The relative growth response of planted loblolly (Pinus taeda L.), shortleaf (Pinus echinata Mill.), Virginia (Pinus virginiana Mill.), and Eastern white (Pinus strobus L.) pines to intensive silvicultural practices such as woody competition control and fertilization in the Piedmont Province of Virginia is unclear. To address this issue, during 1999, a mixed stand of Virginia pine and hardwoods was clearcut and site-prepared by herbicide application. Three replications containing strips of loblolly, shortleaf, Virginia, and white pines were planted at a 3 m x 1.5 m spacing during February-June, 2000. Four different sources of loblolly pine seedlings were used. The strips were subsequently split across to accommodate four different silvicultural treatments: (1) check (no treatment); (2) woody vegetation control; (3) fertilization; and (4) weed control plus fertilization. The weed control treatment used two directed spray herbicide applications in 2001 (triclopyr and glyphosate) and 2003 (glyphosate) and one mechanical cutting of the remaining hardwoods in 2004. Fertilizer containing N, P, K, and S was applied in 2001, only N in 2002, and N plus P in 2004. Crop tree survival was highest for loblolly pine, decreased in shortleaf and Virginia pines, and Eastern white pine had the poorest survival through age 5. Fertilization without controlling the competing hardwoods decreased survival in all planted pines due to the increased hardwood competition. Loblolly pine was tallest (4.7 m) through the five-year period, shortleaf and Virginia pines were shorter (2.95 m and 3.06 m, respectively), and white pine was shortest (1.7 m). When fertilized, hardwoods were taller than white pine seedlings, almost equal in height to shortleaf and Virginia pines, but shorter than loblolly pine seedlings. Silvicultural treatments had no significant impact on tree height. However, the weed control treatment increased fifth-year pine DBH and stem volume, while fertilization did not. When applied in combination with weed control, there was no additional increase in crop tree DBH and stem volume due to fertilization beyond that from weed control only. The increased availability of soil nutrients due to harvesting the previous stands and allocating them to the crop trees by controlling the competing woody vegetation was enough to meet the nutrient requirements of the young seedlings up to this age. / Master of Science

Seit jeher treibt die Motivation, erfolgreiche Produkte – Innovationen – am Markt zu vertreiben, die wirtschaftliche Produktentwicklung von Unternehmen an (Schumpeter 1912). Dabei sind neben einer erfolgreichen Einführung eines Produktes in den Markt, ein relevantes Produktprofil (Bedarfssituation am Markt) sowie die technische oder serviceseitige Lösung dieses Bedarfs durch eine Neuerung (Invention) notwendige Bestandteile einer Innovation (siehe Abbildung 1) (Albers et al. 2018a). Allerdings stellt das Kreieren einer Innovation kein triviales Unterfangen dar, sondern unterliegt vielmehr dem kontinuierlichen Umgang mit Unsicherheiten (Bennett & Lemoine 2014). Dies führt dazu, dass der Prozess in der Produktentwicklung nicht ausreichend planbar und infolgedessen äußerst störanfällig ist (Albers et al. 2019a). Um Entwicklerteams jedoch bestmöglich im Innovationsprozess durch geeignete Vorgehensweisen zu unterstützen, wurde eine Vielzahl an Prozessmodellen entwickelt (Wynn & Clarkson 2018). In der Literatur haben sich unterschiedliche Arten von Innovationen herauskristallisiert, die, insbesondere hinsichtlich der durch sie hervorgerufenen Marktveränderungen, unterschieden werden können (Disselkamp 2005). Diese Unterscheidung ist ausschließlich retrospektiv durchführbar. Zudem existiert keine systematische Betrachtung der Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den einzelnen Innovationsarten auf Basis der Informationen, die für die Entwicklung der Produkte notwendig sind. Im vorliegenden Beitrag erfolgt dieser Vergleich anhand dreier Beispiele mit jeweils drei Produkten. [... aus der Einleitung]

