In the present study, two strains of Ectocarpus siliculosus with different pollution histories, LIA4 and Es524, were exposed to three PSII inhibitor herbicides, diuron (DIU), terbuthylazine (TBA) and isoproturon (IPU). Evaluation of their effects on growth and photosynthetic efficiency (Fv/Fm, ΦPSII, qP) have demonstrated negative impacts of all herbicides on both strains. With reference to the 7 d RGR EC50 values; DIU (9.9 - 25 μg L-1); TBA (18 – 28 μg L-1); IPU (257 – 315 μg L-1), the reported environmental concentrations for DIU were higher than the values that exert negative effects to E. siliculosus. However, as for TBA and IPU, the environmental concentrations were below the values which caused detrimental effects to E. siliculosus. Strain Es524, which originated from a Cu-polluted site in Chile, was found to exhibit greater resistance to the herbicides, with higher EC50 values recorded, compared to LIA4. To further elucidate the factors contributing to the relative tolerances of the two strains, responses associated with reactive oxygen species (ROS) were investigated. Measurements of H2O2 concentrations and lipid peroxidation showed significant differences between the strains, with increases in both parameters recorded at lower concentrations in LIA4 than Es524. Activities of antioxidant enzymes (CAT, APX and GR) were significantly (P < 0.05) greater in Es524 than LIA4, and total phenolic content and DPPH scavenging activity were also greater in the more tolerant strain. The rank order of toxicity of the three herbicides was diuron > terbuthylazine > isoproturon in both strains of E. siliculosus. In addition to exposure to individual herbicides, the interactions between binary mixtures were also investigated in both strains using physiological and biochemical biomarkers. All three ways of action (synergistic,additive and antagonistic) were exhibited through different endpoints applied in the present study. Significant differences (P < 0.05) between LIA4 and Es524 were observed for the DIU+TBA and TBA+IPU mixtures, while higher impacts were recorded in LIA4 strain compared to Es524. Further studies showed synergistic interactions were observed in Es524 for the aforementioned mixtures (DIU+TBA, TBA+IPU) on the antioxidative enzyme activities while in LIA4 different interactions were exhibited, which probably contribute to the higher tolerance of Es524 to the mixtures. The presence of TBA together with the phenylureas DIU/IPU was also observed to increase the stimulation of antioxidative enzymes (CAT, APX, GR) in both strains of E. siliculosus. This investigation provides new information on the abiotic stress metabolism in brown algae, and HPLC analysis demonstrates the important role of polyphenols in overcoming the impact of oxidative stress. In conclusion, exposure to the herbicides, singly and in mixtures, caused significant (P < 0.05) changes in the growth, photosynthetic efficiency, and ROM of both strains of E. siliculosus. Strain Es524 was found to be more tolerant than LIA4.

Abstract Though a very influential Texan during the first half of the twentieth century, Amon Carter has yet to receive a full scholarly treatment, a problem which this dissertation attempts to rectify by investigating the narrative of Carter’s life to see how and why he was able to rise from humble beginnings to become a powerful publisher who symbolized boosterish trends within Texas and the New South. Publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, philanthropist, oilman, and aviation supporter, Carter used his power and influence to become a leading booster of his city and region seamlessly making the transition from being a business progressive to New Deal supporter to an Eisenhower Democrat. His connections with corporations like American Airlines and General Motors helped bring aviation and industry to his region, and his ability to work with public and private entities helped inspire his failed attempt to make the Trinity River navigable up to Fort Worth. His own success at building the Star-Telegram into the largest circulating newspaper in Texas encouraged him to expand his media empire into radio and television, while the wealth he gained from his oil activities enabled him to form a philanthropic foundation that would provide support for Fort Worth’s medical, cultural, and educational needs for the future. Possessing a life marked by both success and failure, it is clear throughout this dissertation that Carter embodied the idea of the New South civic booster, a figure who at once promoted his goals for his city and region while understanding how this fit within the larger national context.

