Les arguments en faveur d’un rôle important de l'architecture des chromosomes en interphase pour la régulation des gènes et la maintenance du génome s’accumulent rapidement. Au cours de l'interphase, les chromosomes sont positionnés de façon non aléatoire l’un par rapport à l'autre et fournissent ainsi des points de repère nucléaires. Deux types d'interactions contribuent probablement à ce positionnement non aléatoire: (i) des domaines subchromosomiques interagissent avec des structures nucléaires telles l'enveloppe nucléaire (EN) et (ii) des interactions intrachromosomiques s’établissent entre des loci situés de façon linéairement distante en cis sur un même chromosome. Contribuant à l’expansion de ce domaine de recherche, nous avons poursuivi le développement d’une technique préalablement établie au laboratoire pour détecter des interactions protéine-protéine. Le développement de cette technique nouvelle a constitué une part de ce travail de thèse accompli sur des cellules humaines. Elle se base sur le marquage par la biotine de composants de la chromatine qui en interphase se trouvent à proximité immédiate de l’EN. Les cellules ont été traitées pour exprimer (i) la biotine ligase BirA fusionnée à l’émerine, une protéine de l’EN, conjointement avec (ii) une variante d’histone, l’histone macroH2A, en fusion avec un peptide accepteur de biotine. L'étiquette biotine déposée sur l’histone macroH2A pendant l'interphase est ensuite détectée par microscopie à fluorescence sur des cellules en mitose étalées sur lames. Les chromosomes mitotiques marqués peuvent en outre être caractérisés par des techniques plus classiques de caryotypage. Nous avons nommé cette technique «topokaryotypage» car elle peut fournir des informations d’ordre à la fois topologique et caryotypique. Son développement pas à pas a nécessité la production d'une lignée cellulaire ad hoc et une optimisation fine du protocole. Ce travail de thèse peut déboucher sur des questions biologiques explorées sur cellules uniques. A titre d’application, une analyse comparative a été réalisée par topokaryotypage sur des cellules cultivées in vitro dans diverses conditions de stress expérimentales. L’utilisation du topocaryotypage pourrait fournir des informations précieuses sur les mécanismes à la base de l’organisation et de la dynamtique des noyaux cellulaires. / Evidence is rapidly accumulating that the architecture of interphase chromosomes is important for both gene regulation and genome maintenance. During interphase, chromosomes are nonrandomly positioned with respect to each other and thus they provide nuclear landmarks. Two kinds of interactions are likely to contribute to this nonrandom positioning: (i) subchromosomal domains interact with nuclear structures such as the nuclear envelope (NE) and ii) intrachromosomal interactions take place between linearly distant loci positioned in cis on the same chromosome. As a contribution to this expanding research domain, we have built upon an existing approach previously established in the laboratory to detect protein-protein interactions. The new technique was developed in human cells as part of the present PhD research. It is based on biotin labelling of chromatin components which are in close proximity with the nuclear envelope (NE) in interphase cells. Cells were made to express (i) the biotin ligase BirA fused to the NE protein emerin together with (ii) a fusion between a biotin acceptor peptide and macroH2A, a variant core histone. The biotin label deposited on the macroH2A histone during interphase is then detected by fluorescence microscopy on mitotic cells spread on slides. The biotin-labelled mitotic chromosomes can be further characterized using more classical karyotyping techniques. We refer to this new technique as “Topokaryotyping” since it can provide both topological and karyotypic information. Its step-by-step development has required the establishment of an ad hoc cell line and a fine protocol optimization. This PhD work could pave the way for biological questions explored at a single cell level. As an illustration, a comparative topokaryotyping analysis was performed on cells cultivated in vitro in various experimental stress conditions. It is envisioned that using this technique can provide valuable mechanistic insights relevant to the organization and dynamics of cell nuclei.

