Parvoviruses cause dreadful enteritis in waterfowls and lead to tremendous financial losses. This study aims at developing effective way to prevent waterfowl parvoviral infection. Duck parvoviruses (DPVs) and goose parvoviruses (GPVs) were isolated from organs of infected waterfowls. The presence of virus in the specimens was identified using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and subsequent restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. To reveal the genetic variation of viral capsid proteins (VPs), full length VPs gene were amplified and sequenced. The sequence data indicated the sequences diverge 4.1 to 4.4% among viral strains isolated during 1990 to 1999. The variant amino acids cluster in the common regions of VP3 at residues 203-266 and 482-534, which overlaps with the regions proposed to expose on the outer surfaces of parvoviral particles. These data implying that selective pressure from host immune system might play a part. The nucleotide sequences of VPs also reveal that DPV and GPV share 77 % similarity at the DNA, and 84.6% at the protein level. The most variable regions reside in the N-terminal of VP2 before the initiation codon of VP3 with 35% (19/54) amino acids divergence. This study also reveals the presence of conserved strain-specific residues in VPs and these residues seldom vary among different isolates of the same virus, suggesting that they might be important in maintaining viral structure or host specificity which worth further investigation. To investigate the antigenicity of VPs, the GPV genomic DNA encoding common region of VPs was fused in frame with glutathione S-transferase (GST) gene for the expression of GST-GPV (248-516) fusion protein in bacterial cells. Purified fusion protein was used as immunogen for the generation of rabbit anti-GPV (248-516) antiserum. The potential diagnostic usage was confirmed by the fact that this antiserum was able to differentiate between viral infected and uninfected primary embryonic fibroblast cells by immunocytochemical analysis. In addition, VPs in purified DPV and GPV virions were analyzed by Western blotting. This antiserum detected two prominent proteins bands with the molecule weight of 80 and 70 kilodaltons, which correspond to the sizes of VP1 and VP2 reported in the literature. The fact that VP1 of DPV reacts weakly with this antiserum suggests the existence of antigenic discrepancy between DPV and GPV. For the purpose of developing subunit vaccine for the control of Derzy's disease, recombinant full length VPs were expressed using both prokaryotic, GST and histidine-tagged fusion proteins, and eukaryotic, baculovirus and mammalian vero cell, expression systems. After large- scale production and purification, same amount of 4 recombinant VPs were individually used to immunize 1-week-old geese. The antibodies induced after immunization were then evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). All four recombinant proteins stimulate approximately 7 to 8 folds increases of ELISA antibodies titers, and together with preliminary data of safety tests suggest a potential usage as subunit vaccine for the control of parvoviral infection.

Among most of the LEED registered and LEED certified health-care facilities, there is a credit variation between the LEED pilot checklist and the final checklist. The credit variation between the LEED pilot and final checklists implies failure in achieving the pre-defined green objectives. Most of the credits were given up due to financial reasons. Although most of the credits in the LEED credit list emerge as design issues, accomplishing a LEED rating is primarily the owner??s responsibility. In order to minimize the variation between the LEED pilot checklist and LEED approved checklist, the owner needs to conduct significant project planning. The owner should integrate the LEED objectives early in the project and should include the cost of the LEED process in the capital budget. Since there are limited LEED certified health-care projects, adoption of the systems approach for planning and developing a green health-care facility using the IDEF0 method is recommended. The IDEF0 method can produce an outcome array which represents the matrix of all possible circumstances. This will give the owner and the project team the ability to better forecast cost and schedule decisions, even when there is a lack of historical data relating to green health-care projects. The approach will be beneficial in analyzing the various outcomes, cost, and feasibility of projects in terms of integrating LEED objectives early on. This could minimize the credit variation, as well as cost and schedule overruns during the project execution stage. Adequately defining the full development process upfront is vital to the overall success of any project, especially for green buildings, since they are a developing trend in the construction industry.

