Die invasive Aspergillose ist eine schwerwiegende opportunistische systemische Infektion bei immunsupprimierten Patienten. In dieser Arbeit wurden verschiedene PCR-Verfahren und ein ELISA-Verfahren zum Antigennachweis in Hinblick auf Sensitivität, Sensibilität und positiver bzw. negativer Vorhersagewahrscheinlichkeit verglichen. Die konventionelle 18S-PCR ist ein panfungales Assay und wegen zahlreicher falsch-positiver Ergebnisse nicht geeignet zur Frühdiagnose. Die ITS-PCR hat sich aufgrund guter Spezifität als vielversprechend erwiesen, muss aber noch mit größeren Fallzahlen evaluiert werden. Der Antigennachweis (Platelia, Fa. Bio-Rad) weist eine hohe Sensitivität und negativen prädiktiven Wert auf. Als vielversprechend dürfte zukünftig eine Kombination aus PCR und Antigennachweisverfahren gelten. / Diagnosis of Invasive Aspergillosis in immunocompromised patients

Die Breite der Wirkungen von Aldosteron auf Nierenzellen wurde lange Zeit unterschätzt. Inzwischen zeigte sich ein nicht unerheblicher Anteil des Hyperaldosteronismus an arterieller Hypertonie und ebenso mehren sich die Hinweise auf damit assoziierter erhöhter Inzidenz für maligne Entartung von Nierengewebe. In dieser Arbeit wurde der Effekt von Hyperaldosteronismus auf Nierenzellen von Ratten in vivo untersucht. Mittels real time quantitative PCR wurden die relative Expressionsveränderungen der mRNA von validierten Nierenschädigungsmarkern im Hyperaldosteronismusmodell kontrolliert beobachtet und statistisch ausgewertet. Anders als im analog durchgeführten Vorversuch mit DOCA an der Stelle von Aldosteron, ließ sich größtenteils kein über der natürlichen Streuung der Daten liegender, signifikanter Effekt der Nierenschädigung durch überhöhte Aldosteronspiegel nachweisen. Hierfür kommen vielfältige Gründe in Frage. Neben der technischen Variabilität, der Beschaffenheit der internen Kontrolle, potentiell vorhandenen Inhibitoren und der Qualität der mRNA, konnten eine Reihe von weiteren Gründen als Ursache für die Diskrepanz zu den Ergebnissen der mit DOCA behandelten Tiere ausgeschlossen werden. Neben der theoretischen Möglichkeit inter-methodischer Differenzen und sich daraus ergebender Variationen, sowie der noch weiter zu untersuchenden Rolle des Glukokortikoidrezeptors durch dessen variable gleichzeitige Aktivierung, ist die Interpretation im Sinne eines zu gering ausgeprägten Schädigungseffektes durch den Hyperaldosteronismus für den gewählten Stichprobenumfang naheliegend. Hiermit stimmt auch die Tatsache überein, dass der Effekt der Behandlung mit Aldosteron im Vergleich zur Behandlung mit DOCA von vorne herein deutlich geringer ausfallend erwartet wurde. / The broad spectrum of effects of aldosterone on renal cells has been underestimated for a long time. Meanwhile it has been shown that hyperaldosteronism has a considerable share of all cases of arterial hypertension, and the indications for an associated higher incidence of malignant transforming of kidney tissue are also increasing. The subject of this study was to investigate the effect of Hyperaldosteronism on kidney cells in rats. By means of real-time quantitative PCR, the change in the relative expression of mRNA of validated kidney cell damage markers in the hyperaldosteronism model were monitored and statistically evaluated under controlled conditions. In contrast to the previous pre-test with DOCA instead of aldosterone, a significant effect of renal impairment due to excessive aldosterone levels could not be detected. Numerous reasons are conceivable for that. In addition to the technical variability, the nature of the internal control, potentially present inhibitors and the quality of the mRNA, a number of further reasons could be excluded as a cause of the discrepancy with the results of the animals treated with DOCA. Besides the theoretical possibility of inter-methodical differences and resulting variations, as well as the role of the glucocorticoid receptor, which is still to be investigated, the closest interpretation is a damage effect too small to be detected by the given sample size. This is also in agreement with the fact that the effect of the treatment with aldosterone compared with the treatment with DOCA was expected to be significantly lower from the outset.

