M.Tech. (Chiropractic) / Purpose: Movement time is the time it takes an individual to perform an actual task. A faster and better movement can be invaluable in athletes using their upper limb. This study aims to see the immediate effect of a chiropractic adjustment on the segments innervating the upper limb, 05 to Ti spinal levels, to movement time in the upper limb, in athletes. Method: This study was a comparative study and consisted of two groups of fifteen. The participants were between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, with a half male to female ratio. The potential participants were examined and accepted according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The method of treatment administered to each participant was determined by group allocation. Group 1 received chiropractic adjustments to the segments innervating upper limb (C5-T1). Group 2 was the control group and did not receive treatment, only a rest period of ten minutes was given in between tests. Objective data findings were based on the above treatment protocols. Procedure: Treatment consisted of six treatment consultations with an additional follow up consultation over a three week period, with two consultations being performed per week interval. Objective data readings were taken at the beginning of the first, fourth and seventh consultations. Objective data was collected by the tapping task test and the movement time evaluator program. Analysis of collected data was performed by a statistician. The chiropractic adjustments used were based on restrictions identified during motion palpation and were applied on all the consultations. Results: Clinically significant results were found in group i, the treatment group. Showing a decrease in overall movement time, especially between visit i and visit 4, but also between visit 4 and visit 7. Group 2, the control group, showed a decrease in movement time before and after visit i, but this was only due to learning effect of performing the test for the second time. No statistical significance was found between visit 1 and visit 4 or visit 4 and visit 7.

Notre travail de thèse s'est attaché à comprendre les mécanismes mis en jeu par une expérience d'adaptation visuomanuelle inspirée de l'adaptation saccadique, qui a été décrite par [Magescas 2006a]. Le premier chapitre visait à montrer que le paradigme de [Magescas 2006a] induisait peu ou pas d'effets sensoriels. Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous nous sommes intéressés au processus exact de généralisation de l'adaptation au niveau de la seule articulation du coude. Nos résultats nous permettent d'avancer l'idée que le paradigme étudié induisait une modification spécifique du gain moteur pour le groupe de muscles extenseurs du coude. Le troisième chapitre présente le développement de méthodes d'enregistrement de la chaîne articulaire du membre supérieur. Cette méthodologie a permis une comparaison précise entre des hypothèses de généralisation de l'adaptation dans l'espace des tâches et dans l'espace articulaire. Dans un quatrième chapitre, suivant une démarche exploratoire, nous avons imaginé deux protocoles de transposition de l'expérience de [Magescas 2006a], afin d'élargir nos possibilités pour une future étude sur des patients ayant un déficit moteur. A l'issue de ce travail, nous disposons à la fois : de moyens méthodologiques pour l'enregistrement et la modélisation de la chaîne articulaire du membre supérieur ; d'un modèle théorique du fonctionnement de l'adaptation motrice étudiée ; et d'un protocole d'adaptation de la saisie, mieux adapté à la clinique que le protocole d'adaptation du pointage. / We investigated the underlying mechanisms of an visuomanual adaptation experiment mimicking the well-known saccadic adaptation paradigm, described by [Magescas 2006a]. The first chapter aims at giving evidence that the [Magescas 2006a]'s paradigm induced little if any perceptual effects, which means it implicated the only phase of motor commands generation. The second chapter deals with the generalization process of adaptation at the level of one joint (the elbow). Our results suggest that the studied paradigm induced a focused change of the motor gain of the group of elbow extensor muscles. The third chapter details the development of methods to record the arm joint configuration. Such a methodology allowed to precisely compared the hypothesis of generalisation of adaptation in task space and in joint space. In chapter 4, following an explorative approach, we have designed two protocols transposing the [Magescas 2006a]'s experiment, in order to widen our ressources for a future research on patients with motor deficit. At the end of the present work, we have : methodological means of recording and of modeling the joint chain of the arm ; a theoretical model of the studied motor adaptation ; and a new protocol of adaptation of grasping, which is more convenient than adaptation of pointing for clinical purposes.

