Linseed oil (Linum usitatissimum L.) is valued for its food and non-food applications. Although Canada is the world’s largest linseed producer and exporter, linseed remains a minor crop in part because its yield has been stagnating over the last decade compared to other oilseeds. Narrow genetic base, absence of an efficient hybrid production system and limited genomic tools for linseed breeding are the main factors hindering yield and quality improvements. Here, we characterized the Canadian flax core collection of 407 accessions with 448 genome-wide simple sequence repeat markers and, using association mapping (AM), we demonstrated its potential for the improvement of seed quality and agronomic traits. Genetic structure analyses assigned all accessions to two major groups that were weakly differentiated (FST = 0.094). Genetic diversity was abundant in the total panel (5.32 alleles per locus) with weak familial relatedness (mean = 0.287) for most individual pairs. Linkage disequilibrium (LD) decayed relatively quickly with an average genome-wide LD of ~1 cM. AM for seven seed quality traits including oil content (OIL), palmitic acid (PAL), stearic acid (STE), oleic acid (OLE), linoleic acid (LIO), linolenic acid (LIN) and iodine value (IOD) identified nine stable candidate QTL. LIO and LIN QTL co-localized with previously identified QTL and some mapped in the vicinity of genes known to be involved in the fatty acid biosynthesis pathway. AM conducted for nine agronomic traits including yield, bolls per area (BPA), seeds per boll (SPB), thousand seed weight (TSW), start of flowering (FL5%), end of flowering (FL95%), plant height (PH), plant branching (PB) and lodging (LDG) identified twelve significant marker-trait associations for six of the traits. The associated markers explained between 0.5 to 18.5% of the phenotypic variation, with Lu526 and Lu2532 associated with TSW and Lu943 associated with flowering being the most promising for marker-assisted selection. Statistical simulation for five markers associated with TSW indicated that the favorable alleles have additive effects. None of the accessions carried the five favorable alleles but a few breeding lines had four, indicating that further improvement of TSW and yield could be achieved through marker assisted breeding

Contaminated environmental surfaces can be a means of transmission of Clostridium difficile spores in health-care facilities. The study objectives are to assess the value of the UV marker as an audit tool for improving housekeeping compliance and to compare microfiber and cotton cloths for removal of Clostridium difficile spores from surfaces. A lotion visible only under short-wave UV light (UV Marker) was applied to different surfaces within the patient’s washrooms on consecutive week days, over a twenty-four week period. The Study included three Arms: Arm one received feedback for 24 weeks , Arm two received feedback for the first 12 weeks and Arm three was given feedback for the last 12 weeks based on UV Marker results. The visual audit resulted in a cleaning compliance of 55%; whereas, feedback with the UV Marker led to a housekeeping compliance of 90%. The UV marker is a better audit tool than visual inspection for improving cleaning compliance of housekeeping staff. The use of microfiber cloths may enhance efficiency of microbial removal during surface cleaning.

Vision-based positioning systems are founded primarily on a simple image processing technique of identifying various visually significant key-points in an image and relating them to a known coordinate system in a scene. Fiducial markers are used as a means of providing the scene with a number of specific key-points, or features, such that computer vision algorithms can quickly identify them within a captured image. This thesis proposes a reliable vision-based positioning system which utilizes a unique pseudo-random fiducial marker. The marker itself offers 49 distinct feature points to be used in position estimation. Detection of the designed marker occurs after an integrated process of adaptive thresholding, k-means clustering, color classification, and data verification. The ultimate goal behind such a system would be for indoor localization implementation in low cost autonomous mobile platforms.

