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Vogt, David. "Learning Continuous Human-Robot Interactions from Human-Human Demonstrations." Doctoral thesis, Technische Universitaet Bergakademie Freiberg Universitaetsbibliothek "Georgius Agricola", 2018. http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:105-qucosa-233262.
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In der vorliegenden Dissertation wurde ein datengetriebenes Verfahren zum maschinellen Lernen von Mensch-Roboter Interaktionen auf Basis von Mensch-Mensch Demonstrationen entwickelt. Während einer Trainingsphase werden Bewegungen zweier Interakteure mittels Motion Capture erfasst und in einem Zwei-Personen Interaktionsmodell gelernt. Zur Laufzeit wird das Modell sowohl zur Erkennung von Bewegungen des menschlichen Interaktionspartners als auch zur Generierung angepasster Roboterbewegungen eingesetzt. Die Leistungsfähigkeit des Ansatzes wird in drei komplexen Anwendungen evaluiert, die jeweils kontinuierliche Bewegungskoordination zwischen Mensch und Roboter erfordern. Das Ergebnis der Dissertation ist ein Lernverfahren, das intuitive, zielgerichtete und sichere Kollaboration mit Robotern ermöglicht.
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Frazer, Ann L. (Ann Louise) 1977. "Modeling human-spacesuit interactions." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/82761.
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Smith, Mary Kathryn. "Human coronavirus-receptor interactions /." Connect to full text via ProQuest. Limited to UCD Anschutz Medical Campus, 2008.
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Thesis (Ph.D. in Microbiology) -- University of Colorado Denver, 2008.Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-210). Free to UCD Anschutz Medical Campus. Online version available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations;
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Kan, Viirj. "Molecular design interactions : material synthesis for human interaction with fluids." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112539.
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Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 89-99).
[Color illustrations] Figure 0-1. Key elements within a Molecular Design Interactions interaction loop. Be it information embodied within rain, the oceans, a dinner plate, or human tears; the flow of information through fluids provides insights into the biological and chemical states of systems. Yet a large portion of our everyday experience with these systems remain inaccessible to users, designers and engineers whom operate outside the context of chemical disciplines. This thesis introduces a design framework coined Molecular Design Interactions, along with a toolbox of material based input-output devices termed Organic Primitives to facilitate the design of interactions with organic, fluid-based systems. The design methodology utilizes organic compounds from food for the development of color, odor and shape changing information displays. Activated by units of fluid information called droplets, this thesis focuses on pH signals in fluid as a model to demonstrate how molecular scale phenomena can be brought from materials into applications for interaction with a range of organic systems. A design language and vocabulary, drawing from signaling theory and molecular associations, offer designers a method with which to translate sensor-display output into meaningful experience designs for human perception. The design space showcases techniques for how the Organic Primitives can transcend beyond mere input-output devices to achieve higher order complexity. Passive and computational methods are presented to enable designers to control material interface output behaviors. An evaluation of the individual output properties of the sensors-actuators is presented to assess the rate, range, and reversibility of the changes as a function of pH 2-10. Strategies for how the materiality of objects can be augmented using Organic Primitives are investigated through several applications under four contexts: environmental, on-body, food, and interspecies. Molecular Design Interactions offers a process and toolbox to create interfaces between humans and molecules in fluids, across scales, from the nano to the macro systems.
by Viirj Kan.
S.M.
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Midgley, Caroline Ann. "Binocular interactions in human vision." Thesis, Durham University, 1998. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4839/.
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Early visual processing is subject to binocular interactions because cells in striate cortex show binocular responses and ocular dominance (Hubel & Weisel, 1968). The work presented in this thesis suggests that these physiological interactions can be revealed in psychophysical experiments using normal human observers. In the region corresponding to the blind spot, where binocular interactions differ from areas of the visual field which are represented by two eyes, monocular contrast sensitivity is increased. This finding can be partially explained by an absence of normal binocular interactions in this location (Chapter 2). A hemianopic patient was studied in an attempt to discover whether the effect in normal observers was mediated by either a mechanism in striate cortex or via a subcortical pathway. However, the results were unable to distinguish between these two explanations (Chapter 3).In a visual search task, no difference in reaction time was observed for targets presented to the region corresponding to the blind spot compared with targets presented to adjacent binocularly represented areas of the visual field. Since performance was unaffected by the monocularity of the region corresponding to the blind, pop-out for orientation may be mediated beyond striate cortex where cells are binocularly balanced (Chapter 5). Further support for this contention was provided by studies of orientation pop-out in central vision which found that dichoptic presentation of stimuli did not affect the degree of pop-out obtained and that in general, visual search for a target based solely on eye of origin is impossible (Chapter 6). However, a task that measured orientation difference sensitivity more directly than the search experiments, found that thresholds were higher for dichoptically presented stimuli. This suggests the involvement of neurons that receive a weighted input from each eye. A model of orientation difference coding can account for the results by assuming that the range of inhibition across which orientation differences are coded is narrower for dichoptic stimuli leading to a greater resolvable orientation difference (Chapter 7).
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Dowen, Sally Elizabeth. "Human papillomavirus / host genetic interactions." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.620590.
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Erlandsson, Fredrik. "Human Interactions on Online Social Media : Collecting and Analyzing Social Interaction Networks." Doctoral thesis, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Institutionen för datalogi och datorsystemteknik, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-15503.
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Online social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, provides users with services that enable them to interact both globally and instantly. The nature of social media interactions follows a constantly growing pattern that requires selection mechanisms to find and analyze interesting data. These interactions on social media can then be modeled into interaction networks, which enable network-based and graph-based methods to model and understand users’ behaviors on social media. These methods could also benefit the field of complex networks in terms of finding initial seeds in the information cascade model. This thesis aims to investigate how to efficiently collect user-generated content and interactions from online social media sites. A novel method for data collection that is using an exploratory research, which includes prototyping, is presented, as part of the research results in this thesis. Analysis of social data requires data that covers all the interactions in a given domain, which has shown to be difficult to handle in previous work. An additional contribution from the research conducted is that a novel method of crawling that extracts all social interactions from Facebook is presented. Over the period of the last few years, we have collected 280 million posts from public pages on Facebook using this crawling method. The collected posts include 35 billion likes and 5 billion comments from 700 million users. The data collection is the largest research dataset of social interactions on Facebook, enabling further and more accurate research in the area of social network analysis. With the extracted data, it is possible to illustrate interactions between different users that do not necessarily have to be connected. Methods using the same data to identify and cluster different opinions in online communities have also been developed and evaluated. Furthermore, a proposed method is used and validated for finding appropriate seeds for information cascade analyses, and identification of influential users. Based upon the conducted research, it appears that the data mining approach, association rule learning, can be used successfully in identifying influential users with high accuracy. In addition, the same method can also be used for identifying seeds in an information cascade setting, with no significant difference than other network-based methods. Finally, privacy-related consequences of posting online is an important area for users to consider. Therefore, mitigating privacy risks contributes to a secure environment and methods to protect user privacy are presented.
