extant taxa.


Context: Necrotizing fasciitis of the breast is rare globally. There is an observed increase in the number of cases seen in our hospital. Moreover, there is no previous documentation on the disease from this center. Aims: The aim was to highlight the clinical features, predisposing factors, complications, treatment, and outcome of necrotizing fasciitis of the breast. Settings and Design: It was a 5-year prospective study from January 2012 to December 2016. Subjects and Methods: The biodata, clinical features, predisposing factors, complications, treatment, and outcome of necrotizing fasciitis of the breast were documented. Statistical Analysis Used: The results were analyzed using SPSS software version 21 and presented as percentages and charts. Results: Thirty-nine out of 163 women with infective breast disease had necrotizing fasciitis of the breast. Majority of the patients (28 [71.8%]) were <31 years. Most of the patients had low educational status (33 [84.6%]). The most common clinical features were foul-smelling discharging ulcers/sinuses and necrosis of the skin of the breast in all patients. Majority of the patients (29 [74.4%]) were lactating mothers. Poorly treated mastitis/breast abscess was the predominant predisposing factor. Culture revealed polymicrobial organisms in 20 (51.3%) patients. Thirty-six (92.3%) patients had serial wound debridement, 25 (64.1%) had split-thickness skin grafting, and 3 (7.7%) had toileting mastectomy. Mortality rate was 10.3%. Conclusions: Necrotizing fasciitis of the breast is not uncommon in our center. Majority of the patients were illiterate with low socioeconomic status. Poorly treated mastitis/breast abscess in lactating women was the major predisposing factor.


A superhydrophobic surface was realized on a glass substrate and on the inner wall of a capillary tube, employing a combination of ZnO nanorod arrays and stearic acid. The vertical ZnO nanorod arrays were grown by a unique two-step solution method consisting of a seed formation step and nanorod growth step. Stearic acid appeared to be coated over the tips of ZnO nanorod arrays, increasing the possibility of air trapping in the nanorod forest. A water contact angle of 156.3° was demonstrated on the surface-modified glass, and it was attributed mainly to the air-trapping effect. The surface-modified glass substrate was used for contact angle measurements of detergent solutions, and the contact angle was found to monotonically decrease with increasing detergent concentration. Similarly, it was disclosed that the capillary height consistently decreased as a function of detergent concentration. These results indicate that contact angle measurement or capillary rise measurement may be a simple and practical way...


Access to external sources of technical knowledge is one of the keys to staying innovative for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The literature suggests that SMEs with a weak internal R&D capacity do not make much use of institutional sources like research institutes and universities. In this paper I investigate how trade associations can induce member SMEs to use a research institute. The case of a public research institute and SMEs in the textile industry in Kyoto, Japan is examined. Evidence from the case suggests that trade associations facilitate the use of the institute by expressing a collective 'voice' to the management of the institute. The effect is evident among active members in the use of services involving a large information gap as to their benefits. I also consider a shortcoming of the collective approach and suggest some measures to be taken on the part of research institutes.


An indirect hemagglutination (IHA) test and a complement fixation (CF) test were evaluated from test results on sera from 212 human melioidosis patients of which 119 were culturally proved cases. Significant antibody titers (IHA titers of 1:40 or greater and CF titers of 1:4 or greater) were demonstrated with either test in all except five patients. IHA and CF titers ranged as high as 1:20,480 and 1:1,024, respectively. Antibodies were usually demonstrated by both tests 1 week after onset of disease. Transient seronegative reactions during the course of disease were seen in sera of approximately 19% of the patients with either IHA and CF but rarely with both tests. High titers in either test were obtained by the third week of disease and reached maximum levels in 4 to 5 months. Titers usually were detectable for 9 or more months. Antibodies were detected by IHA and CF tests in 80 to 100% of the sera obtained at various time intervals from 9 months to 2 or more years after disease onset. Antibody persistence occurred in patients who had a short disease course, as well as in patients with prolonged, complicated infections. The IHA test had excellent specificity when evaluated with normal human sera and diverse antimicrobial sera from hyperimmunized rabbits and human patients. The CF antigen appeared to contain common antigens with some but not all types of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The specificity of the CF antigen could be enhanced without appreciable effect on its sensitivity by use of a titer of 1:8 in lieu of 1:4 as a criterion for a significant reaction. Either test could be used advantageously for the laboratory diagnosis of melioidosis.


This case study investigates the rise of solo self-employment in the Netherlands as well as the increasing importance of entrepreneurial activity by employees. A fifty percent increase in the number of Dutch solo self-employed in the last decade has led to more than 800,000 individuals now working for own risk and reward. A minority can be regarded as ambitious with respect to innovation orientation. Figures about entrepreneurial employees have only been collected since a few years. In the short term, the share of entrepreneurial employees in the Dutch adult population seems to be stable. Their current number has been estimated on more than half a million. More and more individuals combine multiple jobs, or are employed and self-employed simultaneously. The report attempts to explain which institutions have contributed to the deviating pattern in Dutch solo self-employment numbers from a European perspective. We argue that changes in formal institutions regarding the judicial and tax treatment of self-employed as compared to that of employees are the main determinant. Especially tax facilities like the profit exemption for SMEs, the self-employed deduction, and the starters deduction have increased the attractiveness of working as or working with solo self-employed since the second half of the nineties. Who benefits most from the difference in tax treatment, either the solo self-employed individual or his/her client, depends on the parties' bargaining power when negotiating about the hourly rate. The developments in the Netherlands fit into the broader shift from the managed economy to a more entrepreneurial economy. It is argued that, mainly driven by globalisation and technological change, labour is increasingly organized in sets of tasks. On a task market, the total amount of work is divided among all workers, i.e. both employed and self-employed. Workers differ with respect to the completeness of their labour contract, and the degree of innovativeness of the tasks that are specified in that contract, either implicitly or explicitly. Policy should aim for developing and improving workers' modern skills like creativity and innovation, rather than educating people for specific jobs. Also, workers should be made aware that they themselves are increasingly responsible for human capital investments during their own career. Finally, given the blurring boundaries between employment and self-employment, the current legal distinction should be loosened by providing all workers with equal access to the welfare system.


Multimodal Transformers achieve superior performance in multimodal learning tasks. However, the quadratic complexity of the self-attention mechanism in Transformers limits their deployment in low-resource devices and makes their inference and training computationally expensive. We propose multimodal Sparse Phased Transformer (SPT) to alleviate the problem of self-attention complexity and memory footprint. SPT uses a sampling function to generate a sparse attention matrix and compress a long sequence to a shorter sequence of hidden states. SPT concurrently captures interactions between the hidden states of different modalities at every layer. To further improve the efficiency of our method, we use Layer-wise parameter sharing and Factorized Co-Attention that share parameters between Cross Attention Blocks, with minimal impact on task performance. We evaluate our model with three sentiment analysis datasets and achieve comparable or superior performance compared with the existing methods, with a 90% reduction in the number of parameters. We conclude that (SPT) along with parameter sharing can capture multimodal interactions with reduced model size and improved sample efficiency.


Purpose: This study was done to analyze the trend of theory application in articles published in the Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration (JKANA) over the last 10 years. Methods: Four hundred and eighty-five articles were reviewed to determine the scope of theory-applied research. General characteristics, study design and keywords classification by nursing meta-paradigm were analyzed using established analysis framework. Results: Twenty-four articles (4.9%) were identified as theory-applied research publications. More than half of the articles (54.2%) stated that a theoretical framework was used; the number of theories used in the 24 articles was 27 including nine nursing theories. The majority of the studies were conducted in hospital settings. In the keyword classification by nursing meta-paradigm, 28 environment-related keywords were identified but only 7 keywords were related to health. Conclusion: The results show that theory application in Korean nursing administration research is very limited. It is necessary to create a positive educational environment for graduate students to learn about nursing theories as well as theories from other disciplines. In addition, different levels of nursing theories should be continuously developed in the field of nursing administration.


A chemiluminescence resonance energy transfer (CRET) method was fabricated for the determination of indolyl acetic acid (IAA) by using Ce(IV)–Na2SO3 in a chemiluminescence (CL) reaction as the donor and luminescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) as the acceptor. The CL intensity from the redox reaction of Ce(IV) and Na2SO3 in acidic medium increased significantly in the presence of N-CDs because the absorption band of N-CDs perfectly overlapped with the luminescence spectra of excited SO2 from the reaction of Ce(IV)–Na2SO3. Further, IAA was observed to inhibit the CL signal of the N-CDs–Ce(IV)–Na2SO3 system, which made it applicable for the determination of IAA. The linear range was 2.0 × 10−8–1.0 × 10−6 mol L−1 and the detection limit was 5.6 × 10−9 mol L−1. This work is not only of importance for gaining a better understanding of the unique optical and physical chemistry properties of doping carbon dots with heteroatoms but also has great potential to find CL applications in many fields.