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I dagens samhälle är det svårt att ta med befintliga bälteskuddar vid resa då de är mycket otympliga. Vid resa med bil som färdmedel krävs en särskild skyddsanordning för barn enligt lag. Syftet med arbetet är att underlätta för barnfamiljer att ut och resa med sina barn och samtidigt inte riskera säkerheten. Målet med arbetet är att ta fram ett koncept för en uppblåsbar bälteskudde som visualiseras med hjälp av en CAD-modell. Modellen visualiseras i ett uppblåst tillstånd och anpassas till barn som är mellan åldrarna 5-10 år. Vid hållfasthetsberäkningar avgränsas arbetet från att ta hänsyn till kuddens materialdata och analysera spänningskoncentrationerna som uppstår. Genom att samla in kundbehov med hjälp av intervjuer och analys av befintlig produkt, har en produktspecifikation upprättas som sedan är grunden till en konceptgenerering. Konceptgenereringen utförs både internt i form av en workshop och externt genom benchmarking. Med hjälp av systematisk utforskning och konceptpoängsättning struktureras och elimineras lösningsförslag för att slutligen erhålla det mest lämpliga konceptet. Det utvalda konceptet består av en stabil rektangulär kudde med remmar som fästmekanism för bältet. Kudden blåses upp med hjälp av lungkraft och förpackas i en extern påse. Konceptet anses uppfylla syftet då modellen ger en låg förpackningsvolym och samtidigt anses vara säker. För att garantera säkerheten krävs ytterligare hållfasthetsberäkningar och ett säkerhetstest utifrån den europeiska standarden. / As a parent of children these days, it is problematic to bring the booster seat with you due to inconvenience because of the generic shaping of the seats. Our intention with the study is to make it easier for parents to bring their kids when travelling without challenging their kids' safety. Our objective is to develop a concept of an inflatable booster seat by illustrating a CAD-model in inflated condition. The booster seat is appropriate for children of an age between 5 and 10 years. When calculating the strength, the study is limited to consider the material data of the seat and only analyzing the stress concentrations that occurs. By gathering customer needs, a product specification has been established, which there after has been utilised as the foundation for the concept generation. The concept generation was made internally in the form of a workshop and externally through benchmarking. By performing systematic research as well as a concept scoring, solutions were gathered and the most appropriate concept were found. The chosen concept consists of a stable rectangular booster seat with straps as a mounting mechanism for the seatbelt. The booster seat are inflated via pulmonary force and can be stored in an extern pouch. The concept is considered to fulfill its purpose due to its small volume when stored while still being considered as safe. To ensure safety levels and meet European standards, further strength calculations and safety-tests are necessary.

Thesis advisor: Utku Unver / Thesis advisor: Bumin Yenmez / This dissertation consists of two chapters. Both are centered around the theory and design of markets, in which the use of money is prohibited and/or strongly undesirable. In my first chapter, I study multi-object assignment problems. Here, the assignment of graduate students to teaching assistant positions over the course of two semesters, serves as an illustrative application. In my second chapter, I propose an alternative way to distribute asylum seekers among European member states based on the preferences of both sides. Chapter 1: Multi-Object Assignment: Booster Draft In my first chapter, I ask the question of how to divide among a set of n individuals a set of n × m indivisible objects without using monetary transfers, in a way that is efficient, incentive compatible, and ex-post fair. A well known impossibility result shows that the only mechanisms that are both incentive compatible and efficient are dictatorship mechanisms. I fill a gap in the literature by describing a novel mechanism that is both incentive compatible and fair in the responsive preference domain. The mechanism is inspired by booster drafts used in competitive card game tournaments. The idea is to arbitrarily divide the set n × m objects into m \boosters" (sets) of size n and specify a priority order for each such booster. Afterwards the individuals pick objects from the boosters in order of priority. The outcome of the booster draft mechanism can be improved if additional knowledge about a particular market is incorporated into the creation of boosters. I point out a special case of multi-object assignment problems, motivated by the allocation of teaching assignments among graduate students. In this domain the creation of the boosters is straightforward. Indeed, at the Boston College economics department, graduate students are assigned exactly one fall and one spring semester task over the academic year. Here the optimal way of creating boosters is to group up all spring teaching assignments in one booster and all fall semester assignments in the other. In this case the balanced booster draft is not only strategyproof and fair, but also weakly efficient (dominance efficient). Moreover, for this restricted assignment domain I characterize the set of all booster drafts as any (strongly) strategyproof, neutral and non-bossy mechanism. In the final part of the paper I take a closer look at the teaching assistant assignment