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Siou, GeÌrard Paul Serge. "Streptococcus pyogenes interactions with human tonsils." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2005. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.424082.
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Kamatsos, Paraskevas. "Smart Homes : Human interactions and IoT." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för informatik (IK), 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-53427.
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This thesis studies the phenomenon of human-system interaction in smart homes as a practice of Internet of Things. The research was conducted through interviews, workshops and observations and followed an interpretive research paradigm of phenomenologically-situated paradigm of HCI and a qualitative research approach. The theories of Phenomenology and Postphenomenology were used to interpret the experiences, beliefs and views of the participants. The empirical findings were processed and a thematic analysis was followed in order to identify the main themes that emerged out of the interviews, workshops and observations. The discussion of the findings showed that the research questions were answered to the grade that the participants of the research design, use and interact with smart homes in a multiple and complex way.
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Stewart, Joanna. "Nuclear mitochondrial interactions in human disease." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.492095.
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The maintenance of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is dependent on DNA polymerase gamma (poly). The catalytic subunit encoded by the POLG1 gene has become the target for much investigation. Reported mutations result in disrupted mtDNA maintenance leading to a quantitative (depletion) or qualitative (point mutation or deletion) defects of mtDNA. This secondary genetic defect results in disruption of the respiratory chain and impaired oxidative phosphorylation.
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Stead, Mark Alexander. "POZ domain interactions in Human cancer." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2009. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.511152.
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Thurrell, Adrian Edward Ivan. "Multisensory interactions concerning human self-motion." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.411397.
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Simon, Tomas. "Measuring Human Motion in Social Interactions." Research Showcase @ CMU, 2017. http://repository.cmu.edu/dissertations/927.
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This thesis develops methods for social signal reconstruction—in particular, we measure human motion during social interactions. Compared to other work in this space, we aim to measure the entire body, from the overall body pose to subtle hand gestures and facial expressions. The key to achieving this without placing markers, instrumentation, or other restrictions on participants is the Panoptic Studio, a massively multi-view capture system which allows us to obtain 3D reconstructions of room-sized scenes. To measure the position of joints and other landmarks on the human body, we combine the output of 2D keypoint detectors across multiple views and triangulate them in 3D. We develop a semi-supervised training procedure, multi-view bootstrapping, which uses 3D triangulation to generate training data for keypoint detectors. We use this technique to train fine-grained 2D keypoint detectors for landmarks on the hands and face, allowing us to measure these two important sources of social signals. To model human motion data, we present the Kronecker Markov Random Field (KMRF) model for keypoint representations of the face and body. We show that most of the covariance in natural body motions corresponds to a specific set of spatiotemporal dependencies which result in a Kronecker or matrix normal distribution over spatiotemporal data, and we derive associated inference procedures that do not require training sequences. This statistical model can be used to infer complete sequences from partial observations and unifies linear shape and trajectory models of prior art into a probabilistic shape-trajectory distribution that has the individual models as its marginals. Finally, we demonstrate full-body motion reconstructions by using the KMRF model to combine the various measurements obtained from the Panoptic Studio. We capture a dataset of groups of people engaged in social games and fit mesh models of the body, face, and hands—a representation that encodes many of the social signals that characterize an interaction and can be used for analysis, modeling, and animation.
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Heilbronn, Leonie Kaye. "Gene/environment interactions in human obesity." Title page, table of contents and summary only, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phh466.pdf.
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Nam, Hye In. "Multiplexed fragmentation and protein interaction reporter technology application to human cells." Pullman, Wash. : Washington State University, 2009. http://www.dissertations.wsu.edu/Thesis/Summer2009/h_nam_071509.pdf.
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Thesis (M.S. in Chemistry)--Washington State University, August 2009.Title from PDF title page (viewed on Sept. 21, 2009). "Department of Chemistry." Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-66).
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Dubois, Sara Dawn. "Understanding humane expectations : public and expert attitudes towards human-wildlife interactions." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/45917.
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The field of wildlife management has been on a collision course with societal values regarding animal use for some time. Although wildlife populations are still managed largely under the “North American model of wildlife conservation” to accommodate consumptive uses, many people, often with different concerns, want to be heard in decisions about wildlife. These human dimensions present a challenge to wildlife management, a field in which policy has been generally driven by experts. This research used several public engagement methods to understand broader attitudes towards wildlife management and how to incorporate them into policy. Participants with varying levels of wildlife experience in British Columbia, Canada, were asked in online and telephone surveys for their attitudes towards, and acceptance of, specific wildlife activities and management practices. Findings indicate a gap between public and expert opinions on invasive (e.g., relocation) and lethal management practices (e.g., problem bears, predator control, protection of endangered species). Problems also emerged with the public view of wildlife feeding. This led to a review of its motivations, types and consequences, and an evaluative framework was proposed to assess when feeding is acceptable. When asked to rate the harm to wildlife caused in various ways (hunting, vehicle collisions, pollution, etc.), experts and the public largely agreed on the relative importance of harms, indicating considerable potential for finding common ground between conservation-oriented and welfare-oriented citizens. However, some current management practices, especially those involving killing animals, lacked broad public support and may be improved upon with public participation in policy development, especially with women, urban residents, those with low wildlife engagement and animal-protectionist values. This could take the form of public polling or increased representation on decision-making committees. Societal expectations for managing human-wildlife interactions in BC documented by this research include ensuring that actions have an appropriate conservation purpose, are controllable, use humane methods, and appear fair to both people and wildlife. Including a broader public, educating both experts and the public on issues of humaneness, and strengthening wildlife and animal protection laws and enforcement, may serve to better align wildlife policy with societal values.
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Chen, Iris Ye Wu. "The interactions between human antithrombin and heparin." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape10/PQDD_0005/NQ42731.pdf.
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Bridge, Cook Philippa. "Protein interactions involved in human gene regulation." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape2/PQDD_0016/NQ53799.pdf.
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Derhami, Kalal. "Interactions of human skin fibroblasts with titanium." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 2000. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape3/PQDD_0011/NQ59577.pdf.
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Small, Dana. "Sensory and affective interactions in human gustation." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=37842.
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The aim of this thesis is to examine where in the human brain sensory and affective processing of taste takes place. Two patient studies and two neuroimaging studies were performed. Taste intensity perception was evaluated in patients with unilateral resection from the AMTL, and in healthy control subjects. The results from two independent experiments indicate that AMTL removal leads to taste intensity perception changes, including decreases in the accuracy of judging actual concentrations of taste solutions, and increases in the perceived intensities of an aversive bitter taste. It is possible that the latter result reflects a potentiation of the aversiveness of bitter as opposed to, or in addition to a change in intensity perception of taste intensity alone.To define more precisely the regions of the insula/operculum and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) {putative primary and secondary gustatory regions (PGA and SGA, respectively)} that are activated by gustatory stimulation in humans, standardized Talairach coordinates from all available studies were compiled and plotted onto an averaged MRI image. As in non-human primates, it is likely that the human PGA is represented in several regions within the middle to anterior insula, and in frontal and parietal opercula. The precise location of the human SGA is less clear, but is likely within the caudal region of the OFC.
