Introduction: The desire to have a biological child transcends race, religion and socio-economic status. However for those faced with infertility, the financial resources needed to conceive are often not available. Current research in assisted reproduction has gravitated towards cost reduction to address restricting financial factors, without compromising quality of treatment. One such initiative is the development of a low-cost embryo culture method by The Walking Egg foundation. This method utilizes a standard chemical reaction and simple equipment to equilibrate culture media pH and to regulate temperature; both aspects were investigated in this study. An exploration into the insemination concentration to achieve oocyte fertilization was also undertaken. Methods: Quality control of temperature regulation on six different heating devices, including a comparison of inter- and intra-variations was carried out. The utilization of citric acid and bicarbonate of soda for carbon dioxide production, which subsequently facilitate setting of pH values, was tested by injecting increasing citric acid volumes (1.2 ml – 3.0 ml in 0.2 ml increments) into set volumes of bicarbonate of soda. Further investigation evaluated gas production at various temperatures (37°C, 25°C and 15°C), at increasing intervals (16 – 30 hours) of equilibration and these were compared by measuring pH of the culture media. The influence of altitude on pH was explored by repeating the chemical reaction experiment at five different locations in South Africa. Furthermore, the addition of water to citric acid before gas generation was explored. The minimal insemination concentration needed for fertilization was determined by the addition of decreasing numbers of spermatozoa to non-fertilized bisected oocytes. The experiment was repeated with a selected sperm insemination number in 1 ml or 50 μl culture media to compare the tested culture system with conventional culture. Spermatozoa bound to the hemi-zonae were counted with the aid of an inverted phase contrast microscope. Hemi-zonae with bound sperm were also stained with ethidium homodimer and evaluated using a confocal laser-scanning microscopy system. After removal of hemi-zonae, the spermatozoa in culture were isolated for deoxyribonucleic acid fragmentation analyses and reactive oxygen species presence in the culture media was measured. Additionally, reactive oxygen species generation in simulated culture was measured over time. Results: All the equipment tested bar one, the warming oven, proved useable with the simplified Walking Egg in vitro fertilization culture system. By decreasing the citric acid volumes, it was indicated that 1.8 ml citric acid, diluted with 1.2 ml water, is the optimal volume to facilitate the required culture media pH. Omitting the water dilution from citric acid volumes affected the culture media pH adversely, however reducing the temperature during gas equilibration did not. A change in altitude had no effect on culture media pH. Lower insemination numbers resulted in decreased sperm binding, with 2 x 103 motile sperm insemination providing the lowest number to still obtain sufficient sperm–zona binding (≥20 sperm bound). Incubation in 1 ml vs. 200 μl culture media indicated decrease in sperm bound. Sperm deoxyribonucleic acid fragmentation and the presence of reactive oxygen species in the culture media were similar in both the test and control groups. A comparison over time revealed less reactive oxygen species in 1 ml culture media, from the simplified Walking Egg in vitro fertilization culture system after three days of culture, than 200 μl culture media drops under oil, from conventional culture after 18 hours, however the results were not statistically significant. Discussion: Purpose-made heating devices provide superior stabilization of culture media temperature. When selecting a heating device, intra-variations should be considered. Culture media can be manipulated to the required pH by carbon dioxide production, with meticulous attention paid to the citric acid volumes used. However, if gas generation is performed at room temperature, equilibration time must be increased. In conventional culture, the minimum insemination number can be reduced to 2 x 103 motile sperm. Due to lower binding of sperm in large volumes of culture media, 2 – 5 x 103 motile sperm should be considered for the simplified culture system, depending on a holistic consideration of all sperm parameters. Extended culture for at least three days with the simplified culture system can be performed without increasing reactive oxygen species present in culture media. Further research of this novel culture method should include the application of the culture method in a South African environment. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Obstetrics and Gynaecology / MSc / Unrestricted

