Written in the tradition of the classic spy novels of Ian Fleming and the detective novels of Raymond Chandler, The Agolmirth Conspiracy represents the return to the thriller of its traditional elements of romanticism, humanism, fast-moving action, and taut suspense, and a move away from its cynicism and dehumanization as currently practiced by authors such as John Le Carre' and Tom Clancy. Stanford Torrance, an ex-cop raised on "old-fashioned" notions of uncompromising good and naked evil and largely ignorant of computer systems and high-tech ordinance, finds himself lost in a "modern" world of shadowy operatives, hidden agendas, and numerous double-crosses. He is nevertheless able to triumph over that world when he puts his own honor, his own dignity, and his very life on the line, proving to himself and to his adversaries that such things can still make things easier to see amid today's swirling moral fog.

Inaug.-Diss.--Jena. / Lebensabriss.

Großes Empören machte sich breit in Deutschland, nachdem publik wurde, was die USA alles geheimdienstlich ausforschen. Mitten im Bundestagswahlkampf 2013 hatte die SPD Kanzlerin Angela Merkel vorgeworfen, ihren Amtseid gebrochen zu haben. Weil sie nicht schärfer gegen die Machenschaften der US-Geheimdienste auf deutschem Boden vorgegangen sei. Sie ließ tatsächlich abwiegeln.

Ned Ward’s monthly The London Spy (1698–1700) maps the life and character of London and exposes “the Vanities and Vices of the Town” (2). Written after the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1694, the work also exemplifies new freedoms of the press that flourished when pre-publication censorship was no longer enforced: The London Spy is unabashedly scandalous, and frequently critical of public institutions and the state. Ward profited from the public’s interest in his always irreverent, frequently indecorous and salacious tales. However, he aims to be critical and insightful as well as superficial and shallow in The London Spy; by capitalizing on the differences between his two characters, the Spy and his Friend, Ward vilifies “Vice and Villany,” with one hand while satisfying a voyeuristic appetite for the prurient and scatological with the other. This study examines how the two perspectives of The London Spy, the Spy and his Friend, work together within a highly fragmented and contradictory framework in order to show how Ward attempts to please both the unrefined reader looking for salacious material and, occasionally, the more discerning reader who understands the underlying problems and appreciates satire. Ward uses two differences between the Spy and his Friend to negotiate the balance between these two perspectives. First, The Spy is a naive and ignorant spectator and tourist, while the Friend is a cynical and experienced guide. The second difference is that the Spy is curious and at times compassionate where the Friend is diagnostic in his approach and unaffected on a personal level by the troubles of other people. The Spy and his Friend also distance themselves from the crowds and spectators they encounter, acting as observers or “spies.” The two perspectives of The London Spy are central to Ward’s negotiation between voyeuristic and knowing audiences.

