The major obstacle in using pancreatic islet transplantation to cure type I and some type II diabetes is the shortage of the donors. One of ways to overcome such obstacle is to isolate and clone pancreatic stem cells as "seed cells" and induce their differentiation into functional islets as an abundant transplantation source. In this study, a monoclonal human pancreatic stem cell (mhPSC) line was obtained from abortive fetal pancreatic tissues. Pancreatic tissues were taken from abortive fetus by sterile procedures, and digested into single cells and cell clusters with 0.1% type IV collagenase. Cultured in modified glucose-low DMEM with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), these single cells and cell clusters adhered to culture dishes, and then primary epidermal-like pancreatic stem cells started to clone. After digesting with 0.25% trypsin and 0.04% EDTA, fibroblasts and other cells were gradually eliminated and epithelioid pancreatic stem cells were gradually purified during generations. Using clone-ring selection, the mhPSCs were obtained. After addition of 10 ng/mL epidermal growth factor (EGF) in cell culture medium, the mhPSCs quickly grew and formed a gravelstone-like monolayer. Continuously proliferated, a mhPSC line, which was derived from a male abortive fetus of 4 months old, has been passed through 50 generations. More than 1×10 9 mhPSCs were cryo-preserved in liquid nitrogen. Karyotype analysis showed that the chromosome set of the mhPSC line was normal diploid. Immunocytochemistry results demonstrated that the mhPSC line was positive for the pdx1, glucagon, nestin and CK19, and negative for the insulin, CD34, CD44 and CD45 protein expression. RT-PCR revealed further that the mhPSCs expressed transcription factors of the pdx1, glucagon, nestin and CK19. Also, in vitro induced with β-mercaptoethanol, the mhPSCs differentiated into nerve cells that expressed the NF protein. Induced with nicotinamide, the mhPSCs differentiated into functional islet-like clusters, as identified by dithizone staining, which expressed the transcription factor of the insulin and secreted the insulin and C-peptide. Furthermore, the transplantation of mhPSCs-induced pancreatic islets into the subcapsular region of the kidney in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats could reduce blood glucose levels and prolong the life time.

Methylglyoxal (MGO) is a highly reactive dicarbonyl compound, formed as a metabolite from nonenzymatic and enzymatic reactions and is the leading precursor of advanced glycation end products (AGEs). AGEs contribute to ageing, type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), and diabetes-related complications. However, MGO also has beneficial antibacterial activity and is the bioactive ingredient of medicinal honeys such as Manuka. Flavonoids are a group of phytochemicals that are powerful antioxidants. Polyphenols including flavonoids have been reported to trap MGO, forming adducts thereby preventing AGE formation. However, there is little to no information on the effect of adduct formation on the antioxidant properties of flavonoids and the antibacterial activity of MGO. In this study, catechin (CAT), chrysin (CHRY) and naringenin (NAR) at 0.1 mM and mixtures of each flavonoid with MGO (1:1) and (1:2) were evaluated for antioxidant and antibacterial activity. Antioxidant activity/capacity were evaluated with the total polyphenolic content (TPC), total flavonoid content (TFC), Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) and the oxygen radical absorbent capacity (ORAC) assays. The bovine serum albumin (BSA)/MGO model was used to evaluate the effect on glycation. The 2’, 7’-dichlorofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA) assay with the L929 cell line was used to evaluate cellular antioxidant activity. Cytotoxicity was determined in the L929 cell line using the crystal violet (CV) and the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide) tetrazolium (MTT) assays. Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis) were used to determine antibacterial activity using the microbroth-dilution assay and subsequent changes to morphology were evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). A reduction in antioxidant content was observed for: CHRY (TPC), CAT and NAR (TFC) and in antioxidant activity for: CHRY (TEAC) and CAT (ORAC), when combined with MGO. Overall most of the antioxidant activity of the flavonoids was not affected by the addition of MGO. In the presence of BSA and MGO, all flavonoid:MGO combinations reduced formation of AGEs except NAR in combination with MGO. All flavonoids alone and in combinations did not cause cellular oxidative damage while MGO and AAPH induced increased cellular damage indicating that MGO via AGE formation makes cells more sensitive to the effects of oxidants that form radicals. Only CAT reduced the oxidative effects of MGO/AAPH. For all combinations there was no