Lung diseases, cancers, and trauma can result in injury to the connective tissue lining the lung, i.e., the pleura. Pleural injuries lead to pneumothoraxes or pleural effusions, i.e., air or fluid leaking out of the lung respectively, and potential lung collapse - an immediately life threatening condition. While several bioengineered soft tissue sealants exist on the market, there is only one sealant FDA-approved for use in pulmonary surgery. In addition, very limited techniques are presented in the literature for characterizing the burst properties of hydrogel tissue sealants. For my thesis, I proposed to develop a protocol for characterizing the burst properties of hydrogel sealants using a novel burst pressure test chamber. I further proposed a novel combination of oxidation and methacrylation reactions of alginate for tissue sealant applications, with a particular focus on developing a pulmonary sealant. The proposed research objectives are: 1) To develop protocol for testing hydrogel sealants for soft tissue applications; 2) To verify alginate as a potential for tissue sealant applications; and 3) To optimize an alginate hydrogel sealant and perform ex vivo analysis for a pleural sealant application. Alginate materials with varying degrees of oxidation and methacrylation were synthesized and characterized. Oscillatory rheometry was used to characterize material properties such as viscosity, hydrogel gelation kinetics, and complex moduli. Burst pressure measurements properties and failure mechanisms, i.e. delamination or material failure, were collected for a liquid and dry-state application. Preliminary ex vivo mouse lung model testing demonstrated that methacrylated alginate hydrogels are able to withstand physiological pressures associated with breathing, and failure occurs within the hydrogel for adhesive alginate-based tissue sealants.

In this thesis the Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are studied, the brightest explosions in the universe. GRBs have been observed since year 1967, but there are several unsolved problems. In the first chapter there is an introduction to the issue of GRBs, and the history of observations are briefly described. The Fermi satellite, the latest satellite devoted to gamma-ray burst observations is described in chapter two. Characteristics of the Fermi instruments are also described. The observed data of GRBs are characterized in the third chapter. The distribution of GRB durations, distances, and spectral hardnesses are described. The characteristics of long and short GRBs (distance, isotropy of distribution, metalicity dependence, isotropic energy) are described. A chance of the appearance of a GRB in the Milky Way is discussed. New Fermi observations are described too. Fourth chapter is about models of GRBs. The fireball and canonball models are described. Fifth chapter is focused on the exposure function of CGRO-BATSE, Fermi-GBM, Swift. I have created the exposure function for GBM on Fermi satellite. It is quite difficult, and I have assumed some simplified hypotheses. Information of the satellite's position, position of detectors on the Fermi satellite, have been found on the Fermi web pages and in the article...

