Cette recherche prend pour objet d’étude la conception stoïcienne de la responsabilité, éclairée par la thématique contemporaine de l’engagement. Les différents niveaux du discours – ontologique, physique, psychologique, moral et politique – réinterrogent également, par leur articulation problématique, l’unité des stoïciens. On résume traditionnellement leur fatalisme à un «compatibilisme», dans la mesure où ils conjuguaient liberté et déterminisme. Cette compatibilité est au principe même de la notion de responsabilité, dont il s’agit de comprendre comment, de la physique à la morale, mais aussi, du stoïcisme hellénistique au stoïcien impérial, elle reçoit un traitement autant inédit qu’équivoque. On s’interrogera ainsi sur l’articulation du concept de «cause» (αἴτιον) avec celui de «ἐφ' ἡμῖν» (ce qui dépend de nous), concepts qui mettent en jeu la problématique de l’imputation – où il s’agit de fonder la responsabilité humaine – dans son lien avec celle de l’assomption, où il s’agit de la reprendre à son propre compte en accomplissant son rôle et ses devoirs. Ces deux versants de la responsabilité mobilisent toutes les branches du système stoïcien, et leur caractère organique. On montre que la responsabilité reçoit une extension maximale, parce que son analyse est synthétique. Le passage de la responsivité ontologique à l’assomption morale, qui ouvre, de Chrysippe à Épictète et Marc Aurèle, à une éthique de la responsabilité et à un engagement philosophique, qui fait fond sur l’idée d’acceptation et de renversement, constituera le point de mire de notre questionnement. / This research studies the Stoic conception of responsibility, informed by the contemporary theme of commitment. Different levels of the discourse - ontological, physical, psychological, moral and political - will also question anew, by their problematic articulation, the unity of the Stoics. Traditionally, their fatalism is summarized by a "compatibilism", insofar as they associate freedom and determinism. This compatibility is at the very principle of the concept of responsibility, which we should understand by how it receives a treatment as unique as equivocal, from its physics to its morals, but also from the Hellenistic to the Imperial stoicism. We will thus wonder about the articulation of the concept of "cause" (αἴτιον) with that of "ἐφ' ἡμῖν" (that which is up to us), concepts that involve the issues of attribution - where it comes to build up human responsibility - and assumption, where it comes to seize it again by performing one's role and duties. Those both sides of responsibility mobilize all the branches of the Stoic system and their organic character. We show that responsibility receives a maximal extension, because its analysis is synthetic. The shift from ontological responsiveness to moral assumption that leads, from Chrysippus to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, towards an ethics of the responsibility and a philosophical commitment, which builds on the idea of acceptance and overthrow, will be the focus of our inquiry.

During the beginning of the cinema media era around the turn of 20th century, a debate prevailed in Sweden about the film’s harmful and negative moral impact on children and young people. This study aims to investigate the debaters’ knowledge claims regarding a preview of a publicly shown film and if it is related to their morality. The following questions were asked: 1. What knowledge claims are made in connection with the need for prior control over the film that is shown in public? 2. What is presented as the basis for the legitimacy of these knowledge claims? 3. How do these knowledge claims change during its path to legal text? 4. What was the relationship between the presented knowledge claims and a moral perception prevailing among the debaters? A debate paper, a parliamentary motion from 1909 and the public inquiry before the decision to create the Swedish Agency of Movie Censors were analysed with argumentation analysis and thematic analysis with a perspective of history of knowledge. This study points at various aspects such as medical, psychological, social structure and moral arguments, which were put forward as arguments for a regulation of the new film medium. The knowledge claims were justified by professional expertise, general knowledge, experiences from other countries and the debaters’ prior knowledge of the subject. A strong fear of ruining a good existing moral conception that exists in the growing generation emerges. The analysis describes a change in knowledge claims: the moral arguments diminish along the way towards the legal text. Furthermore, the study points at the necessity for continued research to increase the understanding of how legitimacy of knowledge is created by an influential group and then passed on.

<p>This dissertation investigates whether dual credit students' academic performance in subsequent university courses is comparable to that of non-dual-credit students. The study uses data from a Midwest regional public university over a ten-year period and employs propensity score matching and proportional odds ordinal logistic regression to create balanced comparison groups and analyze the results. The findings indicate that students who completed the prerequisite course as dual credit have similar grades in subsequent university courses as those who completed the prerequisite course as a university student. The study also identifies significant predictors of academic performance in subsequent university courses, such as sex, historically underserved groups status, high school GPA, and course subject, regardless of dual credit status. However, first-generation status, SAT scores, and the time between courses are not statistically significant predictors. These results suggest that dual credit students are as prepared for subsequent university courses as non-dual-credit students. Nevertheless, academic outcomes differ based on certain factors, which should be considered when designing student success initiatives and allocating resources.</p>

An assessment of the validity of idealizing a concrete diaphragm as rigid was performed through the modal analysis of three existing buildings. Modal analysis was performed both by physical experimentation and computational analysis. Experimental determination of the mode shapes shows that two of the three buildings’ diaphragms exhibited flexible behavior. The experimental results were compared to computational analysis results and were shown to be similar, confirming that that the two building diaphragms are not rigid. As a standard, diaphragms with aspect ratios less than three are permitted to be idealized as rigid per ASCE 7-05. To determine the effect of the rigid diaphragm idealization, the design forces and roof deflections for each building were determined from the computational model through a spectral analysis for both a model with rigid diaphragms and a model with semi-rigid diaphragms. It was found that the design seismic demands for the two buildings with flexible diaphragms were higher when modeled with semi-rigid diaphragms than with rigid diaphragms. The conclusion is made that idealizing a concrete diaphragm as rigid solely based on its aspect ratio may result in an unconservative estimate of the seismic demands on a building.