This thesis explores the poetics of editing in the films and multimedia works of Chris Marker. From his first essay films of the 1950s to his 1998 CD-ROM Immemory, the director’s work has attracted critical attention for its beauty and originality of expression. Much existing analysis engages with this work in terms of its subject matter and themes and their relationship with its associational, rather than linear, narrative form, with relatively little focus on the stylistics of Marker’s editing. While questions of the director’s thematic concerns also arise in my study, I argue that Marker’s contribution to cinema and the visual arts cannot be fully appreciated without a systematic understanding of his stylistics—his expressive use of cinematic forms and patterns. In developing such an understanding, this thesis utilises the work of a number of film writers explicitly concerned with the expressive use of cinematic space and time. From Andr?? Bazin, I take the idea of rapprochement to mean the way the comparison between two juxtaposed events or images suggests or expresses the meaning of their juxtaposition. From Jean-Andr?? Fieschi, I draw on the idea that the dialectical interaction of the plastic, formal and narrative elements of a film gives meaning to its cinematic space and time. My approach synthesises and builds upon both ideas for its account of the stylistics of Marker’s work. Starting with a preliminary analysis of one cinematic comparison in The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004), I then consider Marker’s exploration of the imaginative potential of a single image sequence in The Last Bolshevik (1993). After this, I explore examples of the stylistic figure of rapprochement in Letter from Siberia (1958), and the stylistic figure of transformation in Sunless (1982). The thesis then studies articulations of rapprochement and transformation in the museum installations Zapping Zone: Proposals for an Imaginary Television (1991), Silent Movie (1995) and the CD-ROM Immemory.

This thesis explores the poetics of editing in the films and multimedia works of Chris Marker. From his first essay films of the 1950s to his 1998 CD-ROM Immemory, the director’s work has attracted critical attention for its beauty and originality of expression. Much existing analysis engages with this work in terms of its subject matter and themes and their relationship with its associational, rather than linear, narrative form, with relatively little focus on the stylistics of Marker’s editing. While questions of the director’s thematic concerns also arise in my study, I argue that Marker’s contribution to cinema and the visual arts cannot be fully appreciated without a systematic understanding of his stylistics—his expressive use of cinematic forms and patterns. In developing such an understanding, this thesis utilises the work of a number of film writers explicitly concerned with the expressive use of cinematic space and time. From Andr?? Bazin, I take the idea of rapprochement to mean the way the comparison between two juxtaposed events or images suggests or expresses the meaning of their juxtaposition. From Jean-Andr?? Fieschi, I draw on the idea that the dialectical interaction of the plastic, formal and narrative elements of a film gives meaning to its cinematic space and time. My approach synthesises and builds upon both ideas for its account of the stylistics of Marker’s work. Starting with a preliminary analysis of one cinematic comparison in The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004), I then consider Marker’s exploration of the imaginative potential of a single image sequence in The Last Bolshevik (1993). After this, I explore examples of the stylistic figure of rapprochement in Letter from Siberia (1958), and the stylistic figure of transformation in Sunless (1982). The thesis then studies articulations of rapprochement and transformation in the museum installations Zapping Zone: Proposals for an Imaginary Television (1991), Silent Movie (1995) and the CD-ROM Immemory.

Ulm, Univ., Diss., 2008.

Hohenheim, Univ., Diss., 2008. / Enthält u.a. drei Abstracts.

Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2005--München.

Emerging from potentially malignant disorders that in most cases will never become cancerous, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a cancer that is extremely difficult to diagnose early. This late stage diagnosis has allowed limited improvements in overall survival (OS) as patients are prone to local recurrence, secondary primary tumors, and distant metastasis. As a result, it has become vitally important to assess the prognostic value of biological marker screening to provide an avenue for early diagnosis and identification of local recurrence or residual secondary tumor sites. Many characteristic markers such as EGFR, p16, p53 and VEGF that are constitutively mutated in HNSCC have been identified. However, the dysregulation of VEGF marks a landmark mutation that accelerates the diseases progression and spread. An angiogenic protein normally expressed in response to hypoxic conditions, VEGF allows the creation of new vasculature to remove catabolites and bestows resistance to normal cellular apoptotic signals; pathways often employed by chemotherapeutics. Therefore, early identification of VEGF poses a unique opportunity to employ aggressive therapeutic regimens in combination with precision surgical resection to eliminate the cancer before neovascualture invasion has occurred and the tumor has expanded significantly. For this reason, this review will examine the current literature available on VEGFs role in HNSCC, its value as a prognostic marker.