<p>Plant growth and development are strictly regulated by internal hormonal signaling networks, which integrate and coordinate to promote plants’ adaptation and survival in the changing environment. Among the diverse hormones, gibberellins (GAs) are the phytohormones that regulate various processes, from seed germination to fruit development. The conserved plant-specific GRAS family protein DELLAs, key repressors in the GA signaling pathway, serve as the central coordinator of multiple signaling networks through physical interactions with many key transcription factors/regulators in other pathways. </p><p>Diverse DELLA-interacting proteins (DIPs) from different signaling pathways and various protein families have been identified in recent years. All the DIPs interact with the C-terminal GRAS domain of DELLA, however, the mechanism of how the GRAS domain interacts with diverse proteins remains a mystery. To solve this problem, I expressed a number of DELLA proteins in E.coli and obtained high-purity protein for biochemical and structural analysis.</p><p>As the central coordinator of plant growth and development, DELLA’s activity and stability are regulated by post-translational modifications. Our lab recently showed that SECRET AGENT (SEC) modulates the activity of DELLA through O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification in Arabidopsis. Nevertheless, SEC’s paralog SPINDLY (SPY), a putative O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) identified 20 years ago, does not have OGT activity, and serves as opposite role to SEC in GA signaling with an unknown mechanism. </p><p>Our lab made the breakthrough in uncovering the SPY function, and showed it promotes the O-fucosylation of DELLA in planta. I further proved that SPY is a novel protein O-fucosyltransferase through biochemical analysis. SPY specifically transfers O-fucose from GDP-fucose to its substrate peptide, and SPY mutant proteins showed reduced or abolished transferase activity. This is the first work to identify O-fucosylation of nuclear proteins in any organism. O-fucosylation of DELLA activates DELLA by promoting its interaction with DIPs, opposite to repression of interaction with O-GlcNAcylation. Previous studies showed that SPY is involved in multiple cellular pathways such as GA signaling, cytokinin signaling and the circadian clock. Thus, SPY plays an important role in regulating plant growth and development through O-fucosylation of key components in diverse intracellular pathways. </p><p>SPY orthologs are conserved in bacteria, protists, algae and plants, while SEC orthologs are also present in fungi and animals. SPY-like and SEC-like proteins share high sequence similarity, except that two key residues important for the OGT activity of SEC is missing in SPY. Structure analysis of SPY (or its orthologs) would greatly facilitate our understanding of its unique substrate specificity. Toward this goal, I expressed Arabidopsis SPY proteins (as well as bacterial SPY orthologs) in E.coli and obtained high-purity protein for structural analysis. I further identified lead conditions that produce needle-cluster crystals. While optimization would be required, these studies will ultimately reveal the structure of SPY and the architecture of the active site, to show how SPY interacts with GDP-fucose for the transferase activity.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis is a micro-history of the formation of the various identities that shaped the Revolutionary War experiences of one eighteenth-century Vermonter (Thomas Johnson) whose life is documented in a manuscript collection at the Vermont Historical Society. I break down Johnson's identities into three levels: social class, state, and national. My argument is that what it meant to be a provincial gentleman, to be a Vermonter, and to be an American were still being constructed at the time of the Revolution and were therefore in a state of flux. The fluid nature of these identities shows us how America's founding fathers' generation was full of ambiguity and a multiplicity choices. The first section of my thesis analyzes how Johnson's identity as a gentleman officer influenced his experience as a prisoner-of-war. I argue that Johnson's identity as an American patriot and his role as a double-agent can only be understood in relation to his conflicted identity as a provincial gentleman. The second section, on the identity of Vermont in the context of a new American nation, starts with historical background on the formation of Vermont first as part of New Hampshire, then as part of New York, and, finally, in negotiations with the British in Canada to rejoin the British empire, with which Johnson participated. In this section I argue that the shifting identities of colonial and revolutionary Vermont provided a backdrop of fluidity and change, as well as animosities between eastern and western residents, which influenced the identities of individual Vermonters during the war, including Thomas Johnson. For the national level, I look at how European Americans had divided loyalties during the war, with an emphasis on the Revolution as a civil war. My thesis departs from most historiography on the Revolution as a civil war, though, by examining it as a war with gray area - not just black and white, or Patriots versus Loyalists. I use this analysis to examine how Johnson's community was divided and why Johnson's neighbors reacted so diversely to the possibility that he was working with the British. In a last and brief section of my thesis, I look at how Johnson has been memorialized in his town's history, and how doubts of his American loyalty have all but disappeared over time, regardless of the intense debates they provoked during his lifetime. I aim to show that despite the consensus view that has shaped much of the historical memory of the American Revolution, the actual process of revolution was full of disorientation and turbulence.

