published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Medicine / Master / Master of Philosophy

Revised; Originally Published: 2000 / 8 pp. / Whether you are beginning a new landscape or renovating an existing one, planning ahead can prevent many problems. The majority of maintenance requirements and plant problems result from either selecting the wrong kind of plant for a location or planting an inferior specimen of the selected plant type. In other words, there are two decisions to be made: ▪ What species, or kind, of tree are you going to buy — an oak, pine, mesquite, or acacia? ▪ Assuming you decide on an oak, which one in the row of oaks at the nursery are you going to buy? The first decision is called Plant Selection and the second is Selecting Plants. Our goal is to install the right plant in the right place. This publication will cover the factors involved in making good decisions to achieve this goal.

Cette thèse porte sur la vérification des règles ajoutées de l'Atelier B en utilisant une plate-forme appelée BCARe qui repose sur un plongement de la théorie sous-jacente à la méthode B (théorie de B) dans l'assistant à la preuve Coq. En particulier, nous proposons trois approches pour prouver la validité d'une règle, ce qui revient à prouver une formule exprimée dans la théorie de B. Ces trois approches ont été évaluées sur les règles de la base de règles de SIEMENS IC-MOL. La première approche dite autarcique est développée avec le langage de tactiques de Coq Ltac. Elle repose sur une première étape qui consiste à déplier tous les opérateurs ensemblistes pour obtenir une formule de la logique du premier ordre. Puis nous appliquons une procédure de décision qui met en oeuvre une heuristique naïve en ce qui concerne les instanciations. La deuxième approche, dite sceptique,appelle le prouveur automatique de théorèmes Zenon après avoir effectué l'étape de normalisation précédente. Nous vérifions ensuite les preuves trouvées par Zenon dans le plongement profond de B en Coq. La troisième approche évite l'étape de normalisation précédente grâce à une extension de Zenon utilisant des règles d'inférence spécifiques à la théorie de B. Ces règles sont obtenues grâce à la technique de superdéduction. Cette dernière approche est généralisée en une extension de Zenon à toute théorie grâce à un calcul dynamique des règles de superdéduction. Ce nouvel outil, appelé Super Zenon, peut par exemple prouver des problèmes issus de la bibliothèque de problèmes TPTP.

Задачей магистерской работы «Интонация в тексте художественной литературы (в романе Б. Акунина Ф.М.) является анализ способов выражения интонации в художественном тексте, его письменном варианте в сравнении со звучащим, интерпретация возможностей восприятия.В данной работе выявлены и проанализированы конкретные способы выражения интонации в художественном тексте, отражающие различные эмоциональные, стилистические оттенки значений в репликах персонажей. Автор пользуется различными способами фиксации и передачи интонации в письменном художественном тексте: авторскими ремарками (коментарий автора), знаками препинания и другими (исключительно индивидуально авторскими) указаниями на мимику и жесты, физиологические реакции и т.д. В данной магистерской работе особенности изображения интонации в художественном тексте анализируются в сравнении с другими писателями того же периода (В. Пелевин и В. Сорокин), их спецификой изображения интонации в письменном тексте. / Magistro darbo „Intonacija grožinės literatūros tekste (B. Akunino romane «F.М.»)“ tikslas – ištirti intonacijos raiškos grožiniame tekste, jo rašytiniame variante, lyginant su sakytiniu, galimybių suvokimą bei interpretaciją. Šiame darbe nustatyti ir apibūdinti konkretūs šio autoriaus intonacijos išraiškos meniniame tekste būdai, atspindintys įvairius emocinius, stilistinius personažų kalbos atspalvius. Tuo tikslu autorius naudojasi įvairiais intonacijos meniniame rašytiniame tekste fiksavimo ir perdavimo būdais: autorinėmis remarkomis (autoriaus komentarais), skyrybos ženklais bei kitomis (specialiomis ir išskirtinėmis autorinėmis) grafinėmis priemonėmis ar išskirtinėmis žodžių žymėjimo priemonėmis, nuorodomis į mimiką ir gestus, fiziologines reakcijas ir kt. Šiame magistro darbe B.Akunino intonacijos raiškos grožiniame tekste ypatumai palyginti su kitų to paties laikotarpio rusų rašytojų (V.Pelevino, V.Sorokino) autorinės intonacijos meniniame rašytiniame tekste raiškos specifika. / The aim of Master’s Degree Work “Intonation in Literary Text” (in “F.M” novel by B. Akunin) is to analyze perception and interpretation of possibilities of intonation expression in a literary text and its written variant in comparison with an oral text. For this purpose the author uses different means of fixing and transferring the intonation in written text: author’s remarks (author’s commentaries), punctuation marks and other (special and exceptional author’s) graphical means as well as exceptional means of word marking, and references to the mimic and gestures, physiological reactions etc. In this Master’s Degree Work B. Akunin’s specifics of intonation expression in a literary text have been compared with other Russian writers’(V. Pelevin, V. Sorokin) specifics of author intonation expression in a literary written text.