Orientador: Renata Cristina Batista Fonseca / Resumo: A fragmentação é uma das principais causas da perda de biodiversidade. Conciliar as atividades produtivas e a conservação dos recursos naturais é um dos principais desafios das empresas do setor florestal. Poucos estudos avaliam a composição e estrutura das comunidades em longo prazo, sendo o monitoramento de aves uma ferramenta eficaz para tal finalidade. Este estudo foi conduzido num fragmento de vegetação natural em unidade de manejo florestal no município de Agudos, interior de São Paulo, Brasil. Tem como objetivo verificar se houve alteração na comunidade de aves de um fragmento de no intervalo de 35 anos. Nesse intervalo o fragmento que no estudo inicial era isolado foi conectado a outras áreas de vegetação natural por meio de corredores ecológicos. A captura das aves foi realizada com o auxílio de redes de neblina, dispostas em cinco pontos, com quatro redes por ponto. As amostras foram realizadas por dois dias consecutivos/mês/ponto sendo o estudo inicial, realizado de março de 1982 a janeiro de 1983 e o atual, de novembro de 2017 a dezembro de 2018. No estudo inicial foram capturados 368 indivíduos, distribuídos em 16 famílias e 32 espécies. A diversidade foi de H’ = 2,7. Não houve dominância significativa entre as espécies (J = 0,77). No atual foi constatada diminuição significativa na riqueza e diversidade, sendo capturados 142 indivíduos, de 12 famílias e 18 espécies. A diversidade foi de H’ = 2,2. Não houve dominância significativa entre as espécies (J = 0,78). A... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Fragmentation is a major cause of biodiversity loss. Reconciling how productive activities and conservation of natural resources is one of the main challenges for companies in the forest sector. Few studies assess long-term community composition and structure, and bird monitoring is an effective tool for such use. This study was conducted on a fragment of natural vegetation in the forest unit in Agudos, São Paulo State, Brazil. It aims to verify if there was alteration in the bird community of a 35 years interval fragment. In this interval the fragment that in the initial study, was connected to other areas of natural vegetation through ecological corridors. The birds were captured with the aid of five point mist nets with four nets per point. Samples were taken for two consecutives days/month/point with the initial study conducted from March 1982 to January 1983 and the current study from November 2017 to December 2018. No initial study captured 368 individuals, distributed in 16 families and 32 species. The diversity was H '= 2.7. There was no significant dominance between species (J = 0.77). At the moment, there was a significant reduction in richness and diversity, and 142 individuals from 12 families and 18 species were captured. The diversity was H '= 2.2. There was no significant dominance between species (J = 0.78). A collector curve in the current study is not stabilized and an estimated 26 species (Jackknife1). The results show that despite the strategies adopted by... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

The diploma thesis focuses on analysis of fatty alcohols with mass spectrometry. Theoretical part describes distribution, main properties, usage and analytical methods for analysis of fatty alcohols. Experimental work focuses on the search for a proper derivatisation procedure for fatty alcohols, which would enable their detection with soft ionisation techniques of mass spectrometry, as well as their structural analysis. The main aim of the structural analysis is to find the methyl branching in the fragmentation spectra of derivatives of the fatty alcohols.

Title: Study of jet fragmentation and inclusive jet production in heavy-ion colli- sions with the ATLAS experiment Author: Mgr. Radim Slovák Institute: Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics Supervisor: Mgr. Martin Spousta, Ph.D., Institute of Particle and Nuclear Physics, Charles University Abstract: This thesis presents two measurements - measurement of the jet frag- mentation functions and inclusive jet production in heavy-ion collisions. The frag- mentation functions are measured in Pb+Pb and pp collisions with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The distributions are measured as a function of jet trans- verse momentum and rapidity. The analysis utilises an integrated luminosity of 0.14 nb−1 of Pb+Pb data and 4.0 pb−1 of pp data collected in 2011 and 2013, respectively, at the same centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV. Modest but signif- icant centrality-dependent modifications of fragmentation functions in Pb+Pb collisions with respect to those in pp collisions are seen. Measurements of the yield and nuclear modification factor, RAA, for inclusive jets are performed us- ing 25 pb−1 of pp data at √ s = 5.02 TeV and 0.49 nb−1 of Pb+Pb data at √ sNN = 5.02 TeV. The jets are measured over the transverse momentum range of 100-1000 GeV in six rapidity intervals covering |y| < 2.8. The magnitude of the RAA...

