Sediment control devices (SCDs) are critical to reducing the contamination of waterways from adjacent construction sites. Perimeter sediment controls retard the flow of surface runoff water originating on site and subsequently reduce solid, nutrient, and metal concentrations suspended in the flowing water. Silt fence is a commonly used SCD comprised of geotextile filter fabric, steel or wood support posts, and wire mesh reinforcement. The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) uses an extensive amount of silt fence every year, and because of high degradation of geotextile in the field, the silt fence installations are rarely recycled. This research measures the performance of five SCDs (two types of silt fence, mulch berm, compost sock, and straw bales) at suspended solid, turbidity, nutrient, and metal reduction. A life cycle analysis (LCA) is performed to identify environmental impacts associated with material production, assembly, installation, use on site, and disposal. An impact analysis is performed according to for each SCD. Results of the impact analysis are compared to determine the SCD with lowest overall environmental impact. Results of the SCD performance study show that silt fence installations performed the best at reducing suspended solids and turbidity, mulch was best at reducing nutrients, and compost was the best at reducing metal concentrations. The life cycle impact analysis indicates that a mulch berm is the SCD with the lowest overall environmental impact. The impact analysis included global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, and aquatic toxicity.

Des approches parcimonieuses sont aujourd'hui développées pour la modélisation de la qualité des rejets urbains par temps de pluie, e adéquation avec la quantité de données disponibles. De plus, l'analyse des incertitudes apparaît comme un outil incontournable pour le test des modèles. Parallèlement, le développement des techniques de mesure en continu en réseau, spectrométrie et turbidité, permet l'obtention de données continues de flux de matières en suspension et de demande chimique en oxygène en grand nombre, apportant une information riche. Ce travail constitue une des premières études en hydrologie urbaine basée sur l'exploitation d'une grande base de données acquises par la mesure de la turbidité. Des mesures sur la période 2004-2008 ont été exploitées sur deux sites. Après traitement et validation, 263 et 239 événements pluvieux ont été retenus. L'analyse des données a permis la formulation d'hypothèses sur la génération des flux pour la proposition de modèles adaptés. Le test de l'approche multi-régression a confirmé la nécessité de construire des modèles locaux, basés sur une analyse approfondie des données. Les meilleurs modèles obtenus sont ceux pour la masse événementielle qui parviennent à reproduire en tendance la variabilité des observations. La méthode bayésienne a été utilisée pour le test d'un modèle d'Accumulation-Erosion-Transfert simple à l'échelle du bassin versant. Les premiers résultats mettent e défaut la structure du modèle testé. Cependant ces premiers tests ont démontré l'efficacité de la procédure d'analyse bayésienne, dont l'application du principe d'apprentissage permet d'améliorer de manière significative les structures des modèles. / More and more urban water managers are tackling the issue of water quality modelling. Current research works focus on parsimonious modelling approaches that match the amount of data available for calibration. Moreover uncertainties analysis now appears as an integrated step and a powerful tool in models testing. In parallel, development of in sewer continuous measurements based on spectrometry and turbidimetry techniques, provides large data base of continuous total suspended solids and chemical oxygen demand concentrations, providing much information on fluxes dynamics. This research work is one of the first studies in urban hydrology based on a large turbidity data base. Data from two sites have been treated and validated, with measurements over the period 2004-2008. 263 and 239 stormwater events were selected for the modelling work for the two sites. Data analysis provided insights for making assumptions on the pollutant fluxes generation and proposing adapted models. Test of multi-regression approach that it is necessary to build local approaches based on detailed data analysis. Best models were obtained for event mass, data variability could be reproduced in trend. Formal Bayesian approach was used for testing a simple global Accumulation-Erosion-Transfer model for Chassieu. First results evidenced the difficulties of the model to reproduce the dynamics variability. This may be due to the simple structure. However these first tests have demonstrated the efficiency of the Bayesian analysis procedure. ln particular, the application of the learning principle showed that model structure can be significantly and efficiently improved.