In the final study, successive [15O]H2O PET scans were performed on volunteers as they ate chocolate to beyond satiety. Thus, the sensory stimulus was held constant while its reward value was manipulated by feeding. As predicted, modulation was observed in both the primary and secondary gustatory regions, corresponding to the regions identified in the previous study. This finding suggests overlapping representation of sensory and affective processing of taste in humans. Additionally, different groups of structures were selectively recruited depending on whether subjects were eating chocolate when they were highly motivated to eat or highly motivated not to eat.
In summary, the work contained within this thesis suggests that sensory and affective processing of taste occurs in the AMTL, PGA, and SGA. Such an interaction marks a departure from classical theories of sensory organization based upon studies performed largely in the visual modality.
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Lisgo, Steven Newton. "Human TBX22 expression and protein-DNA interactions." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/1066.
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Cleft palate is one of the most common birth abnormalities. Figures published in 2006 by the American Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, report the incidence of those born in the United States with a cleft palate without the presence of a cleft lip (CPI) to be 6.39 for every 10000 in the three years between 1999 to 2001 and for cleft lip in association with a cleft palate (CLP) to be even greater - 10.48 per 10000 live births. In 2001, Braybrook and colleagues reported that mutations in the TBX22 gene cause X-linked cleft palate (CPX), a disease characterised by a cleft of the secondary palate and is often seen in association with ankyloglossia (tongue-tie) (Braybrook et al. 2001). A cleft of the secondary palate arises as a consequence of disturbance to correct development during palatogenesis: an anomaly in palatal shelf growth; delayed or failed shelf elevation; defective shelf fusion or a failure of medial edge epithelium cell death. This thesis reveals that the expression of TBX22 during these key developmental events in human embryos is consistent with the phenotype seen in CPX. To enable an investigation for TBX22 target genes, a DNA binding sequence is determined for the TBX22 protein. This sequence is used to generate a generic TBX22 DNA binding site, the presence of which is screened for in promoter regions, defined as 2kb upstream of transcription start sites. 132 genes were selected as candidate TBX22 targets on the basis that they underlie human disorders that include a cleft palate. The screen shows that 28 of these genes have at least one perfect or near perfect match to the generic TBX22 DNA binding site. Of these, only two both contained a perfect TBX22 generic DNA binding site and mouse mutants also had cleft palates: SUMO1 and MSX1. Interaction between SUMO1 and TBX22 has already been shown (Andreou et al. 2007). This study investigated MSX1 as a downstream target of TBX22 using a luciferase reporter gene construct in vitro. The results showed that in the presence of TBX22, the luciferase signal was reduced and support MSX1 being a downstream target gene of TBX22. These findings further the understanding of the molecular networks regulating craniofacial development. Unravelling these complex interactions is crucial to identifying the mechanisms of oro-facial clefting, important steps towards improved methods of counselling, treatment and prevention of these common birth disorders.
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Kanmert, Daniel. "Structure and Interactions of Human IgG-Fc." Doctoral thesis, Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för fysik, kemi och biologi, 2011. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-65536.
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This thesis involves structure and interaction studies of the Fc fragment of human IgG. For this purpose, hIgG-Fc of different subclasses were cloned and expressed in the eukaryotic host Pichia pastoris, where relevant protein modification at the post-translational level can be obtained. Sometimes, changes in pH, temperature and salt concentration or addition of moderate amounts of denaturants to a protein solution are associated with the protein forming non-natively folded states, such as the molten globule or the A state. IgG and some parts thereof are capable of forming another, so called alternatively folded state, usually induced by acidification in the presence of anions. This state is in many aspects related to the molten globule and the A state but with distinguishing properties related mainly to chemical stability and formation of oligomeric structures. The first part of this thesis describes two different alternatively folded states of hIgG-Fc of subclass 4. One of them was induced by decreasing the pH of the protein solution. Observed structural changes were highly dependent on the concentration of sodium chloride. The alternatively folded protein showed drastic changes in its secondary structure compared to the native protein and significant tertiary structure was lost. Moreover, it displayed an apparently increased chemical stability and had surface exposed hydrophobic patches resulting in the formation of higher order assemblies. In addition, it was shown for the first time that thermal induction of an alternatively folded state is also possible, with similar, but not identical, properties as the acid-induced state. Heat incubation for 20 hours at neutral pH and at a physiological salt concentration further resulted in the formation of protein aggregates. The dye Congo red had affinity for these aggregates, and when viewed under polarized light, it showed green birefringence. They also displayed binding of Thioflavin T and had a typical fibril appearance in the transmission electron microscope. Hence, the formed aggregates share key properties with structures constituting amyloid. The second part of this thesis is focused on interactions of the Fc-fragment with respect to both Fcγ-receptors on monocytes and the IgG autoantibody rheumatoid factor. Immune complexes and their binding to Fcγ-receptors are of pathogenic interest to rheumatoid arthritis. A surface mimic presenting full IgG molecules was designed as an in vitro immune complex model. Utilizing self-assembled monolayers composed of alkanethiolates with different chemical functionalities, the lateral IgG density could be tuned, enabling control of monocyte interaction with the surface. Importantly, the IgG molecules were homogeneously oriented to expose the Fc-fragment. The protein repellent properties of these surfaces ensured that only differences in IgG concentration determined variations in cellular adhesion. In a separate study the specificities of IgG rheumatoid factor with respect to the different subclasses of hIgG-Fc were investigated, using sera from patients with early rheumatoid arthritis. Strikingly high IgG-RF reactivity against hIgG2-Fc was observed, together with raised levels against hIgG1-Fc and hIgG4-Fc. No reactivity against hIgG3-Fc was found.
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Markmiller, Michael P. (Michael Patrick). "Sensory interactions in human perception of motion." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40243.
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Eckenrode, Sokolowski Tara. "Computational prediction of human protein-protein interactions." Thesis, University of Dundee, 2013. https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/3609a365-dc5c-4347-bca8-a8fc17f76a4d.