problem, using date on the submitted rankings over semester-tasks by graduate students. The simulation exercise provides additional evidence that the proposed mechanism is a sensible practical solution. In particular, I show that for a simple measure of welfare students prefer a balanced booster draft to a serial dictatorship mechanism if they are mildly risk averse. Chapter 2: An Alternative Asylum Assignment The 2015 refugee crisis has demonstrated the necessity of revising the current European asylum system. As an alternative, I propose to take into account preferences of asylum seekers as well as preferences of member states. Asylum seekers indicate how long they are willing to wait for their asylum application for any given member state, allowing them to avoid overburdened member states by opting for \less popular" member states. Within the market design literature, this is the first paper proposing to match asylum seekers as opposed to refugees. In other words, its stays much closer to the template of the Common European Asylum System. From a theoretical perspective, it turns out that the asylum seeker framework can be formulated as an application of the well-known matching with contracts model by Hatfield and Milgrom (2005a). This simplifies the analysis a great deal, as matching with contracts is a well studied framework within the matching/market design literature. I show that the standard cumulative offer mechanism (Gale and Shapley, 1962a; Hatfield and Kojima, 2010a) is asylum seeker incentive compatible and leads to stable outcomes, using the fact that the proposed choice functions have a completion satisfying substitutability and the law of aggregate demand Hatfield and Kominers (2016). Moreover, stability implies two sided Pareto efficiency, giving consideration to both preferences of member states and asylum seekers. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of British Columbia, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 89-90). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.

During the last couple of years several studies have been conducted to investigate how children move and position during car rides. This in order to map when, and for how long children sit in positions that are not safe as well as to identify the reason for these movements. One of the conclusions is that children do not always sit comfortable in today’s belt-positioning boosters and thereby they chose positions that are unwanted for safety reasons. The aim for the master thesis has thereby been to improve seating comfort for children while traveling safely in the rear seat of a car. The target group has been children in ages 5-11 years old with body height 110-145 cm, a Swedish population 50 percentile has been used for the extreme dimensions. The master thesis process is divided in three phases; Discovery, Development and Testing and Evaluation. In the Discovery phase information in the areas child safety, child methodology and comfort was gathered through literature study, interviews with experts, benchmarking and a focus group with parents. As a final step customer needs were formulated. In the Development phase a workshop with children was initially performed to complement the customer needs with inputs from the users. The customer needs were afterwards reformulated into a specification of requirements and five comfort hypotheses. Finally a prototype was developed, designed from the requirements with the purpose to validate the comfort hypotheses, using an anthropometric design method (Osvalder, et al., 2010). In the final phase, Testing and Evaluation, the prototype and reference belt-positioning boosters were evaluated by children in two user studies; one static study and one on road study, to evaluate comfort features and try out different seating comfort evaluation methods. The result is divided into child seating comfort characteristics and child seating comfort methodology guidelines. To assist future development of belt-positioning boosters, seven comfort features are defined to help children ride comfortable in a safe position in the car. Furthermore, 13 child methodology guidelines are formulated to help further seating comfort evaluation with children. Conclusively to make children sit comfortable and safe positioned in the car they should be seated in a belt-positioning booster with headrest, backrest, seat cushion and foot support, the supporting parts need to be perceived as soft around head, back and under the buttock and all parts need to be dimensioned for all children in the target group. The size of the belt-positioning booster and the combination of foam thickness, foam hardness and shape are the main factors for affecting the perceived seating comfort. Furthermore, children shall be included as both design partners and testers during the development of belt-positioning boosters. During the prototype development static comfort evaluation with children should be done repeatedly to verify measurements, shape and foam hardness. To evaluate comfort both static evaluation and on road evaluation should be performed since comfort varies over time. Data should be collected subjectively from children through quantitative methods, such as rating scales, and qualitative methods, such as general questions regarding comfort/discomfort experience. Video observations can identify children’s position during car rides. Different positions can be timed and together with subjective data reasons for repositioning can be identified.

