Introduction Estrogen-induced cholestasis is a disease characterized by a failure of bile flow and bile production. It can develop in women after oral contraceptives use, hormone replacement therapy or during pregnancy. The estrogen metabolism is a complex process leading to formation of metabolites with different biological activities. It takes place primarily in the liver (Phase I and Phase II including hydroxylation, methylation, sulfation and glucuronidation). The enzymes from UDP-glucuronosyltransferases family , abbreviated UGT, are responsible for the glucuronidation of estrogens. Aims The objective of my work is to define estrogen metabolism and gene expression of UGT1A1, CYP1A2 and SULT1A1 and characterize cholestatic liver damage in the UGT1A1 deficient rat strain (Gunn rats) compared to rats with normal enzyme activity and try to define possible mechanisms responsible for the liver damage. Methods Adult female Gunn and corresponding heterozygous rats were treated with ethinylestradiol (EE, 5 mg/kg body weight SC) for 5 days, while control rats received propanediol (vehicle). Day six, the animals were sacrificed and plasma and liver tissue were collected for analysis. Markers of cholestasis and liver damage ALP, AST, ALT and bilirubin were determined using an automatic analyzer, total...

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T14:16:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Antonio P Magalhaes.pdf: 3251730 bytes, checksum: 0e3e5794c6a8e24e374f425ce2d5079e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-15 / William Gilbert of Colchester (1544-1603), one of the many personal physicians of Queen Elizabeth the First, was a prominent figure regarding the studies of electric and magnetic phenomena between the end of the XVI century and the beginning of the XVII century. In his attempt to reformulate the approach given to knowledge about the nature of these phenomena in his days, as well as the appropriate way to elaborate such process, William Gilbert would then develop various original and influent works, which would be published in the year of 1600 in his book De Magnete. His declared purpose would be to establish a new philosophy based on arguments and true observations, demonstrated by experiments and experiences. Consequently, he would then create new concepts and conceptions about the nature of electric and magnetic matter. The present work aims to go further in the analysis of this specific book, undertaking initially some aspects of its structure, editions and repercussions, as well as the rare biographical data on the author. Next, we investigate the relationship between De Magnete and some of the sources suggested by the author. Particularly those concerning the experiments regarding the magnetic phenomenon, specially the Epistola attributed to the medieval thinker Petrus Peregrinus, The New attractive (1581), written by the navigation craftsman Robert Norman. We also take into consideration, William Gilbert s criticism of book VII of Magia Naturalis (1558) written by the renaissance magician, Giambattista della Porta. We finally deal with the conceptions of electric matter and magnetic form proposed by William Gilbert. The study of the attractions would force him to separate electric bodies, imperfect for acting through matter, from magnetic bodies, perfect for acting through form. Therefore, form should present similarity with a superior soul and a resemblance with the skies / William Gilbert de Colchester (1544-1603), um dos muitos médicos pessoais da Rainha Elizabeth I, foi uma das mais destacadas figuras no que diz respeito aos estudos sobre os fenômenos elétrico e magnético entre o final do século XVI e início do século XVII. Em sua tentativa de reformular a abordagem dada ao conhecimento sobre a natureza desses fenômenos, em seus dias, bem como a própria maneira de elaborá-lo, William Gilbert desenvolveria trabalhos em muitos pontos originais e influentes, que seriam publicados, no ano de 1600, em seu livro De Magnete. Seu objetivo declarado seria estabelecer uma nova Filosofia baseada em argumentos e observações verdadeiros, demonstrados por experimentos e experiências. Assim, ele criaria novos conceitos e concepções sobre a natureza da matéria elétrica e magnética. O presente trabalho propõe-se a aprofundar a análise dessa obra, retomando inicialmente alguns aspectos de sua estruturação, edições e repercussões, bem como os raros dados biográficos de seu autor. Em seguida, busca-se investigar relações dessa obra com algumas das fontes sugeridas pelo autor, particularmente aquelas concernentes a experimentos relacionados ao fenômeno magnético, em especial a Epistola atribuída ao pensado medieval Petrus Peregrinus, o The New attractiue (1581), escrito pelo artesão náutico Robert Norman e também as críticas que William Gilbert desferiu contra o livro VII do Magia Naturalis (1558) escrito pelo mago renascentista, Giambattista della Porta. Por fim abordam-se as concepções de matéria elétrica e forma magnética propostas por William Gilbert. O estudo das atrações exigia-lhe separar os corpos elétricos, imperfeitos por atuarem através da matéria, dos corpos magnéticos, perfeitos por atuarem através da forma. Dessa maneira, a forma deveria apresentar similaridade com uma alma superior, à semelhança dos céus

