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Amniotic membrane is applied to the diseased ocular surface to stimulate wound healing and tissue repair, because it releases supportive growth factors and cytokines. These effects fade within about a week after application, necessitating repeated application. Generally, amniotic membrane is fixed with sutures to the ocular surface, but surgical intervention at the inflamed or diseased site can be detrimental. Therefore, we have developed a system for the mounting of amniotic membrane between two rings for application to a diseased ocular surface without surgical intervention (sutureless amniotic membrane transplantation). With this system, AmnioClip, amniotic membrane can be applied like a large contact lens. First prototypes were tested in an experiment on oneself for wearing comfort. The final system was tested on 7 patients in a pilot study. A possible influence of the ring system on the biological effects of amniotic membrane was analyzed by histochemistry and by analyzing the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF-A), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF 2) and pigment epithelium-derived factor (PEDF) from amniotic membranes before and after therapeutic application. The final product, AmnioClip, showed good tolerance and did not impair the biological effects of amniotic membrane. VEGF-A and PEDF mRNA was expressed in amniotic membrane after storage and mounting before transplantation, but was undetectable after a 7-day application period. Consequently, transplantation of amniotic membranes with AmnioClip provides a sutureless and hence improved therapeutic strategy for corneal surface disorders.

The dual role of glycolytic enzymes in cytosol-located metabolic processes and in cell surface-mediated functions with an influence on virulence is described for various micro-organisms. Cell wall-less bacteria of the class Mollicutes including the common human pathogen Mycoplasma pneumoniae possess a reduced genome limiting the repertoire of virulence factors and metabolic pathways. After the initial contact of bacteria with cells of the respiratory epithelium via a specialized complex of adhesins and release of cell-damaging factors, surface-displayed glycolytic enzymes may facilitate the further interac-tion between host and microbe. In this study, we described detection of the four subunits of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDHA-D) among the cytosolic and membrane-associated proteins of M.pneumoniae. Subunits of PDH were cloned, expressed and purified to produce specific polyclonal guinea pig antisera. Using colony blotting, fractionation of total proteins and immunofluorescence experiments, the surface localization of PDHA-C was demonstrated. All pecombinant PDH subunits are able to bind to HeLa cells and human plasminogen. These interactions can be specifically blocked by the corresponding polyclon-al antisera. In addition, an influence of ionic interactions on PDHC-binding to plasminogen as well as of lysine residues on the association of PDHA-D with plasminogen was confirmed. The PDHB subunit was shown to activate plasminogen and the PDHB-plasminogen complex induces degradation of human fibrinogen. Hence, our data indicate that the surface-associated PDH subunits might play a role in the pathogenesis of M.pneumoniae infections by interaction with human plasminogen.

Vocal tract morphology is an important factor in voice production. Its analysis has potential implications for educational matters as well as medical issues like voice therapy. The knowledge of the complex adjustments in the spatial geometry of the vocal tract during phonation is still limited. For a major part, this is due to difficulties in acquiring geometry data of the vocal tract in the process of voice production. In this study, a centerline-based segmentation method using active contours was introduced to extract the geometry data of the vocal tract obtained with MRI during sustained vowel phonation. The applied semiautomatic algorithm was found to be time- and interaction-efficient and allowed performing various three-dimensional measurements on the resulting model. The method is suitable for an improved detailed analysis of the vocal tract morphology during speech or singing which might give some insights into the underlying mechanical processes.

The role of competition in tree communities is increasingly well understood, while little is known about the patterns and mechanisms of the interplay between above- and belowground competition in tree communities. This knowledge, however, is crucial for a better understanding of community dynamics and developing adaptive near-natural management strategies. We assessed neighbourhood interactions in an unmanaged old-growth European beech (Fagus sylvatica) forest by quantifying variation in the intensity of above- (shading) and belowground competition (crowding) among dominant and co-dominant canopy beech trees during tree maturation. Shading had on average a much larger impact on radial growth than crowding and the sensitivity to changes in competitive conditions was lowest for crowding effects. We found that each mode of competition reduced the effect of the other. Increasing crowding reduced the negative effect of shading, and at high levels of shading, crowding actually had a facilitative effect and increased growth. Our study demonstrates that complementarity in above- and belowground processes enable F. sylvatica to alter resource acquisition strategies, thus optimising tree radial growth. As a result, competition seemed to become less important in stands with a high growing stock and tree communities with a long continuity of anthropogenic undisturbed population dynamics. We suggest that growth rates do not exclusively depend on the density of potential competitors at the intraspecific level, but on the conspecific aggregation of large-diameter trees and their functional role for regulating biotic filtering processes. This finding highlights the potential importance of the rarely examined relationship between the spatial aggregation pattern of large-diameter trees and the outcome of neighbourhood interactions, which may be central to community dynamics and the related forest ecosystem services.

