Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Bibliography: leaves 63-70.

Trypanosoma brucei, un parasite flagellé unicellulaire, est responsable de la trypanosomiase humaine africaine aussi connue comme la maladie du sommeil.Les microtubules (MTs) sous-pelliculaires, le quartet de MTs (MTQ), le flagelle (F) et le collier de la poche flagellaire (CPF) sont les principaux composants du cytosquelette dutrypanosome. À ce jour, une seule protéine du CPF, BILBO1, a été identifiée et caractérisée.Dans cette étude, nous montrons in vivo que BILBO1 forme des polymères capables deconstruire un échafaudage qui permet l’ancrage de protéines partenaires. Ainsi, un crible en double hybride chez la levure a identifié plusieurs protéines partenaires de BILBO1,notamment une nouvelle protéine appelée FPC4. Nous démontrons que FPC4 est une protéine spécifique des kinétoplastides, localisée au CPF mais aussi au hook-complex, une structure proche du CPF. L’interaction FPC4 – BILBO1 est démontrée in vitro et in vivo, etles domaines d'interaction identifiés. En outre, nous démontrons in vivo et in vitro que FPC4est une protéine associée aux microtubules. Nos données suggèrent fortement que FPC4est impliquée dans le processus de séparation des CPFs au cours du cycle cellulaire. Nos résultats mettent en évidence un lien étroit entre le MtQ et le CPF et l'implication probable duhook-complex. Enfin, nous mettons en évidence une structure analogue au hook-complex chez les Leishmanies. L’interaction BILBO1 – FPC4 représente une nouvelle cible thérapeutique et sera caractérisée plus avant. / Trypanosoma brucei, a unicellular flagellated parasite, is responsible for the human African trypanosomiasis also known as sleeping sickness. Sub-pellicular microtubules (MT), the MT quartet (MtQ), the flagellum (F) and the Flagellar Pocket Collar (FPC) are the main components of the T. brucei cytoskeleton. To date, only a single FPC protein, BILBO1, has been identified and characterized. In this study we demonstrate in vivo that BILBO1 forms polymers able to build a scaffold structure that anchors partner proteins. As such, a yeast-2-hybrid screen identified several BILBO1 interacting protein partners. We demonstrate that FPC4 is a kinetoplastid-specific protein, which is localized at the FPC and at the hook complex. Its specific interaction with BILBO1 has been demonstrated in vitro and in vivo, and the interacting domains identified. Furthermore, we demonstrate that FPC4 is a microtubule binding protein. Our data strongly suggest that FPC4 is involved in the separation of the old and the newly formed FPC during the cell cycle. Altogether, our results demonstrate a tight connection and interplay between the MtQ and the FPC and the likely involvement of an adjacent third structure, the hook complex. Finally, we highlight a structure similar to the hook-complex in Leishmania. The BILBO1 – FPC4 interaction represents a new therapeutic target and will be characterized further.

Network infrastructures often need to stage content so that it is accessible to consumers. The standard solution, deploying the content on a centralised server, can be inadequate in several situations. Our thesis is that information encoded in social networks can be used to tailor content staging decisions to the user base and thereby build better data delivery infrastructures. This claim is supported by two case studies, which apply social information in challenging situations where traditional content staging is infeasible. Our approach works by examining empirical traces to identify relevant social properties, and then exploits them. The first study looks at cost-effectively serving the ``Long Tail'' of rich-media user-generated content, which need to be staged close to viewers to control latency and jitter. Our traces show that a preference for the unpopular tail items often spreads virally and is localised to some part of the social network. Exploiting this, we propose Buzztraq, which decreases replication costs by selectively copying items to locations favoured by viral spread. We also design SpinThrift, which separates popular and unpopular content based on the relative proportion of viral accesses, and opportunistically spins down disks containing unpopular content, thereby saving energy. The second study examines whether human face-to-face contacts can efficiently create paths over time between arbitrary users. Here, content is staged by spreading it through intermediate users until the destination is reached. Flooding every node minimises delivery times but is not scalable. We show that the human contact network is resilient to individual path failures, and for unicast paths, can efficiently approximate flooding in delivery time distribution simply by randomly sampling a handful of paths found by it. Multicast by contained flooding within a community is also efficient. However, connectivity relies on rare contacts and frequent contacts are often not useful for data delivery. Also, periods of similar duration could achieve different levels of connectivity; we devise a test to identify good periods. We finish by discussing how these properties influence routing algorithms.

