Thesis (M.A. Agricultural Management (Plant Production)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) production had been ranked as the most important commodity in terms of job and wealth creation within the auspices of the National Development Plan (NDP) framework in Limpopo Province. However, soil-borne diseases including plant-parasitic nematodes preclude the successful monoculturing of this commodity and therefore inducing instability in job creation. Generally, after growing a tomato crop for one season in commercial tomato-production systems, the land is being fallowed for 3-5 years under natural grasses. Attempts are being initiated to ensure that during the 3-5 years the land be occupied by an economic alternative crop in order to level off job instability as broadly articulated in the NDP framework. The production of sweet stem sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) for ethanol production during the 3-5 years fallowing period could potentially be attractive to commercial tomato-producing famers. Preliminary agronomic evaluations demonstrated that sweet stem sorghum var. ndendane-X1 had attributes to fulfil the identified need. However, the degree of nematode resistance of the variety to Meloidogyne incognita race 2 and M. javanica, which are dominant in Limpopo Province, along with the compatibility of var. ndendane-X1 to phytonematicides used in tomato production had not been documented. The objectives of the study were, therefore, to determine whether sweet stem sorghum var. ndendane-X1: (1) had any degree of nematode resistance to M. incognita race 2 under both greenhouse and microplot conditions, (2) had any degree of nematode resistance to M. javanica under greenhouse conditions, and (3) would be compatible with phytonematicides used in suppression of population densities of xiv Meloidogyne species in tomato production under field conditions. In the greenhouse trials, seeds were sown in 20-cm-diameter plastic pots and each seedling inoculated with 0, 600, 1 000, 1 400, 1 800 and 2 200 eggs and second-stage juveniles (J2s) of M. incognita race 2 or M. javanica. Treatments were arranged in a randomised complete block design (RCBD), with 10 replicates (n = 60). In the microplot trial, seeds were sown in 30-cm-diameter plastic pots and buried 75% deep in a 0.30-m intra-row and 0.25-m inter-row spacing. Treatments, namely, 0, 200, 600, 1 000, 1 400, 1 800 and 2 200 J2s of M. incognita race 2 were arranged in RCBD, with 14 replications (n = 98). In a Meloidogyne-infested field trial, seeds were sown at 0.2-m inter-row and 0.3-m intra-row spacing, with treatments 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 g nemafric-BG phytonematicide/plant, arranged in RCBD, with 13 replications (n = 78). The degree of nematode resistance was measured using host-status and host-sensitivity, which provide information on reproduction of the target nematode and plant damage due to nematode infection, respectively. Nematode reproduction was measured through the reproductive factor (RF), which is a proportion of final nematode population density (Pf) to initial nematode population density (Pi), summarised as RF = Pf/Pi. In all nematode resistance trials, RF was equivalent to zero, which implied that var. ndendane-X1 was a non-host to both M. incognita race 2 and M. javanica. Additionally, in both greenhouse and microplot trials, sweet stem sorghum var. ndendane-X1 did not suffer any significant damage due to infection by Meloidogyne species. Using nematode-plant relation concepts, sweet stem sorghum var. ndendane-X1 was resistant to M. incognita race 2 and M. javanica under greenhouse and microplot conditions. Under field conditions, nemafric-BG phytonematicide reduced eggs and J2s of Meloidogyne species in root and soil samples xv by 76-85% and 24-65%, respectively, without nematode effect on plant growth, suggesting that nemafric-BG could be integrated with nematode resistance in var. ndendane-X1 to manage nematode population densities. In conclusion, pilot projects where sweet stem sorghum var. ndendane-X1 could be used during the 3-5 years fallowing period in a tomato-sweet stem sorghum crop rotation system should be established to assess: (i) the economics of the proposed cropping system, (ii) the effect of the cropping system on soil-borne diseases, including plant-parasitic nematodes, and (iii) the effect of the cropping system on soil health.

Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease that affects humans and animals in more than 98 countries across the globe placing more than 1 billion people at risk for the disease and killing more than 20,000 people per year. In the United States the disease is enzootic within the hunting dog population and vertical transmission has been identified as the primary route of transmission in this population. In Brazil the disease is endemic in the human population and enzootic in the dog population with vector and vertical transmission having been reported. In many diseases reports have found there is increased disease severity when an individual is co-infected with another organism. Case reports have suggested this may also occur with tick borne diseases and leishmaniosis in dogs but there is limited longitudinal data to support this relationship. Even less is known and understood regarding the risk factors and basic reproduction number, number of secondary cases one infected individual can cause in a susceptible population, of leishmaniosis in regards to vertical transmission. The goal of the work presented in this thesis is to address host factors related to the transmission of L. infantum and the way in which co-infections affect the progression of the disease both in the U.S. and in Brazil. Understanding the risk factors associated with the transmission of the parasite Leishmania infantum, the causative agent of the disease, are necessary to controlling and potentially elimination the disease. Utilizing a large prospective cohort and both active and passive surveillance it was identified that leishmaniosis can be maintained in a population via vertical transmission at prevalence rates similar to other endemic countries, 20%. With this knowledge an additional study examining a longitudinal cohort and assessing the impact of tick borne disease co-infections upon disease transmission was performed. It was identified that dogs exposed to three or more tick borne diseases were 11x more likely to progress to clinical disease (Adjusted RR: 11.64 95% CI: 1.22-110.99 p-value: 0.03) than dogs with no tick borne disease exposures. Furthermore, dogs with Leishmania and tick borne disease were 5x more likely to die within the study (RR: 4.85 95% CI: 1.65-14.24 p-value: 0.0051). When examining this relationship in a cross-sectional study in Brazil it was found that dogs with multiple tick borne disease exposures had 1.68x greater risk of being positive for Leishmania (Adjusted RR: 1.68 95% CI: 1.09-2.61 p-value: 0.019). Using a retrospective cohort of dogs and information regarding their dam’s diagnostic status near the time of pregnancy risk factors associated with vertical transmission and the basic reproduction number were calculated. It was found that dogs who were born to dams that were ever diagnostically positive for exposure and/or infection with L. infantum were 13.84x more likely become positive for L. infantum within their lifetime (RR: 13.84 95% CI: 3.54-54.20 p-value < 0.0001). The basic reproduction number for vertically transmitted L. infantum within this cohort was 4.16. The results of these studies suggest that leishmaniosis can be maintained in a population through vertical transmission. Furthermore, the studies show the risk factors associated with vertical transmission relate to the mother’s diagnostic status at time of pregnancy. The results of the co-infection studies highlight the importance of tick prevention in order to reduce disease progression. With increased disease severity associated with increased transmission to potential vectors these studies underline the need for immunotherapies and prevention measures to reduce disease progression in order to reduce transmission. Furthermore, these studies highlight the need for public health control and prevention programs to address vertical transmission if elimination of the disease is to ever be successful.

La nécessité d’économiser de l'énergie est l’un des axes importants de ces dernières décennies, d’où le besoin de surveiller la consommation d'énergie des processus résidentiels et industriels. Le travail de recherche présenté dans ce manuscrit s’inscrit plus particulièrement dans le suivi de la consommation électrique afin de permettre l’économie d’énergie. Le but final étant d'avoir une connaissance précise et fiable d'un réseau électrique donné. Cela passe par la décomposition de la consommation électrique globale du réseau électrique étudié afin de fournir une analyse détaillée de l'énergie consommée par usage. L’objectif de cette thèse est la mise en place d’une approche non-intrusive permettant de réaliser les étapes de détection d’évènements et d’extraction de caractéristiques, qui précédent les étapes de classification et d’estimation de la consommation électrique par usage. L’algorithme résultant des travaux effectués durant cette thèse permet de détecter les évènements qui surviennent sur le courant et d’y associer un vecteur d’information contenant des paramètres caractérisant le régime permanent et le régime transitoire. Ce vecteur d’information permet ensuite de reconnaître tous les évènements liés à la même charge électrique. / The need to save energy is an important focus of recent decades, hence the need to monitor the energy consumption of residential and industrial processes. The research works presented in this manuscript are within the monitoring power consumption area in order to enable energy saving. The final goal is to have a clear and reliable knowledge of a given grid. This involves the decomposition of the overall power consumption of the electrical network to provide a detailed analysis of the consumed energy. The objective of this thesis is to develop a non-intrusive approach to achieve the event detection and feature extraction steps, which precede the classification and the power consumption estimation steps. The algorithm resulting from the works performed in this thesis can detect events which occur on the current and associates to them an information vector containing the parameters characterizing the steady and transient states. Then this information vector is used to recognize all the events linked to the same electrical load.

