Extensive research on amino acids, and even other biochemical assays usually present in low concentration and volume face challenges using known analytical techniques for analysis of traces amounts. Some limiting factors are the achievable efficiency, sensitivity (resulting from instrument limit of detection and/or experimental methods), volume requirement, and total analysis time. Counterflow electrofocusing techniques combining forces of electrophoresis and bulk flow (pressure driven flow and/or electroosmotic flow) provides a basis for the development of alternative detection techniques geared towards improving peak efficiency, sensitivity and time. The work presented gives a vivid description of recently developed capillary counterflow techniques: gradient elution isotachophoresis (GEITP) using UV detection, GEITP coupled to Capillary Zonal Electrophoresis (GEITP-CZE), temperature gradient focusing (TGF), and temperature gradient denaturing focusing (TGDF). A first demonstration of GEITP using UV detection was applied to enrichment and separation of tyrosine and tryptophan under optimized conditions. Primarily, separation is achieved as the result of the difference in electrophoretic velocity of analytes in a discontinuous buffer system. First, a plug of sample is allowed to preconcentrate (or enrich) between high mobility leading electrolyte (LE) and low mobility trailing electrolyte (TE) under controlled hydrodynamic pressure and continuous injection. This preconcentration is initiated outside the capillary in a conductivity bubble. Although analyte focus according to their electrophoretic velocity, the inclusion of spacer molecule in sample matrix was instrumental in achieving separation with tradeoff between analyte resolution and enrichment. Gradient produced results from reduction in pressure as sample is loaded on column. Separation using this technique is a one step process. A hybrid method marking the first successful coupling of GEITP to CZE with laser induced fluorescence detection was used for separation of six fluorescently labeled amino acids (which formulates the Mars-7). An eleven minute separation was achieved under optimized conditions. A proof-of-concept demonstration of TGF with LIF detection showed focusing and separation of fluorescein and carboxyfluorescein dye molecules, and carboxyfluorescein-labeled glutamate and aspartate. The generation of null focusing points along the thermal separation column (set between 80-20oC) was produced in collaboration with continuous sample injection, discontinuous buffer system and balancing of counterflows (electrophoresis and bulk flow). Preliminary results showed stability in instrument. The TGDF method carried out on a TGF apparatus is a modification to the temperature gradient gel electrophoresis and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis methods. In principle, TGDF primarily achieves focusing and separation on a thermal separation column (set between 20 to 80 oC) as a result of conformational changes. It is currently being developed for the detection and simultaneous separation of single and double stranded DNA. Preliminary results show enrichment of wildtype and mutant synthetic DNA strands (containing twenty-four base pairs in sequence) in different buffer matrices. / Chemistry

No description available.

A gradient-independent model of gas fluxes was formulated and tested. The model is built on the relationship between gas flux and the time history of surface gas concentration, known as half-order derivative (HOD), when the transport of the gas in the boundary layer is described by a diffusion equation. The eddy-diffusivity of gas is parameterized based on the similarity theory of boundary layer turbulence combined with the MEP model of surface heat fluxes. Test of the new model using in-situ data of CO2 concentration and fluxes at several locations with diverse vegetation cover, geographic and climatic conditions confirms its usefulness and potential for monitoring and modeling greenhouse gases. The proposed model may also be used for estimating other GHGS fluxes such as methane (CH4) and Water vapor flux. This proof-of-concept study justifies the proposed model as a practical solution for monitoring and modeling global GHGS budget over remote areas and oceans where ground observations of GHGS fluxes are limited or non-existent. One focus of the on-going research is to investigate its application to producing regional and global distributions of carbon fluxes for identifying sinks and sources of carbon and re-evaluating the regional and global carbon budget at monthly and annual time scales.

The goal of this study is to develop a gradient-independent method for modeling surface gas flux using surface gas concentration data. The proposed method is built on the relationship between gas flux and the time history of surface gas concentration, known as half-order derivative (HOD), when the transport of gas in the boundary layer is described by a diffusion equation. The new model is tested using in-situ data of CO2 concentration time series at half hour (or hour) intervals from Ameriflux Network at several locations in US, Canada, Mexico and Brazil to estimate CO2 fluxes. In this research the estimated CO2 flux using HOD method are compared with observed CO2 fluxes from four study sites out of 160+ sites with diverse vegetation cover, geographic and climatic conditions to test the generality of model within reasonable endeavor. The sites are Cedar Bridge National Forest, New Jersey, Delta Junction 1920 Control, Alaska, Lucky Hills Shrub land, Arizona, and LBA Tapajos Mature Forest, Brazil. The modeled CO2 flux demonstrates close agreement with field observations confirming the usefulness and potential of HOD model for estimating CO2 gas fluxes.

No description available.