Bibliography: p. leaves 62-68.

One of the facets of the mobile or wireless environment is that errors quite often occur in bursts. Thus, strong codes are required to provide protection against such errors. This in turn motivates the employment of decoding algorithms which are simple to implement, yet are still able to attempt to take the dependence or memory of the channel model into account in order to give optimal decoding estimates. Furthermore, such algorithms should be able to be applied for a variety of channel models and signalling alphabets. The research presented within this thesis describes a number of algorithms which can be used with linear block codes. Given the received word, these algorithms determine the symbol which was most likely transmitted, on a symbol-by-symbol basis. Due to their relative simplicity, a collection of algorithms for memoryless channels is reported first. This is done to establish the general style and principles of the overall collection. The concept of matrix diagonalisation may or may not be applied, resulting in two different types of procedure. Ultimately, it is shown that the choice between them should be motivated by whether storage space or computational complexity has the higher priority. As with all other procedures explained herein, the derivation is first performed for a binary signalling alphabet and then extended to fields of prime order. These procedures form the paradigm for algorithms used in conjunction with finite state channel models, where errors generally occur in bursts. In such cases, the necessary information is stored in matrices rather than as scalars. Finally, by analogy with the weight polynomials of a code and its dual as characterised by the MacWilliams identities, new procedures are developed for particular types of Gilbert-Elliott channel models. Here, the calculations are derived from three parameters which profile the occurrence of errors in those models. The decoding is then carried out using polynomial evaluation rather than matrix multiplication. Complementing this theory are several examples detailing the steps required to perform the decoding, as well as a collection of simulation results demonstrating the practical value of these algorithms.

La stratigraphie synrift du bloc de faille est divisée en trois groupes stratigraphiques, représentant une épaisseur de 1624 m. Le Groupe inférieur est composé de sédiments fluvio-lacustres, le Groupe moyen comporte les Gilbert-deltas géants et leurs faciès fins associés, le Groupe supérieur est formé de Gilbert-deltas récents à actuels ainsi que de formations superficielles. La discordance basale de l'Unité du prérift présente une paléotopographie. La phase d'extension précoce (Groupe inférieur) est caractérisée par une très faible subsidence assurée par l'activité précoce de la faille de Pirgaki et des failles mineures. La transition avec la phase d'extension principale (Groupe moyen) est marquée par un approfondissement du bassin ainsi que par une augmentation du taux de subsidence. La phase d'abandon et de soulèvement du bloc (Groupe supérieur) est caractérisée par des évènements de creusement-comblement. Le Gilbert-delta géant de Kerinitis se serait déposé dans la période Pléistocène inférieur-Pléistocène moyen, en milieu marin. L'étude de la sédimentologie de faciès a permis de mettre en évidence quatre associations de faciès : topset, foreset, bottomset, prodelta. L'architecture stratigraphique est composée de onze Unités Stratigraphiques (SU) séparées par onze Surfaces Stratigraphiques (KSS). Dans un contexte de création continue d'espace d'accommodation, les SU se déposent pendant les maxima et les périodes de chute du niveau marin. Les KSS se mettent en place pendant des périodes d'augmentation du niveau marin. Les quatres étapes de construction du Gilbert-delta de Kerinitis ont enregistré le début, le maximum et l'arrêt de l'activité du système de failles.

