Photosystem II is unique! It remains the only enzyme that can oxidize water using light as energy input. Water oxidation in photosystem II is catalyzed by the CaMn4 cluster. The electrons extracted from the CaMn4 cluster are transferred to P680+ via the tyrosine residue D1-Tyr161 (YZ). Favorable oxidation of YZ is coupled to a proton transfer along a hydrogen bond to the nearby D1-His190 residue, resulting in the neutral radical YZ•. By illuminating photosystem II at cryogenic temperatures, YZ• can be trapped in a stable state. Magnetic interaction between this radical and the CaMn4 cluster gives rise to a split electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) signal with characteristics that depend on the oxidation state (S state) of the cluster. The mechanism by which the split EPR signals are formed is different depending on the S state. In the S0 and S1 states, split signal induction proceeds via a P680+-centered mechanism, whereas in the S2 and S3 states, our results show that split induction stems from a Mn-centered mechanism. This S state-dependent pattern of split EPR signal induction can be correlated to the charge of the CaMn4 cluster in the S state in question and has prompted us to propose a general model for the induction mechanism across the different S states. At the heart of this model is the stability or otherwise of the YZ•–(D1-His190)+ pair during cryogenic illumination. The model is closely related to the sequence of electron and proton transfers from the cluster during the S cycle. Furthermore, the important hydrogen bond between YZ and D1-His190 has been investigated by following the split EPR signal formation in the different S states as a function of pH. All split EPR signals investigated decrease in intensity with a pKa of ~4-5. This pKa can be correlated to a titration event that disrupts the essential hydrogen bond, possibly by a direct protonation of D1-His190.  This has important consequences for the function of the CaMn4 cluster as this critical YZ–D1-His190 hydrogen bond steers a multitude of reactions at the cluster.

Examensarbetets stora fokus baseras på hur en kvinnlig antagonist skapas både utifrånestetiska och praktiska premisser. För den estetiska och tekniska normen utgick jag ifrånspelet Devil May Cry 4 (Capcom, 2008). Utifrån spelets modeller kunde en studie genomföraspå enstaka karaktärer där de tekniska begränsningar och den estetiska utformningen kundefastställas. Först har jag skapat ett koncept som baseras på de estetiska valen, och utifrånstudien fick jag fram informationen där jag kunde med hjälp av 3d program som användsinom spelbranschen tag fram en egen karaktär, i det här fallet en kvinnlig antagonist.Jag har velat skapa en kvinnlig spelkaraktär utifrån konventioner som samtidigt utmanas. Denkvinnliga antagonisten baseras på estetiska val och teman som framhäver karaktärenspersonlighet. Mina problemställningar är Hur kan koder och konventioner användas för attskapa en stark och framträdande kvinnlig karaktär? Och Hur kan de estetiska tillvalenappliceras med dagens tekniska metoder?

This thesis aims to analyze the Turkish policy of being an energy hub. Within this context Turkey, as it is geographically very close to the two thirds of the world&#039 / s proven oil and natural gas reserves, has a very big advantage to manage its location and the purpose of this study is to discuss the measures taken to utilize this advantage. Therefore relative weakness of Turkey in comparison to the other actors like Russia, the USA or the EU and the strengths of the Turkish policy like the geopolitical advantage, the ethnic link between Turkey and the newly independent states of the Caspian and the already existing infrastructure for the transportation of oil and natural gas like Kirkuk-Yumurtalik Pipeline, Baku Tblisi Ceyhan Oil Pipeline, Ceyhan Terminal, and Baku Tblisi Erzurum Natural Gas Pipeline are discussed. With this respect, this study argues that, as a result of the existing and planned projects, Ceyhan&#039 / s claim to become a hub is a realistic objective and in addition to BTC and Kirkuk-Yumurtalik Pipeline, the realization of Samsun-Ceyhan Pipeline will increase Ceyhan&#039 / s potential as an energy hub.