This is a two-part story looking at women’s professional soccer in the United States. First, it is a look at the newly formed National Women’s Soccer League. The league is the third attempt to establish a women’s professional soccer league in the U.S. Low attendance, low-ticket sales, and poor team ownership spelled the end for past leagues. The United States Soccer Federation’s involvement in the league has team owners and players overwhelming confident that the league will be a success. Challenges await them as the NWSL looks to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors. The second part looks at women’s professional soccer in Texas. The first audio story focuses on the Houston Aces and Lauren Prewitt. Prewitt plays semi-professional soccer for the Aces. At 30 years old, she still has dreams to play professionally. Aces owner William Brumbaugh is hoping his team can be the first women’s soccer team from Texas, to play in a women’s top league. The second audio story puts a focus on the Austin Nationals and the Austin Women’s Soccer League. Both are attempting to build women’s soccer in Austin but are going about it different manners. Anna Villarreal is attempting to establish a team that is not as reliant on ticket sales as most teams are. Through community outreach and partnerships with local businesses she is hoping to build a team to compete in Europe come 2014. The AWSL is a local soccer league for women that is trying to establish itself in Austin. They receive little outside support in terms of funding but president and vice president Angela Molock and Casey Gannon are hoping the changes they have brought to the league can help it grow. The “Soccer In Austin” piece focuses on the local establishments that have given soccer fans a place to go to watch their favorite clubs on television. Fadó Irish Pub and Cuatro’s have established themselves as the more popular locales when it comes to showing soccer games on television. Others have attempted to emulate Fadó’s and Cuatros’ popularity but many have struggled to attract the committed fan base that have helped Fadó and Cuatro’s become the go-to spots to watch a soccer game in Austin. Aside from showing soccer matches, these places provide people who share interests to come together and interact. For those who come from soccer loving countries such as England and Ireland, these places help to remind of home. While not quite the same in every aspect, the fans have fully embraced having a place to go where they can watch a soccer match while drinking a pint and engage in some friendly banter. / text

L’obsession pour la croissance économique domine le discours politique. Le déterminant principal de la croissance de long terme avancé par les théories de croissance endogène est l’innovation, mais l’environnement institutionnel de l’activité économique est également un élément primordial d’explication du rythme de la croissance, et en particulier, au sein de cet environnement, la concurrence, dont le rôle est très discuté. L’objet de cette thèse est d’étudier certaines dimensions de la croissance, de ses déterminants et des politiques qui cherchent à la favoriser, en particulier l’innovation et la concurrence. La première partie s’intéresse à deux types de politiques d’encouragement à l’innovation. La première est le soutien public direct, à travers une étude de l’impact du crédit d’impôt recherche (chapitre 1). La deuxième politique examinée est l’évolution du cadre juridique de l’innovation (chapitre 2). Le modèle théorique présenté entend tenir compte des nouvelles pratiques du droit de la propriété intellectuelle. La deuxième partie aborde l’environnement institutionnel au sens large, et en particulier la concurrence. Elle s’ouvre par une comparaison internationale du niveau de la concurrence entre la France et plusieurs pays européens dans divers secteurs s’appuyant sur une méthode économétrique fondée sur des équations de croissance (chapitre 3). Deux secteurs sont ensuite analysés en détail : la filière agro-alimentaire, dont l’équilibre a largement été modifié au profit de la grande distribution ces dernières années (chapitre 4), et le secteur hôtels-cafésrestaurants (chapitre 5). / Political discourse is imbued with an obsession for economic growth. The main determinant of long-term growth in endogenous growth theory is innovation, but the institutional environment of economic activity is also an important explanatory factor. In particular, within this environment, competition plays a major, though controversial, role. The purpose of this thesis is to study some aspects of growth, of its determinants and of policies that seek to promote it. Two aspects in particular will be studied, innovation and competition. The first part focuses on two types of policies aimed at encouraging innovation. The first policy is direct government support, studied through an analysis of the impact of the Research Tax Credit (Chapter 1). The second policy considered is the legal framework for innovation (Chapter 2). The theoretical model presented intends to take into account new practices in intellectual property law. The second part deals with the institutional environment in general, and in particular competition. It starts with an international comparison of the level of competition between France and several European countries in various sectors, using an econometric method based on growth equations (Chapter 3). Two sectors are then analyzed in detail : the food industry (Chapter 4), where the balance of power has been tipped in favour of large retailers, and accomodation and food services activities (Chapter 5).

Business processes are increasingly used by organizations to automate their activities. Written in languages like WS-BPEL, they allow an institution to describe precisely its internal operations. As the pace of change increases, however, both organizations and their internal processes are required to be more flexible; they have to account for an increasing amount of externally-driven environment state, or context, and modify their behavior accordingly. This puts a significant burden on business-process programmers, who now have to source, track, and update context from multiple entities, in addition to implementing and maintaining core business logic. Implementing this state-maintenance logic in a WS-BPEL business process is involved. This is because WS-BPEL business processes are modeled as if they were the only thing operating in, and making changes to, the business environment. This mental model does not reflect the real world, where organizations and entities depend on state that is outside their control – state that is modified independent of, and concurrent with, the organization’s activities. This makes it hard for business-process programmers to write context-dependent processes in a concise manner. This thesis presents a solution to this problem based on the notion of a context variable for WS-BPEL business processes. It describes how context variables are designed using the WS-BPEL language-extension mechanism, and how these variables can be used in business processes. It also outlines an architecture for offering context in the web services environment that uses constructs from the WS-Resource Framework specification. It shows how changes in context can be propagated from these context sources to WS-BPEL context variables using WS-Notification-based publish/subscribe. The design also includes a standards-compliant method for extending web-service responses with references to context sources. Finally, a prototype validating the overall system is described, and enhancements for increasing the utility of context variables proposed. This solution offers significant advantages: it builds on established practices and well-understood message-exchange patterns, leverages widely used languages, frameworks and specifications, is standards compliant, and has a low barrier-to-entry for business-process programmers. Moreover, when compared to existing alternatives, this solution requires significantly less process logic and fewer interface changes to maintain constantly changing environment state.