Bats (Chiroptera) are usually considered as a group greatly endangered by destructing their habitats through the human activity. However, a significant part of bat species at the central Europe use human buildings as shelters, moreover the natural shelters are marginal or unknown in several species. Considering the linkage of the great part of our bat species to the fragmented area and in connection with a long term human influence on the central european landscape we ask whether at least part of our species see human activity through providing proper shelters as positive. Based on the analysis of landscape structure and ruggedness effect on density, diversity and population structure of bat assamblages acquired by standardized mist net captures located in lowlands (elevations below 500 m) of Czech Republic (204 localities, 3585 bats, 22 bat species), we found that even though most of reactions were species specific and few species seemed to be positively associated with urban environments, most of the bat species rely on the broad-leaved forest cover and other natural habitats such as water bodies. The most significant factor influencing sexual segregation for bats was ruggedness of surrounding landscape. Keywords: Bats, Chiroptera, fragmentation, Europe, temperate zone

Introduction The National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) is a national nuclear physics facility in which heavy ion beams are fragmented to produce exotic nuclei. In this process of fragmentation many nuclei are created, however, only one isotope is selected for experimentation. The remaining isotopes that are created go unused. The future upgrade of the NSCL to the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) will increase the incident energy of these heavy ion beams and amplify the current by three orders of magnitude. An aqueous beam dump will be created to collect the unused isotopes created in the process of fragmentation. Several of these isotopes are of interest for many applications including nuclear security, medical imaging, and therapy and are not currently available or are only available in very limited supply. Harvesting these isotopes from the aqueous beam dump could provide a consistent supply of these im-portant isotopes as an ancillary service to the existing experimental program. Material and Methods A liquid water target system was designed and tested to serve as a mock beam dump for exper-iments at the NSCL1. A 25 pnA 130 MeV/u 76Ge beam was fragmented using a 493 mg/cm2 thick beryllium production target. After fragmentation the beam was separated using the A1900 frag-ment separator2 set up for maximum 67Cu pro-duction using a 240 mg/cm2 aluminum wedge and a 2% momentum acceptance. The secondary beam was collected for four hours in the liquid water target system before being transferred to a collection vessel. Four additional four hour collections were made before finally shipping the five collections to Washington University and Hope College for chemical separation. Four of the five samples were separated using a two part separation scheme. First they were passed through and 3M Empore iminodiacetic acid functionalized chelation disk in a 1.25M ammonium acetate solution at pH 5. The flow through was collected and analyzed using an HPGe detector. Then 10mL of 6M HCl acid was passed through the chelation disk to remove the 2+ transition metals. The 10mL of 6M HCl acid was collected after passing through the disk and added to an anion-exchange column with 2.5 g AG1-X8 resin. The eluate was collected and then an additional 10mL of 6M HCl was passed through the column to remove the nickel. The 67Cu was then collected by passing 10mL of 0.5M HCl and the eluate was collected in 1mL fractions each analyzed by HPGe for 67Cu concentration and purity. The two highest 67Cu fractions were heated to dryness and reconstituted in 50 μL 0.1M ammonium acetate pH 5.5. 2 μL of 7.9 mg/mL NOTA-Bz-Trastuzumab was added to 45 μL of 67Cu and 3 μL 0.1M ammonium acetate pH 5.5. This solution was placed in a shaking incubator at 37 °C for twenty minutes and then analyzed by radio-instant thin layer chromatography in order to determine the per-cent of 67Cu bound to the antibody. Results and Conclusion 67Cu was collected into the liquid water target system with an average efficiency of 85 ± 5 %. The secondary beam was 73 % pure with the impurities, half-lives greater than 1 minute, listed in TABLE 1. Separation of 67Cu from the impurities resulted in an average recovery of 88 ± 3 % for a total recovery of 67Cu from the beam and separation of 75 ± 4 %. No detectable radioactive impurities were found in the final samples when analyzed using an HPGe detector. TABLE 2 shows the amount of 67Cu collected from the beam and the amount recovered decay corrected to end of bombardment. Labeling NOTA-Bz-Trastuzumab with 67Cu resulted in > 95 % radiochemical yield. Collection of the 73 % pure 67Cu beam in water and the resulting separation proved successful. These results demonstrate that radioisotopes can be collected from fragmented heavy ion beams and isolated in usable quantities and purity for many radiochemical applications. Further experimentation with an unpurified beam to better simulate conditions in the beam dump at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams will be performed in the near future.

