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<p>Nanotechnology has experienced a tremendous rise in the last decade. The synthesis of nanomaterials of defined structure and controlled properties is one of the most challenging part. Solution processing bottom-up fabrication techniques enables the facile synthesis of low dimension and ordered structures with low cost through the self-assembly of basic building blocks. Biotemplating has become an emerging field in which natural biomolecular objects are utilized for creating functional, hierarchical, controlled patterned structures with nanometric precision. It is a capital effective, eco-friendly and energy-efficient synthetic process. Viral biotemplating has shown great potential in electronics, environmental and biomedical devices. In recent years, in-planta produced Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) and its variants have been used to produce metal nanorods and nanowires of monodisperse structures under mild conditions without the use of harsh chemical treatments although there remains much to be understood. Mass production of biotemplate, programming of viral particles of desired functionalities, manipulation for biomineralized metal materials of good quality have not been sufficiently studied to allow for directed synthesis. The fundamental studies on platform development for viral biotemplate production, design of viral proteins carrying engineered properties, and the hydrothermal synthesis of biotemplated metal nanomaterials, which create great uniformity and high coverage are of interest in this dissertation. Three experimental studies are outlined.<br></p><p><br></p><p>A novel virus biotemplate, Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) virus-like particle is designed and engineered through genetic engineering. By fusing the Origin of Assembly from TMV to the transcript encoding BSMV capsid protein, the self-assembly of BSMV-VLP nanorod from microbial-based protein expression system was achieved for the first time. An alternate platform for viral particle production has been developed. Optimization of VLP expression, purification and processing conditions are performed. This developed alternative E. coli production platforms offer unique opportunities for genetic engineering and faster protein expression; therefore, the development of our system enables rapid design-build-test cycles for the engineering and production of BSMV-VLPs with desired properties. Results in this project shows the power of genetic engineering and serves as a springboard for genetic engineering of the VLPs.<br></p><p><br></p><p>Programming on BSMV-VLP is further used to decouple the VLP assembly into governing internal molecular interactions. To drive the nucleic acid free helical BSMV-VLP rod assembly and further increase the stability of capsid proteins, an identification of Caspar Carboxylate cluster in BSMV is performed. Various carboxylate residues were selected through protein crystal structure and examined systematically through experimental work. By introducing mutations on selected residues, the intersubunit carboxylate interaction of the proteins was significantly altered, resulting in an in vivo production of nucleic-acid free BSMV-VLP assembly for the first time. The change in interactions leads to increased stability of the modified VLP, enabling the formation of longer nanorods with lengths over one micrometer. Moreover, both wild-type and mutated BSMV-VLPs were shown to have great structural stability across a wide range of pHs. Overall, we exhibit experimental identification to systematically probe the key carboxylate interactions to increase the stability of proteins and drive RNA-free BSMV-VLP assembly. This project greatly expands the potential usefulness of the engineered BSMV-VLP biotemplates for a wide variety of applications.<br></p><p><br></p><p>Finally, to demonstrate the versatile uses of BSMV-VLP in biotemplating, the new biotemplate was utilized to expand understandings on the directed synthesis of metal nanostructures. By using the hydrothermal synthesis, VLPs were successfully utilized to synthesize monometallic palladium nanorods with a wide range of length scales. The VLP-mediated nanorods are more uniformly and fully-covered than the ones synthesized with in planta-produced BSMV virion. Besides, the synthesis shows an effective control over the metal nanorod diameter. The capability of BSMV-VLP was readily expanded from the synthesis of monometallic nanorods to bimetallic hybrid. In the absence of an exogenous reducing agent, mineralization of platinum, gold and copper was successfully demonstrated on the VLP. It is attributed to lower reduction barrier introduced by already-deposited palladium nanoparticles which serve as nucleation sites for subsequent metal reduction. The formation of bimetallic complexes was further supported by STEM, EDS and XPS analysis evidenced the presences of multiple metals. Overall, BSMV-VLP-mediated biotemplating using the hydrothermal synthesis has been confirmed to be a promising and feasible approach to create organic-inorganic complex nanocomposite.<br></p><p><br></p><p>Lastly, to move toward an application, the synthesized Pd nanorods coated with full coverage and great uniformity of nanoparticles were utilized as an exciting hydrogen sensing material. The developed hydrogen sensing system using a quartz crystal microbalance shows a fast response toward hydrogen as well as the ability of hydrogen detection and quantification of the adsorption capacity. This study serves as an entry point and opens up enormous possibility for next-generation of Pd-virus hybrid hydrogen sensors.<br></p><p><br></p><p>Taken together, this dissertation has demonstrated the engineering and production of a novel BSMV virus-like particle bacterial system. This alternative platform and developed parameter space for VLP production is genetically tractable and requires significantly shorter processing duration for large-scale and mass production. The BSMV-VLP biotemplated metal nanomaterials present great qualities and controllable dimensions. This approach has explored the synthetic palette and opened up enormous possibilities in the bottom-up nanofabrication of versatile and tunable organic-inorganic nanoscaled complex and would facilitate future engineering industrial applications.<br></p>

The aim of this study was to find out how Utbildningsverket’s (UR) pedagogical material, belonging to two miniseries aimed at upper secondary school, use top-down- and bottom-up strategies to teach listening comprehension. For this purpose, a case study method was used where the materials worked as the case to be studied. Furthermore, the approaches that were used for this study were based on taxonomies established by previous research: First, a taxonomy of strategies for listening comprehension illustrated by Graham and Santos (2015). Secondly, a taxonomy relating to listening types, illustrated by Field (2009). With these taxonomies and the English 5 syllabus, the materials were studied as a qualitative case study. The results show that the two criteria in the English 5 syllabus, which relate to strategies, are addressed within the teacher’s guide of both miniseries. Moreover, My English Mistakes and The Great Debate, both implicitly instruct students to use various strategies. The results also show that the top-down strategies are overrepresented in frequency but less varied in listening type variation. However, the strategies that are instructed are not explained or motivated in the materials.

