<p>Företag som bedriver handel via nätet på sajter som inriktar sig mot privatpersoner satsar idag mycket på att utvecklas för att på bästa sätt stödja kunden mot sitt mål. Dock har företag som inriktar sig mot andra företag (B2B-business to business) inte hängt med i samma utsträckning. Den här rapporten syftade till att undersöka hur man kan arbeta för att ta fram ett designförslag på en B2B-sajt, närmare bestämt vilka metoder och teorier man kan dra nytta av. Metoder och teorier som har använts är effektkartläggning, Coopers målinriktade designmetod, Nielsens designprinciper för användbarhet och information foraging. Arbetet resulterade i en prototyp kring vilken en diskussion fördes följt av slutsatsen att valet av metoder och teorier tycks vara en lämplig kombination vid utveckling av B2B-sajter men att ytterligare forskning krävs för att skapa en enhetlig metod.</p>

L'anxiété est un symptôme prédominant au cours des périodes initiales de sevrage à la cocaïne et est considéré comme un facteur important de rechute. Le but de cette étude était de caractériser les dysfonctionnements cérébraux qui pourraient contribuer à l'expression de cet état pathologique chez le rat. Les rats sont traités avec de la cocaïne en chronique et le comportement anxieux est évalué au cours du sevrage dans différents paradigmes expérimentaux (tests du labyrinthe en croix surélevé, du confinement dans un bras ouvert surélevé et de l'enfouissement défensif). Nos résultats ont montré que le sevrage à la cocaïne induit un état anxieux élevé qui persiste pendant au moins 28 jours de sevrage. Nous avons ensuite utilisé l'immunohistochimie de Fos pour comparer les patterns d'activation cérébrale chez les rats sevrés et témoins après exposition au test de l'OA. Nos données ont montré que l'anxiété élevée des rats sevrés était accompagnée d'une altération de la réactivité des neurones glutamatergiques de la partie dorsale du cortex préfrontal médian (dCPFm) et de certaines régions sous-corticale (aires hypothalamiques latérale et antérieure et le noyau paraventriculaire du thalamus). Nous avons ensuite montré que l'inactivation pharmacologique du dCPFm avec du muscimol atténuait les comportements anxieux des rats sevrés suggérant ainsi une hyperréactivité de cette région corticale durant le traitement des informations de type anxieux. Notre étude amène des données nouvelles quant aux substrats neuronaux sous-tendant l'anxiété pathologique observée au cours du sevrage à la cocaïne et souligne l'importance du CPFm dans la régulation de cet état d'anxiété pathologique.

Dans ce travail, la réflexion sur les enjeux linguistiques (et éthiques) de la traduction s'articule à l'étude de valeurs temporelles et aspectuelles en bulgare et en français. La question de l'aspectualité en bulgare a été envisagée sous l'angle de la possibilité de ses manifestations en français. Les orientations principales de cette étude ont été guidées par la conviction du rôle fondamental de la traduction pour la compréhension des mécanismes régissant les langues. L'approche théorique a nécessité la description de paradigmes temporels : l'aoriste et le parfait en bulgare, le passé simple, l'imparfait et le passé composé en français. Un certain nombre de procédés orthonymiques ont été considérés et illustrés afin de souligner l'importance, lors de la constitution de l'écriture de la traduction, de l'expérience référentielle, et de l'omniprésence, dans l'esprit des traducteurs, d'une conception jugée correcte et naturelle de s'exprimer. La revue des notions théoriques autour du temps et de l'aspect a permis de mettre en lumière le traitement des imperfectifs secondaires, fondamental pour l'appréhension de l'aspect. Texte original et traduction attestent également de différentes visions des procès mais le choix de l'une ou de l'autre représentation ne constitue pas un obstacle à la réception sans aspérités du texte traduit. Cette divergence de représentations démontre que l'existence d'oppositions aspectuelles en bulgare est rarement prise en compte par le traducteur. L'examen du parfait a constitué une ouverture vers l'analyse de valeurs médiatives dont l'expression est, dans une langue comme le bulgare, fortement intégrée dans la morphologie verbale.

