This thesis provides a literary commentary on Dionysius of Alexandria's Guide to the Inhabited World, verses 174-382. The commentary focuses on two central aspects of the work. First, it compares Dionysius' portrayal of the inhabited world with representations by earlier and contemporary geographical authors, and attempts to trace the sources of his geographical and ethnographical material. Second, and more important for an understanding of the poem as a whole, the commentary highlights the relationship of the work to its poetic models. Dionysius drew much upon the work of Hellenistic poets, such as Aratus and Apollonius Rhodius, as well as upon Homer and Hesiod. I therefore focus largely upon the way in which he used such models to produce a literary map of a timeless world, consisting as much of the peoples and places of Greek myths as of the peoples and places which his contemporaries might have expected to encounter. The introduction begins by examining the evidence for Dionysius' life and other works, before outlining the structure of the Periegesis itself. It then sets out the framework for the aims of the commentary by providing accounts of the geographical tradition and of the literary models on which Dionysius drew. Finally, the introduction presents a brief history of the text of the Periegesis, looking at the evidence of the manuscript tradition, the scholia, Latin translations, Greek paraphrases, and the twelfth-century commentary on the poem by Eustathius. The commentary is accompanied by an English translation of the entire poem, and by an appendix of Homeric hapax legomena which occur within the verses studied in the commentary.

David A. Castanon, Bernard C. Levy, Alan S. Willsky. / "May 1979." / Bibliography: leaf 29-31. / Office of Naval Research contract ONR/N00014-76-C-0346

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Ces recherches visent à développer une approche intégrée des processus d’évolution d’une vallée fluviale en relation avec les facteurs de contrôles climato-anthropiques. Cette étude est sur deux sites de la moyenne vallée du Cher. L’objectif est de caractériser la sensibilité des milieux fluviaux aux variations climatiques majeures de la transition Tardiglaciaire-Holocène ancien et aux variations plus modestes de l’Holocène récent mais également d’appréhender les réponses à l’impact des sociétés du passé depuis le Néolithique. Les résultats mettent en lumière deux temporalités principales. Tout d’abord, la transition du Tardiglaciaire à l’Holocène (15 000- 11 5000 cal. BP) traduit un contrôle climatique à l’origine d’une métamorphose du style fluvial caractérisée par le passage d’un cours à chenaux multiples à une rivière méandriforme. La seconde moitié de l’Holocène correspond à une période de forte mobilité des méandres au sein de la plaine d’inondation. Cette mobilité très importante des chenaux observée jusqu’au milieu du Moyen-Age contraste très fortement avec la situation actuelle caractérisée par une très faible migration des méandres. Ce changement morphodynamique majeur est à mettre en relation avec des aménagements hydrauliques et proto-industriels installés dès la période médiévale. Cet équipement lourd et densément réparti le long du cours d’eau constitue une véritable entrave à la mobilité de la rivière. Ces résultats mettent donc en évidence différents forçages. Ainsi les variables de contrôle sont d’ordre climatique durant la majeure partie de l’Holocène et le forçage d’origine anthropique reste modéré et discontinu. C’est à partir du milieu du Moyen-Age que le contrôle anthropique s’affirme pleinement jusqu’à modifier durablement les dynamiques hydrologiques et morphosédimentaires. / This research aims to provide an integrated approach to the evolution of a floodplain in relation to climatic and-anthropogenic controls. This study was conducted on two sites in the middle Cher valley. The objective is to characterize the sensitivity of river environments to major climatic variations of the Lateglacial-Holocene transition and to smoother variations of the recent Holocene, but also to understand the responses to the impact of societies since the Neolithic. The results highlight two main temporalities. First, the transition from the Lateglacial to the Holocene (15,000- 11,5000 cal. BP) reflects a climatic control that has led to a fluvial metamorphosis of the river pattern from a multi-channel to a meandering river. The second half of the Holocene corresponds to a period of high meander mobility within the floodplain. This very high channel mobility observed up to the middle of the Middle Ages contrasts very strongly with the current situation, which is characterized by very low migration rate. This major morphodynamic change is to be linked to hydraulic and proto-industrial structures installed since the medieval period. This heavy and densely distributed equipment along the river is a strong obstacle to the mobility of the river. These results therefore highlight different forcings. Thus, the control are of a climatic nature during most of the Holocene and anthropogenic forcing remains moderate and discontinuous. It was from the middle of the Middle Ages that anthropogenic control became fully established until it permanently modified hydrological and morphosedimentary dynamics.