Background The purpose of this study was to determine the etiology and epidemiologic characteristics of sudden death at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) Teaching Hospital, South West Nigeria. Methods This was a retrospective descriptive study of all cases of natural unexpected death, either occurring out of hospital or less than 24 hours after admission to LAUTECH Teaching Hospital, over a nine-year period from January 2003 to December 2011. Data were generated from information in the case notes and autopsy reports for these cases. Results Sudden death accounted for 29 (4.0%) of 718 adult medical deaths and 1.0% of all adult medical admissions. Out-of-hospital deaths occurred in 72.4% of cases. The mean age of the patients was 46.8 ± 11.5 (range 25–74) years. The male to female ratio was 6.25:1. Cardiovascular disease were the most common cause of death (51.7%), followed by respiratory disease (20.7%), pulmonary thromboembolism (10.4%), central nervous system disease (13.8%), gastrointestinal disorders (13.8%), severe chemical/drug poisoning (13.8%), and combined cardiovascular and central nervous system disease (13.8%). Hypertension-related causes were responsible for 14/29 (48.3%) of the sudden deaths. Hypertensive heart disease accounted for 86.7% of the cardiovascular deaths, hypertensive heart failure accounted for 73.3%, whilst all heart failure cases accounted for 80.0%. Left ventricular hypertrophy was present in 69.2% of the patients with hypertensive heart disease. Moderate to severe atheromatous changes occurred in the aorta in 38.5% of patients aged ≥50 years. No case of myocardial infarction was found. Conclusion Hypertensive heart disease and hypertension-related disorders are the most common causes of sudden death in South West Nigeria, so effective public health strategies should be channeled towards prevention, detection, and treatment of hypertension.


The research problem of this study was based on the existing skills gap between education and employment in Saudi Arabia. The Institute of Public Administration like other educational institutions has established Co-operative education programmes (Co-op) in order to build a partnership with the private sector. Co-op was one of the objectives of the state's sixth development plan (1414 – 1420h), (1995 – 2000) and is used to increase education sufficiency and improving its quality. It is argued that, to meet the future demands for appropriately skilled managers and workers, ongoing collaboration and consultation with industry is required to ensure the goals of all primary stakeholders - students, educators and industry employers - are met (Walo, 2000).

The primary objective of the study was to explore the effectiveness of the Co-operative education programmes, which are provided by private sector companies and some government agencies under the supervision of the Institute of Public Administration, in developing the students' awareness of the importance of generic competencies required for IPA's Post-secondary Diploma degree for graduates entering the workplace.

Through a quantitative and qualitative study, this research compared the perceptions held by employers, teachers and students (before and after particpating in the Co-op) about the importance of the generic competencies required for IPA's post-secondary graduates entering workplace today, and employers' and teachers' perceptions of the most important competencies required to be developed in the graduates. A survey questionnaire adapted from the research tool used in studies by Hodges and Burchell (2003) and Lin (2005), based on Spencer and Spencer's work (1993) was administered to 38 of IPA's eastern province's organisations which participated in IPA's Co-op programme in the last 3 years, 38 teachers from IPA's Dammam branch, and 99 students from IPA's Post-secondary programmes (before and after particpating in the Co-op). Employers were interviewed as a further qualitative component to give more depth to the study. The frequency distribution, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA plus post-hoc Seheffe, Kruskal-Wallis test plus post-hoc Mann-Whitney, and 'Direct Ranking' statistical methods were used to identify the differences between the participant groups. The findings revealed that there is a good agreement between the four groups on the importance of a broad range of competencies.
The study has revealed the impact of Co-operative education programmes. This was clear for example when students (after particpating in the Co-op) joined employers in ranking English language (writing), English language (speaking), and English language (overall) among the ten most important competencies, and their awareness of the importance of competencies remained high across a broad range of competencies. This study has also shown the importance placed on ethical competencies by educators and industrial professionals.

The study has also shown that employers', teachers', and students' perceptions of the importance of competencies were affected by their different demographic characteristics. The study showed that all groups perceived both hard and soft competencies as important, and there was consistency between the four groups in favouring soft competencies over hard competencies. The results showed that there was an agreement between employers and teachers in the need to improve IPA's Post-secondary graduates' performance in the competency of English language (overall), as a priority as well as some ethical competencies, and the hard competency of computer literacy. The study showed that Post-secondary Programme (PSP) was ranked in first place as the most important source that developed students' awareness of the importance of competencies, whether in an individual area or under the two categories hard and soft. Second was home/family/community, third came the Co-op Programme, fourth was school, and self-taught came in the last rank

The study clearly reflected the effectiveness of IPA's Post-secondary Programmes in developing students' awareness of the importance of competencies, and the impact of home/family/community in this objective. The study also asserted that Co-operative education programme was effective as well; based on its short-term impact in comparison to the long-term influence expected by other sources. The study revealed a lack of effort in schools directed to developing students' awareness of the importance of competencies. The results in general revealed the positive impact of Co-operative education in developing students' awareness of the importance of competencies to be closer to the requirements of employers.


PURPOSE
The purpose of this integrative review was to explore how adolescents and young adults used the social determinant of the built environment, specifically greenspace, as a potential point of intervention to address overall well-being, specifically mental health symptoms.

METHOD
The approach used strategies described by Whittemore and Knafl. Peer-reviewed, published research articles in English were identified using electronic databases CINAHL, PubMed, and EMBASE. Seventeen research reports using qualitative or quantitative methods with adolescents and young adults. Each article was evaluated for quality using a critical appraisal tool by Hawker et al. Data were analyzed and then synthesized using the Matrix Method.

FINDINGS
Three themes related to the purpose and aims were extracted: elements of greenspace, activity variation, and amenities. All themes shared a common element of quality, which influenced the perception of safety and greenspace use.

DISCUSSION
The science of urban greenspace and adolescent-young adult well-being is still relatively new. Public health nurses can incorporate social determinants of health, such as the built environment in research, to understand how greenspace is to be used as an alternative health strategy to possibly reduce mental health symptoms and improve well-being.


The link between Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) shareholder engagement and financial risk and/or return is a very novel topic within the wider relevant literature. While prominent theoretical and empirical research has studied shareholder activism in the form of raising shareholder proposals, literature specifically pinpointing shareholder engagements, a rapidly growing alternative form of activism, is scarce. This thesis provides a quantitative analysis of a leading UK activist's (Hermes Equity Ownership Services) ESG shareholder engagement and its impact on investment risk as well as the role of additional determining engagement factors lying behind these financial impacts.
First, I investigate the issue of the ESG engagement effect on investment risk by examining the respective differences between target firms and control firms during the entire engagement period. The main finding is that ESG shareholder engagement creates a demonstrable value protection effect. The engagement targets have significantly less downside risk and Value at Risk than control firms. This result holds for subsamples of engagements related to governance theme, the combination of governance and social themes, and the combination of governance and environmental themes. However, this risk reduction effect disappears for environmental or social engagements alone. Moreover, I find that reduced risk only manifests for engagement targets that take actions/strategies to meet the investors' requirements.
Secondly, I analyse ESG engagement effects on investment returns and find little evidence of a strong association between the two. This conclusion holds for subsamples created by theme, industry or geography. I argue that ESG engagement hardly delivers any abnormal returns in the long run when the market learns the anomalies associated with ESG information.
Thirdly, I further explore the financial impacts of ESG engagement and the mechanisms underlying it, focusing on the extractive industry only. I find that a successful engagement produces in average lower downside risk than a less successful engagement. Further investigating this, I show that tactics contributing to a successful engagement include targeting the higher authority levels of engaged firms, communicating via personal meetings (instead of alternative channels) and being consistent in the engagement proc


Such demands raise difficulties, as the physician has to consider (and has to be the defender of) the coming child. A thorough psychological investigation must be conducted, as the couple's motives and those of each partner considered separately are not necessarily in agreement. Most important for the couple are the persistence of common projects and the strengthening of the bonds. The husband wants to survive through a child, to give an ultimate present and to increase the chance of keeping his partner. The wife shows her faithfulness and diminishes her partner's guilt feelings. She is, anyway, in a difficult situation if trying not to become pregnant, especially if she had already expressed a wish for maternity in normal circumstances. Unconscious mechanisms can intervene, such as fantasmatic adultery (through IAD) which reequilibrates the couple: the husband who brought the HIV has to be forgiven, or punished. Also, and most importantly, one has to analyze the prospects for the child, who is at risk of loosing his father, and also his mother: a later transmission of the virus to her cannot be excluded. The child will be confronted by illness and death of his father, and by heavy family secrets. The attitude of the medical team remains problematic: no clearcut attitude prevails.


