A cromoblastomicose é uma infecção fúngica subcutânea causada por fungos da família Dematiceae sendo o principal agente etiológico o fungo Fonsecaea pedrosoi (F. pedrosoi). Estes fungos induzem uma lesão crônica na pele de freqüente recidivas. O objetivo do trabalho foi avaliar alguns aspectos imunológicos na cromoblastomicose experimental através de dois modelos de infecção pelas vias: intraperitoneal (i.p.) e subcutânea (s.c.). No primeiro modelo de infecção pela via s.c. em camundongos BALB/c infectados com 106 conídios de F. pedrosoi, ocorreu a cura espontânea da infecção em aproximadamente 4 semanas. Na subtipagem de linfócitos T em linfonodos regionais ocorreu um predomínio de células T CD4+ que foi constante até a 4ª semana de infecção, no entanto, observamos aumento significativo de linfócitos T CD8+ ao longo da infecção sugerindo que essa população tenha também uma importante participação no controle da doença. Os ensaios de linfoproliferação demonstraram, na 1ª semana de infecção, elevado índice de proliferação celular quando as células de linfonodos foram estimuladas in vitro com antígenos de F. pedrosoi, além da liberação principalmente da citocina IFN-γ, já na 4ª semana de infecção não foi detectado proliferação celular. Esses resultados sugerem que no início da infecção a resposta celular seja mediada principalmente por linfócitos T CD4+ produtores de IFN-γ, o que nos sugere, que neste modelo experimental, polarize uma resposta de células T do tipo Th1. No segundo modelo de infecção, via intraperitoneal (i.p.), camundongos BALB/c infectados com 106 conídios de F. pedrosoi mostraram desenvolvimento de infecção crônica com preservação da imunidade celular mesmo após a 8ª semana. Ainda pela via i.p., os camundongos C57BL/6 nocautes de T CD4+ apresentaram uma maior carga fúngica no início da infecção e em tempos mais tardios a carga fúngica foi semelhante aos camundongos controles (C57BL/6); esses mesmos animais nocautes não apresentaram uma ativação da resposta celular medida pelo teste de HTT (Hipersensibilidade do Tipo Tardio). Quando avaliamos o padrão de citocinas, a citocina IFN-γ produzida pelos órgãos baço e fígado apresentou menores níveis no início da infecção quando comparado ao camundongos controle. Já os níveis de IL-10 aumentaram gradativamente ao longo da infecção e IL-4 não apresentou diferenças em relação ao controle. Nos camundongos nocautes para coa (C57BL/6 CD8 \"KO\"), a carga fúngica, os níveis de citocinas e o teste de HTT foram semelhantes aos animais controle. Esses resultados mostraram que pela via i.p. os linfócitos T, principalmente células T CD4+ são importantes no controle inicial da infecção. Em tempos mais tardios a infecção foi controlada mesmo em camundongos deficientes de linfócitos TCD 4+ ou T CD8+, sugerido que outras células como macrófagos ou NK, estariam atuando de forma mais efetiva no controle da infecção. / Abstract not available.

