Transcriptional regulation is a determinant of stability of recombinant protein production in CHO cells. Fundamental studies of recombinant gene transcription in relation to chromatin environment and promoter regulation are important for CHO cell line development and selection. This study has developed a methodology based on a cell/vector system to study recombinant transcription and expression stability of different promoters and/or proteins in the similar genomic environment. The CHO-FRT mini-pools developed in this project were mini-pools of CHO-S cell lines containing Flp Recombination Target (FRT) sites with ß-galactosidase gene, under the influence of a SV40 promoter. Continuous culture of these mini-pools for 8 weeks using a robotic system demonstrated that 20% of the mini-pools studied revealed an unstable profile (with 30% loss of protein expression). Two of these mini-pools with different characteristics, CHO-FRT 1 (low producer/unstable) and CHO-FRT 108 (high producer/stable), were selected to be used on the study of influence of SV40 and CMV promoters in long-term recombinant expression. Genes encoding fluorescent proteins were integrated in a site-directed manner under the influence of SV40 or CMV promoters. A sub-clonal population of the top 10% yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) expressing cells of each mini-pool/promoter combination was selected by cell sorting and cultured for 4 weeks. During this period protein expression was monitored by flow cytometry and compared between both promoters. The results revealed that both SV40 and CMV promoters had an unstable expression with different degrees of instability and long-term expressing behaviours. For CMV, instability was considerably high displaying a long-term logarithmic loss of 50-80% of productivity while for SV40 the loss of productivity observed was only 40-45% with a linear behaviour during long-term culture. The vector system generated contained an MS2-RNA tag sequence cloned 3'- of the recombinant gene to track the recombinant mRNA by using the MS2/MCP-GFP system. This study showed the development of a protocol to measure the transcriptional output of recombinant promoters in CHO cells. The results showed background signal in CHO cells that requires further optimisation studies to allow the direct live cell image quantification of the transcriptional activity of recombinant promoters. Although not yet optimised, the successful combination of site-directed integration with recombinant mRNA tagging method has the potential to become a valuable tool to study the mechanisms of transcriptional activity and stability of transcription driven by different promoters in CHO cells.

Finally, we perform a series of experiments employing several replication schemes and compare them with a non-redundant single service. Through the experiments, we evaluate both the reliability of the Web service paradigm and the correctness of the Web service composition algorithm. / In the paradigm, N-version programming technique is applied to increase the diversity of the system. As different versions of Web services or even different versions of their components are abundantly available in the Internet, the combination of different versions of the Web service or their components is thus becoming critical for enabling different versions in a server application using the N-version approach. We propose a dynamic Web service composition algorithm and evaluate with Petri-Net for verification purposes. / Moreover, we model the Web services with Markov chains and Petri-Nets to demonstrate the performance and reliability of the constructed Web services. Also, we develop the mathematical models to analyze the reliability of the Web services. / One of the latest achievements of the Internet usage is the availability of Web services technology and its dependability is becoming one of the most critical goals in Web related research. In this thesis, we propose a design paradigm for reliable Web services and a Web service composition algorithm. We describe the methods of dependability enhancement by redundancy in space and redundancy in time, using Round-robin scheduling technique, N-version programming and recovery block. The Web services are coordinated by a replication manager. It provides a Round-robin algorithm for scheduling the workload of the Web services and keeps updating the availability of each Web service. The replication algorithm and the detailed system configuration are described. / Chan, Pik Wah. / "March 2008." / Adviser: Micheal R. Lyn. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: A, page: 0722. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-124). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