Between 1920 and 1964, the city of Raleigh was
radically transformed, growing from a small, relatively dense
capital city with a number of racially diverse communities to large
sprawling civic, commercial, and educational hub with neighborhoods
increasingly divided along race lines. At the forefront of this
transformation was a series of school building campaigns aimed at
modernizing educational facilities throughout the city. Beginning
in the 1920's the Raleigh school board, under the advisement of the
city's chamber of commerce, used school planning as a method of
advancing segregated neighborhoods. Beginning in the Post-World War
II period, faculty at the newly formed School of Design at North
Carolina State University were instrumental establishment of new
school design standards based on contemporary modernist trends with
the support of the nominally progressive leadership of the city.
These new schools, as with all public schools in the state of North
Carolina, were racially segregated, but with the ruling of Brown v.
Board of Education, the status of race in educational facilities
was brought to the forefront. This research explores the
development of racially defined communities in Raleigh by examining
the discriminatory methods of school planning and design in order
to illustrate that the planning of schools from the 1920's through
the mid century was used as a method of increasing segregation at
the scale of the city, and furthermore to demonstrate that the
perception and implementation of a modernist aesthetic was not
uniform. It will be argued that these modern schools were aimed
creating an image of progressive values while simultaneously
reasserting the values of the segregationist South.


As a model system to study the elasticity of bottle-brush polymers, we here introduce self-assembled DNA bottle brushes, consisting of a DNA main chain that can be very long and still of precisely defined length, and precisely monodisperse polypeptide side chains that are physically bound to the DNA main chains. Polypeptide side chains have a diblock architecture, where one block is a small archaeal nucleoid protein Sso7d that strongly binds to DNA. The other block is a net neutral, hydrophilic random coil polypeptide with a length of exactly 798 amino acids. Light scattering shows that for saturated brushes the grafting density is one side chain per 5.6 nm of DNA main chain. According to small-angle X-ray scattering, the brush diameter is D = 17 nm. By analyzing configurations of adsorbed DNA bottle brushes using AFM, we find that the effective persistence of the saturated DNA bottle brushes is Peff = 95 nm, but from force–extension curves of single DNA bottle brushes measured using optical tweezers we find Peff = 15 nm. The latter is equal to the value expected for DNA coated by the Sso7d binding block alone. The apparent discrepancy between the two measurements is rationalized in terms of the scale dependence of the bottle-brush elasticity using theory previously developed to analyze the scale-dependent electrostatic stiffening of DNA at low ionic strengths.


Abstract Background Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease. It was reported that lncRNA Non-coding RNA-activated by DNA damage (NORAD) has potential regulatory effects on skin diseases. Our previous studies found that lncRNA NORAD was highly expressed and its potential target miR-26a was down-regulated in psoriasis model mice. Here, we aimed to investigate the role of NORAD in the development of psoriasis. Methods IL-22/LPS (interleukin-22/lipopolysaccharide)-stimulated HaCaT (human immortalized keratinocytes) cell model and imiquimod-induced mouse model were established. Keratin 6 (K6), Keratin 16 (K16), Keratin 17 (K17), and Cell division cycle 6 (CDC6) levels were detected by western blot. Cell activity was detected by CCK-8, MTT, and EdU assays. Quantitative real-time PCR was performed to examine the levels of NORAD, miR-26a, CDC6, K6, K16, and K17. Haematoxylin-eosin staining was applied to observe the degree of skin thickening and hyperplasia. Fluorescence in situ hybridization detects the location of NORAD. RNA immunoprecipitation, RNA pull-down, and Luciferase test were performed to detect the interaction between NORAD and miR-26a. Results In IL-22/LPS-stimulated HaCaT cells, NORAD, CDC6, and keratinocyte proliferation-related proteins (K6, K16, and K17) were up-regulated and miR-26a was down-regulated. Cell survival and proliferation were also increased. However, the results were reversed after interference with NORAD. Also, in vitro experiments revealed that NORAD negatively regulated miR-26a. In IL-22/LPS-stimulated HaCaT cells and skin of imiquimod-induced mice, we found that lower NORAD resulted in an increase of miR-26a and a decrease of CDC6, further decreased levels of keratinocyte proliferation-related proteins (K6, K16, and K17).


Public administration research has documented a shift in the locus of discretion away from street-level bureaucrats to "systems-level bureaucracies" as a result of new information communication technologies that automate bureaucratic processes, and thus shape access to resources and decisions around enforcement and punishment. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are accelerating these trends, potentially altering discretion in public management in exciting and in challenging ways. We introduce the concept of "artificial discretion" as a theoretical framework to help public managers consider the impact of AI as they face decisions about whether and how to implement it. We operationalize discretion as the execution of tasks that require nontrivial decisions. Using Salamon's tools of governance framework, we compare artificial discretion to human discretion as task specificity and environmental complexity vary. We evaluate artificial discretion with the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, manageability, and political feasibility. Our analysis suggests three principal ways that artificial discretion can improve administrative discretion at the task level: (1) increasing scalability, (2) decreasing cost, and (3) improving quality. At the same time, artificial discretion raises serious concerns with respect to equity, manageability, and political feasibility.


Both before and after pentobarbital anesthesia, cardiovascular responsiveness to norepinephrine, epinephrine and serotonin was increased and that to angiotensin was decreased when experimental renal hypertension was first elicited. Response to tyramine was strikingly enhanced. Several weeks later, during the chronic phase of hypertension, there was a slight and scarcely significant heightened response to norepinephrine, a clearly increased response to tyramine, and no change in that to serotonin, dimethylphenylpiperazinium iodide, and 3-hydroxy-phenyl-ethanolamine HCl. Study of the problem of variability of responsiveness showed relatively little difference in mean response to any of five pressor drugs with or without anesthesia and after sham operation. Hypertension produced by infusion of angiotensin into normal anesthetized dogs did not change the response to norepinephrine but more than doubled that to tyramine. When acute renal hypertension was produced in the same dogs, angiotensin infusion failed to cause further change in response to either substance. Infusion of angiotensin into dogs with chronic renal hypertension caused increased response to tyramine but not to norepinephrine. The perfused hind legs of dogs with acute renal hypertension showed clearly reduced responses to angiotensin with no concurrent change in responses to norepinephrine. The pressor response to serotonin was increased while that to tyramine was unchanged. During chronic hypertension responses were like the normal values. Hypertension caused by infusion of angiotensin decreased greatly the vasoconstrictor response to superimposed injections of angiotensin into the perfused leg circuit while norepinephrine responses were unchanged. Response to another peptide, vasopressin, was reduced like that to angiotensin. These studies suggest that during acute renal hypertension increased quantities of angiotensin are present and that there is a decrease in neural tone. The finding that during the chronic phase of hypertension, the response to tyramine alone remained elevated, suggests the presence of small amounts of angiotensin, i.e., enough to increase the pressor effectiveness of endogenous norepinephrine released by tyramine. During the chronic phase of hypertension, peripheral resistance appears relatively more dependent on neural control.


Porang ( Amorphophallus muelleri Blume) is an indigenous Indonesian plant containing high hemicellulose as a source of glucomannan. An alternative way to produce a good quality of mannooligosaccharides was through hydrolysis of glucomannan by endo-β mannnase from actynomicetes. Based on 16S rRNA analysis, BF 3.10 isolate, isolated from Bukit Duabelas National Park soil, Jambi was identified as Streptomyces violascens BF 3.10 . Reducing sugar was analyzed by dinitrosalicylic acid methods. The highest reducing sugar was achieved at the 72 hours of incubation. Mannanase of isolate BF 3.10 had the highest activity at pH 6 and temperature of 70 °C with enzyme activity of 16.38 U/mL and was stable at 4 °C for 48 h. During 5-hour of hydrolysis with substrate concentration of 0.25%, 0.5%, and 1% porang glucomannan dissolved in 10 mL enzyme, mannooligosaccharides were produced with the degree of polymerization of 2-3. Visualization of the products by using thin layer chromatography (TLC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods showed that mannooligosaccharides produced comprised of glucose, mannobiose, mannotriose, and mannotetraose. The degree of polymerization and the simple sugars produced indicated that mannanase produced by S. violascens actively catalyzed the hydrolysis of 1.4-β-D-mannoside linkage from β-1.4-mannan backbone, that eventually produced simple sugars of mannooligosaccharides. Key words: glucomannan, mannanase, mannooligosaccharides, porang, Streptomyces violascens