Instante Architekturen erscheinen in bestimmten Bereichen von Raumbildung als vertraute Alltagsbauten, wie etwa im American Diner oder der Imbissbude. In den 2000er Jahren entwickelte die jüngere Architektengeneration neue Ansätze, die auf der Idee einer Raumerweiterung und -aneigung durch Selbstgestaltung beruht und zumeist als temporäre Intervention im Sinne der situationistischen Ideen realisiert wurde. Zweckentfremdung und Rekontextualisierung sind dabei als Gestaltungsmethodik wieder zu finden. Qualitäten dieser instanten Architekturen werden hier im Kontext einer kritischen Hinterfragung der üblichen Entwurfs- und Planungsmethoden und einer informellen Bottom-Up-Stadtentwicklung herausgestellt.

The barbaric and targeted killings of police officers have become a growing epidemic facing the nation. An immediate consequence has created the monumental task in protecting the men and women who daily put their lives on the line on behalf of the public. Staggering national numbers over these last ten years has indicated a strong surge in the number of law enforcement officers being ambushed by domestic extremists. The purpose of the current research study was to present an overall awareness and threat picture to the law enforcement and academic communities to better educate men and women in law enforcement and to explain who exactly are these domestic extremist groups and/or individuals carrying out this violence and their ideologies and traits that make them crave such an outcome. The current research study utilized a strong exploratory qualitative focus by interviewing several law enforcement members and intelligence personnel in the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area to (a) gauge their jurisdictional domestic extremist threat picture; (b) to understand what policing tactics were being employed currently to produce effective “officer safety” protocols while embracing community relationships (if any); and (c) what recommendations they may have for other jurisdictions that will keep safe law enforcement men and women. If one law enforcement life can be saved from the current research study, then every second spent on the research was well worth it.

The diploma thesis discusses the potential of interpretation of typographical language LATEX and describes the structure of this language, its functions and their syntax. Also it analyses possibilities of LaTeX interpretation into HTML (HyperText Markup Language), in order to create typographically accurate publications, which could be viewed by common web browser. The solution concept and outlines of possible problems follows.

Between February 1st and March 16th 2023 sixteen qualitative research interviews wereconducted with deans, vicars and priests of both the Catholic Church in Sweden and theEvangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden with the aim to compare how they look at their religiousleadership, and what their answers might say about their respective theological traditions using asuggested theory called Comparative Lived Theology. The main research findings rendered fromthese interviews may be divided into the following three sections: firstly, top-down and bottom-upleadership approaches in a religious setting is descriptive of the structure of the religiousorganisations. Secondly, the fact that Evangelical-Lutheranism is a majority religious tradition inSweden sets it apart from minority traditions such as Catholicism, and this affects the religiousleadership. Thirdly, the interviews generated a notion that party politics plays a different role in thestructure of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Sweden than it does in the Catholic Church in Sweden.

Abstract The international UN-led peacebuilding mission MINUSMA has been deployed in Mali since 2013 and was initially rather successful. The mission managed to support the government with stabilization and a peace agreement that ended the conflict between the north and the south. However, since 2017 the situation has deteriorated in the presence of MINUSMA. Violence has escalated and several new communal conflicts have emerged primarily in the central regions where Islamist groups have gained ground, and there have been two more coup d’états and the government have been carrying out human rights violations against civilians. By 2023 the people of Mali and the current military government has demanded the mission to withdraw and leave the country. This study set out to understand why civilians oppose international peacebuilding and made a comparative case study of three regions in Mali, Koulikoro in the south, Mopti in the central and Gao in northeastern Mali looking at how opposition against MINUSMA has changed between 2017-2020. The study found that reasons for opposition are multilayered and stem from both historical and contemporary events and experiences. Moreover, the study found that despite substantial research on the importance of including civil society in peacebuilding processes, most civilians, groups and communities have been left out of the peace process and instead the approach has been mainly top-down with MINUSMA supporting the Malian government. The problematic aspect of this is that the government did not support its own people. The study suggest that international peacebuilding must be more context-sensitive and understand the history and root causes of the conflicts to successfully support a country with peacebuilding in order to avoid a situation where the civilian population oppose the mission instead of being included, engaged and committed to the peace process.

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Listening comprehension has been the forgotten skill in second language acquisition. However, in recent years, more and more studies have focused on listening comprehension and now acknowledge its importance in language acquisition. Empirical studies have explored how listeners use the two main listening processes (top-down processing and bottom-up processing). In this study, 31 low-proficiency level Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners from Brigham Young University took the Chinese Computer Adaptive Language Test (CCALT) and listened to four listening passages, measured by idea unit analysis and local and global question types. The data from these measurements suggest that low-proficiency level CFL participants in this study used both top-down and bottom-up processing while they listened to short listening passages. The results suggest listening comprehension at various proficiency levels needs to be studied further in Chinese and with different types of listening passages.