Quantum dots are fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals that have unique optical properties such as high quantum yield and photostability. These nanoparticles are superior to organic dyes and fluorescent proteins in many aspects and therefore show great potential for both in vivo and in vitro imaging and drug delivery applications. However, cytototoxicity is still one of the major problems associated with their biological applications. The aim of this study is in vitro characterization and assessment of biological application potential of a novel silver sulfide quantum dot coated with mercaptopropionic acid (2-MPA). In vitro studies reported in this work were conducted on a mouse fibroblast cell line (NIH/3T3) treated with Ag2S/2-MPA quantum dots in 10-600 &mu / g/mL concentration range for 24 h. Various fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy methods were used to determine metabolic activity, proliferation rate and apoptotic fraction of QD-treated cells as well as QD internalization efficiency and intracellular localization. Metabolic activity and proliferation rate of the QD treated cells were measured with XTT and CyQUANT&reg / cell proliferation assays, respectively. Intracellular localization and qualitative uptake studies were conducted using confocal laser scanning microscopy. Apoptosis studies were performed with Annexin V assay. Finally, we also conducted a quantitative uptake assay to determine internalization efficiency of the silver sulfide particles. Correlated metabolic activity and proliferation assay results indicate that Ag2S/2-MPA quantum dots are highly cytocompatible with no significant toxicity up to 600 &mu / g/mL treatment. Optimal cell imaging concentration was determined as 200 &mu / g/mL. Particles displayed a punctuated cytoplasmic distribution indicating to endosomal entrapment. In vitro characterization studies reported in this study indicate that Ag2S/2-MPA quantum dots have great biological application potential due to their excellent spectral and cytocompatibility properties. Near-infrared emission of silver sulfide quantum dots provides a major advantage in imaging since signal interference from the cells (autofluorescence) which is a typical problem in microscopic studies is minimum in this part of the emission spectrum. The results of this study are presented in an article which was accepted by Journal of Materials Chemistry. DOI: 10.1039/C2JM31959D.

Obesity becomes an epidemic health problem in developing and developed countries, which arises due to stable life style and increase in the consumption of high fat diets. Obesity is generally accompanied with various clinical disorders, such as insulin resistance, type II diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia and cardiovascular diseases. This study aims to characterize and quantify different lipid classes in longissimus dorsi (LD) and quadriceps (Q) skeletal muscles of control (DBA/2J), obese Berlin fat mouse inbred (BFMI) and Berlin muscle mouse inbred (BMMI) lines, which display high fat and high muscle content, respectively. These mouse lines were special due to their phenotypes, especially BFMI lines, which displayed spontaneous and strong obesity. These lines, more specifically BFMI860 and BFMI861, were also special due to their possibility of being an animal model of cardiovascular diseases and metabolic syndrome, since they also displayed insulin resistance. For separation,identification and quantification of various lipids of these lines, a novel method was developed which gives better separation of main lipid classes via using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to an evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD). Addition of triethylamine (TEA) to the solvents being used, and altering the parameters of HPLC and ELSD instruments, and also the gradient elution, provided a better separation with an enhanced resolution. This method has been applied to the lipid extracts obtained from longissimus dorsi (LD) and quadriceps (Q) skeletal muscles of control (DBA/2J), obese Berlin fat mouse inbred (BFMI) and Berlin muscle mouse inbred (BMMI). In this method, a binary gradient elution composed of n-Hexane, isopropanol, methanol, acetic acid and triethylamine was applied to the samples. All interested lipid classes, namely triglyceride (TG), cholesteryl ester (CO), cholesterol (C), 1-oleoyl-rac-glycerol (MG), phosphatidylcholine (PC) and cardiolipin (CLPN), all of which have been known to have a role in obesity, insulin resistance, and cardiovascular diseases, were separated, identified and quantified via this novel method. According to the results, among BFMI lines, BFMI860 and BFMI861 lines and BMMI806, among BMMI lines, are worth to study obesity. Especially, the former ones may also become animal models for cardiovascular diseases and metabolic syndrome.

Im Rahmen der Studie wurden die Bürgermeister und Fraktionsvorsitzenden aller sächsischen Gemeinden am 2. Juni 2004, also kurz vor der Kommunalwahl am 13. Juni 2004, befragt. Dieser Befragungszeitpunkt wurde bewusst gewählt, da die Befragten die ablaufende Wahlperiode im Rückblick betrachten sollten. Die Befragung erfolgte schriftlich mit einem standardisierten Fragebogen.

