Chez la vigne, les gibbérellines activent le débourrement des bourgeons latents et stimulent la formation de vrilles mais contrairement à Arabidopsis, celles-ci semblent inhiber la formation d'inflorescences. Par ailleurs, comme la floraison de la vigne n'est pas sensible à la photopériode,on peut se demander si l'orthologue du gène FT (VvFT) a tout de même un rôle intégrateur au niveau des feuilles et s'il active l'expression de l'orthologue du gène LFY (VFL). Dans la première partie de ma thèse, nous avons conduit une analyse moléculaire avec un matériel original : un porte-greffe 41 B transformé avec une construction contenant le gène VvFT sous contrôle du promoteur 35S et une plante dérivée du Pinot Meunier, portant une mutation dans le gène GA-INSENSITIVE (GAl). Notre étude montre que les gibbérellines ou/et le gène VvFT activent les gènes de floraison comme VFL. mais avec des réponses très différentes entre la vrille, les bourgeons latents et les inflorescences.Dans la seconde partie de ma thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés au silencing. Nous avons produit des plantes transgéniques de la lignée PN40024 contenant soit le gène codant la GFP, soit une construction tige-boucle GF-FG, soit les deux. Les cals embryogènes transgéniques GFP et GFP+GF-FG sont fluorescents. Par contre, nous avons observé une disparition totale de la fluorescence chez ces PN40024 GFP+GF-FG, dès l'apparition des premières feuilles et chez la plante entière. L'étude moléculaire a mis en évidence des petits ARNs de 21 nt et 24nt produits à partir de la construction tige-boucle GF-FG. Des petits ARNs secondaires de 21 nt produit à partir de la séquence de la GFP ont été également été détectés. / In grapevine, gibberellins activate latent bud and stimulate the formation of tendrils but in contrast to Arabidopsis, they appear to inhibit the formation of inflorescences. Moreover, as the flowering of the grapevine is not sensitive ta photoperiod, one might wonder whether the ortholog of the FTgene (VvFT) still has an integrative raie in leaves and it activates the expression of the ortholog ofLFY gene (VFL). ln the first part of my thesis, we conducted a molecular analysis with original material: a rootstock 41 B transformed with a construct containing the VvFT gene under the control of the 35S promoter and a derivative of the plant Pinot Meunier, carrying a mutation in the GA-INSENSITIVE gene (GAl). Our study shows that gibberellins and 1 or the gene VvFT activate genes in flowering as a VFL, but with very different responses between the tendril, latent buds and inflorescences.ln the second part of my thesis, we are interested in silencing. We produced transgenic plants of the PN40024 which line containing either the gene encoding GFP, a stem-loop structure GF-FG, orbath. The embryogenic callus transgenic GFP and GFP + GF-FG fluoresce. We observed acomplete disappearance of fluorescence in PN40024 GFP + GF-FG, from the first leaves appear and in the whole plant Molecular analysis revealed small RNAs of 21 nt and 24nt produced from the stem-loop structure GF-FG. Small secondary 21 nt RNAs produced from the sequence of the GFP were also detected.