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Over the past decade, knowledge of the human genome has grown exponentially. While identifying individual genes and their protein products is crucial, understanding how these entities exist within the context of other molecules within the cell provides valuable insight into their functional significance. In particular, mapping the intricate web of interactions between proteins (or the ‘interactome’), allows for an understanding the roles of individual proteins within specific cellular processes and the potentially negative implications when these processes cannot occur. At the present time, approximately 40,000 binary, protein-protein interactions have been identified in human through low- and high-throughput, lab-based experiments; however, this number represents only a fraction of the estimated 600,000 protein-protein interactions thought to occur. With the high number of potential protein-protein pairing, experimentally testing each possible interaction is a time-consuming and near-impossible task. As a result, several computational methods have been developed to predict probable interactions for experimental verification. Previously, our group developed PIPs, a predictor of protein-protein interactions in human based on a naive Bayesian framework that has undergone two version releases (Scott et al., 2007, McDowall, 2011). In this thesis, a third version of PIPs, PIPs v. 3.0, is described. In addition to an update of the included data, PIPs v. 3.0 contains a new network analysis component, the TransMCL (Z) module, that combines the previously separate Transitive module (and associated EOCT predictor) introduced in version 1.0 and Cluster module (and associated EOCM predictor) introduced in version 2.0. This new module has allowed the two previously separate PIPs predictors to be merged into one method (the EOCZ predictor). In total, the new EOCZ predictor identifies over 500K significant interactions, made up of those predicted by the EOCT and EOCM predictors individually as well as a new set of interactions.Additionally, this thesis describes the development of PIP’NN, a new protein-protein interaction predictor built on a neural network framework with the data incorporated into PIPs. Overall, PIP’NN performs slightly better than the three PIPs predictors on multiple blind tests of varying sizes. PIP’NN identifies both interactions predicted by the three PIPs methods as well as a set of new interactions. As a result, PIP’NN is able to stand on its own as a new predictor of human protein-protein interactions or in conjunction with PIPs as a method to further narrow down the set of predicted interactions. Finally, this thesis describes the practical implementation of PIPs and PIP’NN through collaborations with two groups within the University of Dundee that have identified sets of potential interactions of interest for experimental confirmation. While these interactions have yet to be confirmed, both studies offer a proof of concept of how the predictors can be incorporated into lab-based interaction identification protocols. Additionally, the new PIPs web server will allow outside groups access to the updated PIPs prediction database.Overall, the work described in this thesis has built upon previous work both within and outside of the University of Dundee to further the identification of novel protein-protein interactions in human and increase the understanding of the human interactome.
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Carvalho, Sara da Costa Cabral Pires. "Receptor Tyrosine Kinases interactions in human cancers." Master's thesis, Universidade de Aveiro, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10773/838.
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Mestrado em Biologia Molecular e CelularObjectivos: Os receptores tirosina cinase MET, ErbB-2 e EGFR foram identificados como tendo um papel importante no desenvolvimento e progressão de cancro. O objectivo deste estudo foi determinar a expressão e procurar interacções dos receptores MET, ErbB-2 e EGFR em linhas celulares de carcinomas de tiróide e mama, e em tumores mamários. Métodos: Neste estudo a expressão e interacções dos receptores MET, ErbB-2 e EGFR foi determinada em duas linhas celulares de carcinoma da tiróide (TPC-1 e 8505C) e em duas linhas celulares de carcinomas da mama (MDAMB- 231 e SkBr3). A expressão de MET foi também estudada, por Imunohistoquímica, numa serie de 219 carcinomas invasivos da mama, em microarrays, com um acompanhamento dos pacientes de 13 anos. Resultados: Observámos que MET, ErbB-2 e EGFR são expressos em todas as linhas de tiróide e mama, e observámos também interacções entre MET e ErbB-2. Na série de tumores mamários a expressão de MET foi significativamente relacionada com factores de prognóstico bem estabelecidos como ErbB-2, receptor de estrogénio, grau histológico e subtipos moleculares, sendo também significativamente associada com a diminuição da sobrevida das pacientes. Por análise multivariada MET demonstrou ter um valor prognóstico independente. Conclusões: O nosso estudo sugere que a comunicação entre MET e ErbB-2 pode ter um importante impacto clínico-patológico e que merece uma futura investigação, nomeadamente ao nível do desenvolvimento de novas terapêuticas. ABSTRACT: Aims: Receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) MET, ErbB-2 and EGFR have been identified to play an important role in cancer development and progression. Our aim was to determine MET, ErbB-2 and EGFR expression and search for their interactions in thyroid and breast carcinoma-derived cell lines and human breast tumours. Methods: We have studied the RTKs expression and interactions in two thyroid carcinoma-derived cell lines (TPC-1 and 8505C) and in two breast carcinomaderived cell lines (MDA-MB-231 and SkBr3). We have also studied, by Immunohistochemistry, MET expression on a series of 219 invasive breast carcinomas with 13-year disease follow, using tissue-microarray. Results: We observed that MET, ErbB2 and EGFR were expressed in both thyroid and breast cell lines, and we found physical interactions between MET and ErbB2. In the series of breast tumours, MET expression was significative correlated with established prognostic factors such ErbB-2, oestrogen receptor (ER), grade and subtype, and was also significatively associated with poor clinical outcome of the patients. By multivariate analysis MET showed to have an independent prognostic value. Conclusions: Our study suggests that the cross-communication between MET, and ErbB-2 may have clinicopathological impact and deserves further analysis namely in the design of novel combined therapeutic approaches.
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Rodger, Faye Elizabeth. "Cellular interactions in the human corpus luteum." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/22597.
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The corpus luteum is a transient endocrine gland which is essential for the maintenance of early pregnancy in mammals, however the physiological mechanisms which control luteal lifespan are poorly understood. The aim of this thesis is to investigate potential control points in luteal maintenance and regression by studies utilising human tissues from throughout the luteal phase and in simulated early pregnancy. In particular, the roles of luteal growth and angiogenesis, apoptosis and immune cells are examined. Results of these studies indicate that although angiogenesis is maximal in the early luteal phase, growth of blood vessels does not vary during luteal maintenance and regression. Similarly, although the apoptotic protoncogenes bcl-2 and bax are present in the human corpus luteum, expression of these factors remains constant as luteal function changes. Leukocytes are present throughout the luteal lifespan and local cytokine production may be important in causing the ingress of immune cells which is observed during luteal regression. Cells of steroidogenic, vascular and immune cell compartments of the human corpus luteum may interact in complex ways to bring about changes in the function and structure throughout the lifespan of the gland.
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Ramkissoon, Yashin Danjay. "Interaction cloning by phage display : protein interactions of the human testis determining factor, SRY." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.627297.
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Durdu, Akif. "Robotic System Design For Reshaping Estimated Human Intention In Human-robot Interactions." Phd thesis, METU, 2012. http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12615150/index.pdf.
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This thesis outlines the methodology and experiments associated with the reshaping of human intention via based on the robot movements in Human-Robot Interactions (HRI). Although works on estimating human intentions are quite well known research areas in the literature, reshaping intentions through interactions is a new significant branching in the field of human-robot interaction. In this thesis, we analyze how previously estimated human intentions change based on his/her actions by cooperating with mobile robots in a real human-robot environment. Our approach uses the Observable Operator Models (OOMs) and Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) designed for the intelligent mobile robotic systems, which consists of two levels: the low-level tracks the human while the high-level guides the mobile robots into moves that aim to change intentions of individuals in the environment. In the low level, postures and locations of the human are monitored by applying image processing methods. The high level uses an algorithm which includes learned OOM models or HMM models to estimate human intention and decision making system to reshape the previously estimated human intention. Through this thesis, OOMs are started to be used at the human-robot interaction applications for first time. This two-level system is tested on video frames taken from a real human-robot environment. The results obtained using the proposed approaches are compared according to performance towards the degree of reshaping the detected intentions.
