L’étude des organismes vivants, la biologie, s’étend sur de nombreux domaines et notamment s’applique à comprendre le fonctionnement des êtres vivants. Les organismes les plus complexes comme les êtres Humains possèdent plusieurs niveaux d’organisation : ils sont constitués successivement d’organes, de tissus, de cellules, de biomolécules. On trouve plusieurs types de biomolécules dont les protéines, qui sont comme des minuscules outils qui permettent aux cellules de vivre et d’interagir avec leur environnement. Pour cela, les protéines doivent entrer en contact les unes avec les autres de manière très précise et déterminée. Cette thèse teste l’existence de forces électrodynamiques de longue portée qui leur permettraient d’interagir de manière rapide et guidée, via l’étude de l’absorption ou l’émission de ce type d’onde par des protéines, puis la diffusion de ces protéines en solution pour observer leur comportement. / The study of living organisms, biology, extends over many fields and in particular, applies to understanding the functioning of living beings. The most complex organisms, such as human beings, have several levels of organization: they are made up successively of organs, tissues, cells, and biomolecules. There are several types of biomolecules including proteins, which are like tiny tools that allow cells to live and interact with their environment. To do this, proteins must come into contact with each other in a very precise and determined way. This thesis tests the existence of long-range electrodynamic forces which would allow them to interact in a rapid and guided way, by studying the absorption or emission of this type of wave by proteins, then the diffusion of these proteins in solution to observe their behavior.

A modelagem clássica da demanda por transportes ignora um importante aspecto normalmente presente na estrutura das variáveis de interesse: a autocorrelação espacial. Pesquisas recentes reconhecem e incluem tal característica à estimativa da demanda, mas há limitações referentes aos elementos básicos de tratamento utilizados nas abordagens. No intuito de superar alguns problemas e restrições associados aos estudos anteriores, o presente trabalho utiliza a dependência espacial entre as observações de viagens no intuito de gerar estimativas do volume de Embarques e Desembarques por ponto de parada, bem como Carregamento nos trechos, ao longo de uma linha de transporte público. Dados de uma pesquisa sobe/desce, realizada em oito linhas de ônibus da cidade de São Paulo, foram disponibilizados pela SPTrans, sendo que, selecionou-se a linha 856R-10 para compor uma análise do desempenho da Geoestatística, ferramental adequado para a estimativa de valores de variáveis em locais não amostrados, sobretudo em bancos de dados espacialmente dependentes. O processo de estimação foi realizado por meio da Krigagem Ordinária com distâncias euclidianas, técnica de interpolação geoestatística que, para sua aplicação, exige apenas o valor da variável em pontos do espaço e suas respectivas coordenadas geográficas. Posteriormente, tal método foi comparado às estimativas obtidas por meio da utilização de distâncias em rede ao longo da linha de ônibus. Os resultados obtidos, a partir da validação cruzada e métricas de aderência, apontaram um ajuste considerável dos valores observados e estimados para ambos os tipos de distância. Dessa forma, a investigação proposta confirmou, com sucesso, a viabilidade de aplicação da Geoestatística às variáveis de demanda por transporte público ao longo de uma linha de ônibus. Além disso, uma vez que a pesquisa sobe/desce exige recursos elevados para sua realização, os resultados destacam o potencial dos interpoladores geoestatísticos em eliminar a necessidade de execução do referido levantamento em todo o percurso da linha de ônibus, já que a Geoestatística garante estimativas aproximadas aos valores da pesquisa completa. / The classical modeling of travel demand overlooks an important aspect normally found in the variables of interest: spatial autocorrelation. Recent researches recognize and include this characteristic in travel demand forecasting, but there are limitations regarding the basic elements of treatment used in the approaches. In order to overcome some of the problems and constraints associated with previous researches, the present study relies on the spatial dependence between the observations of trips in order to generate estimates of the Boarding and Alighting passenger volume per bus stop and Loading in the stretches, along a public transport line, that would not be sampled for the survey occasion. Data from a passenger Boarding and Alighting survey carried out on eight bus lines in the city of São Paulo were made available by SPTrans, and line 856R-10 was selected to compose an analysis of the performance of Geostatistics, a tool that deals with the problem of scarce data and estimation in non-sampled places in the forecast of variables of public transport demand, especially in spatially dependent databases. The estimation process was performed by means of Ordinary Kriging with Euclidian distances, a geostatistical interpolation technique that, for its application, only requires the value of the variable in points of the space and their respective geographical coordinates. Subsequently, this method was compared to the estimates obtained through the use of network distances along the bus line. The results obtained, from cross-validation and measures of goodness-of-fit, indicated a considerable adjustment of the observed values to the estimated ones for both types of distance. Thus, the proposed research successfully confirmed the feasibility of applying Geostatistics to the variables of public transport demand along a bus transit line. Moreover, since the boarding/alighting survey requires high resources for its realization, the results highlight the potential of the geostatistical interpolators in eliminating the need to carry out the survey in the whole course of the bus line, since Geostatistics provides estimates similar to the values of the complete survey.