Abstract Plants and soil organisms are closely linked. Plants are the sole source of carbon in the soil and soil organisms are responsible for recycling of nutrients, making them available for plant growth. To understand the function of a system, it is important to understand the interactions between the soil and plants. These interactions have mainly been studied in temperate areas, with few studies in the arctic and subarctic. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the effect of ecological disturbances in sub- and low-arctic grasslands on soil organisms and plant-soil feedback relationships. The effect of removal of vegetation, replanting of a local plant species, and different components of grazing (trampling, defoliation and return of nutrients) on soil decomposer organisms were studied. Whether short term effects of defoliation depended on plant species community was also studied, as well as whether defoliation in the field could create changes in the soil system systems that affect the growth of seedlings. Experiments were conducted under both controlled greenhouse conditions and in field sites. The results showed that physical disturbance (removal of vegetation and trampling) reduced the abundance and diversity of soil biota. Defoliation increased soil decomposer abundance in the short term. Plant species composition did not affect soil biota and only in a few cases did it changes their responses to defoliation. In the long-term, effects of fertilization and defoliation on the soil biota were context-dependent. However, defoliation did create changes in the soil that reduced the growth of seedlings planted into the soil. Furthermore, plant species community and spatial heterogeneity (revealed by blocking) had important effects on the soil communities.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Statistics / James Higgins / Many studies are performed on units that cannot be replicated due to cost or other restrictions. There often is an abundance of subsampling to estimate the within unit component of variance, but what is needed for statistical tests is an estimate of the between unit component of variance. There is evidence to suggest that the ratio of the between component of variance to the total variance will remain relatively constant over a range of studies of similar types. Moreover, in many cases this intraclass correlation, which is the ratio of the between unit variance to the total variance, will be relatively small, often 0.1 or less. Such situations exist in education, agriculture, and medicine to name a few. The present study discusses how to use such prior information on the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) to obtain inferences about differences among treatments in the face of no replication. Several strategies that use the ICC are recommended for different situations and various designs. Their properties are investigated. Work is extended to under-replicated experiments. The work has a Bayesian flavor but avoids the full Bayesian analysis, which has computational complexities and the potential for lack of acceptance among many applied researchers. This study compares the prior information ICC methods with traditional methods. Situations are suggested in which prior information ICC methods are preferable to traditional methods and those in which the traditional methods are preferable.

Title: Using dataloggers in physics teaching (focused on Vernier experimental system) Author: Petr Kácovský Department: Department of Physics Education Supervisor: Mgr. Pavel Böhm Supervisor's e-mail address: pavel.bohm@mff.cuni.cz Abstract: Modernizing equipment enables schools to involve advanced computer- aided systems in physics teaching. This work especially focuses on systems capable of recording and storing measured data for later evaluation - the dataloggers. The introduction of this work is devoted to a survey among physics teachers that should investigate what form of instructions they prefer; then a brief search of existing ma- terials follows. The main part of the work consists of newly created instructions for experiments with dataloggers of the Vernier experimental system, primarily designed to serve tea- chers to implement physics experiments in their teaching. The instructions always include a description how to prepare and undertake the measurement, how to process the measured data and what questions and tasks for students can be connected with this part of physics. Experiments described in this work mainly focus on secondary school thermodynamics (or more precisely on molecular physics and thermals) and their thematic intersection is energy, its forms, transmission and conservation.

<p> The sales of deer licenses, one of the most important revenue sources for wildlife management at the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR), have been declining for a decade. To increase its funds, the agency is considering launching a new lifetime deer license, which would allow hunters to harvest deer (and possibly other species) each year for the rest of their lives in exchange for a large, up-front fee. The forward-looking nature of the decision to buy a lifetime license means hunters’ choice behavior is necessarily dynamic. We estimate a dynamic discrete choice model using data from a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to capture this forward-looking choice behavior and to estimate hunters’ preferences for different lifetime license designs. We find that our dynamic model better fits our data than a standard, static choice model. We also find that hunters prefer licenses that allow (i) harvest of antlered and antlerless deer to one that only allows harvest of antlerless deer and (ii) harvest of additional species beyond just deer. We use our model to estimate the price of lifetime licenses that maximizes IDNR revenues. This is the first study to estimate the value of lifetime deer hunting licenses using a dynamic approach. This dynamic approach can help improve the IDNR’s decision-making to maximize its revenue and stabilize wildlife management funds.  </p>

