In "Characteristics of key signatures" Katariina Holma describes and reflects upon her experiences of  transposing her operatic singing repertoire. Do the character and colour of the sung music change when we transpose it? According to Holma's experience, it is the storyteller in particular, the role character in an opera aria, who is most affected by transposition. Holma learned during her experiment that there are several positive qualities to be gained from transposition that not only help a singer learn more about their repertoire  but also assist them in exposing stumbling blocks to their singing technique.

Tn7 and Tn7-like transposons are complex elements found in disparate environments and are responsible for mobilizing a wide variety of genes and forming pathogenicity/fitness islands. They are novel in their ability to recognize both a single site in the chromosome and specifically target transposition into mobile plasmids via dedicated TnsD and TnsE targeting proteins. TnsE recognizes mobile plasmids through an association with the processivity clamp and a 3′ recessed DNA end during conjugal replication. However, the mechanism for the specific recognition of 3′ recessed DNA ends remains unclear. Structural analyses of the C-terminal domain of TnsE identified a novel protein fold including a central V-shaped loop that toggles between two distinct conformations. The structure of a robust TnsE gain-of-function variant has this loop locked in a single conformation, suggesting that conformational flexibility regulates TnsE activity. Structure-based analysis of a series of TnsE variants relates transposition to DNA binding stability. Follow up studies of full length TnsE bound to DNA are in progress. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Symphonic Prayers is a work for orchestra and soprano soloist in four movements. The work uses four poems from Rainer Maria Rilke's collection Das Stundenbuch (The Book of Hours), written between 1895 and 1903. Rilke was a Bohemian poet, mystic, traveler, and lover of art and nature. He narrates The Book of Hours through a fictional Russian monk who converses with God and reflects upon the nature of the world through the poetry. Rilke's poems delicately weave together the joys and struggles of a faith journey and of finding one's place in the world and in eternity. Equally striking is the beauty with which he utilizes the German language. There is an irresistible rhythm and nuance to his words. The four poems I chose each reflect a different category of prayer derived from the Christian faith tradition. A common prayer model utilized in the Protestant church is abbreviated by the acronym "ACTS," which stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication. The ACTS prayers guide the worshipper through four methods of praying: expressing adoration for God, confessing sins and shortcomings, showing gratitude and thanksgiving, and asking for help for oneself and others. I modeled each movement of Symphonic Prayers after these categories and chose poems from Das Stundenbuch that mirrored the sentiments of each prayer. Adoration is a proclamation of faith, a statement of unrelenting praise and prayer. The narrator unapologetically declares that even if it begets arrogance, nothing will diminish his drive to reach out to God. Even through this bold statement, the poem maintains reverence and a sense of wonder toward its subject. Confession is a statement of the brokenness of the world, recounting how murder has ripped through God's call for us to love life, and how our attempts to atone for this brokenness fall short. Thanksgiving is a boisterous statement of praise to God. The speaker analogizes her praise to trumpet calls, her words to sweet wine, and her music to a northern spring day, each preparing the way for God. Supplication returns to the reverence of the first movement. The narrator contemplates her life that is ever circling around God. The accompanying monograph explains the ACTS prayers in the context of the Reformed Church of America, both historically and currently. It presents an analysis of the four Rilke poems selected to represent the ACTS prayers, including their narrative meaning, their relationship to Das Stundenbuch, their translations, and a close examination of their poetic features, such as prosody, meter, and rhyme. The discussion of the poems also required some background on Rilke's faith journey and artistic maturation. The monograph also addresses musical text setting in a broader sense by recounting some historical philosophies of textual and musical relationships and explaining where the composer's ideologies fall within the larger framework. Finally, it presents a musical analysis of Symphonic Prayers in relation to the text setting of the four poems, including an explanation of its harmonic structure, which is derived from Olivier Messiaen's modes of limited transposition. The compositional goal of Symphonic Prayers was to create a work that would honor the ACTS prayers through the elegant words of a mystic poet. The music reinforces the messages behind Rilke's honest conversations with God, and in doing so offers a new lens through which to experience the arc of the ACTS prayers. / Music Composition / Accompanied by one .pdf score: Symphonic Prayers for Orchestra and Soprano Soloist.

