We investigate the properties of two distinct disordered systems: the two-species predator-prey Lotka-Volterra model with rate variability, and an elastic line model to simulate vortex lines in type-II superconductors. We study the effects of intrinsic demographic variability with inheritance in the reaction rates of the Lotka-Volterra model via zero-dimensional Monte Carlo simulations as well as two-dimensional lattice simulations. Individuals of each species are assigned inheritable predation efficiencies during their creation, leading to evolutionary dynamics and thus population-level optimization. We derive an effective subspecies mean-field theory and compare its results to our numerical data. Furthermore, we introduce environmental variability via quenched spatial reaction-rate randomness. We investigate the competing effects and relative importance of the two types of variability, and find that both lead to a remarkable enhancement of the species densities, while the aforementioned optimization effects are essentially neutral in the densities. Additionally, we collected extinction time histograms for small systems and find a marked increase in the stability of the populations against extinction due to the presence of variability. We employ an elastic line model to investigate the steady-state properties and non-equilibrium relaxation kinetics of magnetic vortex lines in disordered type-II superconductors. To this end, we developed a versatile and efficient Langevin molecular dynamics simulation code, allowing us to do a careful study of samples with or without vortex-vortex interactions or disorder allows us to disentangle the various complex relaxational features present in this system and investigate their origin. In particular, we compare disordered samples with randomly distributed point defects versus correlated columnar defects. We extract two-time quantities such as the mean-square displacement, the height and density correlations, to investigate the relaxation kinetics of the system of flux lines. Additionally, we compare the steady-state mean velocity and gyration radius as a function of an external driving current in the presence of point-like and columnar disorder. We validate our simulation algorithm by matching our results against a previously-used Monte Carlo algorithm, verifying that these microscopically quite distinct methods yield similar results even in out-of-equilibrium settings. / Ph. D.

<p>Tolerance is a diagnostic criterion for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and dependence and is often measured metabolically or behaviorally by comparing blood ethanol concentrations (BEC) or locomotor performance to an ethanol (EtOH) challenge before and after a drinking history, respectively. To explore another aspect of chronic behavioral tolerance in a family history positive (FH+) model of AUD, crossed High Alcohol Preferring (cHAP) mice were allowed to respond instrumentally for an EtOH reinforcer after either a five-week history of continuous home cage two-bottle choice (2BC) drinking or a concurrent five-week water-drinking period. Additionally, some of these animals were placed back into the operant box after home cage drinking histories to respond in extinction, allowing for the quantification of alcohol-motivated seeking alone in the absence of EtOH taking and its intoxicating effects. The results demonstrate that an alcohol history does not lead to a subsequent increase in active lever responding or inactive lever responding when compared to water-drinking controls. However, female cHAP mice with an EtOH-drinking history respond more on the inactive lever in extinction compared to water controls, suggesting that home cage EtOH history potentiates variation in responding in extinction. Overall, female mice responded more on the active lever and drank more alcohol in the reinforced condition, but again, there was not an effect of drinking history on this sex-specific effect. Together these results suggest that while female cHAPs, regardless of drinking history, are more motivated to work to drink EtOH, reinforced and non-reinforced instrumental responding are not reliable readouts for tolerance in cHAP mice compared to other endpoints such as drinking in the dark (DID) assays.</p>

Developing software for complicated systems is often done by collaboration and consists of deliverables by a multitude of organisations. The deliverables can range from smaller devices and commercial-off-the-shelf software components, to larger systems. This is the situation during the development of the embedded system for large vehicles or machines. Many companies within the embedded industry are transitioning to using Service-Orientation to develop high-quality software and reduce costs. However, when integrating different external systems with an internal, service-oriented system there may arise difficulties since the communication patterns, i.e. interface, cannot be changed to fit the internal system. This study aims to develop a design solution that can be used to integrate different external systems with an internally developed service-oriented system in an entire software product line, including the handling of variability by parametrization. The solution is evaluated by software developers at a company in such a situation. To develop the design solution design science methodology is applied, which is an iterative process that continuously improves the candidate solution until satisfactory according to various stakeholders. The resultant design solution includes the use of wrappers-based interaction between systems, where so-called adapters are used when the internal system acts as a client to an external system, and using gateways for when the internal systems acts as a server to an external system. We also observe the need for a system integration view to describe the relations and available communication mechanisms between systems, i.e. the gateways and adapters. We conclude that to integrate a service-oriented software system with non-service-oriented systems, there can be benefits to using an abstraction layer between systems to protect the internally developed software architecture from being affected by the nature of the external system. Attempting to integrate external systems with an internal system as if also developed internally may become troublesome in terms of defining and upholding an appropriate service-oriented architecture. This is especially important when considering variability of the complete system, where different external systems are used or replaced in specific variants.

Typically, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) solutions produce large amounts of data that can be used for analysis. The enormous amount of data produces new challenges for effective exploration. The prototype system EVITA, based on ranked access of application-specific regions of interest, provides an effective tool for this purpose. Automated feature detection techniques are needed to identify the features in the dataset. Automated techniques for detecting shocks, expansion regions, vortices, separation lines, and attachment lines have already been developed. A new approach for identifying the regions of flow separation is proposed. This technique assumes that each pair of separation and attachment lines has a vortex core associated with it. It is based on the velocity field in the plane perpendicular to the vortex core. The present work describes these methods along with the results obtained.

Maize, Zea mays L., is the largest cereal grain crop grown in United States. Its yield and grain quality are adversely impacted by diseases every year. Aspergillus ear rot, caused by the fungus Aspergillus flavus, received little interest until its carcinogenic secondary metabolites, aflatoxins, were discovered. The objectives of this study were to introgress the quantitative trait loci (QTL) 2.04 from Mp313E and 5.03 from Mp715 into two commercial inbred lines, MonF and MonM; and evaluate their near isogenic lines (NILs) and testcrosses for preharvest aflatoxin accumulation and secondary agronomic traits. Marker assisted selection to create NILs and the testcross production was conducted by Bayer Company between 2015 and 2018. Field trials were conducted in summer 2019 as randomized complete block trials at three locations. The entry list of inbred trials included two donor parents (DP), two recurrent parents (RP), and their 58 NILs, and that of hybrid trials included 114 NIL testcrosses and 8 parental testcrosses. The top ear of each plant in every plot was inoculated with a 3.4 ml of A.flavus conidial suspension 13 days after mid-silk. All the inoculated ears were harvested at maturity, dried, machine shelled, ground, and aflatoxin concentration was determined by plot. Separate hybrid yield trials were conducted in four locations to measure the grain yield including an additional commercial check. Data on aflatoxin and other secondary traits was analyzed using SAS software. Overall, MonF NILs improved significantly more than MonM NILs in terms of their resistance to aflatoxin accumulation with the introgression of QTL 2.04 from Mp313E, but there were no differences with the introgression of QTL 5.03 from Mp715. Overall, Mp313E NILs improved more than Mp715 NILs when the recurrent parent was MonF, but the response was opposite when the recurrent parent was MonM. Compared to their respective recurrent parents, there were at least two NILs from each of the three out of four RP x DP crosses that significantly improved their resistance to aflatoxin accumulation with a minimal loss of their agronomic performance and testcross grain yields. These NILs could be considered as parents in future introgression projects.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.