A 3-yr study evaluated the carryover effects of dairy heifer grazing experience on behavior and first-lactation performance as dairy cows. Forty-one Holstein and 23 Holstein-Jersey crossbred calves born between January and April 2008 were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatments (n = 8 per group, 2 groups per treatment) in a completely randomized design. Treatments were combi-nations of managing dairy heifers in confinement (CNF) or on pasture (PST): grazed yr 1 and 2 (PSTPST); grazed yr 1, but confined yr 2 (PSTCNF); confined yr 1 and grazed yr 2 (CNFPST); or confined yr 1 and 2 (CNFCNF). After calving, all heifers on all treatments were grazed as cows in yr 3. In yr 1, PSTPST and PSTCNF heifers were grazed for 41 d on Italian ryegrass pastures, whereas CNFPST and CNFCNF were housed in bedded-pack pens and fed a TMR. In yr 2, PSTPST and CNFPST heifers grazed Italian ryegrass pasture for 65 d, whereas PSTCNF and CNFCNF remained in confinement. In yr 2, a mid-trial assessment of heifer grazing behavior was made on PSTPST versus CNFPST heifers. Grazing activities were assessed by visual observation and heifer movement measured by portable global positioning system units. Heifers from all treatment groups subsequently calved between January and April in yr 3. All primiparous cows were then allocated to pastures by treatment group, grazed for 61 d, (May through July) in yr 3, with grazing behavior and milk production evaluated while grazing. In yr 2, heifers on the PSTPST treatment spent more time grazing than heifers on the CNFPST treatment (78 vs. 35% of the time) when first exposed to pasture (d 1). On d 1 to 3, PSTPST heifers walked a greater distance than CNFPST heifers; however, PSTPST and CNFPST heifers had similar daily grazing times and walking patterns after 3 d of pasture exposure in yr 2. As lactating cows (yr 3), cows with no (CNFCNF) grazing experience grazed less on d 1 compared with cows with (PSTPST, PSTCNF, or CNFPST) grazing experience. Day-1 grazing times in yr 3 were 62, 59, 76, and 13% of the times for cows with PSTPST, PSTCNF, CNFPST, and CNFCNF grazing experience, respectively. In yr 3, on d 1 to 3, cows with previous grazing experience as heifers (PSTPST, CNFPST, and PSTCNF) walked a greater distance than cows without previous grazing experience (CNFCNF). Milk production was lowest on d 1 to 3 for cows with no previous grazing experience (CNFCNF), but average daily milk production was not different overall over the 61 d of study in yr 3. Results indicate that grazing experiences as a heifer can affect behavior and milk production during a cow's first days on pasture. After a short acclimation period, dairy cows without grazing experience as heifers developed similar grazing behaviors and performance as cows with grazing experience as heifers.


The incidence of twin births in the United States (US) has increased more than 65 per cent since 1980. However, the risk of injury to multiple-birth children is unknown. We sought to compare the risk of injury-related hospitalization and death between multiples and singletons. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using linked birth certificate, hospital discharge, and death certificate data from Washington State (1987–2002). All multiples and approximately three singletons randomly selected for each multiple pregnancy were included. We used Cox proportional hazards regression to determine the hazard ratio (HR) of injury-related hospitalization and death in the first six years of life for twins and triplets compared to singletons. The HRs of injury-related hospitalization were 1.4 for twins (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.2–1.6) and 2.9 for triplets (95% CI: 0.5–9.5) relative to singletons after adjustment for child's sex, mother's age and marital status, and number of older siblings. Low birth weight significantly modified the association between twin status and injury hospitalization. The risk of injury death was not significantly higher among twins than singleton children. Twins appear to be at higher risk of childhood injury hospitalization. Triplets had a nearly three-fold increased rate of injury hospitalization compared to singletons, though we cannot exclude chance as an explanation.


Currently, metabolic syndrome treatment includes predominantly pharmacological symptom relief and complex lifestyle changes. Trace amines and their receptor systems modulate signaling pathways of dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which are involved in the pathogenesis of this disorder. Trace amine-associated receptor 1 (TAAR1) is expressed in endocrine organs, and it was revealed that TAAR1 may regulate insulin secretion in pancreatic islet β-cells. For instance, accumulating data demonstrate the positive effect of TAAR1 agonists on the dynamics of metabolic syndrome progression and MetS-associated disease development. The role of other TAARs (TAAR2, TAAR5, TAAR6, TAAR8, and TAAR9) in the islet's function is much less studied. In this review, we summarize the evidence of TAARs' contribution to the metabolic syndrome pathogenesis and regulation of insulin secretion in pancreatic islets. Additionally, by the analysis of public transcriptomic data, we demonstrate that TAAR1 and other TAAR receptors are expressed in the pancreatic islets. We also explore associations between the expression of TAARs mRNA and other genes in studied samples and demonstrate the deregulation of TAARs' functional associations in patients with metabolic diseases compared to healthy donors.


An electric motor is a device that changes electrical energy into mechanical energy for railway vehicles. When developing the electric motor, it used to be developed simply for structures or control methods of the motor itself without considering convergence with other devices or technologies. However, as the railway vehicles become more advanced, technology development through convergence with other devices or technologies is spreading. Therefore, based on patent data related to the electric motors applied to the railway vehicles, this research aims to carry out technical forecasting for establishing research and development (R and D) direction for new technologies by predicting vacant technologies from the point of view of technology convergence. In other words, we studied how to find the vacant technologies in a field of convergence technology for the electric motor of the railway vehicles by analyzing the patent data. More specifically, we search the patents data associated with the electric motor of the railway vehicle that contain multiple IPC codes, and use multiple IPC codes to determine the field of convergence technology. In addition, we extract keywords from the patents data related to each of the determined convergence technologies and define the vacant technologies by interpreting the field of convergence technology and the extracted keywords.


Amyloid diseases are global epidemics with profound health, social and economic implications and yet remain without a cure. This dire situation calls for research into the origin and pathological manifestations of amyloidosis to stimulate continued development of new therapeutics. In basic science and engineering, the cross-β architecture has been a constant thread underlying the structural characteristics of pathological and functional amyloids, and realizing that amyloid structures can be both pathological and functional in nature has fuelled innovations in artificial amyloids, whose use today ranges from water purification to 3D printing. At the conclusion of a half century since Eanes and Glenner's seminal study of amyloids in humans, this review commemorates the occasion by documenting the major milestones in amyloid research to date, from the perspectives of structural biology, biophysics, medicine, microbiology, engineering and nanotechnology. We also discuss new challenges and opportunities to drive this interdisciplinary field moving forward.


This is a critical enquiry into the widely held belief that the doctrines of pre-Tractarian High Church Anglicanism have exercised a specially tenacious hold on the Church of Ireland. Chapter 1 surveys the tradition as developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, but also examines the peculiarity of a Church established by law in a land the majority of whose people adhered to other Christian bodies. Chapter 2 outlines the careers of Knox as the forerunner and Jebb as the principal embodiment of 'Old High Church' feeling, pointing to their relations with Methodism and Roman Catholicism, and their dependence on the legal status of the Church. Chapter 3 contrasts diverse attempts to confront the problems that arose from decreasing support for that legal status on the part of the British Government, culminating in the Irish Church Temporalities Act of 1833: the trigger of the Oxford Movement. The lineaments of High Church thought at that moment, notably its patristic emphasis, are traced in Chapter 4, and its limitations exposed in an account of a contemporary ecumenical venture. It becomes clear that the Tractarians owed a debt to Irish old High Church thinking, but developed their theology well beyond even Knox and Jebb. Chapter 5 depicts Irish hostility towards Tractarian- ism, exemplified in the career of J.H. Todd, and various endeavours to maintain the High Church tradition such as the foundation of S. Columba's College. At the same time, the cornerstone of traditional Irish High Church thought is removed by the Irish Church Disestabhshment Act of 1869. Chapter 6, in recounting the speed and ferocity with which Low Church Evangelicals, chiefly amongst the laity, captured the commanding heights of the disestablished Church, seeks to throw retrospective light on the inherent weakness of the old High Church tradition. Indeed, as Chapter 7 also aims to show, it was only through imported Anglo-Catholicism that any elements of the earlier tradition were to survive. The conclusion reached in these two final chapters is that the historical situation of the Church of Ireland was never favourable to an indigenous traditionalist High Church movement capable of widespread lay support.


In this era where data and voice services are available at a push of a button, service providers have virtually limitless options for reaching their customers with value-added services. The changes in services and underlying networks that this always-on culture creates make it essential for service providers to understand the evolving business logic and appropriate support systems for service delivery, billing, and revenue assurance. Supplying an end-to-end understanding of telecom management layers, Fundamentals of EMS, NMS and OSS/BSS is a complete guide to telecom resource and service management basics. Divided into four sections: Element Management System, Network Management System, Operation/Business Support Systems, and Implementation Guidelines, the book examines standards, best practices, and the industries developing these systems. Each section starts with basics, details how the system fits into the telecom management framework, and concludes by introducing more complex concepts. From the initial efforts in managing elements to the latest management standards, the text: Covers the basics of network management, including legacy systems, management protocols, and popular products Deals with OSS/BSScovering processes, applications, and interfaces in the service/business management layers Includes implementation guidelines for developing customized management solutions The book includes chapters devoted to popular market products and contains case studies that illustrate real-life implementations as well as the interaction between management layers. Complete with detailed references and lists of web resources to keep you current, this valuable resource supplies you with the fundamental understanding and the tools required to begin developing telecom management solutions tailored to your customers needs.