effect on cell number, although cell viability was significantly reduced for CHRY and its combinations and for NAR and NAR:MGO1. Flavonoids at 0.1 mM CAT, CHRY and NAR had no antibacterial activity against E. coli while inhibition was observed only with NAR against B. subtilis. MGO at 0.1 and 0.2 mM inhibited bacterial growth while in combination the antibacterial activity was significantly reduced. MGO as well as NAR caused major changes to bacteria morphology. In combination, the antibacterial activity of MGO was reduced, and ultrastructure changes associated with toxicity was also observed in most groups. In conclusion, flavonoids do trap MGO and this effect does not significantly alter flavonoid antioxidant activity. However, the antibacterial activity of MGO is reduced. Future studies should focus on the chemistry and the effects involved and should include dosage dependent studies. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Anatomy / MSc / Unrestricted

The objective of this study was to evaluate the nutritional profile of mono- or multi-species pastures of native warm season grasses. One of four treatments were randomly assigned to Twelve pastures: 1) BG; 2) IG; 3) Mix G; 4) Mix NG. Growing steers (n = 225) were randomly assigned to one of nine pastures. Grass samples were taken from all pastures every 28 days during a four-month period and were analyzed for nutrient composition. Bermudagrass pastures had greater crude protein and ADF, but less NDF concentrations compared with the native warm-season grasses. Crude protein, IVDMD, and NDF IVDMD concentration decreased while NDF, ADF, and Hemicellulose concentration increased as grasses matured. Steers grazing IG and Mix G pastures gained more weight and consumed more forage than those on BG pastures. It appears that native warm-season grasses may offer a viable alternative to BG for grazing cattle during the summer.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

SammanfattningInledningIPS e.max® Press är en polykromatisk litiumdisilikat-förstärkt glaskeram utformad för termisk press- ning. Den produceras i olika grader av opacitet, translucens, färg och färgmättnad. En polykromatisk skiktad variant, IPS e.max® Press Multi, har tillkommit med en gradvis skiftning av opacitet, trans- lucens, färg och färgmättnad.SyfteSyftet med studien är att jämföra hållfastheten mellan polykromatiska skiktade normkronor fram- ställda av multipuckar och normkronor framställda av de konventionella monokromatiska presspuck- arna.Material och metodTill studien framställdes totalt 30 stycken standardiserade normkronor indelade i tre grupper, tio stycken IPS e.max® Press LT A2, tio stycken IPS e.max® Press Multi A2 och tio IPS e.max® Press Multi Bl2. Det framställdes 30 stycken stansar i ett ljushärdande 3D-material.Normkronorna termocyklades varpå de cementerades på de printade stansarna, följt av cyklisk me- kanisk förbelastning innan de belastades till brott i en universaltestmaskin. Värdena vid brott regi- strerades i Newton (N). Analysen av brotthållfastheten gjordes med one-way ANOVA, Tukey’s test. Konfidensintervallet sattes till 95% och signifikansnivån sattes på α= 0,05.ResultatDet kunde påvisas en statistisk signifikant skillnad i brotthållfasthet mellan samtliga tre grupper. Det lägsta medelvärdet påvisade grupp Multi A (IPS e.max® Press Multi A2) med 866 N följt av grupp Multi B (IPS e.max® Press Multi Bl2) med 987 N. Det högsta medelvärdet påvisade grupp Mono C (IPS e.max® Press LT A2) med 1108 N.SlutsatsInom ramen för studiens begränsningar kan följande slutsatser dras:• Den monokromatiska litiumdisilikat-förstärkta glaskeramen IPS e.max® Press LT A2 är ur hållfasthetssynpunkt starkare än de polykromatiska glaskeramerna IPS e.max® Press Multi A2 och Bl2.• Hypotesen bekräftas, men ytterligare studier behövs inom ämnet för att säkerställa resultaten. / AbstractIntroductionIPS e.max® Press is a polychromatic, lithium disilicate glass-ceramic designed for thermal pressing. It is produced in various degrees of opacity, translucency, color and saturation. A polychromatic layered variant, the IPS e.max® Press Multi, has been developed to show gradual shifts of opacity, translucency, color and saturation similar to those of natural teeth.PurposeThe purpose of present study is to compare the strength of polychromatic, layered, standardized norm crowns made of multi ingots and standardized norm crowns made of the conventional monochromatic ingots.Material and methodFor the study, 30 specimens of standardized norm crowns were generated and divided into three spci- men groups: ten IPS e.max® Press LT A2, ten IPS e.max® Press Multi A2 and ten IPS e.max® Press Multi BL2. 