La ré-identification de véhicules permet d’estimer deux paramètres clés en gestion dynamique de trafic : les temps de parcours et les matrices origine-destination. Dans cette thèse, nous avons choisi d'effectuer cette ré-identification par analyse des signatures magnétiques mesurées par des capteurs tri-axiaux placés sur la chaussée. La signature magnétique est générée par l'aimantation du véhicule : elle est alors susceptible de varier en fonction de l'orientation du véhicule par rapport au champ magnétique terrestre (à cause de l'aimantation induite dans le plan horizontal), et en fonction de sa position latérale relative par rapport aux capteurs. Les expérimentations que nous avons menées nous ont permis d'obtenir une base de données de signatures magnétiques, et ainsi d'évaluer les performances des deux méthodes de ré-identification que nous avons élaborées.La première méthode consiste à comparer directement des paires de signatures magnétiques mesurées par les capteurs. Les calculs de distances entre les paires sont effectués avec des algorithmes classiques comme la distance euclidienne. Les résultats obtenus sont très bons, et baissent peu lorsque le véhicule change d'orientation. Toutefois, ils sont très sensibles à la déformation des signaux due au décalage latéral du véhicule, et nécessitent donc de positionner un capteur tous les 0.20m sur toute la largeur de la voie.Dans un second temps, nous proposons une méthode de ré-identification qui compare des paires de modèles magnétiques de véhicules. Ces modèles sont composés de plusieurs dipôles, et sont calculés à partir des signatures mesurées. La modélisation a pour but de s’affranchir du décalage latéral du véhicule, en remontant à la position relative du véhicule par rapport aux capteurs. Avec deux fois moins de capteurs que la méthode précédente, les résultats obtenus sur signaux réels sont également très bons, même s'ils sont un peu plus sensibles au changement d'orientation du véhicule. De plus, une simulation nous permet d'extrapoler qu'il est effectivement possible de s'affranchir du décalage latéral avec cette méthode. / Vehicle re-identification gives access to two essential data for dynamic traffic management: travel times and origin-destination matrices. In this thesis, we chose to re-identify vehicles by analysing their magnetic signatures measured with several 3-axis magnetic sensors located on the road. A magnetic signature is created by the vehicle magnetization. Therefore, the vehicle orientation to the Earth’s magnetic field (which determines the induced magnetization) and the variation of the lateral position of the vehicle relative to the sensors’ one might both have an impact on the magnetic signature. We gathered our experiments’ results into a database of magnetic signatures that we used to evaluate the performances of the two vehicle re-identification methods we developed.The first method is a direct comparison of pairs of magnetic signatures measured by the sensors. Distances between pairs of signatures are computed using classic algorithms such as the Euclidean distance. This method’s results are very positive and the vehicle change of orientation has only a slight impact on them. However, the distortion of signals due to a lateral offset in the vehicle position has a strong impact on the results. As a consequence, sensors have to be placed every 0.20m over the road’s entire width.The second proposed method compares pairs of vehicles’ magnetic models. Those models are composed of several magnetic dipoles and are determined from the measured signatures. Magnetic modelling aims to suppress the influence of the vehicle lateral position on the results by assessing the relative position of the vehicle above the sensors. Although the vehicle orientation has slightly more impact on the performances than with the first method, the overall results are more promising. This method also allows us to divide by two the number of sensors used.