This study offers a reinterpretation of the so-called Eurozone crisis, arguing that its crisis character is overstated and that it is rather a normal stage in the process of European banking sector integration. Particularly, I maintain that it is neither a sovereign debt crisis caused by profligate peripheral governments, nor a crisis of the Eurozone's common monetary policy. Nor, however, are the Eurozone's low growth, high unemployment, and economic and political instability deliberate policies, whether by German or Greek governments, European institutions, or the European banking circuitry. Rather, I trace the Eurozone's low growth and high unemployment back to what I call transpositions. Transpositions change the possible boundaries of perceiving political and economic situations by altering the syntagmatic structure governing their intelligibility. The shift from 2003-2007 'boom times' to post-2007 'times of crisis' is one such transposition, which occurs behind the backs of human actors and thus forms the horizon of possible behavior of market and political actors. The Eurozone's 'crisis' transposition, results in differentiations within the asset class of Euro-denominated sovereign debt between a 'core,' comprising Germany, Austria, Latvia, and Finland, among others, and a 'periphery,' encompassing Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus. It follows that the solvency of Eurozone member states is a derivative function of banking sector liquidity, reversing the conventional 'sovereign debt crisis' explanation to what I call the country-fundamental transposition. The second transposition I explore is the austerity transposition. I maintain that the Eurozone's real economy is more interconnected than conventional narratives of European economic unification allow, and that supposedly national European economies – including particularly that of Germany – are integrated subcircuits of Europe's real economy. Constituting them as supposedly national economies is itself a transposition, necessary for the preservation of the European banking circuitry's interconnected balance sheets. Yet, the austerity transposition goes further, beyond a form of political economy oriented towards growth and sustainability, and into a moral economy of condemnation differentiating between morally virtuous and morally pernicious economies in the Eurozone. Its destructive effects are therefore neither irrational nor the result of a German hegemonic agenda, but that of the Eurozone's post-2007 syntagmatic structure. / Ph. D.

Histophilus somni is an etiologic agent of shipping fever pneumonia, myocarditis, and other systemic diseases in bovines, although nonpathogenic commensal strains also exist. Virulence factors that have been identified in H. somni include biofilm formation, lipooligosaccharide phase variation, immunoglobulin binding proteins, survival in phagocytic cells, and many others. To identify genes responsible for virulence, an efficient mutagenesis system is needed. Mutagenesis of H. somni using allelic exchange is difficult due to its tight restriction modification system. Mutagenesis by natural transformation in Haemophilus influenzae is well established and may be enhanced by the presence of uptake signal sequences (USS) within the genome. We hypothesized that natural transformation occurs in H. somni because its genome is over-represented with USS and contains all the necessary genes for competence, except that ComD and ComE are mutated. For natural transformation, H. somni was grown to exponential phase, and then transferred to a non-growth defined medium to induce competence. H. somni strain 2336 was successfully transformed with homologous linear DNA (lob2A) containing an antibiotic marker gene, but at low efficiency. Shuttle vector pNS3K was also naturally transformed into H. somni at low efficiency. To attempt to improve transformation efficiency, comD and comE from H. influenzae were cloned into shuttle vector pNS3K to generate the plasmid pSScomDE. Although introduction of pSScomDE into H. somni was expected to increase the number and breadth of mutants generated by natural transformation, multiple attempts to electroporate pSScomDE into H. somni were unsuccessful. A native plasmid (pHS649) from H. somni strain 649 may prove to be a more efficient shuttle vector. Due to inefficiency in generating mutants by allelic exchange, transposon (Tn) mutagenesis with EZ / Master of Science