<p>Martina Haag’s method of self-mockery used in her chronicles is characterized by her wish to live up to various ideals. This essay brings out the subversive power of self-deprecatory hu-mor expressed in her book Hemma hos Martina. The author’s strategies and kinds of humor are being studied, leading up to what this humor accomplishes. General theories on humor, by Mary Ann Rishel, Maria Ohlsson, Henri Bergson, Joannne R. Gilbert and Simon Critchley are being applied to find the essence of her craftsmanship in writing comedy. The analysis also goes more closely into the style and language, to give a deeper understanding of how she creates jokes, and also how she relates to her ideals through language. The main thrust of the analysis, though, builds on theories on self-deprecatory humor. Haag is included into Joanne R. Gilbert’s theory on self-deprecation and The Whiner within the field of stand-up comedy.</p><p>Some American feminist critics have rejected self-deprecatory humor as being anti-feminist, stating that women applying this particular kind of humor merely reinforce stereoty-pes, and put themselves down. This paper objects to those critics, leaning on Haag’s book. I wish to show that Haag is not demeaning towards herself, but towards the cultural norms and expectations in our present society. In this context, I show how Haag manages to demystify and criticize ideal representations of women, by lampooning them and revolting against them. In this way, her book turns into a satirical critique of cultural values. My essay illustrates how Haag objectifies herself, making regular use of stereotypes. This is necessary, since these two elements are essential to most humor. Haag confirms stereotypes to make people laugh. This laughter brings about awareness in the reader, making Haag’s work a social critique of current values and norms concerning women.</p>

The Glossa ordinaria on the Bible stands as one of the prime achievements of the period in western intellectual history known as the Renaissance of the twelfth century. In spite of the great number of still extant manuscripts very little is known about the circumstances around its composition. This state of affairs is partly explained by the lack of modern and critical editions of the books of the Glossa ordinaria. The present work is the first critical edition of the Glossa ordinaria on the Book of Lamentations, and consists of the forewords, or prothemata, and the first book (of five) of this text, which was compiled early in the twelfth century by the theologian and Ciceronian rhetorician Gilbert the Universal (†1134), schoolmaster at Auxerre and subsequently Bishop of London. The introduction includes a background sketch of the environment in which the Glossa ordinaria was conceived – the school of Laon – with a short biography of Gilbert the Universal, as well as a study of the sources to this particular part of the Gloss, chief among them the ninth-century commentary of Paschasius Radbertus. It is shown that Gilbert’s major improvement to his source, apart from drastically rewriting it, consists of the introduction of Ciceronian rhetorical loci to the verses of Lamentations. The introduction furthermore provides the reader with an analysis of the manuscript tradition of the early twelfth century and a selective analysis of the later manuscript tradition (some 86 manuscripts have so far been traced). One of the conclusions reached is that the Gloss on Lamentations exists in two textual recensions, the one original, the other a later redaction made once the Gloss had become a success and preserved in nearly all the later manuscripts. The manuscripts of the first recension, which is the one edited in the present work, may be organised into a stemma codicum consisting of two major families originating in a single archetype. It is possible to reconstruct this archetype on the basis of the five oldest manuscripts. An English translation of the edited text is included, as well as a ‘semi-critical’ edition of the text of the second recension. An important part of the present work consists of an effort to combine the sophisticated mise-en-page of the glossed manuscripts with the standards of presentation to be expected of a modern critical edition.

