The first effective demonstration of a telescope using reflecting optics was made by Isaac Newton, and his invention was given widespread publicity by the Royal Society of London in 1672. Newtonts instrument was closely associated with the introduction of his new theory of the nature of white light and colour, and for Newton his telescopes practicability remained important to the acceptance of his optical theory. Newtonts telescope, influenced to some extent by the earlier work of James Gregory, encouraged the Royal Society to promote more ambitious trials, but instruments by Robert Hooke and Christopher Cock, and by Newton himself, achieved only limited success. Renewed interest in the reflector followed its re- emergence in Newtonts Opticks of 1704. John Hadleyes successful revival of Newtones instrument led in turn to the establishment in London of competitive commercial manufacture of reflectors in the early 18th century, and by 1710 the market was dominated by the instruments of James Short. Contemporary references to the reflecting telescopes of Newton and others have been analysed to allow the historical development of this work to be established more reliably, and to propose a relationship between the various instruments that may be ascribed to Newton. The emphasis has therefore been placed on the instrumentation itself, on practical detail, and on questions of provenance.

The phenomenon of thermoluminescence (TL) cannot yet be said to be completely understood, and cases of anomalous results from TL dating programmes are not infrequent, although explanations are rarely given. It is therefore useful to put TL dating into a firmer physical framework in which all relevant phenomena can be adequately described, whence the best action can be taken to avoid spurious results. However, TL dating embraces many varied aspects of physics, and a solution to all the problems is not a simple task. This thesis is intended to be an experimental study of some of the main physical techniques in thermoluminescence dating. Following a brief review of the whole field, selected areas presented here have been investigated in more detail. A new TL reader has been implemented with novel design features, including microprocessor controlled heating cycles, a switch-mode power supply direct current heating, all based on a modular concept to facilitate future improvements in the hardware. The use of a microprocessor as the heating controller should enable further development (eg. data collection and processing) to be a straightforward task. Non-linear heating profiles can be generated for glow curve analysis and for providing pre-heat zones. The radioisotope content of ceramics and soils is important in TL dating, and a comparison of commonly used radio assay techniques has been made with the aim of assigning a minimum detectable activity to each technique for a given required accuracy. The analytical methods have been applied to various ceramic samples, and the derived dose rates within the shards are calculated and presented for comparison. Some theoretical aspects of TL described in this thesis include a computer model to simulate common TL phenomena, which is used to investigate the effects of varying the model parameters. A complete solution of the equations determining glow curve shapes produced by hyperbolic heating profiles is presented, with techniques for extracting the mathematical constants describing the model, from them. A brief intercomparison of five quartz samples of differing origins is presented with a trace element analysis of the samples to determine whether there exists a correlation between trace element concentration and the magnitude of the TL properties.

Testing uniformity in the univariate case has been studied by many researchers. Many papers have been published on this issue, whereas the multi-dimensional uniformity test seems to have received less attention in the literature. A new test statistic for the multi-dimensional uniformity is proposed in this thesis. The proposed test statistic can be used to test whether an underlying multivariate probability distribution differs from a multi-dimensional uniform distribution. Some important properties of the proposed test statistic are discussed. As a special case, the bivariate test statistic is discussed in detail and the critical values of test statistic are obtained. By performing Monte Carlo simulation, the power of the new test is compared with the Distance to Boundary test, which was a recently proposed statistical test for multi-dimensional uniformity by Berrendero, Cuevas and Vazquez-Grande (2006). It has been shown that the test proposed in this thesis is more powerful than the Distance to Boundary test in some cases.