O conhecimento acerca das vocalizações dos odontocetos é extremamente heterogêneo e concentra-se principalmente nas espécies mantidas em cativeiro. Neste estudo, descrevo quantitativamente parte do repertório vocal dos golfinhos-rotadores, Stenella longirostris, que vivem ao redor do Arquipélago de Fernando de Noronha, subdividido nos seguintes elementos: assobios, grasnidos emitidos na faixa audível e grasnidos emitidos pelos machos durante a corte. Além disso, avaliei a influência tantos dos diferentes sistemas de gravação e análise de dados, quanto da escolha, interpretação e extração de variáveis por diferentes pesquisadores na variabilidade dos assobios e grasnidos emitidos por golfinhosrotadores. Para avaliar a variabilidade dos assobios desta população de golfinhos-rotadores, uma série de análises quantitativas foi conduzida. Nove variáveis foram extraídas de cada contorno de assobio selecionado aleatoriamente. Os valores médios observados foram muito similares àqueles reportados por OSWALD et al. (2003) para golfinhos-rotadores do Oceano Pacífico Tropical Oriental e apresentaram diferença significativa apenas em relação a freqüência máxima dos assobios. Com relação aos grasnidos, amostras foram selecionadas aleatoriamente e destas foram extraídas oito variáveis. Uma série de análises quantitativas foram então conduzidas para avaliar a variabilidade destas emissões. Os valores obtidos para cada uma das variáveis diferiram dos valores previamente reportados para a espécie, mas as razões para esta variação são ainda desconhecidas. Na busca de indícios sobre a função dos grasnidos no comportamento reprodutivo, eu dividi os grasnidos gravados em duas categorias: corte e não-corte. Grasnidos de corte foram aqueles sons gravados na presença de grupos de golfinhos compostos por uma ou duas fêmeas e por vários machos, engajados em comportamento de corte. Grasnidos de não-corte eram todos aqueles gravados em outros comportamentos ou situações. Os resultados obtidos mostraram diferenças significativas entre as duas categorias tanto nas análises univariadas, quanto na Análise Discriminante (AD), pelo menos quanto à duração e ao número de pulsos. Além disso, a AD mostrou que 98% das amostras foram corretamente classificadas nessas categorias. Estes resultados reforçam a idéia de que os grasnidos são usados em contextos sociais, especialmente em situações aflitivas e exaltam a importância da identificação do emissor dos sinais, assim como o uso de equipamentos de gravação de amplo espectro de freqüência. Por fim, realizei uma série de testes para avaliar a metodologia de gravação e análise de sons. Para isso, gravei as emissões utilizando dois sistemas distintos de gravação, ambos com taxa de amostragem de 48 kHz. Além disso, dois pesquisadores diferentes extraíram as variáveis de um mesmo grupo de amostras e os resultados obtidos para cada pesquisador, bem como para cada sistema foram comparados. Os resultados mostraram que, para os assobios, houve diferenças significativas entre as análises de cada pesquisador, quanto à às variáveis freqüência mínima, freqüência final e duração. Ao comparar os resultados obtidos pelos diferentes sistemas de gravação, notei que a duração apresentou diferenças significativas. Quanto aos grasnidos, notei uma diferença significativa no número de amostras de qualidade gravadas por cada um dos sistemas de gravação. Entretanto, as amostras gravadas em ambos os sistemas não apresentaram diferenças significativas em nenhuma das variáveis extraídas, tampouco foram observadas diferenças entre os diferentes pesquisadores. Acredito que o conhecimento gerado aqui contribuirá para uma melhor compreensão dos padrões de variação da espécie e servirá como base para uma série de outros estudos comparativos. / Knowledge on odontocete vocalizations is extremely heterogeneous and centered mainly in those species kept in captivity. In this study, I describe quantitatively part of the vocal repertoire of the spinner dolphin, Stenella longirostris, from Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, off Brazil, subdivided in the following elements: whistles, burst-pulses emitted in the aural range, and burst-pulses emitted by males during courtship. Furthermore, I evaluated the influence of different recording and analysis systems, and the choice, interpretation and extraction of the acoustic variables by different researchers in the variability of whistles and burst-pulses emitted by spinner dolphins. To evaluate the variability of whistles emitted by this population, a series of quantitative analyses was conducted. Nine variables were extracted from each randomly selected whistle contour. The mean values observed were very similar to those reported by OSWALD et al. (2003) for the spinner dolphins from Eastern Tropical Pacific and presented significant differences only in relation to the maximum frequency of the whistles. I extracted eight variables from randomly selected burst-pulsed sound samples. A series of quantitative analyses were conducted to evaluate the variability of these emissions. The values obtained from each of the variables differed from previously data reported for the species, but the reasons to this variation are still unknown. In the search of any signs of burstpulse functions in reproductive behaviors, I divided the recorded burst-pulses in two categories: court and no-court pulses. Court bursts were those sounds recorded in the presence of groups of dolphins composed by one or two females and several males, engaged in courtship behavior. No-court bursts were all those recorded in other behaviors or situations. The results showed significant differences between the two categories in univariate analysis and also in the Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA). The DFA also showed that 98% of the samples were correctly classified in these categories. These results reinforce the idea that burst-pulsed sounds are used in social contexts, specially in afflictive situations, and exalt the importance of identifying the signal emitter, as well as using wide frequency capable recording equipment. Finally, I performed a series of tests to evaluate the methodology of recording and sound analysis. To achieve this, I recorded the sound emissions using two different recording systems, both with sample rate of 48 kHz. Furthermore, two rsearchers extracted the variables of a group of samples, and the results from each researcher and each recording system were compared. Taking into account the whistles, the results showed that there were significant differences between the researchers on duration, minimum and final frequencies recorded. I compared the results obtained by different recording systems and noticed that the sound duration presented significant differences. With respect to burst-pulses, I noticed a significant difference in the number of samples with quality recorded by each of the recording systems. However, the samples recorded in both systems didn\'t show any difference in none of the extracted variables, nor there were observed differences between researchers. I believe that the knowledge produced here will contribute to the comprehension of variation patterns, and will also serve as a basis to further comparative studies.