We have developed a new cluster parallel graphics architecture that improves upon prior cluster parallel graphics systems for high performance supergraphics – the Vortex deferred sort-last parallel graphics architecture based on global Zspace paradigm. The new architecture bypasses limitations of screen-space based parallelization paradigms, solves known Z-space parallelization inefficiencies and problems. Vortex addresses the lack of global Z buffer awareness between GPUs and prevents artifacts in globally order-dependent blending on multiple GPUs. The new paradigm allows for full 1-1 process-GPU coupling with minimal interprocess and inter-GPU communications. This allows for maximal input bandwidth, maximal GPU utilization levels, near optimal load balances, and improved efficiency when scaled to larger configurations. The Vortex architecture introduces the new deferred sort-blend approach for preventing visual artefacts in globally order-dependent fragment blends. All blend fragments are buffered in an external sort-blend subsystem until the end of rendering, when they are Z-culled, sorted and blended into the final frame. The new approach allows for efficient automatic order-independent blending and results in frames without any global blending artifacts The new architecture gives us the ability to fully harness the processing power of state of art GPUs, and at the same time it offers a much easier parallelization paradigm to programmers, compared to existing screen-space CPGS parallelization paradigms. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

[Abstract]: The performance of surface irrigation is a function of the field design, infiltration characteristic of the soil, and the irrigation management practice. However, the complexity of the interactions makes it difficult for irrigators to identify optimaldesign or management practices. The infiltration characteristic of the soil is the most crucial of all the factors affecting the performance of surface irrigation and both spatial and temporal variations in the infiltration characteristic are a major physicalconstraint to achieving higher irrigation application efficiencies. Real-time optimisation and control has the potential to overcome these spatial and temporalvariations and return highly significant improvements in performance. Calculation of the infiltration parameters from irrigation advance data is now the preferred method.If the process is to be included in a real time control system it must be done accurately, reliably and rapidly, and with a minimum of field data. Substantial workhas been directed towards developing methods to estimate the infiltration characteristics of soil from irrigation advance data. However, none of the existing methods are entirely suitable for use in real time control. The greatest limitation is that they are data intensive and or unreliable and provide soil infiltration propertiesafter an irrigation event.A simple real-time control system for furrow irrigation is proposed that: predicts the infiltration characteristics of the soil in real-time using data measured during anirrigation event, simulates the irrigation, and determines the optimum time to cut-off for that irrigation. The basis of the system is a new method for the Real-timeEstimation of the Infiltration Parameters (REIP) under furrow irrigation, developed during this research study, and that uses a model infiltration curve, and a scalingprocess to predict the infiltration characteristics for each furrow and each irrigation event. The underlying hypothesis for the method is that the shape of the infiltration characteristic for a particular field or soil is relatively constant (across the field andwith time), despite variations in the magnitude of the infiltration rate or amount. A typical furrow in the field is selected for evaluation (known as the model furrow)and its infiltration parameters (a, k, fo) in the Kostiakov–Lewis equation are determined by a model such as INFILT or IPARM using inflow, advance and runoffdata. Subsequently the infiltration parameters for this model furrow can be scaled to give the cumulative infiltration curves for the whole field. In this process a scaling factor (F) is formulated from rearrangement of the volume balance equation and is calculated for each furrow/event using the model infiltration parameters and the single advance point. The performance of each furrow can then be simulated and optimised using an appropriate simulation model to determine the preferred time tocut-off.Using this new method, infiltration parameters were calculated for two different fields T & C. The SIRMOD simulation model was then used to simulate irrigationperformance (application efficiency, requirement efficiency and uniformity) under different model strategies. These strategies were framed to assess the feasibility of and demonstrate the gains from the real-time control strategy. The infiltration evaluation results revealed that the infiltration curves produced by the proposed method were of similar shape and hence gave a distribution of cumulative depths of infiltration for the whole field that was statistically equivalent to that given using the complete set of advance data for each furrow. The advance trajectories produced bythe proposed method also matched favourably to the measured advances.The simulation results showed firstly that the scaled infiltration gave predictions of the irrigation performance similar to the actual performance. They also indicated that by adopting the simple real time control system, irrigation application efficiencies forthe two fields could be improved from 76% for field T and 39% for field C (under usual farm management) to 83% and 70% for the fields T & C, respectively. Savingsof 1239 m3 in the total volume of water applied per irrigation over the area of 7.1 ha of both fields were indicated, which can be used beneficially to grow more crop. The proposed real-time control system is shown to be feasible. It requires few data for itsoperation and provides the infiltration characteristics for each furrow without significant loss of accuracy. The irrigation performance is improved greatly from thatachieved under current farmer management and a substantial reduction in the volume of water applied per irrigation is achievable.