La ré-identification de véhicules permet d’estimer deux paramètres clés en gestion dynamique de trafic : les temps de parcours et les matrices origine-destination. Dans cette thèse, nous avons choisi d'effectuer cette ré-identification par analyse des signatures magnétiques mesurées par des capteurs tri-axiaux placés sur la chaussée. La signature magnétique est générée par l'aimantation du véhicule : elle est alors susceptible de varier en fonction de l'orientation du véhicule par rapport au champ magnétique terrestre (à cause de l'aimantation induite dans le plan horizontal), et en fonction de sa position latérale relative par rapport aux capteurs. Les expérimentations que nous avons menées nous ont permis d'obtenir une base de données de signatures magnétiques, et ainsi d'évaluer les performances des deux méthodes de ré-identification que nous avons élaborées.La première méthode consiste à comparer directement des paires de signatures magnétiques mesurées par les capteurs. Les calculs de distances entre les paires sont effectués avec des algorithmes classiques comme la distance euclidienne. Les résultats obtenus sont très bons, et baissent peu lorsque le véhicule change d'orientation. Toutefois, ils sont très sensibles à la déformation des signaux due au décalage latéral du véhicule, et nécessitent donc de positionner un capteur tous les 0.20m sur toute la largeur de la voie.Dans un second temps, nous proposons une méthode de ré-identification qui compare des paires de modèles magnétiques de véhicules. Ces modèles sont composés de plusieurs dipôles, et sont calculés à partir des signatures mesurées. La modélisation a pour but de s’affranchir du décalage latéral du véhicule, en remontant à la position relative du véhicule par rapport aux capteurs. Avec deux fois moins de capteurs que la méthode précédente, les résultats obtenus sur signaux réels sont également très bons, même s'ils sont un peu plus sensibles au changement d'orientation du véhicule. De plus, une simulation nous permet d'extrapoler qu'il est effectivement possible de s'affranchir du décalage latéral avec cette méthode. / Vehicle re-identification gives access to two essential data for dynamic traffic management: travel times and origin-destination matrices. In this thesis, we chose to re-identify vehicles by analysing their magnetic signatures measured with several 3-axis magnetic sensors located on the road. A magnetic signature is created by the vehicle magnetization. Therefore, the vehicle orientation to the Earth’s magnetic field (which determines the induced magnetization) and the variation of the lateral position of the vehicle relative to the sensors’ one might both have an impact on the magnetic signature. We gathered our experiments’ results into a database of magnetic signatures that we used to evaluate the performances of the two vehicle re-identification methods we developed.The first method is a direct comparison of pairs of magnetic signatures measured by the sensors. Distances between pairs of signatures are computed using classic algorithms such as the Euclidean distance. This method’s results are very positive and the vehicle change of orientation has only a slight impact on them. However, the distortion of signals due to a lateral offset in the vehicle position has a strong impact on the results. As a consequence, sensors have to be placed every 0.20m over the road’s entire width.The second proposed method compares pairs of vehicles’ magnetic models. Those models are composed of several magnetic dipoles and are determined from the measured signatures. Magnetic modelling aims to suppress the influence of the vehicle lateral position on the results by assessing the relative position of the vehicle above the sensors. Although the vehicle orientation has slightly more impact on the performances than with the first method, the overall results are more promising. This method also allows us to divide by two the number of sensors used.

Published Article / The Water Administration System (WAS) is designed to be a management tool for irrigation schemes and water offices that want to manage their water accounts and supply to clients through canal networks, pipelines and rivers. The ultimate aim of WAS is to optimize irrigation water management and minimize management-related distribution losses in irrigation canals. This research project focus on the implementation of the water release module of the WAS program at the Vaalharts irrigation scheme. WAS consists of four modules that are integrated into a single program that can be used on a single PC, a PC network system (in use currently at Vaalharts) or a multi-user environment. These modules can be implemented partially or as a whole, depending on the requirements of the specific scheme or office. The four modules are an administration module, a water request module; water accounts module and a water release module. The first three modules are already implemented at Vaalharts, while module four is implemented only partially. This module links with the water request module and calculates water releases for the main canal and all its branches allowing for lag times and any water losses and accruals. Any researcher in this field should first understand where water comes from and how it will be utilized before any calculations are attempted. Only then manipulation of the release volume can commence. To precisely calculate this water release, accurate data is needed to ensure that the correct volume of water is released into the canal network. This can be done by verifying existing data with field data. To optimize the management of the irrigation scheme the fully implemented WAS program need to be installed and running at the scheme. A series of data and calculation verification needs to be executed. The exercise will show the adequacy and correctness of the available database WAS uses to do the release calculation from. This will ensure improved management of the irrigation scheme, catchment and water resource sustainability. It is planned that the information generated from this project will be used in the compilation of an integrated catchment management information system, currently underway in the school of Civil Engineering and Built Environment at the Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa.

