Polycationic Arene Chromium Tricarbonyl Complexes

The formation of charged arenes bound to metals may provide materials with interesting electrical properties and such materials may exhibit molecular recognition with specific molecules. Polysubstituted benzyl-alcohols and benzyl-polyols were converted to the corresponding chromium carbonyl complexes. Reactions with PBrs, BBr3 and HBr converted these into the corresponding bromides, which were then treated with DABCO (1,4 diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane) and N-mono-substituted DABCO derivatives to give polycationic arene chromium complexes. Certain patterns of substitution produced complexes which show restricted rotation. The chromium tricarbonyl unit can be used as a probe for the electron density on the ring, since the carbonyl bands in the infra-red spectrum change in frequency, depending on the electronic effects of the groups on the ring. The more electron-withdrawing the groups, the higher the frequency of the carbonyl bands. By observing these shifts in the carbonyl bands, the counter-ions of the polycationic arene chromium tricarbonyl complexes were shown to interact to a different extent with the polycationic complexes. A model is advanced to account for these observations. The binding strength of these polycationic complexes with various anions in host-guest type chemistry was investigated using the method of NMR titration. Changes in the chemical shift are observed with different concentrations of counter-ions and by varying the concentrations of host and guest it is possible to determine the binding constant and the stoichiometry of binding. A comparison was made between the complexed and uncomplexed systems as hosts with the same guest molecules

Bold Headlines of Urban Eyescapes:A Computational Approach of Urban Mapping via Digital Surveying and Eye-Tracking Technologies

The sensory stimuli from the urban environment are often distinguished as subtle structures that derive from experiencing the city. The experience of the urban environment is also related to the social relationships and memories that complete the 'urban eyescapes' and the way individuals can recall them. Despite the fact that the consideration of urban sensory stimuli is part of urban design, currently the account of visual experience in urban studies is hard to be identified. This article explores ways of recording how the senses mediate one's engagement with the urban environment. This study involves an experiment in the urban environment of the Copenhagen city centre, with 20 subjects performing a walking task. The aim of the experiment is to categorize the visual 'Bold Headlined Stimuli’ (BHS) of the examined environment, using eye-tracking techniques. The analysis allows us to identify the Headlining Stimuli Process, (HSP) in the select urban environment. HSP is significantly mediated by body mobility and perceptual memories and has shown how urban stimuli influence the intelligibility and the recalling patterns of the urban characteristics. The results have yielded a 'Bold Headline list' of stimuli related to: the spatial characteristics of higher preference; the stimuli that are relevant to livability; and the spatial dimensions easier to recall. The data of BHS will be used in cross-disciplinary city analysis. In the future, these results could be useful in urban design, to provide information on how urban space affects the human activities

Identifying And Improving Deficient Business Processes To Prepare SMEs For ERP Implementation

The study reported in this paper aims to identify, explore and improve hitherto deficient business processes for SMEs in order to prepare them for ERP implementation projects. When business process improvement is traditionally perceived as a task that is particularly related to the ERP project phase, this paper argues that broad changes of business processes should actually be performed well before implementing the system. The research took a Cypriot SME as a case study, and adopted in-depth interview as the main method of data collection. The qualitative data collected was analysed by using an inductive thematic analysis approach. The findings identified that business deficiencies and problems, which can impact potential ERP adoption and usage in SMEs, can be localised across business processes, e.g. sales ordering and stock controlling processes. Disregarding these deficient business processes and business drawbacks in the ERP preparation stage will have implications not just for the subsequent ERP project, but also for the long-term ERP usage

Low-dose 2-Deoxy Glucose Stabilises Tolerogenic Dendritic Cells and Generates Potent in vivo Immunosuppressive Effects