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Safari, Maryam. "Aspergillosis : interactions of Aspergillus fumigatus and Human Airway Cells." Thesis, University of Westminster, 2013. https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/item/8z158/aspergillosis-interactions-of-aspergillus-fumigatus-and-human-airway-cells.
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Aspergillus fumigatus is a filamentous fungus that colonises the lungs of immunosuppressed patients and causes aspergillosis. Despite recent medical advances, infectious diseases caused by opportunistic pathogens such as A. fumigatus are still one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality among immunosuppressed patients. Gliotoxin is a mycotoxin and a secondary metabolite of A. fumigatus. This toxin possesses immusuppresive activity affecting cells of immune system. This research shows that human adenocarcinoma alveolar epithelial cells (A549) are highly susceptible to gliotoxin- induced cell death. Wild type strains of A. fumigatus cause death in these cells whereas mutant strains (gliotoxin deficient) do not. Gliotoxin induced cell death is mostly via apoptosis programmed cell death rather than necrosis. Long term incubation of A549 cells with gliotoxin-deficient strain causes morphology changes (swelling/partial damage) in these cells. This research proposes that gliotoxin induced death/ inflammation of pneumocytes by programmed apoptosis may contribute to the pathogenesis of aspergillosis, particularly invasive aspergillosis. In addition, other produced metabolites (e.g. proteases or other toxins) also contribute (to a lesser extent) to the lung tissue damage in the absence of gliotoxin. One of the key risk factors in developing aspergillosis is corticosteroid therapy. This is due to the effect of glucocorticoids on suppressing body’s defence mechanism. As hydrocortisone is present during Aspergillus infection, understanding the ability of the fungus to perceive this host-factor enhances the understanding of A. fumigatus interaction with the host within the host environment. Previous reports have shown that physiological and pharmacological concentrations of hydrocortisone enhance the growth-rate of A. fumigatus in vitro. The present work demonstrates the effect of hydrocortisone on cultures of A. fumigatus at both morphological and molecular levels. Hydrocortisone causes an early onset of sporulation and seems to play a role in regulation of haemostasis and stress response in this fungus. Expression of stress-related proteins (hsp70, catalase), proteases (e.g. serine protease, metalloprotease), and carbohydrate metabolism-related proteins increased after supplementation of A. fumigatus cultures with hydrocortisone. Stimulation studies investigating the effect of secondary metabolites of A. fumigatus on A549 cells with and without pre-treatment of the fungal cultures with hydrocortisone indicated subtle increases in the number of dead cells after hydrocortisone pre-treatment. This study shows further that hydrocortisone treatment of the lung alveolar cells enhances the binding of A. fumigatus spores to these cells. The obtained data suggests that presence of hydrocortisone may contribute to the survival of this pathogen within the host environment. This study provides additional knowledge at molecular and cellular level where complications exist as a result of infection by A. fumigatus fungus and during treatment with glucocorticoids.
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Mandage, Rajendra 1984. "Understanding interactions between EBV and human genomic variation." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/586328.
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The EBV has been linked to multiple human disease phenotypes and has been associated with cancers and other infections. Recently single gene analysis and genome-wide analysis studies have been exploited to uncover the human genetic variants that are linked with EBV diseases. It also suggested the substantial role of individual host genetics and also provided a clue in understanding the interaction between virus and human. Furthermore, the outcome of the EBV infection is a complex phenomenon governs by the variation in the genetic architecture of the viral and human genomes and/or the interacting environmental factors.
Therefore, this PhD work is mainly a large-scale effort towards the understanding of the human and EBV genetic architecture to uncover the role of genetic variation in EBV associated infections, disease susceptibility, immune recognition and invasion. Our results also provide a framework on the impact of human and EBV genetic variation and their unusual interactions that highlight the human genetic influence affecting viral load reflecting the clinical behavior of EBV in LCLs and the other side viral antigenic variation modulating immune response to sustain persistence infection. This EBV-human perturbation is essential to follow-up in the context of the susceptibility of individual populations to a specific EBV associated pathology.
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Nielsen, Curtis W. "Using Augmented Virtuality to Improve Human-Robot Interactions." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2006. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd1170.pdf.
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Venables, Julian. "Interactions of RBM, a candidate human spermatogenesis factor." Thesis, University of Leicester, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/2381/29655.
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Development can be seen as the consequence of alternative gene expression in different cell types. The focus of this study is the hierarchy of gene expression that controls the process of spermatogenesis, at the RNA level. RBM is an RNA-binding protein (encoded by the Y chromosome) thought to be important for the production of sperm. Its primary structure is reminiscent of SR protein splicing factors and it colocalises with them in the nucleus of germ line cells in the testes. If RBM were involved in splicing it should interact with components of the splicing machinery, so a yeast two-hybrid screen was employed and several candidate RNA-binding proteins were retrieved. These included two testes-specific novel proteins with ubiquitous known homologues. Overall the prey fell into three functional categories: signal transducers and RNA processors (STAR proteins), general heterogeneous ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs) and SR protein splicing factors. This suggests a global theory for RBM function, that it relays signals from the cytoplasm to effect key changes in gene expression at the level of splicing. Evidence was obtained that these proteins colocalise in vivo and bind in vitro in a phosphorylation-dependent manner that could be the key to its essential regulation in nature.
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Stjernholm, Ylva. "Endocrine and neuronal interactions in human cervical ripening /." Stockholm, 1998. http://diss.kib.ki.se/search/diss.se.cfm?19981009stje.
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Huang, Vera. "Interactions of p53 and p73 with human promoters." Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2007. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3283559.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007.Title from first page of PDF file (viewed November 21, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.
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Meister, Julia [Verfasser]. "Human-Environmental Interactions in Northeastern Jordan / Julia Meister." Berlin : Freie Universität Berlin, 2017. http://d-nb.info/1140043420/34.
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Bhattacharya, Ananyo Anaranya. "Crystallographic analysis of ligand interactions with human albumin." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.409303.
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Blaum, Bärbel. "Glycosaminoglycan-protein interactions and human complement factor H." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/3868.