Ce travail de thèse a pour objectif d'aider à la compréhension neuropathophysiologique des troubles de l'humeur. Les nombreuses études s'intéressant à ce type de pathologie font face à un manque d'outil objectif de catégorisation de la maladie et donc à des difficultés dans le diagnostic différentiel. Les modifications neurofonctionnelles sont majoritairement basées sur deux modèles : le modèle de l'hypofrontalité, qui explique l'état dépressif par une diminution de l'activité des zones corticales frontales et une augmentation de celle des régions sous-corticales ; et le modèle de l'asymétrie interhémisphérique, intégré aux théories sur la latéralisation des émotions, qui fait du déséquilibre fonctionnel interhémisphérique (hémisphère droit plus actif que le gauche) le corrélat neurologique aux troubles de l'humeur. Malgré tous les efforts d'élimination de biais méthodologiques les chercheurs ne trouvent pas de consensus. Le but de cette recherche est de trouver des indicateurs objectifs du trouble dépressif par des techniques psychophysiques (oculométrie) et neurophysiologiques (excitabilité corticale). Nous avons donc suivi des patients recevant des traitements pharmacologiques ou des cures de stimulation magnétique transcrânienne (TMS) afin d'observer les effets de ces derniers et de voir si des déséquilibres, qu'ils soient intra- ou inter-hémisphériques, peuvent être mis en évidence et alors aider dans le choix du traitement. Nos résultats mettent en évidence la variabilité interindividuelle qui suppose que chaque patient peut présenter une pathophysiologie différente. Par ailleurs, le suivi de patients bipolaires dans les différentes phases thymiques suggère une inversion des déficits entre les phases maniaques et dépressives. Plusieurs corrélats pourraient donc engendrer une humeur dépressive et le choix d'une cure rTMS latéralisée pourrait être guidée par les modifications observées.

Neural connections in the human brain are known to be modified by experiences. Yet, little is known about the mechanism of the modification and its implications on the brain function. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what impact the spatial properties of brain tissue can have on learning and memory. In particular, we focus on the dendritic plasticity. We present a model where the tissue is represented by a two-dimensional grid and its structure is characterized by various connections between the grid cells. We provide a formal definition of the model and we prove it to be computational as strong as the Turing machine. An adaptation algorithm proposed enables the model to reflect the environmental feedback, while evolutionary algorithms are employed to search for a satisfactory architecture of the model. Implementation is provided and several experiments are driven to demonstrate the key properties of the model. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Based on the former studies, there is evidence of tinnitus being associated with performance on cognitive ability tests (for example Andersson et al. 2009, Hallam et al. 2004). The topic of my bachelor thesis was to unravel how depression, stress and anxiety connected with tinnitus symptoms are related to cognitive abilities such as verbal fluency, inhibition ability and working memory capacity. In order to fill an existing gap of knowledge, the relationship of different severity of stress caused by tinnitus symptoms as measured with Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and cognitive abilities and depression and anxiety symptoms was emphasized. The experiment group was divided into two subgroups, those with lower and higher level of perceived tinnitus severity and the differences in test scores between groups were investigated with one-way analysis of variance. As a result, significant differences between the two tinnitus patient groups were found in the level of performance in inhibition task where participants were asked to give the font color of congruent color - word pair as an answer. It was also studied whether there were correlations between perceived severity of tinnitus symptoms, depression and anxiety symptoms, working memory capacity and inhibition ability. As a result of correlation analysis, this study confirmed the connection between tinnitus symptoms and anxiety and depression symptoms found in previous studies, and a significant correlation was found between THI scores and anxiety symptoms, and THI scores and C inhibition test scores where the participant was asked to name the font color from incongruent color-word pairs. The results of this study suggest that there is a connection between the level of perceived tinnitus severity and the ability to name font color of incongruent color - word pair. The current study found no evidence about the connection between THI scores and other cognitive abilities as well as anxiety and depression symptoms, even though the THI scores correlated with both anxiety symptom scores and with the reaction times of an inhibition task where the participants were asked to point out the font color from incongruent color - word pairs.