The global-local sustainable development and climate change adaptation policy, and the emerging political discourse on the value of local Adaptation, have positioned the local institutions and their governance space within the strategic enclaves of multilevel governance system. Such shifts have transformed the context for sustainable Nature Based Tourism (NBT) development and adaptation in Nepal in general, and its protected areas, in particular. The emerging institutional adaptation discourse suggests on the need to link tourism development, adaptation and governance within the sustainability concept, and also to recognize the justice and inclusive dimensions of local adaptation. However, sociological investigation of institutional adaptation, particularly at the interface between sustainability, justice and inclusive local adaptation is an undertheorized research topic. This exploratory study examined the sociological process of the institutional adaptation, especially the social resilience and adaptive governance capacities of the NBT institutions, in 7 Village Development Committees of the Mustang district, a popular destination in the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal. Using the sphere (a dynamic social space concept) and quality of governance as the analytical framework, the integrative adaptation as the methodological approach and the case study action research method, the study investigated and generated a holistic picture on the state of the social resilience and adaptive governance capacities of the NBT institutions. The findings show institutional social resilience capacities to be contingent on socio-political construction of adaptation knowledge and power. Factors influencing such constructions among NBT institutions include: the site and institutions specific political, economic and environmental dispositions; the associated socio-political processes of knowledge constructions and volition action; and the social relationships and interaction, operating within the spheres and at multiple governance levels. The adaptive governance capacities hinge on the institutional arrangements, the procedural aspects of adaptation governance and the governmentality. These are reflective of the diverse legal frameworks, the interiority perspective of the decision making and governance practices of the NBT institutions. In conclusion, it is argued that effective local adaptation in the Mustang district is contingent on the adaptation and institutional dynamics of the NBT institutions, consisting of the cognitive, subjective, process and procedural aspects of the adaptation knowledge production and its use. / Die Politik im Bereich der nachhaltigen Entwicklung und der Anpassung an den Klimawandel sowie der Diskurs über die diesbezüglichen Adaptionsnotwendigkeiten auf lokaler Maßstabsebene, tangieren die Institutionen vor Ort und deren Position im Rahmen eines multi-skalaren Governance. Durch diese Umgewichtung wurden die Rahmenbedingungen für den Naturtourismus in Nepal verändert, insbesondere in den Schutzgebieten. Der sich daraus ergebende Governance-Diskurs hinsichtlich der institutionellen Anpassung betont die Notwendigkeit, Regionalentwicklung allgemein und speziell die Entwicklung des Naturtourismus im Sinne des Nachhaltigkeitskonzepts ganzheitlich zu betrachten. Sowohl die Dimension der Gerechtigkeit wie auch die Inklusivität lokaler Adaptionsnotwendigkeiten gilt es somit gleichrangig zu würdigen. Die sozialwissenschaftliche Erforschung der institutionellen Anpassung an der Schnittstelle zwischen Nachhaltigkeit, Gerechtigkeit und inklusive der lokalen institutionellen Adaptionsnotwendigkeiten, stellt bisher ein theoretisch unzureichend erfasstes Thema dar. Diese explorative Studie untersucht diesen sozialwissenschaftlichen Prozess der institutionellen Anpassung, insbesondere die soziale Resilienz und die adaptiven Governance-Kapazitäten der Naturtourismus-Institutionen in sieben Dorfentwicklungskomitees des Mustang Distrikts, einer beliebten Destination in der Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal. Den Analyserahmen stellen der Wirkungsbereich (innerhalb eines dynamischen sozialen Raumes) und die Qualität des multi-skalaren Governance-Regimes dar. Methodologisch auf dem Ansatz der integrativen Anpassung basierend, wird die Forschungsmethode der „case study action research“ gewählt. Die Arbeit analysiert dabei den Status der sozialen Resilienz und adaptiven Goverance-Kapazitäten der örtlichen Naturtourismus-Institutionen, mit dem Ziel, ein ganzheitliches Bild derselben zu präsentieren. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Kapazität im Bereich der sozialen Resilienz bedingt wird durch die sozio-politische Konstruktion von Wissen und Macht. Zu den Faktoren, welche diese Konstruktionen bei den Naturtourismus-Institutionen im Annapurna-Gebiet Nepals beeinflussen, zählen unter Anderem: orts- und institutionenspezifische politische, ökonomische und umweltbezogene Bedingungen; die darauf beruhenden sozio-politischen Prozesse der Wissenskonstruktion, sowie soziale Beziehungen und Interaktionen, die innerhalb des dynamischen sozio-politischen Raumes und des Governance auf verschiedenen Maßstabsebenen wirksam sind. Die adaptiven Governance-Kapazitäten hängen u.a. vom institutionellen Aufbau und den verfahrenstechnischen Aspekten der politischen Steuerung der lokalen Institutionen ab. Sie spiegeln unterschiedliche rechtliche Rahmenbedingungen, die Innenperspektive der Entscheidungsfindung und die Governance-Praktiken der Naturtourismus-Institutionen wider. Zusammenfassend wird argumentiert, dass effektive lokale Klimawandel-Adaption im Mustang Distrikt Nepals abhängig ist von den spezifischen institutionellen Dynamiken der Naturtourismus-Institutionen, welche sich aus den kognitiven, subjektiven, prozess- und verfahrensorientierten Aspekten der Generierung von Adaptions-Wissen und seiner konkreten Anwendung zusammensetzt.