Thesis (M.S. in plant pathology)--Washington State University, December 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

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style="font-size: 12pt / line-height: 115% / font-family: &quot / Times New Roman&quot / ,&quot / serif&quot / ">This study has reveled the levels of knowledge and compliance towards Universal Precautions and examined the factors that are influential in having a positive and negative effect on their adoption by healthcare practitioners in practice. Despite acceptable knowledge regarding the potential for infection and mechanisms to prevent these infections, this study has found out that health care workers are not as compliant with universal precautions as they need to be. The findings that compliance correlated directly with knowledge, with in-service training and with availability of protective equipment, provide important indications for future interventions. Therefore a regular on job refreshing training program on Universal Precautions, a written guideline and reminder poster on Universal Precautions and personal protective equipment need to be made available for all health care providers in every department of the hospital for better compliance. <span style="">&nbsp / </span><span style="">&nbsp / </span><span style="">&nbsp / </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p>&nbsp / </p>

<p>Background: Health care workers, more specifically, nursing students are at increased risk of occupational injury and exposure to blood borne pathogens. Compliance with universal precautions (UP) will minimise risk or transmission of HIV and HBV (Hepatitis B virus) according to the Department of Health of South Africa. Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the knowledge and practice of universal precautions amongst nursing students and their fear of occupational exposure to blood borne pathogens. Rationale: The rationale for the study was to investigate what the students&rsquo / knowledge and practice of UP were, to see if this could be a possible contributing factor to occupational exposure. Research design: The study was a quantitative, cross sectional survey using a questionnaire that included one open ended question. Participants: The participants for the study were the undergraduate nursing students in year levels two to four (n = 253) who and were selected by means of stratified random sampling. Procedures: A questionnaire was administered to the participants by the researcher. Analysis of the data collected was done through statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 16.0) and content analysis. Results: The researcher established that there is indeed a lack of knowledge regarding UP and that the students&rsquo / self reported practice of UP is poor. No statistically significant correlation between knowledge and practice of UP were found. There is underreporting of occupational exposures to staff at the School of Nursing. The majority of students reported a moderate to severe fear for occupational exposures and contributing factors raised by them are reality in the clinical facilities.</p>

After decades of investigation, we still have to deal withthe problem of environmental effects of the use of de-icingsalt on roads. Lacking useful indicators of the system, westill do not know the environmental utility of ameliorativemeasures taken. The thesis aims at i) describing the system of de-icing practices and theirenvironmental effects with special reference to the exposure ofthe roadside environment to air-borne salt and damage to Norwayspruce seedlings and ii) at proposing indicators for afollow-up system. By collecting bulk deposition and relatingthe deposition pattern to factors concerning wind androad-maintenance characteristics, the influence of thesefactors on air-borne exposure is investigated. By exposingNorway spruce (Picea abies(L.) Karst.) seedlings to roadsideconditions the influence ofsalt exposure on the degree ofdamage is investigated. Based on a comparison of severalsystems of monitoring, improvements are suggested by proposingnew indicators for salt use and its environmental effects. A large part of the salt that is applied on the road surfacewill be transported by air and deposited on the ground in theroadside. While the vast majority of the salt will be depositedwithin some tens of metres of the road, some may still be windtransported several hundred metres away. The wind directionplays an important role for the deposition already at adistance of some ten metres from the road. Wind speedinfluences the distance to which the salt is transported.Chloride concentration in unwashed needles collected after thesalting season is positively related to the bulk deposition ofCl during the exposure. The degree of damage can be describedby a sigmoid curve of response to the Cl concentration inneedles. Improvements to the follow-up system are suggested byproposing indicators of the driving forces, pressures, states,impacts and possible responses as regards the undesired impactson water resources, vegetation and the roadside scenery as asocietal asset. <b>Keywords:</b>road, de-icing salt, air-borne, environmentalimpact, vegetation damage, Norway spruce, seedling, follow-up,monitoring, indicator

