No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is evaluating a new water treatment technology; electrochemical technique and see if the technique is an alternative for municipal wastewater treatment. The aim of the project was also to test the electroflotation by purification of phosphorus from synthetic wastewater and separation of green algae from the culture medium so the technology can be evaluated. To answer the purpose, two different experiments were made at laboratory. In the first experiment, wastewater was purified from phosphorus with electroflotation. In the second experiment, green algae were separated with the same technology, but with different machine. The results of the study show that the electrochemical technology is a good technique to separate green algae from the culture medium. In the tests the removal efficiency was over 90 %. Results from the phosphorus purification did not go so well, because sources of error in the system. To summarize the results of the project the electrochemical technology is a good alternative to other wastewater treatments because it’s more environmental friendly and easy to operate.

The concept of human nature profoundly shapes our understanding of how political and social life ought to be organised. This thesis examines the concept of human nature developed by the Green political perspective and its impact on the Green understanding of economy, society and technology. By comparing the Green and Liberal concepts of human nature (and by extension their respective conceptualisation of society, economy and technology), it is argued that the roots of present day environmental crisis could be traced to the Liberal concept of human nature and the Liberal conceptualisation of the relationship between humanity and nature.

No description available.

No description available.

Ingeniero Civil Matemático / En esta memoria se estudian dos problemas semilineales elípticos clásicos en la literatura: el problema de la curvatura Gaussiana prescrita en dimensión 2, y el problema de Lin-Ni-Takagi con exponente crítico en dimensión 3. En ambos se encuentran soluciones con reviente cuando el valor de un parámetro involucrado se aproxima a cierto valor crítico. En el primer capítulo se estudia el siguiente problema: Dada una función escalar $\kappa(x)$, suficientemente regular, definida en una variedad Riemanniana compacta $(M,g)$ de dimensión 2, se desea saber si $\kappa$ puede corresponder a la curvatura Gaussiana de $M$ para una métrica $g_1$, que es adicionalmente conforme a la métrica inicial $g$, es decir, $g_1=e^ug$ para alguna función escalar $u$ en $M$. Sea $f$ una función regular en $M$ tal que \equ{f\geq 0,\quad f\not\equiv 0, \quad \min_M f=0.} Sean $p_1,\ldots,p_n$ una colección de puntos cualesquiera en los que $f(p_i)=0$ y $D^2f(p_i)$ es no singular. Se demuestra que para todo $\la>0$ suficientemente pequeño, existe una familia de metricas conformes de tipo burbuja $g_\la=e^{u_\la}g$ tal que su curvatura Gaussiana está dada por la función que cambia de signo $K_{g_\la}=-f+\la^2$. Más aún, la familia $u_\la$ satisface \equ{u_\la(p_j)=-4\log \la -2 \log \left(\frac{1}{\sqrt2}\log \frac{1}{\la}\right)+O(1), \quad \la^2e^{u_\la}\rightharpoonup 8\pi\sum_{i=1}^n\delta_{p_i},} donde $\delta_p$ corresponde a la masa de Dirac en el punto $p$. En el segundo capítulo se considera el problema \equ{-\Delta u+\la u-u^5=0,\quad u>0 \quad \mbox{in }\Omega,\quad \ddn{u}=0\quad \mbox{on }\partial\Omega,} donde $\Omega\subset \R^3$ es un dominio acotado con frontera regular $\partial\Omega$, $\la>0$ and $\nu$ denota la normal unitaria exterior a $\partial\Omega$. Se demuestra que cuando $\la$ se apoxima por arriba a cierto valor explícitamente caracterizado en términos de funciones de Green, una familia de soluciones con reviente en un cierto punto interior del dominio existe.

The activity of plant 9-lipoxygenases (LOXs) influences the outcome of Arabidopsis thaliana interaction with pathogen and insects. Evidence provided here indicates that in Arabidopsis, 9-LOXs facilitate infestation by Myzus persicae, commonly known as the green peach aphid (GPA), a sap-sucking insect, and infection by the fungal pathogen Fusarium graminearum. in comparison to the wild-type plant, lox5 mutants, which are deficient in a 9-lipoxygenase, GPA population was smaller and the insect spent less time feeding from sieve elements and xylem, thus resulting in reduced water content and fecundity of GPA. LOX5 expression is induced rapidly in roots of GPA-infested plants. This increase in LOX5 expression is paralleled by an increase in LOX5-synthesized oxylipins in the root and petiole exudates of GPA-infested plants. Micrografting experiments demonstrated that GPA population size was smaller on plants in which the roots were of the lox5 mutant genotype. Exogenous treatment of lox5 mutant roots with 9-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid restored water content and population size of GPA on lox5 mutants. Together, these results suggest that LOX5 genotype in roots is critical for facilitating insect infestation of Arabidopsis. in Arabidopsis, 9-LOX function is also required for facilitating infection by F. graminearum, which is a leading cause of Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease in wheat and other small grain crops. Loss of LOX1 and LOX5 function resulted in enhanced resistance to F. graminearum infection. Similarly in wheat, RNA interference mediated silencing of the 9-LOX homolog TaLpx1, resulted in enhanced resistance to F. graminearum. Experiments in Arabidopsis indicate that 9-LOXs promote susceptibility to this fungus by suppressing the activation of salicylic acid-mediated defense responses that are important for basal resistance to this fungus. the lox1 and lox5 mutants were also compromised for systemic acquired resistance (SAR), an inducible defense mechanism that is systemically activated throughout a plant in response to a localized infection. the lox1 and lox5 mutants exhibited reduced cell death and delayed hypersensitive response when challenged with an avirulent strain of the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato. LOX1 and LOX5 functions were further required for the synthesis as well as perception of a SAR-inducing activity present in petiole exudates collected from wild-type avirulent pathogen-challenged leaves. Taken together, results presented here demonstrate that 9-LOX contribute to host susceptibility as well as defense against different biotic stressors.