Installé au cœur de l'interféromètre du Very Large Telescope (le VLTI, situé au sommet du Mont Paranal, dans le nord du Chili), l'instrument VINCI permet de recombiner la lumière infrarouge de deux télescopes séparés de manière cohérente. Il ouvre ainsi un accès vers la très haute résolution angulaire (quelques millisecondes d'angle), et des programmes de recherche novateurs dans des domaines aussi divers que la physique stellaire, les disques protoplanétaires ou bien encore l'étude des exoplanètes. Mon travail de thèse sur l'instrument VINCI a porté sur sa conception, en particulier la définition fonctionnelle de son logiciel d'exploitation, son installation au sommet du Mont Paranal et ses premières observations scientifiques. Le principe de fonctionnement et les performances de cet instrument sont décrits dans la première partie de ce document.<br /> Dans une seconde partie, j'aborde l'étude des étoiles variables Céphéides par interférométrie. Ces étoiles pulsantes jouent un rôle primordial dans l'estimation des distances astronomiques depuis qu'il a été établi que leur période de variation était liée à leur luminosité intrinsèque par la célèbre relation période-luminosité. Leur observation photométrique permet donc de calculer directement leur distance. Toutefois, notre connaissance du point zéro de cette relation est encore imparfaite, car elle repose sur la mesure des distances aux Céphéides galactiques les plus proches, encore mal connues. La très haute résolution angulaire apportée par l'instrument VINCI et le VLTI permettra bientôt l'étude fine de la pulsation de ces étoiles. Par la mesure simultanée de la vitesse radiale de pulsation et de la variation du diamètre angulaire de l'étoile, il sera possible de calculer directement la distance aux Céphéides les plus proches, et donc d'étalonner la relation période-luminosité. L'enjeu de ce programme : la calibration de cette relation avec une précision de 0,01 magnitude, soit un gain d'un facteur dix par rapport à notre connaissance actuelle.<br /> Au-delà de ce programme fondamental, je décris également les possibilités offertes par VINCI dans le domaine de l'étude des étoiles naines de la séquence principale, notamment de type solaire (avec application au couple d'étoiles Alpha Centauri A et B), et j'aborde brièvement l'étude des exoplanètes.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine whether there is a connection between distance to the schoollibrary and the extent to which teachers are using it as an integral part of their teaching. The study aims to answerif the physical distance to the school library is affecting teachers' ways of working with the library, if it affects thecollaboration between teachers and librarians and finally if teachers that are using a school library outside theschool premises are doing so less as an integral part of their teaching compared to teachers that have access to aschool library within the schools premises.The study is based on qualitative interviews with six teachers in the intermediate stage of the nine-yearcompulsory school, of which three have access to a school library within the school premises and three haveaccess to a school library outside the school premises. The two groups of teachers are compared in order to findout if there is a connection between distance to the school library and the usage of it. Loertscher's school librarymedia program and teacher taxonomy have been used as a theoretical framework.The study shows that the teachers who use a school library within the school premises have a bettercollaboration with the librarians than the ones who use a school library outside the school premises. The studyalso show that theese libraries are an integral part of the teaching to a higher degree. However, it is not shownbeyond doubt that the physical distance to the library is the determining factor for the teacher's results. Otherfactors, such as the fact that the school libraries outside the school premises at the same time are functioning aspublic libraries, may also have influenced the result.This is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

We report the detection of diffuse Ly alpha emission, or Lya halos (LAHs), around star-forming galaxies at z approximate to 3.78 and 2.66 in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey Bootes field. Our samples consist of a total of similar to 1400 galaxies, within two separate regions containing spectroscopically confirmed galaxy overdensities. They provide a unique opportunity to investigate how the LAH characteristics vary with host galaxy large-scale environment and physical properties. We stack Ly alpha images of different samples defined by these properties and measure their median LAH sizes by decomposing the stacked Ly alpha radial profile into a compact galaxy-like and an extended halo-like component. We find that the exponential scale-length of LAHs depends on UV continuum and Ly alpha luminosities, but not on Ly alpha equivalent widths or galaxy overdensity parameters. The full samples, which are dominated by low UV-continuum luminosity Lya emitters (M-UV greater than or similar to -21), exhibit LAH sizes of 5-6 kpc. However, the most UV- or Ly alpha-luminous galaxies have more extended halos with scale-lengths of 7-9 kpc. The stacked Ly alpha radial profiles decline more steeply than recent theoretical predictions that include the contributions from gravitational cooling of infalling gas and from low-level star formation in satellites. However, the LAH extent matches what one would expect for photons produced in the galaxy and then resonantly scattered by gas in an outflowing envelope. The observed trends of LAH sizes with host galaxy properties suggest that the physical conditions of the circumgalactic medium (covering fraction, H I column density, and outflow velocity) change with halo mass and/or star formation rates.