To make mathematics more significant for the beneficiaries, the problem studied in this thesis is to investigate how to connect mathematical daily practices with educational contexts. The overarching aim is to investigate how to contextualise school mathematics within Rwandan cultural mathematics practices. The content of the thesis reports on the characteristics of mathematical organisations in three workplace settings (taxi driving, house construction and restaurant management) which in turn serve as source for the design of contextualised mathematical activities for student teachers in a teacher education programme. Three levels of mathematical practices are described: (1) mathematical practices that are performed by workers within their respective workplaces, (2) mathematical practices that are performed by student teachers while solving and posing contextualised mathematical tasks for secondary school students, (3) mathematical practices that are carried out by secondary school students. Data gathered from individual and group interviews, transcripts of group discussions and students’ written reports of mathematical work were analysed from the perspective of both activity theory and anthropological theory of didactics. Findings from workplace settings revealed that mathematical organisations performed by workers are characterised by techniques which are functional to the problem at hand, the cultural constraints and the educational background of the workers. As long as they are pragmatic towards the goals of the activity no further justification of the techniques used is needed, resulting in a mathematical organisation with undeveloped know-why (logos). On the contrary, at university and secondary school settings, students justified the used techniques throughout the related taught content of the subject mathematics. Also from each category of mathematical practice, it is shown that while connecting workplaces and educational settings the didactic transposition process was much influenced by the institutional conditions and constraints. / För att göra matematiken betydelsefull för avnämarna är problemområdet som studeras i denna avhandling hur den matematik som finns i samhället kan överbryggas till en undervisningskontext. Syftet med avhandlingen är att undersöka hur man kan kontextualisera skolmatematik i kulturella praktiker i Rwanda. I avhandlingen belyses först matematisk organisation på tre arbetsplatser – i en taxiverksamhet, hos en byggmästare och hos en restaurangägare. Matematik i dessa verksamheter utgör underlag för att konstruera uppgifter för lärarstudenter inom ämnet matematik som först löser uppgifterna och sedan i sin tur konstruerar uppgifter för elever motsvarande årskurs nio i grundskolan. Uppgifterna konstrueras med utgångspunkt i den information studenterna fått om de tre verksamheterna. Datainsamlingen skedde med hjälp av individuella intervjuer, gruppintervjuer och bandinspelade gruppdiskussioner samt studenters och elevers nedtecknade lösningar på respektive uppgifter. Data analyserades med hjälp av aktivitetsteori och antropologisk didaktisk teori. Resultaten från arbetsplatserna visade att matematisk organisation kännetecknades av tekniker som är funktionella för de problem som behövde lösas, de kulturella villkor som förelåg och deltagarnas utbildningsbakgrund. Så länge som teknikerna ledde till önskade mål för verksamheten fanns inga behov att utveckla tekniken som kännetecknades av en matematisk organisation med outvecklad logos. I kontrast till denna strategi sågs studenter och elever i respektive miljöer redovisa de tekniker som användes och motivera dem i enlighet med vad som krävs inom matematikämnet. Den matematiska transpositionsprocessen som utfördes av deltagarna i de olika miljöerna influerades i hög grad av rådande institutionella villkor och begränsningar.

The purpose of the study is the investigation of the topics of transposition and the transposed major and minor modes as discussed principally by selected French authors of the final twenty years of the seventeenth century and the first three decades of the eighteenth. The sources are relatively varied and include manuals for singers and instrumentalists, dictionaries, independent essays, and tracts which were published in scholarly journals; special emphasis is placed on the observation and attempted explanation of both irregular signatures and the signatures of the minor modes. The paper concerns the following areas: definitions and related concepts, methods for singers and Instrumentalists, and signatures for the tones which were identified by the authors. The topics are interdependent, for the signatures both effected transposition and indicated written-out transpositions. The late Baroque was characterized by much diversity with regard to definitions of the natural and transposed modes. At the close of the seventeenth century, two concurrent and yet diverse notions were in evidence: the most widespread associated "natural" with inclusion within the gamme; that is, the criterion for naturalness was total diatonic pitch content, as specified by the signature. When the scale was reduced from two columns to a single one, its total pitch content was diminished, and consequently the number of the natural modes found within the gamme was reduced. An apparently less popular view narrowed the focus of "natural tone" to a single diatonic pitch, the final of the tone or mode. A number of factors contributed to the disappearance of the long-held distinction between natural and transposed tones: the linking of the notion of "transposed" with the temperament, the establishment of two types of signatures for the minor tones (for tones with sharps and flats, respectively), the transition from a two-column scale to a single-column one, and the recognition of a unified system of major and minor keys.