How do air traffic controllers, or ATCos, distribute visual attention and can it vary between controllers? In this study, using primarily eye-tracking data and a couple of on-site interviews, these questions are explored. Two ATCos, with the most similar landings, had their eye-movements recorded with Tobii pro glasses 2 and further analysed by categorizing every fixation into different areas of interest during four landings. Two more ATCos were interviewed briefly during an observational visit to the control tower. The results showed that the ATCos distributed their attention fairly equally between the outside of the control tower and the inside. When attending to something outside the runway was the focus and when attention was inside the control tower the radar was usually the focus. The ATCos differed in their attention distribution by the presumably more experienced ATCo distributing their attention more outside the control tower than the presumably less experienced ATCo.  A large number of fixations were not categorized bringing the method of dividing the ATCos eye-tracking view into areas of interest into question.

Cette thèse est, au départ, une contribution indirecte au problème de la modélisation de l'acquisition des catégories phonétiques chez l'enfant. Les modèles computationnels déjà proposés n'ont encore jamais été testés de manière systématique pour déterminer s'ils sont réellement à même de rendre compte d'une partie conséquente des observations empiriques disponibles. Nous développons une approche permettant une évaluation systématique des modèles sur la base de Mesures de Discriminabilité ABX. Nous montrons l'intérêt de notre approche en l'appliquant à deux problèmes reliés: la traitement des catégories phonétiques à la naissance et à l'âge adulte. La prochaine étape sera bien sûr d'appliquer notre approche aux modèles d'acquisition des catégories phonétiques.L'intérêt des Mesures de Discriminabilité ABX ne se restreint pas au cas particulier de l'évaluation des modèles de traitement des catégories phonétiques. Elle sont utiles dans l'étude de signaux autre que la parole et de catégories autres que les catégories phonétiques, ainsi que dans le cadre de champs disciplinaires autres que les sciences cognitives, comme l'ingénierie, l'exploration des données ou l'intelligence artificielle par exemple. Nous le justifions en étudiant les propriétés de ces mesures dans un cadre abstrait général et en présentant trois grandes familles d'applications: l'évaluation de la capacité de systèmes opérant en l'absence de supervision explicite à représenter une structure catégorielle; la formulation de modèles computationnels simples du comportement dans des tâches de discrimination; la définition de mesures descriptives pour des représentations associées à des données catégorielles. / This thesis constitutes an indirect contribution to the problem of modeling phonetic category acquisition in infancy. Some specific computational models of phonetic category acquisition have been proposed, but they were never tested extensively nor compared quantitatively to see whether they were really able to account for a sizable portion of the available empirical observations. In this thesis, we introduce ABX-Discriminability Measures and we develop a methodology based on these measures that allows to perform such a systematic evaluation. We demonstrate the interest of our framework by applying it to the evaluation of models for two related problems: phonetic category processing at birth and in adulthood. The next step, applying our framework to models of phonetic category acquisition, is left for future work.The interest of ABX-Discriminability Measures is not restricted to the particular problem of evaluating models of phonetic category processing in humans. We argue that their interest generalizes to the study of other signals than speech and other category structures than phonetic categories, as well as to other research fields than cognitive science, like low-resource engineering, data mining and artificial intelligence for example. To make this point, we study the properties of these measures in a general abstract framework and we detail the rationale for three broad family of potential applications: evaluating systems operating without explicit supervision in their ability to represent a category structure; providing simple computational models of behavior in discrimination tasks; providing descriptive measurements for representations of categorical data.