O objeto de estudo da presente pesquisa são as comunidades mediadas pela Internet (CMIs). Uma CMI consiste de um conjunto de pessoas que compartilham interesses e que, durante algum tempo, utilizam recursos em comum na Internet (por exemplo, um web site – objeto preferencial deste trabalho) para trocarem informações umas com as outras relativamente aos interesses compartilhados. A pesquisa realizada é exploratória e qualitativa, tendo feito uso de estudos de caso, pesquisa-ação e entrevistas em profundidade para estruturar uma base conceitual para as CMIs e reunir elementos relevantes a serem considerados quando da construção de web sites para as mesmas. Realizou-se estudo de caso de 5 (cinco) web sites de CMIs, a fim de serem identificadas as principais tecnologias e métodos em uso atualmente para a estruturação de web sites para CMIs. Na pesquisa-ação, 7 (sete) grupos de pessoas foram identificados e, para cada um, construiu-se 1 (um) web site, de modo que se ofereceu um espaço na Internet para a interação dos seus integrantes. A observação da interação das pessoas através dos web sites permitiu concluir-se que, dos sete grupos iniciais, apenas 1 (um) poderia ser caracterizado como CMI, conforme critérios de Jones (1997): associação sustentável, variedade de comunicadores, espaço virtual para a comunicação em grupo, e interatividade. Para as entrevistas em profundidade, elaborou-se um questionário com base no referencial teórico, nos estudos de caso e na pesquisa-ação, sendo aplicado a 17 (dezessete) pessoas (da única CMI e de dois dos sete grupos). O objetivo das entrevistas foi levantarem-se percepções sobre os web sites utilizados pelos grupos, percepções essas que, sob análise de conteúdo, ajudaram na formação de um conjunto de 12 (doze) recomendações para a construção de web sites para CMIs. As recomendações são de natureza diversa, mas deixam clara a necessidade de haver um entendimento profundo do contexto de uma CMI previamente ao projeto do seu web site.

Site-based management (SBM) in schools can trace its roots back to two phenomena, citizen's movements in large cities such as New York in the late 1960s and decentralization efforts of business in the 1970s. Both were done in the belief that achieving a better result can be done 11 through decisions made by the people closest to the process. Site-based management programs are diverse. Some stress one aspect, the restructuring of the school administration and program to affect achievement. Other schools stress a second aspect, the empowerment of teachers and stakeholders to make administrative decisions. Whichever emphasis chosen, several changes must occur for school management to move from the central office to the local school. These changes are evolutionary, taking 10-15 years. An evaluation study in a northern rural Utah school that has been involved with site-based management since 1990 allows for a context to understand the changes that might occur, namely, (a) the relinquishment of central school district authority; (b) the assumption of authority by the local school; ( c) the assumption of accountability for student achievement; ( d) the development of sensitivity between school and community; and (e) the development of consensus among school stakeholders. An instrument was developed for the evaluation, the Site-Based Management Progress Check. The instrument used items covering the agents and activities that would be present as these five changes occur. Additionally, the largest portion of the progress check was based on the goals in the school. As respondents showed more agreement concerning which goals were chosen and achieved, an inference was made that greater progress had occurred toward the team activity necessary for local school management. The data were provided by 100% of the lower-elementary teachers; upper-elementary teachers, however, were poorly represented, restricting data generalizability. The study indicated that, despite its 7-year involvement with site-based management, the school was still at an early stage of development with no change in district authority and no use of stakeholder groups to monitor goals. The school did have a wide base of teacher leadership. Slow progress seems to be related to lack of knowledge of SBM processes.

A consumer characteristic profile of the snowmobile owners in Utah was compiled and compared to the general population in Utah and the United States. Other statistics were compiled which included user preferences of snowmobiling sites and machine characteristics. Data were collected by a mail survey of snowmobilers during the 1974-75 snowmobiling season. Approximately 315 questionnaires were analyzed. Additional data were collected from the Utah Division of Parks and Recreation. Total economic rent values were estimated for 58 sites in Utah . These values were then separated into location and quality values. This was done by reallocating trips to sites by means of a least cost programming technique. The value attributed to location was subtracted from the total and the residual is attributed to site quality. Ten site characteristics were chosen to analyze site quality. Stepwise regression was used to show this relationship. Increasing site carrying capacity was undertaken in the model to show the effect on site quality. An exposition factor for number nf trips was derived by using the largest use month, the month with the greatest number of trips recorded. Comparisons were then made between the unexpanded data to that and the expanded data.

