Estudou-se o sistema porta hepático do bagre africano Clarias gariepinus Burchell, 1822, sob o ponto de vista da anatomia macroscópica e microscópica, utilizando-se várias técnicas anatômicas, que envolveram anestesia, injeção de substâncias recomendadas ao estudo do sistema vascular (látex, nanquim, cloreto de polivinil e substância radiopaca), dissecação, corrosão ou radiografia, conforme a exigência de cada técnica, como meio de compreensão da anatomia vascular do fígado deste peixe. Foram utilizados 16 exemplares do sexo feminino, com comprimento total entre 45 e 53,5 centímetros e massa corpórea entre 575 e 1068 gramas. Para a execução dessas técnicas, os peixes foram devidamente anestesiados com benzocaína, garantindo a narcose profunda e evitando qualquer tipo de sofrimento a eles. Os resultados obtidos com essas técnicas mostram que o fígado de Clarias gariepinus ocupa a cavidade abdominal cranial e apresenta uma lobação bem definida, sendo constituído por dois grandes lobos, denominados direito e esquerdo, conectados cranialmente por uma ponte dorsal à transição entre o esôfago e o estômago. O lobo esquerdo apresenta-se ligeiramente maior que o contralateral. Em suas extremidades caudais, os lobos esquerdo e direito formam um ápice pontiagudo, de formato triangular, que continua tenuemente através de um istmo eminentemente vascular que liga esses ápices a dois outros lobos, chamados acessórios direito e esquerdo, bem menores que os demais, e que ficam seqüestrados em um recesso peritoneal, lateral à cavidade abdominal. Os resultados indicam ainda que o sistema porta hepático de Clarias gariepinus está representado por duas veias portas principais denominadas direita e esquerda, levemente assimétricas em diâmetro, que drenam o sangue das vísceras abdominais (baço, estômago, vesícula biliar, intestino e gônadas) através dos tributários viscerais desse sistema. Ainda, devido a uma situação peculiar dos lobos acessórios, definem-se mais duas veias portas secundárias ligadas às principais e designadas igualmente por acessórias, uma esquerda e outra direita. Ambas as vv. portas principais se ramificam, atingindo o hilo da face visceral, enquanto que as vv. acessórias penetram por uma região restrita do lobo. Através de ramos interlobares, ambas as vv. portas principais se anastomosam no parênquima hepático. A v. porta esquerda, com discreto aumento de diâmetro, forma-se pela terminação da v. intestinal, concomitante à desembocadura da v. gastrointestinal e da v. porta acessória esquerda. A v. porta direita se define pela terminação da v. intestinal cranial, simultaneamente à chegada da v. porta acessória ipsilateral, drenando sangue do intestino médio, estômago e vesícula biliar. Nessa espécie, também estão caracterizados dois sítios de comunicação entre o sistema porta hepático e o sistema porta renal através de anastomoses em cada v. porta. Sob as condições em que o trabalho foi desenvolvido e considerando-se a metodologia proposta e a análise dos resultados, conclui-se que todos os métodos foram adequados ao estudo do aparelho circulatório de Clarias gariepinus, sendo recomendados para experimentos futuros sobre o mesmo assunto em outras espécies piscícolas; porém, dentre as três metodologias utilizadas para análises macroscópicas, a injeção de cloreto de polivinil seguida de corrosão das peças e subseqüente obtenção de moldes vasculares mostrou-se mais eficiente na marcação e identificação dos vasos que compõem o sistema porta hepático deste peixe. Conclui-se também que, devido à presença dos lobos acessórios, a lobação hepática é peculiar nesta espécie, em virtude da posição ocupada por estes lobos, assim como a circulação porta, em função das duas veias porta acessórias, e ainda a anastomose entre as duas veias porta principais, característica que deve ser considerada em trabalhos que envolvam cirurgia hepática no bagre africano / The hepatic portal