Applications Alice is subtitled Application Elegantly Formating Books automatically. I think this subtitle, where each word begins with the letter of the name Alice (in czech), expresses the function of application quite clearly :) Try it with it too. If you choose to use Alice, everything what you need to know, you will discover during the process itself. Alice is actually a nice assistant who will help to you with everything. Simple advices will lead you to through the process. It guides you through five steps - just enter a few details, upload the text as it is (like Word) and at the end of prosecc you can download the publication formatted and ready to print. Application automatically did everything for you. You do not need any graphic designer or paid any graphic software. It takes you about 30 minutes. Application is running on the web, so it is not necessary any installation.

The dissertation consists of three papers presenting applications of meta-analysis in economics and introductory chapter which discusses the development of meta-analysis in author's perspective as well as strengths and weaknesses of this quantitative method to synthesize empirical research. In the first paper analyses the impact of information and communication technology investments on productivity. The second paper focuses on the trade effect of the euro. In the third investigates the relation between international trade flows and trade costs.

The relationship between income inequality and happiness is central to a host of welfare policies. If higher income inequality puts people down, advocating for income redistribution from the rich to the poor could make society happier. We show, however, that this popular consensus on the relationship's direction is rather absent in the academic literature. Based on the 868 observations col- lected from 53 studies and controlling for 62 aspects of study design, we use state-of-the-art meta-analysis techniques to identify several important drivers of the efect. Unless each study gets the same weight, the literature is driven by publication bias pushing the estimates against the popular consensus. While geographical diferences dominate among the systematic infuences of the re- lationship's magnitude, the relationship is also strongly afected by various methods and data the authors use in the primary studies. Most prominently, it matters if authors control for diferent individual's characteristics, such as perceived trust in people or their health status.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de fournir des mécanismes améliorés pour déployer des services compétitifs par des manières rapides et rentables. Nous proposons un modèle de composition de service basé sur un environnement IMS/Web convergent. Ce modèle permet aux utilisateurs non professionnels de réutiliser les services existants pour créer de nouveaux services facilement. Pour améliorer la fonctionnalité de composition automatique, trois stratégies, y compris mise à jour passive, mise à jour active et mise à jour hybride sont proposées et analysées. Nous introduisons ensuite une plateforme centralisée d'exposition de service pour une variété de services, y compris services de Télécom / Web / appareil / services générés par les utilisateurs. Cette plateforme vise à renforcer les caractéristiques de centrée-sur-utilisateur et convergence, et fournir l'accès unifié à différents services. Par la suite, deux modèles basés sur le P2P sont conçus pour compléter le modèle centralisé: i) Un modèle hiérarchique basé sur Chord pour garantir l'efficacité de la découverte de services. Il adopte le concept de publication et découverte de service abstrait pour permettre à la recherche de service ambiguë. ii) Un modèle de superposition-triplex et P2P basé, qui cible principalement des services offerts par les appareils. Dans ce modèle, nous utilisons des passerelles pour déléguer des appareils résidant en eux pour l'exposition globale de services, et utilisons une architecture basée sur une superposition triplex, qui comprend une couche P2P non structurée, une couche de réseau sémantique (SON), et une couche de dépendance de service, pour la partage de l'information de service et la découverte de services / The goal of this thesis is to provide enhanced mechanisms to deploy competitive services in a rapid and cost-effective manner. To achieve this goal, we first propose an automatic service composition model relying on an IMS/Web converged environment. This service composition model is intended to be one in which even non-professional users can easily reuse existing services to create new services. To further improve the automatic service composition feature, three strategies including passive update, active update and hybrid update are proposed and analyzed. We then propose a centralized service exposure framework for a variey of services, including Telecom / Web / Device / user-generated services. This framework aims at enhancing the user-centric and convergence features, and providing the unified access to diverse services.Subsequently, two P2P based service information sharing models are designed to complement the centralized service exposure model : i) A hierarchical P2P based model, which reuses Chord for guaranteeing the service discovery efficiency, meanwhile adopts the concept of abstract service publication and discovery for enabling the ambiguous services searching. ii) A triplex P2P overlay based model, which mainly targets the devices offered services. In this model, we use the gateways to delegate the devices residing in them for the global service exposure, and use a triplex overlay based architecture, which includes an underlying unstructured P2P layer, a Semantic Overlay Network (SON) based overlay and a service dependency overlay, for the service information sharing and discovery

Even though precise evaluation of money demand function is essential for cen- tral banking and for the right determination of the transmission mechanism, economists have not reached a consensus about the underlying determinants of money demand function neither their magnitude and direction. Researchers differ even in the selection of measures used for the main variables - income, and interest rate. While the heterogeneity in elasticity estimates of the former one has been scrutinize in several quantitative surveys, to the best of our knowledge, there has not been compiled any meta-analysis focusing on differences among the interest rate elasticities of the money demand. Therefore, we collected 53 studies reporting 1 094 estimates of interest rate elasticity. Implementing both the state-of-the-art methods and those proposed only recently, we have found out that researches are prone to selective reporting. Firstly, our results shows that negative publication bias is present in empirical studies of the money de- mand and increases the average elasticity estimate approximately three times (in absolute terms). Secondly, negative highly precise estimates are more likely to be compared to their imprecise counterparts. Additionally, we scrutinize po- tential sources of heterogeneity among individual...