This thesis examines Byzantine diplomacy and foreign policy in the round in the personal reign of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (945-959). This particular period has been singled out for investigation because Constantine had a keen personal interest in foreign affairs and two treatises from his reign, the De administrando imperio and the De cerimoniis aulae byzantinae, shed light upon the Byzantine view of the outside world and the workings of imperial bureaux charged with diplomatic affairs and the administration of military campaigns. After introducing the subject and the key sources, the thesis makes a clockwise circuit of all of the theatres in which Byzantine foreign policy was active. The first chapter looks at worldviews as documented in sources from Byzantium, Ottonian Saxony, and the Islamic Near East in order to determine how these key players saw their place in the world and systematised their relationships with each other. The second chapter discusses relations with the Islamic Near East and Transcaucasia and provides a survey of sources, historical reconstruction, and analysis of goals and processes. Chapter three examines relations with the Islamic caliphates of the central and western Mediterranean, and assigns them greater importance than generally acknowledged. Chapter four chronicles the nascent relations with Ottonian Saxony and Byzantium's re-engagement with the Transalpine Franks. Chapter five deals with the peoples of the Eurasian steppe and homes in on Byzantium's attempts to diffuse threats from this volatile world. Chapter six focuses on Italy as the region in which three strands of Byzantine foreign policy met and evaluates the empire's response to wholesale changes in power relations in the peninsula in the early years of Constantine's personal reign. The conclusion to the thesis interrogates whether Constantine's foreign policy kept the empire safe, enhanced its prestige, managed the military elites, and had an enduring legacy.

Die vorliegende Arbeit analysiert den Umgang mit dem Tatbestand der Holocaust-Leugnung durch die Europäische Union (EU) und den Europäischen Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte (EGMR). Derzeit befinden sich diese in einer heiklen Situation: Sie müssen das Gedenken an ein für die europäische Identität zentrales historisches Ereignis – den Holocaust – pflegen und schützen und zugleich die Achtung der Grundrechte, insbesondere der Meinungsfreiheit, gewährleisten. Diese besondere Situation erfordert eine gründliche Untersuchung des europäischen Umgangs mit dem Tatbestand der Holocaust-Leugnung. Der erste Teil der Dissertation steckt den Anwendungsbereich der europarechtlichen Verpflichtungen zur Kriminalisierung der Holocaust-Leugnung ab. Bewertet wird insbesondere die Bedeutung des Rahmenbeschlusses 2008/913/JHA über Rassismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit für die EU-Mitgliedstaaten. Dabei werden einige Beispiele der Umsetzung in staatliches Recht dargestellt. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit befasst sich mit der Rechtsprechung des EGMR und untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen dem Tatbestand der Holocaust-Leugnung und der Meinungsfreiheit mit dem Ziel, die Grundsätze, nach denen Staaten verpflichtet sind, entsprechende Äußerungen zu kriminalisieren, herzuleiten. Die übergreifenden Ziele der Untersuchung sind: a) den Charakter des Zusammenspiels zwischen EU und EGMR herauszuarbeiten; b) zu ermitteln, ob die jeweiligen Positionen gegensätzlich oder komplementär sind; c) die Rechtsnatur und den Inhalt der für die Mitgliedstaaten begründeten Verpflichtungen zu bestimmen; d) herauszuarbeiten, ob eine europaweite Kriminalisierung verpflichtend ist oder lediglich gefördert werden soll; und e) ob beziehungsweise unter welchen Bedingungen ein mit Kriminalstrafe sanktioniertes Verbot der Holocaust-Leugnung erstrebenswert wäre. / The present study aims to analyse the legal treatment of the crime of denialism by the two main actors in European justice, namely, the European Union (‘EU’) and the European Court of Human Rights (‘ECtHR’). Presently, these two systems find themselves in a delicate position: they must cherish and protect the memory of an historical event – the Holocaust – which is central to Europe’s own identity, while simultaneously promoting respect for fundamental rights such as the freedom of speech. This unique balance raises a need for a thorough investigation into Europe’s approach to the crime of denialism. The dissertation’s first section seeks to measure the scope of EU-imposed obligations to make denialism a crime. Notably, the impact on EU Member States of the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on racism and xenophobia is assessed, with illustrations of a few archetypal examples of domestic implementing legislation. The second part of the dissertation turns to the jurisprudence of the ECtHR to examine the relationship between Holocaust denial as a crime and the right to freedom of expression, with a view to deducing the principles under which States must comply in the criminalization of this kind of utterance. The work’s overall goals are to assess: a) the nature of interactions between the EU and ECtHR; b) whether their positions on denialism are better portrayed in terms of contrast or mutual support; c) the legal nature and content of the obligations originating for the Member States; d) whether a Europe-wide criminal prohibition on denialism is dictated or simply encouraged; and e) whether such a prohibition would be desirable, and if so, under what conditions.