The aim of this study is to develop a sound transmission model that can be used to predict the vibration and noise levels of a submerged vessel. The noise transmitted from the mechanical vibrations of the hull of a submarine and the turbulent boundary layer excitation on the submarine are investigated. A simplified physical model of the submarine hull including the effects of bulkheads, end enclosures, ring stiffeners and fluid loading due to the interaction of the surrounding medium is presented in the study. An energy approach, i.e., Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) is used for the analysis because the characterization of the hull of the structure can be done by a very large number of modes over the frequency range of interest and the deterministic analysis methods such as finite element and boundary element methods are limited to low frequency problems. The application consists of the determination of SEA subsystems and the parameters and the utilization of power balance equations to estimate the energy ratio levels of each subsystem to the directly excited subsystem. Through the implementation of SEA method, the sound pressure levels of the hull of the structure are obtained. In terms of military purposes, the sound levels of the submarine compartments are vital in the aspects of the preserving of submarine stealth.

Ground-borne vibrations from railway systems not only pose threats to structural integrity of nearby buildings and cause annoyance on people but also contribute into environmental noise levels. It is of utmost importance to predict these vibrations at the design stage of such systems. This thesis attempts to reach this goal through finite elements analysis. Commercial software is used to develop a finite element model of an existing railway system. The model is based on the work of Forrest and Hunt [11]. It is also aimed to perform transient analysis in time domain to complement vibration information already obtained in frequency domain. The model is validated by checking maximum element size and comparing results with the infinite boundary condition case. Parametric studies are designed to investigate effects of soil type, railpad type and train speed on vibrations induced by underground train traffic. Results acquired through the finite element analysis are found to be in good harmony with the ones by existing numerical methods. The study demonstrates that the approach can be applied to predict ground-borne vibration from any configuration of railway systems.

The incidence of tick-borne zoonoses such as Ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Lyme disease has steadily increased in the southeastern United States in recent years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the southeastern states accounted for 1,200 of the 27,000 total cases of Lyme disease reported in the U.S. in 2007. Although Ixodes scapularis is the most commonly recognized vector for the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, Dermacentor variabilis (a common vector for Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever) also has been shown to be a viable host for this pathogen. The purpose of the present study was to use PCR and DNA sequencing technologies to determine if Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato is present in ticks and whole blood samples removed from raccoons and opossums trapped in south-central Kentucky. Raccoons and opossums were trapped in Barren and Warren counties of Kentucky between June 2007 and June 2008. Ticks were removed and stored in 70% ethanol. Sterile blood samples were collected into three 10 ml tubes containing the anticoagulant K2EDTA and stored at 4°C. Genomic DNA was extracted from ticks and blood samples using a QIAamp DNA mini kit and a QIAamp DNA blood mini kit (Qiagen) respectively. DNA samples were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the presence of B. burgdorferi using oligonucleotide primers specific for the OspA gene. A total of 976 ticks were collected. Three different species were obtained from raccoons; Dermacentor variabilis, Amblyomma americanum, and Ixodes sp. Dermacentor variabilis was the only tick species found on opossums. Twenty-five percent (163/642) of the tick DNA samples were positive for Borrelia burgdorferi. Prevalence of B. burgdorferi by tick species was 24.4% (141/577) in D. variabilis, 40.6% (13/32) in A. americanum, and 27.6% (8/29) in I. scapularis. In the present study, 15.7% (8/51) of the total raccoon blood samples examined by PCR were positive for B. burgdorferi, while no opossum blood samples were positive. The high prevalence of B. burgdorferi in ticks common to raccoons and opossums observed in this study, as well as in a tick species that aggressively bites humans in the southeast U. S. (A. americanum), creates concern that there are ample opportunities for people to come in contact with the infected ticks on these animals. Future studies are urgently needed to fully assess the presence and prevalence of B. burgdorferi in Kentucky and other southeastern states in the U. S.