ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LIST OF ORIGINAL PUBLICATIONS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

We consider state-dependent channels with general state available at both the encoder and the decoder. We establish the "-capacity and the optimistic "-capacity of such channels. The determination of these capacities allows us to provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the strong converse property to hold. We also provide a simpler sufficient condition on the firstand second-order stat...

Vitex genera is reputed for their medicinal properties. Of the 12 species reported to be present in Indian only 8 species are medicinally useful. Of these six species were colled and their pharmacognostic characters were studied and described.

Intracranial berry aneurysms are the most common kind of aneurysms in the brain, and are caused by head trauma in 1% of cases. They may remain asymptomatic for a long time or may rupture and cause intracranial hemorrhage. These aneurysms are associated with a high mortality rate. A definitive diagnosis can be made by angiography or autopsy. We studied the cadavers of 425 people who passed away ...

We study the Jahn-Teller effect of positive fullerene ions C60 and 1C 60 . The aim is to discover if this case, in analogy with the negative ion, possesses a Berry phase or not, and what are the consequences on dynamical Jahn-Teller quantization. Working in the linear and spherical approximation, we find no Berry phase in 1C 60 , and presence/absence of Berry phase for coupling of one L = 2 hol...

We provide a geometrical argument for the emergence of a Wess-Zumino-Witten (WZW) term in a Fermi surface threaded by a Berry curvature. In the presence of external fields, the gauged WZW term yields a chiral (triangle) anomaly for the fermionic current at the edge of the Fermi surface. Fermion number is conserved though since Berry curvatures occur always in pairs with opposite (monopole) char...

Grapevine red blotch-associated virus (GRBaV) is a major threat to the wine industry in the USA. GRBaV infections (aka red blotch disease) compromise crop yield and berry chemical composition, affecting the flavor and aroma properties of must and wine. In this study, we combined genome-wide transcriptional profiling with targeted metabolite analyses and biochemical assays to characterize the im...

Grapevine cluster compactness has a clear impact on fruit quality and health status, as clusters with greater compactness are more susceptible to pests and diseases and ripen more asynchronously. Different parameters related to inflorescence and cluster architecture (length, width, branching, etc.), fruitfulness (number of berries, number of seeds) and berry size (length, width) contribute to t...