system of the African catfish Clarias gariepinus Burchell, 1822, was studied considering the macroscopic and microscopic anatomy, by means of several anatomic techniques, including anesthesia, injection of substances recommended to the study of the vascular system (latex, Indian ink, polyvinyl chloride and radiopaque substance), dissection, corrosion or radiography, according to the requirement of each technique, as a way of understanding the hepatic circulatory pathway in the African catfish. Sixteen female specimen were used, being the entire length between 45 and 53.5 centimeters and the corporal mass between 575 and 1068 grams. To perform these techniques, the fishes were adequately anesthetized with benzocaine, assuring the deep narcosis and preventing them from any suffering. The results obtained through such techniques show that the liver of Clarias gariepinus occupies the cranial abdominal cavity and shows a clear lobation, the liver consisting of two large lobes, called right and left, cranially connected by a bridge dorsal to the transition between the esophagus and the stomach. The left lobe is slightly larger than the contralateral lobe. At their caudal ends, the left and the right lobes form a sharp triangle-like apex that tenuously passes through a strip eminently vascular that links these apexes with two other lobes, called right and left accessories, much smaller than the others, these lobes being wrapped in a peritoneal recess, situated at the side of the abdominal cavity. The results still show that the hepatic portal system of Clarias gariepinus is represented by two main portal veins named right and left, slightly asymmetric in diameter, that empty the blood out of the abdominal viscera (spleen, stomach, gall bladder, intestine and gonads) through the visceral tributaries of this system. Furthermore, due to a peculiar situation of the accessory lobes, two other secondary portal veins were defined; they are connected to the main veins and are equally called right and left accessories. Both the main portal veins branch, reaching the hilum of the visceral face, whereas the accessory veins go into a restricted region of the lobe. Through interlobar branches, both the main portal veins anastomose in the hepatic parenchyma. The left portal vein, with a slight increase in diameter, is formed by the terminatio of the intestinal vein, accompanying the discharge of the gastrointestinal vein and the accessory left portal vein. The right portal vein is defined by the terminatio of the cranial intestinal vein, simultaneously with the accessory ipsilateral portal vein, emptying the blood out of the medial intestine, stomach and gall bladder. In this species it is also possible to distinguish two connecting sites between the hepatic portal system and the renal portal system by means of anastomoses in each portal vein. Under the conditions in which the experiment was carried out and considering the methodology suggested and the analysis of the results, it is concluded that all the methods were suitable for the study of the circulatory system of Clarias gariepinus, being recommended for future tests on the same subject in other fish species; however, among the three methodologies used in the macroscopic analyses, the injection of polyvinyl chloride followed by the corrosion of pieces and subsequent getting of vascular moulds was believed to be more efficient at the marking and identification of the vessels that compose the hepatic portal system of this fish. It was also concluded that, due to the presence of the accessory lobes, the hepatic lobation is peculiar in this species because of the position occupied by these lobes, as well as the portal circulation, caused by the two accessory portal veins, in addition to the anastomose between the two main portal veins, a characteristic that must be thought of in studies of hepatic surgery in the African catfish