The Neisseria genus includes pathogens, Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) and Neisseria meningitidis, as well as commensals. Ngo, the cause of gonorrhea, induces massive inflammation but a surprising lack of adaptive immune responses. We have observed that Ngo can inhibit both T cell activation and dendritic cell maturation through interaction with the host expressed co-inhibitory receptor carcinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 1 (CEACAM1). Therefore, I wondered whether B cells may also be affected in this manner. Herein, I examine primary human B cell responses to infection with Ngo, as well as the other Neisseria species. B cells infected with Ngo show no sign of inhibition, regardless of their ability to bind CEACAM1, instead responding to gonococci with robust activation and proliferation. There are distinct subsets of B cells found in the periphery and, intriguingly, the IgM memory B cell subset expand and produce polyreactive IgM in response to goncoccal infection. These cells are innate in function, producing low affinity, polyclonal IgM that is protective against bacterial and fungal dissemination. This effect was broadly specific for Neisseria sp., as B cell infection with all commensal Neisseria species examined induced innate B cell responses. Curiously, meningococcal strains avoid inducing the innate B cell responses, making it enticing to hypothesize that its avoidance of such an ancient immune response may contribute to its ability to cause disease in humans. Finally, I tested whether gonococcal Opa protein binding to CEACAM1 affects primary human B cell activation, and show that no inhibition was observed. This absence of co-inhibitory function of neisserial-bound CEACAM1 may reflect inherent differences between distinctive cell types. Combined, the results in this thesis contribute new insight regarding the poorly characterized human IgM memory B cells, as well as to the function of CEACAM1 in lymphocytes.

Lepton pairs resulting from the decay of heavy flavor mesons are an important tool to probe the hot and dense matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Due to their large mass, heavy quarks are produced in the earliest stages of the collision and will, therefore, experience the full evolution of the system. The yield of heavy flavor mesons can be measured through their semi-leptonic decay channel by constructing like-sign and unlike-sign lepton pairs. Cross section measurements in p + p collisions provide a test of perturbative quantum chromodynamics (pQCD) theory in addition to a crucial baseline measurement to study the hot and cold nuclear matter effects present in heavy ion collisions. For the first time, the b¯b cross section in p+p collisions at √s = 500 GeV is measured. The results are based on the yield of high mass, like-sign dimuons measured in the PHENIX muon arm acceptance (1.2 < |y| < 2.2). The extrapolated total cross section is 25.2 ± 3.2 (stat) +11.4 -9.5 µb (sys). The cross section is comparable to pQCD calculation within uncertainties.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The Neisseria genus includes pathogens, Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) and Neisseria meningitidis, as well as commensals. Ngo, the cause of gonorrhea, induces massive inflammation but a surprising lack of adaptive immune responses. We have observed that Ngo can inhibit both T cell activation and dendritic cell maturation through interaction with the host expressed co-inhibitory receptor carcinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 1 (CEACAM1). Therefore, I wondered whether B cells may also be affected in this manner. Herein, I examine primary human B cell responses to infection with Ngo, as well as the other Neisseria species. B cells infected with Ngo show no sign of inhibition, regardless of their ability to bind CEACAM1, instead responding to gonococci with robust activation and proliferation. There are distinct subsets of B cells found in the periphery and, intriguingly, the IgM memory B cell subset expand and produce polyreactive IgM in response to goncoccal infection. These cells are innate in function, producing low affinity, polyclonal IgM that is protective against bacterial and fungal dissemination. This effect was broadly specific for Neisseria sp., as B cell infection with all commensal Neisseria species examined induced innate B cell responses. Curiously, meningococcal strains avoid inducing the innate B cell responses, making it enticing to hypothesize that its avoidance of such an ancient immune response may contribute to its ability to cause disease in humans. Finally, I tested whether gonococcal Opa protein binding to CEACAM1 affects primary human B cell activation, and show that no inhibition was observed. This absence of co-inhibitory function of neisserial-bound CEACAM1 may reflect inherent differences between distinctive cell types. Combined, the results in this thesis contribute new insight regarding the poorly characterized human IgM memory B cells, as well as to the function of CEACAM1 in lymphocytes.