Transcription initiation is an important step in the process of gene regulation in prokaryotes. Promoters are stretches of DNA sequence that are present in the upstream region of transcription start sites (TSSs), where RNA polymerase and other transcription factors bind to initiate transcription. Recent advancement in sequencing technologies has resulted in huge amount of raw data in the form of whole genome sequences. This sequence data has to be annotated, in order to identify coding, non-coding and regulatory regions. Computational tools are useful for a quick and fairly reliable annotation of many genome sequences. Promoter prediction is an important step in genome annotation process which is needed, not only for the validation of predicted genes, but also for the identification of novel genes, especially those coding for non-coding RNA, which are missed by gene prediction programs. DNA sequence dependent structural properties such as DNA duplex stability, bendability and intrinsic curvature have been found to be associated with promoter regions in all domains of life. The work presented in this thesis focuses on the analysis of these structural features in the promoter regions of published prokaryotic transcriptome data. Furthermore, promoters were predicted using these structural features and their role in gene expression were studied. The organization of thesis is as follows. An overview of transcription machinery of prokaryotes, promoter architecture, available promoter prediction programs and sequence dependent structural features is presented in chapter 1. Chapter 2 describes the datasets and methods used in entire study. Structural features of promoters associated with primary and operon TSSs of H.pylori26695 genes and their orthologs (chapter 3) Promoter regions in genomic sequences from all domains of life show similar trends in their structural properties such as stability, bendability, curvature. This chapter dis-cuss the DNA duplex stability and bendability of various classes of promoter regions (based on the identification of different classes of transcription start sites, viz. primary, secondary, internal, operon TSSs etc, in transcriptome study) of Helicobacter pylori 26695 strain. It is found that the primary TSS and operon associated TSS promoters show significantly strong structural features in their promoter regions. DNA free energy based promoter prediction tool PromPredict has been used to annotate promoters of different classes and very high recall values (80%) are obtained for primary TSS. Orthologous genes from 10 different strains of H. pylori show conservation of structural properties in promoter regions as well as coding regions. PromPredict annotates promoters of orthologous genes with very high recall and precision values. DNA duplex stability of promoter region is conserved in the orthologous genes in 10 different strains of Helicobacter pylori genome. Sequence dependent structural features of promoters in prokaryotic transcriptome (chapter 4) Next-generation sequencing studies have revealed that a wide range of transcripts such as primary, internal, antisense and non-coding RNA, are present in the prokaryotic transcriptome and a large fraction of them are functionally involved in various regulatory activities. Identification of promoters associated with different transcripts is important for characterization of transcriptome. The current chapter discusses DNA sequence dependent structural properties like stability, bendability and curvature in the promoter region of six different prokaryotic transcriptomes (Helicobacter pylori, Anabaena, Synechocystis, Escherichia coli, Salmonella and Klebsiella). Using these structural features, promoters associated with different category of transcripts were predicted, which constitute an integral part of the transcriptome. Promoter annotation using structural features is fairly accurate and reliable as compared to motif-based approach since different category of transcripts show poor sequence conservation in the promoter region. Most importantly, it is universal in nature unlike sequence-based approach that is generally organism specific. Role of sequence dependent structural properties in gene expression in prokaryotes (chapter 5) DNA duplex stability, bendability and intrinsic curvature play crucial roles in the process of transcription initiation. Hence, in order to understand the relationship be-tween these structural features and gene expression, the relative differences in stability, bendability and curvature in the promoter regions of high and low expressed genes were studied. It is found that these features are relatively accentuated in the promoter regions associated with high gene expression as compared to low gene expression. Promoter regions associated with high gene expression are annotated more reliably using DNA structural features, compared to those for low gene expression. Sequence dependent structural properties in the promoter region of essential and non-essential genes of the prokaryotes (chapter 6) Essential genes are the minimal possible set of genes required for the survival of organism. These sets of genes can be identified by experiments such as single gene deletion and transposon mediated inactivation. Here, the analysis of DNA duplex stability and bendability in the promoter regions of essential and nonessential genes of prokaryotes is reported. It is found that the average free energy and bendability pro-files are distinct in the promoters regions of essential and nonessential genes. Whole genome promoter predictions using in-house program, PromPredict, for essential and nonessential genes has also been carried out. Chapter 7 present the summary and conclusion of the entire thesis work followed by future perspectives in the field. Optimization of PromPredict algorithm and updating PromBase with newly sequenced genomes (Appendix A) PromPredict is an in-house program, which is based on the relative stability of the DNA in flanking regions. It was found to perform well in predicting promoters across all organisms. In previous studies, it was observed that for organisms having low genomic GC content (<35%), promoter prediction resulted in low precision values, which indicates higher false positive rate. Threshold values of PromPredict algorithm were re-vised in order to optimize the algorithm with low false positive rate. PromBase is a comparative genomics database of microbial genomes. It stores different genomic and structural properties of the microbial genomes. It also displays the predictions obtained from PromPredict in a graphical as well as tabular format. Newly sequenced genomes were downloaded from NCBI and processed using in-house programs and added to the mysql database (back end of the PromBase). Stability profiles for predictions were also added for the RNA coding genes, earlier only profiles for protein coding genes were displayed. Comparative genomics of asymmetric gene orientation in prokaryotes (Appendix B) Transcription proceeds in 5’ to 3’ direction on the template strand, hence it provides directionality. Prokaryotic genomes show asymmetry in gene orientation on leading and lagging strands. The different phyla of prokaryotes were analyzed in terms of asymmetry in gene orientation. It is found that organisms belonging to a particular phyla known as “Firmicutes”, show high asymmetry in gene orientation, which are known to have different DNA polymerase systems for replication.