Nos connaissances scientifiques sur la reproduction humaine et l’éducation à la sexualité se renouvellent très rapidement. Leur transposition didactique également, en fonction de l’évolution de pratiques sociales liées à la santé sexuelle, à des comportements sociaux, mais aussi en interaction avec des représentations sociales et des valeurs. L’objectif de notre recherche est donc de clarifier ces interactions et d'identifier ce qui empêche ou retarde l'introduction, dans l'enseignement d'un pays, des dernières connaissances scientifiques sur la reproduction humaine et l’éducation sexuelle. Une première approche historique et épistémologique est relative à l’influence des facteurs culturels sur l’éducation à la sexualité dans le cadre de la culture arabo-islamique, sans oublier pour autant le cadre culturel occidental. Par ailleurs, une deuxième approche didactique porte sur l’analyse d’une part des programmes et manuels scolaires tunisiens (depuis 2004 jusqu’à nos jours), et d’autre part sur une analyse comparative des conceptions des enseignants en Tunisie et dans six pays francophones (Maroc, Algérie, Liban, Burkina Faso, Sénégal et la France). Afin de permettre un choix raisonné des contenus d’enseignement, nous avons trouvé utile l’approche suivante : l’étude de l’interaction entre les programmes, les manuels et les attentes des futurs enseignants. C’est dans cette perspective que nous avons tenté d’identifier les attentes et les interrogations des futurs enseignants tunisiens sur l’enseignement de l’éducation à la sexualité. Le dernier chapitre de cette thèse analyse les conceptions d'enseignants dans sept pays francophones (Algérie, Burkina Faso, France, Liban, Maroc, Sénégal, Tunisie) sur la reproduction humaine et l’éducation à la sexualité. Notre contribution se veut une porte d'entrée à ce vaste domaine toujours en évolution, qu'est la sexualité dans une perspective éducative et citoyenne ; elle veut poser la question du statut moral et culturel de la sexualité dans notre société. En effet, l'analyse des conceptions des enseignants nous a conduits à caractériser la notion de « rapport à la culture » qui se rapproche du concept de « rapport au savoir ». La mise en évidence de l’incidence de la culture musulmane sur le sujet traité nous a permis de tirer des conclusions quant au lien entre la culture et les conceptions / Our scientific knowledge about Human Reproduction and Sex Education is constantly changing. Its didactic transposition is also changing according to the evolution of social practices linked to reproductive health, social behaviours, and in its interaction with values. The aim of our research is therefore to clarify these interactions and to identify the factors that prevent or promote the introduction of the lastest scientific knowledge on Human Reproduction and Sex Education into a country’s teaching syllabus. Firstly, a historical and epistemological approach was used to study the influence of cultural factors on sex education in the Arabic-Muslim culture, without neglecting the Western culture. Secondly, a didactic approach was used to critically analyse Tunisian school textbooks on Human Reproduction and Sex Education (from 2004 to 2011), and equally to carry out a comparative analysis of teachers' conceptions in Tunisia and in six francophone countries (Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Burkina Faso, Senegal and France). In order to choose an appropriate teaching content, we thought it wise to use the approach of studying the interaction between the syllabus, the textbooks and the student teachers’ expectations on the teaching of human reproduction and sexuality. It is in this perspective that we attempted to identify the expectations and worries of student teachers on issues related to the teaching of sex education. The last chapter of this work analyses the conceptions of teachers in seven francophones countries (Algeria, Burkina Faso, France, Lebanon, Morocco, Senegal, Tunisia) on Human Reproduction and Sex Education. This work intends to make its contribution to the vast and constantly evolving domain of Human sexuality, especially in the perspective of citizenship education. It intends to discuss the question of culture and moral status of sexuality in our society. In fact, the analysis of teachers' conceptions about sex education led us to characterize the notion of "relation to culture" which approaches the concept of "relation to knowledge". Highlighting the impact of Muslim culture on the topic has permitted us to draw conclusions about the link between culture and conceptions

Transposons sind genetische Elemente, die fähig sind, sich innerhalb des Genoms zu bewegen. Sleeping Beauty (SB) gehört zur Tc1/mariner-Superfamilie von Transposons. SB wurde aus molekularen Fossilien rekonstruiert um u.a. einen sicheren und effizienten Vektor für die Gentherapie zu schaffen. Zu diesem Zweck ist es notwendig, den Mechanismus der SB-Transposition und deren Regulation, die Aktivitäten des Proteins und den Einfluss von Wirtsfaktoren genau zu verstehen. In meiner Arbeit habe ich die einzelnen Schritte des Transpositionsprozesses und die Bildung des sogenannten paired-end complex (PEC) – eine Voraussetzung für die folgenden katalytischen Reaktionen – untersucht. Zusätzlich habe ich versucht, einen in vitro Transpositionstest für SB zu etablieren. SB gehört zur IR/DR-Gruppe der Tc1/mariner-Superfamilie. Im Gegensatz zu mariner-like-Elementen ist die IR/DR-Struktur von SB durch lange IRs mit insgesamt vier Bindestellen für die Transposase gekennzeichnet. Ich habe die Fähigkeit dieser beiden Transposon-Systeme zum Ausschneiden eines Transposonendes ohne die Beteiligung des