Bacterial resistance to the aminoglycoside antibiotics is a major health concern because of the elimination of a therapeutic option for the treatment of nosocomial infections. Clinical resistance is commonly caused by the acquisition of genes that encode an aminoglycoside modifying enzyme. These enzymes offer a potential therapeutic target in the fight against aminoglycoside resistance. By gaining a structural understanding of these enzymes the potential is created for rational drug design. The research presented here deals with structural studies on two aminoglycoside resistance enzymes. First the initial stages of structural determination for the bifunctional Aminoglycoside 6'-N-Acetyl transferase Aminoglycoside 2''-O-Phosphotransferase (AAC(6')-APH(2")) including the optimization of the purification procedure for this enzyme. The second enzyme is the Aminoglycoside 3'-O-Phosphotransferase (APH(3')IIIa). Computational studies on this enzyme have been carried out in order to determine models for aminoglycoside binding and also to search for potential enzyme inhibitors. The molecular docking studies for both the aminoglycoside binding and inhibitor search involved the development of a number of novel methods to improve the chance of obtaining a correct model, and to aid in the analysis of the data from the docking studies. These methods have the potential to be applied in future structure based drug design / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)

Rational-emotive therapy was proposed as a therapeutic treatment approach to romantic jealousy. It was hypothesized that rational-emotive therapy would be significantly more effective than an attention placebo group in the reduction of romantic jealousy with undergraduate single female subjects. It was also hypothesized that reductions in romantic jealousy would be sustained to a significantly greater extent in the rational-emotive therapy group rather than the attention placebo group on a follow-up evaluation after a 2-month period. Advertisements soliciting single females who were romantically jealous and who felt that this was a problem in their love relationships yielded 18 female subjects from the North Texas State University campus. The pre-treatment, post-treatment, and follow-up assessments consisted of two self-report questionnaires. The pre- and post-treatment also included a physiological measurement (heart rate) while the subject was imagining a jealousy scene. Both of the self-report questionnaires (Sexual Jealousy, Irrational Beliefs) were given to a significant other (such as a boyfriend or lover). Results support the hypothesis that rational-emotive therapy is more effective than an equally credible placebo in the reduction of female romantic jealousy.

The system of rational numbers can be extended to the real number system by several methods. In this paper, we shall extend the rational number system by means of rational nests of intervals, and develop the elementary properties of the real numbers obtained by this extension.

An apparel product (or “apparel”) is a human product. The design of an apparel product (or “apparel design”) should share many features of general product design and be conducted with a high degree of systematics and rationality. However, the current practice of apparel design is relatively more experience-based and ad-hoc than it should be. Besides, computer support to apparel design is quite limited in that there are several software systems available for supporting apparel design but they are isolated. Two reasons may explain this above situation: (1) absence of the ontology of apparel and apparel design, and (2) absence of a systematic and rational apparel design process. Furthermore, apparel is a specialized type of product in that all three inherent requirements (i.e., function, comfort related to ergonomics, and pleasure related to aesthetics) are equally important, especially the latter, which creates positive affects in the human wearer. In general, knowledge of how to design an apparel product for pleasure/affects is missing from the current design. The general motivation for the research conducted in this thesis is to locate and articulate this “missing knowledge” in order to advance design technology including computer-aided design for modern apparel products. The specific objectives of the research presented in this thesis are: (1) development of a model for the ontology of apparel or apparel system so that all basic concepts and their relationships related to the apparel system are captured; (2) development of a systematic design process for apparel that captures all the inherent characteristics of design, namely iteration and open-endedness; and (3) development of a computer-aided system for affective design for apparel, whereby human feeling once described can be computed with the result that an apparel product meets the wearer’s “feeling needs” (functional and ergonomic needs are assumed to be satisfied or not the concern of this thesis). There are several challenges to achieving the foregoing objectives. The first of these is the understanding of ontology for apparel and apparel design, given that there are so many types of apparel and ad-hoc apparel design processes in practice. The second challenge is the generalization and aggregation of the various ad-hoc apparel design processes that exist in practice. Third is the challenge presented by imprecise information and knowledge in the aspect of human’s affect. All three above challenges have been tackled and answered in this thesis. The first challenge is tackled with the tool of data modeling especially semantic-oriented data modeling. The second challenge is tackled with the general design theory such as general design phase theory, axiomatic design theory, and FCBPSS knowledge architecture (F: function, C: context, B: behavior, P: principle, SS: state and structure). The third challenge is tacked with the data mining technique and subjective rating technique. Several contributions are made with this thesis. First is the development of a comprehensive ontology model for apparel and apparel design that provides a basis for computer-aided design and manufacturing of apparel in the future. Second is the development of a general apparel design process model that offers a reference model for any specific apparel design process. Third is the provision of new “data mining” technology for acquiring words in human language that express affects. It should be noted that this technology is domain-independent, and thus it is applicable to any other type of product for affective design. The final contribution is the development of a method for searching apparel design parameters which describe an apparel product meeting a wearer’s required feelings described by “feeling words”. The database of words and the algorithm can be readily incorporated into commercial software for computer aided design of apparel products with the new enabler (i.e., design for affect or feeling).