This thesis explores the relationship between musical tastes and dance practices in a popular dance style known as breaking or b-boying/b-girling. It is based on a multi-sited ethnography involving the participation in and observation of the practices of breaking, as well as interviews with individual b-boys and b-girls, who often travelled between cities as part of their practices. Although there were many interesting and contradictory observations and participant responses provided by this multigenerational, multicultural scene, one theme emerged as central. 'Vernacular' or street dancers make consistent claims that "it's all about the music." This is to challenge assumptions in current academic writing on the relationship of music and dance. On one hand, many contemporary dance writers argue that musical tastes have little to do with choreographic practices and the meanings of dance performances. On the other hand, sociological accounts of musical tastes rarely consider dance practice in their analyses. The result is that musical tastes are under-theorised in accounts of dance performance, and vice versa. Hennion's (2007) assertion that taste is an activity provides a foundation for a new argument. I propose that taste is an activity that, when theorised in terms of music and dance practices, suggests new epistemological avenues for studies of popular dance. Put simply, I argue that, in breaking practices, dance is a performance of musical taste. This performance of taste has a variety of avenues - from hip hop theatre performances, to international battles, master class workshops, club nights and local events – and in each new context, the relationship between music and dance transforms. These shifts in selection reveal that the dance is not just “about the music,” but also about how tastes are mediated, negotiated and competed over.

This thesis is about the structure of the boundary of the universe, i.e., points where the geometric structures of spacetime cannot be continued. In partic­ular, we study the structure of the b-boundary by B. Schmidt. It has been known for some time that the b-boundary construction has several drawbacks, perhaps the most severe being that it is often not Hausdorff separated from interior points in spacetime. In other words, the topology makes it impossible to distinguish which points in spacetime are near the singularity and which points are ‘far’ from it. The non-Hausdorffness of the b-completion is closely related to the concept of fibre degeneracy of the fibre in the frame bundle over a b-boundary point, the fibre being smaller than the whole structure group in a specific sense. Fibre degeneracy is to be expected for many realistic spacetimes, as was proved by C. J. S. Clarke. His proofs contain some errors however, and the purpose of paper I is to reestablish the results of Clarke, under somewhat different conditions. It is found that under some conditions on the Riemann curvature tensor, the boundary fibre must be totally degenerate (i.e., a single point). The conditions are essentially that the components of the Riemann tensor and its first derivative, expressed in a parallel frame along a curve ending at the singularity, diverge sufficiently fast. We also demonstrate the applicability of the conditions by verifying them for a number of well known spacetimes. In paper II we take a different view of the b-boundary and the b-length func­tional, and study the Riemannian geometry of the frame bundle. We calculate the curvature Rof the frame bundle, which allows us to draw two conclusions. Firstly, if some component of the curvature of spacetime diverges along a horizontal curve ending at a singularity, R must tend to — oo. Secondly, if the frame bundle is extendible through a totally degenerate boundary fibre, the spacetime must be a conformally flat Einstein space asymptotically at the corresponding b-boundary point. We also obtain some basic results on the isometries and the geodesics of the frame bundle, in relation to the corresponding structures on spacetime. The first part of paper III is concerned with imprisoned curves. In Lorentzian geometry, the situation is qualitatively different from Riemannian geometry in that there may be incomplete endless curves totally or partially imprisoned in a compact subset of spacetime. It was shown by B. Schmidt that a totally imprisoned curve must have a null geodesic cluster curve. We generalise this result to partially im­prisoned incomplete endless curves. We also show that the conditions for the fibre degeneracy theorem in paper I does not apply to imprisoned curves. The second part of paper III is concerned with the properties of the b-length functional. The b-length concept is important in general relativity because the presence of endless curves with finite b-length is usually taken as the definition of a singular spacetime. It is also closely related to the b-boundary definition. We study the structure of b-neighbourhoods, i.e., the set of points reachable from a fixed point in spacetime on (horizontal) curves with b-length less than some fixed number e &gt; 0. This can then be used to understand how the geometry of spacetime is encoded in the frame bundle geometry, and as a tool when studying the structure of the b-boundary. We also give a result linking the b-length of a general curve in the frame bundle with the b-length of the corresponding horizontal curve. / digitalisering@umu