Synchronization research reveals that those who are able to coordinate behavior in time are more likely to feel positively towards one another. Unlike previous research that has taken a linear approach, I examine the dynamical nature of individuals' emotional coordination by investigating the overlap in their moment-to-moment emotional responses to positive and negative events in the form of film clips. By using the mouse program, I develop a new relationship paradigm and find that this measure is able to capture the nuances of emotional responses, and, more importantly, it is able to distinguish between relationship partners versus pairs of strangers. However, I am unable to determine that emotional coordination, as determined by smaller differences in mouse program data between partners, is related to relationship quality, as measured by their level of liking and loving (for romantic partners only) towards each other and their future expectancy of the relationship. / by Maureen Jane Leong-Kee. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / This dissertation takes up Maurice Merleau-Ponty's unfinished project of developing an ontology of nature whose concepts are drawn from the phenomenon of life, rather than from human techne. I argue that the question of life has been hopelessly obscured by the collapse, in the Modern era, of the distinction between nature and artifice. We cannot hope to understand the difference between life and non-life until we understand the difference between the living body and the machine. Merleau-Ponty's constant aim was to show that the living body is not a blind mechanism, and that the body has its own endogenous sense which is not projected onto it by a disembodied consciousness. Central to these efforts were the phenomena of learning and development, and the concept of form or Gestalt. Development is what distinguishes the living body, which is an open-ended process of becoming, from the machine, whose possibilities are determined in advance by its creator. In order to conceptualize the phenomenon of development, Merleau-Ponty appropriated from psychology the concept of form (Gestalt): a dynamic, self-organizing whole that cannot be decomposed into independent parts. Where the conception of nature as mechanism implies that everything is determined in advance, Merleau-Ponty's conception of nature as Gestalt allows for the genesis of genuinely new phenomena through nature's own self- organizing movement. We would thus be able to understand the genesis of sense in nature as a process of morphogenesis--the genesis of form. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to clarify the ontological status of form. He lacked the conceptual resources to explain form in its own terms, rather than by contrast with the decomposable wholes of human artifice. This dissertation attempts to locate these conceptual resources in the science of complexity that has emerged since Merleau- Ponty's death, and whose descriptions of complex systems are uncannily anticipated in Merleau-Ponty's writings. I take from this new science the conception of form as asymmetry or difference, and of morphogenesis as symmetry-breaking or self-differentiation. In order to investigate how meaning emerges out of form, I turn to recent work in biology and psychology that applies the concept of symmetry-breaking to the phenomena of anatomical growth and motor development. By studying the development of the living body and its behavior, I show how nature articulates itself into perceiver and perceived. In the movement of the living body, form folds back upon itself, giving rise to a new kind of meaning: a pre-reflective, motor significance that is neither mechanism nor mental representation. In Chapter One, I distinguish the living body from a machine or artifact by distinguishing between manufacturing and growth. This distinction, which seemed obvious to the Ancients, has been obscured by Modern science's pivotal decision to treat nature as if it were a product of human artifice. This decision has committed us to an atomistic ontology, which takes nature to be a synthetic whole composed of mutually indifferent parts. However, this ontology faces a basic problem, which I call the problem of form: how to explain the synthesis of indifferent atoms into the complex, harmonious wholes we observe in nature, without appealing to an intelligent designer. Nowhere is this problem more acute than in the phenomenon of anatomical development or embryogenesis. I argue that biology has been unable to explain this phenomenon in mechanical or atomistic terms: the Neo-Darwinist view of the living body as a synthetic whole determined in advance by a genetic blueprint or program has succeeded not by explaining development, but rather by ignoring it. In Chapter Two, I argue that the problem of form--and of living form in particular--can only be resolved by abandoning our atomistic ontology, and with it our synthetic understanding of form as a shape imposed on an indifferent material. Recent developments in the science of complexity have yielded a new definition of form as asymmetry or difference. On this view, the genesis of form in nature is not the synthesis of wholes out of pre-existing parts, but the self-differentiation of wholes into parts through symmetry-breaking. In order to understand how natural wholes become less symmetrical over time, I introduce three further concepts from the science of complexity: nonlinearity, stability, and instability. With these concepts in hand, I return to the problem of embryogenesis, in order to show how complex living forms can develop reliably and robustly without being determined in advance by a design or program. In Chapter Three, I turn from anatomical development to the development of behavior, in order to see how the genesis of form becomes a genesis of sense. I begin by criticizing three mechanistic theories of behavior--Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Connectionism--which suffer from the same problem of form that plagues mechanistic theories of anatomical development. Behavior grows like an organ: by symmetry-breaking, not by synthesis. Learning is not a matter of association, but of differentiation: the perception of increasingly subtle asymmetries in the body's environment through increasingly asymmetrical movements. It is the world that teaches the organism how to move--but a world that is only revealed to the organism by its own movements. Thus the living body and its world grow together dialectically, each driving the other to become more determinate through its own increasing determinacy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.