L'analyse des structures curvilignes en 3 dimensions est un problème difficile en analyse d'images. En effet, ces structures sont fines, facilement corrompues par le bruit et présentent une géométrie complexe. Depuis plusieurs années, de nombreuses méthodes spécialement dédiées au traitement d'images contenant des structures curvilignes ont vu le jour. Ces méthodes concernent diverses applications en science des matériaux, télédétection ou encore en imagerie médicale. Malgré cela, l'analyse des structures curvilignes demeure une tâche complexe.Dans cette présentation nous parlerons de la caractérisation des structures curvilignes pour l'analyse d'images. Nous présenterons en premier lieu une nouvelle méthode appelée RORPO, à partir de laquelle deux caractéristiques peuvent être calculées. La première est une caractéristique d'intensité, qui préserve l'intensité des structures curvilignes tout en réduisant celle des autres structures. La deuxième est une caractéristique de direction, qui fournit en chaque point d'une image, la direction d'une structure curviligne potentielle.RORPO, contrairement à la plupart des méthodes de la littérature, est une méthode non locale, non linéaire et mieux adaptées à l'anisotropie intrinsèque des structures curvilignes. Cette méthode repose sur une notion récente de Morphologie Mathématique: les opérateurs par chemins.RORPO peut directement servir au filtrage d'images contenant des structures curvilignes, afin de spécifiquement les préserver, mais aussi de réduire le bruit. Mais les deux caractéristiques de RORPO peuvent aussi être utilisées comme information a priori sur les structure curvilignes, afin d'être intégrées dans une méthode plus complexe d'analyse d'image.Dans un deuxième temps, nous présenterons ainsi un terme de régularisation destiné à la segmentation variationnelle, utilisant les deux caractéristiques de RORPO.L'information apportée par ces deux caractéristiques permet de régulariser les structures curvilignes seulement dans la direction de leur axe principal. De cette manière, ces structures sont mieux préservées, et certaines structures curvilignes déconnectées par le bruit peuvent aussi être reconnectées.Des résultats en 2D et 3D de ces méthodes seront enfin présentées sur des images de vaisseaux sanguins provenant de diverses modalités / The analysis of curvilinear structures in 3D images is a complex and challenging task. Curvilinear structures are thin, easily corrupted by noise and present a complex geometry. Despite the numerous applications in material sciences, remote sensing and medical imaging and the large number of dedicated methods developed the last few years, the detection of such structures remains a difficult problem.In this thesis, we work on the characterization of curvilinear structures. We first propose a new framework called RORPO, to characterize such structures through two features: an intensity feature which preserves the intensity of curvilinear structures while decreasing the intensity of other structures, and a directional feature providing at each point, the direction of the curvilinear structure.RORPO, unlike classic other state of the art methods, is non-local and non-linear, which are desirable properties adapted to the intrinsic anisotropy of curvilinear structures. RORPO is based on recent advances in mathematical morphology: the path operators.We provide a full description of the structural and algorithmic details of RORPO, and we also conduct a quantitative comparative study of our features with three popular curvilinear structure analysis filters: the Frangi Vesselness, the Optimally Oriented Flux, and the Hybrid Diffusion with Continuous Switch.Besides the straightforward filtering application, both RORPO features are designed to be used as prior information to characterize curvilinear structures. We propose a regularization term for variational segmentation which embed these features. Classic regularization terms are not adapted to curvilinear structures and usually lead to the loss of most of the low-contrasted ones. We propose to only regularize curvilinear structures along their main axis thanks to both RORPO features. This directional regularization better preserves curvilinear structures but also reconnect parts of these structures which may have been disconnected by noise.We present results of the segmentation of retinal images with the Chan et al. model either with the classic total variation or our directional regularization term. This confirm that our regularization term is better suited for images with curvilinear structures

Artificial neural networks have shown great potential and have attracted much research interest. One problem faced when simulating such networks is speed. As the number of neurons increases, the time to simulate and train a network increases dramatically. This makes it difficult to simulate and train a large-scale network system without the support of a high-performance computer system. The solution we present is a "real" parallel system - using a parallel machine to simulate neural networks which are intrinsically parallel applications. SpiNNaker is a scalable massively-parallel computing system under development with the aim of building a general-purpose platform for the parallel simulation of large-scale neural systems. This research investigates how to model large-scale neural networks efficiently on such a parallel machine. While providing increased overall computational power, a parallel architecture introduces a new problem - the increased communication reduces the speedup gains. Modeling schemes, which take into account communication, processing, and storage requirements, are investigated to solve this problem. Since modeling schemes are application-dependent, two different types of neural network are examined - spiking neural networks with spike-time dependent plasticity, and the parallel distributed processing model with the backpropagation learning rule. Different modeling schemes are developed and evaluated for the two types of neural network. The research shows the feasibility of the approach as well as the performance of SpiNNaker as a general-purpose platform for the simulation of neural networks. The linear scalability shown in this architecture provides a path to the further development of parallel solutions for the simulation of extremely large-scale neural networks.

The thesis focuses on the transfer pricing questions in the Czech companies. The theoretical part concerns the legislative background, transfer pricing determination methodology and related necessary documentation. The practical part contains the performed questionnaire survey targeted at transfer pricing methods, binding consideration, documentation, and experience with the tax search. A specific manufacturing company is then used to illustrate the manner of transfer pricing determination.