Sports injury prevention has been the focus of a number of recent public health initiatives due to the acknowledgement that sports injuries are a significant public health problem in Australia Whilst Australian football is one of the most popular participation sports in the country, only very limited data is available about football injuries The majority of sports injury data available for this sport is from hospital emergency departments and elite-level injury surveillance Overall there is a paucity of data from treatment settings other than hospitals In particular, there is a lack of information about the injuries sustained by community-level, junior and recreational Australian football participants. One good potential source of football injury data is sports medicine clinics. Analysis of injury presentations to sports medicine clinics was undertaken to provide a detailed description of the epidemiology of Australian football injuries that present to this treatment setting and to determine the implications for injury prevention in this sport. In addition, the data from sports medicine clinics was compared with existing sources of Australian football injury data to determine how representative sports medicine clinic data is of other football injury data sources and to provide recommendations for future injury surveillance n Australian football. The results contained in this thesis show that Australian football is the sport most associated with injury presentation at sports medicine clinics. The majority of injured Australian football players presenting to sports medicine clinics are community-level or junior participants which suggests that sports medicine clinics are a good source of information on the injuries sustained by sub-elite football participants. Competition is the most common context in which Australian football players presenting to sports medicine clinics are injured. The major causes of injuries to Australian football players are being struck by another player, collisions and overuse. Injuries to Australian football players predominantly involve the lower limb. Adult players, players who stopped participating immediately after noticing their injury and players with overuse injuries are the most likely to sustain a more severe injury (i.e. more than four weeks before a full return to football participation and a moderate/significant amount of treatment expected). The least experienced players (five or less years of participation) are more likely to require a significant amount of treatment than the more experienced players. The prevention of lower limb injuries, injuries caused by body contact and injuries caused by overuse should be a priority for injury prevention research in Australian football due to the predominance of these injury types in the pattern of Australian football injuries Additionally, adult players, as a group, should be a focus of injury prevention activities in Australian football due to the association between age and injury severity. Overall, the pattern of Australian football injuries presenting to sports medicine clinics appears to be different than reported by club-based and hospital emergency department injury surveillance activities. However, detailed comparison of sports medicine clinic Australian football data with other sources of Australian football injury data is difficult due to the variable methods of collecting and reporting injury information used by hospital emergency department and club-based injury surveillance activities. The development of a standardised method for collecting and reporting injury data in Australian football is strongly recommended to overcome the existing limitations of data collection in this sport. In summary, sports medicine clinics provide a rich source of Australian football injury data, especially from the community and junior levels of participation. The inclusion of sports medicine clinic data provides a broader epidemiological picture of Australian football injuries. This broader understanding of the pattern of Australian football injuries provides a better basis for the development of injury prevention measures in this sport.

The need for a method to create a collaborative machine learning model which can utilize data from different clients, each with privacy constraints, has recently emerged. This is due to privacy restrictions, such as General Data Protection Regulation, together with the fact that machine learning models in general needs large size data to perform well. Google introduced federated learning in 2016 with the aim to address this problem. Federated learning can further be divided into horizontal and vertical federated learning, depending on how the data is structured at the different clients. Vertical federated learning is applicable when many different features is obtained on distributed computation nodes, where they can not be shared in between. The aim of this thesis is to identify the current state of the art methods in vertical federated learning, implement the most interesting ones and compare the results in order to draw conclusions of the benefits and drawbacks of the different methods. From the results of the experiments, a method called FedBCD shows very promising results where it achieves massive improvements in the number of communication rounds needed for convergence, at the cost of more computations at the clients. A comparison between synchronous and asynchronous approaches shows slightly better results for the synchronous approach in scenarios with no delay. Delay refers to slower performance in one of the workers, either due to lower computational resources or due to communication issues. In scenarios where an artificial delay is implemented, the asynchronous approach shows superior results due to its ability to continue training in the case of delays in one or several of the clients.

Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Alagoas / Estudos recentes sugerem que a técnica de estimulação elétrica transcraniana (ETCC) pode reduzir a vontade subjetiva de comer e desejo pelo alimento, mostrando-se uma possível ferramenta terapêutica no combate à obesidade. O exercício físico suscita efeitos positivos sobre a manutenção e perda do peso corporal total, balanço energético, regulação do apetite e neuroplasticidade, oxigenação e vascularização cerebral. Desse modo, o objetivo do presente estudo foi verificar o efeito da ETCC, associada à prática de exercício físico, sobre a variabilidade da freqüência cardíaca (VFC) e sensações subjetivas do apetite em humanos obesos. Participaram do estudo nove indivíduos de ambos os sexos. Os sujeitos foram submetidos a duas etapas de procedimentos experimentais. A primeira consistiu na realização de um teste cardiopulmonar máximo no cicloergômetro com protocolo do tipo rampa, a fim de determinar sua capacidade cardiorrespiratória (VO2MAX; FCMAX; CargaMAX). Na segunda etapa, os sujeitos realizaram duas sessões não consecutivas de testes, em que inicialmente permaneceram sentados por 10min, receberam ETCC anódica ou placebo (2mA por 20min), em ordem randomizada e, logo após, executaram sessões isocalóricas (~200kcal) a 70%VO2MAX. Em seguida, permaneceram em recuperação sentados em repouso por 30 minutos. Em todo o protocolo, escalas visuais analógicas para avaliação das sensações subjetivas de apetite, bem como a VFC, foram registradas. Os resultados mostraram que, para os escores médios das sensações de saciedade na condição de ETCC anódica, houve diminuição significativa entre os momentos 30 PÓS EXERCÍCIO vs. todos os momentos analisados (P<0.05). Houve aumento da sensação de fome, em ambas condições de ETCC, entre os momentos 30 PÓS EXERCÍCIO vs. PÓS EXERCÍCIO. No entanto, houve diminuição do desejo pelo alimento após a ETCC anódica (PRÉ ETCC vs. PÓS ETCC; p=0.04), mas não quando os indivíduos receberam ETCC placebo. Quando se associou a ETCC com o exercício, uma diminuição ainda maior foi evidenciada (PRÉ ETCC vs. PÓS EXERCÍCIO; p=0.05). Quanto à VFC, a variável low frequency (LFLOG) demonstrou, em todos os momentos e condições analisados, semelhança em seu comportamento. Por outro lado, as variáveis high frequency (HFLOG) e balanço simpatovagal (LF/HFLOG), apresentaram aumento e diminuição significativas, respectivamente, entre as condições analisadas (placebo e anódica) após a realização da sessão de exercício. Um maior HF e menor LF/HF foram mantidos até o trigésimo minuto de recuperação. Portanto, pode-se concluir que a aplicação da ETCC anódica associada à prática de exercício físico não foi capaz de modificar as respostas hedônicas de fome e saciedade. Porém, a ETCC foi capaz de diminuir o desejo pelo alimento, o que foi potencializado pela associação com o exercício físico. Por outro lado, a ETCC foi capaz de alterar o comportamento do sistema nervoso autonômico cardíaco, propiciando uma maior modulação da atividade parassimpática e diminuição no balanço simpatovagal durante todo o período de recuperação após exercício aeróbio.

Although disaster risk reduction is still not considered a priority by many countries and organisations, there is significant progress made towards the reduction of disaster risk. The experience of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR, 1990–1999) prompted a major conceptual shift from disaster response to disaster reduction underscoring the crucial role of human action (UNISDR, 2001:03). This circumstance led to the adoption of an International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR) in 1999 by the participants of the IDNDR Programme Forum. The adoption gave emphasis to the importance of a global strategy that encourages and facilitates concerted action to reduce risk and vulnerability to natural and related technological and environmental hazards. This research then focuses on the disaster risk reduction phenomenon and major or international initiatives and forums aimed at improving or raising the disaster risk reduction profile. It also focuses on disaster risk management in the South African context. In recent years, disaster risk reduction has grown in importance on the international agenda. This followed the prevalence of natural hazards such as floods, drought, earthquakes, tsunamis, as well as epidemics, which have had an increasing impact on humans, due to population growth, urbanization, rising poverty and the onset of global environmental changes. Aspects of environmental change include climate change, land degradation and deforestation. Practitioners and researchers widely acknowledge that poor planning, poverty and a range of other underlying factors create conditions of vulnerability that result in insufficient capacity or measures to reduce hazards‘ potentially negative consequences (IISD/UN/ISDR, 2007:01). It is in this light that in 2005 many governments around the world committed themselves to take action to reduce disaster risk, and thereby adopted a guiding document to reduce vulnerabilities to natural hazards, called the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The HFA was adopted in January 2005 at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, in Kobe Hyogo, Japan by 168 States. The aim of the HFA is to assist the efforts of nations and communities to become more resilient to, and cope better, with the hazards that threaten their development gains with the overriding goal of achieving a substantial reduction in global disaster risk. It also emphasizes that disaster risk reduction is a central issue for development policies, in addition to being of interest to various science, humanitarian and environmental fields. To help attain the expected outcome, the HFA identified five specific priorities for action (PFAs) which are: (i) making disaster risk reduction a priority; (ii) improving risk information and early warning; (iii) building a culture of safety and resilience; (iv) reducing the risks in key sectors; and (v) strengthening preparedness for response. The Global Network of Civil Society Organisation for Disaster Risk Reduction (GNDR) which was launched in 2007 in Geneva, is a major international network of civil society organisations working to influence and implement disaster risk reduction policies and practice around the world. The major programme of the global network is to collect perspective for the local level as to how the HFA is progressing. The