Spider silk has long been a subject of scientific research due to its remarkable mechanical properties. Until recently, there has been no way to effectively obtain spider silk except by harvesting it from individual spiders. With advances in technology, the genes that code for the individual spider silk proteins have been isolated and genetically engineered into other hosts to produce recombinant spider silk proteins (rSSp) of varying sizes, Larger rSSp have correspondingly greater mechanical properties in any resulting materials. Using current production methods, larger rSSp cannot be produced in commercially viable quantities while simultaneously being economically viable. The current production methods have shown that small rSSp are easier to produce and purify in genetically engineered systems while maintaining favorable yields. After the small molecular weight rSSp were expressed and purified, they were polymerized to form larger molecular weight rSSp, while having maintained mechanical properties of similarly sized rSSp from other expression systems. To accomplish this polymerization, two systems were designed that can catalyze this reaction: using a Spy System and an intein system. These two systems require no external cofactors or enzymes and occur spontaneously once initiated. The expression and purification of rSSp from both of these systems has been characterized. The Spy System did not produce high enough quantities of rSSp to be economically viable. Whereas the intein system produced yields of 5 g/L, which is higher than previously reported. The rSSp from the intein system have been made into biomaterials, such as films, hydrogels, and aerogels. The mechanical properties of these biomaterials were comparable to biomaterials from other spider silk protein production. Utilizing the intein system, projected cost estimates for the production of rSSp has been lowered from $350 to $40 per kilogram. This decreased cost of rSSp would allow a wider array of commercial applications.

This thesis introduces 'spy agents' as a new security paradigm for evaluating trust in remote hosts in mobile code scenarios. In this security paradigm, a spy agent, i.e. a mobile agent which circulates amongst a number of remote hosts, can employ a variety of techniques in order to both appear 'normal' and suggest to a malicious host that it can 'misuse' the agent's data or code without being held accountable. A framework for the operation and deployment of such spy agents is described. Subsequently, a number of aspects of the operation of such agents within this framework are analysed in greater detail. The set of spy agent routes needs to be constructed in a manner that enables hosts to be identified from a set of detectable agent-specific outcomes. The construction of route sets that both reduce the probability of spy agent detection and support identification of the origin of a malicious act is analysed in the context of combinatorial group testing theory. Solutions to the route set design problem are proposed. A number of spy agent application scenarios are introduced and analysed, including: a) the implementation of a mobile code email honeypot system for identifying email privacy infringers, b) the design of sets of agent routes that enable malicious host detection even when hosts collude, and c) the evaluation of the credibility of host classification results in the presence of inconsistent host behaviour. Spy agents can be used in a wide range of applications, and it appears that each application creates challenging new research problems, notably in the design of appropriate agent route sets.

No description available.

Au XVIIIe siècle le secret est un thème qui traverse le réel et la fiction. Il se retrouve en effet dans la vie des romanciers aventuriers, mais aussi dans leurs oeuvres. Entre 1737 et 1782, de la proscription des romans qui entraîne la clandestinité jusqu’au crépuscule du libertinage que peignent Les Liaisons dangereuses, le secret ne cesse de se transformer. Essentiellement créateur de péripéties, voire d’imbroglios, chez Mouhy, Chevrier, ou Bastide, il contribue ensuite à l’expression de la subjectivité chez Vivant Denon et Laclos. De l’aventure à l’alcôve, nous assistons à l’intériorisation d’un thème qui se renouvelle en même temps que le plaisir de la lecture. Cette étude souhaite reconstituer le contexte du temps en mettant en relation des romans classés comme minores avec d’autres tenus pour des majores, et démontrer qu’au-delà des frontières qui séparent les sous-genres, le secret de la littérature réside sans doute dans la façon dont les minores peuvent éclairer la lecture des chefs-d’oeuvre. / In the eighteenth century secret is a theme which goes through reality and fiction alike. It is actually found both in adventurous novelists' life and in their works. Between 1737 and 1782, from the prohibition of novels which brings about underground publishing to the twilight of the libertine outlook depicted by Les Liaisons dangereuses, secret does not stop transforming itself. Basically at the origin of ups and downs even imbroglioes in Mouhy, Chevrier or Bastide, it contributes afterwards to the expression of subjectivity in Vivant Denon and Laclos’s works. From adventure to alcove, we observe the interiorization of a theme which is renewed at the same time as the pleasure of reading. This study hopes to render the context of the time putting in relation novels considered as minor and others held to be major ones and to prove that beyond the boundaries that separate the sub-genres, the secret of literature lies very likely in the way minor works can throw light on masterpieces.