We present VIMOS-Very Large Telescope (VLT) spectroscopy of the Frontier Fields cluster MACS. J0416.1-2403 (z = 0.397). Taken as part of the CLASH-VLT survey, the large spectroscopic campaign provided more than 4000 reliable redshifts over similar to 600 arcmin(2), including similar to 800 cluster member galaxies. The unprecedented sample of cluster members at this redshift allows us to perform a highly detailed dynamical and structural analysis of the cluster out to similar to 2.2 r(200) (similar to 4Mpc). Our analysis of substructures reveals a complex system composed of a main massive cluster (M-200 similar to 0.9 x 10(15) M-circle dot and sigma(V r200) similar to 1000 km s(-1)) presenting two major features: (i) a bimodal velocity distribution, showing two central peaks separated by Delta V-rf similar to 1100 km s(-1) with comparable galaxy content and velocity dispersion, and (ii) a projected elongation of the main substructures along the NE-SW direction, with a prominent sub-clump similar to 600 kpc SW of the center and an isolated BCG approximately halfway between the center and the SW clump. We also detect a low-mass structure at z similar to 0.390, similar to 10' south of the cluster center, projected at similar to 3Mpc, with a relative line-of-sight velocity of Delta V-rf similar to 1700 km s(-1). The cluster mass profile that we obtain through our dynamical analysis deviates significantly from the "universal" NFW, being best fit by a Softened Isothermal Sphere model instead. The mass profile measured from the galaxy dynamics is found to be in relatively good agreement with those obtained from strong and weak lensing, as well as with that from the X-rays, despite the clearly unrelaxed nature of the cluster. Our results reveal an overall complex dynamical state of this massive cluster and support the hypothesis that the two main subclusters are being observed in a pre-collisional phase, in agreement with recent findings from radio and deep X-ray data. In this article, we also release the entire redshift catalog of 4386 sources in the field of this cluster, which includes 60 identified Chandra X-ray sources and 105 JVLA radio sources.

Spatially varying depth and the characteristics of observing conditions, such as seeing, airmass, or sky background, are major sources of systematic uncertainties in modern galaxy survey analyses, particularly in deep multi-epoch surveys. We present a framework to extract and project these sources of systematics onto the sky, and apply it to the Dark Energy Survey (DES) to map the observing conditions of the Science Verification (SV) data. The resulting distributions and maps of sources of systematics are used in several analyses of DES-SV to perform detailed null tests with the data, and also to incorporate systematics in survey simulations. We illustrate the complementary nature of these two approaches by comparing the SV data with BCC-UFig, a synthetic sky catalog generated by forward-modeling of the DES-SV images. We analyze the BCC-UFig simulation to construct galaxy samples mimicking those used in SV galaxy clustering studies. We show that the spatially varying survey depth imprinted in the observed galaxy densities and the redshift distributions of the SV data are successfully reproduced by the simulation and are well-captured by the maps of observing conditions. The combined use of the maps, the SV data, and the BCC-UFig simulation allows us to quantify the impact of spatial systematics on N(z), the redshift distributions inferred using photometric redshifts. We conclude that spatial systematics in the SV data are mainly due to seeing fluctuations and are under control in current clustering and weak-lensing analyses. However, they will need to be carefully characterized in upcoming phases of DES in order to avoid biasing the inferred cosmological results. The framework presented here is relevant to all multi-epoch surveys and will be essential for exploiting future surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which will require detailed null tests and realistic end-to-end image simulations to correctly interpret the deep, high-cadence observations of the sky.