A robot is proficient if its performance for its task(s) satisfies a specific standard. While the design of autonomous robots often emphasizes such proficiency, another important attribute of autonomous robot systems is their ability to evaluate their own proficiency. A robot should be able to conduct proficiency self-assessment (PSA), i.e. assess how well it can perform a task before, during, and after it has attempted the task. We propose the assumption-alignment tracking (AAT) method, which provides time-indexed assessments of the veracity of robot generators' assumptions, for designing autonomous robots that can effectively evaluate their own performance. AAT can be considered as a general framework for using robot sensory data to extract useful features, which are then used to build data-driven PSA models. We develop various AAT-based data-driven approaches to PSA from different perspectives. First, we use AAT for estimating robot performance. AAT features encode how the robot's current running condition varies from the normal condition, which correlates with the deviation level between the robot's current performance and normal performance. We use the k-nearest neighbor algorithm to model that correlation. Second, AAT features are used for anomaly detection. We treat anomaly detection as a one-class classification problem where only data from the robot operating in normal conditions are used in training, decreasing the burden on acquiring data in various abnormal conditions. The cluster boundary of data points from normal conditions, which serves as the decision boundary between normal and abnormal conditions, can be identified by mainstream one-class classification algorithms. Third, we improve PSA models that predict robot success/failure by introducing meta-PSA models that assess the correctness of PSA models. The probability that a PSA model's prediction is correct is conditioned on four features: 1) the mean distance from a test sample to its nearest neighbors in the training set; 2) the predicted probability of success made by the PSA model; 3) the ratio between the robot's current performance and its performance standard; and 4) the percentage of the task the robot has already completed. Meta-PSA models trained on the four features using a Random Forest algorithm improve PSA models with respect to both discriminability and calibration. Finally, we explore how AAT can be used to generate a new type of explanation of robot behavior/policy from the perspective of a robot's proficiency. AAT provides three pieces of information for explanation generation: (1) veracity assessment of the assumptions on which the robot's generators rely; (2) proficiency assessment measured by the probability that the robot will successfully accomplish its task; and (3) counterfactual proficiency assessment computed with the veracity of some assumptions varied hypothetically. The information provided by AAT fits the situation awareness-based framework for explainable artificial intelligence. The efficacy of AAT is comprehensively evaluated using robot systems with a variety of robot types, generators, hardware, and tasks, including a simulated robot navigating in a maze-based (discrete time) Markov chain environment, a simulated robot navigating in a continuous environment, and both a simulated and a real-world robot arranging blocks of different shapes and colors in a specific order on a table.

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The general trend of efficiency increase, weight and noise reduction has derived in the design of more slender, loaded, and 3D shaped blades. This has a significant impact on the stability of fan, and low pressure turbine blades, which are more prone to aeroelastic phenomena such as flutter. The flutter phenomenon is a self-excited, self-sustained unstable vibration produced by the interaction of flow and structure. These working conditions will induce either blade overload, or High Cycle Fatigue (HCF) produced by Limited Cycle Oscillation (LCO). The main objectives of the present work are on the investigation of the aeroelastic properties of a high-lift low-pressure in the light of the local flow features present in such profiles, in nominal and extreme off-design conditions both in high and low subsonic Mach number, for three dif-ferent rigid body modes. In addition, the validity of the linearity assump-tion of the influence coefficient technique has also been investigated, in order to expand the understanding of the physical limits of this assumption. This work has been designed as experimental investigation in the influence coefficient domain focused on a high-lift low-pressure turbine designed by ITP within the framework of the European FP7 project FU-TURE. These experiments have been carried out in the Aeroelastic test rig (AETR), at KTH Stockholm, which consist of an instrumented annular sector cascade with a single oscillating blade. The results acquired have been supported by numerical results provided by a non-propietary commercial software package (ANSYS CFX). The results suggest that the typical three-dimensional effects associated secondary flow features and tip leakage flows have a significant influence on the aeroelastic performance and the cascade stability. However the major influence appears as a consequence of the separation surface on the pressure side which appears at extreme off-design operating conditions. The contribution to stability of this local feature depend on the oscillation mode showing for the axial and torsion mode a neutral stability contribution, which is directly associated with the geometrical properties of the cascade. However, on the circumferential mode this separation surface has a stabilizing effect much more independent of the blade geometry. The study of the linearity assumption of the influence coefficient domain has revealed, that an apparent linear relation between the integrated unsteady response and the vibrational amplitude, does not necessary imply that the local unsteady response is linear with respect to the oscillation amplitude. The results also suggest that the validity of the linearity as-sumption is more sensitive to high oscillation amplitudes at high Mach conditions. / <p>QC 20140609</p>