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Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:58:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SaraMFA.pdf: 4966448 bytes, checksum: 1ef74fa9275b2d2eb81d82fd6bcd301f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-06-18 / Low voltage solar panels increase the reliability of solar panels due to reduction of in series associations the configurations of photovoltaic cells. The low voltage generation requires DCDC converters devices with high efficiency, enabling raise and regulate the output voltage. This study analyzes the performance of a photovoltaic panel of Solarex, MSX model 77, configured to generate an open circuit voltage of 10.5 V, with load voltage of 8.5 V, with short circuit current of 9 A and a power of 77 W. The solar panel was assembled in the isolated photovoltaic system configuration, with and without energy storage as an interface with a DCDC converter, Booster topology. The converter was designed and fabricated using SMD (Surface Mounted Devices) technology IC (integrated circuit) that regulates its output voltage at 14.2 V, with an efficiency of 87% and providing the load a maximum power of 20.88 W. The system was installed and instrumented for measurement and acquisition of the following data: luminosities, average global radiation (data of INPE Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais), solar panel and environment temperatures, solar panel and DC-DC converter output voltages, panel, inverter, and battery charge output currents. The photovoltaic system was initially tested in the laboratory (simulating its functioning in ideal conditions of operation) and then subjected to testing in real field conditions. The panel inclination angle was set at 5.5?, consistent with the latitude of Natal city. Factors such as climatic conditions (simultaneous variations of temperature, solar luminosities and ra diation on the panel), values of load resistance, lower limit of the maximum power required by the load (20.88 W) were predominant factors that panel does not operate with energy efficiency levels greater than 5 to 6%. The average converter efficiency designed in the field test reached 95% / Pain?is solares de baixa tens?o aumentam a confiabilidade dos pain?is solares, devido ? redu??o das associa??es em s?rie nas configura??es das c?lulas fotovoltaicas. A gera??o em baixa tens?o requer dispositivos conversores DC/DC de alto rendimento, que possibilitem elevar e regular a tens?o de sa?da. O presente estudo analisa o desempenho de um painel fotovoltaico da Solarex, modelo MSX 77, configurado para gerar uma tens?o em aberto de 10,5 V, tens?o com carga de 8,5 V, com uma corrente de curto-circuito de 9,0 A, e uma pot?ncia de 77 Watts. O painel solar foi montado na configura??o de sistema fotovoltaico isolado, com e sem armazenamento de energia tendo como elemento de interface um conversor DC-DC, topologia Booster. O conversor foi projetado e confeccionado com circuitos integrados de tecnologia Surface Mounted Devices (SMD), para regular tens?o de sa?da em 14,2V, com rendimento de 87 % , disponibilizando a carga uma pot?ncia m?xima de 20,88W. O sistema foi instalado e instrumentado para medi??o e aquisi??o dos seguintes dados: luminosidades, radia??es m?dias globais (dados do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE)), temperaturas do painel solar, temperatura ambiente, tens?es de sa?da do painel solar, tens?o de sa?da do conversor DC-DC, correntes de sa?da do painel, do conversor, da carga e da bateria. O conjunto fotovoltaico foi inicialmente ensaiado em laborat?rio (simulando seu funcionamento em condi??es ideais de opera??o) e, em seguida, submetido a testes em condi??es reais de campo. O ?ngulo da inclina??o do painel foi fixado em 5,5?, compat?vel com a latitude da cidade de Natal. Fatores como condi??es clim?ticas (varia??es simult?neas de altas temperaturas e radia??es solares), valores da resist?ncia de carga, baixo limite da m?xima pot?ncia solicitada pela carga (20,88W) foram fatores predominantes para que painel n?o operasse com n?veis de efici?ncia energ?tica maiores que 5 ? 6 %. O rendimento m?dio do conversor projetado nos ensaios de campo alcan?ou 95 %