Background: Presbycusis is related to degenerative changes of aging resulting from deficient cochlear microcirculation. It is characterized by bilateral, symmetrical, sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) in which recruitment and speech discrimination is affected in the absence of noise exposure. The objective of this study was to analyze the pure tone audiogram characteristics in Presbycusis.
Methods: This descriptive study recruited n=192 cases of presbycusis of both genders, aged 50 to 80 years with convenience sampling technique. The study was conducted at Yusra General Hospital and the National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, Islamabad from1st July 2017 to 30th September 2017. Pure tone audiometry was used to collect audiometric data. SPSS-24 was used for data analysis. Chi-square and Pearson's correlation were used to determine association between variables with p < 0.05 taken as significant.
Results: Pure tone audiometry revealed 58 (30.2%) right and 65 (33.9%) left ears with high frequency gently sloping audiogram, while the second commonest configuration being high frequency steeply sloping curve in 51(26.6%) right and 52(27.1%) left ears. There was a significant correlation between the configuration of the audiogram and age with p=0.000, while no significant correlation with gender (p=0.71). The majority,77 (40.10%) right and 71(36.98%) of left ears had moderately severe hearing loss, while severe hearing loss was second commonest with 60(31.25%) right and 70(36.46%) left ears affected. The severity of hearing loss had a significant (P=0.000) positive correlation with age but no significant relationship with gender.
Conclusion:  High frequency gently sloping audiogram was the commonest configuration followed by high frequency steeply sloping curve. Moderately severe hearing loss was most commonly seen followed by severe hearing loss.


The production of pulp and paper is associated with the generation of large quantities of wastewater that has to be purified to avoid severe pollution of the environment. Wastewater purification in pulp and paper mills combines sedimentation, biological treatment, chemical precipitation, flotation and anaerobic treatment, and the specific combination of techniques is determined by the local conditions. Wastewater treatment generates large volumes of sludge that after dewatering can be incinerated and thus used for bio-energy production. Sludge is currently viewed as biofuel of poor quality due to its high water content, and some mills treat it solely as a disposal problem.Two strategies have been identified as feasible options to improve the energy efficiency of sludge management. One is drying using multi-effect evaporation followed by incineration. The other is anaerobic digestion of the wet sludge to produce methane.This thesis explores the energy balances of sludge management strategies in pulp and paper mills with special focus on anaerobic digestion. The first part consists of a system analysis, used to evaluate some wastewater treatment processes and sludge management, and the second part of empirical studies of anaerobic digestion of pulp and paper mill sludge. It was shown that the use of energy for aeration in aerobic biological treatment should be kept to the minimum required for acceptable quality of the processed water. Additional aeration for reduction of the generated sludge will only result in reduced energy generation in a subsequent methane generation stage. In the second part of the thesis, it is shown that anaerobic digestion is a feasible option for sludge management as it leads to production of high value biogas. Co-digestion with grass silage, cow/pig manure or municipal sewage sludge should then be used to counteract the low nitrogen content of pulp and paper mill sludge.


This thesis aims to predict wind induced ventilation of a structure through the application of current analytical techniques, computational fluid dynamics simulations and novel techniques for ventilation flows induced by turbulent mechanisms. Validation of the predictions was carried out through full-scale measurements undertaken on a purpose built test structure. The structure was of cubic design with an external dimension of 6m. The construction of this full-scale research structure at Silsoe Research Institute, Bedfordshire, England, provided a unique opportunity for undertaking full-scale experimentation on a fundamental wind engineering test case which, prior to this thesis, had only been investigated using scale models in wind tunnels and computational simulations.


Ferroelectric ceramics were born in the early 1940s with the discovery of the phenomenon of ferroelectricity as the source of the unusually high dielectric constant in ceramic barium titanate capacitors. Since that time, they have been the heart and soul of several multibillion dollar industries, ranging from high-dielectric-constant capacitors to later developments in piezoelectric transducers, positive temperature coefficient devices, and electrooptic light valves. Materials based on two compositional systems, barium titanate and lead zirconate titanate, have dominated the field throughout their history. The more recent developments in the field of ferroelectric ceramics, such as medical ultrasonic composites, high-displacement piezoelectric actuators (Moonies, RAINBOWS), photostrictors, and thin and thick films for piezoelectric and integrated-circuit applications have served to keep the industry young amidst its growing maturity. Various ceramic formulations, their form (bulk, films), fabrication, function (properties), and future are described in relation to their ferroelectric nature and specific areas of application.


The paper examines the determinants of workforce structure with respect to status and sector. It develops multinomial regression by using National Sample Survey Organisations (NSSO) household survey data to analyse factors that influence types of employment of workers in rural Andhra Pradesh. The variables considered for the study are assets, social group, religion, education level, age, and other household and regional factors of the workers. The selected variables in the model explain about 80% of variation in the types of employment of a worker. The educational level has high and significant impact on the choice of non-agricultural employment especially in services and regular employment, in rural Andhra Pradesh. As expected, income, size of landholding, state of being regular employee in non-agriculture is negatively associated with part-time employment compared to full-employment. On the other hand, the probability of self-employees in agriculture is higher in part-time work. Surprisingly, workers with technical education are more likely to be part-time employees. The probability of women workers to be employed as part-time workers is higher than that for male workers. There is significant increase in weekly wage rates of the non-agricultural workers as educational level increases, but there has been no significant increase in weekly wage earnings of casual labourers as educational level increases. There are significant wage differentials across different types of employment, by educational level of workers, by social group, and male and female workers.


Protein interaction in cells can be described at different levels. At a low interaction level, proteins function together in small, stable complexes and at a higher level, in sets of interacting complexes. All interaction levels are crucial for the living organism, and one of the challenges in proteomics is to measure the proteins at their different interaction levels. One common method for such measurements is immunoprecipitation followed by mass spectrometry (IP/MS), which has the potential to probe the different protein interaction forms. However, IP/MS data are complex because proteins, in their diverse interaction forms, manifest themselves in different ways in the data. Numerous bioinformatic tools for finding protein complexes in IP/MS data are currently available, but most tools do not provide information about the interaction level of the discovered complexes, and no tool is geared specifically to unraveling and visualizing these different levels. We present a new bioinformatic tool to explore IP/MS datasets for protein complexes at different interaction levels and show its performance on several real–life datasets. Our tool creates clusters that represent protein complexes, but unlike previous methods, it arranges them in a tree–shaped structure, reporting why specific proteins are predicted to build a complex and where it can be divided into smaller complexes. In every data analysis method, parameters have to be chosen. Our method can suggest values for its parameters and comes with adapted visualization tools that display the effect of the parameters on the result. The tools provide fast graphical feedback and allow the user to interact with the data by changing the parameters and examining the result. The tools also allow for exploring the different organizational levels of the protein complexes in a given dataset. Our method is available as GNU-R source code and includes examples at www.bdagroup.nl.


We study the formation of microstructure of gold films that generally undergo three processes: nucleation and nuclear growth, normal grain growth, and abnormal grain growth. Here the grains grow as a column in the normal grain growth process. When the grain size becomes larger than and comparable to the film thickness, the grains with favourable orientation will grow at the expense of the grains with unfavourable orientation, leading to abnormal grain growth. The abnormal grains grow along the favoured orientation (111), which has been certified by x-ray diffraction spectroscopy. Finally, the processes of the normal and abnormal grain growth are fitted using the Lifshitz–Slyozov–Wanger theory.


Ecology and population studies are among the most important curriculum standards of the NCSS. Population Connection has aligned its various lessons with NCSS national standards. The NCSS standard "People, Places, and Environments" aligns with the state standards of history and geography. Both the state and NCSS provide K-12 grade alignment. Social studies teachers nationwide are able to use the NCSS standards that Population Connection has provided to align the many lessons with NCSS national standards and state standards. Each of the following three lessons is designed for the elementary classroom teachers to integrate social studies with other elementary content. All three lessons have been field-tested and provide an overview, procedures, objectives, standards, skills and materials, discussion questions, and extension activities.


Production of correct bioassay outcome is the foremost objective in digital microfluidic biochips (or DMFBs). In high-frequency DMFBs, continuous actuation of electrodes leads to malfunctioning or even breakdown of the system. The improper functioning of a biochip tends to produce erroneous results. On the other hand, while transporting droplets, the residues may get stuck to electrode walls and cause contamination to other droplets. To ensure proper assay outcome, washing becomes mandatory, whose incorporation may delay the bioassay completion time significantly. Furthermore, each wash droplet possesses a capacity constraint within which the residues can be washed off successfully. Evidently, the design objectives possess a large degree of trade-offs among themselves and must be attacked to prepare an efficient platform. Here, the authors propose a complete fluid-level synthesis considering all the essential goals together instead of dealing with them in isolation. The presented approach effectively handles the trade-off scenarios and provides flexibility to the designer to decide the threshold of the individual optimisation objective leading to the construction of a good-quality solution as a whole. The performance is evaluated over several benchmark bioassays.


