816 research outputs found
Perspective: Adhesion Mediated Signal Transduction in Bacterial Pathogens
No full textDuring the infection process, pathogenic bacteria undergo large-scale transcriptional changes to promote virulence and increase intrahost survival. While much of this reprogramming occurs in response to changes in chemical environment, such as nutrient availability and pH, there is increasing evidence that adhesion to host-tissue can also trigger signal transduction pathways resulting in differential gene expression. Determining the molecular mechanisms of adhesion-mediated signaling requires disentangling the contributions of chemical and mechanical stimuli. Here we highlight recent work demonstrating that surface attachment drives a transcriptional response in bacterial pathogens, including uropathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli), and discuss the complexity of experimental design when dissecting the specific role of adhesion-mediated signaling during infection.Peer reviewe
Integrated Pest and Disease Management in Tomato: An Economic Analysis
No full textThe adoption of IPM technology in tomato using African marigold as a trap crop, root dipping of seedlings in Imidacloprid, soil application of neem/pongamia cake, spraying of botanicals like pongamia soap and biopesticide like Ha NPV has been found effective in both insect as well as disease management. The IPM technology has been found economically viable as the yield on IPM farms has been found higher by about 46 per cent, cost of cultivation has been less by about 21 per cent and the net returns have been higher by 119 per cent. The technology can be considered environment-friendly as it uses more of eco-friendly inputs and less of chemicals. The constraints like non-availability of botanicals and bio-pesticides should be addressed on priority basis to make the technology sustainable and more popular.Agricultural and Food Policy,
Changes in corporate governance following allegations of fraud against shareholders versus fraud against the government.
No full textUniversity of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. June 2012. Major: Business Administration. Advisor: Pervin Shroff. vii, 55 pages, appendices A-B.This dissertation examines changes in corporate governance subsequent to allegations of fraud against the government under the False Claims Act (FCA) and compares them to governance changes after allegations of fraud in shareholder class action (SCA) lawsuits. While shareholders have clear incentives to bring about changes in top management and improve board independence when they themselves are defrauded by managers, their incentives are not that clear in cases of fraud committed by managers against the government that may result in net gains to shareholders. A particularly interesting finding of my study is that top management turnover and improvement in board independence is significantly greater following SCA lawsuits, where shareholders are the wronged party, relative to FCA lawsuits, where the fraud is committed against the government. The evidence questions shareholder ethics in responding to fraud. It appears that shareholders respond harshly when they have unambiguously suffered a loss, but may condone managerial misconduct when it may provide or promise net benefits to them.Krishna Moorthy, Lakshmana Kumar. (2012). Changes in corporate governance following allegations of fraud against shareholders versus fraud against the government.. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/131803
Effective depreciation model for commercial vehichles in Malaysia / Lim Alan, Krishna Moorthy Manicka and Theresa Wong Lai Har.
No full textMalaysian Financial Reporting Standards (MFRS) offers a choice for corporations to select their preferable depreciation methods to allocate the cost of the assets every year. Findings shown that majority of the corporations apply Straight Line method in depreciation calculation nowadays. However, Straight Line method is unable to show the fair value of the assets and received major criticism from past researchers. Hence, current research has applied a newly proposed method to conduct the depreciation calculation with the secondary data collected with the three existing accounting depreciation models. The net book value result was compared against the market value, and the analysis showed that newly proposed method could produce the closest proportion to the market value of the vehicles, and hence it is determined as the most effective depreciation model that can best reflect the current value of the motor vehicles
Measurement of renal dimensions in vivo: A critical appraisal
No full textKidney volume is regarded as the most precise indicator of kidney size. However, volume assessment is not widely used clinically because its measurement is difficult due to the complex kidney shape. Apart from the conventional methods of measurement of renal dimensions from X-rays, ultrasound scan, computed tomography scan and magnetic resonance imaging have evolved as the three best modalities for this purpose currently. Assessment of kidney size should also be made individually since many factors like body mass index, height, gender, age, position of kidneys, sex, stenoses and number of renal arteries influence the measurements. In this paper, we have critically analysed the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods of renal morphometry, by reviewing the literature spanning over the period of 1976 - 2009
Strategies for prostate cancer prevention: Review of the literature
No full textThe goal of primary chemoprevention is to decrease the incidence of a given cancer, simultaneously reducing treatment-related adverse events, cost of treatment of the disease and mortality. Prostate cancer is an attractive and appropriate target for primary prevention because of its high incidence and prevalence, increased disease-related mortality, long latency and molecular pathogenesis and epidemiological data indicating that modifiable environmental factors may decrease risk. Various agents have been suggested to prevent prostate cancer and many clinical trials are currently on. Ultimately the adoption of a preventive strategy hinges on its potential benefits weighed against the potential risks of the specific agents used. This article is aimed to examine the experimental and epidemiological data spanning a period of 1998 to 2007, demonstrating the chemopreventive activity, safety and toxicity of various nutritional elements and other agents that can help prevent prostate cancer and/or slow disease progression
Information Transfer and Communication in Surgical Care
No full textEffective Information transfer and Communication is one of the key aspects of good
medical practice and essential for surgical safety. High reliability organisations such
as aviation have highlighted the importance of communication for safety and
regularly provide communication skills training to their team members via Crew
resource management (CRM) module. This report discusses important aspects of
communication research in high-risk environments and confers its application in
surgery. It analyses the nature and scope of communication failures in surgical field.
