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Spiral of silence has been published for 30 years, and been tested in many areas, however these test are not all qualified. This study aims to interpret spiral of silence theory and to inspect if there are any misuse in these test. First, we interpret these theory form the origin of the theory and it¡¦s deducing process, and built an theory model. Then inspect those test based on this model. The result discovered that most of these test stressed on testing people¡¦s willingness to speak out, and misleaded to compare one¡¦s opinion and one¡¦s perception of majority. This comprehension gap may comes from the wrong variable definition in the operational models. For this sake, this study offered a theory model to overcome this gap.

Thèse de doctorat : Virologie : Paris 12 : 2007. / Version électronique uniquement consultable au sein de l'Université Paris 12 (Intranet). Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. : 260 réf.

Place is highly connected with outdoor education; it is defined by the location of the learning process and it designates both practically and theoretically ways to foster to students a strong bond with natural places. Place attachment refers to this bond or, in other words, the love relationship, one can develop with a place. This research tries to investigate if there is a causal relationship between outdoor education and development of place attachment. A quasi-experimental design research was conducted to 31 teenagers, 12-13 years old. A questionnaire, for measuring the level of place attachment to the natural surroundings of their school, was distributed at two different timelines. Four different dimensions of place attachment were measured; place identity, place dependence, social bonding and nature bonding. The experimental group participated in the program “Attachment to my Local Natural Landscape”, which was developed especially for this study and promoted direct connection with the land, through outdoor activities. The control group received no intervention. The results demonstrated that the program influenced only the female participants of the experimental group. No significant differences were indicated between the two groups after the implementation of the program. The small sample and the short length program implemented were important limitations of this study, which demand further future research to extract more clear results.

Ausgehend vom klassischen linearen Modell werden Regressionsmethoden für Datenstrukturen dargestellt, bei denen die Standardannahmen (Unabhängigkeit, normalverteilte Fehler und konstante Varianz) nicht erfüllt sind. Läßt man die Responsevariable aus einer Exponentialfamilie zu, so erhält man die Klasse generalisierter linearer Modelle (GLM) . Dies erlaubt, den Erwartungswert von verschiedensten stetigen und diskreten Responsevariablen (z .B. Anteile, Häufigkeiten, etc.) über eine fixe Kovariatenstruktur zu modellieren. Hebt man zusatzlich die Notwendigkeit auf, eine Verteilung aus Exponentialfamilien spezifizieren zu müssen, erhält man Quasi-Likelihood Modelle, bei denen nur mehr eine Beziehung zwischen Erwartungswert und Varianz festgelegt werden muß. Die Berücksichtigung einer Korrelationsstruktur führt zu verallgemeinerten Schätzgleichungen, d.h. es können auch Longitudinaldaten ohne besondere Verteilungsannahmen analysiert werden. Ziel der Arbeit ist es, diese Methoden und ihre statistischen Eigenschaften vorzustellen und anhand eines Beispiels (Überdispersion bei wiederholt gemessenen binomialen Anteilen) ihre Bedeutung in der biometrischen Praxis zu illustrieren. (Autorenref.) / Series: Forschungsberichte / Institut für Statistik

Για ένα, μάλλον, μακρύ διάστημα, (1950-1975) οι Μαθηματικοί ασχολήθηκαν με την εμφύτευση μιας αντιμεταθετικής τοπολογικής ημιομάδας σε ομάδα. Είναι γνωστό ότι για ημιομάδα S έχουμε αλγεβρική εμφύτευση στο σχέση ισοδυναμίας = , όπου στοιχεία της καινούργιας ομάδας). Το νέο στοιχείο είναι ότι ενώ η συνθήκη εμφύτευσης αναφέρεται σε Ομοιόμορφο χώρο, έχει εισαχθεί ο Η- μι-Ομοιόμορφος χώρος. Οι διαφορές μεταξύ των δύο χώρων είναι τεράστιες και ακριβώς, εκεί έγκειται η δημιουργικότητα της νέας δομής. Έτσι, η πρώτη θεώρηση για τη διατριβή είναι η προσπάθεια επιστημόνων να βρούνε συνθήκες, ώστε να μπορεί μια τοπολογική αντιμεταθετική ημιομάδα ( S,.,τ) (με τη συνήθη έννοια των . και τ ) να εμφυτεύεται στη δομή η γνωστή ισοδυ- ναμία ad=bc αν ). Τα έξη πρώτα εδάφια είναι εισαγωγικά. Στη συνέχεια εκθέτουμε όλη τη μεθοδο- λογία του θέματος / --

Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes have been intensively studied in the past decade for their capacity-approaching performance. LDPC code implementation complexity and the error-rate floor are still two significant unsolved issues which prevent their application in some important communication systems. In this dissertation, we make efforts toward solving these two problems by introducing the design of a class of LDPC codes called structured irregular repeat-accumulate (S-IRA) codes. These S-IRA codes combine several advantages of other types of LDPC codes, including low encoder and decoder complexities, flexibility in design, and good performance on different channels. It is also demonstrated in this dissertation that the S-IRA codes are suitable for rate-compatible code family design and a multi-rate code family has been designed which may be implemented with a single encoder/decoder.The study of the error floor problem of LDPC codes is very difficult because simulating LDPC codes on a computer at very low error rates takes an unacceptably long time. To circumvent this difficulty, we implemented a universal quasi-cyclic LDPC decoder on a field programmable gate array (FPGA) platform. This hardware platform accelerates the simulations by more than 100 times as compared to software simulations. We implemented two types of decoders with partially parallel architectures on the FPGA: a circulant-based decoder and a protograph-based decoder. By focusing on the protograph-based decoder, different soft iterative decoding algorithms were implemented. It provides us with a platform for quickly evaluating and analyzing different quasi-cyclic LDPC codes, including the S-IRA codes. A universal decoder architecture is also proposed which is capable of decoding of an arbitrary LDPC code, quasi-cyclic or not. Finally, we studied the low-floor problem by focusing on one example S-IRA code. We identified the weaknesses of the code and proposed several techniques to lower the error floor. We successfully demonstrated in hardware that it is possible to lower the floor substantially by encoder and decoder modifications, but the best solution appeared to be an outer BCH code.

More strict control quality requirements are raised to the synthesis of modern algorithmic control systems which can not be satisfied by using classical methods of systems synthesis. Also, the usage of them sometimes becomes impossible, e.g. in cases when a mathematical model of the control object is described by means of complex differential equations or in cases when the model itself is unknown. By applying the suggested synthesis methods of quasi-optimal and variable structure systems as well as algorithms, it is possible to avoid disadvantages common with classical synthesis methods.

No description available.

Glutathione transferases (GSTs) are good candidates for investigations of enzyme evolution, due to their broad substrate specificities and structural homology. The primary role of GSTs is to act as phase II detoxifying enzymes protecting the cell from toxic compounds of both endo- and exogenous origins. The detoxification is conducted via conjugation with glutathione (GSH), which facilitates their removal from the body. The work presented in this thesis has supported a theory for enzyme evolution when the multiple pathway to novel functions can been seen to involve a “generalist” state from which “specialist” states with a new activities can evolve. The generalist has broader specificity and lower activity than the specialist. The term quasi-species is used for a group or cluster of enzyme variants with similar functional properties, and this entity has been suggested as the fittest group for further evolution. This is based on studies of the evolution of new GST variants in two generation. Three diverging clusters or quasi-species, with diverging substrate selectivity, were identified from a GST M1/M2 library, by using directed evolution (family DNA shuffling), multiple substrate screening and multivariate statistics as tools. One of the clusters was M1-like and the other was M2-like, both functionally and structurally. The third quasi-species diverged orthogonally from the parent-like distributions. Its functional character can be referred to as a “generalist” as it had lower activities with most of the substrates assayed except for epoxy-3-(4-nitrophenoxy)-propane (EPNP) and p-nitrophenyl acetate (pNPA). Another round of family DNA shuffling was made with selected variants from the “generalist” quasi-species. From the second generation three quasi-species emerged with diverging functions and sequences. The major cluster contained enzyme variants that represented a direct propagation of the generalists. Diverging from the generalists was a cluster with high specificity with isothiocyanates (ITCs). Increased ITC specificity and decreased epoxide specificity was observed among the novel variants (specialists). The change in functional properties was attributed to a Tyr116His substitution in the active site. These results demonstrate the usefulness of multivariate analysis in the quest for novel enzyme quasi-species in a multi-substrate space, and how minimal changes in the active site can generate distinctive functional properties. An application of our method could be identification of enzyme quasi-species that have lost their sensitivity with alternative inhibitors.