Gaussian processes (GPs) are a flexible class of methods with state of the art performance on spatial statistics applications. However, GPs require O(n3) computations and O(n2) storage, and popular GP kernels are typically limited to smoothing and interpolation. To address these difficulties, Kronecker methods have been used to exploit structure in the GP covariance matrix for scalability, while allowing for expressive kernel learning (Wilson et al., 2014). However, fast Kronecker methods have been confined to Gaussian likelihoods. We propose new scalable Kronecker methods for Gaussian processes with non-Gaussian likelihoods, using a Laplace approximation which involves linear conjugate gradients for inference, and a lower bound on the GP marginal likelihood for kernel learning. Our approach has near linear scaling, requiring O(DnD+1/D) operations and O(Dn2/D) storage, for n training data-points on a dense D > 1 dimensional grid. Moreover, we introduce a log Gaussian Cox process, with highly expressive kernels, for modelling spatiotemporal count processes, and apply it to a point pattern (n = 233,088) of a decade of crime events in Chicago. Using our model, we discover spatially varying multiscale seasonal trends and produce highly accurate long-range local area forecasts.


Objective: Heart rate (HR) reduction is a powerful method used to reduce myocardial oxygen demand thus reducing the frequency and duration of angina in chronic ischemic heart disease (CIHD). Ivabradine selectively inhibits the Na+/K+ current (If current) in pacemaker cells of the sinoatrial node thus reduces the slope of diastolic depolarization resulting in slower HR without causing other side effect on myocardial contractility or AV conduction. Treating silent myocardial ischemia has a prognostic effect and may improve long term mortality of (CIHD). The effect of Ivabradine on angina frequency was already studied but its effect on silent ambulatory myocardial ischemia (SAMI) has not been reported yet. In this study we report the effect of ivabradine on (SAMI). Design and method: We enrolled 50 patients with proven stable coronary artery disease (CAD) and at least one episode of ST-segment depression on ambulatory ECG monitoring. All of them were receiving optimal therapy for CIHD. 25 patients were randomized to receive Ivabradine 5–7.5 mg bid. And the other 25 patients received placebo. Ambulatory monitoring was repeated after 4 to 6 months of therapy. The two groups were comparable with respect to baseline characteristics, number of episodes of ST-segment depression, and baseline serum cholesterol levels. Holters were read by a blinded cardiologist. Results: The Ivabradine group had lower mean HR at study end and experienced a significant reduction in the number of episodes of ST-segment depression compared with the placebo group. ST-segment depression was completely resolved in 9 of 25 patients (36%) in the Ivabradine group versus 3 of 25 (12%) in the placebo group. The Ivabradine group exhibited a highly significant reduction (SAMI) (P < .001). By logistic regression, treatment with Ivabradine was an independent predictor of (SAMI) resolution. Conclusions: Conclusions: Further lowering of HR with Ivabradine can result in reduction or resolution of (SAMI) recorded as episodes of ST-segment depression in ambulatory monitoring of the ECG. A larger study is required to confirm this theory and to see the effect of SAMI reduction on long term mortality of CIHD.


Abstract

The Bhakti Luhur Foundation in 2016 in the preparation of financial statements at a glance has been referred to the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (PSAK) no. 45 but not yet in full. The objectives of this study were to analyze accounting procedures of Yayasan Bhakti Luhur Sidoarjo, conformity with PSAK 45 (revision 2017), and differences with PSAK 45 (revision 2017).
The result of the research indicates that Yayasan Bhakti Luhur in presenting the financial statements is not in full compliance with the provisions under PSAK 45. The provisions that have not been applied are the requirements in paragraph 03, paragraph 05, paragraph 11, paragraph 13, paragraph 14, paragraph 15, paragraph 19, paragraph 20 , paragraph 23, paragraph 24, paragraph 25, paragraph 29, paragraph 33, and paragraph 34. The Foundation presents 3 financial statements at the end of each accounting period. The three reports are not fully compliant with the provisions of PSAK 45. The differences in reports under PSAK 45 with practices implemented by the Foundation include, among others, the names of reported reports, formats, and items. In addition, Yayasan has not made any notes on the financial statements. The statement of financial position is called the balance sheet, activity report is called income and expense report, and the cash flow statement is called cash flow recapitulation.

Keywords: Financial Statements, Foundation, PSAK 45 (revised 2017)


Multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) have become a popular mechanism in global development and conservation circles, given the urgency to find transformative approaches to address climate change and unsustainable development. In this current context, it is important to take stock of MSFs,
 an example of a participatory mechanism that is emerging as a new 'solution'. The papers in this Special Issue of the International Forestry Review derive from a multi-country comparative research project carried out by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) that aimed
 to understand how best to support MSFs organised for more sustainable land and resource use. The seven papers assess the potential of MSFs for more equitable decision-making in regard to land and resource use sustainability, and engage with scholarly debates over these forms of participation.
 The papers approach MSFs from different theoretical perspectives and analytical interests, yet all engage with issues that stem from the power inequalities that are inherent to these forums. The papers provide more evidence – and a warning – that to get closer to transformational
 change, we need MSFs that do more than simply bring people to the table.


Catria is 1 of the 22 native Italian horse breeds that now survive from a larger number. Thirty individuals, representative of the Catria horse, were analyzed for 11 microsatellites and compared with data of 10 breeds reared in Italy. Three different approaches, genetic distances, correspondence analysis, and clustering methods, were considered to study genetic relationships among Catria and the other horse populations. Genetic differentiation among breeds was highly significant (P < 0.01) for all loci. Average F(ST) values indicate that around 10% of the total genetic variation was explained by the between-breed differences and the 3 approaches utilized gave similar results. Italian native breeds are clearly separated from the other examined breeds. However, by the correspondence analysis, the Catria appears closer to Maremmano and Murgese. The results of Bayesian approaches give further information showing for Catria a common origin with Maremmano and Italian Heavy Draught. Genetic relationships among Catria and the other breeds are consistent with the breed's documented history. The data and information found here can be utilized in the organization of conservation programmes planned to reduce inbreeding and to minimize loss of genetic variability.


The aim of this research is to show that a semiotic approach, similar to those who have already been applied in the HCI field, may contribute to design accessible interfaces. Comparing design solutions from a WCAG approach and from a semiotic approach, we show how the latter can contribute to a real communicational accessibility.


The notion of random motion in a potential well is elemental in the physical sciences and beyond. Quantitatively, this notion is described by reverting diffusions—asymptotically stationary diffusion processes which are simultaneously (i) driven toward a reversion level by a deterministic force, and (ii) perturbed off the reversion level by a random white noise. The archetypal example of reverting diffusions is the Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process, which is mean-reverting. In this paper we analyze reverting diffusions and establish that: (i) if the magnitude of the perturbing noise is constant then the diffusion's stationary density is unimodal and the diffusion is mode-reverting; (ii) if the magnitude of the perturbing noise is non-constant then, in general, neither is the diffusion's stationary density unimodal, nor is the diffusion mode-reverting. In the latter case we further establish a result asserting when unimodality and mode-reversion do hold. In particular, we demonstrate that the notion of mean-reversion, which is fundamental in economics and finance, is a misconception—as mean-reversion is an exception rather than the norm.


Audit reports ensure that financial statements are prepared and used with a commo accounting language and reasonable assurance for the target user groups such as company managers, investors, creditors, government and employees who are financial information users. In our country, with the entry into force of the Turkish Commercial Law numbered 6102 on July 1, 2012, independent audit has become mandatory for companies with certain qualifications. In addition, the Public Oversight Accounting and Auditing Standards Authority (KGK) was established on November 2, 2011 with the Decree Law No. 660 to regulate the audit area in line with international developments in order to carry out independent auditing under public supervision. The number of businesses subject to independent audit is increasing day by day. At the same time, in addition to legal requirements, credit institutions request independent audit reports in credit transactions, which increases the demand of companies for independent audit.

In this study, the reasons for the transition to independent audit, the features of the audit, the need for a common accounting language under the effect of globalization are explained briefly. Between the years 2013-2019 in the development of general and special audit Antalya Turkey, the data obtained from the Public Oversight Authority was based on a comparative analysis of numerical data and statistical information.

The aim of the study is to analyze the development of the audit in the 2013-2019 period and to measure the place of Antalya in the independent audit. In addition, it is to reveal the effect of regularly revising the independent audit criteria on the spread and spread of independent auditing.


INTRODUCTION
Metabolic Syndrome (MS) consists of a cluster of metabolic abnormalities that confer exaggerated risk of cardiovascular disease. MS is a novel risk factor for Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) and is a rising disease entity in Asia. Incidence of ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) is high in patients with MS. There is limited data on prevalence of MS in patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI).

AIM
To determine frequency of MS in patients admitted with STEMI.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Hundred Consecutive patients between 25 to 75 years who were admitted with STEMI at Govt medical college Thrissur were included in this prospective study. Subjects were assessed for five-component conditions of metabolic syndrome. Criteria to identify MS were based on a "Consensus statement for diagnosis of metabolic syndrome for Asian Indians". Presence of three or more of following suggest MS, Waist Circumference (WC)>90 cm in men and 80 cm in women, Blood pressure >130/85 mm Hg, Fasting Plasma Glucose (FPG) >100 mg%, serum triglycerides >150 mg/dl, High Density Lipoprotein (HDL)<40 mg/dl in male and<50 mg/dl in female. Statistical analysis was performed using Epi-Info software. Data expressed as numbers and percents were compared by Chi-square test.

