La maladie d’Alzheimer (AD) est la principale cause de démence neurodégénérative, caractérisée à 95% par des formes tardives (LOAD) qui présentent des troubles mnésiques et progressent lentement. Cependant, environ 5% des patients atteints d’AD présentent une forme précoce de la maladie (EOAD) débutant avant 65 ans. Bien que le substratum lésionnel soit identique à la LOAD, l’EOAD est caractérisée par une plus grande sévérité des dépôts de plaques amyloïdes, des enchevêtrements neurofibrillaires et de l’atrophie cérébrale. De plus, l’EOAD est plus hétérogène que la LOAD, car même si la majorité des troubles sont mnésiques il existe une proportion importante de formes atypiques affectées par des troubles du langage, visuospatiaux ou exécutifs. Bien que de nombreuses études en imagerie TEP 18F-FDG aient permis de caractériser métaboliquement l’EOAD par rapport à la LOAD ou à un groupe de contrôles sains, très peu différentiaient pas les formes typiques (mnésiques) des formes atypiques. Dans ce travail de thèse, nous avons examiné les données d’imagerie TEP 18F-FDG, complémentées par l’IRM structurelle, afin d’améliorer la caractérisation et la compréhension des formes typiques et atypiques d’EOAD. Suite à un premier travail d’harmonisation des reconstructions TEP 18F-FDG entre deux machines GE et Siemens ayant toutes deux servies à l’acquisition des données patients, notre second objectif a été d’étudier à l’inclusion sur le cerveau entier les patterns hypométaboliques caractéristiques des différentes formes d’EOAD et leurs corrélations potentielles avec la performance neuropsychologique. Cette étude a montré que chaque forme clinique d’EOAD était caractérisée par des patterns hypométaboliques spécifiques fortement corrélés aux symptômes cliniques et aux scores neuropsychologiques du domaine cognitif associé. Par la suite, nous nous sommes intéressés à la progression sur 3 ans de l’hypométabolisme sur la surface corticale en fonction des formes typiques ou atypiques d’EOAD. Bien que des patterns similaires d’évolution de l’hypométabolisme entre les formes typiques et atypiques aient été observés au niveau du cortex pariétal, seules les formes atypiques ont présenté une réduction du métabolisme bilatérale plus importante au niveau du cortex orbito-frontal latéral associée à des déclins cognitifs plus sévères. Temporellement, les résultats suggèrent que l’hypométabolisme chez les formes typiques progresserait selon un axe antérieur-vers-postérieur en cohérence avec les stades de Braak et Braak, alors que l’hypométabolisme chez les formes atypiques progresserait selon un axe postérieur-vers-antérieur. Pris ensemble, ces résultats confortent l’hypothèse d’une distribution différente de la pathologie tau en termes de charge et d’évolution temporelle entre ces deux formes d’EOAD. Notre dernier objectif a été de déterminer les capacités discriminatives des données TEP 18F-FDG, seules ou combinées aux données de l’IRM structurelle, afin de classifier de manière automatique et supervisée des patients atteints d’EOAD en forme typique ou atypique. Nous avons mis en application des algorithmes de machine learning combinés à des méthodes de validation croisée afin d’évaluer les influences de diverses composantes sur les performances de classification. Des précisions équilibrées maximales égales à 80,8% en imagerie monomodale TEP 18F-FDG et 92,4% en imagerie multimodale TEP 18F-FDG/IRM T1 ont été obtenues, validant ainsi la TEP 18F-FDG comme un biomarqueur sensible de l’EOAD et soulignant l’apport incontestable de la multimodalité. En conclusion, nos travaux ont permis une meilleure caractérisation et compréhension des formes cliniques d’EOAD, ouvrant la voie à un management personnalisé du patient et des traitements plus efficaces pour ces formes distinctes. / Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of neurodegenerative dementia, characterized at 95% by late-onset forms (LOAD) which present episodic memory impairments and progress slowly. However, 5% of AD patients have an early-onset form (EOAD) of the disease whose onset begins before 65. Although the lesion substratum is similar between EOAD and LOAD, EOAD has more severe neuritic plaque deposits, neurofibrillary tangles and brain atrophy. Moreover, EOAD is more heterogeneous than LOAD, because even if most of the impairments are about episodic memory there is a high proportion of atypical forms impaired in language, visuospatial or executive functions. Although many 18F-FDG PET studies allowed to metabolically characterize EOAD compared to LOAD or healthy controls group, very few differentiated typical from atypical forms. In this thesis, we examined 18F-FDG PET data, complemented by structural MRI, in order to improve characterization and comprehension of typical and atypical forms of EOAD. Following a first harmonization work between 18F-FDG PET