A aquicultura sofre diferentes pressões por um lado o impacto que as doenças causam na produção, e por outro a pressão por parte de grupos ambientalistas e do governo devido ao impacto ambiental. Diferentes soluções foram propostas para esses problemas como probióticos e imunoestimulantes para prevenir e controlar doenças com nenhum ou algum sucesso. Outra opção seria o biofloco para minimizar o impacto ambiental, com excelentes resultados zootécnicos. Porém não sabemos se o sistema de biofloco estimula ou inibe o sistema imune de camarões (Litopenaeus vannamei). Esse é o objetivo desse estudo, saber se o sistema de biofloco altera a contagem total e diferencial de hemócitos, os índices fagocíticos, utilizando ensaio de fagocitose in vitro com Sacaromises cerevisae e a produção de ânion superóxido pelo ensaio de Nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT). Na contagem total de hemócitos nos 2 primeiros meses os animais criados em água clara possuem uma contagem maior que os criados em biofloco enquanto que no 4° mês os animais de biofloco possuem uma contagem maior. Na contagem diferencial no 4°mês as células hialinas estão em maior porcentagem nos animais criados em biofloco enquanto que as granulares e simi-granulares estão em menor porcentagem nesses animais, quando comparamos com os animais criados em água clara. Os índices fagocíticos e a produção de ânion superóxido não apresentam diferença entre os animais criados em água clara e os criados em biofloco. / The aquaculture production suffers different pressure in one hand disease, and in the other its environment impact. Different solutions are offered to solve this problems such as probiotics and immunostimulant to prevent and control the diseases with some or no success. Another option is the biofloc to minimize its environmental impact, with excellent results to zootechincal characteristics. But it is not known whether biofloc stimulate or inhibits the shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) immune system. That is what our study aim to answer if the biofloc system affects or not the total and differential hemocytes count, the phagocityc indexes of in vitro phagocytosis with Sacaromises cerevisae and the production of superoxide anion with the Nitroblue Tetrazolium (NBT) assay. At the first 2 month the animal rare in clear water had a higher total hemocyte count, while it was higher in the animals rare in the biofloc at the 4th month. At the 4th month the hyalines cells had a higher concentration in animals rare at biofloc system, while the granular and semi-granular cells had a lower concentration in this animals when compared with the ones rare at the clear water system. The phagocityc indexes and the production of superoxide anion did not have any difference between animals rare at clear water system and biofloc system.

New optical technologies were developed to continuously measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) and oxygen metabolism (CMRO2) non-invasively through the skull. Methods and devices were created to improve the performance of near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) for use in experimental animals and humans. These were employed to investigate cerebral metabolism and cerebrovascular reactivity under different states of anesthesia and during models of pathological states. Burst suppression is a brain state arising naturally in pathological conditions or under deep general anesthesia, but its mechanism and consequences are not well understood. Electroencephalography (EEG) and cortical hemodynamics were simultaneously measured in rats to evaluate the coupling between cerebral oxygen metabolism and neuronal activity in the burst suppressed state. EEG bursts were used to deconvolve NIRS and DCS signals into the hemodynamic and metabolic response function for an individual burst. This response was found to be similar to the stereotypical functional hyperemia evoked by normal brain activation. Thus, spontaneous burst activity does not cause metabolic or hemodynamic dysfunction in the cortex. Furthermore, cortical metabolic activity was not associated with the initiation or termination of a burst. A novel technique, time-domain DCS (TD-DCS), was introduced to significantly increase the sensitivity of transcranial CBF measurements to the brain. A new time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) instrument with a custom high coherence pulsed laser source was engineered for the first-ever simultaneous measurement of photon time of flight and DCS autocorrelation decays. In this new approach, photon time tags are exploited to determine path-length-dependent autocorrelation functions. By correlating photons according to time of flight, CBF is distinguished from superficial blood flow. Experiments in phantoms and animals demonstrate TD-DCS has significantly greater sensitivity to the brain than existing transcranial techniques. Intracranial pressure (ICP) modulates both steady-state and pulsatile CBF, making CBF a potential marker for ICP. In particular, the critical closing pressure (CrCP) has been proposed as a surrogate measure of ICP. A new DCS device was developed to measure pulsatile CBF non-invasively. A novel method for estimating CrCP and ICP from DCS measurement of pulsatile microvascular blood flow in the cerebral cortex was demonstrated in rats. / 2018-03-08T00:00:00Z