No description available.

<div>Agricultural headwater streams in the Midwestern United States are subject to contaminants from fields, increased sedimentation, and degradation of natural habitat. Previous research has shown that physical instream habitat degradation better explained variation in fish community structure than water chemistry. However, these studies did not include total suspended solids (TSS), which are considered a major freshwater contaminant. The objective of this study is to determine whether total suspended solids better explains fish community structure than other variables in agricultural headwater streams. Mixed linear effects modeling was used to determine the set of independent variables that best predicts each of the fish response variables of species richness, Shannon diversity index, fish density, and index of biotic integrity. Standardized coefficients were used to determine which independent variable in each of the models had the largest influence on fish response metrics. The set of independent variables that best explained species richness were mean total suspended solids, imidacloprid, discharge, and substrate richness. Shannon diversity index was explained best by the combination of maximum total suspended solids, mean total suspended solids, atrazine, total nitrogen, and discharge. Fish density was explained best by the percentage of silt and clay, dissolved oxygen, the percentage of canopy cover, cover type richness, and discharge. IBI was explained best by the combination of the percentage of silt and clay, total phosphorus, mean total suspended solids, and dissolved oxygen. Total suspended solids was the most influential independent variable for fish species richness and Shannon diversity, however the percentage of silt and clay in benthic sediments was the most influential independent variable for fish density and IBI. Results also indicate discharge and total phosphorus as being influential to fish community metrics. The results from this study suggest that models containing a combination of different types of independent variables best explain fish community structure. This study supports the use of conservation and restoration practices that reduce total suspended solids and the amount of silt and clay present in bed sediments to increase fish community integrity of agricultural headwater streams of the Midwestern United States.</div>

<p>This essay is treating how, by signing to little children, can help them i their speach language development. I have intervjued the staff in a preeschool, where they are working with signs in the purpose to help little children, in some case, so small that they not yet have a language, to communicate with others. My hope is to show that it´s possible to minimize small childrens tantrums with this method. And that these children who has learned signs, does not choose signing over spoken language.</p>

This essay is treating how, by signing to little children, can help them i their speach language development. I have intervjued the staff in a preeschool, where they are working with signs in the purpose to help little children, in some case, so small that they not yet have a language, to communicate with others. My hope is to show that it´s possible to minimize small childrens tantrums with this method. And that these children who has learned signs, does not choose signing over spoken language.

No description available.