Efter finanskrisen 2008 ökade både arbetslöshet och högerpopulism på flera håll i Europa. I denna studie undersöks sambandet mellan arbetslöshet och högerpopulism med målet att avgöra om sambandet är kausalt. Med två olika beroende variabler för stöd samt röstning på högerpopulistiska partier, och tre olika nivåer på arbetslöshet som oberoende variabler, undersöks sambandet med en difference-in-difference analys med två års data över finanskrisen, där första perioden är precis innan krisen och andra perioden precis efter. Resultatet visar att arbetslöshet på landsnivå har en kausal positiv effekt på röstningsandelar för högerpopulistiska partier, vilket antyder att det är ”sociotropic voting” som är mekanismen genom vilken arbetslösheten påverkar högerpopulistiskt röstande.

This thesis deals with design and realization of the onboard computer for evaluating functional parameters and status of the gas engine. Designed solution is consisted of two main parts. The first part is measuring unit whose obtains actual information on engine especially consumption of fuel, rotate per minutes and temperature of engine head. The second part of the solution is formed by pocket computer with appropriate software. The application for the pocket computer processes data from the measuring unit and from GPS receiver, which is integrated in pocket computer. Wireless bluetooth technology is used for data transfer between measuring unit and pocket computer. The application in pocket computer displays and records each of obtained and computed data.

The aim of my dissertation work was to create an application for pocket PC with operating system Windows Mobile and touch screen, an application that would enable to position the current location of the pocket PC based on the GPS data, on distance measurement between two and more points of which the location is obtained from GPS, and on measurement of territory surface defined by certain number of points obtained from the GPS. The application also enables to display the characteristics of the received GPS signal, information about the number of visible satellites and also information about maximum deviation from positioning. In order to increase the accuracy of the positioning, an averaging function has been implemented. As additional function, a possibility of route location has been created. It measures the passed distance and records some other route characteristics. The application has been successfully tested on pocket PC E-ten M600+ and GPS receiver Navilock but it has been designed with general-purpose and should be compatible with all devices working with operating system Windows Mobile and touch screen. The text section of my dissertation work describes the positioning principle on the basis of satellites with known position, deals with the accuracy of these systems and describes few possibilities how to increase their accuracy. It also discusses the NMEA 0183 Protocol that is used by the majority of GPS modules for communication. The text section also describes several mathematic and cartographic calculations needed for realization of the application. In the end of the text section there is a detailed description of the created application.

Title: Ventilation - respiratory changes and diffusion of gases in the simulated snow avalanche. Goals: The aim of this study was to investigate different ventilation-respiratory parameters with breathing into the simulated snow avalanche with and without any air pockets. Method: An intervention randomized double blind crossover study was conducted on 12 male students of Military Department at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports of Charles University. The study was realized in the Krkonoše Mountains in the period January 14 - 18th, 2013 at an altitude of 762 m above sea level. Each volunteer underwent two phases of the experiment in a random order: 1st phase "AP"- breathing into the snow with a 1 L air pocket, and 2nd phase "NP"- breathing into the snow with no air pocket. Physiological parameters, especially fractions of O2 and CO2 in the airways and work of breathing (WoB) expressed as Pressure- Time Product (PTP) were recorded continuously. Results: The presence of the air pockets and size has an important role in the survival of buried avalanche victims. The finding of this study is that it is possible to breath in the avalanche snow even with no air pocket (0 L), but breathing under this condition is associated with significantly increased work of breathing. The limiting factor in no...

Today, the telecommunication world is focused on mobility. This is popular because since the 1990s most people have integrated their mobile phones into their life. A new factor is the rise of the voice over IP(VoIP) technology, with VoIP over Wireless LANs (WLANs) as the clear next growth area for mobile communications. The purpose of this thesis was to understand how to save power based upon changing when some operations are performed in a VoIP client. In order to do this, we decided to port minisip to an HP iPAQ 5500 Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), in order to explore some of the issues of running such a client on a PDA - due to its constraints with regard to storage, processing power, and battery power. Minisip is a SIP open source user agent running on Linux and Windows. This thesis builds upon earlier theses which showed that minisip can offer a secure communications platform with the latest functions which are desired in a mobile personal VoIP system. However, most of these earlier theses utilized desktop, laptop, or server based system, i.e., with few resources constrains. The focus of this thesis was to examine the case of a highly constrained user platform such as an iPAQ. / Dagens telekommunikationssystem fokuserar på mobilitet. Detta har blivit populärt under 90-talet då mobilitet blev naturligt integrerad i människans vardagliga liv i form av exempelvis mobiltelefoner. Voice over IP (VoIP) har blivit en stor del av dagen teknik där trådlösa system Wireless LANs (WLANs) har blivit en större del av mobilkommunikation. Målet med denna rapport är att förstå hur strömförbrukningen kan minimeras genom att utföra vissa operationer med hjälp av en VoIP-klient. För att åstadkomma detta porterade vi minisip, en SIP agent som är baserad på öppen källkod och körs på Linux och Windows, till en HP iPAQ 5500, en så kallad Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). Vi valde PDAn för att kunna utforska de begränsningar den medför i form av lagringsutrymme, processorkapacitet, och batteri. Denna rapport bygger vidare på tidigare rapporter som visar att minisip kan erbjuda en säker kommunikationsplattform med de senaste funktionerna som önskas i mobila VoIPsystem. De flesta av dessa tidigare rapporter baseras på system med få begränsningar rörande resurser såsom stationära- eller bärbara datorer samt serverbaserade system. Denna rapports fokus är att utforska detta fall i en miljö med större begränsningar på resurser som till exempel en iPAQ.