RESULTS
Study enrolled 100 patients (males 80, females 20) with a mean age of 58. Frequency of MS in patients with STEMI was 40% (36% of males and 55% of females). Prevalence of components in the MS group was WC >80/90 -31(71%), BP>130/85- 23(58%), FPG >100 - 37(93%), HDL <40 (male)/ 50 (female) - 18(45%), TG >150 -15(37.5%).

CONCLUSION
The present study concluded that there is a remarkably high occurrence of metabolic syndrome and central obesity in patients with ST elevation Myocardial Infarction (MI) in our local population especially in females. Considering this fact the role of specific and targeted intervention for clinical detection and management of MS including lifestyle modifications needs to be addressed.


This is the first report of somatic embryogenesis and synthetic seed production in Angelica glauca, a valuable medicinal plant of Himalaya. Somatic embryogenesis protocol was developed using leaf explants from newly sprouted rhizomes. Mature leaf explants were inoculated in Murishige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 3 µM 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) induced 86% callus. Calli (0.5 g) subcultured into different concentration of 1-napthaleneacetic (NAA) and 6- benzylaminopurine (BA) either alone or in combination produced globular structure and their differentiation. NAA (2 µM) in combination of BA (2 µM) germinated 2.2 shoots per culture in 8 weeks time. Plantlets when transferred into sand, soil and peat moss (1:1:1) ratio were found suitable for acclimatization and 75% plantlets survived. Somatic embryos were put into a combination of 3% (w/v) sodium alginate and 100 µM calcium nitrate for 30 min for protecting the somatic embryos and the production of synthetic seeds. Experiments on the evaluation of synthetic seeds are under progress.

 Key words: Himalaya, Angelica glauca, somatic embryogenesis, synthetic seed.


Recently, there has been considerable interest in the promise of new computing paradigms (CP) like the diskless computing paradigm, running applications off a network. The discussion on these CPs has focused mainly on the costs of ownership of the CPs. In this work, we adopt a grounded theory approach to identify and operationalize factors that are important in the decision space of senior IS managers, when deciding to adopt a CP for their organization. Using conjoint analysis, we measure the relative importance of these factors in their minds, and also whether the effect of these factors is linear or not. Our findings show that the software quality associated with a CP is the primary factor considered by IS managers. The effect of the cost factor is less important, non linear and in many cases unexpected.


The Mll gene is a member of the mammalian trithorax group, involved with the antagonistic Polycomb group in epigenetic regulation of homeotic genes. MLL contains a highly conserved SET domain also found in various chromatin proteins. In this study, we report that mice in which this domain was deleted by homologous recombination in ES cells (DeltaSET) exhibit skeletal defects and altered transcription of particular Hox genes during development. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and bisulfite sequencing analysis on developing embryo tissues demonstrate that this change in gene expression is associated with a dramatic reduction in histone H3 Lysine 4 monomethylation and DNA methylation defects at the same Hox loci. These results establish in vivo that the major function of Mll is to act at the chromatin level to sustain the expression of selected target Hox genes during embryonic development. These observations provide previously undescribed evidence for the in vivo relationship and SET domain dependence between histone methylation and DNA methylation on MLL target genes during embryonic development.


Genes encoding transcription factors are frequently altered by chromosomal translocations in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), suggesting that aberrant transcriptional regulation plays a prominent role in leukemogenesis. E2A-hepatic leukemia factor (HLF), a chimeric transcription factor created by the t(17;19), consists of the amino terminal portion of E2A proteins, including two experimentally defined transcriptional activation domains (TADs), fused to the HLF DNA binding and protein dimerization basic leucine zipper (bZIP) domain. To understand the mechanisms by which E2A-HLF induces leukemia and the crucial functions contributed by each constituent of the chimera, it is essential to define the normal transcriptional regulatory properties of HLF and related bZIP proteins. To address these questions, we cloned the human homologue of TEF/VBP, a bZIP protein closely related to HLF. Using a binding site selection assay, we found that TEF bound preferentially to the consensus sequence 5'-GTTACGTAAT-3', which is identical to the previously determined HLF recognition site. TEF and HLF activated transcription of consensus site-containing reporter genes in several different cell types with similar potencies. Using GAL4 chimeric proteins, a TAD was mapped to a discrete approximate 40 amino acid region of TEF and HLF within which they share 72% amino acid identity and 85% similarity. The TEF/HLF activation domain (THAD) has a predicted helical secondary structure, but shares no sequence homology with previously reported TADs. The THAD contained most, if not all, of the transcriptional activation properties present in both TEF and HLF and its deletion completely abrogated transcriptional activity of TEF and HLF in both mammalian cells and yeast. Thus, TEF and HLF share indistinguishable DNA-binding and transcriptional regulatory properties, whose alteration in leukemia may be pathogenetically important.


To the best of our knowledge, we present the first field trial of distributed fiber optical sensing (DFOS) and high-speed communication, comprising a coexisting system, over an operation telecom network. Using probabilistic-shaped (PS) DP-144QAM, a 36.8 Tb/s with an 8.28-b/s/Hz spectral efficiency (SE) (48-Gbaud channels, 50-GHz channel spacing) was achieved. Employing DFOS technology, road traffic, i.e., vehicle speed and vehicle density, were sensed with 98.5% and 94.5% accuracies, respectively, as compared to video analytics. Additionally, road conditions, i.e., roughness level was sensed with >85% accuracy via a machine learning based classifier.


The barrier properties of the topmost layer of the skin, stratum corneum have significant limitations for successful systemic delivery of a wide range of therapeutic molecules, especially macromolecules and genetic material. One solution is to utilize microneedles (MNs), which are capable of painlessly traversing through the stratum corneum and directly translocating protein drugs into the systematic circulation. This strategy involves the use of micron sized needles fabricated from different materials and using different geometries to create transient aqueous conduits across the skin. Microneedles in isolation, or in combination with other enhancing strategies, have been shown to dramatically enhance the skin permeability of numerous therapeutic molecules including biopharmaceuticals either in vitro, ex vivo or in vivo. MNs can be designed to incorporate appropriate structural materials as well as therapeutics or formulations with tailored physicochemical properties. This platform technique has been applied to deliver drugs both locally and systemically in applications ranging from vaccination to diabetes and cancer therap. As an alternative to hypodermic needles, coated polymer microneedles (MNs) are able to deliver drugs to subcutaneous tissues after being inserted into the skin. The dip-coating process is a versatile, rapid fabricating method that can form coated MNs in a short time. However, it is still a challenge to fabricate coated MNs with homogeneous and precise drug doses in the dip-coating process. This review article focuses on recent and potential future developments in microneedle technologies. This will include the detailing of progress made in microneedle design, an exploration of the challenges faced in this field and potential forward strategies to embrace the exploitation of microneedle methodologies, while considering the inherent safety aspects of such therapeutic tools. The clinical potential and future translation of MNs are also discussed.


This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the contributions of the Austrian school of economics, with specific emphasis on post-WWII developments. We provide a brief history and overview of the original theorists of the Austrian school in order to set the stage for the subsequent development of their ideas by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. In discussing the main ideas of Mises and Hayek, we focus on how their work provided the foundations for the modern Austrian school, which included Ludwig Lachmann, Murray Rothbard and Israel Kirzner. These scholars contributed to the Austrian revival in the 1960s and 1970s, which, in turn, set the stage for the emergence of the contemporary Austrian school in the 1980s. We review the contemporary development of the Austrian school and, in doing so, discuss the tensions, alternative paths, and the promising future of Austrian economics.


Treatment of rat hepatoma cells with insulin, glucagon, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3) caused a concentration-dependent decrease in the monomeric actin content as measured by the deoxyribonuclease-I inhibition assay. Similarly, human peripheral blood neutrophils responded with a decrease in monomeric actin content when stimulated with T4, T3 and the adrenergic agonists phenylephrine and isoprenaline. The effect of phenylephrine could be blocked by phentolamine, demonstrating the specificity of the interaction. These observations suggest that hormone-induced actin changes might be an important event in response to both cell-surface-reactive hormones, such as insulin, glucagon and adrenergic agents, and those hormones that act through intracellular receptors, such as thyroid hormones. It is suggested that changes in actin state may have a role in metabolic regulation and cell growth.


IMPORTANCE
Orbital infections from acute sinusitis are rare in neonates and infants and can lead to devastating complications. To our knowledge, no prior dedicated review exists for evaluation, treatment, and outcomes of orbital complications in this age group.

OBJECTIVE
To perform a systematic review over the past 50 years on the diagnosis and treatment of orbital complications secondary to acute sinusitis in neonates and infants and report a case.

