A clinical study was performed in order to determine if healthy test subjects can differentiate between adjacent and separated pairs of vertebrae in the lumbar spine. The variable of interest was number of correctly specied pairs of vertebrae. The test subjects were evaluated in terms of sensitivity and specicity of this test. Bootstrap resampling was applied in the data analysis. The results clearly indicated that the test subjects in this study were able to successfully determine whether a pair of adjacent or separated vertebrae was tested during the procedure.

The effects of expansion of cities on the fringe area are still the common problems of several countries as well as Turkey. The main problem stemming from rapid urban growth was described as urban sprawl that has been used as waste of land, time, and natural resources. Although sprawl becomes usually unplanned, uncontrolled, and uncoordinated, it can be claimed that some local and national government policies triggers the urban sprawl by creating planned areas more than required. The growth management policies are utilized to provide a responsible balance between development and the infrastructure needed to manage the impacts of development and to control urban sprawl. Four types of urban containment techniques have been used in several countries to control urban sprawl according to fundamental purposes of where to grow and where not to grow. These are greenbelt, urban growth boundary, urban service area and adjacent area. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the impacts of urban growth on physical development of metropolitan cities and to critically evaluate the raison d&#039 / &ecirc / tre and changing meaning of adjacent areas concept in Turkish urban planning experience in a historical context. Ankara planning experiences are examined as a case study to what extent adjacent area is a functional and effective tool to control sprawl.

No description available.

No abstract available / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Geology / unrestricted

The classical (proper) graph colouring problem asks for a colouring of the vertices of a graph with the minimum number of colours such that no two vertices with the same colour are adjacent. Equivalently the colouring is required to be such that the graph induced by the vertices coloured the same colour has the maximum degree equal to zero. The graph parameter associated with the minimum possible number of colours of a graph is called chromatic number of that graph. One generalization of this classical problem is to relax the requirement that the maximum degree of the graph induced by the vertices coloured the same colour be zero, and instead allow it to be some integer d. For d = 0, we are back at the classical proper colouring. For other values of d we say that the colouring has defect d. Another generalization of the classical graph colouring, is list colouring and its associated parameters: choosability and choice number. The main result of this thesis is to show that every graph G of Euler genus μ is ⌈2 + √(3μ + 3)⌉–choosable with defect 1 (equivalently, with clustering 2). Thus allowing any defect, even 1, reduces the choice number of surface embeddable graphs below the chromatic number of the surface. For example, the chromatic number of the family of toroidal graphs is known to be 7. The bound above implies that toroidal graphs are 5-choosable with defect 1. This strengthens the result of Cowen, Goddard and Jesurum (1997) who showed that toroidal graphs are 5-colourable with defect 1. In a graph embedded in a surface, two faces that share an edge are called adjacent. We improve the above bound for graphs that have embeddings without adjacent triangles. In particular, we show that every non-planar graph G that can be embedded in a surface of Euler genus μ without adjacent triangles, is ⌈(5+ √(24μ + 1)) /3⌉–choosable with defect 1. This result generalizes the result of Xu and Zhang (2007) to all the surfaces. They proved that toroidal graphs that have embeddings on the torus without two adjacent triangles are 4-choosable with defect 1.

No description available.

Non-native plants have invaded over 100 millions of acres of western arid land in the US and dramatically altered nutrient cycling rates. Changes in water cycling caused by invasive species are of particular interest because primary production in the Western US is typically limited by water availability and aquifer recharge reflects plant demand. Large-scale invasions can, therefore, be expected to cause large-scale changes in hydrological cycles, but until recently, there have been considerable limitations in the ability to measure the timing, location, and extent of water use. Here we injected a tracer, deuterated water (D2O), into five soil depths in two sampling periods (May and June) in two adjacent plant communities (native and non-native dominated). Plants were sampled at several distances from the tracer addition area to determine the horizontal and vertical extent of water use in native and non-native communities. The tracer injection was coupled with measurements of leaf level stomatal conductance, leaf area index, and volumetric soil water content to estimate plant transpiration. We found that both native and non-native plants transpired water from primarily the top 60 cm of the soil (>75%), with a particular emphasis (≥ 50%) on shallow soil water (<10 cm) while lateral roots did not exceed 50 cm for most species. Higher leaf area index resulted in significantly more water being transpired from the native community. Some sharp distinctions in timing and location of tracer uptake resulting from the differing phenologies of the dominant species in each community were observed and confirmed previous mechanisms thought to govern plant assemblages in these communities. In May, the non-native community dominated by annual grasses had higher tracer uptake at 10 cm than the native community but began using deep water (higher tracer uptake at 80 cm) as annual grasses senesced and tap-rooted fobs became dominant in June. The perennial native species, however, used the entire soil profile from the moment they became active until they senesced. Our approach shows promise for overcoming the lack of resolution associated with natural abundance isotopes and other enrichment approaches, and for providing detailed measurements of plant water-use space.

No description available.

No description available.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(社会健康医学) / 甲第24094号 / 社医博第125号 / 新制||社医||12(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科社会健康医学系専攻 / (主査)教授 佐藤 俊哉, 教授 中山 健夫, 教授 松田 秀一 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Public Health / Kyoto University / DFAM