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Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) are linear polysaccharides expressed ubiquitously on animal cell surfaces and within extracellular matrices. GAGs usually occur as parts of proteoglycans and often accomplish their biological functions through their interactions with proteins. GAG oligosaccharides for this work were produced via enzymatic digest of heparin, followed by gel filtration and ion exchange chromatography. Two tetrasaccharide species obtained from this digest were characterised using 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Complement factor H (fH) is a regulatory protein of the alternative pathway of the complement system, a major component of human innate immunity. Acting as a cofactor to factor I, fH inhibits C3b-initiated complement activation on host cells, protecting cells from auto immune attack. This study focused on the interaction of factor H with GAGs, which are thought to be among the markers allowing factor H to distinguish between self and non self surfaces. Binding studies of two heparin-binding sites in fH are presented. These include the C-terminal modules 19 and 20 (fH~19-20) and fH~7-8. FH~7, fH~7-8 and fH~19-20 were produced recombinantly in various isotope forms. The techniques used to study the protein-GAG interactions in this work encompass NMR spectroscopy, mass spectrometry, gel mobility shift assays (GMSA) and chemical cross linking. Several genetic studies suggest that a common polymorphism in the heparin-binding module fH~7, Y402H, plays a role in the development of age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The work presented here included preparation and backbone resonance assignment of a 13C, 15N- labelled sample of fH~ 7-8 via triple resonance NMR experiments. Further NMR experiments were employed to investigate the role of the lysine and arginine sidechains of fH~7 in GAG binding. These studies were combined with the preparation and characterisation of a covalently cross linked GAG-protein complex using NMR and mass spectrometry. A range of fH~19-20 mutations that are linked to a severe kidney disease, atypical haemolytic uraemic syndrome (aHUS), were characterised using GMSA. No correlation between the disease and the heparin binding properties of the aHUS mutants was observed. The mutant proteins were also characterised with respect to their ability to compete with full-length fH in a physiological complement assay. Simultaneous binding of WT fH~19-20 to GAGs and C3d, the relevant fragment of C3b, was assessed using NMR. NMR experiments were also conducted with NK1, which comprises the two N-terminal heparin-binding modules of hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor (HGF/SF), and heparin as well as dermatan sulfate-derived GAGs. Relaxation studies on a human defensin, HBD2, were performed to assess the role of GAGs in HBD2 self-association.
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Hutchinson, S. J. "Spatio-chromatic interactions in the human visual system." Thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.411198.
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Harrison, Thomas Stephen. "Interactions between Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Cryptococcus neoformans." Thesis, St George's, University of London, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299059.
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Rees, Dorothy Glenda Cerys. "The interactions of oral streptococci and human platelets." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.299545.
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Jones, Angela. "Human dendritic cell interactions with respiratory syncytial virus." Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.289663.
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Githumbi, Esther Nyambura. "Holocene environmental and human interactions in East Africa." Thesis, University of York, 2017. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/19515/.
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A multi-proxy approach analysing pollen, macro-charcoal, sediment characterisation and elemental profiles was used to develop palaeoecological records and reveal environmental changes since the late Pleistocene- Holocene transition period from Mau Forest and since the mid-Holocene from Amboseli. Mau Forest was characterised by diverse Afromontane forest taxa between �16,000 cal yr BP and �13,000 cal yr BP which decreased during the Younger Dryas. During the early Holocene, there was a slight increase in montane tree taxa and the main vegetation change noted during the Holocene was the increase in woody shrubs and herbs. The pollen, sediment characterisation and elemental profiles revealed that climatic variability was the main driver of forest composition change and periods of aridity and wetness were identified at�15,000, �13,400, �12,000 and �1200 cal yr BP where there was increased organic matter, sand, magnetic susceptibility with peaks in detrital elements suggesting periods of wetness. Four new Amboseli records dating from the mid Holocene (�5000 cal yr BP) revealed a predominantly dry environment characterised by localised wet and dry phases and fire activity. The spatial differences observed from the Amboseli records are attributed to hydrological variance as the swamps are all fed by ground water and the differential use by humans and wildlife. Kimana, Enkongu and Esambu swamps are Cyperaceae dominated; the pollen records indicate that Amboseli is a grassland savannah dominated by Poaceae, Acacia, Commiphora and Euphorbia. The pollen composition and abundance and charcoal concentration levels vary between the four Amboseli sites indicating localised drivers and controls of fire at each site. This long-term information is useful in the development of ecosystem management policies which are constantly being updated due to the evolving pressures caused by increasing populations and changing land use around the two ecosystems.
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Wall, Sion Richard. "Host-virus interactions in human papillomavirus mediated disease." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2004. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/55555/.
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Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the cause of a wide spectrum of disease ranging from benign cutaneous warts to malignant anogenital tumours. Two notable features of HPV diseases are that the viruses are highly tissue specific of individual HPV types and the fact that while HPV infections are common only a minority of infected individuals manifest clinical disease, indicating the importance of host virus interactions. In this thesis two HPV mediated diseases have been examined in detail, cervical cancer and Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis. Cervical cancer is a major cause of mortality in women in developing nations. In these countries cervical screening programmes are impractical for logistical reasons and there is much interest in the feasibility of developing preventative vaccines. However, before such agents can be developed it must be established that the same HPV types that cause cervical cancer in industrialised nations are associated with cervical cancer in developing nations and that the local clades of HPV have the same amino acid sequence as putative vaccine strains. This thesis presents a study of the prevalence of cervical HPV infection, HPV type distribution and viral genetics carried out in a previously unstudied population of 934 women in rural Gambia. A high cervical HPV prevalence is observed, the most common high risk types were found to be HPV-16 & -35, the former being the most common high risk type worldwide and the latter this study show may be underestimated in African populations. Sequencing of the HPV L1 open reading frames provided data which may have implications for vaccine research. RRP is a rare disease characterised by the presence of papillomata on the larynx and other sites in the upper aerodigestive tract. RRP is usually caused by HPV-6 or -11, two viruses more commonly associated with genital warts. RRP is thought to be contracted from the genital tract. However, genital HPV infection is common yet RRP remains a rare disease, therefore other factors either from the virus or the host must modulate disease pathogenesis. In order to elucidate if RRP is caused by unique HPV clades that might be particularly well adapted to the larynx, the L1 major capsid gene and the oncogenes E6 & E7 have been sequenced. In order to establish the sequence of "normal" genital HPV-11 and to exclude regional differences between UK and US HPV-6 and HPV-11, genital wart tissue from 37 UK donors has also been analysed and compared to papilloma material from 53 RRP patients. Significant sequence differences between RRP and Genital Wart E6 & E7 ORF were observed. In order to examine the possible role of host immunogenetic factors in the pathogenesis of RRP, 50 individuals with RRP were then HLA class typed. A significant association between the HLA class II allele DRB*0301 was found along with a negative association with the HLA DQB1*03 allele. Finally, T-cell proliferation studies using Cytokine Bead Array to detect cytokine production revealed that DQBT03 positive donors produce more IFN-y in response to HPV peptides than DQB1*03 negative individuals.
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Avendano, Perez Gaspar. "Interactions between Salmonella typhimurium and human gut bacteria." Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2015. https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/54306/.