A aquicultura sofre diferentes pressões por um lado o impacto que as doenças causam na produção, e por outro a pressão por parte de grupos ambientalistas e do governo devido ao impacto ambiental. Diferentes soluções foram propostas para esses problemas como probióticos e imunoestimulantes para prevenir e controlar doenças com nenhum ou algum sucesso. Outra opção seria o biofloco para minimizar o impacto ambiental, com excelentes resultados zootécnicos. Porém não sabemos se o sistema de biofloco estimula ou inibe o sistema imune de camarões (Litopenaeus vannamei). Esse é o objetivo desse estudo, saber se o sistema de biofloco altera a contagem total e diferencial de hemócitos, os índices fagocíticos, utilizando ensaio de fagocitose in vitro com Sacaromises cerevisae e a produção de ânion superóxido pelo ensaio de Nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT). Na contagem total de hemócitos nos 2 primeiros meses os animais criados em água clara possuem uma contagem maior que os criados em biofloco enquanto que no 4° mês os animais de biofloco possuem uma contagem maior. Na contagem diferencial no 4°mês as células hialinas estão em maior porcentagem nos animais criados em biofloco enquanto que as granulares e simi-granulares estão em menor porcentagem nesses animais, quando comparamos com os animais criados em água clara. Os índices fagocíticos e a produção de ânion superóxido não apresentam diferença entre os animais criados em água clara e os criados em biofloco. / The aquaculture production suffers different pressure in one hand disease, and in the other its environment impact. Different solutions are offered to solve this problems such as probiotics and immunostimulant to prevent and control the diseases with some or no success. Another option is the biofloc to minimize its environmental impact, with excellent results to zootechincal characteristics. But it is not known whether biofloc stimulate or inhibits the shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) immune system. That is what our study aim to answer if the biofloc system affects or not the total and differential hemocytes count, the phagocityc indexes of in vitro phagocytosis with Sacaromises cerevisae and the production of superoxide anion with the Nitroblue Tetrazolium (NBT) assay. At the first 2 month the animal rare in clear water had a higher total hemocyte count, while it was higher in the animals rare in the biofloc at the 4th month. At the 4th month the hyalines cells had a higher concentration in animals rare at biofloc system, while the granular and semi-granular cells had a lower concentration in this animals when compared with the ones rare at the clear water system. The phagocityc indexes and the production of superoxide anion did not have any difference between animals rare at clear water system and biofloc system.