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how the role of knowledge may be the missing link in economics and to argue that the assumption of unbounded rationality, which underpinned neoclassical economics, should be replaced by bounded rationality and that bounded rationality should be redefined as people are rational, but are constrained by asymmetric and imperfect knowledge. This decomposition of bounded rationality makes it possible for us to operationalize bounded rationality, which was founded by Herbert Simon in the 1950s, but has not been widely adopted in economics because the concept was considered too difficult to formalize. The inclusion of asymmetric and imperfect knowledge considerations in microeconomics provides new insights into the existence and boundaries of firms, the role and nature of institutions, financial market inefficiency and political choices. The inclusion of asymmetric knowledge considerations in macroeconomics can help explain the unequal distribution of wealth between individuals, firms and nations. A lack of knowledge, and the difficulties in overcoming a lack of knowledge, can help to explain aspects of economic fluctuations, prices rigidities, monetary non-neutrality and unemployment. Most importantly, when the role of knowledge is considered, it provides better explanations to various anomalies in economics, helps reconciles differences between various theories and may opens up the possibility of unifying various schools of economic thought.

Un arrangement central A est un ensemble fini de sous-espaces vectoriels dans un espace vectoriel complexe V de dimension finie. L'espace topologique complémentaire M(A) est l'ensemble des points de V qui n'appartiennent à aucun des sous-espaces de A. Dans ce travail, nous étudions la topologie de l'espace M(A) du point de vue de l'homotopie rationnelle. L'outil clé qui a servi de départ à cette thèse est un modèle rationnel de M(A) qui s'avère relativement simple à manipuler. À l'aide de ce modèle, nous obtenons plusieurs résultats sur la topologie de M(A). Citons par exemple des formules de récursion qui permettent de calculer certains invariants topologiques, dont les nombres de Betti, une preuve du fait que la caractéristique d'Euler de l'espace M(A) est nulle ou encore une description des arrangements (vérifiant une condition technique) dont le complémentaire est un wedge rationnel de sphères. Enfin, les résultats principaux de cet ouvrage sont une caractérisation des arrangements dont le complémentaire a le type d'homotopie d'un produit de sphères, et la preuve du fait que si le complémentaire n'est pas un produit de sphères, alors son algèbre de Lie d'homotopie contient la sous-algèbre de Lie libre à deux générateurs.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2001. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-102). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This thesis concerns the analysis and sensitivity of nonlinear eigenvalue problems for matrices and linear operators. The first part illustrates that lack of normality may result in catastrophic ill-conditioned eigenvalue problem. Linearization of rational eigenvalue problems for both operators over finite and infinite dimensional spaces are considered. The standard approach is to multiply by the least common denominator in the rational term and apply a well known linearization technique to the polynomial eigenvalue problem. However, the symmetry of the original problem is lost, which may result in a more ill-conditioned problem. In this thesis, an alternative linearization method is used and the sensitivity of the two different linearizations are studied. Moreover, this work contains numerically solved rational eigenvalue problems with applications in photonic crystals. For these examples the pseudospectra is used to show how well-conditioned the problems are which indicates whether the solutions are reliable or not.

Zugl.: Leipzig., Univ., Diplomarbeit, 2005