Applications with timing requirements, such as multimedia and live multi-user interaction, are becoming more prevalent in wide area networks. The desire to provide more predictable performance for such applications in packet switched wide area networks is evident in the channel management provided by Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks and in the extensions to the Internet protocols proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working groups on integrated and differentiated service. The ability to provide guarantees on the performance of traffic flows, such as packet delay and loss characteristics, relies on an accurate model of the traffic arrival and service at each node in the network. This thesis surveys the work in bounding packet delay based on various proposed queuing disciplines and proposes a method for more accurately defining the traffic arrival and worst case backlog experienced by packets. The methods are applied to the first in first out (FIFO) queuing discipline to define equations for determining the worst case backlog and queuing delay in multihop networks. Simulation results show a significant improvement in the accuracy of the delay bounds over existing bounds published in the literature. An improvement of two orders of magnitude can be realised for a ten hop path and the improvement increases exponentially with the length of the path for variable rate network traffic. The equations derived in the thesis also take into consideration the effect of jitter on delay, thereby removing the requirement for rate controllers or traffic shaping within the network. In addition to providing more accurate delay bounds, the problem of providing fault tolerance to channels with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) is also explored. This thesis introduces a method for interleaving resource requirements of backup channels to reduce the overall resource reservations that are required to provide guaranteed fault recovery with the same QoS as the original failed channel. An algorithm for selecting recovery paths that can meet a channel's QoS requirements during recovery is also introduced. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Computer Science, 2003.

Mobile collaborative work is a developing sub-area of Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW). The future of this field will be marked by a significant increase in mobile device usage as a tool for co-workers to cooperate, collaborate and work on a shared workspace in real-time to produce artefacts such as diagrams, text and graphics regardless of their geographical locations. A real-time collaboration editor can utilise a centralised or a replicated architecture. In a centralised architecture, a central server holds the shared document as well as manages the various aspects of the collaboration, such as the document consistency, ordering of updates, resolving conflicts and the session membership. Every user's action needs to be propagated to the central server, and the server will apply it to the document to ensure it results in the intended document state. Alternatively, a decentralised or replicated architecture can be used where there is no central server to store the shared document. Every participating site contains a copy of the shared document (replica) to work on separately. Using this architecture, every user's action needs to be broadcast to all participating sites so each site can update their replicas accordingly. The replicated architecture is attractive for such applications, especially in wireless and ad-hoc networks, since it does not rely on a central server and a user can continue to work on his or her own local document replica even during disconnection period. However, in the absence of a dedicated server, the collaboration is managed by individual devices. This presents challenges to implement collaborative editors in a replicated architecture, especially in a mobile network which is characterised by limited resource reliability and availability. This thesis addresses challenges and requirements to implement group editors in wireless ad-hoc network environments where resources are scarce and the network is significantly less stable and less robust than wired fixed networks. The major contribution of this thesis is a proposed framework that comprises the proposed algorithms and techniques to allow each device to manage the important aspects of collaboration such as document consistency, conflict handling and resolution, session membership and document partitioning. Firstly, the proposed document consistency algorithm ensures the document replicas held by each device are kept consistent despite the concurrent updates by the collaboration participants while taking into account the limited resource of mobile devices and mobile networks. Secondly, the proposed conflict management technique provides users with conflict status and information so that users can handle and resolve conflicts appropriately. Thirdly, the proposed membership management algorithm ensures all participants receive all necessary updates and allows users to join a currently active collaboration session. Fourthly, the proposed document partitioning algorithm provides flexibility for users to work on selected parts of the document and reduces the resource consumption. Finally, a basic implementation of the framework is presented to show how it can support a real time collaboration scenario.

