1. Euphausiids are an important component of high latitude pelagic ecosystems, but there is a paucity of information on their distribution, abundance and population processes on within-year time scales. This thesis encompasses new research into the euphausiid-ocean component of two important high latitude ecosystems (South Georgia and the Irminger Sea) on sub-annual time scales. 2. A new method for measuring abundance of Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) continuously at South Georgia (Southern Ocean) was devised using upward-looking acoustic devices deployed on moorings. These novel platforms provide a new window of observations onto marine systems not open from conventional research vessels. At South Georgia, the moorings provided data at a high temporal resolution giving completely new insight to the function of the coupled biological-physical marine ecosystem. The use of moorings may aid ecosystem-based management at South Georgia and elsewhere. 3. Analysis of mooring data collected between October 2002 and December 2005 indicated a regular annual cycle in krill density: high in summer and low in winter. Mooring estimates of krill density were not statistically different from estimates derived from standard ship-based surveys in adjacent time periods suggesting that the mooring point estimates had relevance in a wider spatial context (c. 100 x 100 km). The results indicated that because of the sharp peaks in the biomass cycle, the exact timing of repeated ship-based acoustic surveys might be critical. Surveys that differ in their timing by only a few weeks might exhibit quite different estimates of biomass because they fall at different points of the cycle. Additionally, within this intra-annual framework, annual ship-based surveys may be able to detect differences between high and low krill years only if they differ by densities of c. 35 g per square m. in summer and c. 20 g per square m. in winter. 4. The mechanisms driving intra-annual variability in Antarctic krill density at South Georgia are likely to be complex. Analysis of mooring data revealed a possible association between high krill density and low water temperatures (at 200 m) at South Georgia. There was evidence that seasonal variation in krill density off-shelf was linked to seasonal variation in current velocity: marked increases in velocity at the end of summer coincided with marked decreases in krill density and abrupt changes in water temperature characteristic of the Sub-Antarctic Current Front (SACCF). Oceanographic data indicated that the SACCF might have impinged in proximity to the moorings during the winter season. However, krill densities were low during these periods and analyses suggest that seasonal variations in krill density were not driven by seasonal oscillations in the position of the SACCF. The data are not consistent with a pattern of seasonal growth, production and mortality of a resident krill population at South Georgia, but are consistent with the notion of large influxes of krill in early summer, and of a predator-driven reduction at between mid- and late-summer. 5. The seasonal distribution, abundance and growth of key euphauiids in the Irminger Sea, North Atlantic was quantified using the first net haul data from the region since the 1930s. Results show a high degree of spatial heterogeneity in the seasonal distribution of euphausiid abundance/biomass during 2001-2002. There was evidence to suggest regional variation in growth and population processes of Meganyctiphanes norvegica and Thysanoessa longicaudata, and this corresponded broadly to distinct physical zones in the Irminger Sea. There were, however, no significant links between growth and temperature and chlorophyll a concentration. This was attributed to high spatial and temporal variability in biological and physical sampling. These data are a prerequisite for understanding ecosystems dynamics in the North Atlantic, and are important for robust ecosystem-based management strategies. 6. Controls on euphausiid spatial heterogeneity at high latitudes are likely to be complex. Important factors include horizontal advection, temperature, resource availability and behavioural mechanisms. Short-term (intra-annual), small-scale (basin-scale) data are fundamental to understanding variability in euphausiid abundance and distribution on broader spatial and temporal scales in these ecosystems.