Business processes are increasingly used by organizations to automate their activities. Written in languages like WS-BPEL, they allow an institution to describe precisely its internal operations. As the pace of change increases, however, both organizations and their internal processes are required to be more flexible; they have to account for an increasing amount of externally-driven environment state, or context, and modify their behavior accordingly. This puts a significant burden on business-process programmers, who now have to source, track, and update context from multiple entities, in addition to implementing and maintaining core business logic. Implementing this state-maintenance logic in a WS-BPEL business process is involved. This is because WS-BPEL business processes are modeled as if they were the only thing operating in, and making changes to, the business environment. This mental model does not reflect the real world, where organizations and entities depend on state that is outside their control – state that is modified independent of, and concurrent with, the organization’s activities. This makes it hard for business-process programmers to write context-dependent processes in a concise manner. This thesis presents a solution to this problem based on the notion of a context variable for WS-BPEL business processes. It describes how context variables are designed using the WS-BPEL language-extension mechanism, and how these variables can be used in business processes. It also outlines an architecture for offering context in the web services environment that uses constructs from the WS-Resource Framework specification. It shows how changes in context can be propagated from these context sources to WS-BPEL context variables using WS-Notification-based publish/subscribe. The design also includes a standards-compliant method for extending web-service responses with references to context sources. Finally, a prototype validating the overall system is described, and enhancements for increasing the utility of context variables proposed. This solution offers significant advantages: it builds on established practices and well-understood message-exchange patterns, leverages widely used languages, frameworks and specifications, is standards compliant, and has a low barrier-to-entry for business-process programmers. Moreover, when compared to existing alternatives, this solution requires significantly less process logic and fewer interface changes to maintain constantly changing environment state.

Analysis of competetion

Aedes aegypti (Ae. aegypti) is one of the most important vectors of dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever viruses. The use of chemical control strategies such as insecticides is associated with problems including the development of insecticide resistance, side effects on animal and human health, and environmental concerns. Because current methods have not proven sufficient to control these diseases, developing novel, genetics-based, control strategies to limit the transmission of disease is urgently needed. Increased knowledge about mosquito-pathogen relationships and the molecular biology of mosquitoes now makes it possible to generate transgenic mosquito strains that are unable to transmit various parasites or viruses. Ae. aegypti genetic experiments are enabled, and limited by, the catalog of promoter elements available to drive transgene expression. To find a promoter able to drive robust expression of firefly (FF) luciferase in Ae. aegypti embryos, an experiment was designed to compare Ae. aegypti endogenous and exogenous promoters. The PUb promoter was found to be extremely robust in expression of FF luciferase in different stages of embryonic development from 2-72 hours after injection. In subsequent experiments, transformation frequency was calculated using four different promoters (IE1, UbL40, hsp82 and PUb) to express the Mos1 transposase open reading frame in Mos1-mediated transgenesis. Germline transformation efficiency and size of transgenic cluster were not significantly different when using endogenous Ae. aegypti PUb or the commonly used exogenous Drosophila hsp82 promoter to express Mos1 transposase. This study also describes the development of new tools for gene editing in the Ae. aegypti mosquito genome and the use of these tools to design an efficient gene drive system in this mosquito. Homing endonucleases (HEs) are selfish elements which catalyze double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) breaks in a sequence-specific manner. The activities of four HEs (Y2-I-AniI, I-CreI, I-PpoI, and I-SceI) were investigated for their ability to catalyze the excision of genomic segments from the Ae. aegypti genome. All four enzymes were found to be active in Ae. aegypti; however, the activity of Y2-I-AniI was higher compared to the other three enzymes. Single-strand annealing (SSA) and non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathways were identified as mechanisms to repair HE-induced dsDNA breaks. TALE nucleases (TALENs) are a group of artificial enzymes capable of generating site-specific DNA lesions. To examine the ability of TALENs for gene editing in Ae. aegypti, a pair of TALENs targeted to the kmo gene were expressed from a plasmid following embryonic injection. Twenty to forty percent of fertile G0 produced white-eyed progeny which resulted from disruption of the kmo gene. Most of these individuals produced more than 20% white-eyed progeny, with some producing up to 75%. A small deletion of one to seven bp occurred at the TALEN recognition site. These results show that TALEN and HEs are highly active in the Ae. aegypti germline and can be used for gene editing and gene drive strategies in Ae. aegypti. / Ph. D.