Open Access via Springer Compact Agreement University of Aberdeen Development Trust Grant number RG14251, RG12663 Acknowledgements: We thank the University of Aberdeen Iain Fraser Flow Cytometry core facility, and the University of Aberdeen Histology and Microscopy core facility for processing of histology slides. The authors thank University of Aberdeen Medical Research Facility for technical assistance with in vivo experiments. We thank Dr. Tian Yu, Dr. Yi-Hsia Liu, Mrs Rosemary Fordyce, and Mrs Elizabeth Muckersie for technical assistance with in vivo and in vitro experiments. Funding: This work was supported by funds from the University of Aberdeen Development Trust Grants RG14251 and RG12663. Maria Christof was the recipient of a University of Aberdeen PhD Studentship. Samantha Le Sommer was funded by a Wellcome Trust ISSF Postdoctoral Fellowship.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Signalling through MyD88 drives surface expression of the mycobacterial receptors MCL (Clecsf8, Clec4d) and Mincle (Clec4e) following microbial stimulation

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the staff of the animal facility for their support and care for our animals. Funding was provided by the Wellcome Trust (102705) and Medical Research Council (UK) (MR/J004820/1) and a University of Aberdeen Studentship to BK.Peer reviewedPostprintPublisher PD

The atypical chemokine receptor-2 fine-tunes the immune response in herpes stromal keratitis

Herpes stromal keratitis (HSK) is a blinding corneal disease caused by herpes simplex virus-1 (HSV-1), a common pathogen infecting most of the world’s population. Inflammation in HSK is chemokine-dependent, particularly CXCL10 and less so the CC chemokines. The atypical chemokine receptor-2 (ACKR2) is a decoy receptor predominantly for pro-inflammatory CC chemokines, which regulates the inflammatory response by scavenging inflammatory chemokines thereby modulating leukocyte infiltration. Deletion of ACKR2 exacerbates and delays the resolution of the inflammatory response in most models. ACKR2 also regulates lymphangiogenesis and mammary duct development through the recruitment of tissue-remodeling macrophages. Here, we demonstrate a dose-dependent upregulation of ACKR2 during corneal HSV-1 infection. At an HSV inoculum dose of 5.4 x 105 pfu, but not at higher dose, ACKR2 deficient mice showed prolonged clinical signs of HSK, increased infiltration of leukocytes and persistent corneal neovascularization. Viral clearance and T cell activation were similar in ACKR2-/- and wild type mice, despite a transient diminished expression of CD40 and CD86 in dendritic cells. The data suggest that ACKR2 fine-tunes the inflammatory response and the level of neovascularization in the HSK

Virtual Reality as a Medium for Attitude Change

The study of attitude change has been of interest for decades, with social professionals, having to deal with real actors, written words, and relying on traditional software and hardware to achieve their goals. Virtual Reality (VR), due to its immersive, transformative and engaging form, and its ability to make users feel like they are part of the virtual world that surrounds them, can be a useful medium to affect peoples’ attitudes, including emotions, behavior, knowledge, and beliefs over an entity. This dissertation, through a series of three experimental studies, delves into whether VR can be used as a medium for attitude change, in order to modernize the existing traditional methods used by social professionals. Attitudes can be categorized into affective, behavioural and cognitive attitudes. They include our emotions, behavior, and knowledge about an entity. In this dissertation, focus is given to changing affective attitudes and more specifically empathy toward stigmatized groups and cognitive attitudes and more specifically increasing knowledge about an archeological site in Cyprus. Thus, the first study, offered the ability to participants, to experience through VR, a substance use situation in a virtual school from different perspectives (a teacher and two different students, one of them experiencing hallucinations due to drug use), to change affective attitudes and more specifically, induce empathy about drug users. The VR intervention elicited a statistically significant difference in participants ability, those who viewed the scenario through the drug users’ perspective, the ability to relate to students going through drug problems. An increase in participants’ heart rate after the experiment, compared to their heart rate before the experiment, indicates that they experienced a stressful condition as there was a significant difference in their reported negative mood states as well. The second study explored VR’s ability to support sensorimotor contingencies, on changing affective attitudes and more specifically inducing empathy toward drug users. It was a comparison between a VR and a non-VR system that was not offering any sensorimotor contingencies. Results showed a significant positive correlation between the closeness to the drug user and empathy in the VR group and that both conditions achieved an increase in positive attitudes. The third study dealt with cognitive attitudes and more specifically increasing knowledge about a part of Cyprus’ cultural heritage and more specifically an archaeological site. It was investigated whether participants’ attitudes and knowledge toward archaeology can be affected by using an immersive VR and a Desktop Application, taking users on a virtual tour of an archaeological site in Cyprus. There was not a significant change in attitudes toward archaeology between the two groups. Interestingly, the VR Application was found to be less effective in acquiring and memorizing new information about the archaeological site. Results from these studies show the potential of VR as a medium for attitude change and more specifically for affective attitudes and more specifically inducing empathy for drug users and positive attitudes for them. VR-based methods did not significantly increase knowledge or a change in attitudes towards an archaeological site. Findings showed that more research is needed regarding what could make VR-based methods more effective for bringing cognitive attitude change like knowledge acquisition, with promising results in inducing empathy for stigmatized groups.Retalis Symeon Andujar CarlosComplete