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Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium is an important enteropathogen that causes human morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is essential to study the interaction between Salmonella and the gut bacteria to elucidate the elements that influence the ability of the pathogen to overcome the colonisation barrier mediated by the gut microbiota and why Salmonella can persist in ‘healthy’ individuals in a carrier state after infection. In this study the effect of faecal bacteria on the growth and survival of S. Typhimurium was investigated. Initially, experiments involved co-cultures of the pathogen and single strains of intestinal bacteria obtained from culture collections; results showed that when E. coli reached its maximum concentration density, the growth of S. Typhimurium was halted. S. Typhimurium was then inoculated with multi-strain gut bacteria from culture collections and also with faecal samples in batch cultures mimicking the conditions of the human colon. A significant reduction of S.Typhimurium concentration was observed in mixed cultures with faecal samples from different human donors; however, bacteria obtained from culture collection had no effect on S. Typhimurium. Close proximity with faecal bacteria was required as the pathogen was not affected when it was separated from the faecal bacteria by a 0.45 µm pore size membrane. S. Typhimurium was also affected in a continuous culture system. Transcriptomic analysis indicated that some of the functions associated with the genes expressed by S. Typhimurium during Salmonella inactivation were related to stress responses. Molecular profiling of faecal bacteria measured by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis did not show any change specifically associated to S. Typhimurium inactivation. It was not possible to identify the bacterial strains responsible for the inactivation of S. Typhimurium; however, this effect caused by cell-cell contact with human faecal bacteria is reported for the first time in this study.
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Tsang, Kenneth Wah Tak. "Bacterial interactions with human respiratory mucosa in vitro." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8346/.
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The theme of this thesis is to study the interactions of non-typable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) with intact human respiratory mucosa in vitro. Recent evidence suggests that bacteria are mainly associated with respiratory mucus during exacerbation of chronic bronchitis but penetration of antibiotics into respiratory mucus is generally poor. A study was therefore performed to evaluate the effects of 0.25 and 0.5 minimal inhibitory concentrations of amoxycillin, loracarbef (a new carbacephem) and ciprofloxacin on NTHi infection of adenoid organ cultures in an agar-embedded model in which only the intact respiratory mucosa was exposed to bacteria-containing culture medium. The results from this study may help explain the clinical efficacy of antibiotics in treatment of bronchial infection despite poor antibiotic penetration into respiratory secretions. By using the same organ culture model the effects of NTHi infection of intact human bronchial mucosa was also studied. NTHi infection of bronchial organ cultures was associated with ultrastructural damage compared with uninfected organ cultures after 24h incubation. This damage was similar to the pattern observed in adenoid organ cultures described earlier. Similar experiments using nasal turbinate tissue showed virtually no adherence of NTHi to nasal respiratory mucosa suggesting that there may be a difference in epithelial surface receptors for NTHi between adenoid and nasal turbinate mucosa. Infection of adenoid organ cultures with an air-mucosal interface by PA caused significant ultrastructural damage (mitochondrial damage, loss of cilia, cytoplasmic blebbing and extrusion of cells from the epithelial surface) and slowing of ciliary beat when assessed by transmission electron and light microscopy respectively after 8h incubation. PA was found to cause disruption of epithelial tight junctions and adhere to basement membrane collagen. A matrix-like material was probably produced by PA which bridged PA with respiratory mucosa and might therefore be a PA adhesin. PA formed bacterial biofilms on the surface of respiratory mucosa that might have hindered its removal by the mucociliary clearance mechanism. These findings might help explain the difficulty in eradicating PA from the lower respiratory tract of patients with cystic fibrosis and bronchiectasis. The organ culture model with an air-mucosal interface was also used to study the effects of a bacterial toxin on intact human respiratory mucosa. An exotoxin of PA, pyocyanin was found to cause significant mucosal damage to adenoid organ cultures when assessed by transmission electron microscopy. Moreover, by using a newly developed transmission electron microscopy method to assess orientation of central microtubules of cilia and foot processes, pyocyanin was found to cause significant disorientation of the central microtubules of respiratory cilia but not the foot processes. PA pyocyanin may therefore have a role in the pathogenesis of PA infection in vivo. By using these organ culture models of intact human respiratory mucosa, bacteria interactions with human respiratory mucosa can be studied using the transmission, scanning electron, and light microscopy methods described in this thesis. Potential virulent factors for NTHi and PA can be tested and the mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis can be studied further to advance current understanding of bacterial interactions with the human respiratory tract mucosa that may lead to the development of novel therapies.
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Buffleben, George M. "Interactions of human and drosophila Rad 51 paralogs." Scholarly Commons, 2010. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/751.
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Damage to DNA from a variety of sources can lead to damaged proteins, genomic instability, aneuploidy, and cancer. It is therefore essential to repair DNA damage, and to do so a variety of DNA repair mechanisms have evolved. One of the repair mechanisms, known as homologous recombination (HR) repair, uses an undamaged sister chromatid as a template to make error free repairs to double-strand (ds) DNA breaks. While many proteins are involved in HR, this work focuses on testing the interactions of a subset of these proteins known as the Rad51 paralogs.
The goal of this study is to determine if the putative Rad51 paralogs in Drosophila melanogaster are sufficiently conserved as to function in the same manner as their human counterparts. This research is part of a larger project to determine if Drosophila melanogaster is a good model organism for studying HR in humans (Hs).
The D. melanogaster Rad51 gene, and its four paralogs Spn D, Spn B, Rad51D, XRCC2 (the last 2 identified by sequence homology), and human hsRad51D and hsXRCC2, were cloned into Invitrogen's TOPO protein expression vector. When induced with IPTG, the resulting fusion proteins contains either aN-terminal Xpress TM epitope or a C-terminal V5 epitope. The fusion proteins were used in immunoprecipitation assays with antibodies against the epitope tags to test for proteinprotein interactions.
While many of the assays were inconclusive and are still being optimized, the interaction of the C-terminally tagged dmXRCC2 with theN-terminally tagged hsRad51D gave a positive result. This single interspecies result suggests that homologous recombination is highly conserved between D. melanogaster and humans.
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Debard, Quentin. "Automatic learning of next generation human-computer interactions." Thesis, Lyon, 2020. http://www.theses.fr/2020LYSEI036.
