The activity of plant 9-lipoxygenases (LOXs) influences the outcome of Arabidopsis thaliana interaction with pathogen and insects. Evidence provided here indicates that in Arabidopsis, 9-LOXs facilitate infestation by Myzus persicae, commonly known as the green peach aphid (GPA), a sap-sucking insect, and infection by the fungal pathogen Fusarium graminearum. in comparison to the wild-type plant, lox5 mutants, which are deficient in a 9-lipoxygenase, GPA population was smaller and the insect spent less time feeding from sieve elements and xylem, thus resulting in reduced water content and fecundity of GPA. LOX5 expression is induced rapidly in roots of GPA-infested plants. This increase in LOX5 expression is paralleled by an increase in LOX5-synthesized oxylipins in the root and petiole exudates of GPA-infested plants. Micrografting experiments demonstrated that GPA population size was smaller on plants in which the roots were of the lox5 mutant genotype. Exogenous treatment of lox5 mutant roots with 9-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid restored water content and population size of GPA on lox5 mutants. Together, these results suggest that LOX5 genotype in roots is critical for facilitating insect infestation of Arabidopsis. in Arabidopsis, 9-LOX function is also required for facilitating infection by F. graminearum, which is a leading cause of Fusarium head blight (FHB) disease in wheat and other small grain crops. Loss of LOX1 and LOX5 function resulted in enhanced resistance to F. graminearum infection. Similarly in wheat, RNA interference mediated silencing of the 9-LOX homolog TaLpx1, resulted in enhanced resistance to F. graminearum. Experiments in Arabidopsis indicate that 9-LOXs promote susceptibility to this fungus by suppressing the activation of salicylic acid-mediated defense responses that are important for basal resistance to this fungus. the lox1 and lox5 mutants were also compromised for systemic acquired resistance (SAR), an inducible defense mechanism that is systemically activated throughout a plant in response to a localized infection. the lox1 and lox5 mutants exhibited reduced cell death and delayed hypersensitive response when challenged with an avirulent strain of the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato. LOX1 and LOX5 functions were further required for the synthesis as well as perception of a SAR-inducing activity present in petiole exudates collected from wild-type avirulent pathogen-challenged leaves. Taken together, results presented here demonstrate that 9-LOX contribute to host susceptibility as well as defense against different biotic stressors.

Twenty-two different unialgal clonal isolates have been obtained at random for experimental purposes over a period of about one year. Also, during this period, at least 12 other species or strains have been isolated into unialgal cultures which had not yet been identified and/or significantly cleared of heterotrophic contaminants.

This thesis reports the effect of the non-toxic cyanobacterium Oscillatoria agardhii CYA29 and its spent medium on the cell-bound toxin levels in Microcystis aeruginosa PCC7820 and Nodularia sp. PCC7804. Microcystin levels were elevated when O. agardhii or its spent medium were added to cultures of M. aeruginosa PCC7820. This effect was also observed for two nodularin variants in Nodularia PCC7804. However, growth of M. aeruginosa in its own spent medium did not lead to elevated microcystin levels. Some Gram-negative bacteria use quorum sensing, the determination of population density by pheromones, to regulate the expression of traits in a density dependent manner. The presence of the bacterial pheromones, acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs), was investigated in cyanobacteria and a simple and fast synthesis for AHLs employed. No AHLs have been found in the cyanobacterial species tested, neither by Chromobacterium violaceum CV026 nor by Escherichia coli HB101 pUCD607 bioassay. No changes in dry weight or microcystin concentration were observed in M. aeruginosa PCC7820 grown in the presence of the AHL N-hexanoyl-DL-homoserine lactone. The activity of the spent medium of O. agardhii CYA29 was retained when it was heated up to 100°C for 20 min, frozen or freeze-dried. Molecular weight cut-off filtration showed the active compound to be less than 1 kD in size. The active component could not be extracted by dichloromethane or methanol, and activity was lost upon acidification. A small peptide of five amino acid moieties was isolated from an active fraction of the spent medium, four of which have been identified by 1H NMR to be serine, glycine, alanine, and the modified serine(thiazole). To my knowledge this is the first report of serine(thiazole) in natural products and the first thiazole containing peptide from O. agardhii.

