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No description available.

Thesis (Master)--İzmir Institute Of Technology, İzmir, 2005. / Mechatronic systems, robots, explosive ordnance disposal robot, control in task space. Includes bibliographical references (leaves. 55-56).

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Hamburg, 1980.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2004. / Includes bibliography.

The research studies children's syntactic and textual transformations in the latter stages of primary school. Previous research has established that children transform their writing in response to participation in ever-changing communication contents and in the school context, in response to reading and writing texts which represent the world relatively abstractly. While much is understood across disciplines about the broad differences between children's and adult's writing, little is understood about the linguistic and conceptual evolution of the 'synoptic' mode in children's writing and their 'interests' in representing knowledge and experience from this perspective.

Mass spectrometry (MS)based protein and peptide identification has become a solid method in proteomics. In high-throughput proteomics research, the “shotgun method has been widely applied. Database searching is currently the main method of tandem mass spectrometrybased protein identification in shotgun proteomics. The most widely used traditional search engines search for spectra against a database of identified protein sequences. The search engine is evaluated for its efficiency and effectiveness. With the development of proteomics, both the scale and the complexity of the related data are increasing steadily. As a result, the existing search engines face serious challenges. First, the sizes of protein sequence databases are ever increasing. From IPI.Human.v3.22 to IPI.Human.v3.49, the number of protein sequences has increased by nearly one third. Second, the increasing demand of searches against semispecific or nonspecific peptides results in a search space that is approximately 10 to 100 times larger. Finally, posttranslational modifications (PTMs) produce exponentially more modified peptides. The Unimod database (http://www.unimod.org) currently includes more than 1000 types of PTMs. We analyzed the entire identification workflow and discovered three things. First, most search engines spend 50% to 90% of their total time on the scoring module, the most widely used of which is the spectrum dot product (SDP)based scoring module. Second, nearly half of the scoring operations are redundant, which costs more time but does not increase effectiveness. Third, more than half of the spectra cannot be identified via a database search alone, but the identified spectra have a connection with the unidentified ones, which can be clustered by their distances. Based on the above observations, we designed and implemented a new search engine for protein and peptide identification that includes three key modules. First, a parallel index system, based on GPU, organizes the protein database and the spectra with no redundant data, low search computation complexity, and no limitation of the protein database scale. Second, the graphics processing unit (GPU)based SDP module adopts GPUs to accelerate the most time-consuming step in the process. Third, a k-meansbased spectrum-clustering module classifies the unidentified spectra to the identified spectra for further analysis. As general-purpose high-performance parallel hardware, GPUs are promising platforms for the acceleration of database searches in the protein identification process. We designed a parallel index system that accelerated the entire identification process two to five times with no loss of effectiveness, and achieved around 80% linear speedup effect on the cluster. The index system also can be easily adopted by other search engines. We also designed and implemented a parallel SDP-based scoring module on GPUs that exploits the efficient use of GPU registers and shared memory. A single GPU was 30 to 60 times faster than the central processing unit (CPU)based version. We also implemented our algorithm on a GPU cluster and achieved approximately linear acceleration. In addition, a k-meansbased spectrum-clustering module with GPUs can classify the unidentified spectra to the identified spectra at 20 times the speed of the normal k-means spectrum-clustering algorithm.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Nursing Johannesburg, 2016 / Mechanical ventilation is a life-saving and frequently used treatment modality in a variety of medical diagnosis in the intensive care unit (ICU). Despite that fact, mechanical ventilation can be a distressing experience for the patient, and may result in anxiety and discomfort. In recent years, light or no sedation and the practice of wake-up calls have become common approaches allowing the patient to be more awake during mechanical ventilation. Little is known about how patients experience this particular aspect of ICU treatment in light of changes in sedation practices. This study explored and described the experiences of patients on mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit of one public sector hospital in Johannesburg. A qualitative, descriptive and explorative design was used and ten mechanically ventilated patients were recruited from the intensive care units of one public sector hospital in Johannesburg. The data was collected using audio-taped in-depth interviews to keep a record of the actual information presented by the participants. The collected data was transcribed and the information was analysed using Clarke and Braun’s (2013) descriptive method. A general expression from the participants was the fact that being connected to a ventilator induces a physical and emotional discomfort. The data analysis identified three themes which were (i) physical experiences, (ii) emotional experiences and (iii) communication. The participants described their experiences of breathlessness, mouth dryness, pain and physical discomfort as a result of being placed on the ventilator which caused the physical experiences for the patients. The experiences of bothering, fear of unknown, anxiety, feeling shocked and frightened at the moment of waking up from anaesthesia culminated into an emotional experience for the patients. The participants described that the extubation process has hard and difficult to endure, also powerlessness, loss of body image and control and near death experiences were findings of the participants. The lack of information was viewed by the participants in terms of being connected to mechanical ventilation as an important component of the recovery period, the benefit of purpose of connection during this period and the weaning process although, some of the participants alluded to receiving a measure of information but described it as inadequate to prepare them emotionally for the procedure. The short time for visitation and family presence was also evident in this study as impacting on the emotional state of the participants. In the midst of these unpleasant experiences, most of the participants appreciated the caring attitude of the ICU nursing staff which gave them a sense of comfort and safety. The findings of this study further showed that administration of sedation to some of the participants affected their memory as they could not recollect things that happen while in the ICU. Communication was the third theme that emerged from this study as findings revealed that the participants were not happy with the inability to talk as a result of the endotracheal tube. Nevertheless, the use of alternative communication methods such as the use of sign language, writing, scribbling on paper and lip reading gave the participants a bit of a relief. The findings of this study support the previous findings of the experiences of patients on mechanical ventilation. The findings add to the body of knowledge from the South African context as little is known regarding the patients experiences of mechanical ventilation from the South African context and Africa at large. As the field of intensive care nursing is growing in the African continent, it becomes imperative for research to be conducted in order to determine the clinical, educational and managerial gaps in ICU focusing more on measures to reduce these unpleasant experiences, increase evidence based practise and nursing perspectives. It may be appropriate for this study to be replicated in other private and public institution on a larger scale to compliment these findings. / MT2017

<p> The biosynthesis of the alkaloids of Decodon verticillatus, (L.)Ell, a member of the Lythraceae family, was studied by tracer methods. These alkaloids contain a phenylquinolizidine system, whose biosynthetic origin has not previously been investigated.</p> <p> Labelled samples of lysine, △^1-piperideine and phenylalanine yielded radioactive decodine and decinine, the two major alkaloids of D. verticillatus. Systematic degradations of these labelled alkaloids show that lysine, △^1-piperideine and phenylalanine serve as specific precursors. Whereas lysine and △^1-piperideine entered the quinolizidine ring, the biphenyl ring system of these alkaloids was derived from two units of phenylalanine. In a further experiment, labelled pelletierine was administered to the plants. But this experiment yielded an inconclusive result.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Northwestern University, 1977. / Also issued in print.