Nos travaux ont permis d'étudier l'effet combiné de la maturation, du mûrissement et des périodes climatiques, sur le profil des composés bioactifs de la banane Musa Cavendish, issus des French West Indies (FWI). La teneur en polyphénols des bananes 400 Degrés Jour (dj) est restée inchangée, tandis que les bananes 600 et 900 dj ont présenté une augmentation significative de leurs teneurs en polyphénols pendant la maturation (p<O,OS). En outre, les résultats ont également montré que, bien que la dopamine ait été déterminée comme étant le polyphénol le plus élevé dans la peau de bananes pendant le stade verte de développement et la maturation, sa cinétique différait du profil observé pour celle des polyphénols totaux. Les facteurs post-récolte ont été optimisés. L'ensemble de nos résultats ont montré que la sélection d'une matrice de choix tenant compte de la maturation, du mûrissement et du climat permettait d'atteindre un statut optimal de Musa Cavendish pour des concentrations optimales en composés identifiés pertinents pour la santé humaine. C'est effectivement le cas des concentrations de dopamine, médiateur vasoactif, dépendantes des stades physiologiques, du mûrissement et climat. Nos travaux ont ainsi démontré que le totum de banane présentait un effet contracturant dose dépendant sur l'aorte moins puissant que celui enregistré pour les composés de référence à concentrations plus faibles mais toutefois significatifs. Dans les mêmes conditions, il a été démontré que la prazosine modifie l'effet contracturant de la banane en l'inhibant de manière compétitive. Le récepteur alpha-l adrénergique vasculaire joue un rôle dans les effets vasoconstricteurs de la banane. Les phénomènes ulcéreux étudiés à travers l'inhibition ou non de la pousse de Helicobacter pylori après addition ou pas d'extraits polaires et apolaires de bananes ont indiqué le rôle non-inhibiteur de Musa cavendish sur la croissance de Helicobacter pylori. / The combined influence of maturation, ripening and climate periods on French West Indies (FWI) bananas, Musa Cavendish, bioactive compounds profile was studied. The polyphenol content of the 400 dd bananas remained unchanged, while the 600 and 900 dd bananas exhibited a significant polyphenol increase during ripening (p<O.OS). Furthermore, the results showed that although dopamine was deterrnined as the highest polyphenol in the banana peels during the green developmental stage and ripening, its kinetic differed from the total polyphenol profile. Together ours results showed that this matrix of choice (maturation, ripening and climate may allow selection of Musa Cavendish status for optimal concentration in identified compounds with human health relevance. Indeed, this is the case of dopamine, a vasoactive mediator, which is dependent on physiological stages, ripening and climate. Thus, our work has demonstrated that the banana totum showed a dose-dependent contracture effect on aortic which was less powerful than the one recorded for reference compounds at lower concentrations. Nevertheless it was significant. In the same conditions, it was demonstrated that prazosin modifies the effect of banana contracture inhibiting it competitively. Receptor alpha-I adrenergic vascular plays a role in the vasoconstrictor effects of bananas. The study of ulcers through inhibition! non inhibition of Helicobacter pylori growth after addition of polar and apolar banana extracts indicated the role of Musa cavendish as a non-inhibitor of Heiicobacter pylori growth

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For centuries utopian and science fiction has allowed women to engage with dominant discourses, especially those which have been defined as the “domain” of men. Feminist scholars have often characterized this genealogy as one which begins with the destabilization of Enlightenment ideals of the rational subject in the Romantic Revolution, with the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) in particular. This thesis demonstrates that there has in fact been an enduring history of women’s cognitive and rational attempts to explore key discourses such as science, technology and architecture through Reason, as opposed to rage. This is a genealogy of women writing utopian science fiction that is best illuminated through Darko Suvin’s of the novum. Chapter One reveals how the innovative utopian visions of Margaret Cavendish (1626-1673) proffer a highly rational and feminist critique of seventeenth-century experimental science. Chapter Two demonstrates how Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall (1762) explored the socio-political significance of the monstrous-looking “human” body some fifty years before Shelley’s Frankenstein. Following this, Chapter Three re-reads Frankenstein in light of the early nineteenth century zeitgeist of laissez-faire economics, technological advancement and global imperialism and argues that these were also the concerns of other utopian science fiction works by women, such as Jane Loudon’s The Mummy! (1827). Chapter Four analyses how the function of the novum is integral to L.T. Meade’s (1854-1915) depictions of male/female interaction in the scientific field. Chapter Five considers how important it is to acknowledge the materialist concern with popular science that informs texts such as Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975) and Pat Cadigan’s cyberpunk novel Synners (1991). This is the history of how women have used the form of utopian science fiction as a means with which to present a rational female voice. In addition to the historical works by women, it employs a range of utopian and science fiction theory from Suvin and Fredric Jameson to historical and contemporary feminism.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 220 p. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-217).