The Energy Industry utilizes Energy Management Information Systems (EMIS) smart meters to monitor utility consumers’ energy consumption, communicate energy consumption information to consumers, and to collect a plethora of energy consumption data about consumer usage. The EMIS energy consumption information is typically presented to utility consumers via a smart meter web portal. The hope is that EMIS web portal use will aid utility consumers in managing their energy consumption by helping them make effective decisions regarding their energy usage. However, little research exists that evaluates the effectiveness or success of an EMIS smart meter web portal from a utility consumer perspective. The research goal was to measure EMIS smart meter web portal success based on the DeLone and McLean Information Success Model. The objective of the study was to investigate the success constructs system quality, information quality, service quality, use, and user satisfaction, and determine their contribution to EMIS success, which was measured as net benefits. The research model used in this study employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) based on Partial Least Squares (PLS) to determine the validity and reliability of the measurement model and to evaluate the hypothetical relationships in the structural model. The significant validity and reliability measures obtained in this study indicate that the DeLone and McLean Information Success Model (2003) has the potential for use in future EMIS studies. The determinants responsible for explaining the variance in net benefits were EMIS use and user satisfaction. Based on the research findings, several implications and future research are stated and proposed.

Den explosivt ökande mängden information som finns tillgänglig på Internet har även sina avigsidor. Att hitta meningsfull information och kunskap på Internet idag blir allt svårare. Behovet av verktyg som kan hjälpa individer och företag att ta fram värdefull information, speciellt tidskritisk sådan på ett effektivt sätt, är och kommer att bli mycket stort. Likaså kommer behovet av att komma åt denna information, oberoende av tid och plats att vara stort och bli allt större i takt med den ständigt accelererande utvecklingstakten. Vi har försökt att belysa hypotesens komplexitet och visa på det faktum att inte bara en utan många beståndsdelar spelar in vid skapandet av en personanpassad informationsportal. Arbetet har grundat sig på att identifiera de krav som skulle kunna ställas på grundläggande funktioner. Utifrån dessa har vi presenterat förslag på funktioner och konstruktion som kan användas till en applikationslösning. Layout-funktionerna som presenterats i arbetet är ytterst viktiga och ser till att utvald information presenteras på ett samlat och strukturerat sätt. Push-funktionerna är väsentliga för att användaren ska ha kontroll över vilken information som ska skickas ut. De funktioner som ställer in och kontrollerar informationsinnehåll är de som vi har kommit fram till bör anses vara viktigast. Dessa gör att informationen är korrekt, avgränsad och uppdaterad på det sätt användaren önskar. Detta arbete i sig och den applikationslösning som vi har tagit fram, anser vi vara en bra grund för att konstruera framtida personanpassade informationsportaler.

This thesis investigates how a web-hosted portal could be developed and designed in order to assist customer information updates in micro-enterprises in the ship broking business. Based on well-established system development theories and collected material, the web-hosted portal concept was developed. The development process included a case study at a ship broking company in Karlshamn, southern Sweden. Ship broking companies handle information as a mediator between other actors, thus the information becomes sensitive. In the ship broking business there is a constant need and flow of information. As the shipbrokers’ customers demand constant information 24 hours a day it is important to meet this demand in a service minded fashion. Today all customer updates are handled manually and are considered very time consuming and generate duplication of work. To solve these issues a possible solution could be to introduce information technology in the organisation. The introduction of information technology in the ship broking organisations has been slow. A contributing factor might be the widespread conservatism and resistance to changes in the ship broking business. The conclusions show the needs and demands for a web-hosted portal among shipbrokers and interested parties in the logistic chain. The result of the thesis should be considered as a foundation for further development and implementation of the concept.

An effective health portal should be easy to use and understandable. A number of research studies have been taken in order to evaluate different health portals but there is no such study for ltblekeinge health portal. A multi-phased research approach is adopted to evaluate the usability of ltblekeinge health portal. Authors conducted a usability test of the system where citizens from the county of Blekinge are taken as subjects. They evaluated the health portal on the basis of usability test and a questionnaire is prepared to know the different perspectives of citizens. The authors validated the result with the help of interviews with a number of individual. The authors find it is very important that a health web portal should contain sufficient amount of relevant and useful health related contents. Moreover, there is need to improve ltblekeinge portal in terms of interface, contents and set of tools for accessing the ehealth services and health related information. / En effektiv hälso-portal bör vara lätt att använda och förstå. En antal forskningsstudier har vidtagits för att utvärdera olika hälsoportaler men det finns ingen sådan studie för ltblekeinge hälsoportal. En flera faser forskningsansats antas att utvärdera användbarheten av ltblekeinge hälsoportal. Författarna genomförde en användbarhet test av systemet där medborgare från Blekinge tas som subjekt. De utvärderas hälsoportalen på grundval av användbarhet test och Frågeformuläret är beredd att känna till olika perspektiv för medborgarna. Författarna validerade resultatet med hjälp av intervjuer med ett antal enskilda. Författarna tycker att det är mycket viktigt att en hälso webbportal ska innehålla tillräcklig mängd relevanta och användbara hälsorelaterade innehåll. Dessutom finns det behov av att förbättra ltblekeinge portalen i termer av gränssnitt, innehåll och uppsättning verktyg för åtkomst till e-hälsovård tjänster och hälsorelaterad information.