30 dies were produced in a light-curing 3D material.The crowns were thermocycled, whereupon they were cemented on the printed dies, followed by cyclic mechanical pre-load before load to fracture in a universal testing machine. The values at fracture were recorded in Newtons (N). Analysis of the fracture strength was performed using one- way ANOVA, Tukey’s test. The confidence interval was 95% and the significance level was α= 0.05.ResultsA statistically significant difference in breaking strength was detected between all three groups. The group with the lowest average result was A Multi (IPS e.max® Press Multi A2), with 866 N, followed by group Multi B (IPS e.max® Press Multi BL2) with 987 N. The highest average was detected in group Mono C (IPS e.max® Press LT A2) with 1108 N.ConclusionWithin the scope of present study, the following conclusions can be drawn:• The monochromatic, lithium disilicate glass-ceramic IPS e.max® Press LT A2 has a higher fracture strength than the polychromatic glass-ceramics IPS e.max® Press Multi A2 and BL2.• The hypothesis is confirmed, but further studies on the subject are necessary to secure sufficient results.

Yes / This study presents results from laboratory experiments to investigate the wake structure in the lee side of a scaled three-bladed horizontal axis tidal stream turbine with a mono-pile support structure. Experiments are conducted for a range of approaching flow velocity and installation height of rotor. Analysis of the results shows that bed shear stress increases with the increase of approaching velocity and decrease of installation height within 2D (D is the diameter of the rotor) downstream of the rotor. The flow field within 2D downstream of the rotor is greatly influenced by the presence of nacelle and mono-pile. Low stream-wise flow velocity and large turbulence intensity level is detected along the flume center right behind the nacelle and mono-pile from 1D to 2D downstream of the rotor. Stream-wise velocity at the blade tip height lower than the nacelle increases sharply from 1D to 2D and gradually grows afterwards. Correspondingly, the turbulence intensity decreases quickly from 1D to 2D and slowly afterwards. Large bed shear stress is measured from 1D to 2D, which is closely related to turbulence induced by the mono-pile. It is also found that the presence of the mono-pile might make the flow field more ‘disc-shaped’. / National Key Research and Development Program of China (No.2017YFC1404200), the Marine Renewable Energy Research Project of State Oceanic Administration (No.GHME2015GC01), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (No.2017B696X14) and the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province, China (No.KYCX17_0448)

This work is focused on the design, fabrication and characterization of high performance MEMS-based micro gas chromatography columns having wide range of applications in the pharmaceutical industry, environmental monitoring, petroleum distillation, clinical chemistry, and food processing. The first part of this work describes different approaches to achieve high-performance microfabricated silicon-glass separation columns for micro gas chromatographic (µgC) systems. The capillary width effect on the separation performance has been studied by characterization of 250 µm-, 125 µm-, 50 µm-, and 25 µm-wide single-capillary columns (SCCs) fabricated on a 10à 8 mm2 die. The plate number of 12500/m has been achieved by 25 µm-wide columns coated by a thin layer of polydimethylsiloxane stationary phase using static coating technique. To address the low sample capacity of these narrow columns, this work presents the first generation of MEMS-based "multicapillary" columns (MCCs) consisting of a bundle of narrow-width rectangular capillaries working in parallel. The second contribution of this work is the first MEMS-based stationary phase coating technique called monolayer protected gold (MPG) for ultra-narrow single capillary (SCC) and multicapillary (MCC) microfabricated gas chromatography (μGC) columns yielding the highest separation performance reported to date. This new μGC stationary phase has been achieved by electrodepositing a uniform functionalized gold layer with an adjustable thickness (250nm-2µm) in 25μm-wide single columns as well as in four-capillary MCCs. The separation performance, stability, reproducibility and bleeding of the stationary phase have been evaluated over time by separating n-alkanes as non-polar and alcohols as polar gas mixtures. / Master of Science