摘要 《紅樓夢》是一部具有高度思想性和高度藝術性的文學鉅著，其前進思想和表現的寫作技巧，無可置疑的領先同時代的作家和作品。因為其具有獨特的藝術魅力，所以不但廣泛的流傳民間，也成功地站上世界文學之林。 《紅樓夢》雖然膾炙人口且流傳已逾兩百餘年，然而本書真正的作者是誰，卻一直是學者專家們爭論的話題。在大家的印象中，紅樓夢前八十回由清朝曹雪芹所寫，而後四十回則由高鶚所續編完成，但是研究紅樓夢的學者對於此一說法，仍抱著懷疑的態度，不斷的尋求證據以解答此問題的真相。 近年來，學者憑靠著殘存的證據，試圖以各種研究方法予以合理的推論，然時空變遷，只能恢復部分的歷史真相，無法給予完整的復原，而《紅樓夢》的作者究竟是誰，至今尚未有一個大家認同的答案。 本論文嘗試以品種比較、樣本重複性及品種涵蓋率等統計方法，配合電腦的檢索，藉由分析寫作風格及其用字習慣，以統計分析的角度來推論《紅樓夢》的作者。 關鍵詞：紅樓夢、品種問題、樣本重複性、卜瓦松過程。 / Abstract "The Dream of Chamber" is a greatly artistic novel in Chinese literature. Undoubtedly, the writing style and the delicate design of this book lead the other authors and novels at the same time. Because of its distinctive charm, it is wide-spreading not only in China but also in the other country. Although "The Dream of Chamber" has been spread more than two hundred years, however it also exists a mystery─"Who is the real author of this book？". Most people believe that Sher-Chin Tsao wrote the first 80 chapters, and Gao-E wrote the last 40 chapters. But many have doubt about this statement. People try to find evidence in order to solve this problem, but still have not a persuasive answer. In this report, we attempt to solve this riddle by statistical analysis, including the methods of species comparing, species overlap, and sample coverage etc., besides, we use computer to search words. We try to infer the author of "The Dream of Chamber" from the statistical point of view. Keyword: The Dream of Chamber, species comparison, sample coverage. Poisson Process.

Gene expression regulation is dynamic and specific to various factors such as developmental stages, environmental conditions, and stimulation of pathogens. Nowadays, a tremendous amount of transcriptome data sets are available from diverse species. This trend enables us to perform comparative transcriptome analysis that identifies conserved or diverged gene expression responses across species using transcriptome data. The goal of this dissertation is to develop and apply approaches of comparative transcriptomics to transfer knowledge from model species to non-model species with the hope that such an approach can contribute to the improvement of crop yield and human health. First, we presented a comprehensive method to identify cross-species modules between two plant species. We adapted the unsupervised network-based module finding method to identify conserved patterns of co-expression and functional conservation between Arabidopsis, a model species, and soybean, a crop species. Second, we compared drought-responsive genes across Arabidopsis, soybean, rice, corn, and Populus in order to explore the genomic characteristics that are conserved under drought stress across species. We identified hundreds of common gene families and conserved regulatory motifs between monocots and dicots. We also presented a BLS-based clustering method which takes into account evolutionary relationships among species to identify conserved co-expression genes. Last, we analyzed single-cell RNA-seq data from monocytes to attempt to understand regulatory mechanism of innate immune system under low-grade inflammation. We identified novel subpopulations of cells treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS), that show distinct expression patterns from pro-inflammatory genes. The data revealed that a promising therapeutic reagent, sodium 4-phenylbutyrate, masked the effect of LPS. We inferred the existence of specific cellular transitions under different treatments and prioritized important motifs that modulate the transitions using feature selection by a random forest method. There has been a transition in genomics research from bulk RNA-seq to single-cell RNA-seq, and scRNA-seq has become a widely used approach for transcriptome analysis. With the experience we gained by analyzing scRNA-seq data, we plan to conduct comparative single-cell transcriptome analysis across multiple species. / Doctor of Philosophy / All cells in an organism have the same set of genes, but there are different cell types, tissues, organs with different functions as the organism ages or under different conditions. Gene expression regulation is one mechanism that modulates complex, dynamic, and specific changes in tissues or cell types for any living organisms. Understanding gene regulation is of fundamental importance in biology. With the rapid advancement of sequencing technologies, there is a tremendous amount of gene expression data (transcriptome) from individual species in public repositories. However, major studies have been reported from several model species and research on non-model species have relied on comparison results with a few model species. Comparative transcriptome analysis across species will help us to transform knowledge from model species to non-model species and such knowledge transfer can contribute to the improvement of crop yields and human health. The focus of my dissertation is to develop and apply approaches for comparative transcriptome analysis that can help us better understand what makes each species unique or special, and what kinds of common functions across species have been passed down from ancestors (evolutionarily conserved functions). Three research chapters are presented in this dissertation. First, we developed a method to identify groups of genes that are commonly co-expressed in two species. We chose seed development data from soybean with the hope to contribute to crop improvement. Second, we compared gene expression data across five plant species including soybean, rice, and corn to provide new perspectives about crop plants. We chose drought stress to identify conserved functions and regulatory factors across species since drought stress is one of the major stresses that negatively impact agricultural production. We also proposed a method that groups genes with evolutionary relationships from an unlimited number of species. Third, we analyzed single-cell RNA-seq data from mouse monocytes to understand the regulatory mechanism of the innate immune system under low-grade inflammation. We observed how innate immune cells respond to inflammation that could cause no symptoms but persist for a long period of time. Also, we reported an effect of a promising therapeutic reagent (sodium 4-phenylbutyrate) on chronic inflammatory diseases. The third project will be extended to comparative single-cell transcriptome analysis with multiple species.