reconstructions from both GE and Siemens scanners used for the acquisition of patient data, our second aim was to study at baseline on the whole brain hypometabolic patterns characterizing the clinical forms of EOAD and their correlations with neuropsychological performance. This work showed that each clinical form of EOAD was characterized by specific hypometabolic patterns highly correlated with clinical symptoms and neuropsychological performance of the associated cognitive domain. Then, we focused on the 3-year hypometabolism progression on the cortical surface according typical or atypical forms of EOAD. Although similar patterns of hypometabolism evolution between typical and atypical forms were observed in parietal cortices, atypical only showed a more severe reduction of metabolism in lateral orbitofrontal cortices associated with more severe cognitive declines. Temporally, the results suggest that hypometabolism in typical forms would progress according to an anterior-to-posterior axis coherently with Braak and Braak stages, whereas in atypical forms hypometabolism would progress according a posterior-to-anterior axis. Taken together, results consolidate the hypothesis of a different tau distribution in terms of burden and temporal evolution between both forms of EOAD. Our last goal was to determine the discriminative power of 18F-FDG PET data, alone or combined to structural MRI data, in order to automatically classify in a supervised manner EOAD patients into typical or atypical form. We applied machine learning algorithms combined to cross-validation methods to assess influence of some components on classification performances. Maximum balanced accuracies equal to 80.8% in monomodal 18F-FDG PET and 92.4% in multimodal 18F-FDG PET/T1 MRI were obtained, validating 18F-FDG PET as a sensible biomarker of EOAD and highlighting the incontestable contribution of multimodality. In conclusion, our works allowed a better characterization and comprehension of clinical forms of EOAD, paving the way to personalized patient management and more effective treatments for these distinct clinical forms.

La compréhension des effets des interactions dans un ensemble de particules quantiques représente un enjeu majeur de la physique moderne. Les atomes ultra-froids sont rapidement devenus un outil incomparable pour étudier ces systèmes quantiques fortement corrélés. Dans cette thèse, nous présentons plusieurs travaux portant sur les propriétés d’un mélange de superfluides de Bose et de Fermi créé à l’aide de vapeurs ultra-froides de ⁷Li et de ⁶Li. Nous étudions tout d'abord les propriétés hydrodynamiques du mélange en créant un contre-courant entre les superfluides. L'écoulement est dissipatif uniquement au dessus d'une vitesse critique que nous mesurons dans le crossover BEC-BCS. Une simulation numérique d’un contre-courant de deux condensats permet de mieux comprendre les mécanismes sous-jacents mis en jeu dans la dynamique. En particulier, l'étude numérique fournit des preuves supplémentaires que l'origine de la dissipation dans nos expériences est liée à l'émission d'excitation élémentaires dans chaque superfluide. Finalement, nous nous intéressons aux pertes inélastiques par recombinaison à trois corps qui peuvent limiter la stabilité de nos nuages. Ces pertes sont intimement liées aux corrélations à courte distance présentes dans le système et sont ainsi connectées aux propriétés universelles du gaz quantique. Cela se manifeste notamment par l’apparition de dépendances en densité ou en température inusuelles du taux de perte lorsque le système devient fortement corrélé. Nous démontrons cet effet dans deux exemples où les interactions sont résonantes, le cas du gaz de Bose unitaire et celui de notre mélange de superfluides Bose-Fermi. Plus généralement, nos travaux montrent que ces pertes inélastiques peuvent être utilisées pour sonder les corrélations quantiques dans un système en fortes interactions. / Understanding the effect of interactions in quantum many-body systems presents some of the most compelling challenges in modern physics. Ultracold atoms have emerged as a versatile platform to engineer and investigate these strongly correlated systems. In this thesis, we study the properties of a mixture of Bose and Fermi superfluids with tunable interactions produced using ultracold vapors of ⁷Li and ⁶Li. We first study the hydrodynamic properties of the mixture by creating a counterflow between the superfluids. The relative motion only exhibit dissipation above a critical velocity that we measure in the BEC-BCS crossover. A numerical simulation of counterflowing condensates allows for a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms at play in the dynamics. In particular, this numerical study provides additional evidence that the onset of friction in our experiment is due to the simultaneous generation of elementary excitations in both superfluids. Finally, we consider the inelastic losses that occur via three-body recombination in our cold gases. This few-body process is intimately related to short-distance correlations and is thereby connected to the universal properties of the many-body system. This manifests as the apparition of an unusual dependence on density or temperature in the loss rate when increasing the interactions. We demonstrate this effect in two examples where interactions are resonant: the case of a dilute unitary Bose gas and the one of impurities weakly coupled to a unitary Fermi gas. More generally, our work shows that inelastic losses can be used to probe quantum correlations in a many-body system.

