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The problem of this thesis is concerned with the directing and producing of a 1936 peace play, Bury the Dead, by Irwin Shaw. The production attempts to heighten the relevancy of the play to modern audiences. The project experiments with applying contemporary machines and techniques to a dated script containing realistic dialogue, a dualistic point of view, and a surrealistic idea of dead soldiers rising from their graves. The task generates a particular responsibility and challenge in that the use of contemporary machinery must be carefully chosen in such a way that it does not interfere with the message of the play.

La chromatographie à lit mobile simulé (procédé SMB) est une technique de séparation bien maîtrisée dans certains secteurs traditionnels tels que la séparation de sucres et d’hydrocarbures. Cependant, son application à la séparation de composés à haute valeur ajoutée dans l’industrie pharmaceutique pose de nouveaux problèmes liés à la nature des produits à séparer ainsi qu'aux exigences plus strictes en matière de pureté et de quantités produites. Les principaux problèmes ouverts sont notamment la détermination des conditions de fonctionnement optimales, la conception de structures robustes de régulation, et le développement d’un système de supervision permettant la détection et la localisation de dégradations de fonctionnement. Ces tâches requièrent l’usage d’un modèle mathématique du procédé ainsi qu’une méthodologie d’estimation paramétrique. L’étude et le développement des modèles mathématiques pour ce type d’installation ainsi que l’estimation des paramètres des modèles sur base de mesures expérimentales constituent précisément l’objet de nos travaux de doctorat. Les modèles mathématiques décrivant les procédés SMB consistent en les bilans massiques des composés à séparer. Ce sont des modèles à paramètres distribués (décrit par des équations aux dérivées partielles). Certains ont un comportement dynamique de type hybride (c'est-à-dire faisant intervenir des dynamiques à temps continu et des événements discrets). Quelques modèles ont été développés dans la littérature. Il s’agit de sélectionner ceux qui paraissent les plus intéressants au niveau de leur temps de calcul, de leur efficacité et du nombre de paramètres à déterminer. En outre, de nouvelles structures de modèles sont également proposées afin d’améliorer le compromis précision / temps de calcul. Ces modèles comportent généralement certains paramètres inconnus. Ils consistent soit, en des grandeurs physiques mal définies au départ des données de base, soit, en des paramètres fictifs, introduits à la suite d'hypothèses simplificatrices et englobant à eux seuls un ensemble de phénomènes. Il s’agit de mettre au point une procédure systématique d’estimation de ces paramètres requérant le moins d’expériences possible et un faible temps de calcul. La valeur des paramètres est estimée, au départ de mesures réelles, à l'aide d'une procédure de minimisation d'une fonction de coût qui indique l’écart entre les grandeurs estimées par le modèle et les mesures. La sensibilité du modèle aux écarts sur les paramètres, ainsi que l’identifiabilité du modèle (possibilité de déterminer de manière univoque les paramètres du modèle) sur la base de mesures en fonctionnement normal sont étudiées. Ceci fournit un critère de comparaison supplémentaire entre les différents modèles et permet en outre de déterminer les conditions expérimentales optimales (choix du type d’expérience, choix des signaux d’entrée, choix du nombre et de la position des points de mesures…) dans lesquelles les mesures utilisées lors de l’estimation paramétrique doivent être relevées. De plus, les erreurs d’estimation sur les paramètres et les erreurs de simulation sont estimées. La procédure choisie est ensuite validée sur des données expérimentales recueillies sur un procédé pilote existant au Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik komplexer technischer systeme (Magdebourg, Allemagne).

Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, a decentralized adaptive sliding mode control scheme is proposed in this thesis for a class of mismatched perturbed large-scale systems containing dead-zone input to solve regulation problems. The main idea is that some adaptive mechanisms are embedded both in the sliding surface and in the controllers, so that not only the mismatched perturbations are suppressed during the sliding mode, but also the information of upper bound of perturbations is not required. The sliding surface function is firstly designed through the usage of a pseudo controller which is capable of stabilizing the reduced-order systems. The second step is to design the controllers so that the trajectories of the controlled systems are able to reach sliding surface in a finite time. Once the controlled system enters the sliding mode, the asymptotical stability is guaranteed for each subsystem even the mismatched perturbations exist. A numerical example and a practical example are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed design technique.