Ce travail de thèse a pour objet une méthode de détermination du champ électromagnétique au voisinage des bâtiments urbains, ainsi que l’évaluation de l’incertitude associée, liée aux paramètres variables des façades. Cette étude met en oeuvre une méthode théorique, précise et rapide de caractérisation du champ électromagnétique réfléchi par des objets diffractants diélectriques de taille supérieure à quelques longueurs d’onde. La réflexion comprend la rétrodiffusion, la réflexion spéculaire et la réflexion non-spéculaire. La méthode se trouve dans la catégorie des techniques basées sur les courants équivalents et calcule le rayonnement de ces courants à l’aide des fonctions de Green associées à l’interface entre deux diélectriques semi-infinis. Les fonctions de Green tiennent compte de la présence de l’objet diffractant correctement dans toutes les directions, c’est pourquoi la méthode proposée ici présente une précision plus importante que les méthodes du même type, particulièrement dans les directions nonspéculaires. La méthode peut être appliquée dans différents domaines : radar, télédétection, géophysique, et plus particulièrement dans l’environnement urbain dans le cadre de cette thèse. Un modèle simple de bâtiment urbain, composé des murs (en béton) et des fenêtres (en verre), est adopté dans les exemples présentés au cours du manuscrit, avec l’avantage de tenir compte simplement du type et de l’épaisseur des fenêtres. La méthode des fonctions de Green étant rapide et peu exigeante en temps de calcul et en ressources informatiques, elle permet d’obtenir une caractérisation rapide du champ, et en conséquence de déterminer l’influence de plusieurs paramètres intervenant dans le calcul du champ au voisinage d’un bâtiment via des études paramétriques/statistiques. L’influence de la variation de plusieurs paramètres est approfondie par des études statistiques. Parmi ces paramètres citons : la permittivité du matériau principal de la façade, la distribution des fenêtres, les dimensions (la largeur et la hauteur) des fenêtres et le type du vitrage (l’épaisseur des fenêtres). La connaissance des paramètres influents et la quantification de leur influence sur le champ réfléchi permettront aux simulateurs de la propagation d’onde de faire des simplifications qui accélèrent le temps de calcul tout en maintenant une bonne précision des résultats. Ce travail pourra être utilisé afin d’obtenir des modèles de propagation plus précis / This study presents a theoretical, fast and accurate method for characterizing the electromagnetic fields reflected by dielectric objects larger than a few wavelengths. The method is based on equivalent currents whose radiation is calculated by the Green's functions associated with the interface between two semi-infinite dielectrics. The Green's functions take into account the presence of the diffracting object correctly in all directions ; the proposed method presents thus a greater accuracy than other methods of the same type. The method being not very demanding in computation time and computer resources, it makes possible to determine the influence of several parameters involved in calculating the field in the vicinity of a building through statistical studies. These studies will allow propagation simulators to make simplifications that speed up the computation time while maintaining good accuracy

Thesis (DTech (Chemistry))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015. / Researchers around the world are now focusing on inculcating green chemistry principles in all level of research especially in nanotechnology to make these processes environmental friendly. Nanoparticles synthesized using green chemistry principles has several advantages such as simplicity, cost effectiveness, compatibility for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications and large scale production for commercial purpose. Based on this background, this thesis present the design, synthesis, characterization and applications of various CdSe based core-shell and core-multi shell quantum dots (QDs), quantum dots-polymer nanocomposites, silver nanoparticles (Ag-NPs) and silver nanocomposites via completely green methods. Various QDs like CdSe/CdS/ZnS and CdSe/ZnS, and there polymer nanocomposites were successfully synthesized and characterized. The high quality of the as-synthesized nanoparticles was confirmed using absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high resolution TEM (HRTEM). Detailed optical and morphological characterization showed that the CdSe/CdS/ZnS core-multi shell QDs were small, monodispersed with high fluorescent intensity and narrow emission width. The CdSe/CdS/ZnS core multi-shell QDs were dispersed in epoxy polymer matrix to obtain fluorescent epoxy nanocomposite. The brillouin spectroscopy analysis revealed that the presence of QDs inside polymer composite reduces the acoustic frequency of the polymer. Highly fluorescent CdSe/ZnS core-shell QDs was also synthesized and dispersed in PMMA polymer matrix to prepare bright yellow emitting nanocomposite film. The as-synthesized QDs also undergone surface exchange to convert the organically soluble nanomaterial to water soluble. After the ligand exchange, the morphology and above all the fluorescence property of the quantum dots remained intact. In another approach, HDA-capped CdSe nanoparticles were synthesized in the absence of an inert gas followed by dispersion in polymer polycaprolactone to produce orange light emitting electrospun polymer nanocomposite nanofibre.

Thesis advisor: Vanessa P. Rumble / <bold>Synthesis and Selfhood: A Comparative Study of Kierkegaard and Kant By Leslie Roy Ballard Advisor: Vanessa Rumble</bold> Many commentators on Kierkegaard's philosophy acknowledge that his writings draw from Kant's philosophy; but few essays trace the origin of specific categories in Kierkegaard's thought to their Kantian roots. While young scholars are especially prone to see in the philosophy of the previous century numerous links to Kierkegaard's writings, few question their ultimate source. The question of Kierkegaard's indebtedness to Kant recommends itself, then, to serious explorers of the sources of Kierkegaard's notion of selfhood, the role of Kant's ontology and moral philosophy in the latter, and the differences in their understandings of the relation between religious faith and moral obligation. Ronald M. Green and Ulrich Knappe examine Kierkegaard's familiarity with Immanuel Kant's philosophy. Green consults lecture notes, journal entries, and university documents to determine the nature and extent of Kierkegaard's engagement with Kant; he reviews public auction records to discover the books by Kant that Kierkegaard owned at the time of his death. Knappe bypasses such investigations to analyze the Kantian ideas apparent in Kierkegaard's texts &mdash; often a more substantive reflection than Green's, albeit sometimes speculative. This dissertation identifies and addresses interpretive problems like the ultimate unity of Kant's critical and ethical philosophies, and the autonomy of Kierkegaard's pseudonyms. Conclusions concerning Kierkegaard's use of Kant are drawn within these parameters. The early Climacus alludes to Kant's pure intuitions of space and time and the origin of consciousness in reflection. In spite of similarities in their depictions of the synthesis implied in human consciousness and knowledge, Climacus later criticizes Kant's presumed neglect of ethics for theory. Climacus' criticism, I argue, is based on a conflation of non-religious and religious ethics. The dissertation takes as its point of departure Kant's and Kierkegaard's non-religious formulations of identity in order to learn how each thinker understands human being and to allow each to present a conception of Christian selfhood. Three different, sometimes overlapping, stages emerge in the pseudonymous writings: the esthetic, the ethical, and the religious. In <italic>Either/Or</italic>, the first two are analogous to Kant's hypothetical and categorical motivation in terms of the universality and necessity of the law. A cogent analogy between their ethics requires the pseudonyms, however, to describe the law as a priori. William twice refers to a priority and mentions his familiarity with Kantian ethics. It is argued that William's ethical stage is a Kantian a priori ethics that other pseudonyms--namely, Silentio--overcome in the religious. The corpora understand sin differently, but agree that it hinders moral progress and causes the breakdown of the non-religious person. Anti-Climacus writes that revelation imparts knowledge of sin, and Haufniensis asserts that the convert needs dogmatics to guide the new self-understanding. Religious passion rather than reason primarily motivates the theological self. Kant thinks theology and its self-conception are good only insofar as they help pure practical reason to attain perfection; passion remains mostly suspect, and pure practical reason maintains its authority in moral deliberation. Silentio and Kant disagree whether the faith of religious life can be justified in violating universal ethical principles. Silentio claims that Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac presupposes the teleological suspension of universal ethics. Kant asserts that the laws of pure practical reason admit no exception. Abraham must comprehend the apparition's command as a temptation to commit murder, and not heed it. Silentio envisions extraordinary acts of faith <italic>apart</italic> from moral justification, but Kant argues the ethical is inviolate. Silentio welcomes the passionate and the miraculous; Kant leaves open the question whether his ethical rigorism is compatible with true biblical faith. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Le nombre de périphériques mobiles (smartphone, tablette, ordinateur portable, etc.) et les internautes augmentent continuellement. En raison de l'accessibilité du cloud computing, de l'Internet et de l'Internet des Objets (IdO), les utilisateurs utilisent de plus en plus d'applications logicielles qui provoquent un effet croissant sur les émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Ainsi, les TIC (Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication) sont responsables d'environ 2% des émissions mondiales de gaz à effet de serre qui sont équivalentes à celles émises par l'industrie aérienne. Selon des rapports récents, le Groupe d'experts Intergouvernemental sur l'Evolution du Climat (GIEC), les émissions de CO2 dus aux TIC augmentent rapidement. Néanmoins, les TIC, en permettant de résoudre des problèmes complexes dans d'autres secteurs, peuvent grandement et facilement participer pour réduire une partie importante des 98% restants des émissions mondiales de CO2. L'utilisation du logiciel implique des opérations matérielles qui sont physiquement responsables de la consommation d'énergie. Par conséquent, le logiciel est indirectement impliqué dans la consommation d'énergie. Ainsi, nous devons réduire la consommation d'énergie du logiciel tout en conservant les mêmes fonctionnalités pour le logiciel afin de créer des logiciels durables et verts. Premièrement, dans ce travail de thèse, nous définissons les termes «durable et vert» dans le domaine du logiciel afin de créer des logiciels respectant les critères de ces termes. Pour créer un produit logiciel, nous devons suivre un processus d'ingénierie logicielle. Par conséquent, nous décrivons des critères durables et verts à respecter après chaque étape de ce processus afin d'établir un processus d'ingénierie logicielle durable et écologique. En particulier, nous nous concentrons sur l'estimation de la consommation d'énergie du logiciel. De nombreux travaux ont essayé de proposer divers outils pour estimer la consommation d'énergie due aux logiciels afin de réduire l'empreinte carbone. Pendant longtemps, les solutions proposées se sont concentrées uniquement sur la conception du matériel, mais ces dernières années, les aspects logiciels sont également devenus importants. Malheureusement, ces études, dans la plupart des cas, ne considèrent que le CPU et négligent tous les autres composants. Les modèles de consommation d'énergie existants doivent être améliorés en tenant compte de plus de composants susceptibles de consommer de l'énergie pendant l'exécution d'une application. L'écriture d'un logiciel durable, performant et vert nécessite de comprendre le comportement de consommation d'énergie d'un programme informatique. L'un des avantages est que les développeurs, en améliorant leurs implémentations du code source, optimiseront la consommation d'énergie du logiciel. De plus, il existe un manque d'outil d'analyse pour surveiller dynamiquement la consommation d'énergie du code source de plusieurs composants. Ainsi, nous proposons GMTEEC (Méthodologie Générique d'Outil pour Estimer la Consommation Energétique) qui se compose de quatre couches aidant et guidant la construction d'un outil permettant d'estimer la consommation énergétique d'un logiciel. Ainsi, dans notre travail, en respectant les couches de GMTEEC, nous créons TEEC (Outil pour Estimer la Consommation Energétique) qui repose sur une formule mathématique établie pour chaque composant (CPU, mémoire, disque dur, réseau) susceptible de consommer de l'énergie afin d'estimer la consommation totale d'énergie du logiciel composée de la somme de chaque consommation d'énergie par composant. De plus, nous ajoutons à TEEC la capacité de localiser dynamiquement les points chauds qui sont les parties du code source consommant la plus grande quantité d'énergie afin d'aider et guider les développeurs à optimiser leur code source et à créer des logiciels efficaces, durables et verts... [etc] / The number of mobile devices (smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.) and Internet users are continually increasing. Due to the accessibility provided by cloud computing, Internet and Internet of Things (IoT), users use more and more software applications which cause an increasing effect on gas emission. Thus, ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is responsible of around 2% worldwide greenhouse gas emissions which is equivalent of that emitted by the airline industry. According to recent reports, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CO2 emissions due to ICT are increasing widely. Nevertheless, ICT, in allowing to solve complex problems in other sectors, can greatly and easily participate to reduce significant portion of the remaining 98% of global CO2 emissions. The use of software implies hardware operations which are physically responsible of energy consumption. Consequently, software is indirectly involved in the energy consumption. Thus, we need to reduce software energy consumption while maintaining the same functionalities for the software in order to build sustainable and green software. Firstly, in this thesis work, we define the terms sustainable and green in the area of software development. To build a software product, we need to follow a software engineering process. Hence, we define and describe sustainable and green criteria to be respected after each step of this process in order to establish a sustainable and green software engineering process. Then, we focus on the software energy consumption estimation. Many research works tried to propose various tools to estimate the energy consumption due to software in order to reduce carbon footprint. Unfortunately, these studies, in the majority of cases, consider only the CPU and neglects all others components. Existing power consumption methodologies need to be improved by taking into account more components susceptible to consume energy during runtime of an application. Writing sustainable, power efficient and green software necessitates to understand the power consumption behavior of a computer program. One of the benefits is the fact that developers, by improving their source code implementations, will optimize software power consumption. Moreover, there is a lack of analyzing tool to dynamically monitor source code energy consumption of several components. Thus, we propose GMTEEC (Generic Methodology of a Tool to Estimate Energy Consumption) which is composed of four layers assisting developers to build a tool estimating the software power consumption. Hence, in our work, respecting the layers of GMTEEC, we develop TEEC (Tool to Estimate Energy Consumption) which is based on mathematical formula established for each component (CPU, memory, hard disk, network) in order to estimate the total software energy consumption. Moreover, we add in TEEC the capacity to locate dynamically the hotpoints which are the parts of source code consuming the greater amount of energy in order to help and guide developers to optimize their source code and build efficient, sustainable and green software. We performed a variety of experiments to validate the accuracy and quality of the sustainable and green software engineering process and TEEC. The results demonstrate the possibility to save significant quantity of energy and time at limited costs with an important positive impact on environment

Thesis advisor: Brian Gareau / Thesis advisor: Juliet Schor / This research seeks to understand how, if at all, access to green and open spaces impacts community well-being. Although much work has been done in the environmental justice sector on the disproportionate distribution of amenities in low-income communities, these studies have focused mainly on the negatives such as toxics and pollutants. This research is important because it seeks to understand the importance of environmental amenities that are not available to these populations. In order to understand this relationship, I conducted in-depth interviews with nine community members and observed at four green or open spaces. As a result of the above procedures, I found that green and open spaces not only have a positive impact on community well-being, but they influence personal well-being as well. Personal well-being is enhanced by activities that foster perceived mental and physical health for individuals, while community well-being has been linked to the ability to participate in social encounters with others. Although there are many other factors that inevitably provide well-being, it is important to note that all of my interviewees believed green and open spaces in their community were a prominent contributor. This research enhances the understanding of the less visible environmental injustices low-income communities suffer. I hope that this study serves as a catalyst for future research on a larger scale that will prove the importance of access to these areas. It is my hope that cities will begin to plan their parks and open spaces in ways that will benefit the most people and that areas where space is an issue will begin to create small green areas wherever possible. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology Honors Program. / Discipline: Sociology.

O presente trabalho apresenta uma técnica para a análise de uma antena de microlinha em uma estrutura planar multicamadas com substratos anisotrópicos do tipo uniaxial. Utilizando a transformada dupla de Fourier, esta formulação permite a determinação das funções de Green transformadas para a estrutura multicamadas em consideração. Aplica-se a técnica desenvolvida a quatro configurações específicas de interesse prático, abrangendo antenas com cobertura dielétrica protetora e substratos uniaxiais ou isotrópicos, apresentando-se explicitamente as funções de Green transformadas para estes quatro casos. Apresenta-se também uma expressão para calcular o campo distante da estrutura multicamadas, em termos das funções de Green transformadas. Analisam-se as propriedades de irradiação de um dipolo impresso em uma estrutura a duas camadas. sendo ambas do tipo uniaxial, e descreve-se o efei to da anisotropia nos diagramas de irradíação e nas características de polarização cruzada do dipolo. Apresentam-se resultados numéricos de diagramas de irradiação, impedância de entrada e freqüência de ressonância de uma antena de microlinha retangular sobre substrato uniaxial. Estes resultados são obtidos usando-se o método dos momentos, e para o caso particular de substrato isotrópico os resultados de impedância são comparados com dados experimentais.

The materials synthesised in this study were designed to have novel morphology coupled with a tightly controlled surface composition that could be varied depending on a application. Preparations with simple single metal oxides (i.e. TiO2, SiO2, Al2O3 and ZrO2) were used as the starting point with the latter stages involving multi-metal oxide coatings and materials. The research was divided into three interconnected areas; i) biotemplating, ii) alternative synthetic morphologies to biotemplating and iii) the synergy between microparticles and insecticides. For the investigation into biotemplating pollen was chosen as the main example due to its ubiquity. Here, good replication of its structure with metal oxides can be achieved by two-dimensional solgel chemistry. Such materials can be further modified to have tunable surface chemistry through dopants and optical properties (i.e. fluorescence) through the use of dyes. Materials were extensively characterised using primarily spectroscopy (UV and IR) and microscopy (i.e. SEM coupled with EDX elemental analysis). These were considered for several applications and examples investigated here included as a taggant technology and photocatalytic removal of methyl orange in an aqueous environment (TiO2-pollen only). For the latter, results have been compared with those of a commercially available alternative (P25) where the preliminary results are very promising. The method of overcoating was also shown to be transferrable to other flora and fauna biotemplates. Synthetic alternatives for the biotemplated pollen were considered in the second investigative area where solution sol-gel processes such as the Stöber method were considered in addition to other suspension based precipitation methods (i.e. refluxes and microemulsions). Processes developed in the biotemplating research were applied here and analysed again using spectroscopy and microscopy as the main techniques. As part of this aspect, a novel fast-drying water-in-oil microemulsion delivery and preparative system was also developed using low boiling point solvents such as isopentane and ethanol and low toxicity sucrose ester surfactants. Hollow oxide shells could be prepared in these using a novel low-temperature route that were comparable in thickness (but significantly smaller in size) to hollow pollen replicas. In this second area attention was shifted to more focus on oxides of Si and Al (as opposed to TiO2 that used extensively in biotemplating) to broaden the scope of the research and investigate other potential applications, such as nanoabrasives (surface roughness and ability to cleave DNA). The third and final area of interest used the materials from the previous two aspects in coatings that were applied to investigating the knockdown (KD) and total mortality (TM) of selected arthropods. Here mosquitoes of the A. Gambiae and S. Aegypti genus were considered with particular focus on synergistic effects with existing commercial insecticides (using mainly CDC bottle tests). Microscopy was used as the primary characterisation technique here to determine particle transfer after each assay. In these tests %TM suggested SiO2 microspheres were particularly effective at in enhancing mortality of the commercial l-cyhalothrin insecticide. Additionally, novel methods of recording mosquito behaviour was investigated through optical and thermographic stills and videos.