Politische Kultur hat politischer Kultiviertheit wenig zu tun. Sie erfasst vielmehr die „subjektive Dimension von Politik“ – Meinungen, Einstellungen und Werte der Bevölkerung gegenüber Politikern, dem Parlament, den Institutionen uvm. Mehr als ein Vierteljahrhundert nach der Deutschen Wiedervereinigung fragt dieses, aus einem Forschungsseminar an der TU Chemnitz hervorgegangene Umfrageprojekt nach ausgewählten Aspekten der lokalen politischen Kultur in Chemnitz. Dazu zählen die Wahrnehmung der politischen Institutionen, die Einschätzung der demokratischen Teilhabechancen, das Sozialkapital sowie schließlich die Nutzung digitaler Medien. / Political Culture has nothing to do with a civilized mode of political behaviour, Instead, it embraces the “subject dimension of politics” – opinions, attitudes and value orientations of society toward politicians, parliament, and other institutions of political life. More than 25 years after German re-unification this project – a product of a research seminar conducted at TU Chemnitz in 2016 – illuminates selected aspects of local political culture in “Saxony’s Manchester”, including the societal perception of political institutions, the evaluation of democratic participatory opportunities, social capital as well as the relevance of social media for political participation.

Politische Kultur hat politischer Kultiviertheit wenig zu tun. Sie erfasst vielmehr die „subjektive Dimension von Politik“ – Meinungen, Einstellungen und Werte der Bevölkerung gegenüber Politikern, dem Parlament, den Institutionen uvm. Mehr als ein Vierteljahrhundert nach der Deutschen Wiedervereinigung fragt dieses, aus einem Forschungsseminar an der TU Chemnitz hervorgegangene Umfrageprojekt nach ausgewählten Aspekten der lokalen politischen Kultur in Chemnitz. Dazu zählen die Wahrnehmung der politischen Institutionen, die Einschätzung der demokratischen Teilhabechancen, das Sozialkapital sowie schließlich die Nutzung digitaler Medien. / Political Culture has nothing to do with a civilized mode of political behaviour, Instead, it embraces the “subject dimension of politics” – opinions, attitudes and value orientations of society toward politicians, parliament, and other institutions of political life. More than 25 years after German re-unification this project – a product of a research seminar conducted at TU Chemnitz in 2016 – illuminates selected aspects of local political culture in “Saxony’s Manchester”, including the societal perception of political institutions, the evaluation of democratic participatory opportunities, social capital as well as the relevance of social media for political participation.

No description available.

The advent of high-throughput sequencing and structure determination techniques has had a tremendous impact on our quest in cracking the language of life. The genomic and protein data is now being accumulated at a phenomenal rate, with the motivation of deriving insights into the function, mechanism, and evolution of the biomolecules, through analysis of their similarities, differences, and interactions. The rapid increase in the size of the biomolecular databases, however, calls for development of new computational methods for sensitive and efficient management and analysis of this information. In this thesis, we propose and implement several approaches for accurate and highly efficient comparison and retrieval of protein sequences and structures. The observation that corresponding residues in related proteins share similar inter-residue contacts is exploited in derivation of a new set of biologically sensitive metric amino acid substitution matrices, yielding accurate alignment and comparison of proteins. The metricity of these matrices has allowed efficient indexing and retrieval of both protein sequences and structures. A landmark-guided embedding of protein sequences is developed to represent subsequences in a vector space for approximate, but extremely fast spatial indexing and similarity search. Whereas protein structure comparison and search tasks were hitherto handled separately, we propose an integrated approach that serves both of these tasks and performs comparable to or better than other available methods. Our approach hinges on identification of similar residue contacts using distance-based indexing and provides the best of the both worlds: the accuracy of detailed structure alignment algorithms, at a speed comparable to that of the structure retrieval algorithms. We expect that the methods and tools developed in this study will find use in a wide range of application areas including annotation of new proteins, discovery of functional motifs, discerning evolutionary relationships among genes and species, and drug design and targeting.