Although higher correlation between gauge and radar at hourly or daily accumulations are reported, it is rarely observed at higher time resolution (e.g. 10 -minute). This study investigates six major rainfall events in year 2000 in the greater Winnipeg area with durations varying from four to nine hours. The correlation between gauge and radar measurements of precipitation is found to be only 0.3 at 10-minute resolution and 0.55 at hourly resolution using Marshall-Palmer’s Z-R relationship (Z=200R1.6). The rainfalls are classified into convective and stratiform regions using Steiner et al. (1995)’s algorithm and two different Z-R relationships are tested to minimize the error associated with the variability of drop-size-distribution, however no improvement is observed. The performance of the artificial neural network is explored as a reflectivity-rainfall mapping function. Three different types of neural networks are explored: the back propagation network, the radial basis function network, and the generalized regression neural network. It is observed that the neural network’s performance is better than the Z-R relationship to estimate the rainfall events which was used for training and validation (correlation 0.67). When this network is tested on a new rainfall its performance is found quite similar to that obtained from the Z-R relationship (correlation 0.33). Based on this observation neural network may be recommended as a post-processing tool but may not be very useful for operational purposes - at least as used in this study. Variability in weather and precipitation scenarios affects the radar measurements which apparently makes it impossible for the neural network or the Z-R relationship to show consistent performance at every rainfall event. To account for variability in weather and rainfall scenarios conventional correction schemes for attenuation and hail contamination are applied and a trajectory model is developed to account for rainfall advection due to wind drift. The trajectory model uses velocity obtained from the single-doppler observation. A space-time interpolation technique is applied to generate reflectivity maps at one-minute resolution based on the direction obtained from the correlation based tracking algorithm. The trajectory model uses the generated reflectivity maps having one-minute resolution which help to account for the travel time by the rainfall mass to reach to the ground. It was found that the attenuation correction algorithm adversely increases the reflectivity. This study assumes that the higher reflectivity caused by hail contaminated regions is one reason for the overestimation in the attenuation correction process. It was observed that the hail capping method applied prior to the attenuation correction algorithm helps to improve the situation. A statistical expression to account for radome attenuation is also developed. It is observed that the correlation between the gauge and the radar measurement is 0.81 after applying the various algorithms. Although Marshall-Palmer’s relationship is recommended for stratiform precipitation only, this study found it suitable for both convective and stratiform precipitation when attenuation is properly taken into account. The precipitation processing model developed in this study generates more accurate rainfall estimates at the surface from radar observations and may be a better choice for rainfall-runoff modellers. / February 2006

The correlation coefficient (CC) is a standard measure of the linear association between two random variables. The CC plays a significant role in many quantitative researches. In a bivariate normal distribution, there are many types of interval estimation for CC, such as z-transformation and maximum likelihood estimation based methods. However, when the underlying bivariate distribution is unknown, the construction of confidence intervals for the CC is still not well-developed. In this thesis, we discuss various interval estimation methods for the CC. We propose a generalized confidence interval and three empirical likelihood-based non-parametric intervals for the CC. We also conduct extensive simulation studies to compare the new intervals with existing intervals in terms of coverage probability and interval length. Finally, two real examples are used to demonstrate the application of the proposed methods.

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Prior research on covenants show that they are frequently included in corporate debt agreements as means of mitigating bondholder-stockholder conflicts. As covenants should be more frequently included when there is a higher degree of bondholder-stockholder conflict, what is then the relation between covenants and spread? Our results show that on the Norwegian corporate debt market, bonds that include covenants have a higher spread than those that do not. The results of an OLS-regression using some of the most common covenants, Z’-score and bond spread shows that the 43 % of bond spread can be explained by whether the bond includes dividend restrictions, equity restrictions and poison puts, and the Z’-score of the issuer.