Fusarium wilt of banana has a long and devastating history in many of the world’s banana producing countries. The most pronounced damage caused by Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense (Foc), the Fusarium wilt pathogen, occurred during the 20th century in Central America, where tens of thousands of virgin forests were lost to further banana production. No control strategy is effective against Fusarium wilt other than replacement of susceptible by resistant varieties. It is, therefore, important to develop or identify resistant replacements that would not only be able to resist the pathogen, but also be acceptable to consumers. Resistance in wild banana varieties has been identified, and hybrids have been developed by breeding programmes with good resistance to Fusarium wilt. These varieties, unfortunately, appear not to be acceptable replacements for Cavendish bananas, the sweet desert banana variety that serves as the primary export banana and constitutes almost 40% of all bananas planted in the world today. A field selection, GCTCV-218, now proved to be the Cavendish plant with the most resistance to Foc ‘tropical’ race 4 (VCG 0121) has saved the Cavendish-based banana industry in Taiwan from devastation. In this thesis, GCTCV-218 has been evaluated against Foc ‘subtropical’ race 4 (VCG 0120), the primary variant of the pathogen in subtropical banana-producing countries such as South Africa, Australia and the Canary Islands. Defence-associated genes that are differentially expressed and that were up-regulated early in the defence response against the pathogen were isolated and identified. Greenhouse and field trials conducted at the research facilities of the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, University of Pretoria and in Kiepersol, South Africa, respectively, showed that GCTCV-218 had a significantly higher level of disease tolerance against Foc ‘subtropical’ race 4 (VCG 0120) when compared to the commercially grown Williams cultivar. Phenolic assays revealed that total phenolics and cell-wall bound phenolics were expressed at higher levels in GCTCV-218 after pathogen attack and seemed to play an important role in the tolerance of GCTCV-218. It was, therefore, proposed that GCTCV-218 could be considered a replacement for other Cavendish banana varieties planted in South Africa. The genetic basis of defence mechanisms in banana to Foc is unknown. In this investigation, Suppression Subtractive Hybridisation (SSH) was used to construct a cDNA library, containing banana genes that were up-regulated early (3&6 hours after infection), in the GCTCV-218/Foc interaction. The efficiency of the procedure was confirmed by PCR amplification of a known defence gene (endochitinase) present in the subtracted tester material, as well as analysing the reduction of a known housekeeping gene, actin, in the subtracted material compared to unsubtracted material. Southern blot data further provided confidence in the subtraction process. A cDNA library containing 736 gene fragments was constructed and then subjected to a screening procedure to remove false positives that escaped the subtraction process. The screening of a banana cDNA library for defence-related genes involved the development of a high-throughput cDNA microarray technique. This novel technique removed all false positives, such as housekeeping genes that escaped the subtraction as well as clones representing rDNAs. Seventy-nine genes differentially expressed in GCTCV-218 and not in Williams were selected, sequenced and subjected to BLASTX, BLASTN and DBest searches. Of these, several gene fragments showed homology to defence-associated genes, and 20 unique genes fragments were identified. These include two different peroxidases, response regulator 6, catalase 2, metallothionein, pectin acetylesterase (PAE), two different unknown proteins, salt stress, trypsin inhibitor, unspecific monooxygenase cytochrome P450, Bowman Birk proteinase inhibitor, root control, xylanase inhibitor, inhibitor CII, hypothetical protein, putative senescence-associated protein, pathogenesis-related protein 1 (PR1) and ribosomal protein S3a. The significance of the defence reaction to Fusarium wilt diseases in agricultural crops depends on the tempo of plant response. When a host plant is able to respond early to pathogen invasion the pathogen is successfully contained, preventing further spread throughout the plant. The expression of genes with antimicrobial