Introduction: The mechanism of cell activation by LPS in the absence of surface Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is unclear. We hypothesize that ICAM-1 binds LPS on the cell surface, mediating cell activation independent of TLR4. Methods: The interaction between murine ICAM-1 and LPS was measured in a binding assay. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) isolated from TLR4 deficient mice were stimulated with LPS. Cell activation was measured by flow cytometry and cytokine production. The role of ICAM-1 in cell activation was determined by siRNA transfection. Results: Murine ICAM-1 binds LPS. TLR4 deficient AMs respond to LPS stimulation by upregulation of LPS binding sites, ICAM-1 expression and cytokine release. Cell activation is attenuated by treatment with polymyxin B and ICAM-1 gene silencing. Conclusions: ICAM-1 binds LPS and is important in TLR4-independent cell activation. Strategies devised to target ICAM-1 may have the potential to block the excessive inflammatory response seen in gram-negative sepsis.

Introduction: The mechanism of cell activation by LPS in the absence of surface Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is unclear. We hypothesize that ICAM-1 binds LPS on the cell surface, mediating cell activation independent of TLR4. Methods: The interaction between murine ICAM-1 and LPS was measured in a binding assay. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) isolated from TLR4 deficient mice were stimulated with LPS. Cell activation was measured by flow cytometry and cytokine production. The role of ICAM-1 in cell activation was determined by siRNA transfection. Results: Murine ICAM-1 binds LPS. TLR4 deficient AMs respond to LPS stimulation by upregulation of LPS binding sites, ICAM-1 expression and cytokine release. Cell activation is attenuated by treatment with polymyxin B and ICAM-1 gene silencing. Conclusions: ICAM-1 binds LPS and is important in TLR4-independent cell activation. Strategies devised to target ICAM-1 may have the potential to block the excessive inflammatory response seen in gram-negative sepsis.

Support provision is a personal and important element of daily life for many people with disabilities. The study examines the ways in which organizational mandates and philosophies shape interactions between people with disabilities and support providers at two unique organizations: a L’Arche community for people with intellectual disabilities and a Independent Living Resource Centre. The project is framed with the social model of disability, the work of Titchkosky (2003) and human geography. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, including a scenario component, with administrators at each location, people with disabilities using the services and support providers. The findings demonstrate that both organizations have strongly articulated philosophies that the participants are familiar with. The L’Arche model creates an environment that determines certain ways of interacting and while the IL participants amend the philosophy to reflect the daily reality of support provision. / October 2007

The overall purpose of this study was to better understand why youth travellers are visiting Manitoba. A web-survey was administered to visitors of the Hostelling International - Canada, Manitoba Region website. Youth leisure travellers planning to visit Manitoba were found to be between 24 and 28 years of age, mostly from Canada and Australia, not students, but educated and employed, with between $501 and $3,500 available for travel purposes. Respondents’ travel plans were found to include; travel alone or with one other person, an average stay of 5 days planned for Manitoba, travel by rented vehicle or by bus, and the use of the internet, guidebooks and family and friends as information sources prior to travel. Dominant motives for travel to Manitoba were uncovered, and relationships of Manitoba specific travel motives were found with several demographic and travel characteristics. The results of this study can be used by the Manitoba tourism sector to market Manitoba travel experiences and to emphasize how they cater to one or more dominant travel motives. This will enable them to better attract and satisfy their customers. / October 2007

This dissertation considers a class of closely related NP-hard otpimization problems on graphs that arise in many important applications, including network-based data mining, analysis of the stock market, social networks, coding theory, fault diagnosis, molecular biology, biochemistry and genomics. In particular, the problems of interest include the classical maximum independent set problem (MISP) and maximum clique problem (MCP), their vertex-weighted vesrions, as well as novel optimization models that can be viewed as practical relaxations of their classical counterparts. The concept of clique has been a popular instrument in analysis of networks, and is, essentially, an idealized model of a “closely connected group”, or a cluster. But, at the same time, the restrictive nature of the definition of clique makes the clique model impractical in many applications. This motivated the development of clique relaxation models that relax different properties of a clique. On the one hand, while still possessing some clique-like properties, clique relaxations are not as “perfect” as cliques; and on the other hand, they do not exhibit the disadvantages associated with a clique. Using clique relaxations allows one to compromise between perfectness and flexibility, between ideality and reality, which is a usual issue that an engineer deals with when applying theoretical knowledge to solve practical problems in industry. The clique relaxation models studied in this dissertation were first proposed in the literature on social network analysis, however they have not been well investigated from a mathematical programming perspective. This dissertation considers new techniques for solving the MWISP and clique relaxation problems and investigates their effectiveness from theoretical and computational perspectives. The main results obtained in this work include (i) developing a scale-reduction approach for MWISP based on the concept of critical set and comparing it theoretically with other approaches; (ii) obtaining theoretical complexity results for clique relaxation problems; (iii) developing algorithms for solving the clique relaxation problems exactly; (iv) carrying out computational experiments to demonstrate the performance of the proposed approaches, and, finally, (v) applying the obtained theoretical results to several real-life problems.