EVIDENCE AND ACQUISITION
A systematic review of the literature was performed searching PubMed to collect all the pertinent case reports and series in the English language with subperiosteal orbital abscess (SPOA) or orbital abscess in neonates or infants (date range, 1959-2012).

RESULTS
Eleven cases of SPOA in infants were identified, including our current case. Ages ranged from 10 to 74 days. There were 6 female and 5 male infants. The right eye was affected in 5 cases, the left in 5, and both in 1. There was 1 mortality in this series for which surgical drainage was not performed. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common organism isolated in 9 of 11 cases. Seven of the cases had open surgical drainage, 2 had endoscopic procedures (including our case), and 1 had spontaneous rupture of the abscess.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
An orbital complication due to acute sinusitis is rare in infants and neonates. Drainage in this patient population appears to be paramount, since the only infant in this series who did not receive drainage had died. Modern telescopes and equipment have allowed endoscopic drainage to be a safe and effective surgical treatment in this age group.


Abstract Empathy relies on brain systems that support the interaction between an observer's mental state and cues about the others' experience. Beyond the core brain areas typically activated in pain empathy studies (insular and anterior cingulate cortices), the diversity of paradigms used may reveal secondary networks that subserve other more specific processes. A coordinate-based meta-analysis of fMRI experiments on pain empathy was conducted to obtain activation likelihood estimates along three factors and seven conditions: visual cues (body parts, facial expressions), visuospatial (first-person, thirdperson), and cognitive (self-, stimuli-, other-oriented tasks) perspectives. The core network was found across cues and perspectives, and common activation was observed in higher-order visual areas. Body-parts distinctly activated areas related with sensorimotor processing (superior and inferior parietal lobules, anterior insula) while facial expression distinctly involved the inferior frontal gyrus. Self- compared to other-perspective produced distinct activations in the left insula while stimulus- versus other-perspective produced distinctive responses in the inferior frontal and parietal lobules, precentral gyrus, and cerebellum. Pain empathy relies on a core network which is modulated by several secondary networks. The involvement of the latter seems to depend on the visual cues available and the observer's mental state that can be influenced by specific instructions.


Each patient has a unique history of cancer ecosystem development, resulting in intratumor heterogeneity. In order to effectively kill the tumor cells by chemotherapy, dynamic monitoring of driver molecular alterations is necessary to detect the markers for acquired drug resistance and find the new therapeutic targets. To perform the therapeutic monitoring, frequent tumor biopsy is needed, but it is not always possible due to small tumor size or its regression during the therapy or tumor inaccessibility in advanced cancer patients. Liquid biopsy appears to be a promising approach to overcome this problem, providing the testing of circulating tumor cells (CTC) and/or tumor-specific circulating nucleic acids. Their genomic characteristics make it possible to assess the clonal dynamics of tumors, comparing it with the clinical course and identification of driver mutation that confer resistance to therapy. The main attention in this review is paid to CTC. The biological behavior of the tumor is determined by specific cancer-promoting molecular and genetic alterations of tumor cells, and by the peculiarities of their interactions with the microenvironment that can result in the presence of wide spectrum of circulating tumor clones with various properties and potentialities to contribute to tumor progression and response to chemotherapy and prognostic value. Indeed, data on prognostic or predictive value of CTC are rather contradictory, because there is still no standard method of CTC identification, represented by different populations manifesting various biological behavior as well as different potency to metastasis. Circulating clasters of CTC appear to have essentially greater ability to metastasize in comparison with single CTC, as well as strong association with worse prognosis and chemoresistance in breast cancer patients. The Food and Drug Administration (USA) has approved the CTC-based prognostic test for clinical application in patients with advanced breast cancer. Prospective clinical trials have demonstrated that measuring changes in CTC numbers during treatment is useful for monitoring therapy response in breast cancer patients. Molecular and genetic analysis of CTC gives the opportunity to have timely information on emergence of resistant tumor clones and may shed light on the new targets for pathogenetic antitumor therapy.


Amino end-group functionalised polyglycols are important intermediates in the synthesis of sophisticated polymeric architectures and biomaterials. Herein, we report a facile strategy for the end-group conversion of hydroxyl-terminated polyglycols to amino-terminated polyglycols in high isolated yields and with excellent end-group fidelity. Following traditional conversion of polyglycol hydroxyl end-groups to azides via the corresponding mesylate, reduction with zinc in the presence of ammonium chloride afforded a range of amino end-group functionalised poly(ethylene glycol) and poly(propylene glycol) homopolymers and copolymers with isolated yields of 82–99% and endgroup conversions of >99% as determined by NMR spectroscopy and MALDI ToF MS. Furthermore, this process is applicable to a sequential reagent addition approach without intermediate polymer isolation steps with only a slight reduction in yield and end-group conversion (95%). Importantly, a simple work-up procedure provides access to high purity polyglycols without contamination from other reagents.


Till date, the development of novel drug delivery systems in veterinary medicines is like a dream for Indian scientists, though partially fulfilled in USA and UK. In veterinary medicines, majority of drug formulations are conventional type that fail to deliver and deposit drug molecule at the desired site. Due to wide variation in animal species, body system and its requirement, considerable flexibility exists with regards to the nature and physical structure of the veterinary device. The novel formulation modifications including sustained release devices, implant using biodegradable polymers, site directed formulations and rumen delivery systems could manipulate pharmacokinetic disposition to extend drug availability to the animal at the desired rate for prolonged period. Present review gives insight into controlled drug delivery systems already existing in veterinary field of medicines, however some are in the process of development.


Rhizopus rot, caused by Rhizopus stolonifer, is a major postharvest disease of stone fruits. The disease is related to the occurrence of mechanical and physical damage; however, observations at a Brazilian wholesale market suggest that direct penetration can occur. Therefore, the penetration mechanisms of R. stolonifer in stone fruits were evaluated. To identify the production of enzymes that help with direct penetration by the pathogen, esterase activity, both in mycelial discs and in spore suspensions of the fungus in water and in modified Van Etten nutrient solution, was measured. Assays were also conducted to evaluate the growth of R. stolonifer on glucose or cutin as a sole carbon source. The pathogen grew on both media, and higher esterase activity was observed in the cutin medium. Wounded and unwounded peaches and nectarines were inoculated with R. stolonifer spore suspensions in water or in modified Van Etten nutrient solution. Wounded fruit inoculated with either of the R. stolonifer spore suspensions developed rhizopus rot, whereas unwounded fruit developed the rot only in the presence of spores in the modified Van Etten nutrient solution. Scanning electron and light microscopic examination showed the fungus can directly penetrate the nectarine cuticle. Diisopropyl fluorophosphate, a serine hydrolase inhibitor, prevented rot development in peaches. The results provide valuable evidence for the ability of R. stolonifer to directly penetrate unwounded stone fruits, probably due to the production of esterase enzymes.


MBE-grown semiconductor nanostructures with electronic and photonic confinement In this thesis the realization of semiconductor nanostructures in the InAlGaAs material system with molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is described, as well as the characterization of their optical properties. First, the growth conditions used for different materials and surfaces are given, and the general capabilities of the MBE-systems are demonstrated, with respect to growth of structures with varying thicknesses/alloy compositions, and the synthesis of alloys, so-called digital alloying. In the first main part of the thesis a group of low-dimensional structures are described, the so-called quantum wells, wires and dots. For quantum wells in the InAlGaAs material system, a detailed analysis is presented of the influence of surface segregation during growth, and it is shown how the measured energy levels and linewidths may be calculated with very high precision. Furthermore, the limits of strain in multi quantum wells are deduced, that determine when dislocations will be formed. It is also demonstrated how T-shaped quantum wires with enhanced confinement energies are realized by overgrowing InAlGaAs quantum wells with a GaAs quantum well. Finally, the growth of quantum dots in both InAs, InGaAs and InAlGaAs is decribed, and it is shown how structures with very uniform quantum dots at energies near the visible red part of the spectrum may be realized. The second main part of the thesis deals with the growth of optical microcavities, where the light is strongly interacting with a quantum well and so-called polariton resonances are formed. It is shown how particularly narrow, tunable resonances may be achieved, by an combination of a low cavity energy gradient across the samples and a narrow exciton resonance in a broad quantum well where the density of free carriers is particularly low. Next, the polariton energies and linewidths are measured and analyed as a function of detuning and temperature. It is demonstrated that a coupled-harmonic oscillator model yields a good agreement with the energies, but the analysis of the linewidths requires that the absorption in the quantum well is also taken into account, which is demonstrated in a microcavity with a reduced light-matter interaction. For the polariton with the lowest eigenenergy, it is shown that the probability for scattering on lattice vibrations or free carriers is reduced. Finally, the secondary emission from a microcavity is measured and analysed, where a good qualitative agreement with theories for Rayleigh scattering is found, ant he so-called polariton bottleneck is observed.