Analysis and characterisation of biomolecules using mass spectrometry has advanced over the past decade due to improvements in instrument design and capability; relevant use of complementary techniques; and available experimental and in silico data for comparison with cutting-edge research. This thesis presents ion mobility data, collected on an in-house modified QToF mass spectrometer (the MoQTOF), for a number of protein systems. Two haemoproteins, cytochrome c and haemoglobin, have been characterised and rotationally-averaged collision cross-sections for a number of multimeric species are presented. Intact multiply-charged multimers of the form [xCyt c + nH]z+ where x = 1 (monomer), x = 2 (dimer) and x = 3 (trimer) for cytochrome c have been elucidated and for species with x ≥ 2, reported for the first time. Fragment ions possibly attributed to a novel fragmentation mechanism, native electron capture dissociation, are reported with a brief discussion into their possible production from the dissociation of the gas-phase dimer species. Haemoglobin monomer globin subunits, dimers and intact tetramer have been successfully transferred to the gas phase, and their cross-sections elucidated. Comparisons with in silico computational data have been made and a discussion of the biologically-active tetramer association/dissociation technique is presented. Three further proteins have been studied and their gas-phase collision cross-sections calculated. Two regions of the large Factor H (fH) complement glycoprotein, fH 10-15 and fH 19-20, have been characterised for the first time by ion mobility-mass spectrometry. Much work using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy has previously been achieved to produce structural information of these protein regions, however further biophysical characterisation using mass spectrometry may aid in greater understanding of the interactions these two specific regions have with other biomolecules. The DNA-binding core domain of the tumour suppressor p53 has been characterised and cross-sections produced in the presence and absence of the zinc metal ion that may control the domain’s biological activity. Within this core domain, p53 inactivation mutations have been shown to occur in up to 50% of human cancers, therefore the potential exists to further cancer-fighting activity through research on this region. Anterior Gradient-2 (AGR2) protein facilitates downregulation of p53 in an as yet unclear mechanism. Recent work using peptide aptamers has demonstrated that this downregulation can be disrupted and levels of p53 restored. Collision cross-sections for six peptide aptamers have been calculated, as well as cross-sections for multimers of AGR2 protein. A complex between one aptamer with the protein has also been elucidated. Use of the commercially available Synapt HDMS ion mobility-mass spectrometer at Waters MS Technologies Centre (Manchester, UK) allowed data to be collected for both Factor H protein regions and for the DNA-binding core domain of p53. Data are compared in the appropriate chapters with data collected using the MoQTOF.

The work presented in this thesis has contributed with knowledge to several aspects of protein-protein interaction involving PDZ domains. A substantial amount of our proteome contains regions that are intrinsically disordered but fold upon ligand interaction. The mechanism by which disordered regions bind to their ligands is one important piece of the puzzle to understand why disorder is beneficial. A region in the PDZ domain of nNOS undergoes such a disorder-to-order transition to form a b-sheet in the binding pocket of its partner. By studying the kinetics of interaction, in combination with mutations that modulate the stability of the aforementioned region, we demonstrate that the binding mechanism consists of multiple steps in which the native binding interactions of the b-sheet are formed cooperatively after the rate-limiting transition state. These mechanistic aspects may be general for the binding reactions of intrinsically disordered protein regions, at least upon formation of β-sheets.               The second part of this thesis deals with the engineering of proteins for increasing affinity in protein-protein interaction. Infection by high-risk human papillomavirus (hrHPV) can lead to cancer, and the viral E6 protein is an attractive drug target. E6 from hrHPV natively interacts with the well-characterized PDZ2 domain in SAP97, which we used as a scaffold to develop a high affinity bivalent binder of hrHPV E6. We initially increased PDZ2's affinity for E6 6-fold, but at the cost of decreased specificity. Attaching a helix that binds E6 at a distant site, increasing the affinity another14-fold, completed the design.             The final work of this thesis investigates if binding studies conducted with isolated PDZ domains is representative of the full-length proteins they belong to. It has been suggested that ligand binding in PDZ domains can be influenced by factors such as adjacent domains and interactions outside of the binding pocket. We studied these aspects for the three PDZ domains of PSD-95 and found that they on the whole function in an independent manner with short peptides as ligands, but that interactions outside of the PDZ binding-pocket may be present. The representative length of the PDZ interaction partner should therefore be considered.

For many metropolitan areas in U.S., flight traffic is distributed between multiple airports that service the region. Since 2008, there are trends showing that in certain multi-airport regions, flight traffic is being consolidated toward one “dominant” airport (as in LA) where as in other regions, departure traffic is becoming more evenly distributed between the multiple airports. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects these trends in departure volume are having on overall departure delay times in these regions. For this analysis, data from the airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago are included. Based on the results of this research, there is evidence that the dominant hub model as evidenced in LA with LAX, is preferable when managing delays to a more dispersed model showcased in DC.