Abstract SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) has become a popular work arrangement all over the world because of the growth of knowledge workers, the trend of outsourcing, and the development of Internet. As we can see, there were 680,000 SOHO in Japan in 1996, and 43,000,000 SOHO in America in 1997; moreover, according to the investigations of SOHO magazine, SOHO has reached up to 20% of total work population in Taiwan. However, what kinds of jobs do these SOHO do? What are their motives of choosing to be a SOHO? What kinds of competitive advantages do they have? What¡¦s the current situation of these SOHO? And are there any special requirements for people who want to be SOHO? These questions and issues are what we¡¦re intersted in. According to the purposes of this research, we have discovered some important results: a. The demographic statitics of SOHO: We find out that most SOHO in Taiwan are female, single, about 25~34 years old, bachelor degree, major in science & engineering or business & management, work at home, living in north Taiwan. They usually have more than 10 years work experience, but only 2 years or less in SOHO field. The monthly income are about 40,000~60,000. Most people regard SOHO as a part-time job and devote themselves to designing-orietated works. b. The motives of being SOHO: ¡§To have more free time¡¨, ¡§to increase income¡¨, ¡§to be one¡¦s own master¡¨, ¡§to satisfy achievements¡¨, and ¡§to have different life¡¨ are the five topic motives of being SOHO. c. The current situation and competitive advantages of SOHO: We discuss these issues in four parts, including the current situation, the way of getting cases, the clients, and the future of SOHO. We also find out that ¡§professional knowledge & techniques¡¨ is the most important comparative advantage, which can be accumulated from previous work experience. d. The charateristics of being SOHO: We propose two factors in the characteristics of being SOHO; they are ¡§getting cases factor¡¨ and ¡§work result factor¡¨. We also find out that the ¡§work result factor¡¨ has mainly influence on reaching high achivements of SOHO work.

A three dimensional (3-D) capacitance extraction algorithm based on a kernel independent hierarchical method and geometric moments is described. Several techniques are incorporated, which leads to a better overall performance for arbitrary interconnect systems. First, the new algorithm hierarchically partitions the bounding box of all interconnect panels to build the partition tree. Then it uses simple shapes to match the low order moments of the geometry of each box in the partition tree. Finally, with the help of a fast matrix-vector product, GMRES is used to solve the linear system. Experimental results show that our algorithm reduces the linear system's size greatly and at the same time maintains a satisfying accuracy. Compared with FastCap, the running time of the new algorithm can be reduced more than a magnitude and the memory usage can be reduced more than thirty times.

This study proposes a polarization-independent liquid-crystal Fresnel lens using twisted nematic liquid crystals (TN-LCs) with two electrodes structure. A photoresist type has high diffraction efficiency, high diffraction efficiency and good polarization independence characteristic. However, its diffraction cannot be completely switched off. A patterned electrode type has the characteristics of the switch-off and good polarization independence. However, it has low diffraction efficiency. We improve the patterned electrode type with two electrodes structure. Experimental results reveal that LC Fresnel lens using the TN-LC with two electrode structures has high diffraction efficiency and a good polarization-independent characteristic.

The goal of this study is to understand the institutional and cultural relationship between modern American independent film and the Academy Awards by focusing on the rise in success for independent films from 1992-2007. Two are two main approaches implemented throughout the work. The first focuses on the cultural construction of the indie brand on certain films during this time and the second analyzes how a production or distribution company tries to strategize the marketing of their films to boost their Oscar chances. These approaches allow a conversation for the occurrences of when these two meet and provide a coherent film identity I have identified as an “Oscar indie.” Starting with Miramax in the 1990s and ending with the Oscar race of 2007-08 a trend can be found which shows a rise in success of “indie” branded films at the Academy Awards. The implications of this trend are as simple as more “indie” films being released each year and as complicated as changing the face of the American film industry as a whole. / text

published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy