A hipóxia-isquemia neonatal (HI) faz parte da etiologia de diversas patologias neurológicas e é causa de graves sequelas. Os mecanismos patofisiológicos dessa lesão começam com o insulto imediato após a HI e se estendem por dias ou semanas, pelo aumento da liberação de espécies reativas de oxigênio associada a redução da defesas anti-oxidantes e reação glial, sendo a lesão secundária parte crucial no processo que culmina no dano final. A acetilcolina (ACh) é um neurotransmissor do sistema nervoso central (SNC) que parece ter uma importante ação neuroprotetora após a HI. A acetilcolinaesterase (AChE) é responsável pela degradação da ACh, inibidores dessa enzima vêm sendo utilizados para o tratamento de danos neurológicos. Sua ação positiva sobre a HI foi demonstrada em estudos realizados em nosso laboratório, onde a administração do extrato de Huperzia quadrifariata (inibidor de AChE) reduziu os déficits cognitivos e histológicos causados por essa lesão Para avaliar os efeitos das administrações pré e pós-hipóxia de galantamina, inibidor da AChE, no modelo de HI perinatal, ratos Wistar no 7º dia de vida pós-natal (DPN7) foram submetidos à combinação da oclusão unilateral da artéria carótida direita e exposição a uma atmosfera hipóxica (8% de O2) durante 60 minutos. Foram aplicadas injeções intraperitoniais de salina para os grupos Sham e HI+Salina (HIS) e de galantamina nos grupos HI+Galantamina 5 mg/kg pré-hipóxia (HIG5-Pré), HI+Galantamina 10 mg/kg pré-hipóxia (HIG10-Pré), HI+Galantamina 5 mg/kg pós-hipóxia (HIG5-Pós) e HI+Galantamina 10 mg/kg pós-hipóxia (HIG10-Pós). Os grupos Pré receberam galantamina imediatamente antes da hipóxia e os grupos Pós nos intervalos de 1, 24, 48 e 72 horas após a cirurgia. No DPN45 foi feita a análise do volume das estruturas encefálicas que demonstrou a redução do volume do hipocampo do grupo HIS em relação ao Sham e uma prevenção desse efeito no grupo HIG10-Pré, mas não nos demais grupos. Análises bioquímicas foram feitas no hipocampo ipsilesional 24 horas após a lesão e revelaram: através da citometria de fluxo uma redução na sobrevivência de neurônios no grupo HIS em relação ao Sham que foi prevenida no grupo HIG10-Pré; através de ELISA uma hipertrofia dos astrócitos no grupo HIS que foi revertida no grupo HIG10-Pré e um aumento na atividade da enzima anti-oxidante catalase. O tratamento pré-hipóxia com galantamina foi capaz de prevenir os déficits histológicos, aumentar a sobrevivência celular, reduzir a reação astrocitária e aumentar a atividade anti-oxidante em ratos submetidos à HI. / Neonatal hypoxia ischemia (HI) has a role in etiology of several neurological pathologies and causes severe sequelae. The pathophysiological mechanisms of this lesion start immediately after HI and last for days or weeks, with the secondary injury being a crucial part the process that culminates in the final damage. Acetylcholine (ACh) is a neurotransmitter of the central nervous system that seems to have an important neuroprotective action after HI. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) degradates ACh and inhibitors of this enzyme have been used to treat neurological damage. Its positive action on HI has been demonstrated in studies performed in our laboratory, where the administration of the alkaloid extract of Huperzia quadrifariata (An inhibitor of AChE) reduced the cognitive and histological deficits caused by this lesion. To evaluate the effects of the pre and post-hypoxia administrations of galantamine, a cholinesterase inhibitor, in the model oh perinatal HI, Wistar rats in the post-natal day 7 (PND7) were subjected to a combination of unilateral occlusion of the right charotid artery and of exposure to a hypoxic exposure (8% O2) for 60 minutes. Intraperitoneal injections of saline in the groups Sham anf HI+Saline (HIS) and of galantamine in the groups HI+Galantamine 5 mg/kg pre-hypoxia (HIG5-Pre), HI+Galantamine 10 mg/kg pre-hypoxia (HIG10-Pre), HI+Galantamine 5 mg/kg post-hypoxia (HIG5-Post) and HI+Galantamine 10 mg/kg post-hypoxia (HIG5-Post). The Pre groups received galantamine immediately before hypoxia and the Post groups in the intervals of 1, 24, 48 and 72 hours after HI. On PND45 the analysis of the volume of brain structures showed a reduction of the volume of the ipsilesional hippocampus in the HIS group when compared to the sham and a prevention of this effect in the HIG10-Pre, but not in any other group. Biochemical analysis was performed in the ipsilesional hippocampus 24 hours after the lesion and revealed: a reduction of the number of surviving neurons in the HIS group when compared to the Sham that was prevented in the HIG10-Pre; a hypertrophy of the astrocytes in the HIS group that was prevented in the HIG10-Pre group and an increase in the activity of the anti-oxidant enzyme catalase in the HIG10-Pre group. The treatment with galantamine was able to prevent the histological deficits, increase the survival of neurons, reduce astrocytic reaction and increase the anti-oxidant activity in rats submitted to HI.

Previously studies used correlation of DNase I hypersensitivity sites sequencing (DNase-seq) experiments to predict interactions between enhancers and its target promoter gene. We investigate the correlation methods Pearson’s correlation and Mutual Information, using DNase-seq data for 100 cell-types in regions on chromosome one. To assess the performances, we compared our results of correlation scores to Hi-C data from Jin et al. 2013. We showed that the performances are low when comparing it to the Hi-C data, and there is a need of improved correlation metrics. We also demonstrate that the use of Hi-C data as a gold standard is limited, because of its low resolution, and we suggest using another gold standard in further studies.

The thesis "Perception of Chinese hi-tech brands in Europe" examines how Chinese origin affects the perception of hi-tech brands by European customers. The theoretical part deals with the concept of country of origin and its relationship to the concept of brand equity. The practical part is devoted to the research on the topic of perception of Chinese smartphones in Europe. The research results confirm both hypotheses: 1. Customers when choosing a smartphone brand are not affected by the country of origin. 2. European customers do not perceive Chinese hi-tech products as of low quality.

The recent increase in the number of tourists interested in cultural and food tourism has meant that more authentic traditional foods ought to be on offer at cultural villages and ethnic restaurants. Shangana cultural village is an establishment where tourists can experience the Tsonga-Shangaan ethnic culture in South Africa. It is well known that when people visit such establishments, they primarily want to experience the cuisine of the culture or cultures of the ethnic groups presented to them. With the limited information available on the food habits of South African population groups generally it is impossible to know and explain why certain foods are chosen and accepted. One of the problems about traditional dishes is that their preparation methods have mostly been shared by word of mouth, and not as documented recipes. Yet it is important that when people visit cultural villages depicting certain population groups they receive information about the group’s eating habits. A need therefore arises for the development and standardisation of recipes for use in cultural villages and restaurants specialising in traditional cooking. The study was conducted two phases. The first goal was to develop and standardise recipes for the two traditional Tsonga-Shangaan dishes, xigugu and xiendla hi vomu for inclusion in the menu of ethnic restaurants. The second goal was to determine their acceptability, by leisure tourists visiting a cultural village where the restaurant is situated. Phase I followed the principles of action research to develop and standardise the recipes. This was done as a cyclic process in three stages, recipe verification, product evaluation and quantity adjustment, was implemented. The second phase of the study was exploratory-descriptive in nature. The overall purpose of this phase was to gain comprehensive insight into the acceptability of the two traditional dishes at the Shangana cultural village, by analysing and interpreting the results of this study. A quantitative research approach was adopted for this empirical study with a questionnaire as the main research instrument. Although quick and easy to complete and relevant to the topic, a time constraint was experienced in its completion, because most tourists were in tour groups and had to follow a set programme. However, reliability of the collected data could be attributed to the accuracy and precison of information supplied by the respondents. From the results of the survey it was clear that the tourists liked the two dishes very much. Most of the respondents who were more accepting of the two dishes were those who ate cereal and legume dishes frequently. The Tsonga and Venda ethnic groups were more accepting of the xigugu and xiendla hi vomu than the other ethnic groups. Overall, the findings confirmed that the sensory attributes, appearance, taste, flavour and texture of the food were considered very important in the acceptability and consumption of xigugu and xiendla hi vomu as did the inclusion of the two dishes as menu items. This was evident when those who had never eaten such food before, began to actually enjoy it. Copyright / Dissertation (MConsumer Science)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Consumer Science / unrestricted

Chromatin is a complex polymer molecule in eukaryotic cells, primarily consisting of DNA and histones. Many works have shown that the 3D folding of chromatin structure plays an important role in DNA expression. The recently proposed Chro- mosome Conformation Capture technologies, especially the Hi-C assays, provide us an opportunity to study how the 3D structures of the chromatin are organized. Based on the data from Hi-C experiments, many chromatin 3D structure modeling methods have been proposed. However, there is limited ground truth to validate these methods and no robust chromatin structure alignment algorithms to evaluate the performance of these methods. In our work, we first made a thorough literature review of 25 publicly available population Hi-C-based chromatin 3D structure modeling methods. Furthermore, to evaluate and to compare the performance of these methods, we proposed a novel data simulation method, which combined the population Hi-C data and single-cell Hi-C data without ad hoc parameters. Also, we designed a global and a local alignment algorithms to measure the similarity between the templates and the chromatin struc- tures predicted by different modeling methods. Finally, the results from large-scale comparative tests indicated that our alignment algorithms significantly outperform the algorithms in literature.

The corpus of reference genomes is rapidly expanding as more and more genome assemblies are released for a wide variety of species. The constant progress in sequencing technologies has led to the release in 2021 of a first complete, telomere-to-telomere, gap-less assembly of a human genome, yet a myriad of eukaryote species still lack genomic resources. For animals, genomic projects have focused on species closely related to humans (vertebrates) and those with an impact on health and agriculture. By contrast, there is still a dearth of non-vertebrate genomes that poorly represents their tremendous diversity (about 95% of animal diversity).Haploid chromosome-level genome assemblies using long reads and chromosome conformation capture (such as Hi-C) have become a standard in recent publications. To provide a haploid representation of diploid and polyploid genomes, assemblers collapse haplotypes into a single sequence, yet they are sensitive to high levels of heterozygosity and often yield fragmented assemblies with artefactual duplications. I tackled these shortcomings with two strategies: improving collapsed assemblies with a comprehensive long-read assembly methodology tuned for highly heterozygous genomes; and separating haplotypes to obtain phased assemblies using long reads and Hi-C. The assemblies were finally brought to chromosome-level scaffolds with a new Hi-C scaffolder, which demonstrated its efficiency on genomes of non-model organisms.These methods were applied to generate chromosome-level assemblies of three species for which none or few assemblies of closely related species were available: the bdelloid rotifer Adineta vaga, the coral Astrangia poculata, and the chaetognath Flaccisagitta enflata. These high-quality assemblies contribute to filling the current gaps in non-vertebrate genomics and pave the way for future sequencing initiatives aiming to generate such reference assemblies for all the species on Earth. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The city of Centurion houses various sporting facilities such as SuperSport Park and Centurion Gymnastics Club as well as other training facilities. The proposed site for this thesis is on the edge of the Hennops River and forms part of the Lyttelton Agricultural holdings. It borders SuperSport Park as well as the Centurion Rugby club. The proposed site is located North of South Street in Centurion. Currently there is only one Hi-Performance Sport Centre in South Africa. It is located on the Sports grounds of the University of Pretoria. This centre, although only one year old, is already fully booked well into the year 2004. The overwhelming response to this sports facility is a clear indication that centres like these are in great demand in South Africa. One of the main reasons for its popularity is our appealing weather that attracts many foreign athletes. Another reason is the diversity of sport in one complex and the highly equipped training facilities. The athletes can be monitored throughout training with the proper nutrition and medical support. It is the only facility of its kind, combining a training facility with accommodation. This thesis proposes to provide the Centurion area with a similar centre and including improvements to the existing centre. According to the Centurion Integrated Development Framework the site and its surroundings should be used for sport development and recreational facilities. The surrounding sports grounds are another reason for the choice of site. The site is visible from the main road between Pretoria and Johannesburg (N1 Highway) which increases visibility. According to the Centurion Integrated Development Framework all the developments adjacent to the N1 highway should convey a hi-tech image. This thesis evolved as a comprehensive reaction to the immediate site and the physical, social, cultural and technological conditions. It is the amalgamation of these concepts and ideas that serves as metaphor for the architectural response and process. Since the thesis deals with the professional sport industry and high technological precision research and training, so too does this project focus on presenting this idea of "precision" throughout the architectural-, space-, and tangible experience. In totality, the proposed design is the synthesis of various interrelated influences. The product is site specific, individualistic and realistic. / Dissertation (MArch (Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Architecture / unrestricted

Les deux dernières décennies ont été marquées par la montée en puissance des économies émergentes et l’émergence de startups et PME technologiques à forte croissance internationale. Cette tendance a donné naissance à un nouveau domaine de recherche, l’entrepreneuriat international dans les économies émergentes. L’objet de cette recherche qualitative est d’étudier les facteurs qui influencent le processus d’identification des opportunités internationales chez les PME technologiques issues d’une économie émergente, la Tunisie. A cet effet, nous étudions le processus d’internationalisation de sept PME technologiques tunisiennes du secteur des technologies de l’information et des communications. Les résultats de l’analyse intra et inter cas identifient les traits de personnalité de l’entrepreneur, les capacités entrepreneuriales internationales et les réseaux relationnels de l’entrepreneur comme les trois principales catégories de facteurs qui influencent l’identification des opportunités internationales. Notre recherche aboutit à la formulation et la discussion de huit propositions qui permettent de schématiser un modèle explicatif de l’internationalisation des PME technologiques issues des économies émergentes. / The last two decades have been marked by the rise of emerging economies and the emergence of start-ups and Hi-Tech SMEs with high international growth. This trend has spawned a new area of research, international entrepreneurship in emerging economies. The purpose of this qualitative research is to study the factors that influence the process of identifying international opportunities in technological SMEs from an emerging economy, Tunisia. To this end, we are studying the process of internationalization of seven Tunisian technological SMEs in the information and communications technology sector. The results of the intra- and inter-case analysis identify entrepreneurial personality traits, international entrepreneurial capabilities and relational networks as the three main categories of factors that influence the identification of international opportunities. Our research results in the formulation and discussion of eight proposals that make it possible to schematize an explanatory model of the internationalization of technological SMEs emerging from emerging economies.

Understanding 3D genome structure is crucial to learn how chromatin folds and how genes are regulated through the spatial organization of regulatory elements. Various technologies have been developed to investigate genome architecture. These technologies include ligation-based 3C Methodologies such as Hi-C and Micro-C, ligation-based pull-down methods like Proximity Ligation-Assisted ChIP-seq (PLAC Seq) and Paired-end tag sequencing (ChIA PET), and ligation-free methods like Split-Pool Recognition of Interactions by Tag Extension (SPRITE) and Genome Architecture Mapping (GAM). Although these technologies have provided great insight into chromatin organization, a systematic evaluation of these technologies is lacking. Among these technologies, Hi-C has been one of the most widely used methods to map genome-wide chromatin interactions for over a decade. To understand how the choice of experimental parameters determines the ability to detect and quantify the features of chromosome folding, we have first systematically evaluated two critical parameters in the Hi-C protocol: cross-linking and digestion of chromatin. We found that different protocols capture distinct 3D genome features with different efficiencies depending on the cell type (Chapter 2). Use of the updated Hi-C protocol with new parameters, which we call Hi-C 3.0, was subsequently evaluated and found to provide the best loop detection compared to all previous Hi-C protocols as well as better compartment quantification compared to Micro-C (Chapter 3). Finally, to understand how the aforementioned technologies (Hi-C, Micro-C, PLAC-Seq, ChIA-PET, SPRITE, GAM) that measure 3D organization could provide a comprehensive understanding of the genome structure, we have performed a comparison of these technologies. We found that each of these methods captures different aspects of the chromatin folding (Chapter 4). Collectively, these studies suggest that improving the 3D methodologies and integrative analyses of these methods will reveal unprecedented details of the genome structure and function.

Technology is trying to make life easier for students today. Digitized study materi-als or online courses are just a small example of what modern era enable students. This thesis deals with technological impact on academic dishonesty. It points to the hi-tech sector of the Czech Republic, to the technology market that allows unethical behavior and to the use of these technologies by students. This thesis answers questions about who is a cheating student, how he cheats and what motivates him to do so. These are predominantly students aged 21-23, in the second year full-time study, with good financial situation. Gender or field of studies does not influ-ence the unethical behavior of the student. The thesis outlines recommendations that schools could take to prevent students from academic dishonesty. As unethical behavior begins in schools but should continue in the working environment, the thesis also points to possible solutions for employers who are not interested in unethically acting employees.