The adequacy of existing transport infrastructure to four distinct clusters in Austria's key regions is tested by examining the willingness of logistics managers to pay for additional service improvements. Findings show an overall willingness to pay for multiple service improvements; this reveals a general dissatisfaction with current shipping options, regardless of transport mode, where rail mode services ("Bahn") provoke the greatest dissatisfaction. Willingness to pay for improvements generally increases by degrees of regional EU remoteness and relative youth of cluster industries, as hypothesized from Schumpterian assumptions concerning infrastructure innovation. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers

We present the discovery of seven new proplyds (i.e., sources surrounded by cometary H alpha emission characteristic of offset ionization fronts (IFs)) in NGC 1977, located about 30' north of the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) at a distance of similar to 400 pc. Each of these proplyds is situated at projected distances 0.04-0.27 pc from the B1V star 42 Orionis (c Ori), which is the main source of UV photons in the region. In all cases the IFs of the proplyds are clearly pointing toward the common ionizing source, 42 Ori, and six of the seven proplyds clearly show tails pointing away from it. These are the first proplyds to be found around a B star, with previously known examples instead being located around O stars, including those in the ONC around theta(1) Ori C. The radii of the offset IFs in our proplyds are between similar to 200 and 550 au; two objects also contain clearly resolved central sources that we associate with disks of radii 50-70 au. The estimated strength of the FUV radiation field impinging on the proplyds is around 10-30 times less than that incident on the classic proplyds in the ONC. We show that the observed proplyd sizes are however consistent with recent models for FUV photoevaporation in relatively weak FUV radiation fields.

Nowadays, there exist a huge number of end devices with different screen properties for watching television content, which is either broadcasted or transmitted over the internet. To allow best viewing conditions on each of these devices, different image formats have to be provided by the broadcaster. Producing content for every single format is, however, not applicable by the broadcaster as it is much too laborious and costly. The most obvious solution for providing multiple image formats is to produce one high resolution format and prepare formats of lower resolution from this. One possibility to do this is to simply scale video images to the resolution of the target image format. Two significant drawbacks are the loss of image details through ownscaling and possibly unused image areas due to letter- or pillarboxes. A preferable solution is to find the contextual most important region in the high-resolution format at first and crop this area with an aspect ratio of the target image format afterwards. On the other hand, defining the contextual most important region manually is very time consuming. Trying to apply that to live productions would be nearly impossible. Therefore, some approaches exist that automatically define cropping areas. To do so, they extract visual features, like moving reas in a video, and define regions of interest (ROIs) based on those. ROIs are finally used to define an enclosing cropping area. The extraction of features is done without any knowledge about the type of content. Hence, these approaches are not able to distinguish between features that might be important in a given context and those that are not. The work presented within this thesis tackles the problem of extracting visual features based on prior knowledge about the content. Such knowledge is fed into the system in form of metadata that is available from TV production environments. Based on the extracted features, ROIs are then defined and filtered dependent on the analysed content. As proof-of-concept, this application finally adapts SDTV (Standard Definition Television) sports productions automatically to image formats with lower resolution through intelligent cropping and scaling. If no content information is available, the system can still be applied on any type of content through a default mode. The presented approach is based on the principle of a plug-in system. Each plug-in represents a method for analysing video content information, either on a low level by extracting image features or on a higher level by processing extracted ROIs. The combination of plug-ins is determined by the incoming descriptive production metadata and hence can be adapted to each type of sport individually. The application has been comprehensively evaluated by comparing the results of the system against alternative cropping methods. This evaluation utilised videos which were manually cropped by a professional video editor, statically cropped videos and simply scaled, non-cropped videos. In addition to and apart from purely subjective evaluations, the gaze positions of subjects watching sports videos have been measured and compared to the regions of interest positions extracted by the system.