activity, such as endochitinase, suggests an induced biochemical defence response against Foc. The expression of PAE and PR1 results in the deposition of lignin and callose production for cell wall strengthening. Four defence associated genes (catalase 2, pectin acetyl esterase (PAE), PR-1 and endochitinase) were selected for expression profile analysis using Real-time reverse transcriptase PCR, with TaqMan® and Light Cycler technology. All four genes were shown to be differentially expressed in GCTCV-218 at 3 and 6 hrs after infection, confirming SSH results. PR-1 and PAE were induced very early (3 hrs after infection) in the GCTCV-218, while PR3 and catalase 2 followed with a significant induction at 6 hrs after infection. This study concludes that GCTCV-218 is able to respond rapidly in response to Foc infection by activating both a biochemical and structural defence mechanism. / Thesis (PhD (Plant Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Microbiology and Plant Pathology / unrestricted

Fusarium wilt of banana, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense (Foc), is one of the most destructive plant diseases in recorded history. The disease was first discovered in Australia in 1874 but became renowned for the severe losses it caused to export banana plantations during the 1960s in Central America. The banana export industry was saved only by replacing Gros Michel bananas, the dessert banana grown for the export market, with highly resistant Cavendish banana cultivars. Despite this apparent solution, the fungus was found to attack Cavendish bananas in the sub-tropics, where plants were believed to be predisposed to the disease by the cool winter climate. Good management practices and conventional disease management strategies have not been sufficient to reduce losses and stop the disease from spreading, and today Fusarium wilt can be found in almost all banana-producing countries of the world. Since 1988, Foc has been responsible for significant losses of Cavendish bananas in tropical Asia. The only sustainable control measure, the use of resistant varieties, is not always popular as people prefer to eat locally adopted varieties that, unfortunately, are susceptible to Foc. Sustainable Fusarium wilt management in banana depends on the improvement of existing banana cultivars or the development of novel disease management strategies. Molecular biology and biotechnology provide opportunities to introduce foreign resistance genes into existing cultivars and to develop new, environmentally friendly products that can protect susceptible bananas from Foc. Better knowledge of the Fusarium wilt pathogen, its diversity, and its mechanisms of pathogenesis will contribute significantly to developing these novel approaches for control of the disease. Molecular information on the pathogenicity of Foc, however, is limited, whereas other formae speciales of F. oxysporum have been better studied. In this thesis, Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation of (ATMT) was employed to investigate genes responsible for pathogenicity of Foc to banana. Chapter 1 provides an overview of pathogenicity in F. oxysporum. Pathogenic and non-pathogenic forms of the fungus are first introduced to the reader, and then the biology, epidemiology and etiology of pathogenic forms of F. oxysporum are discussed. The genetic make-up and ability of the Fusarium wilt fungus to cause disease in plants concludes the first part of the review. In recent years, there has been a noted increase in the number of techniques available to study hostpathogen interactions. The second part of the review concentrates on these techniques and their applications in studying pathogenicity of the Fusarium wilt pathogen. In Chapter 2, an ATMT and screening system for Foc was developed. Five A. tumefaciens strains were evaluated for their efficiency to transform Foc with a randomly integrating vector that confers hygromycin B resistance and expression of green fluorescent protein (GFP). A small insertion mutant library of Foc was created, and a subset of transformants was characterized by determining the number of T-DNA inserts present, the location and identity of predicted genes disrupted by T-DNA insertion, and whether transformants of Foc were altered in their virulence against susceptible banana plants. In Chapter 3, the role of a known pathogenicity gene, Frp1, of the tomato pathogen F. oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (Fol) was investigated in Foc. The first objective was to isolate and characterize the Frp1 gene in Foc, and to compare it to the homologous gene in Fol. A vector containing a modified Fol Frp1 gene was then obtained and used for targeted disruption of the gene in Foc via ATMT. Mutants in which the Frp1 gene was disrupted were then analyzed for GFP expression, culture morphology, and alterations in pathogenicity to banana. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Microbiology and Plant Pathology / unrestricted