Les systèmes électriques sont de plus en plus présents dans les applications embarquées. Ils remplacent les systèmes mécaniques ou hydrauliques. Dans le cas du remplacement d'un système hydraulique par un système électrique, le gain de masse n'est pas significatif mais peut devenir plus important en mutualisant l'onduleur. L'objectif des travaux de thèse qui s'intègre dans le cadre du projet CISACS est de développer une méthodologie de pré-dimensionnement de l'étage de puissance en considérant des contraintes multi-physiques et en intégrant le choix technologiques des composants. Le premier chapitre, à travers le contexte et les objectifs du projet CISACS, introduit la problématique de conception de convertisseurs statiques à embarquer au sein de futurs avions plus électrique. Dans le deuxième chapitre, une analyse fonctionnelle et dysfonctionnelle de certaines architectures adaptées à une application de type CISACS est effectuée. Trois architectures sont considérées : structure classique à N convertisseurs, une architecture mono-convertisseur-aiguilleur et une structure d'un convertisseur matriciel. Dans le troisième chapitre, nous proposons une méthodologie de pré-dimensionnement progressif de convertisseurs statiques par optimisation sous contraintes multi-physiques. Grâce à cette méthodologie, le choix des composants actifs et passifs est automatisé. Afin d'affiner le pré-dimensionnement de la structure de puissance retenue, nous proposons dans le dernier chapitre une méthodologie de placement-routage des semi-conducteurs de puissance sur dissipateur plan. La modélisation mise en oeuvre fait intervenir les aspects électrique-thermique-géométrique du système. / Electric systems are more and more present in embedded applications. They replace mechanic or hydraulic systems. Regarding the replacement of a hydraulic system by an electric one, the mass profit is not significant but can be more considerable by mutualizing the inverters. The aim of that thesis’ work, which fit in as part of CISACS projects, is to develop a pre-sizing methodology of the power floor by considering multi-physics torsions and including the technical choices of components. The first chapter, through the context and the objectives of CISACS project, introduces the problematic of the conception of the static converters to load within future more electrified airplanes. In the second chapter, a functional and dysfunctional analysis of some sort of adjusted architecture to an application such as CISACS is done. Three architectures are considered: the first one, a classic structure with N converters, the second one a mono-points converters and the last one a structure of a matrix converters. In the third chapter, a progressive pre-sizing methodology of static converters by optimization under multi-physical constraints is proposed. Thanks to this methodology, the choice of the active and passive components is automated. In order to refine the sizing of the structure of retained power, we suggest in the last chapter a methodology of placement-layout of the semiconductors of power on sink plan. The implementation of the modelling calls on the electric-thermic-geometric aspects of the system.

Dans un travail réalisé au Centre de Robotique et à l'Institut VEDECOM, nous nous sommes intéressés aux systèmes robustes de localisation visuelle en milieu urbain pour la voiture autonome. Obtenir une pose exacte à partir d'une mono-caméra est difficile et insuffisant en terme de précision pour la voiture autonome actuelle. Nous nous sommes concentrés sur l'utilisation de Systèmes d'Information Géographiques (SIG) pour concevoir une approche fiable, précise et absolue de localisation en milieu urbain.Le développement de SIG publics nous a apporté un nouvel horizon pour résoudre le problème de la localisation, mais ses informations, telles que les cartes topologiques, sémantiques, métriques, les Street Views, les cartes de profondeur, les cartes cadastrales 3D et les cartes en haute définition, doivent être bien analysées et organisées pour extraire les informations pertinentes pour une voiture autonome. Notre première tâche consistait à concevoir une base de données hors ligne accessible par un robot à partir d'un SIG public dense, à savoir Google Maps, qui a l'avantage d'avoir une couverture mondiale. Nous générons une représentation topométrique compacte de l'environnement urbain en extrayant quatre données utiles du SIG, y compris : les topologies, les géo-coordonnées, les Street Views panoramiques et les cartes de profondeur associées. Dans le même temps, un ensemble de données en ligne a été acquis par une mono-caméra équipée sur les véhicules de VEDECOM. Afin de rendre les Street View sphériques compatibles avec l'imagerie en ligne, une transformation basée sur l'interpolation d'image est introduite pour obtenir des images rectilignes à partir de Street Views.Nous proposons deux méthodes de localisation : l'une est une approche de vision par ordinateur basée sur l'extraction de caractéristiques, l'autre est une méthode d'apprentissage basée sur les réseaux de neurones convolutionnels (convnet). En vision par ordinateur, l'extraction de caractéristiques est un moyen populaire de résoudre le positionnement à partir d'images. Nous tirons parti de Google Maps et utilisons ses données topo-métriques hors ligne pour construire un positionnement grossier à fin, à savoir un processus de reconnaissance de lieu topologique puis une estimation métrique de pose par optimisation de graphe. La méthode a été testée en environnement urbain et démontre à la fois une précision sous-métrique et une robustesse aux changements de point de vue, à l'illumination