Human activities have dramatically altered the functioning of ecosystems through the ages. Urbanization illustrates the effect of anthropogenic activity by the transformation of natural areas to ecologically disturbed regions (development of towns, cities and settlements). The growing need for urban employment in South Africa has led to an increase in the number of informal settlements on the periphery of urban areas. These settlements result in fragmentation and sprawling of cities, which intensifies strain on the natural environment. Fragmentation in urban regions then leads to the formation of 'patches' of land which exhibit different disturbance levels and are generally typified as either urban, suburban or rural areas. These land use types may be ecologically studied along an urbanization gradient, with the intention of obtaining meaningful comparisons. An urbanization gradient contains an urban landscape which consists of a densely built and developed core surrounded by an area of decreasing development and increasing 'naturalness'. The use of urbanization gradients has been proven world-wide as a useful tool for the study of changes in ecological patterns and processes across landscapes. This approach has been used to examine many different impacts of urbanization, namely on invertebrate communities, bird community composition and plant community composition. Using biological indicators to determine the degree of anthropogenic impact on the environment has proven effective in past studies. These indicators can be used to monitor ecological change following habitat disturbance, identify changing trends over time, provide early warning systems of degradation and diagnose the cause of existing problems. Several authors have supported the use of arthropods as suitable indicators of disturbance. The aim of this study was to determine what impact disturbance, due to urbanization, may have had on the diversity and abundances of epigeal (surface roaming) arthropods (focussing on ants, beetles and spiders) following an urbanization gradient approach. In addition, plant and soil data were combined with the arthropod analysis for each site studied, in order to obtain a better picture of how arthropod community composition would change in relation to these factors. The ant group were the numerically dominant group of the arthropods studied, although the beetles did have the highest number of species captured. Spiders were caught in low abundances, but were also represented by a high number of species. Dramatic decreasing trends were observed with respect to the ant abundances and diversity from rural to the more urbanized sites. Quite the opposite, seemed to occur with the beetles and spiders, who were dominant in species and numbers in the urbanized areas. This trend may be explained on account of the occurrence of generalists and opportunistic beetle and spider species, which seem to thrive in these heterogenous urban habitats. When considering environmental components, percentage bare-ground and sand concentration seemed to be the determining factors in the rural sites, around which the ant group aggregated. Sandy habitats with patches of bare-ground provide more favourable micro-habitats for the ant species to roam and scavenge in, and are advantageous for nest building. Clay concentration and abundance of fruit seemed to assist in providing favourable habitats for the opportunistic and generalist beetle species, in the urbanized areas. High clay concentrations in the urban areas provided ideal conditions for abundant organic covering which would favour saprophagous (feed on decaying organic matter) beetle species and support diverse prey for the predatory beetle and spider species to feed on. Abundance of fruit may have attracted numerous herbivorous beetles (frugivorous beetles). Urbanization seemed to have a more pronounced effect on ant diversity and abundances in comparison to the beetles and spiders, and therefore recommended for future utilization as a suitable "Bio-indicator" group for further local disturbance studies. / Thesis (M. Environmental Science)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

Northern Sweden is one of the largest hosts for mineral resources in Europe and always has been an interesting area for researchers from various disciplines of Earth sciences. This dissertation is a comprehensive summary of three case study papers on airborne VLF, gravity gradient and magnetic data in the area. In the first paper, tensor VLF data is extracted from an old data set which contains only the total and the vertical magnetic components. The anomalous part of the horizontal magnetic field components is computed by a Hilbert transform of the vertical magnetic field. The normal part of the horizontal magnetic field component is computed as a function of total, vertical and anomalous part of horizontal magnetic fields. The electric field is also calculated for TE mode and impedance tensor and apparent resistivity are computed. In addition tippers are calculated for two transmitters and inverted by a 3D inversion algorithm. Comparison of the estimated model and geology map of bedrock shows that lower resistivity zones are correlated with mineralizations. The second paper deals with the internal consistency of airborne gravity gradient data. The six components of the data are estimated from a common potential function. It is shown that the data is adequately consistent but at shorter land clearances the difference between the estimated data and the original data is larger. The technique is also used for computing the Bouguer anomaly from terrain corrected FTG data. Finally the data is inverted in 3D, which shows that the estimated density model in shallow depth is dominated by short wave length features. Inversion of TMI data is the topic of the third paper where a new type of reference model for 3D inversion of magnetic data is proposed by vertically extending the estimated magnetization of a 2D terrain magnetization model. The final estimated 3D result is compared with the magnetization model where no reference model is used. The comparison shows that using the reference model helps the high magnetization zones in the estimated model at shallow depths to be better correlated with measured high remanent magnetization from rock samples. The high magnetization zones are also correlated with gabbros and volcanic metasediments.