Submitted by Diego Cesar (rasecg3@gmail.com) on 2017-06-26T19:47:01Z No. of bitstreams: 1 main_compressed.pdf: 16459769 bytes, checksum: b7838aeb4e94120d45daddb2c1b3c80e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Flávia Sousa (flaviabs@ufba.br) on 2017-06-28T14:27:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 main_compressed.pdf: 16459769 bytes, checksum: b7838aeb4e94120d45daddb2c1b3c80e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-28T14:27:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 main_compressed.pdf: 16459769 bytes, checksum: b7838aeb4e94120d45daddb2c1b3c80e (MD5) / Underwater navigation is affected by the lack of GPS due to the attenuation of the electromagnetic signals. Thereby, underwater robots rely on dead reckoning as their main navigation systems. However, localization via dead-reckoning raises uncertainties over time. Consequently, visual and acoustic sensors have been used to increase accuracy in robotic systems navigation, specially when they move in relation to a target object. This level of precision is required, for instance, for object manipulation, inspection, monitoring and docking. This work aims to develop and assess a hybrid visual controller for an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) using artificial fiducial markers as reference. Artificial fiducial markers are planar targets, designed to be easily detected by computer vision systems and provide means to estimate the robot’s pose in respect to the marker. They usually have high detection rate and low false positive rate, which are desirable for visual servoing tasks. On this master thesis was evaluated, from among the most popular and open-source marker systems, one that presents the best performance in underwater environments in terms of detection rate, false positives rate, maximum distance and angle for successful detection. Afterwards, the best marker was used for visual servoing purposes in an underwater robot. The firsts experiments were performed on the Gazebo robot simulation environment and, after that, on a real prototype, the FlatFish. Tests on a saltwater tank were performed in order to assess the controller using static and adaptive gains. Finally, sea trials were performed, using the controller that best behaved on the controlled environment in order to assess its performance on a real environment. The tests have shown that the visual controller was able of station-keeping in front of an artificial fiducial marker. Additionally, it was also seen that the adaptive gain brings improvements, mainly because it smooths the robot’s motion on the beginning of the task. / Navegação submarina é afetada pela falta de GPS, devido à atenuação de ondas eletromagnéticas. Por causa disso, os robôs submarinos baseiam-se em sistemas de navegação via odometria e sensores inerciais. Contudo, a localização via esse tipo de abordagem possui uma incerteza associada que cresce com o passar do tempo. Por isso sensores visuais e acústicos são utilizados para aumentar a precisão da navegação de veículos submarinos. Nesse contexto, a utilização de um controlador visual aumenta a precisão dos sistemas robóticos quando se locomovem em relação a um objeto alvo. Esse tipo de precisão é requerida para manipulação de objetos, inspeção, monitoramento e docagem submarina. Esse trabalho tem como objetivo projetar e avaliar um controlador visual híbrido para um veículo submarino autônomo (AUV) utilizando como referência marcos visuais artificiais. Os marcos artificiais são alvos planares projetados para serem facilmente detectados por sistemas de visão computacional, sendo capazes de fornecer meios para estimação da posição do robô em relação ao marco. As suas características de alta taxa de detecção e baixa taxa de falsos positivo são desejáveis para tarefas de controle servo visual. Este trabalho analisou, portanto, dentre os marcos mais populares e de código aberto, aquele que apresenta o melhor desempenho em ambientes submarinos, em termos de taxa de detecção, número de falsos positivos, máxima distância e ângulo para detecção. Posteriormente, o marco que apresentou melhor performance foi utilizado para aplicação de controle visual em um robô submarino. Os primeiros ensaios foram realizados na plataforma de simulação robótica Gazebo e, posteriormente, em um protótipo de AUV real, o FlatFish. Testes em um tanque de água salgada foram realizados visando avaliar a solução proposta utilizando um ganho estático e um ganho adaptativo para o controlador visual. Finalmente, testes no mar foram realizados utilizando o controlador que apresentou os melhores resultados no ambiente controlado, a fim de verificar seu desempenho em um ambiente real. Os testes mostraram que o controlador visual foi capaz de manter o veículo em frente aos marcos visuais artificiais e que o ganho adaptativo trouxe vantagens, principalmente por suavizar a movimentação do robô no início da missão.