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L’Intelligence Artificielle (IA) et les Interfaces Homme-Machine (IHM) sont deux champs de recherche avec relativement peu de travaux communs. Les spécialistes en IHM conçoivent habituellement les interfaces utilisateurs directement à partir d’observations et de mesures sur les interactions humaines, optimisant manuellement l’interface pour qu’elle corresponde au mieux aux attentes des utilisateurs. Ce processus est difficile à optimiser : l’ergonomie, l’intuitivité et la facilité d’utilisation sont autant de propriétés clé d’une interface utilisateur (IU) trop complexes pour être simplement modélisées à partir de données d’interaction. Ce constat restreint drastiquement les utilisations potentielles de l’apprentissage automatique dans ce processus de conception. A l’heure actuelle, l’apprentissage automatique dans les IHMs se cantonne majoritairement à la reconnaissance de gestes et à l’automatisation d’affichage, par exemple à des fins publicitaires ou pour suggérer une sélection. L’apprentissage automatique peut également être utilisé pour optimiser une interface utilisateur existante, mais il ne participe pour l’instant pas à concevoir de nouvelles façons d’intéragir. Notre objectif avec cette thèse est de proposer grâce à l’apprentissage automatique de nouvelles stratégies pour améliorer le processus de conception et les propriétés des IUs. Notre but est de définir de nouvelles IUs intelligentes – comprendre précises, intuitives et adaptatives – requérant un minimum d’interventions manuelles. Nous proposons une nouvelle approche à la conception d’IU : plutôt que l’utilisateur s’adapte à l’interface, nous cherchons à ce que l’utilisateur et l’interface s’adaptent mutuellement l’un à l’autre. Le but est d’une part de réduire le biais humain dans la conception de protocoles d’interactions, et d’autre part de construire des interfaces co-adaptatives capables de correspondre d’avantage aux préférences individuelles des utilisateurs. Pour ce faire, nous allons mettre à contribution les différents outils disponibles en apprentissage automatique afin d’apprendre automatiquement des comportements, des représentations et des prises de décision. Nous expérimenterons sur les interfaces tactiles pour deux raisons majeures : celles-ci sont largement utilisées et fournissent des problèmes facilement interprétables. La première partie de notre travail se focalisera sur le traitement des données tactiles et l’utilisation d’apprentissage supervisé pour la construction de classifieurs précis de gestes tactiles. La seconde partie détaillera comment l’apprentissage par renforcement peut être utilisé pour modéliser et apprendre des protocoles d’interaction en utilisant des gestes utilisateur. Enfin, nous combinerons ces modèles d’apprentissage par renforcement avec de l’apprentissage non supervisé pour définir une méthode de conception de nouveaux protocoles d’interaction ne nécessitant pas de données d’utilisation réellesArtificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-Computer Interactions (HCIs) are two research fields with relatively few common work. HCI specialists usually design the way we interact with devices directly from observations and measures of human feedback, manually optimizing the user interface to better fit users’ expectations. This process is hard to optimize: ergonomy, intuitivity and ease of use are key features in a User Interface (UI) that are too complex to be simply modelled from interaction data. This drastically restrains the possible uses of Machine Learning (ML) in this design process. Currently, ML in HCI is mostly applied to gesture recognition and automatic display, e.g. advertisement or item suggestion. It is also used to fine tune an existing UI to better optimize it, but as of now it does not participate in designing new ways to interact with computers. Our main focus in this thesis is to use ML to develop new design strategies for overall better UIs. We want to use ML to build intelligent – understand precise, intuitive and adaptive – user interfaces using minimal handcrafting. We propose a novel approach to UI design: instead of letting the user adapt to the interface, we want the interface and the user to adapt mutually to each other. The goal is to reduce human bias in protocol definition while building co-adaptive interfaces able to further fit individual preferences. In order to do so, we will put to use the different mechanisms available in ML to automatically learn behaviors, build representations and take decisions. We will be experimenting on touch interfaces, as these interfaces are vastly used and can provide easily interpretable problems. The very first part of our work will focus on processing touch data and use supervised learning to build accurate classifiers of touch gestures. The second part will detail how Reinforcement Learning (RL) can be used to model and learn interaction protocols given user actions. Lastly, we will combine these RL models with unsupervised learning to build a setup allowing for the design of new interaction protocols without the need for real user data
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Eid, Fatma Elzahraa Sobhy. "Predicting the Interactions of Viral and Human Proteins." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/77581.
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The world has proven unprepared for deadly viral outbreaks. Designing antiviral drugs and strategies requires a firm understanding of the interactions taken place between the proteins of the virus and human proteins. The current computational models for predicting these interactions consider only single viruses for which extensive prior knowledge is available. The two prediction frameworks in this dissertation, DeNovo and DeNovo-Human, make it possible for the first time to predict the interactions between any viral protein and human proteins. They further helped to answer critical questions about the Zika virus.
DeNovo utilizes concepts from virology, bioinformatics, and machine learning to make predictions for novel viruses possible. It pools protein-protein interactions (PPIs) from different viruses sharing the same host. It further introduces taxonomic partitioning to make the reported performance reflect the situation of predicting for a novel virus. DeNovo avoids the expected low accuracy of such a prediction by introducing a negative sampling scheme that is based on sequence similarity. DeNovo achieved accuracy up to 81% and 86% when predicting for a new viral species and a new viral family, respectively. This result is comparable to the best achieved previously in single virus-host and intra-species PPI prediction cases.
DeNovo predicts PPIs of a novel virus without requiring known PPIs for it, but with a limitation on the number of human proteins it can make predictions against. The second framework, DeNovo-Human, relaxes this limitation by forcing in-network prediction and random sampling while keeping the pooling technique of DeNovo. The accuracy and AUC are both promising ($>85%$, and $>91%$ respectively). DeNovo-Human facilitates predicting the virus-human PPI network.
To demonstrate how the two frameworks can enrich our knowledge about virus behavior, I use them to answer interesting questions about the Zika virus. The research questions examine how the Zika virus enters human cells, fights the innate immune system, and causes microcephaly. The answers obtained are well supported by recently published Zika virus studies.Ph. D.
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Talaulikar, Vikram Sinai. "In vitro modelling of human trophoblast-decidua interactions." Thesis, St George's, University of London, 2016. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.687073.
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Human pregnancy disorders such as miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, intrauterine growth restriction and adherent placenta are thought to have their origins in defective trophoblastic invasion of the decidua. However, an elucidation of the exact mechanism of invasion is elusive because of poor understanding of early trophoblastdecidua interactions. Research is hampered by the inaccessibility of site of implantation, ethical constraints on studies of human pregnancy and lack of an adequate animal model. This research has sought to overcome many of these challenges by modelling, in vitro, events at the trophoblast-decidua interface. Human trophoblast is relatively readily available from pregnancy terminations or term pregnancies and cell lines have been produced in our laboratory. Decidua has previously proven more challenging to obtain in pure form. During this research a novel direct-vision hysteroscopic technique of decidual biopsy was developed which allowed accurate directed sampling of decidua parietalis separate from decidua basalis. Morphological and immunohistochemical studies confirmed the accuracy of the samples. Further characterisation of pure decidua parietalis versus basalis identified structural and functional changes likely to have been induced by or in response to trophoblastic invasion. For example, using electron microscopy, thicker and disrupted collagen fibrils were noted in decidua basalis versus uniform arrangement in decidua parietalis. Proteomic analysis established basic protein profiles for each type of decidua, and among the differences noted were 34 proteins with differential expression between basalis and parietalis. Consistent with the ultrastructural differences, extracellular matrix component lumican showed differences in expression between the two types of decidua. In vitro explant co- culture models were established with placental villi and pure decidua parietalis biopsies. These demonstrated early evidence of invasion of decidua parietalis by extravillous cytotrophoblast, with viability up to 96 hours. It is now possible, using the tools developed during this research, to conduct in-depth studies of early events at the materno-fetal interface.
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Sweeney, Diane L. "Learning in human-dolphin interactions at zoological facilities." Diss., [La Jolla] : University of California, San Diego, 2009. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3387457.
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Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009.Title from first page of PDF file (viewed February 17, 2010). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-304).