High gradient acceleration is a core challenge of accelerator physics. Achieving high gradients is made challenging by issues relating to rf breakdown and pulsed surface heating, which are caused by intense surface fields in the accelerating cavities. The excitation of multiple harmonically related modes within a cavity could reduce the onset of these effects. The temperature rise from pulsed surface heating can be reduced by lowering the average magnetic surface field squared and rf breakdown could be avoided by creating an asymmetry between the anode and cathode surface electric fields. This thesis will present several different cavity designs that show a reduction in the temperature rise on the surface of over 10% for second and third harmonic cavity structures or an asymmetry in the surface electric anode and cathode fields of a factor of 2. The harmonic mode could have undesirable consequences for beam stability. A study of the longitudinal beam dynamics is included that will derive the equations governing the longitudinal motion and show that the harmonic mode will have a minor and predictable effect on the rf bucket. The Compact LInear Collider (CLIC) is a major contender for the next generation of lepton linear colliders and is made challenging by high power requirements and distribution throughout the linac. A high current drive beam is decelerated parallel to the main linac in order to create the required rf power, which can overcome some of these issues. This thesis will describe a novel design for a CLIC-like accelerating structure, using collinear acceleration through fundamental mode detuned cavities. The design will accommodate interleaved drive and test bunches, such that the drive bunches are decelerated and the test bunches are accelerated within the confines of the same cavity which can result in high transformer ratios. The analytical theory based on the circuit model will be verified by time domain simulations. A multi-harmonic detuned accelerating structure is introduced that exhibits the properties of pulsed surface heating reduction and can be used for collinear acceleration. Time domain simulations will verify the transformer ratio to within 3% of theoretical predictions and the average magnetic field squared reduction will be within 20% of the value calculated from eigenmode simulations.

The discrete gradient method is proposed as a novel numerical tool to perform solid mechanics analysis directly on point-cloud models without converting the models into a finite element mesh. This method does not introduce continuous approximation of the primary unknown field variables; instead, it computes the gradients of the field variables at a node using discrete differentials involving a set of neighboring nodes. The discrete gradients are substituted into Galerkin weak from to derive the algebraic governing equations for further analysis. Therefore, the formulation renders a completely discrete computation that can conduct mechanical analysis on point-cloud representations of patient-specific organs without resorting to finite element method. Since the method is prone to rank-deficient instability, a stabilized scheme is developed by employing penalty that involves a minor modification to the method. The difference between nodal strain and subcell strain is penalized to prevent the appearance of zero average strain. This dissertation delineates the theoretical underpins of the method and provides a detailed description of its implementation in two and three-dimensional elasticity problem. Several benchmark numerical tests are presented to demonstrate the accuracy, convergence, and capability of dealing with compressibility and incompressibility constraint without severe locking. An efficient method is also developed to automatically extract point-cloud models from medical images. Two and three-dimensional examples of biomedical applications are presented too.

Dans cette thèse, nous donnons des résultats d’existence, de non-existence, d’unicité et de multiplicité de solutions pour des équations aux dérivées partielles avec croissance critique dans le gradient. Les principales méthodes utilisées dans nos preuves sont des arguments variationnels, la théorie des sous et sur-solutions, des estimations à priori et la théorie de la bifurcation. La thèse se compose de six chapitres. Dans le chapitre 0 nous introduisons le sujet de thèse et nous présentons les résultats principaux. Le chapitre 1 porte sur l’´étude d’une équation du type p-Laplacien avec croissance critique dans le gradient et dépendant d’un paramètre. En fonction de l’intervalle où se trouve le paramètre, nous obtenons l’existence et l’unicité d’une solution ou nous montrons l’existence et la multiplicité de solutions. Dans les chapitres 2 et 3, nous poursuivons notre étude dans le cas où l’opérateur utilisé est le Laplacien mais, contrairement au chapitre 1, nous étudions le cas où les coefficients changent de signe. Nous obtenons à nouveau des résultats d’existence et de multiplicité de solutions. Dans le chapitre 4, nous étudions des problèmes nonlocaux du type Laplacien fractionnaire avec différents termes de gradient non-local. Nous montrons des résultats d’existence et de non-existence de solutions pour différentes équations de ce type. Finalement, dans le chapitre 5 nous présentons quelques problèmes ouverts liés au contenu de la thèse et des perspectives de recherche. / In this thesis, we provide existence, non-existence, uniqueness and multiplicity results for partial differential equations with critical growth in the gradient. The principal techniques employed in our proofs are variational techniques, lower and upper solution theory, a priori estimates and bifurcation theory. The thesis consists of six chapters. In chapter 0, we introduce the topic of the thesis and we present the main results. Chapter 1 deals with a p-Laplacian type equation with critical growth in the gradient. This equation will depend on a real parameter. Depending on the interval where this parameter lives, we obtain the existence and uniqueness of one solution or we prove the existence and multiplicity of solutions. In chapters 2 and 3, we continue our study in the case where the operator is the Laplacian. However, unlike chapter 1, we study the case where the coefficient functions may change sign. We obtain again existence and multiplicity results. In chapter 4, we study non-local problems of fractional Laplacian type with different non-local gradient terms. We prove existence and non-existence results for different equations of this type. Finally, in chapter 5, we present some open problems related to the content of the thesis and some research perspectives.