The thesis has taken bottom-up approach unlike other research in this field, which has
taken a top-down approach. First we have mapped and analysed the communication
failures across the entire surgical pathway. Analysis of full pathway is critical as
communication failures are not discrete events; information loss in one phase of care
can potentially compromise safety in a subsequent phase. After the analysis, user-centred
interventions were developed and implemented to enhance the information
transfer and communication in the postoperative handover phase. Results show that
information transfer and communication failures are ubiquitous and distributed across
the continuum of surgical care. These findings indicate that there is a room for
improvement for enhancing ITC in surgical care. There is an imminent need for
standardizing and structuring communication through use of checklists, proformas,
care pathways and information technology. Subsequently we have demonstrated that
standardization of ITC process through the implementation of postoperative handover
proforma has improved the information transfer and decreased the ITC errors. It is
hoped that this thesis provides a first step towards understanding, assessing and
improving information transfer and communication through entire surgical care
pathway, which in a long run will improve surgical safety
TURP syndrome - current concepts in the pathophysiology and management
No full textTrans Urethral Resection of Prostate (TURP) syndrome is one of the commonest and dreaded complications of urological endoscopic surgery. Even in the best of hands, the incidence of TURP syndrome is up to 20% and car-ries a significant mortality rate. This paper highlights the various pathophysiological mechanisms of TURP syndrome, steps to prevent/delay the onset of manifesta-tions and the treatment of established TURP syndrome
Terrestrial laser scanning - RIEGL VZ-1000, individual tree point clouds and cylinder models, Belgian hedgerows and tree rows
No full textTerrestrial laser scans were acquired for 69 trees (Quercus robur: 39 trees; Alnus glutinosa: 19 trees; Betula pendula: 11 trees) in hedgerows and tree rows in agricultural lands in Flanders, Belgium. We used a RIEGL VZ-1000 terrestrial laser scanner (RIEGL Laser Measurement Systems GmbH, Austria) with a beam divergence of 0.35 mrad operating in the infrared (wavelength 1550 nm) with a range up to 1000 m. We scanned leaf-off and all recorded variables are valid for overbark measurements. Individual trees were manually extracted from the co-registered point cloud in RiSCAN PRO software (provided by RIEGL). To the extracted trees, quantitative structure models (QSM) were fitted. We used the QSMs to derive branch length (m), total wood volume (m³) and merchantable wood volume (m³, using only cylinders with diameter > 7 cm). From the point clouds, we extracted the tree structural features such as crown projection (m²), maximum crown diameter (m) and tree height (m). Biomass expansion factors (BEF) were calculated by dividing total tree volume to merchantable tree volume. We expressed the age dependency of the BEF values via non-linear regression models. See Van Den Berge et al. (2021) for further information (DOI: 10.1007/s12155-021-10250-y).This dataset is a supplement to: Van Den Berge S, Vangansbeke P, Calders K, Vanneste T, Baeten L, Verbeeck H, Krishna Moorthy SP, Verheyen K (2021) Biomass expansion factors for hedgerow-grown trees derived from terrestrial LiDAR. BioEnergy Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12155-021-10250-
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