Views from the Frontline (VFL) is the first independent assessment project undertaken towards the implementation of the HFA at the local level and is led by the Global Network. The aim of this project is to measure the gap between policy formulation at international level with the realities of policy execution at local level and to deepen the communication and coordination between different stakeholders on disaster risk reduction by involving government organisation and communities at the local level. The VFL perspective is that nationally formulated policies are not generating widespread systematic changes in local practices. There is a concern that the current approach is top–down and engages minimally with affected communities and fails to address their needs and capacities (GNDR, 2008:01). The main objective of this research was to provide an overview of progress made in the implementation of the HFA at local level particularly in the Kabokweni Location. The approach adopted in this study is called 'the Views from the Frontline', and explores the extent of the actual progress made toward the implementation and impact of the HFA priorities at local level, namely the Kabokweni community in the Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) situated in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa. / Thesis (M. Development and management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Although disaster risk reduction is still not considered a priority by many countries and organisations, there is significant progress made towards the reduction of disaster risk. The experience of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR, 1990–1999) prompted a major conceptual shift from disaster response to disaster reduction underscoring the crucial role of human action (UNISDR, 2001:03). This circumstance led to the adoption of an International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR) in 1999 by the participants of the IDNDR Programme Forum. The adoption gave emphasis to the importance of a global strategy that encourages and facilitates concerted action to reduce risk and vulnerability to natural and related technological and environmental hazards. This research then focuses on the disaster risk reduction phenomenon and major or international initiatives and forums aimed at improving or raising the disaster risk reduction profile. It also focuses on disaster risk management in the South African context. In recent years, disaster risk reduction has grown in importance on the international agenda. This followed the prevalence of natural hazards such as floods, drought, earthquakes, tsunamis, as well as epidemics, which have had an increasing impact on humans, due to population growth, urbanization, rising poverty and the onset of global environmental changes. Aspects of environmental change include climate change, land degradation and deforestation. Practitioners and researchers widely acknowledge that poor planning, poverty and a range of other underlying factors create conditions of vulnerability that result in insufficient capacity or measures to reduce hazards‘ potentially negative consequences (IISD/UN/ISDR, 2007:01). It is in this light that in 2005 many governments around the world committed themselves to take action to reduce disaster risk, and thereby adopted a guiding document to reduce vulnerabilities to natural hazards, called the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The HFA was adopted in January 2005 at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, in Kobe Hyogo, Japan by 168 States. The aim of the HFA is to assist the efforts of nations and communities to become more resilient to, and cope better, with the hazards that threaten their development gains with the overriding goal of achieving a substantial reduction in global disaster risk. It also emphasizes that disaster risk reduction is a central issue for development policies, in addition to being of interest to various science, humanitarian and environmental fields. To help attain the expected outcome, the HFA identified five specific priorities for action (PFAs) which are: (i) making disaster risk reduction a priority; (ii) improving risk information and early warning; (iii) building a culture of safety and resilience; (iv) reducing the risks in key sectors; and (v) strengthening preparedness for response. The Global Network of Civil Society Organisation for Disaster Risk Reduction (GNDR) which was launched in 2007 in Geneva, is a major international network of civil society organisations working to influence and implement disaster risk reduction policies and practice around the world. The major programme of the global network is to collect perspective for the local level as to how the HFA is progressing. The Views from the Frontline (VFL) is the first independent assessment project undertaken towards the implementation of the HFA at the local level and is led by the Global Network. The aim of this project is to measure the gap between policy formulation at international level with the realities of policy execution at local level and to deepen the communication and coordination between different stakeholders on disaster risk reduction by involving government organisation and communities at the local level. The VFL perspective is that nationally formulated policies are not generating widespread systematic changes in local practices. There is a concern that the current approach is top–down and engages minimally with affected communities and fails to address their needs and capacities (GNDR, 2008:01). The main objective of this research was to provide an overview of progress made in the implementation of the HFA at local level particularly in the Kabokweni Location. The approach adopted in this study is called 'the Views from the Frontline', and explores the extent of the actual progress made toward the implementation and impact of the HFA priorities at local level, namely the Kabokweni community in the Mbombela Local Municipality (MLM) situated in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa. / Thesis (M. Development and management)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.