The principal aims of this thesis were to examine whether there were hydraulic links between individual on-site wastewater systems in sandy soils at Salt Ash and the Tilgerry Creek estuary near Port Stephens, New South Wales, and whether the chemical and microbiological contaminants from on-site systems could reach surface and groundwaters, and possibly lead to impacts on estuarine oyster growing waters. The research outcomes are contained within the thesis and in four refereed papers presented at conferences, and which have been subsequently published, or are in press. Copies of each of these papers are contained within the thesis Appendices. The presence of faecal contamination from domestic systems in the estuary, and surface drains in particular, has been confirmed by work contained in this thesis. The potential level of risk to human health from the consumption of contaminated oysters is, however, regarded as very low, although an assessment of health risk using established microbial assessment models has not been undertaken / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

ABSTRACT BACKGROUND. There have been few studies conducted in hospitalized patients in Viet nam on the epidemiology of surgical site infections (SSIs) and the impact of hand hygiene practices. This study aimed to assess the impact of a bedside hand sanitizer program on SSIs in orthopaedic and neurosurgical patients. DESIGN. A prospective quasi-experimental study was conducted with an untreated control group design in neurosurgical patients and before-after design in orthopaedic patients. A cost analysis based on data derived from the results of this study was also performed. SETTING. Cho Ray Hospital, a tertiary university hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet nam. PATIENTS. All patients admitted for operation between 11 July and 15 August 2000 (Before), and 14 July and 18 August 2001 (After) were included, except those who had undergone another operation within one month prior to admission or were admitted because of SSIs. INTERVENTION. Bedside hand sanitizers were introduced into the Orthopaedic ward and one Neurosurgical ward (Ward A) from September 2000. Training on proper use was also provided to ward staff. Another Neurosurgical ward (Ward B) was used as a control group with no intervention conducted. RESULTS. A total of 1368 patients were recruited into the study. After intervention, in Ward A of the neurosurgical department, the SSI rate between the two periods was reduced by 54% (8.3% to 3.8%; p=0.09). Superficial SSIs were eliminated after the intervention (p=0.007). Comparison between Ward A (intervention) and Ward B (control) showed that, before the intervention, there was no difference in incidence of SSI between the two wards (Ward A: 8.3%, Ward B: 7.2%, p=0.7); however, after intervention, the incidence of SSI in Ward A was significantly lower than Ward B (3.8% and 9.2%, p=0.04). For orthopaedic patients, the SSI rate between the two periods was reduced by 34% (14.8% to 9.8%; p=0.07). SSI patients had a median post-operative length of stay of 19 days longer than patients without SSI (p&lt0.001). Costs were 2.5 times higher in patients with in-hospital SSI compared to uninfected patients (p&lt0.001). Mean SSI-attributable costs were conservatively estimated at US$368 in neurosurgical patients and US$207 in the orthopaedic patients in the before period. SSIs were responsible for at least 14 percent of the annual budget before intervention. The savings per SSI prevented were estimated at US$332 in neurosurgical patients and US$157 in orthopaedic patients. Annual cost savings arising from the intervention were estimated at US$11,112 in orthopaedic patients and US$19,320 in neurosurgical patients. CONCLUSIONS. The incidence of SSI in the hospital was high. The use of hand sanitizers reduced SSI rates, particularly impacting on the incidence of superficial SSIs. The hand sanitization program was found to be a dominant intervention being both more effective and cost saving as compared with no intervention in both study departments. The use of bedside hand sanitizers should be encouraged in the hospitals in Viet nam, where there often is a lack of other hand-washing facilities. / PhD Doctorate

Atmospheric turbulence results taken on the Antarctic plateau are presented in this thesis. Covering two high sites: South Pole and Dome C, this work describes their seeing and meteorological conditions. Using an acoustic sounder to study the turbulence profile of the first kilo- metre of the atmosphere and a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM) to investigate the integrated seeing we are able to deduce important at- mospheric parameters such as the Fried parameter (r0) and the isoplanatic angle (??0). It was found that at the two sites, the free atmosphere (above the first kilometer) was extremely stable and contributed between 0.2" and 0.3" of the total seeing with no evidence of jet or vortex peaks of strong turbulence. The boundary layer turbulence is what differentiates the two sites. Located on the Western flank of the plateau, the South Pole is prone to katabatic winds. Dome C on the other hand is on a local maximum of the plateau and the wind conditions are amongst the calmest in the world. Also linked to the topography is the vertical extent of the temperature in- version that is required to create optical turbulence. At the South Pole the inversion reaches 300 m and only 30 m at Dome C. This difference results in relatively poor seeing conditions at the South Pole (1.8") and excellent at Dome C (0.27"). The strong correlation between the seeing and the ground layer meteorological conditions indicates that even better seeing could be found at Dome A, the highest point of the plateau. Having most of the turbulence near the ground is also incredibly ad- vantageous for adaptive optics. The isoplanatic angle is respectively 3.3" and 5.7" for the South Pole and Dome C. This is significantly larger than at temperate sites where the average isoplanatic angle rarely exceeds 2". This means that wider fields can be corrected without the complication of conjugation to specific layers. For such purpose the potential is even more interesting. We show that ground conjugated adaptive optics would decrease the natural seeing to 0.22" for a wide field of 10 and 0.47" for a field of 1" at the South Pole. At Dome C the results are less impressive due to the already excellent seeing, but a gain of 0.1&quote can still be achieved over 1&quote. These results show that high angular resolution observations can be done better on the Antarctic plateau than any other known site.

The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been instrumental in bringing about the growth in the implementation of web-based information systems (WBIS). Such systems are designed with the aim of improving productivity, data accuracy, and the reduction of paperwork and administrative overheads. Moreover, unlike their conventional non-web-based predecessors, the WBIS are commonly aimed at users who are casual and untrained, geographically distributed and non-homogenous. The dissemination of WBIS necessitates additional infrastructure support in the form of a security system, workflow and transaction management, and web administration. WBIS are commonly developed using an evolutionary approach, whereby the version of the application, acquired from the vendor, is first deployed as a pilot, in order to gather feedback from the target users before the evolutionary cycles commence. While a number of web development methodologies have been proposed by existing research, there is a dearth of empirical evidence that elucidates the experiences of project initiators in pursuing the evolution of web services, a process that undoubtedly involves dealing with stakeholder issues. This research project presents a phenomenological investigation of the experiences of project managers with the implementation of web-based employee service systems (ESS), a domain that has witnessed a sharp growth in Australia in recent times. However, the project managers’ rich, multidimensional account of their experiences with the implementation of ESS revealed the social obstacles and fragility of intra-organizational relationships that demanded a cautious and tactful approach. Thus, the study provides a socio-organizational perspective to web projects in contrast to the functionalist paradigm of current web development methodologies. The research also confirms that consideration of the concerns of stakeholders by project managers is crucial to the successive cycles of ESS evolution. Project managers address stakeholder concerns by pursuing actions that are aimed at encouraging ESS usage, but at the same time, such actions can have consequences necessitating subsequent iterations of system enhancement and improvement. Finally, the research also discovered that despite the different socio-political climate prevalent in various organizations, in which ESS are being implemented, the experiences of project managers in dealing with stakeholder concerns can be captured and independently confirmed in terms of their perceived relevance and usefulness in problem-solving within the application domain.

<p>The purpose of this thesis was to create a communication interface which insures that all the right hardware is in its right place in the IS-node before Ericsson AB delivers it to their customers. One of the first parts of this work was to make sure it is possible to create such an interface for IS. This thesis then explains how to construct an interface that retrieves information from the IS-node into a C#-application. One important part of this project was to collect information and transform it to an XML output with the purpose of then being used in other applications in the future. The application created within the scope of the thesis exports the information retrieved from the IS-node in an XML-file or a text-file. Its communication interface delivers the right information retrieved from the node. Through this application it is therefore possible compare this information to the order specification and make sure that Ericsson AB delivers the right hardware in the node.</p> / <p>Examensarbetet har syftet att leverera ett kommunikationsgränssnitt som säkerställer att rätt hårdvara befinner sig i IS-noden innan Ericsson AB levererar produkten till kund. En av uppgifterna blev att kontrollera om det är möjligt att skapa ett sådant gränssnitt för IS. Utvecklingsverktyget för applikationen valdes till C# och Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Rapporten beskriver hur man kan göra ett kommunikationsgränssnitt för att erhålla information från IS-noden på ett bra och pålitligt sätt. En viktig del i arbetet var att presentera det erhållna svaret så att det i framtiden går att använda informationen i andra applikationer. Valet blev att göra en XML-fil av informationen som returnerades från noden men man kan även generera en text-fil om så behovet finns. Kommunikationsgränssnittet levererar rätt information och användaren kan nu erhålla rätt svar från noden och dessutom kontrollera informationen mot orderspecifikationen manuellt.</p>