Widely applicable, quantitative field methods are needed to gather wildlife data for conservation and management initiatives in Turkey. In order to evaluate the use of camera traps in forest habitats of Turkey, we conducted a 5 phase camera trap survey by using 16 passive infrared-triggered cameras with a total sampling effort of 1200 camera trap days in Yaylacik Research Forest, a 50 km2 forest patch of Yenice Forest in Karab&uuml / k during January-May 2006. The camera trap survey confirmed the presence of grey wolf (Canis lupus), brown bear (Ursus arctos), wildcat (Felis silvestris), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), badger (Meles meles), pine marten (Martes martes), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and wild boar (Sus scrofa) in the study area. The camera trap survey also revealed the presence of jackal (Canis aureus) and brown hare (Lepus europaeus), whose presence were not known by people living and working in the area. Contrary to the local belief, neither camera trapping survey nor ground survey confirmed the presence of lynx (Lynx lynx) in Yaylacik Research Forest. The wolf was observed to be crepuscular and the wildcat showed a diurnal activity pattern. Wildcat seemed to avoid other carnivores spatially and temporally. Simulation studies suggested that camera trap surveys should last 14 days for wolf, 13 days for wildcat, 10 days for pine marten, and 11 days for roe deer, while it is advisable to conduct longer surveys, probably 15-20 days, for wild boar, red fox and brown bears. The estimated population size for wildcat was 9 (SE=2.28227) with 95% confidence interval of 9 to 25 in the study area. A minimum of 6 brown bears were present in the study area. Our study indicated that the local knowledge about the presence of wildlife should be considered by researchers, but it cannot replace scientific surveys conducted by field biologists. This study was the first attempt to assess the presence, relative abundance, activity patterns and diversity of multiple mammal species by the use of camera trapping methodology in Turkey. The results suggest that camera trap surveys have the potential for gathering wildlife data at larger scales in Turkey, where information gap on large mammals is an obstacle for effective management and conservation of mammals.

COLLAGEN IN SITU GROWN CALCIUM PHOSPHATE SCAFFOLDS FOR OSTEOGENIC DIFFERENTIATION OF WHARTON&rsquo / S JELLY AND MENSTRUAL BLOOD STEM CELLS Karadas, &Ouml / zge M.Sc., Department of Biotechnology Supervisor : Prof. Dr. Vasif Hasirci Co-Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gamze Torun K&ouml / se February 2011, 91 pages The importance of developing new techniques for the treatment of bone and joint diseases is increasing continuosly together with the increase of human population and the average life span. Especially bone fractures as a result of osteoporosis are often seen in humans older than 50 years old. The expenses of bone and joint disease operations are very high and the duration of recovery is long. Because of these reasons World Health Organization, The United Nations and 37 countries announced that the years 2000-2010 is the Bone and Joint Decade. Tissue engineering is an alternative approach to clinically applied methods. In this study collagen scaffolds crosslinked with genipin, to improve the stability of foams in culture media, were prepared by lyophilization. To mimic the natural bone structure calcium phosphate mineral phase in the foam was formed by wet chemical precipitation. Collagen concentration (0.75% and 1%, w/v), freezing temperature (-20 oC and -80 oC) of the collagen solution before lyophilization and immersion duration (2x4 h and 2x48 h) of the foams in calcium and phosphate solutions for wet chemical precipitation were changed as process v parameters of foam production. Pore size distribution and porosity analysis as well as compression test were performed for characterization of the scaffolds. The foam with 1% w/v collagen concentration, frozen at -20 oC before lyophilization and immersed for 2x4 h in calcium and phosphate solution was chosen for in vitro cell culture studies. The defined foam had 70% porosity and pore sizes varying between 50 and 200 &mu / m. The elastic modulus and compressive strength of the foam was calculated as 127.1 kPa and 234.5 kPa, respectively. Stem cells isolated from Wharton&rsquo / s jelly (WJ) and menstrual blood (MB) were seeded to foams to compare their osteogenic differentiation. Both cells are isolated from discarded tissues and used in this study as an alternative to the commonly used cells which are isolated by invasive techniques such as bone marrow stem cells. Cells were seeded to collagen foams with and without calcium phosphate (CaP). It was observed that WJ cells proliferated during 21 days on collagen foams without CaP, but MB cell number decreased after day 14. Collagen foams with CaP supported the alkaline phosphate (ALP) activity compared to tissue culture polystyrene (TCPS) and foams without CaP. Contrarily lower cell numbers achieved on CaP containing collagen foams, possibly because of the calcium and phosphate concentration changes in the medium and as the result of osteogenic differentiation. ALP activity of both cell types increased almost 10 times and specific ALP activity (activity per cell) increased 40 times and 150 times for WJ and MB cells, respectively on the CaP containing foams compared to TCPS. Therefore, in this study it was shown that in situ CaP formed collagen foams induce osteogenic differentiation of WJ and MB cells, and these cells isolated from discarded tissues can be used as alternative cell sources in bone tissue engineering applications.