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[pt] Esta dissertação, além de apresentar uma abordagem de um caso prático real, fez reunir as técnicas estatísticas necessárias ao trato de experimentos envolvendo misturas. Foi visto que as metodologias adotadas em Projeto de Experimentos devem ser adaptadas para possibilitar o trato de problemas com misturas, já que há a necessidade de considerar a restrição básica desse tipo de experimento, o qual amarra a soma das proporções dos componentes, que deve ser sempre igual a 1, ou seja, 100%. O experimento do misto de retardo, objeto principal e motivador dessa dissertação, é um experimento com mistura, em que as proporções de todos os três componentes possuem restrições superiores e inferiores simultaneamente. Com essas restrições, o espaço fatorial restrito fica bem distorcido em relação ao simplex, havendo, portanto, a necessidade de geração de um design D-ótimo. Como houve a indicação de que a variância da resposta não é constante, no caso do misto de retardo, recorreu-se aos Modelos Lineares Generalizados, especificamente ao método da Quase- Verossimilhança. De posse do modelo adequado, pôde-se então determinar a proporção dos componentes do misto de retardo, tendo em vista o atendimento da especificação de projeto. / [en] This dissertation presents a real pactical case, and besides, it puts together the statistical techniques for the treatment of Mixture Experiments. It was presented, that the Design of Experiments techniques must be adapted in order to make possible the treatment of problems with mixtures, because the basic constraint in this type of experiment must be taken into account, that is, the sum of the proportions of all mixture components must be equal to 1 or 100%. The delay compound experiment, the main and motivating object in this dissertation, is a mixture experiment with simultaneous constraints in the proportions of all its three components. With these constraints, it is possible to observe a distortion in the restricted factorial design space in comparison to the simplex one. Therefore, it was necessary to generate a D-optimal design. When there was an indication that the response variance is not constant, in the case of the delay compound, the Generalized Linear Models, specifically the Quasi- Likelihood method was used to fit an adequate model. With the adequate model, it was possible to find the proportion of each component of the delay compound in order to attend the design specification.

The use of turbocharged Diesel engines is nowadays a widespread practice in the automotive sector: heavy-duty vehicles like trucks or buses, in particular, are often equipped with turbocharged engines. An accurate study of the flow field developing inside both the main components of a turbocharger, i.e. compressor and turbine, is therefore necessary: the synergistic use of CFD simulations and experimental tests allows to fulfill this requirement. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the performance and the flow field that develops inside a centrifugal compressor for automotive turbochargers. The study is carried out by means of numerical simulations, both steady-state and transient, based on RANS models (Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations). The code utilized for the numerical simulations is Ansys CFX.   The first part of the work is an engineering attempt to develop a CFD method for predicting the performance of a centrifugal compressor which is based solely on steady-state RANS models. The results obtained are then compared with experimental observations. The study continues with an analysis of the sensitivity of the developed CFD method to different parameters: influence of both position and model used for the rotor-stator interfaces and the axial tip-clearance on the global performances is studied and quantified.   In the second part, a design optimization study based on the Design of Experiments (DoE) approach is performed. In detail, transient RANS simulations are used to identify which geometry of the recirculation cavity hollowed inside the compressor shroud (ported shroud design) allows to mitigate the backflow that appears at low mass-flow rates. Backflow can be observed when the operational point of the compressor is suddenly moved from design to surge conditions. On actual heavy-duty vehicles, these conditions may arise when a rapid gear shift is performed. / Användningen av turboladdade dieselmotorer ärr numera utbredd inom bilindustrin: i synnerhet tunga fordon som lastbilar eller bussar ärr ofta utrustade med turbo-laddade motorer. En utförlig förståelse av flödesfältet som utvecklas innuti båda huvudkomponenterna hos en turboladdare, dvs kompressor och turbin, är därför nödvändig: den synergistiska användningen av CFD-simuleringar och experimentel-la tester möjliggör att detta krav uppfylls. Syftet med denna avhandling är att undersöka prestanda och det flödesfält som utvecklas i en centrifugalkompressor för turboladdare. Studien utförs genom nu-meriska simuleringar, både steady state och transient, baserat på RANS-modeller (Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes-ekvationer). Koden som används för de numeriska simuleringarna är Ansys CFX.   Den första delen av arbetet ¨ar ett försöka att utveckla en CFD-metod för att förutsäga prestanda för en centrifugalkompressor med hjälp av steady-state RANS-modeller. De erhållna resultaten jämförs sedan med experimentella observationer. Studien fortsätter med en analys av känsligheten hos den utvecklade CFD-metoden till olika parametrar: Inflytande av både position och modell som används för rotor-statorgränssnitt samt axiellt spel mellan rotor och hus på de globala prestationerna studeras och kvantifieras.   I andra delen utförs en designoptimeringsstudie baserad på Design of Experiments (DoE). I detalj används tidsupplösta RANS-simuleringar för att identifiera vilken utformning av ported shroud som minskar backflöde i kompressorn under en snabb minskning av massflöde och varvtal och därmed ger bättre prestanda i transient surge. På tunga fordon kan dessa förhållanden uppstå under växling.

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