[non communiqué] / For the last three decades, the optical fiber has been a quite systematic response to dimensioning issues in the Internet. Originally restricted to long haul networks, the optical network has gradually descended the network hierarchy to discard the bottlenecks. In the 90's, metropolitan networks became optical. Today, optical fibers are deployed in access networks and reach the users. In a near future, besides wireless access and local area networks, all networks in the network hierarchy may be made of fibers, in order to support current services (HDTV) and the emergence of new applications (3D-TV newly commercialized in USA). The deployment of such greedy applications will initiate an upward upgrade. The first step may be the Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), not only because of the traffic growth, but also because of the variety of served applications, each with a specific traffic profile. The current optical layer is of mitigated efficiency, dealing with unforeseen events. The lack of reactivity is mainly due to the slow switching devices: any on-line decision of the optical layer is delayed by the configuration of the. devices. When the optical network has been extended in the MANs, a lot of efforts has been deployed to improve the reactivity of the optical layer. The Optical Circuit Switching paradigm (OCS) has been improved but it ultimately relies on off-line configuration of the optical devices. Optical Burst Switching (OBS) can be viewed as a highly flexible evolution of OCS, that operates five order of magnitude faster. Within this 'architecture, the loss-free guaranty can be abandoned in order to improve the reactivity of the optical layer. Indeed, reliability and reactivity appear as antagonists properties and getting closer to either of them mitigates the other. This thesis aims at proposing a solution to achieve reliable transmission over a dynamic optical layer. Focusing on OBS networks, our objective is to solve the contention issue without mitigating the reactivity. After the consideration of contention avoidance mechanisms with routing constraints similar as in OCS networks, we investigate the reactive solutions that intend to solve the contentions. None of the available contention resolution scheme can ensure the 100% efficiency that leads to loss-free transmission. An attractive solution is the recourse to electrical buffering, but it is notoriously disregarded because (1) it may highly impact the delays and (2) loss can occur due to buffer overflows. The efficiency of translucent architectures thus highly depends on the buffer availability, that can be improved by reducing the time spent in the buffers and the contention rate. We show that traffic grooming can highly reduce the emission delay, and consequently the buffer occupancy. In a first architecture, traffic grooming is enabled by a translucent core node architecture, capable to re-aggregate incoming bursts. The re-aggregation is mandatory to "de-groom" the bursts in the core network (i.e., to demultiplex the content of a burst). On the one hand, the re-aggregation highly reduces the loss probability, but on the other hand, it absorbs the benefits of traffic grooming. Finally, dynamic access to re-aggregation for contention resolution, despite the significant reduction of the contention rate, dramatically impacts the end-to-end delay and the memory requirement. We thus propose a second architecture, called CAROBS, that exploits traffic grooming in the optical domain. This framework is fully dynamic and can be used jointly with our translucent architecture that performs re-aggregation. As the (de)grooming operations do not involve re-aggregation, the translucent module can be restricted to contention resolution. As a result, the volume of data submitted to re-aggregation is drastically reduced and loss-free transmission can be reached with the same reactivity, end-to-end delay and memory requirement as a native OBS network

No description available.

Oxygen sequence Wolf-Rayet stars (WO) are thought to be the final evolution phase of some high-mass stars, as such they may be the progenitors of Type Ic SNe as well as potential progenitors of broad-lined Ic and long gamma-ray bursts. We present the first spectropolarimetric observations of the Galactic WO stars WR93b and WR102 obtained with FORS1 on the Very Large Telescope. We find no sign of a line effect, which could be expected if these stars were rapid rotators. We also place constraints on the amplitude of a potentially undetected line effect. This allows us to derive upper limits on the possible intrinsic continuum polarization and find Pcont < 0.077 per cent and Pcont < 0.057 per cent for WR93b and WR102, respectively. Furthermore, we derive upper limits on the rotation of our WO stars by considering our results in the context of the wind compression effect. We estimate that for an edge-on case the rotational velocity of WR93b is vrot < 324 km s−1 while for WR102 vrot < 234 km s−1. These correspond to values of vrot/vcrit < 19 per cent and j) < 18.0 cm2 s−1 for WR93b and 2 s−1 for WR102. The upper limits found on vrot/vcrit and log(j) for our WO stars are therefore similar to the estimates calculated for Galactic Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars that do show a line effect. Therefore, although the presence of a line effect in a single WR star is indicative of fast rotation, the absence of a line effect does not rule out significant rotation, even when considering the edge-on scenario.

The GSM platform is a extremely successful wireless technology and an unprecedented story of global achievement. The GSM platform is growing and evolving and offers an expanded and feature-rich voice and data enabling services. General Packet Radio Service, (GPRS), will have a tremendous transmission rate, which will make a significant impact on most of the existing services. Additionally, GPRS stands ready for the introduction of new services as operators and users, both business and private, appreciate the capabilities and potential that GPRS provides. Services such as the Internet, videoconferencing and on-line shopping will be as smooth as talking on the phone. Moreover, the capability and ease of access to these services increase at work, at home or during travel. In this research the traffic channel of a GSM system was studied in detail and simulated in order to obtain a performance analysis. Matlab, software from Mathworks, was used for the simulation. Both the forward and the reverse links of a GSM system were simulated. A flat fading model was used to model the channel. Signal to Noise Ratio, (SNR), was the primary metric that was varied during the simulation. All the building blocks for a traffic channel, including a Convolutional encoder, an Interleaver and a Modulator were coded in Matlab. Finally the GPRS system, which is an enhancement of the GSM system for data services was introduced.