<p>The concept of the transfer Hamiltonian formalism has been reconsidered and generalized to include the non-orthogonality between the electron states in an interacting region, e.g. quantum dot (QD), and the states in the conduction bands in the attached contacts. The electron correlations in the QD are described by means of a diagram technique for Hubbard operator Green functions for non-equilibrium states. </p><p>It is shown that the non-orthogonality between the electrons states in the contacts and the QD is reflected in the anti-commutation relations for the field operators of the subsystems. The derived forumla for the current contains corrections from the overlap of the same order as the widely used conventional tunneling coefficients. </p><p>It is also shown that kinematic interactions between the QD states and the electrons in the contacts, renormalizes the QD energies in a spin-dependent fashion. The structure of the renormalization provides an opportunity to include a spin splitting of the QD levels by polarizing the conduction bands in the contacts and/or imposing different hybridizations between the states in the contacts and the QD for the two spin channels. This leads to a substantial amplification of the spin polarization in the current, suggesting applications in magnetic sensors and spin-filters.</p>

The concept of the transfer Hamiltonian formalism has been reconsidered and generalized to include the non-orthogonality between the electron states in an interacting region, e.g. quantum dot (QD), and the states in the conduction bands in the attached contacts. The electron correlations in the QD are described by means of a diagram technique for Hubbard operator Green functions for non-equilibrium states. It is shown that the non-orthogonality between the electrons states in the contacts and the QD is reflected in the anti-commutation relations for the field operators of the subsystems. The derived forumla for the current contains corrections from the overlap of the same order as the widely used conventional tunneling coefficients. It is also shown that kinematic interactions between the QD states and the electrons in the contacts, renormalizes the QD energies in a spin-dependent fashion. The structure of the renormalization provides an opportunity to include a spin splitting of the QD levels by polarizing the conduction bands in the contacts and/or imposing different hybridizations between the states in the contacts and the QD for the two spin channels. This leads to a substantial amplification of the spin polarization in the current, suggesting applications in magnetic sensors and spin-filters.

The quantum properties of matter waves, in particular quantum correlations and entanglement are an important frontier in atom optics with applications in quantum metrology and quantum information. In this thesis, we report the first observation of sub-Poissonian fluctuations in the magnetization of a spinor 87Rb condensate. The fluctuations in the magnetization are reduced up to 10 dB below the classical shot noise limit. This relative number squeezing is indicative of the predicted pair-correlations in a spinor condensate and lay the foundation for future experiments involving spin-squeezing and entanglement measurements. We have investigated the limits of the imaging techniques used in our lab, absorption and fluorescence imaging, and have developed the capability to measure atoms numbers with an uncertainly < 10 atoms. Condensates as small as ≈ 10 atoms were imaged and the measured fluctuations agree well with the theoretical predictions. Furthermore, we implement a reliable calibration method of our imaging system based on quantum projection noise measurements. We have resolved the individual lattice sites of a standing-wave potential created by a CO2 laser, which has a lattice spacing of 5.3 µm. Using microwaves, we site-selectively address and manipulate the condensate and therefore demonstrate the ability to perturb the lattice condensate of a local level. Interference between condensates in adjacent lattice sites and lattice sites separated by a lattice site are observed.