Contact fatigue damages resulting either from static or dynamic contact are of interest for understanding the failure modes and mechanisms leading to improvement of the components’ performances in tribological applications. The objective of this research was to ascertain how and to what extent the counterface materials, loading conditions, contact configuration, lubrication, and the environment affect the failure behaviours of material under static and dynamic contact fatigue loading. An experimental ball-on-flat test configuration was employed for both static and dynamic contact fatigue testing. In house designed test rig was used to study static cyclic loading contact fatigue behaviours of brittle polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) in contact with balls made of different materials, i.e. Si3N4, steel, aluminium, bronze and PMMA in dry and oil-lubricated conditions. A modified four ball test machine was used to study dynamic rolling contact fatigue behaviours of thermally sprayed molybdenum and titanium coatings in contact with steel balls in dry and seawater conditions. The static contact fatigue and the dynamic contact fatigue test results revealed that counterface material, loading magnitude, lubricant and the environment play a vital role in controlling failure modes and the extent of damage. In static contact fatigue, adhesive strength of the interface was the key factor controlling damage of the PMMA plate in both dry and oil-lubricated conditions. In dry conditions, three failure modes, i.e. adhesive wear, ring cracks, and radial cracks controlled the damage of PMMA to a different degree for each combination of materials. Whereas, the damage of each combination in oil-lubricated conditions was affected by the extent of three failure modes, i.e. adhesive wear, radial cracks and abrasive wear. In dynamic contact fatigue tests, adhesive wear and inter-lamellar cracking were the major failure modes controlling damage of molybdenum coating and titanium coating in dry contact conditions while abrasive wear, corrosion and lubrication controlled damage processes in seawater conditions.

Purpose: This study examined differences in oral health status and dental treatment needs by HMO regions in Virginia. Methods: The Division of Dental Health (DDH), Virginia Department of Health (VDH), completed the 1999 Virginia Oral Health Needs Assessment (VSOHNA) with the cooperation of the Virginia Department of Education. The survey used a probability proportional to size (PPS) sample design in selecting school children from public schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Surface (DMFS/dfs) and tooth-level (DMFT/dft) data were collected as indicators of dental disease on all children. Child-level data was also recorded for each student consisting of age, race, gender, enrollment in a free and reduced lunch program, medical insurance status, dental insurance status, and history of dental visits. A descriptive and regression analysis was completed to examine the relationship between HMO regions and oral health status indicators. Results: The survey included more than 5,000 children in 200 schools and 52 school districts. The mean DMFT/dft levels were 1.47 (.33) and 1.7 (.03), respectively. The mean level of untreated decay (dt) for all schoolchildren was 0.66 (0.01). First graders had the highest levels of untreated disease at 0.71, while third graders had a mean of 0.66. The Central region of the state appeared to have the highest level of untreated decay. Conclusion: There were no significant differences in the percentage of "caries-free" children between the HMO regions. Untreated dental disease of Virginia schoolchildren varied according to the region in which they lived.

L' article 355, paragraphe 6, du traité sur le fonctionnement de l'Union européenne (TFUE) permet au Conseil européen, sur initiative de l'État membre concerné, d'adopter, à l'unanimité et après consultation de la Commission, une décision modifiant le statut à l'égard de l'Union d'un pays ou territoire danois, français ou néerlandais visé aux paragraphes 1 et 2 dudit article. En étant le premier Pays et Territoire d'Outre-Mer à devenir une région ultrapériphérique, Mayotte fait figure de précurseur et concrétise cette faculté innovante. Par ailleurs, cette évolution statutaire de l'île de Mayotte réactualise aujourd'hui une question centrale pour les collectivités ultramarines des États membres : Les régions ultrapériphériques doivent-elles-envier les Pays et Territoires d'Outre-Mer ou bien est-ce l'inverse ? À travers la comparaison des fonctions de chaque statut, cette étude apporte des éléments de réponse à cette interrogation. / The article 355(6) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) allows the European Council, on the initiative of the Member State concerned and acting unanimously after consulting the Commission, to adopt a decision amending the status, with regard to the Union, of a Danish, French or Netherlands country or territory referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 355. By being the first Overseas country and territory to become a outermost region of the European Union, Mayotte is a precursor and concretize this innovative faculty. Besides, this statutory evolution of the island of Mayotte updates a central question for the overseas territories of the member states. Should the outremost régions envy the overseas countries and territories or it is the opposite ? Through the comparison of the functions of every status, this study brings elements of answer to this interrogation.