anderen Endes im PEC getestet. Solche unpräzise Transposition kann zu genomic rearrangements führen. Meine Ergebnisse zeigen, dass SB zwar imstande ist, ein einzelnes Transposonende auszuschneiden, dies geschieht jedoch weit weniger effizient als bei mariner-like-Elementen. Die Unterdrückung unpräziser Transpositionsereignisse ist ein Ergebnis der besseren durch die IR/DR-Struktur bedingten Regulation von SBs Transposition. Die Komplexität der IRs in Kombination mit der zweiteiligen DNA-Bindedomäne von SB kann als Mittel einer raffinierten Regulation des Transpositionsprozesses angesehen werden, welche das Genom vor anormalen Transpositionsereignissen schützt. Die Ergebnisse meiner Arbeit legen ein Modell nahe, in dem die Bildung des PEC während der Transposition von SB ein höchst genau regulierter Prozess ist, der durch die DNA-Protein- und Protein-Protein-Bindeaffinitäten geleitet wird. / Transposons are pieces of DNA able to move within the genomes. Sleeping Beauty is a verterbrate Tc1/mariner transposon reconstructed from molecular fossils to create a safe and efficient vector for gene therapy. For that purpose it is important to deeply understand the mechanism and regulation of the SB transposition, the activities of the transposase and influence of host factors on the process. Therefore, in this project I studied the single steps of the transposition reaction and formation of the paired-end complex (PEC) which is a prerequisite for the subsequent catalytic steps. Additionally, I tried to establish an in vitro transposition assay for Sleeping Beauty that would serve an easy assay for testing the system and probe mechanisms affecting the regulation of transposition activity. Sleeping Beauty belongs to the IR/DR subfamily of the Tc1/mariner-like transposons. In contrast to mariner-like elements the IR/DR structure of SB is characterized by long IRs with four binding sites for the transposase. I compared the ability of the two systems to perform cleavage of the single transposon end without including the second end in the PEC. Such imprecise transposition can lead to genome rearrangements. My results show that SB is capable of single-end cleavage; however, to much lower extent than the mariner-like element. Lower number of imprecise transposition events is a result of better regulation of the SB transposition imposed by the IR/DR stucture. The complexity of the inverted repeats together with the bipartite DNA-binding domain of SB might offer means for more sophisticated regulation of the transposition process, thereby protecting the genome from aberrant transposition events. I propose that complex formation in SB transposition is a strictly regulated ordered assembly process, guided by DNA-protein and protein-protein interaction interfaces of the DNA-binding subdomains. Obtained results allowed me to draw a model how the paired-end complex is formed.

En voulant revoir le concept de transposition didactique (TD) dans un milieu professionnel, nous avons étudié le travail des vulgarisatrices agricoles féminines en Tunisie. Deux thèses sont soutenues simultanément : a/ La limite du concept de transposition didactique dans la lecture d’un espace de travail et l’intérêt du concept d’activité. b/ Contrairement à la représentation répandue, à savoir d’être des agents d’exécution, les vulgarisatrices sont plutôt des travailleuses créatives et créatrices de possibles. La combinaison d’approches sociologiques, psychologique historico-culturelles, didactique disciplinaire et didactique professionnelle, a permis, par des observations directes, des analyses d’entretiens et de documents, de suivre le processus de TD du début jusqu’à la fin avec des vulgarisatrices sur le terrain. Nous découvrons alors que le processus de TD ne rend compte que d’une partie de la réalité professionnelle qui est complétée par l’analyse de l’activité des vulgarisatrices. La transposition n’est pas uniquement didactique mais elle est avant tout professionnelle pragmatique. Tout en constituant un référent à la transposition, le cadre prescriptif influence et contraint les vulgarisatrices prises dans son mécanisme, mais la transposition est également le produit de leur activité socialement, culturellement et émotionnellement située. Nous comprenons mieux ainsi la diversité des activités de transposition situées et individuelles. / While re-examining the concept of didactic transposition (DT) in a professional environment, we studied the work of female agricultural advisors in Tunisia. Two arguments are simultaneously defended. A) The limits of the concept of “didactic transposition” in analysing a work environment and the interest of the concept of “activity”. B) Women who act as agricultural advisors are creative workers rather than simple executants. We combined sociological, psychological, historical and cultural approaches, academic and vocational didactics, directly observing women in charge of agricultural extension, analysing interviews and documents, following the process of DT from the beginning to the end. We thus discovered that the process of DT only partly accounts for the reality of these women’s work, the analysis of their activity supplementing it. Transposition is not only didactic; it is also vocational and pragmatic. The prescriptive framework constitutes a referent for transposition; it also influences and constrains the women who are involved in agricultural extension. Transposition is the result of their activity which is socially, culturally and emotionally situated. We are thus better able to understand the diversity of the activities of transposition once they have been situated in a context and recognized in their individuality.