Harold Lasswell (1936) defined politics as the exploration of "who gets what, when, and how." As such, one of the central concerns of democratic governance is the role that affected interests play not only in politics, but in the implementation of adopted policies as well. In this dissertation, I use both comparative method case studies, as well as pooled-time series statistical techniques, to examine the effects of political, economic and market forces, and competition between the affected interests on implementation of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977. The findings of this, as well as previous, research shows that state-level implementing agencies have some discretion in enforcement activities; however, closer examination shows that this discretion is rarely used. This lack of use of regulatory discretion by the state-level implementing agencies suggests that in most states, there is either sufficient competition between the affected interests to neutralize the excessive use of discretion in enforcement activity, or that there is insufficient pressure placed on the implementing agencies by the affected interests to warrant the use of discretion.

The bottom sediments near the coast of Taiwan Strait are mainly terrestrial origins. The sediment transport processes are controlled by the meteorology hydrology factors, including winds, waves, flows and sea level variations. This study is aimed to investigate the influence of wave-current interaction to the sediment dynamics in the vicinity Shuitou Harbor of Chinmen. Emphasize is placed on analysis of observed meteorology and hydrology data and the bottom topography. The data used in this study are from the field observations during the development of Shuitou Harbor. The hourly data include winds, currents, waves and tides. Additional bottom topography surveys were carried out twice per year, one in April and the other in October. The period of time series data is between October, 2001 and April, 2006. The results of the analyses showed that (1) During the period of northeast monsoon, deposit dominated in the northern part of the study area (Shuitou Harbor vicinity), while erosion dominated in the southern part. The deposition and erosion phenomena reversed during the period of southwest monsoon. (2) The bottom topography variations had higher correlation with the large waves and flows in the winter northeast monsoon season. (3) Winds correlate well with the large waves and flows in the winter, while the correlation is weak in the summer. (4) Resuspension of bottom sediments seems play a major role in the sediment transport, especially in the winter large wave condition. During persistent northeast monsoon, wave height increased significantly that bottom sediments were eroded and transported by the southward mean flow, erosion occurred (in the southern part of the study area). (5) There are two likely sources of sediment. The major source of sediment is from the north, brought by the southward China coastal current in winter. The second source of sediment is from the south, Jiulong River, which occurred mostly in the summer. (6) The long term analysis of topography variations in the vicinity of Shuitou Harbor showed that there is a balance of deposition and erosion. The depositions in the northern part of the study area during the northeast monsoon were eroded and moved north during the period of southwest monsoon. On the other hand, in the southern area, the erosions during the winter were supplied by northward sediment movement in summer. In the long term, the seabed terrain of Shuitou Harbor has no significant change.

<p>Syftet med examensarbetet var att undersöka vilka strategier barn använde sig av när de räknade samt om variation av antal, föremål och gruppering påverkade deras val av strategier. Undersökningen gjordes genom strukturerade observationer då femton barn, födda 2002, på tre olika förskolor räknade föremål där antal, gruppering och material varierades. I vårt teoriavsnitt bearbetades Gelman och Gallistels fem räkneprinciper och Martons variationsteori. Resultatet visade att barn använde sig av samtliga fem räkneprinciper på olika sätt och i olika ordning när de räknade samt att både antal, material och gruppering hade betydelse för barns val av strategier vid antalsbestämning. Barnen hade lättare att räkna legobitar än kulor och behärskade de olika principerna bättre då antalet var färre eller materialet grupperat i rader.</p>

Zugl.: Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 2009

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Patrick M. Gaffney, College of Earth, Ocean, & Environment. Includes bibliographical references.

While transistor size continues to shrink every technology generation increasing the amount of transistors on a die, the reduction in energy consumption is less significant. Furthermore, newer technologies induce fabrication challenges resulting in uncertainties in transistor and wire properties. Therefore to ensure correctness, design margins are introduced resulting in significantly sub-optimal energy efficiency. While increasing parallelism and the use of gating methods contribute to energy consumption reduction, ultimately, more radical changes to the architecture and better integration of architectural and circuit techniques will be necessary. This dissertation explores one such approach, combining a highly-efficient massively-parallel processor architecture with a design methodology that reduces energy by trimming design margins. Using a massively-parallel GPU-like (graphics processing unit) base- line architecture, we discuss the different components of process variation and design microarchitectural approaches supporting efficient margins reduction. We evaluate our design using a cycle-based GPU simulator, describe the conditions where efficiency improvements can be obtained, and explore the benefits of decoupling across a wide range of parameters. We architect a test-chip that was fabricated and show these mechanisms to work. We also discuss why previously developed related approaches fall short when process variation is very large, such as in low-voltage operation or as expected for future VLSI technology. We therefore develop and evaluate a new approach specifically for high-variation scenarios. To summarize, in this work, we address the emerging challenges of modern massively parallel architectures including energy efficient, reliable operation and high process variation. We believe that the results of this work are essential for breaking through the energy wall, continuing to improve the efficiency of future generations of the massively parallel architectures. / text