Promoter region is the key regulatory region, which enables the gene to be transcribed or repressed by anchoring RNA polymerase and other transcription factors, but it is difficult to determine experimentally. Hence an in silico identification of promoters is crucial in order to guide experimental work and to pin point the key region that controls the transcription initiation of a gene. Analysis of various genome sequences in the vicinity of experimentally identified transcription start sites (TSSs) in prokaryotic as well as eukaryotic genomes had earlier indicated that they have several structural features in common, such as lower stability, higher curvature and less bendability, when compared with their neighboring regions. In this thesis work, the variation observed for these DNA sequence dependent structural properties have been used to identify and delineate promoter regions from other genomic regions. Since the number of bacterial genomes being sequenced is increasing very rapidly, it is crucial to have procedures for rapid and reliable annotation of their functional elements such as promoter regions, which control the expression of each gene or each transcription unit of the genome. The thesis work addresses this requirement and presents step by step protocols followed to get a generic method for promoter prediction that can be applicable across organisms. The each paragraph below gives an overall idea about the thesis organization into chapters. An overview of prokaryotic transcriptional regulation, structural polymorphism adapted by DNA molecule and its impact on transcriptional regulation has been discussed in introduction chapter of this thesis (chapter 1). Standardization of promoter prediction methodology - Part I Based on the difference in stability between neighboring upstream and downstream regions in the vicinity of experimentally determined transcription start sites, a promoter prediction algorithm has been developed to identify prokaryotic promoter sequences in whole genomes. The average free energy (E) over known promoter sequences and the difference (D) between E and the average free energy over the random sequence generated using the downstream region of known TSS (REav) are used to search for promoters in the genomic sequences. Using these cutoff values to predict promoter regions across entire E. coli genome, a reliability of 70% has been achieved, when the predicted promoters were cross verified against the 960 transcription start sites (TSSs) listed in the Ecocyc database. Reliable promoter prediction is obtained when these genome specific threshold values were used to search for promoters in the whole E. coli genome sequence. Annotation of the whole E. coli genome for promoter region has been carried out with 49% accuracy. Reference Rangannan, V. and Bansal, M. (2007) Identification and annotation of promoter regions inmicrobial genome sequences on the basis of DNA stability. J Biosci, 32, 851-862. Standardization of promoter prediction methodology - Part II In this chapter, it has been demonstrated that while the promoter regions are in general less stable than the flanking regions, their average free energy varies depending on the GC composition of the flanking genomic sequence. Therefore, a set of free energy threshold values (TSS based threshold values), from the genomic DNA with varying GC content in the vicinity of experimentally identified TSSs have been obtained. These threshold values have been used as generic criteria for predicting promoter regions in E. coli and B. subtilis and M. tuberculosis genomes, using an in-house developed tool ‘PromPredict’. On applying it to predict promoter regions corresponding to the 1144 and 612 experimentally validated TSSs in E. coli (genome %GC : 50.8) and B. subtilis (genome %GC : 43.5) sensitivity of 99% and 95% and precision values of 58% and 60%, respectively, were achieved. For the limited data set of 81 TSSs available for M. tuberculosis (65.6% GC) a sensitivity of 100% and precision of 49% was obtained. Reference Rangannan, V. and Bansal, M. (2009) Relative stability of DNA as a generic criterion for promoter prediction: whole genome annotation of microbial genomes with varying nucleotide base composition. Mol Biosyst, 5, 1758 - 1769. Standardization of promoter prediction methodology - Part III In this chapter, the promoter prediction algorithm and the threshold