et à l'occlusion. Aussi, les résultats montrent que les emplacements éloignés de Street Views produisent une erreur significative dans la phase d'estimation métrique. Ainsi, nous proposons de synthétiser des Street Views artificielles pour compenser la densité des Street View originales et améliorer la précision.Cette méthode souffre malheureusement d'un temps de calcul important. Étant donné que le SIG nous offre une base de données géolocalisée à l'échelle mondiale, cela nous motive à régresser des localisations globales directement à partir d'un convnet de bout en bout. La base de données hors ligne précédemment construite est encore insuffisante pour l'apprentissage d'un convnet. Pour compenser cela nous densifions la base d'origine d'un facteur mille et utilisons la méthode d'apprentissage par transfert pour faire converger notre régresseur convnet et avoir une bonne performance. Le régresseur permet également d'obtenir une localisation globale à partir d'une seule image et en temps réel.Les résultats obtenus par ces deux approches nous fournissent des informations sur la comparaison et la relation entre les méthodes basées sur des caractéristiques et celles basées sur le convnet. Après avoir analysé et comparé les performances de localisation des deux méthodes, nous avons également abordé des perspectives pour améliorer la robustesse et la précision de la localisation face au problème de localisation urbaine assistée par SIG. / In a work made at Centre de Robotique and Institut VEDECOM, we studied robust visual urban localization systems for self-driving cars. Obtaining an exact pose from a monocular camera is difficult and cannot be applied to the current autonomous cars. We mainly focused on fully leveraging Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to achieve a low-cost, robust, accurate and global urban localization.The development of public GIS's has brought us a new horizon to address the localization problem but their tremendous amount of information, such as topological, semantic, metric maps, Street Views, depth maps, 3D cadastral maps and High Definition maps, has to be well analyzed and organized to extract relevant information for self-driving cars. Our first task was to design a robotic accessible offline database from a dense public GIS, namely Google Maps, which has the advantage to propose a worldwide coverage. We make a compact topometric representation for the dynamic urban environment by extracting four useful data from the GIS, including topologies, geo-coordinates, panoramic Street Views, and associated depth maps. At the same time, an online dataset was acquired with a low-cost camera equipped on VEDECOM vehicles. In order to make spheric Street Views compatible with the online imagery, an image warping and interpolation based transformation is introduced to render rectilinear images from Street Views.We proposed two localization methods: one is a handcrafted-features-based computer vision approach, the other is a convolutional neural network (convnet) based learning technique. In computer vision, extracting handcrafted features is a popular way to solve the image based positioning. We take advantages of the abundant sources from Google Maps and benefit from the topometric offline data structure to build a coarse-to-fine positioning, namely a topological place recognition process and then a metric pose estimation by a graph optimization. The method is tested on an urban environment and demonstrates both sub-meter accuracy and robustness to viewpoint changes, illumination and occlusion. Moreover, we demonstrate that sparse Street View locations produce a significant error in the metric pose estimation phase. Thus our former framework is refined by synthesizing more artificial Street Views to compensate the sparsity of original Street Views and improve the precision.The handcrafted feature based framework requires the image retrieval and graph optimization. It is hard to achieve in a real-time application. Since the GIS offers us a global scale geotagged database, it motivates us to regress global localizations from convnet features in an end-to-end manner. The previously constructed offline database is still insufficient for a convnet training. We hereby augment the originally constructed database by a thousand factor and take advantage of the transfer learning method to make our convnet regressor converge and have a good performance. In our test, the regressor can also give a global localization of an input camera image in real time.The results obtained by the two approaches provide us insights on the comparison and connection between handcrafted feature-based and convnet based methods. After analyzing and comparing the localization performances of both methods, we also talked about some perspectives to improve the localization robustness and precision towards the GIS-aided urban localization problem.

Th.--3e cycle, Chim. / phys. : Bordeaux 1 : 1980 ; 1 549.