Ever since the discovery of exotic phenomena like high temperature (Tc) superconductivity in the cuprates and colossal magnetoresistance in the manganites, strongly correlated electron systems have become the center of attention in the field of condensed matter physics research. This renewed interest has been further kindled by the rapid development of sophisticated experimental techniques and tremendous computational power. Computation plays a pivotal role in the theoretical investigation of these systems, because one cannot explain their complicated phase diagrams by simple, exactly solvable models. Among the plethora of experimental techniques, various kinds of high energy electron spectroscopies are fast gaining importance due to the multitude of physical properties and phenomena which they can access. However the physical processes involved and the interpretation of the spectra obtained from these spectroscopies are extremely complex and require extensive theoretical modelling. This thesis is concerned with the theoretical modelling of a certain class of high energy electron spectroscopies, viz. the core-level electron spectroscopies, for strongly correlated systems of various kinds. The spectroscopies covered are Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), core-level photoemission spectroscopy (core-level PES) and X-ray absorption spec- troscopy (XAS), which provide non-magnetic information, and also X-ray magnetic circular and linear dichroism (XMCD and XMLD), which provide magnetic information. .

Η παρούσα διδακτορική διατριβή εστιάστηκε στη μελέτη των σημαντικότερων οικολογικών και βιολογικών παραμέτρων του ζωοπλαγκτού των λιμνών Αμβρακίας, Λυσιμαχείας και Οζερός. Στόχος της μελέτης αυτής είναι η καλύτερη κατανόηση του οικολογικού ρόλου που διαδραματίζουν οι ζωοπλαγκτικές βιοκοινωνίες στα λιμναία οικοσυστήματα στην περιοχή της Δυτικής Ελλάδας, καθώς και η αποτύπωση της σημερινής κατάστασης στην οποία βρίσκονται. Πραγματοποιήθηκαν μηνιαίες δειγματοληψίες κατά την περίοδο Σεπτέμβριος 2006-Αύγουστος 2008 στη λίμνη Αμβρακία και αντίστοιχα κατά την περίοδο Ιούνιος 2009-Μάιος 2010 στις λίμνες Λυσιμαχεία και Οζερός. Σε κάθε λίμνη γινόταν συλλογή δειγμάτων ζωοπλαγκτού, in situ καταγραφή των βασικών φυσικοχημικών παραμέτρων των υδάτων και συλλογή δειγμάτων νερού για τον προσδιορισμό της συγκέντρωσης των κυριότερων θρεπτικών στοιχείων και της χλωροφύλλης-α. Η Αμβρακία είναι μια θειικού τύπου λίμνη με υψηλή αγωγιμότητα. Χαρακτηρίζεται ως θερμή μονομικτική και κατά την περίοδο της θερμοστρωμάτωσης στο υπολίμνιο παρατηρείται ανάπτυξη υποξικών/ανοξικών συνθηκών. Οι λίμνες Λυσιμαχεία και Οζερός δεν εμφάνισαν φαινόμενα θερμοστρωμάτωσης, διατηρούν ικανοποιητικά επίπεδα οξυγόνωσης στην υδάτινη στήλη τους και παρουσιάζουν αρκετά χαμηλές τιμές διαφάνειας. Σύμφωνα με τις τιμές του δείκτη τροφικότητας του Carlson, η λίμνη Αμβρακία χαρακτηρίζεται ως μεσότροφη, η λίμνη Οζερός ως μεσο-εύτροφη και η λίμνη Λυσιμαχεία ως εύτροφη. Στη λίμνη Αμβρακία αναγνωρίστηκαν συνολικά 33 ζωοπλαγκτικά taxa, στη λίμνη Λυσιμαχεία 36 και στη λίμνη Οζερός 25. Λαμβάνοντας υπ’ όψιν τις μέσες τιμές αφθονίας του ζωοπλαγκτού στις τρεις λίμνες, η Αμβρακία (83,6-442,7 ind/l) προσεγγίζει καλύτερα τα χαρακτηριστικά ζωοπλαγκτικών βιοκοινωνιών που συναντώνται σε