Denna fallstudie avser att studera ifall arbetssättet med veckostruktur främjar ett proaktivt agerande för arbetsledare inom byggproduktion. Studien är genomförd på byggentreprenadföretaget Skanska Sverige under produktionsprocessen av ett nybyggnadsprojekt i Stockholm, Nacka. Hantering av tidsbrist, både i såväl arbetet som i privatlivet, är en av de största utmaningarna som människor idag upplever. Om en ledare upplever brist på tid behöver ledarens vardag i ett första steg struktureras upp. En veckostruktur kan ses som ett verktyg för att öka ledares förfogande över sin arbetstid vilket främjar ett proaktivt arbetssätt. Proaktivitet är ett sätt att agera, där en ledare som är proaktiv agerar i förväg och planerat utifrån vad som ska ske framåt i tiden. Det proaktiva arbetssättet medför att ledaren planerar och kanske bättre kan förutse innan händelser sker. Ett omfattande problem för arbetsledare med veckostrukturer är att lyckas följa dem. Behovet av en veckostruktur inom byggproduktion existerar eftersom det skapar en grundstruktur kring arbetsledarens agerande, dvs. konkret vad arbetsledaren ska genomföra under en arbetsdag enligt sitt uppdrag. Avsaknaden av en fungerande veckostruktur medför att en för stor del av arbetsledarens arbetstid kräver improvisation, motsvarande oönskat reaktivt agerande där arbetsledaren agerar efteråt något har inträffat. Studien genomfördes som en fallstudie. Fallet som studeras är om veckostruktur som arbetssätt ökar en arbetsledares planerade proaktiva arbetstid och ifall detta på kort sikt leder till en bättre balans mellan planerad och oplanerad samt proaktiv och reaktiv arbetstid. Fallstudiens formuläruppdelning innebar att primärdata insamlades via både kvantitativa strukturerade enkäter och via kvalitativa semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Tidsstudien pågick i sex veckor och studerade ett bekvämlighetsurval beståendes av sex arbetsledare inom byggnadsproduktion; samtliga verksamma inom samma företag och bostadsprojekt i Stockholm. Enkäten besvarades veckovis under hela tidsstudien vid totalt sex mättillfällen och intervjuer hölls vid två tillfällen. Studiens slutsatser påvisar att veckostruktur som arbetssätt ökar arbetsledarens proaktiva planerade arbetstid. 58 procent strukturerad arbetstid per vecka har i studien kunnat påvisats är möjligt att uppnå. Detta värde har baserats efter ett aritmetiskt medelvärde på respondenternas upplevelse av uppnådd del strukturerad tid per vecka. Vidare utifrån tidsstudien ser man flera indikationer som påvisar att konsekvenserna som reaktiva oplanerade aktiviteter medför minskar. Detta antyder på ett minskat reaktivt och ett ökat proaktivt agerande då andelen strukturerad arbetstid ökar. Av den anledningen kan man dra slutsatsen att arbetsledaren når en bättre balans mellan reaktiv och proaktiv arbetstid på kort sikt genom införandet av en veckostruktur som ökar den strukturerade arbetstiden. / This case study intends to study if a weekly planning structure promotes proactive behavior for supervisors in construction management. The study was conducted at the construction company Skanska Sweden AB during the production process of a new construction project in Stockholm, Nacka. Managing time constraints, both in work and in private, is one of the biggest challenges that people today face. If a supervisor experiences daily time constraints he or she must, as a first step, structure their time planning. A weekly planning structure can be used as a tool to increase the availability of supervisors’ working hours, which promotes a proactive working procedure. Proactivity is a way of acting, where a supervisor who is proactive acts in advance and plans on what will happen in the future. The proactive approach entails that the supervisor plans and anticipates before events occur. An extensive problem with weekly structures is to succeed in following them. The need for a weekly planning structure in construction management exists because it creates a basic structure for the supervisor's behavior, ie. concrete what the supervisor should accomplish during a working day according to his or her assignment. The lack of a functioning weekly planning structure entails that too much of the supervisor ́s work requires improvisation, corresponding to undesirable reactive behavior where the supervisor acts after something has happened. The study was conducted as a case study. The studied case is about weekly planning as a working procedure and if this procedure increases a supervisor’s planned proactive time, then this can, in the short-term, lead to a better balance between planned and unplanned time as well as proactive and reactive time. The case study’s mixed-mode survey methods meant that primary data was collected via both quantitative structured surveys and qualitative semi-structured interviews. The time study was carried out over a six-week period and studied a convenience sampling consisting of six supervisors in building production; all operating within the same company and the same building project in Stockholm. The questionnaire was answered weekly during the entire study on a total of six measuring occasions. The interviews were held on two occasions. The study's conclusions show that a weekly planning structure as a working method increases the supervisor's proactive planned working hours. Fifty-eight percent of structured working hours per week has been shown in the study to be achievable. This value has been based on an arithmetic mean value of the respondents' experience of the achieved structured time per week. Furthermore, based on the time study, there are several indicators that the consequences of reactive unplanned activities are diminishing. This suggests a decrease in reactive and increased proactive behavior as the proportion of structured working time increases. For this reason, it can be concluded that the supervisor achieves a better balance between reactive and proactive working hours in the short term through the implementation of a weekly structure that increases the structured working time.