Univ., Diss.--Paris, 2004.

Thesis (MA)--University of Montana, 2009. / Contents viewed on November 30, 2009. Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2003. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-191).

This study demonstrates how norms and ideals about sexuality and gender expression are used in the TV-show The Walking Dead. An intermediate study is made on the comic books’ two same sex couples as they are compared to how they are represented in the TV-show. Tara Chambler and Alisha, a same sex couple who only exist in the TV-show, not in the comic books, are also analysed. Queer theory and an intersectional perspective are used to discover how different power asymmetries are connected to each other through an active interplay. An analysis of the reception is also made with the help of a discourse analysis on 50 of the twitter commentaries that were posted after the show’s first same sex kiss, with the aim to understand how the media and the public affect one another. The material is selected comic books, episodes from the TV-show and twitter comments. The study shows how sexual expressions are neutralized and used in a heteronormative way.

Mary Sibande's Long Live the Dead Queen series is an on-going installation in the Johannesburg art gallery, MOMO. The subject of this series, Sophie, is a life-sized corporeal presence; she is Sibande's alter-ego cast from Sibande's own body. A central formal element of Sophie is her costume: a voluminous dress that hybridizes the South African domestic servant's uniform and a Victorian madam's dress. A dress denoting both servitude and dominance, it immediately recalls the colonizer/colonized dialectic between the early British Victorian colonizer and many Black African peoples whom the Victorians consigned to subordination, particularly in South Africa. Sophie is seemingly fixed within this binary power system: her visible identity oscillates between maid and Victorian. Furthermore, her eyes are always downcast so that she initially appears to embrace her subservience. However, I argue that her refusal, or even inability, to acknowledge her surroundings might alternatively demarcate her into a subjective, fantasy space, and one that she necessarily controls. She conflates historical identities that persist in present South African circumstances, so she also denies our ability to locate her within logical time or space, underscoring the notion of fantasy. Within this, Sophie can reclaim agency despite her servitude, performing in various positions of power to resituate dialectical power relationships between dominant/subordinate, master/slave. In other words, the postmodern play of Sophie becomes a postcolonial opposition to subjugation. Throughout each chapter I will apply the psychoanalytic treatment of sublimation in which a socially unacceptable desire, that of a collective or individual, is displaced onto something socially appropriate within the context of that society. I can thus look more closely at the methods by which Sophie draws attention to surreptitious and manipulated power relationships, and the ways she then dislodges these relationships from the power dialectic. / text

Accurately determining one’s location has long been a persistent problem in navigation and has reappeared in recent years in the field of mobile computing. The ability to determine a device’s location indoors is needed for both automation and efficient communication in collaborative robotic and sensor networks. Technologies such as indoor GPS transmitters and Cricket have been employed, but have had limited success due to cost, accuracy, and power consumption. The Inertial Solution for Accurately Assessing location Coordinates (ISAAC) was developed as a means of filling this need without requiring infrastructure or expensive components to accurately determine position, inside or outside. ISAAC is based on modified six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) dead reckoning algorithms currently being used by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). UAVs typically have access to other types of sensors to supplement and/or replace the IMU measurements. ISAAC was implemented using a low-cost MEMS 6DOF IMU in which the onboard firmware was modified to incorporate the dead reckoning calculations and communications necessary to realize ISAAC. ISAAC was implemented as a portable unit which communicated with a host computer through an RS-232 interface. ISAAC did not perform as well as expected; the location coordinates were very inconsistent with device movements and did not produce any useful data. The correct intermediate results of the calculations and subsequent review by a local subject-matter-expert implies that the source of the erroneous results lie with the accuracy and precision of the MEMS IMU. ISAAC presents a foundation for future work where more robust sensors and/or filtering can be used for further examination of inertial-based location systems. / text