William Shakespeare and Margaret Cavendish each published plays and poems focusing on the precarious implications and cultural enactments of female chastity in their time. Their lives and writing careers bookend a time when chastity's place in English politics, religion, and social life was perceived as crucial for women while also being challenged and radically redefined. This paper engages in period-specific definitions of virginity and chastity, and with modern scholarship on the same, to explore the historicity of chastity and how representations of self-enforced chastity create opportunities for female political power in certain fiction contexts. Through a comparison of the female protagonists of Measure for Measure and Assaulted and Pursued Chastity—Isabella and Travellia—I argue that both characters are able to assert and gain practical forms of power within their respective systems of government, and not just in spiritual or economic spheres.

Bentinck's attitude towards his responsibilities as Govornor-general was conditioned to an important degree not only by the intellectual outlook he brought with him to India, but also by an emotional factor which originated with his dismissal by the Court of Directors from the Governorship of Madras in 1807. The son of a Whig politician, the third Duke of Portland, Bentinck had been in close touch with the political life of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. His outlook was moulded, not by his father, but by the more imaginative of the Whigs - in particular by Burke and Charles James Fox, He was acquainted with the modes of thought inspired by Bentham and Adam Smith, both of whom could claim him as a disciple. His political sympathies, therefore, lay with the radicals. He was a doctrinnaire in the sense that he had a philosophical belief in progress, and considered the acceleration or initiation of change to be a primary duty of a statesman Bentinck was not in any way an originator of now ideas. His mind, while receptive to the impuluses of a new age, was not capable of originating or directing any of those impulses, It may be said of him, in fact, that his outlook was based more on scepticism towards conventional or traditional attitudes than on a perception of the spirit of liberalism.

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Critical theory has historically situated the beginning of the “modern” era of subjectivity near the end of the seventeenth century. Michel Foucault himself once said in an interview that modernity began with the writings of the late seventeenth-century philosopher Benedict Spinoza. But an examination of early modern English utopian literature demonstrates that a modern notion of subjectivity can be found in texts that pre-date Spinoza. In this dissertation, I examine four utopian texts—Thomas More’s Utopia, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, Margaret Cavendish’s Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World, and Henry Neville’s Isle of Pines—through the paradigm of Jacques Lacan’s tripartite model of subjectivity—the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. To mediate between Lacan’s psychoanalytic model and the historical aspects of these texts, such as their relationship with print culture and their engagement with political developments in seventeenth-century England, I employ the theories of the Marxist-Lacanian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, to show that “early modern” subjectivity is in in fact no different from critical theory’s “modern” subject, despite pre-dating the supposed inception of such subjectivity. In addition, I engage with other prominent theorists, including Fredric Jameson, Jacques Derrida, and Donna Haraway, to come to an understanding about the ways in which critical theory can be useful to understand not only early modern literature, but also the contemporary, “real” world and the subjectivity we all seek to attain.