MTsim (Mobile Traffic Simulator) is an Ericsson AB internal software application that is part of 2Gsim. It is used to simulate elements of a GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) network for feature testing and automated testing. It is written in the programming language TSS Language, also known as SMILE which is a proprietary Ericsson programming language. SMILE is based on the principles of state matrix programming which in essence means that each program is on its own a finite state machine. The language is old and was originally intended as a macro language for smaller test programs, not for applications the size of MTsim. It is of interest to evaluate the feasibility of performing an automatic conversion of applications written in SMILE, with special interest in converting MTsim, to a Java framework since Java has many advantages compared to SMILE. Java, as a language, is well suited for larger applications, there are numerous well supported tools and there is a much wider spread competence than there is for SMILE. It is clear that in order to do a full conversion of a SMILE program to a Java framework two applications must be implemented. First a Java framework, which acts as a run time environment, must be designed which can host the translated programs. The other part is an actual translator which takes a SMILE program as input and ouputs a translated Java program. A more sophisticated framework is preferred since it makes the actual translated programs more light weight and easy to read which means higher degree of maintainability. There are different ways to implement state machines in Java but the most flexible and versatile is to implement it as a black-box framework in an object oriented way where the framework has sophisticated mechanisms for message and event handling which is central to any state machine framework. The translation for SMILE can easily be done by using a AST (abstract syntax tree) representation, which is a full representation of the SMILE program in tree-form. The AST is obtained from an intermediate state of the SMILE program compiler.

Total soluble solids (TSS) is a reliable indicator of melon eating quality, with a minimum standard of 10% recommended. The state of Australian melon production with respect to this quality criterion was considered within seasons, between growing districts and over seasons. It was concluded that improvement in agronomic practice and varietal selection is required to produce sweeter melons. The scientific literature addressing melon physiology and agronomy was summarised, as a background to the work that is required to improve melon production practices in Australia. The effect of source sink manipulation was assessed for commercially grown and glasshouse grown melon plants. The timing of fruit thinning, pollination scheduling, the application of a growth inhibitor and source biomass removal were assessed in relation to fruit growth and sugar accumulation. Results are interpreted against a model in which fruit rapidly increase in weight until about two weeks before harvest, with sugar accumulation continuing as fruit growth ceases. Thus treatment response is very dependant on timing of application. For example, fruit thinning at 25 days before harvest resulted in further fruit set and increased fruit weight but did not impact on fruit TSS (at 9.8%, control 9.3%), while thinning at 5 days before harvest resulted in a significant (Pless than 0.05) increase in fruit TSS (to 10.8%, control 9.3%) and no increase in fruit weight or number. A cost/ benefit analysis is presented, allowing an estimation of the increase in sale price required to sustain the implementation of fruit thinning. The effect of irrigation scheduling was also considered with respect to increasing melon yield and quality. To date, recommended practice has been to cause an irrigation deficit close to fruit harvest, with the intent of 'drying out' or 'stressing' the plant, to 'bring on' maturity and increase sugar accumulation. Irrigation trials showed that keeping plants stress-free close to harvest and during harvest, facilitated the production of sweeter fruit. The maintenance of a TSS grade standard using either batch based (destructive) sampling or (non-invasive) grading of individual fruit is discussed. On-line grading of individual fruit is possible using near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), but the applicability of the technique to melons has received little published attention. Tissue sampling strategy was optimised, in relation to the optical geometry used (in commercial operation in Australia), both in terms of the diameter and depth of sampled tissue. NIR calibration model performance was superior when based on the TSS of outer, rather than inner mesocarp tissue. However the linear relationship between outer and middle tissue TSS was strong (r2 = 0.8) in immature fruit, though less related in maturing fruit (r2 = 0.5). The effect of fruit storage (maturation/senescence) on calibration model performance was assessed. There was a negligible effect of fruit cold storage on calibration performance. Currently, the agronomist lacks a cost-effective tool to rapidly assess fruit TSS in the field. Design parameters for such a tool were established, and several optical front ends compared for rapid, though invasive, analysis. Further, for visualisation of the spatial distribution of tissue TSS within a melon fruit, a two-dimensional, or hyper-spectral NIR imaging system based on a low cost 8-bit charge coupled device (CCD) camera and filter arrangement, was designed and characterised.