Over the past 50 years, several advancements have been made in the research area of the mechanics of unsaturated soils. These advancements can be categorized into two groups; (i) development (or improvement) of testing techniques (or apparatus) to determine the mechanical properties of unsaturated soils and (ii) development of (numerical, empirical or semi-empirical) models to estimate the variation of mechanical properties of unsaturated soils with respect to suction based on the experimental results. Implementation of the mechanics of unsaturated soils in conventional geotechnical engineering practice, however, has been rather limited. The key reasons for the limited practical applications may be attributed to the lack of simple and reliable methods for (i) measuring soil suction in the field quickly and reliably and (ii) estimating the variation of mechanical properties of unsaturated soils with respect to suction. The main objective of this thesis research is to develop simple and reliable techniques, models or approaches that can be used in geotechnical engineering practice to estimate sol suction and the mechanical properties of unsaturated soils. This research can be categorized into three parts. In the First Part, simple techniques are proposed to estimate the suction values of as-compacted unsaturated fine-grained soils using a pocket penetrometer and a conventional tensiometer. The suction values less than 300 kPa can be estimated using a strong relationship between the compressive strength measured using a pocket penetrometer and matric suction value. The high suction values in the range of 1,200 kPa to 60,000 kPa can be estimated using the unique relationship between the initial tangent of conventional tensiometer response versus time behavior and suction value. In the Second Part, approaches or semi-empirical models are proposed to estimate the variation of mechanical properties of unsaturated soils with respect to suction, which include: - Bearing capacity of unsaturated fine-grained soils - Variation of bearing capacity of unsaturated fine-grained soils with respect to matric suction - Variation of initial tangent elastic modulus of unsaturated soils below shallow foundations with respect to matric suction - Variation of maximum shear modulus with respect to matric suction for unsaturated non-plastic sandy soils (i.e. plasticity index, Ip = 0 %) In the Third Part, approaches (or methodologies) are suggested to simulate the vertically applied stress versus surface settlement behavior of shallow foundations in unsaturated coarse-grained soils assuming elastic-perfectly plastic behavior. These methodologies are extended to simulate the stress versus settlement behavior of both model footings and in-situ plates in unsaturated coarse-grained soils. The results show that there is a reasonably good comparison between the measured values (i.e. soil suction, bearing capacity, elastic and shear modulus) and those estimated using the techniques or models proposed in this thesis research. The models (or methodologies) proposed in this thesis research are promising and encouraging for modeling studies and practicing engineers to estimate the variation of mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils with respect to matric suction.

På friluftsmarknaden finns det idag ett tomrum i form av personifierbar och modifierbar utrustning. Ett steg mot detta kan vara accessoarer som fungerar som komplement till huvudutrustningen. Ett sådant komplement är bältesväskan, en extra typ av förvaring som enkelt kan sättas på och tas av från ett skärp eller en ryggsäcks höftbälte eller axelremmar.  Produkten som beskrivs i denna rapport är just en sådan bältesväska. Den har universella fästen som fungerar på band och bälten av olika storlek och riktning: både de som sitter vertikalt, likt en axelrem, och de som sitter horisontellt, som ett skärp. Vidare har den en storlek som snabbt kan justeras efter behov vilket gör den unik på marknaden. Med ett medföljande midjebälte är det dessutom enkelt att göra om den till midjeväska när så önskas.  Projektet har utförts som examensarbete i samarbete med det jämtlandska friluftsföretaget Lundhags. Målet med arbetet var att utveckla en prisvärd, funktionell bältesväska som ska fungera på så många ryggsäckar och bälten som möjligt samt upplevas som en attraktiv produkt att använda både i stadsmiljö och inom friluftslivet. Väskan är systematiskt utvecklad via stödmetoder som ingått i övergripande faser. Stödmetoderna gick ut på att först samla information om behov, önskemål och lösningar på funktioner, för att sedan skissa upp möjliga koncept. Därefter eliminerades koncepten tills enbart det mest lovande fanns kvar. Detta syddes upp i prototyper som utvärderades och modifierades, för att slutligen nå en färdig produkt.  Arbetet har varit avgränsat till att enbart handla om utformning, ej pris eller material.