One major challenge in representing the state of the atmosphere through weather forecast models, is the parametrization of sub-grid clouds. At every vertical column of grid cells within a weather forecast model, the fractional cloud cover is assumed to overlap according to a prescribed Cloud Overlap Assumption (COA). Since the total cloud cover is used in radiation schemes, the choice of COA affects e.g. radiative fluxes. High-quality weather forecasts is important for many aspects of the society, thus, the analysis of cloud parametrizations is significant. In this study, COAs for the HIRLAM ALADIN Research on mesoscale Modelling for NWP In Euromed (HARMONIE) - Application of Research to Operations at Mesoscale (AROME) model were investigated for two time-periods. Moreover, validation methods of cloud cover for HARMONIE-AROME were analyzed due to uncertainties in cloud observations. Both satellite data derived from geostationary Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite and synoptic ground based observations were used to validate cloud cover in this project. It was found that HARMONIE-AROME underestimates the cloud cover during summer. Therefore, the random (RAN) COA is the preferred COA to use during time periods of mainly convective cloud processes. During the tested winter period, which is assumed to have most clouds of the stratiform type, the results regarding optimal COA were not certain. However, it was concluded that HARMONIE-AROME overestimates the cloud cover during winter, for in which case the maximum-random (MRN) COA is recommended to use. The comparative analysis of cloud cover as obtained from the COAs against observed cloud cover, was shown sensitive to the methods used to the observational data. Using a model grid of 25 km instead of 2.5 km when comparing synoptic observations to modelled cloud cover, the errors were reduced. When using binary satellite data, it was concluded that a 5x5 smoothing algorithm was the most appropriate to use since this averaging of several pixels are sufficient to represent sub-grid clouds.

Distance sampling is one of the most commonly used methods for estimating density and abundance. Conventional methods are based on the distances of detected animals from the center of point transects or the center line of line transects. These distances are used to model a detection function: the probability of detecting an animal, given its distance from the line or point. The probability of detecting an animal in the covered area is given by the mean value of the detection function with respect to the available distances to be detected. Given this probability, a Horvitz-Thompson- like estimator of abundance for the covered area follows, hence using a model-based framework. Inferences for the wider survey region are justified using the survey design. Conventional distance sampling methods are based on a set of assumptions. In this thesis I present results that extend distance sampling on two fronts. Firstly, estimators are derived for situations in which there is measurement error in the distances. These estimators use information about the measurement error in two ways: (1) a biased estimator based on the contaminated distances is multiplied by an appropriate correction factor, which is a function of the errors (PDF approach), and (2) cast into a likelihood framework that allows parameter estimation in the presence of measurement error (likelihood approach). Secondly, methods are developed that relax the conventional assumption that the distribution of animals is independent of distance from the lines or points (usually guaranteed by appropriate survey design). In particular, the new methods deal with the case where animal density gradients are caused by the use of non-random sampler allocation, for example transects placed along linear features such as roads or streams. This is dealt with separately for line and point transects, and at a later stage an approach for combining the two is presented. A considerable number of simulations and example analysis illustrate the performance of the proposed methods.

O modelo semiparamétrico de Cox é frequentemente utilizado na modelagem de dados de sobrevivência, pois é um modelo muito flexível e permite avaliar o efeito das covariáveis sobre a taxa de falha. Uma das principais vantagens é a fácil interpretação, de modo que a razão de riscos de dois indivíduos não varia ao longo do tempo. No entanto, em algumas situações a proporcionalidade dos riscos para uma dada covariável pode não ser válida e, este caso, uma abordagem que não dependa de tal suposição é necessária. Nesta tese, propomos um modelo tipo Cox em que o efeito da covariável e a função de risco basal são representadas via bases de Fourier e ondaletas de Haar clássicas e deformadas. Propomos também um procedimento de predição da função de sobrevivência para um paciente específico. Estudos de simulações e aplicações a dados reais sugerem que nosso método pode ser uma ferramenta valiosa em situações práticas em que o efeito da covariável é dependente do tempo. Por meio destes estudos, fazemos comparações entre as duas abordagens propostas, e comparações com outra já conhecida na literatura, onde verificamos resultados satisfatórios. / The semiparametric Cox model is often considered when modeling survival data. It is very flexible, allowing for the evaluation of covariates effects. One of its main advantages is the easy of interpretation, as long as the rate of the hazards for two individuals does not vary over time. However, this proportionality of the hazards may not be true in some practical situations and, in this case, an approach not relying on such assumption is needed. In this thesis we propose a Cox-type model that allows for time-varying covariate effects, for which the baseline hazard is based on Fourier series and wavelets on a time-frequency representation. We derive a prediction method for the survival of future patients with any specific set of covariates. Simulations and an application to a real data set suggest that our method may be a valuable tool to model data in practical situations where covariate effects vary over time. Through these studies, we make comparisons between the two approaches proposed here and comparisons with other already known in the literature, where we verify satisfactory results.