μεσότροφα οικοσυστήματα, ενώ ο Οζερός (59,4-818 ind/l) και ιδιαίτερα η Λυσιμαχεία (147,9-4449,3 ind/l) σε εύτροφα. Η εποχική διακύμανση της συνολικής αφθονίας του ζωοπλαγκτού των λιμνών, χαρακτηρίζεται από τη χαμηλή αφθονία των ειδών κατά τη χειμερινή περίοδο και τη σταδιακή αύξησή τους κατά την εαρινή. Στη βαθιά λίμνη Αμβρακία, η συντριπτική πλειοψηφία του ζωοπλαγκτού βρέθηκε συγκεντρωμένη στο στρώμα των 0-20 m. Το θερμοκλινές φάνηκε να ασκεί σημαντική επίδραση στον κατακόρυφο διαχωρισμό ειδών και οντογενετικών σταδίων. Η διερεύνηση της επίδρασης των περιβαλλοντικών παραμέτρων στην αφθονία και διακύμανση του ζωοπλαγκτού των τριών λιμνών έδειξε πως ο κύριος παράγοντας που φαίνεται να επηρεάζει τα περισσότερα ζωοπλαγκτικά είδη είναι η θερμοκρασία. / The present PhD thesis focused on the study of the main ecological and biological aspects of the zooplankton community in lakes Amvrakia, Lysimachia and Ozeros. The aim of this study is the better understanding of zooplankton’s ecological role in lake ecosystems of Western Greece. For the investigation of the zooplankton community in lakes, zooplankton samples were collected on a monthly basis in Lake Amvrakia during the period September 2006-August 2008 and in lakes Lysimachia and Ozeros during the period June 2009-May 2010. Additionally, for the assessment of water quality in lakes, water samplings were conducted at the same period in order to estimate the concentration of nutrients and chlorophyll-a, while the water’s basic physicochemical parameters were recorded in situ. Lake Amvrakia, which belongs to the sulphate type, exhibits high conductivity values. The lake is characterized as a warm monomictic lake. The main characteristic in the vertical axis was the depletion of oxygen in the deeper hypolimnion, where anoxic conditions prevail, especially at the end of the stratification period. Lakes Lysimachia and Ozeros maintained satisfactory levels of oxygenation in their water column and no thermal stratification was observed. Both lakes exhibited low transparency values. According to Carlson's Trophic State Index (TSI), Lake Amvrakia is characterized as mesotrophic, Lake Ozeros as meso-eutrophic and Lake Lysimachia as eutrophic. The zooplankton sampling in Lake Amvrakia revealed 33 zooplankton taxa, in Lake Lysimachia 36 and in Lake Ozeros 25. Considering the mean integrated abundance of the total zooplankton in the three lakes, Amvrakia (83.6-442.7 ind/l) exhibited the main characteristics of a mesotrophic ecosystem, while Ozeros (59.4-818 ind/l) and especially Lysimachia (147.9-4449.3 ind/l) of eutrophic lakes. The seasonal variation of the total abundance of zooplankton of lakes characterized by low species abundance in winter and a gradually increase during the spring period. The investigation of the zooplankton vertical distribution in the deep lake Amvrakia showed that the vast majority of species was concentrated in the layer of 0-20 m. The development of the thermocline layer had a significant effect on the vertical separation between species, as well as between ontogenetic stages. The water temperature seemed to have the most important influence on the temporal variation of most of the zooplankton taxa in lakes Amvrakia, Lysimachia and Ozeros.

No description available.