This research mainly tries to confirm the relationship between distress risk and stock returns in the Taiwan market. According to three factor theory raised by Fama-French (1992), the higher book-to-market ratio brings higher stock returns because of the higher distress risk, and also mentioned about the three significant factors in explaining expected stock return: risk, firm size, and book-to-market ratio (here replace it with price-to-book ratio). There are many studies had proved that high risk accompanies high expected stock return, but some other obtained the contrary outcome. It still depends on different characteristics of enterprises, industries, and countries. Following other researches, this paper use ¡§Z-Score¡¨ bankruptcy prediction model as the proxy of distress risk, and take the subsequent realized stock returns of the distress publicly-traded firms as a proxy of systematic risk. As it may be doubted of using Z-Score in the Taiwan stock market, this research add ¡§TCRI¡¨ to compare with. ¡§TCRI¡¨ is the credit rating score raised by Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ). Because of the same results of rating on sample companies, it supported the application of Z-Score in Taiwan stock market. In analyzing the relationship between distress risk and stock return, this research find that firm size, distress risk and price-to-book ratio effect are significant enough to explain the expected stock return,(although distress risk and price-to-book ratio are only significant in Y-3) similar to the findings of Fazilah Samad (2009) et al. This research also found that the theoretical expectation of the size effect on distress risk does not hold in the case of the Taiwan distress publicly-traded firms, but price-to-market ratio (PB ratio) does. Unlike the findings of Fazilah Samad (2009) et al. and Griffin and Lemmon (2002), the outcome shows that there is a significant inverse relationship between PB ratio and distress risk, similar to the theory and our original expectation. It directly proved that the lower PB ratio brings higher distress risk in Taiwan market, but inconclusive to deduce that it also brings higher stock return. Meanwhile, this research tries to find out if there is a difference between distress companies and most distress companies. Besides of firm size, there is no significant difference between these two groups, and they are similar as it was closer to distress happened. Although there is not significant relationship between three factors and stock return, this study reveals the decreasing trend of financial performance among those distress firms before facing distress circumstances. It shows again that Z-Score is suitable for Taiwan market although our sample companies including manufacturing and non-manufacturing companies.

Polymer liquid crystal possesses advantages of polymer in chemical industry and liquid crystal in display industry,so it is attracted more attention in science and technology. Diacrylate is a polymer liquid crystal with photosensitive property, so ,it can be applied to optical storage . He-Ne laser induced polymerization in diacrylate mesogen RM257 and RM82 had been verified in previous study. Furthermore, holography pattern can be recorded in RM257 and RM82 by controlling both the temperature of sample and the time of exposing. In this study, we consider the study of nonlinear optical properties of diacrylate using Z-SCAN techeique.¡¨Z-SCAN¡¨ is a simply yet highly sensitive single-beam experimential technique ,it can be used to measure both nonlinear absorption and nonlinear refraction.In this study ,we measured effect of absorption of diacrylate in irradiation of He-Ne laser using Z-SCAN technique.To investigate the reason that He-Ne laser induced polymerization in both RM257 and RM82.

There are two inter-related themes of this thesis: Economic development and global governance. We develop a perspective of &ndash / what we call &ndash / &lsquo / Institutional International Political Economy&rsquo / (IIPE) in order to: i) assess the likelihood of developmental success on the part of the Third World countries in the twenty-first century, and ii) analyze the developmental and world-systemic implications of the so-called &lsquo / global governance model&rsquo / , which we conceptualize as an ultra-liberal capitalist project on the part of the &lsquo / commanding heights&rsquo / of the contemporary &lsquo / world-economy&rsquo / . Our IIPE-perspective relies on an &lsquo / institutionalist&rsquo / synthesis of the classic works of Karl Polanyi, Joseph Schumpeter and Fernand Braudel. In the light of this perspective, &lsquo / state-led development&rsquo / seems to be inconceivable in the face of &lsquo / governance&rsquo / , which is an attempt to disintegrate the &lsquo / institutional substance&rsquo / of the state-as-we-know-it into &lsquo / market-like processes&rsquo / . Nevertheless, &lsquo / governance&rsquo / is bound to become the victim of its own success insofar as it destroys the indispensable political institutions upon which capitalism has survived as a historical world-system in the past.