values have been improved to predict promoter regions on a large scale over 913 microbial genome sequences. The average free energy (AFE) values for the promoter regions as well as their downstream regions are found to differ, depending on their GC content even with respect to translation start sites (TLSs) from 913 microbial genomes. The TSS based cut-off values derived in chapter 3 do not have cut-off values for both extremes of GC-bins at 5% interval. Hence, threshold values have been derived from a subset of translation start sites (TLSs) from all microbial genomes which were categorized based on their GC-content. Interestingly the cut-off values derived with respect to TSS data set (chapter 3) and TLS data set are very similar for the in-between GC-bins. Therefore, TSS based cut-off values derived in chapter 2 with the TLS based cut-off values have been combined (denoted as TSS-TLS based cutoff values) to predict promoters over the complete genome sequences. An average recall value of 72% (which indicates the percentage of protein and RNA coding genes with predicted promoter regions assigned to them) and precision of 56% is achieved over the 913 microbial genome dataset. These predicted promoter regions have been given a reliability level (low, medium, high, very high and highest) based on the difference in its relative average free energy, which can help the users design their experiments with more confidence by using the predictions with higher reliability levels. Reference Rangannan, V. and Bansal, M. (2010) High Quality Annotation of Promoter Regions for 913 Bacterial Genomes. Bioinformatics, 26, 3043-3050. Web applications PromBase : The predicted promoter regions for 913 microbial genomes were deposited into a public domain database called, PromBase which can serve as a valuable resource for comparative genomics study for their general genomic features and also help the experimentalist to rapidly access the annotation of the promoter regions in any given genome. This database is freely accessible for the users via the World Wide Web http://nucleix.mbu.iisc.ernet.in/prombase/. EcoProm : EcoProm is a database that can identify and display the potential promoter regions corresponding to EcoCyc annotated TSS and genes. Also displays predictions for whole genomic sequence of E. coli and EcoProm is available at http://nucleix.mbu.iisc.ernet.in/ecoprom/index.htm. PromPredict : The generic promoter prediction methodology described in previous chapters has been implemented in to an algorithm ‘PromPredict’ and available at http://nucleix.mbu.iisc.ernet.in/prompredict/prompredict.html. Analysing the DNA structural characteristic of prokaryotic promoter sequences for their predominance Sequence dependent structural properties and their variation in genomic DNA are important in controlling several crucial processes such as transcription, replication, recombination and chromatin compaction. In this chapter 6, quantitative analysis of sequences motifs as well as sequence dependent structural properties, such as curvature, bendability and stability in the upstream region of TSS and TLS from E. coli, B. subtilis and M. tuberculosis has been carried out in order to assess their predictive power for promoter regions. Also the correlation between these structural properties and GC-content has been investigated. Our results have shown that AFE values (stability) gives finer discrimination rather than %GC in identifying promoter regions and stability have shown to be the better structural property in delineating promoter regions from non-promoter regions. Analysis of these DNA structural properties has been carried out in human promoter sequences and observed to be correlating with the inactivation status of the X-linked genes in human genome. Since, it is deviating from the theme of main thesis; this chapter has been included as appendix A to the main thesis. General conclusion Stability is the ubiquitous DNA structural property seen in promoter regions. Stability shows finer discrimination for promoter prediction rather than directly using %GC-content. Based on relative stability of DNA, a generic promoter prediction algorithm has been developed and implemented to predict promoter regions on a large scale over 913 microbial genome sequences. The analysis of the predicted regions across organisms showed highly reliable predictive performance of the algorithm.