L'optomécanique en cavité, l'étude de l'interaction entre le mode d'une cavité optique et un mode mécanique d'un résonateur, a eu une évolution impressionnante depuis dix ans et elle est devenue un nouveau champ de recherche, réunissant la physique de la matière condensée et l'optique. Un des objectifs majeurs de cette discipline est de tester et étudier la mécanique quantique en utilisant des systèmes macroscopiques. Parmi les problèmes les plus fondamentaux que la communauté aborde est la question des limites quantiques de la mesure de position. La mécanique quantique prédit que toute mesure s'accompagne d'une action en retour, ce qui perturbe l'état du système mesure. En outre, il devrait être conjugué avec le bruit quantique de l'appareil de mesure (le bruit de mesure) utilisé pour sonder le système. La sensibilité optimale est atteinte lorsque la mesure et le bruit backaction sont identiques, une situation qui peut être assimilé à l'acceptation de l'inégalité de Heisenberg pour l'appareil de mesure. En optomecanique, le mode d'une cavité optique est utilisé comme un appareil de mesure de la position d'un résonateur mécanique qui est piloté par la pression de radiation qui devrait être responsable pour l'action en retour de la mesure. Cependant, cette action en retour n'a jamais été observé à ce jour, alors qu'il reste une étape décisive vers la compréhension des processus de la mesure quantique. Nous décrivons dans ce manuscrit l'étude des effets de la pression de radiation. Nous introduisons le système opto-mécanique que nous avons développé qui consiste a un résonateur mécanique plan-convex de taille de quelques cm présentant un très haut facteur de qualité (~ 1 000 000) intégré dans une cavité Fabry-Perot de très grande finesse (~ 300 000). Nous présentons deux résultats importants que nous avons obtenus avec ce système. Tout d'abord, nous avons rapporté la première observation directe de la pression de radiation en temps réel, basée sur l'établissement des corrélations pompe-sonde. Nous avons également démontré pour la première fois des effets non linéaires dû a l'action en retour liés à l'amélioration substantielle de la sensibilité de la mesure de position. Nous expliquons pourquoi la démonstration de l'action en retour quantique nécessite une ultra- haute stabilité du mode optique. Nous présentons les modifications importantes apportées à la configuration expérimentale précédente, notamment sur la source laser, la détection et la stabilisation de l'expérience. Nous décrivons ensuite une nouvelle technique de détection opto-mécanique fournissant une mesure indépendante du désaccord cavité. Enfin, nous présentons une expérience de validation de principe permettant d'extraire des corrélations quantiques optomécaniques à la température ambiante.

A significant amount of Viscous Oil (e.g., heavy oil, extra heavy oil, and bitumen) is trapped in Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs also known as NFCRs. The word VO endowment in NFCRs is estimated at ~ 2 Trillion barrels mostly reported in Canada, the USA, Russia, and the Middle East. To date, contributions to the world daily oil production from this immense energy resource remains negligible mainly due to the lack of appropriate production technologies. Implementation of a VO production technology such as steam injection is expensive (high capital investment), time-consuming, and people-intensive. Hence, before selecting a production technology for detailed economic analysis, use of cursory or broad screening tools or guides is a convenient means of gaining a quick overview of the technical feasibility of the various possible production technologies applied to a particular reservoir. Technical screening tools are only available for the purpose of evaluation of the reservoir performance parameters in oil sands for various thermal VO exploitation technologies such as Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD), Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), Horizontal well Cyclic steam Stimulation (HCS), and so on. Nevertheless, such tools are not applicable for VO NFCRs assessment without considerable modifications due to the different nature of these two reservoir types (e.g., presence and effects of fracture network on reservoir behavior, wettability, lithology, fabric, pore structure, and so on) and also different mechanisms of energy and mass transport. Considering the lack of robust and rapid technical reservoir screening tools for the purpose of quick assessment and performance prediction for VO NFCRs under thermal stimulation (e.g., steamflooding), developing such fast and precise tools seems inevitable and desirable. In this dissertation, an attempt was made to develop new screening tools for the purpose of reservoir performance prediction in VO NFCRs using all the field and laboratory available data on a particular thermal technology (vertical well steamflooding). Considering the complex and heterogeneous nature of the NFCRs, there is great uncertainty associated with the geological nature of the NFCRs such as fracture and porosity distribution in the reservoir which will affect any modeling tasks aiming at modeling of processes involved