Over the last years major advances have been made in the field of C. difficile research. Despite the continuous progress of research in C. difficile epidemiology and molecular biology. This thesis... Show moreOver the last years major advances have been made in the field of C. difficile research. Despite the continuous progress of research in C. difficile epidemiology and molecular biology. This thesis shows that the development of molecular based techniques in detecetion and typing of C. difficile could be very valuable in combatting CDI. This also applies for the genetics and molecular biology of C. difficile in understanding the virulence of C. difficile. However, the continuing development of new techniques, both typing and genetics manipulation tools, has also led to the recognition of potential weaknesses of the currently frequent used techniques. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to keep up with the technical progress in the field of C. difficile research to enable further elucidation of the mechanisms that determine the virulence of C. difficile. Show less
This dissertation presents the results of a computer-assisted linguistic analysis of the __Book of the Laws of the Countries__, a religious prose text, attributed to the 3rd-century theologian... Show moreThis dissertation presents the results of a computer-assisted linguistic analysis of the __Book of the Laws of the Countries__, a religious prose text, attributed to the 3rd-century theologian Bardaisan, which is one of the earliest representatives of Syriac literature. Using the computational tools and methods that were developed in the Leiden project __Turgama: Computer-Assisted Analysis of the Peshitta and the Targum: Text, Language and Interpretation__ by dr. Wido van Peursen, I have analysed this corpus on different linguistic levels: orthography / morphology, phrase structure, and clause structure. This analysis enables us to gain deeper insight in the peculiarities of the Syriac language of the 3rd century; the same period in which the Hebrew Bible was translated into Syriac, resulting in the so-called Peshitta. As such, the Book of the Laws of the Countries represents a corpus written in __native__ Syriac, to which the translated Syriac of the Peshitta can be compared. This will allow us to attain a better view of the considerations which played a role in the creation process of the Syriac Bible; e.g., the amount to which translation was influenced by interpretation, the two possible meanings of the Syriac word __Turgama__. Show less