The field of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) focuses on understanding the evolution of ontogeny and mechanisms of evolutionary change. Recently, taxonomic comparisons of the sequence of skeletal ossification have become prominent in evo-devo. However, most of these studies fail to consider two major issues: how the technique used to assay ossification and ontogenetic variation and variability may affect comparisons among taxa. This study focuses on the onset of ossification in the skeleton of Monodelphis domestica and quantifies the affects of variation, variability, and technique bias on reconstructions of ontogeny. Previous comparisons among mammalian taxa have used both computed tomography (CT) and clearing-and-staining (CS) to assess the presence or absence of skeletal elements (i.e., skeletal maturity). In this study, CT and CS were used on the same specimen to compare how these methods assess skeletal maturity. The comparisons of the same individual under reveal significant differences in how skeletal maturity is assessed by CT and CS techniques. Further, significant biases were recovered between techniques. CT is more likely to reveal cranial elements that CS does not, whereas CS is more likely to reveal appendicular elements that CT does not. To assess levels of variation and variability, Ontogenetic Sequence Analysis (OSA) was used to characterize the ontogeny of Monodelphis domestica. This revealed significant levels of variation with over 800 different ontogenetic pathways recovered for the onset of ossification of all skeletal elements studied. Additionally, high levels of variability were also reconstructed because the majority of specimens were found to exhibit non-modal ontogenetic sequences. This variability is more highly concentrated in the sequence of cranial ossification, suggesting potential modularity in ontogenetic variation and variability. Finally, OSA revealed that technique bias could importantly affect reconstructions of skeletal ossification sequences because no identical sequences were recovered by the CT and CS datasets. The results of this study demonstrate the importance of considering the primary nature of developmental studies, the specimen. Only by recognizing and quantifying the complexities of evo-devo research, especially natural variation and methodological biases, can more complete understandings of the evolution of ontogeny be had. / text

Individual specialization occurs when individuals selectively consume a subset of their population's diet. Intraspecific diet variation can stabilize population and community dynamics, promote species coexistence, and increase ecosystem productivity. Ecological variation also provides the variability necessary for natural or sexual selection to act. Individual threespine stickleback select different prey from a shared environment, and this variation is not simply a result of sex, size, or spatial heterogeneity. I use longitudinal observation of stickleback foraging microhabitat to support more commonly used cross-sectional metrics. Among recaptured individuals there were correlations between microhabitat use and functional morphology, and microhabitat use and long term dietary differences between individuals. I quantify individual specialization across populations using cross-sectional sampling to understand how and why ecological variation may itself be variable. All populations showed significant individual specialization. Specialization varied between populations and this variation seems to be a long-term property of populations. Overall morphological variance was positively correlated with ecological variation. Ecological variation, like all types of heritable variation, provides raw material for evolutionary change. For example, lacustrine populations of stickleback are commonly under disruptive selection due to intraspecific competition for prey resources. Speciation with gene flow may be driven by a combination of positive assortative mating and disruptive selection, particularly if selection and assortative mating act on the same trait. We present evidence that stickleback exhibit assortative mating by diet, using the isotopes of males and eggs within their nests. In concert with disruptive selection, this assortative mating should facilitate divergence. However, the population remains phenotypically unimodal, highlighting the fact that assortative mating and disruptive selection do not guarantee evolutionary divergence and speciation. There are several not-mutually-exclusive mechanisms by which assortative mating by diet may occur in these populations, such as shared microhabitat preference among individuals of similar diet. Stable isotopes reveal diet differences between different nesting areas and among individuals using different nest habitat within a nesting area. Spatial segregation of diet types may generate some assortative mating, but is insufficient to explain the observed assortment strength. We therefore conclude that sticklebacks' diet-assortative mating arises primarily from behavioral preference rather than from spatial isolation. / text