in thermal VO production from these types of technically difficult and economically unattractive reservoirs. Therefore, several modeling and analyses technqiues were used in order to understand the main parameters controlling the steamflooding process in NFCRs and also cope with the uncertainties associated with the nature of geologic, reservoir and fluid properties data. Thermal geomechanics effects are well-known in VO production from oil sands using thermal technologies such as SAGD and cyclic steam processes. Hence, possible impacts of thermal processes on VO NFCRs performance was studied despite the lack of adequate field data. This dissertation makes the following contributions to the literature and the oil industry: Two new statistical correlations were developed, introduced, and examined which can be utilized for the purpose of estimation of Cumulative Steam to Oil Ratio (CSOR) and Recovery Factor (RF) as measures of process performance and technical viability during vertical well steamflooding in VO Naturally Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs (NFCRs). The proposed correlations include vital parameters such as in situ fluid and reservoir properties. The data used are taken from experimental studies and also field trials of vertical well steamflooding pilots in viscous oil NFCRs reported in the literature. The error percentage for the proposed correlations is < 10% for the worst case and contains fewer empirical constants compared with existing correlations for oil sands. The interactions between the parameters were also considered. The initial oil saturation and oil viscosity are the most important predictive factors. The proposed correlations successfully predicted steam/oil ratios and recovery factors in two heavy oil NFCRs. These correlations are reported for the first time in the literature for this type of VO reservoirs. A 3-D mathematical model was developed, presented, and examined in this research work, investigating various parameters and mechanisms affecting VO recovery from NFCRs using vertical well steamflooding. The governing equations are written for the matrix and fractured medium, separately. Uncertainties associated with the shape factor for the communication between the matrix and fracture is eliminated through setting a continuity boundary condition at the interface. Using this boundary condition, the solution method employed differs from the most of the modeling simulations reported in the literature. A Newton-Raphson approach was also used for solving mass and energy balance equations. RF and CSOR were obtained as a function of steam injection rate and temperature and characteristics of the fractured media such as matrix size and permeability. The numerical solution clearly shows that fractures play an important role in better conduction of heat into the matrix part. It was also concluded that the matrix block size and total permeability are the most important parameters affecting the dependent variables involved in steamflooding. A hybrid Artificial Neural Network model optimized by co-implementation of a Particle Swarm Optimization method (ANN-PSO) was developed, presented, and tested in this research work for the purpose of estimation of the CSOR and RF during vertical well steamflooding in VO NFCRs. The developed PSO-ANN model, conventional ANN models, and statistical correlations were examined using field data. Comparison of the predictions and field data implies superiority of the proposed PSO-ANN model with an absolute average error percentage < 6.5% , a determination coefficient (R2) > 0.98, and Mean Squared Error (MSE) < 0.06, a substantial improvement in comparison with conventional ANN model and empirical correlations for prediction of RF and CSOR. This indicates excellent potential for application of hybrid PSO-ANN models to screen VO NFCRs for steamflooding. This is the first time that the ANN technique has been applied for the purpose of performance prediction of steamflooding in VO NFCRs and also reported in the literature. The predictive PSO-ANN model and statistical correlations have strong potentials to be merged with heavy oil recovery modeling softwares available for thermal methods. This combination is expected to speed up their performance, reduce their uncertainty, and enhance their prediction and modeling capabilities. An integrated geological-geophysical-geomechanical approach was designed, presented, and applied in the case of a NFCR for the purpose of fracture and in situ stresses characterization in NFCRs. The proposed methodology can be applied for fracture and in situ stresses characterization which is beneficial to various aspects of asset development such as well placement, drilling, production, thermal reservoir modeling incorporating geomechanics effects, technology assessment and so on. A conceptual study was also conducted on geomechanics effects in VO NFCRs during steamflooding which is not yet well understood and still requires further field, laboratory, and theoretical studies. This can be considered as a small step forward in this area identifying positive potential of such knowledge to the design of large scale thermal operations in VO NFCRs.