Students have many course based literature text books that they have stopped reading and these books are laying on their book shelves unused. These books can be sold and the proceeds can be used to buy another book the student currently needs. These website will not only serve students but can also serve the entire population or anybody who wants to buy second hand books or wants to empty their book shelves and make financial gain from it. These books can just be simply be uploaded to the website and another student or person can have access to buy the book by just visiting the website. Students also have lesser incomes compared to the rest of the working population. Hence any reasonable resource for getting income is always welcomed. All these will be achieved by creating a user friendly complete online shopping system for buying and selling secondhand books

The worldwide challenges to achieve cost effective protection against global warming impacts and to acquire reliable decision making tools continually force new developments in the area of climate change research. Climate change impacts projections involve several steps: emission scenarios generation, Global Circulation Models and Regional Climate Models (GCM/RCM) runs, downscaling, impact model running, analysis of results and decision making. Unfortunately, GCM/RCMs outputs are often biased and need to be processed before being fed into impact models. This thesis describes the effort carried out to alleviate the burden of downscaling coarse hydro-climatology data outputs from GCM/RCM and making results readily available for climate change impact analysis for specific regions, particularly in the African continent. GCM/RCM outputs are highly unreliable at the sub-grid scale to be used for region specific impact analysis (Wilby, Hay, & Leavesly, 1999). Furthermore, raw GCM/RCM outputs are often downscaled under the premises that the latter offer very coarse spatial resolution. The Internet is a common resource for users of climate change data to access relevant information. Web-based interfaces offer users the capability to retrieve such data. This thesis involves the development of a new web-portal, which addresses the demand for climate change data at the daily scale. It is a user-friendly interactive web-based interface with multiple functionalities including: capacity to process information, capacity to search, sort, retrieve and filter data and download features. Six climate variables are considered in this project: precipitation, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, wind speed, relative humidity and solar radiation. The aforementioned climate variables have been downscaled to specific geographical locations and results have been made available at a fine temporal resolution – the daily scale. The data portal currently hosts climate change data for nine stations in western Africa: Agadez, Brini N’Konni, Gaya, Maine Soroa, Maradi Airport, Niamey Airport, Tahoua, Tillabery and Zinder Airport. The above mentioned climate stations are all located in Niger. Nonetheless, the project aims to expand and cover further ground in Africa. Quantile - Quantile downscaling, also known as Quantile-Quantile mapping, matching or transformation is a statistical procedure used in this project to downscale raw GCM/RCM outputs. GCM/RCM outputs from the AMMA-Ensemble sets under the SRES A1B scenario were used as raw data.

