The study of Roman frontiers tends to concentrate on the historical development and military tactics, in construction and actions, of the Roman army. Little attention has been given to the daily life of the soldiers; and those studies that address daily organisation tend to rely upon interpretations that were made about the Roman army in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Furthermore, the scholars who have researched this aspect tend to apply their arguments to the army as a whole, believing it to have been an homogenous group of people. The early interpretations were often based on anachronistic views that the Roman army was organised and operated in a similar manner to the military system of the time these early archaeologists were writing. One area of the organisation of the Roman army that requires greater deliberation is health care, many aspects of which are taken for granted or interpreted on the basis of understandings made by scholars early on in the development of the discipline. The more recent theories about the system of medical care in the army are also based on rather sparse supporting evidence. It is, therefore, the aim of this thesis to make a two-fold examination of the subject by examining legionary and auxiliary fortifications on the Rhine, Upper and Middle Danube and British frontiers. Queries are raised about previous scholarship in order to see if there is sufficient evidence to support the interpretations and understandings on which more recent scholarshipis based. Following this, new questions are asked of the archaeological and epigraphical material, in the context of more recent anthropological, historical and theoretical archaeological methods not previously applied in studies of Roman military medicine. The main issues are: to see if there is evidence to support the idea of a single system of medical care in the army or if the evidence shows variation within the system, either between the provinces or units; whether there was a difference in care offered to the auxiliary and legionary units; if there is evidence for civilians being treated by military doctors; and if there is evidence for cultural variation of medical practice within the units. The questions are broached by comparing the epigraphical, archaeological and architectural remains relating to medical treatment. Inscriptions mentioning doctors are examined to see if these support the idea of differences in the types of doctors employed according to frontier and unit type. In order to gain information about the cultural background of doctors and the development of medical care in the army the home of the doctors and the dates of the inscriptions are also examined. Medical instruments are employed as a source of evidence to determine the distribution and range of health care in the army. Not only are the instruments compared between fortifications and frontiers to see if there is evidence for medical variation, but they are examined for their context and deposition.It is argued that depositional processes can tell us much about how people understood medical tools and their associations with disease, wounds and death. Finally, the archaeological evidence of buildings identified as military hospitals is considered. In particular, it is questioned whether there is enough evidence to support the definition of the 'hospitals' as hospitals. Artefactual remains from within 'hospitals' are examined and compared when known, as are the plan and layout of each structure that has been recognised as a hospital. The description of Roman hospitals is frequently presented as if they were planned to serve the same functions as modem hospitals, so a comparison of these buildings and their functions, both civilian and military, is made with later (medieval and early-post-medieval) hospitals. Questions of the cultural construction of space are brought into this chapter as a means of demonstrating that the construction and use of buildings is culturally variable and not always undertaken according to a common sense or functional approach as understood in the modem west. It is apparent that our current identification of certain structures as 'hospitals' is far from secure. The thesis concludes by arguing that there is no solid evidence for the existence of a single medical system within the Roman army. A combination of military events and circumstancesa long with cultural variation in the make-up of the units provides the most plausible explanation for this pattern of variability.

In 1968, Rein Taagepera created growth curves of four empires by measuring the surface area of each and plotting his data on a graph of area versus time. He used his growth curves to analyse the development of empires quantitatively, as he considered surface area to be the best measurable indicator of an empire’s strength. His growth curve of the Roman Empire, in particular, has been referenced numerous times by scholars researching the decline and fall of complex civilizations to support their individual analyses of the collapse of Rome. While this thesis surveys only the territories of the Western Roman Empire, many of the parameters used by Taagepera have been either borrowed or adapted in order to define, measure, and graph the surface area of the Western Empire as precisely as possible. This thesis also adds further precision and validity to Bryan Ward-Perkins’ theory that surface area can be used to analyse and quantify the collapse of a complex society accurately. In order to demonstrate the extent to which differing circumstances and outcomes of provincial history impacted the total surface area of the Western Roman Empire, it was essential to include not only an overview of Rome’s extensive history, but also to establish the chronology, as it related to the Roman Empire, of each individual province, territory, and client kingdom within the Western Empire. Detailed chronologies of Noricum and Britannia have been included to serve as case studies as they comprise a broad range of distinct characteristics and so represent typical western provinces. My research of the history and geography of the Roman Empire has generated a comprehensive inventory that includes all the pertinent onomastic and chronological data needed to measure the surface area of each of Rome’s western provinces and client kingdoms. When plotted on a graph of area versus time, my data not only produced an accurate representation of the actual surface area of the Western Roman Empire, but also one that facilitates temporal analyses of territorial fluctuations at any given point in the Empire’s history until the fall of the Western Empire in CE 476.

In this thesis, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish accession of European Union is investigated. Agricultural production, consumption and trade patterns of Greece, Portugal and Spain have changed by the full application of Common Agricultural Policy. The commodity composition of these countries experienced an adjustment, too. The production of vegetables, fruits, fish and other typical Mediterranean products have increased. The composition of consumption has moved from low-income elastic products to high-income elastic products. The agricultural trade direction of these countries has shifted to the European Union. Trade with neighbouring EU member states increased relatively faster than the trade increase with other members of the European Union. Most of the trade volume of these countries is with the Mediterranean countries of the European Union.