The ability to make decisions is a crucial ability of many autonomous systems. In many scenarios the consequence of a decision is unknown and often stochastic. The same decision may lead to a different outcome every time it is taken. An agent that can learn to make decisions based purely on its past experience needs less tuning and is likely more robust. An agent must often balance between learning the payoff of actions by exploring, and exploiting the knowledge they currently have. The multi-armed bandit problem exhibits such an exploration-exploitation dilemma. Thompson Sampling is a strategy for the problem, first proposed in 1933. In the last several years there has been renewed interest in it, with the emergence of strong empirical and theoretical justification for its use. This thesis seeks to take advantage of the benefits of Thompson Sampling while applying it to other decision-making models. In doing so we propose different algorithms for these scenarios. Firstly we explore a switching multi-armed bandit problem. In real applications the most appropriate decision to take often changes over time. We show that an agent assuming switching is often robust to many types of changing environment. Secondly we consider the best arm identification problem. Unlike the multi-armed bandit problem, where an agent wants to increase reward over the entire period of decision making, the best arm identification is concerned in increasing the reward gained by a final decision. This thesis argues that both problems can be tackled effectively using Thompson Sampling based approaches and provides empirical evidence to support this claim.

This study examines seasonal changes in the relationship between a test organism and changes in the hydrographic and chemical properties of Indian Arm, a coastal fjord. There is a close relationship between changes in the hydrographic properties of the water and changes in the metal complexing ability of water in the inlet, as determined with the test organism. The relationship between the organism and the availability of metals changes with time; the complexing ability of natural water increases at the time of the major intrusion of water from the Strait of Georgia into Indian Arm, and then decreases. The addition of a variety of metals under experimental conditions affects the relationship between the organism and the complexing ability of the water. Additional studies examine the effect of material extracted from sediment samples on the toxic effect of copper enrichment. The ability of the extracted material to reduce the toxic effect changes and is related to the seasonal productivity in the surface waters of the inlet. / Science, Faculty of / Zoology, Department of / Graduate

Continuum manipulators which are robot limbs inspired by trunks, snakes, and tentacles, represent a promising field in robotic manipulation research. They are well known for their compliance, as they can conform to the shape of objects they interact with. Furthermore, they also benefit from improved dexterity and reduced weight compared to traditional rigid manipulators. The current state of the art continuum robots typically consists of a bulky pneumatic or tendon-driven actuation system at the base, hindering their scalability. Additionally, they tend to sag due to their own weight and are weak in the torsional direction, limiting their performance under external load. This work presents an origami-inspired cable-driven continuum manipulator module that offers low-cost, light-weight, and is inherently safe for human-robot interaction. This dissertation includes contributions in the design of the modular and torsionally strong continuum robot, the motion planning and control of the system, and finally the embedded sensing to close the loop providing robust feedback.

This study analyzed the relationships present between grip strength, wrist flexion, arm length, partial and total, and throwing velocity. Thirty-one subjects were tested to obtain the data on these variables. A multiple linear regression equation produced a significant F ratio for the relationship between grip strength and throwing velocity. Neither wrist flexion nor arm length obtained a significant F ratio to throwing velocity. A stepwise multiple regression equation again displayed a significant F ratio for grip strength and throwing velocity. Wrist flexion and arm length did not produce a significant F ratio for their relationships to throwing velocity. This study concludes that of the variables tested, only grip strength displayed a significant relationship to throwing velocity. This study indicates that throwing velocity can be predicted at a moderate level from the measurement of grip strength.

Robot manipulators are getting more and more attention nowadays. This is due to their high precision and the speed they provide while executing their tasks. The desires for such high standards are increasing exponentially due to the extended workspace that manipulators provide. Therefore, a safe controller is needed to make it possible for the robot to work alongside people considering the safety precautions. These safety preconditions are widely spread, even when the needs for better human-friendly robots are rising. This thesis will introduce and explain a way to model a 6-axis robot by using its dynamical properties as well as the development of a joint space inverse dynamic controller. The controller will be tested in various different ways. Firstly by adding noise to the measured data. Then testing the robustness of the control model, while the simulated model includes properties different from those used for the controller itself. The different properties would for example be payloads and the inertia of the links. Thereafter, evaluating the precision of a followed path that is given by an operational space trajectory. The outcome of these experiments show promising results. The results show that the controller is able to manage a noise in both the joint angle and joint velocity. It also shows that an error in the payload data will give a small error in the joint angles, sequentially that gives an acceptable error for the end-effector in the operational space. Furthermore, the controller manages to keep the maximum errorin the joint angle low, while it is following a trajectory in the operational space.