Distribution of video contents over the Internet has increased drastically over the past few years. With technological advancements and emergence of social media services, video content sharing has grown exponentially. An increased number of cyber crimes today belong to possession or distribution of illegal video contents over the Internet. Therefore, it is crucial for forensic examiners to have the capability of recovering and analyzing illegal video contents from seized storage devices. File carving is an advanced forensic technique used to recover deleted contents from a storage device even when there is no file system present. After recovering a deleted video file, its contents have to be analyzed manually in order to classify them. This is not only very stressful but also takes a large amount of time. In this thesis we propose a carving approach for streaming multimedia formats that allows forensic examiners to recover individual frames of a video file as images. The contents of these images then can be classified using existing techniques for forensic analysis of image sets. A carving tool based on this approach is developed for MPEG-1 video files. A number of experiments are conducted to evaluate performance of the tool. For each experiment an MPEG-1 file with different encoding parameters is used. Moreover, each experiment contains 18 runs and with each run chunk size of the input MPEG-1 file is varied in order to create different amount of disk fragmentation For video only MPEG-1 files, 87.802 % frames are fully recovered when the chunk size is equal to 124 KB. Where as in the case of MPEG-1 files containing both audio and video data 90.55 % frames are fully recovered when the chunk size is 132 KB.

The marine environment is polluted by plastics of all forms and sizes. To reduce this serious pollution, it is important to identify its sources. This work focuses on the me-chanically induced breakdown of plastic into smaller fragments as a source of secondary microplastic, the time scale in which these microplastics are formed as well as the influ-ence of different environmental conditions like matrix conditions, collision potential or UV irradiation on the abrasion and fragmentation behaviour of plastic debris. Since a systematic investigation of parameter influence is not possible in the environ-ment, laboratory experiments were developed to simulate natural conditions such as drift on the beach or wave action in the (low tide) surf and swash zone. For this purpose, selected plastic objects (PET bottles, HDPE caps, PS cups and LDPE bags) were ex-posed to collision and/or friction forces under different conditions. Besides visual in-spection of the destruction procedure, a number of different methods was used to char-acterize the process, e.g., counting of visible fragments (larger than 350 μm), micro-scopic analysis of the surface structure (binocular, SEM) and highly resolved analysis of particle numbers in the size range below 350 μm. In order to extract microplastic parti-cles (<5 mm) from the matrix, extraction methods were developed that were adapted to the given sample properties (matrix volume). Furthermore, based on the particle num-bers, the power law model was applied to analyse the fragmentation process in the con-text of the observed particle size distributions. Plastic samples exhibited various signs of mechanical impairment in form of surface abrasion, cracks, tears, perforation, crumpling and finally fragmentation. The formation of fragments in different sizes (macro-, meso- and microplastics) was observed. The plastic objects were classified according to their degree of destruction to elucidate the effect of the different experimental conditions. Results show that fragmentation and abrasion depend on individual properties of the plastic objects such as thickness or shape and on the potential of weakening the plastic structure by mechanical forces (collisions) or chemical degradation (UV irradiation). Environmental conditions also influence the plastic damage; surface abrasion plays a major role on the beach; fragmentation will most likely happen in the surf- and in the swash zone. However, both processes occur simultaneously and interact with each oth-er. Formation of secondary microplastics was shown to be likely in the marine environ-ment; it must therefore be considered as an important process in the light of microplastic contamination.

A majority of the world’s cities are situated in or near areas of high biodiversity. Rise in global urban population resulting in rapid urban expansions (larger cities) is a threat to urban biodiversity, which has implications for the ecological health and general well being of humans. The study exploits consistent global land use data to compare 102 cities across the globe on a measure of urban biodiversity, within 15 km and 30 km from the approximate centres of the cities. Cities with high population and higher percentage of land use dedicated to artificial infrastructure recorded lower percentage size reserved for natural habitat, and vice versa. Further testing in regression analysis with birds and plants species as response variables shows a relation with urban extent and size of natural habitat which seeks to promote sustaining ecosystems services. Since urban biodiversity has implications for human ecological health, its indicators must be constantly measured and monitored, while adhering to best practices that conserve nature.