Dans les maladies chroniques du foie, l’angiogenèse et la fibrose sont étroitement liées. Nosprécédents travaux ont permis de montrer que les myofibroblastes portaux (MFP)contribuaient de façon importante à la fibrogenèse hépatique. L’objectif de ma thèse était dedéterminer si les MFP pouvaient aussi contribuer à l’angiogenèse hépatique. Nous avonsidentifié un nouveau marqueur spécifique des MFP, le collagène XV, grâce auquel nousavons pu mettre en évidence une prolifération des MFP dans des stades avancés de fibrose, àla fois dans des modèles animaux et chez les patients atteints d’hépatopathie chronique. Cetteprolifération des MFP était corrélée à celle des cellules endothéliales. Dans le foie cirrhotiquehumain, les MFP présentaient une distribution périvasculaire, entourant les capillaires àproximité de la réaction ductulaire. L’effet des MFP sur les cellules endothéliales a ensuite étéévalué par des tests d’angiogensèse in vitro et in vivo. Le milieu conditionné des MFPaugmentait la migration et la tubulogenèse des cellules endothéliales et stimulaitl’angiogenèse dans les implants de Matrigel chez la souris. En co-culture, les MFPdeveloppaient des jonctions intercellulaires avec les cellules endothéliales et augmentaient latubulogenèse. Nous avons montré que les MFP secrétaient des microparticules contenant duVEGF-A, capables d’activer VEGFR-2 dans les cellules endothéliales et de médier leur effetpro-angiogénique. Enfin, les cholangiocytes étaient capables d’accroître l’effet proangiogéniquedes MFP. En conclusion, les MFP jouent un rôle clef dans le remodelagevasculaire associé à la fibrose hépatique. / Liver angiogenesis and fibrogenesis are closely linked and most of studies have shown thatangiogenesis could worsen fibrosis in chronic liver diseases. Our previous works havedemonstrated that portal myofibroblasts (PMF) greatly contributed to liver fibrogenesis. Theaim of this present work was to determine if PMF could also contribute to liver angiogenesis.We identified collagene XV (col15a1) as a new specific marker for PMF. In vivo, weobserved PMF proliferation (measured by expression of col15a1) at advanced stages offibrosis both in liver from animals models ( CCl4 and BDL) and in livers from patients withchronic liver disease (primary biliary cirrhosis and non alcoolic fatty liver disease). PMFproliferation was correlated with endothelial proliferation. In human cirrhotic liver, PMF werelocated around vessels in fibrotic septa, in proximity to ductular reaction. PMF effects onendothelial cells were assessed in angiogenic tests in vitro and in vivo. PMF conditionedmedium enhanced migration and tubulogenesis of endothelial cells and stimulatedvascularization of matrigel plugs in mice. In coculture, PMF developed junctions withendothelial cells (demosomes and gap junctions) and enhanced endothelial tubulogenesis. Weshowed that PMF secreted VEGFA containing microparticles, able to activate VEGFR-2 inendothelial cells and to mediate their angiogenic function. Cholangiocytes could increasePMF angiogenic properties by stimulating VEGFA expression and microparticles secretion.In conclusion, PMF, studied with a new marker, col15a1, are key cells in hepatic vascularremodeling.

Information management has begun to gain importance very fast during the time of internet business, auctions, stock exchanges, in the time of increasing number of international companies. Nowadays very often mentioned topics are how to obtain and deliver right information at the right place in the right moment, how to communicate with business partners, collaborators, superiors. Intranet belongs among devices for information management and I deal with just this theme in my diploma work. The defining of Intranet belongs to main aims of this text i.e. terminology, elements, principals of function, current trends and also giving instructions for building or reconstruction of company intranet. The detailed study of current trends during building company information system, case studies and instructions according to "Best practices" was the way how to achieve defined goals. I gathered information mainly from internet information sources which deal with this topic, mainly from foreign servers. I can see the contribution of my diploma work that it tries to give instructions for managing the project building company intranet, its timing and it draws attention to critical factors of success. The suggestion of new appearance of company intranet is the culmination of my diploma work. The work is clearly structural -- I present the explanation about problems of company information system in the theoretical part, in the practical part I deal with finding out of main lacks and formulation demands of new appearance of company intranet and at the same time I suggest possible new appearance. I evaluate achieving defined objectives and sum up main ideas in the conclusion.

The theoretical framework of social policy work in relation to children and young people at risk of social exclusion. We will focus mainly on prevention of socially pathological phenomena in children and youth. In the practical part of the student filled a prototype web portal for children and youth from Jindřichův Hradec and its surroundings in order to provide this target group supplement information on leisure time activities in a specific area and any associated options (eg, chat, counseling, survey, photo gallery). Student at the same time, propose the concept of updating and data management for the portal.