We showed that constitutive and inducible chemical and morphological defenses against Western flower thrips differ between tomato and chrysanthemum plants. Furthermore, we demonstrated that both... Show moreWe showed that constitutive and inducible chemical and morphological defenses against Western flower thrips differ between tomato and chrysanthemum plants. Furthermore, we demonstrated that both plant species respond differently to bacteria-derived defense elicitors, such as the phytotoxin coronatine. This highlights the plant species-specificity of these interactions and the possible limitation for the use of pathogen-associated molecular patterns to enhance the plant immune system. This study thus provides knowledge and novel strategies for Western flower thrips control. Yet, further comprehensive work is needed to evaluate the influence of these induction strategies on plant fitness. Show less
Assessing the risks of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) solely on the basis of experimental assays is time-consuming, resource intensive, and constrained by ethical considerations (such as the... Show moreAssessing the risks of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) solely on the basis of experimental assays is time-consuming, resource intensive, and constrained by ethical considerations (such as the principles of the 3Rs of animal testing). The adoption of computational toxicology in this field is a high priority. Computational toxicology is able to contribute to the prediction of the extent of toxic effects of untested ENMs, to the hazard categorization and labeling of ENMs, and to the establishment of hazard threshold values that are sufficiently protecting the ecosystem with respect to the ENMs of concern. These three steps are listed by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) as the three elements in evaluating the hazards of ENMs. This study has expanded the use of computational toxicology in the hazard assessment with regard to the safe handling of ENMs. The results obtained contribute to the integration and evaluation of toxicity data, the identification of research gaps on ENM-related modeling, and the development of nano-SARs and SSDs for metallic ENMs. Despite the uncertainties that are associated with our results, as mainly due to limited data quality and availability, we managed to take this field one step forwards and contribute to better-informed regulatory decisions of ENMs. Show less
This thesis studies asymptotic behavior and stability of determinsitic and stochastic delay differential equations. The approach used in this thesis is based on fixed point theory, which does not... Show moreThis thesis studies asymptotic behavior and stability of determinsitic and stochastic delay differential equations. The approach used in this thesis is based on fixed point theory, which does not resort to any Liapunov function or Liapunov functional. The main contribution of this thesis is to study the approach using fixed point theory in a systematic way and to unify recent results in the literature by considering some general classes of equations. The equation we considered is a combination of time dependent delays, distributed delays, impulses and stochastic perturbations. In addition, an application to stochastic delayed neural networks is investigated. The results in this thesis extend and improve some exist results in the literature in some ways. Examples are discussed in each chapter to illustrate our main results. Show less