<p>Smoking is a worldwide problem and it is the second major cause of death. People often try to quit, but few succeed mainly because of withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, anxiety, increased appetite, hyperventilation and difficulty concentrating.</p><p>The overall aim of this project was to study neurochemical changes in the brain following sensitization to nicotine which could give more information about what causes an individual to go from using drugs to abusing the drugs. Therefore, we investigated messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) expression of several genes known to be involved in the mesolimbic dopamine pathway in the nucleus accumbens, caudate putamen, prefrontal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex using real-time polymerase chain reaction (real-time PCR).</p><p>The results showed that in the nucleus accumbens, mRNA expression of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) Aα1 subunit receptor and GABA transporter 3 (GAT-3) were significantly increased following nicotine administration, while in the caudate putamen no difference in expression was observed. In prefrontal cortex, the expression of adrenergic subunit receptor α2A was significantly increased following hexamethonium administration. In medial prefrontal cortex a significant decrease of expression of GAT-1 was shown following nicotine and hexamethonium administration, while a decrease of CART expression only was shown following nicotine administration.</p><p>Overall, these changes in the GABA system may help to explain the mechanism of nicotine sensitization.</p>

<p>Regression testing plays an important role during the software development life-cycle,especially during maintenance, it provides confidence that the modified parts of softwarebehave as intended and the unchanged parts have no affect by the modification. Regressiontest selection is used to select test cases from the test suites which have been used to test theprevious version of the software. In this thesis, we extend the traditional definition of a testcase with a log file, containing information of which events that occurred when the test casewas last executed. Based on the contents of this log file, we propose a method of regressiontest selection for multi-tasking real-time systems, able to determine which parts of softwarethat have not been affected by the modification. Therefore, the test cases designed for theunchanged parts do not need to be re-tested.</p>

We present the BIP component framework for component-based construction of real-time systems from heterogeneous components. BIP stands for Behavior, Interaction and Priority, the three main elements for building components. It considers that systems can be obtained by composition of 3-layered components, where the lowest layer represents behavior as a set of transitions with triggers and actions; the intermediate level is the set of the interactions between the transitions of the behavior level, and the upper level is a set of dynamic priority rules. BIP has a rigorous formal semantics, and supports a system construction methodology based on a parameterized composition operator on components. The use of a layered composition operator allows incremental construction. The system construction process can be viewed as a sequence of transformations in a three-dimensional space of Behavior X Interaction X Priority, and provides a basis for the study of property preserving transformations between subclasses of systems such as untimed/timed, asynchronous/synchronous. We also provide a distributed semantics for systems in BIP, using a partial state model, and show the use of an auxiliary predicate called Oracle to preserve observational equivalence with respect to the centralized semantics. We present an implementation of BIP as a tool chain that allows modeling, static analysis and execution of BIP descriptions on a dedicated engine. Three different implementations for the engine have been provided, a centralized enumerative engine, a centralized symbolic engine and a distributed engine. We illustrate the use of the tool chain for two major application domains, Software Componentization, and Modeling mixed hw/sw systems.

<p>For many years OSE has been a common used operating system, with real time extensions enhancements, in embed-ded systems. But in the last decades, Linux has grown and became a competitor to common operating systems and, in recent years, even as an operating system with real time extensions. With this in mind, ÅF was interested in replacing the quite expensive OSE with some distribution of the open source based Linux on a PowerPC MPC8360. Therefore, our purpose with thesis is to implement Linux on the named platform and make some tests to see if it is possible to replace OSE with Linux. Using Linux has several advantages, for example it is free of charge to use and over the years the popularity of Linux within the developer community has resulted in numerous tools and utilities available for free.</p><p>As a result, this study shows that Linux with real time extensions on the MPC8360 PowerPC platform is a viable alternative to OSE regarding cost efficiency, flexibility, adaptability and competence available on the market.</p><p>Further studies can be done towards benchmarking for I/O systems and implementing support for more hardware on the MPC8360 AF platform.</p>