Preuves de sécurité outillées d implémentations cryptographiques

Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés à la vérification formelle des implémentations cryptographiques. Dans la première partie, nous étudions la vérification du protocole mERA à l aide d outil ProVerif. Nous vérifions que ce protocole assure certaines propriétés de sécurité, notamment l authentification, le secret et la non-reliabilité, ainsi que des propriétés comme la vivacité du protocole. Dans la deuxième partie de cette thèse, nous étudions la vérification formelle des implémentations cryptographiques vis-à-vis d un certain type d attaque: les attaques par injection de faute modifiant les données. Nous identifions et présentons les différents modèles de ce type d attaque en tenant en compte plusieurs paramètres. Ensuite, nous modélisons des implémentations cryptographiques (munies de contremesures), nous injectons tous les scenarios de fautes possibles et finalement nous vérifions le code correspondant à l aide d outil Frama-C, basé sur l analyse statique. Nous présentons une application de notre méthode : la vérification d une implémentation RSA-CRT munie de la contremesure de Vigilant (CHES 2008). Après avoir exprimé les propriétés nécessaires pour la vérification, nous injectons tous les scenarios de fautes possibles (en tenant compte d un modèle de faute choisi). Cette vérification révèle deux scenarios de fautes provoquant deux attaques susceptibles à fuir des informations secrètes. Afin de mécaniser la vérification, nous avons réussi à automatiser complètement l insertion des fautes selon les différents modèles (en tenant en compte les attaques mono-fautes, ainsi que les multi-fautes). Ceci a donné naissance à un nouveau plug-in de Frama-C : TL_FACEIn this thesis, we are interested on the formal verification of cryptographic implementations. In the first part, we study the verification of the protocol mERA using the tool ProVerif. We prove that this protocol verifies some security properties, like the authentication, the secrecy and the unlinkability, but also properties like its vivacity. In the second part of this thesis, we study the formal verification of cryptographic implementations against an attack family: attacks with fault injection modifying data. We identify and present the different models of these attacks considering different parameters. We then model the cryptographic implementation (with its countermeasures), we inject all possible fault scenarios and finally we verify the corresponding code using the Frama-C tool, based on static analysis techniques. We present a use case of our method: the verification of an CRT-RSA implementation with Vigilant s countermeasure. After expressing the necessary properties for the verification, we inject all fault scenarios (regarding the chosen fault model). This verification reveals two fault scenarios susceptible to flow secret information. In order to mechanize the verification, we insert fault scenarios automatically according to both single and multi fault attacks). This creates a new Frama-C plug-in: TL-FACE.VERSAILLES-BU Sciences et IUT (786462101) / SudocSudocFranceF