No description available.

Efficient data collection is one of the key research areas for 5G and beyond, since it can reduce the network burden of transferring massive data for various data analytics and machine learning applications. Specifically, 5G offers great support for massive deployment of IoT devices, and the number of IoT devices is exploding.There are mainly two complementary ways for achieving efficient data collection: one is integrating data processing into the collection process via e.g. data filtering, aggregation; the other one is reducing the amount of the data needs to be transferred via e.g. data compression/approximation.In this thesis, efficient data collection is studied from the mentioned two perspectives. In particular, we introduce enhanced syntax and functionalities to the message queueing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol, such as data filtering and data aggregation. Furthermore, we enhance the flexibility of MQTT by supporting customized or user-defined functions to be executed in the MQTT broker, and thus data processing in the broker will not be constrained to the predefined processing functions. Lastly, dual prediction is studied for reducing the data transmissions by maintaining the same learning model on both sides of the sender and receiver. In particular, we study and prototype least mean square (LMS) as the dual prediction algorithm. Our implementations are based on MQTT and the benefits are shown and evaluated via experiments using real IoT data. / Effektiv datainsamling är ett av de viktigaste forskningsområdena för 5G och därefter, eftersom det kan minska nätbördan för att överföra massiva data för olika dataanalyser och maskininlärningsapplikationer. Specifikt erbjuder 5G bra stöd för massiv distribution av IoT-enheter, och antalet IoT-enheter exploderar.Det finns huvudsakligen två komplementära sätt att uppnå effektiv datainsamling: ett är att integrera databehandling i insamlingsprocessen via t.ex. datafiltrering, aggregering; den andra minskar mängden data som behöver överföras via t.ex. datakomprimering / tillnärmning.I denna avhandling studeras effektiv datainsamling ur nämnda två perspektiv.I synnerhet introducerar vi förbättrad syntax och funktionalitet till meddelandekö telemetri-transportprotokollet (MQTT), till exempel datafiltrering och dataggregation. Dessutom förbättrar vi MQTT-flexibiliteten genom att stödja anpassade eller användardefinierade funktioner som ska köras i MQTT-mäklaren, och därför kommer databehandling i mäklaren inte att begränsas till de fördefinierade behandlingsfunktionerna. Slutligen studeras dubbla förutsägelser för att minska dataöverföringarna genom att bibehålla samma inlärningsmodell på båda sidornaav avsändaren och mottagaren. I synnerhet studerar och prototypar vi minst genomsnitt kvadrat (LMS) som den dubbla förutsägelsealgoritmen. Våra implementeringar är baserade på MQTT och fördelarna visas och utvärderas via experiment med verkliga IoT-data.

Ireland is a country with a rich and unique cultural heritage. It is difficult to imagine that certain facets of Irish culture (e.g. Saint Patrick's Day, the Blarney Stone, or the Ring of Kerry) can ever be taken for granted since they are so widely recognized internationally. One common feature of Irish life that possibly warrants more scholarly attention is the public house or pub. Much has been written about pubs as quaint institutions in popular literature and fiction. Curiously, they remain largely overlooked as vital aspects of Irish culture by anthropologists and others in the social sciences. In many ways, socio-cultural research on pub life in Ireland is woefully under examined. In an effort to better evaluate the significance of traditional pub life to Irish culture, my thesis seeks to integrate and critically assess the existing socio-cultural literature on Irish pub life. Such work will not only help highlight both the commonalities and discrepancies within this area of study, it will more significantly identify those areas of Irish pub life that can benefit from further academic investigation. Two recent trips to Ireland in September 2004 and May 2006, allowed me to observe important aspects of pub life first hand. It became apparent from these encounters that, like the history of Ireland itself, local pubs have a rich historical foundation. Many of the pubs that I visited have been in existence or operational since the Middle Ages. Based on this longevity, one can reasonably argue that pubs in Ireland function largely as locales of social significance and cultural reproduction, not just centers of recreational drinking. Using my travel experience as a starting point for the critical analysis phase of this thesis project, I have developed three general research questions that I will explore to varying degrees in the context of this work. These are: (1) what are the origins of pubs in Ireland?; (2) what explicit and implicit functions do pubs serve in Irish communities?; and (3) what possible developments are likely to affect Irish pubs in the near and distant future?