Differential gene expression plays a key role in developmental pathways within an organism. Examples of such pathways include primary sex determination signaling and the formation of secondary sexual characteristics. This dissertation is focused on the use of suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) to identify genes that are differentially expressed and involved in some aspect of sexual development in the Mediterranean fruit fly (medfly), Ceratitis capitata. In the course ofthis project, a method for sexing individual specimens from pre-adult stages was developed. This method was used to collect sex-specific RNAs at different developmental stages for use in SSH. A total of25 subtraction products were obtained across all the stages examined. Analysis of these products revealed that approximately half were similar to cytoplasmic ribosomal proteins and mitochondrial ribosomal RNA The remaining products represent putative medfly homologs of other previously identified genes or potentially novel genes One ofthe subtraction products, representing a potentially novel gene, was characterized in detail. This gene, named mapotge', represents a novel medfly gene that appears to encode a polypeptide of 299 amino acids. The N-terminus of this polypeptide contains a BTB-POZ domain. This domain functions as a protein-protein interaction motif found in a wide range of organisms from humans to Drosophila that mediates protein dimerization and oligomerization. The temporal expression pattern of mapotge' was determined using RT-PCR and Northern blot analysis. These revealed that the transcript is expressed throughout embryogenesis in both females and males, and in adult females that are > 0.5 days post-eclosion. Minimal expression is observed in female and male third instar larvae, early pupae, and in adult males. Studies were also initiated to characterize the representation of additioual sequences containing a BTB-POZ domain in the medfly genome. This was performed using Southern blot analysis and degenerate primers for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). These results indicate the presence of at least three sequences in the medfly, in addition to 'mapotge', that contain a BTB-POZ domain. Potential evolutionary relationships ofthe BTB-POZ domain sequences from the medfly and other insect species were also analyzed.

Invasive plants cause ecosystem degradation throughout the world, including the reduction of native plant density and diversity, and changes in ecosystem structure and function. Woody weeds often grow faster than native species and in invaded habitats produce larger and/or more seed and outshade other mid- and under-storey species. Boneseed Chrysanthemoides monilifera ssp. monilifera (L.) T. Norl. has caused the degradation of many temperate woodlands in Australia and has not yet reached its full potential distribution in this country. The control of this weed is therefore a high priority in Australia. Biological control agents have not controlled boneseed populations to date and no detailed integrated control strategies exist for different densities of mature boneseed plants and soil seed banks in native vegetation of varying levels of degradation. Fire, herbicides and manual plant removal have previously been used to control boneseed; however, substantial landscape scale control has not yet been achieved. Boneseed population control experiments were undertaken in two temperate woodlands in Victoria, Australia. In highly degraded temperate grassy woodlands at the You Yangs Regional Park west of Melbourne in Victoria and in a highly diverse native closed woodland at Arthurs Seat State Park in south-eastern Victoria. Several combinations of the weed control techniques of fire, herbicide application, hand-pulling of seedlings and distribution of competitive native grasses were found to control both mature boneseed populations and the large reserves of viable boneseed seeds in the soil. The efficacy of controlled burning, and the combination and timing of control techniques were found to vary according to differing densities of boneseed plants, viable soil seed banks and post-fire emergent seedlings. Where sufficient fine fuel existed, a warm, even, autumn burn consumed above ground biomass, killed the majority of viable boneseed seed in the soil, and caused the remaining boneseed seed to germinate. Spraying with glyphosate herbicide was as effective as metsulfuron-methyl herbicide for killing boneseed seedlings along with the secondary climbing weed Billardiera heterophylla (Lindl.) L.W.Cayzer & Crisp after fire. However, the use of glyphosate also killed all native species, resulting in bare ground. After fire in species rich vegetation, boneseed was eliminated where seed of the native C3 grass Poa sieberiana Spreng. had been broadcast onto the post fire ash-bed, and seedlings had been sprayed five months after the burn or where seedlings had been sprayed 12 months after burning. Boneseed control occurred when seedlings were sprayed five months after the burn. In degraded vegetation few boneseed seedlings remained where seedlings were sprayed 17 months after fire. Where insufficient rainfall occurred, hand-pulling flowering boneseed seedlings prevented new seed fall for 6 to 12 months. Suggestions are made for the integration of these methods with the establishment and proliferation of biological control agents. A new protocol for utilising several integrated control strategies for boneseed and other woody weeds in a mosaic at both the site and landscape scale is described. A mosaic would allow for a variety of native species responses to fire and other control methods and thus lead to heterogeneous ages and structures within the native vegetation following weed control. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1457770 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, 2009

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Univ., 2003. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.Phil.) - University of St Andrews, May 2007.

Zugl.: Mainz, Universiẗat, Diss., 2002.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-158). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.