Transmitting quantum information across quantum channels is an important task. However quantum information is delicate, and is easily corrupted. We address the task of protecting quantum information from an information theoretic perspective -- we encode some message qudits into a quantum code, send the encoded quantum information across the noisy quantum channel, then recover the message qudits by decoding. In this dissertation, we discuss the coding problem from several perspectives.} The noisy quantum channel is one of the central aspects of the quantum coding problem, and hence quantifying the noisy quantum channel from the physical model is an important problem. We work with an explicit physical model -- a pair of initially decoupled quantum harmonic oscillators interacting with a spring-like coupling, where the bath oscillator is initially in a thermal-like state. In particular, we treat the completely positive and trace preserving map on the system as a quantum channel, and study the truncation of the channel by truncating its Kraus set. We thereby derive the matrix elements of the Choi-Jamiolkowski operator of the corresponding truncated channel, which are truncated transition amplitudes. Finally, we give a computable approximation for these truncated transition amplitudes with explicit error bounds, and perform a case study of the oscillators in the off-resonant and weakly-coupled regime numerically. In the context of truncated noisy channels, we revisit the notion of approximate error correction of finite dimension codes. We derive a computationally simple lower bound on the worst case entanglement fidelity of a quantum code, when the truncated recovery map of Leung et. al. is rescaled. As an application, we apply our bound to construct a family of multi-error correcting amplitude damping codes that are permutation-invariant. This demonstrates an explicit example where the specific structure of the noisy channel allows code design out of the stabilizer formalism via purely algebraic means. We study lower bounds on the quantum capacity of adversarial channels, where we restrict the selection of quantum codes to the set of concatenated quantum codes. The adversarial channel is a quantum channel where an adversary corrupts a fixed fraction of qudits sent across a quantum channel in the most malicious way possible. The best known rates of communicating over adversarial channels are given by the quantum Gilbert-Varshamov (GV) bound, that is known to be attainable with random quantum codes. We generalize the classical result of Thommesen to the quantum case, thereby demonstrating the existence of concatenated quantum codes that can asymptotically attain the quantum GV bound. The outer codes are quantum generalized Reed-Solomon codes, and the inner codes are random independently chosen stabilizer codes, where the rates of the inner and outer codes lie in a specified feasible region. We next study upper bounds on the quantum capacity of some low dimension quantum channels. The quantum capacity of a quantum channel is the maximum rate at which quantum information can be transmitted reliably across it, given arbitrarily many uses of it. While it is known that random quantum codes can be used to attain the quantum capacity, the quantum capacity of many classes of channels is undetermined, even for channels of low input and output dimension. For example, depolarizing channels are important quantum channels, but do not have tight numerical bounds. We obtain upper bounds on the quantum capacity of some unital and non-unital channels -- two-qubit Pauli channels, two-qubit depolarizing channels, two-qubit locally symmetric channels, shifted qubit depolarizing channels, and shifted two-qubit Pauli channels -- using the coherent information of some degradable channels. We use the notion of twirling quantum channels, and Smith and Smolin's method of constructing degradable extensions of quantum channels extensively. The degradable channels we introduce, study and use are two-qubit amplitude damping channels. Exploiting the notion of covariant quantum channels, we give sufficient conditions for the quantum capacity of a degradable channel to be the optimal value of a concave program with linear constraints, and show that our two-qubit degradable amplitude damping channels have this property.

L'objectif de ce travail est de caractériser l'évolution du flux sédimentaire sur la marge sud du golfe de Corinthe, avec un aller-retour entre données de terrain, modélisations expérimentales et modélisations numériques. L'acquisition de données de terrain a permis d'établir l'évolution tectono-sédimentaire du rift de Corinthe dans le contexte climatique et eustatique bien contraint du Plio-Pléistocène. Les simulations numériques stratigraphiques (DIONISOS) ont ensuite permis de valider ce modèle d'évolution, de quantifier les flux sédimentaires et de discuter des facteurs de contrôle de l'architecture stratigraphique à différentes échelles de temps et d'espace. Les modélisations expérimentales ont enfin permis de discuter des facteurs de contrôle des flux sédimentaires et de leurs enregistrements dans les corps sédimentaires.

Thèse doctorat : Department of English : Uppsala : 1993.