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Aujourd'hui, les éditeurs logiciels ne conçoivent, développent et ne maintiennent plus leur offre logicielle avec comme cible un client unique. Au contraire, les offres logicielles sont conçues pour cibler plusieurs entités. Par conséquent, ces applications doivent s'intégrer dans des environnements différents et s'adapter aux besoins des clients. Ainsi, les produits logiciels développés ne sont plus des programmes uniques, mais des familles de produits. Les systèmes configurables facilitent la création de ces familles de produits. Grâce à eux il est possible de créer un produit logiciel en sélectionnant les fonctionnalités qui seront intégrées. Cependant, la validation de ces systèmes  est une tâche complexe. Un système configurable peut générer plusieurs millions de configurations possibles. Il ne s'agit donc plus de valider un seul et unique produit, mais un ensemble de produits. Cet important nombre de configurations est un problème pour les personnes chargées de la validation. Nous proposons trois contributions qui visent à mieux répondre aux problématiques liées à la variabilité lors des projets de test : une présentation détaillée de deux projets de test industriels faisant face à des problématiques de variabilité issus de deux entreprises : Cisco et Orange ; une méthode originale basée sur les techniques de programmation par contraintes pour extraire des configurations de test qui respectent le critère Pairwise à partir d'un modèle explicite de la variabilité ; une comparaison de cette approche par rapport aux techniques de l'état de l'art et une étude de l'application de cette technique de test sur deux projets de tests industriels. / Nowadays, software companies develop and maintain their software for several clients. Consequently, these applications have to  be integrated in heterogenous context and adapt to the user requriements. All these products are sharing commonalities but also differ in certain point due to business specific constraints. Configurable systems facilitate the creation of these product families. With them it is possible to create a software product by selecting the features that will be integrated, thus, the creation of a product is greatly simplified. However,  the validation of these systems is a complex task. A configurable system can generate millions of possible configurations. Thus, validation process doesn't consist in validating a single product but in validating a set of products. This large number of configurations is a problem for those responsible of the validation. In this thesis we propose three contributions that aim to solve issues raised by  variability during test projects : A detailled presentation of two industrial test projects coping tat variaibility issues; an original methodology based on constraint programming techniques to select test configurations that respect pairwise criteria from a feature model ; an exhaustive comparison of this approach with the existing approches and a detailled study of the application of a such techniques on the two industrials projects.

Dans le football professionnel, les blessures ont une influence négative sur la performance, l'économie et la santé. Malgré un accent accru sur la prévention des blessures dans le football, il est préoccupant de constater que les blessures n'ont pas diminué au cours des 11 dernières saisons. En raison de l'impact significatif et négatif des blessures dans le football professionnel, il est primordial de veiller à ce que de tels accidents ne se produisent plus. Il est important de déterminer de nouvelles méthodes et procédés afin de détecter et d'empêcher les blessures chez les footballeurs professionnels. En outre, dans la littérature de la recherche scientifique, il y a des résultats contradictoires et des débats en ce qui concerne les facteurs de risque, les tests et les exercices de prévention pour les blessures sans contact dans le football professionnel. Les recherches scientifiques devraient être menées afin d'influencer les pratiques soit en validant soit en réfutant certains procédés et certaines procédures, cependant, il y a actuellement un fossé entre la science et la pratique (Bishop, 2008).Le but de cette thèse était de : (a) étudier des méthodes nouvelles et innovantes pour détecter et prévenir les blessures sans contact au plus haut niveau du football professionnel masculin et (b) (b) de réduire le fossé entre la science et la pratique. Les études de recherche spécifiques menées dans cette thèse étaient (1) les facteurs de risque, le dépistage et les stratégies de prévention pour les blessures sans contact dans le football professionnel: les perceptions et les pratiques actuelles de 44 équipes de première division. (2) les facteurs de risque, le dépistage et les stratégies de prévention pour les blessures de non-contact dans le football professionnel :Les facteurs de risque, les tests et les stratégies de prévention pour des blessures sans contact dans le football professionnel: une revue systématique, (3) un simple test isométrique des membres musculaires inférieurs chez les joueurs de football professionnels, (4) Effet d'un programme de prévention des blessures sur un taux de blessures dans une équipe professionnelle de football participant aux compétitions européennes. La présente thèse a réussi à réduire le fossé entre la science et la pratique en révélant le top 3 des perceptions et des pratiques des équipes de football de haut niveau concernant les facteurs de risque (blessure antérieure, fatigue, déséquilibre musculaire), essais (écran de mouvement fonctionnel, questionnaire, isocinétique) et des exercices de prévention (excentrique, équilibre / proprioception et ischio-jambiers excentrique). Une revue systématique de la littérature scientifique a fourni un niveau scientifique de preuve pour les 3 principaux facteurs de risque, tout à la fois un niveau scientifique de preuve et des recommandations globales graduées ont été fournies pour les 3 premiers tests et exercices de prévention. Un test simple et pratique pour évaluer la force isométrique des membres musculaires inférieurs a été vérifié et mis en œuvre avec succès dans le cadre du football professionnel. Le test s'est avéré être à la fois assez fiable et sensible pour déceler les changements de force survenant après un match de football. Enfin, un programme de prévention des blessures à haute conformité a été correctement et efficacement mis en œuvre dans une équipe de haut niveau prenant part aux compétitions européennes et les taux de blessures considérablement réduits, même lors d'une période comprenant des matchs rapprochés soit 2 matchs par semaine.La présente thèse peut aider à guider les praticiens à utiliser les meilleures pratiques factuelles actuelles. En outre, du point de vue de la recherche, les résultats fournissent aux chercheurs des pistes où concentrer les futures recherches sur la prévention des blessures dans le football professionnel. / In professional football, injuries have a negative influence on performance, economy and health. Despite an increased focus on prevention of injury in football, it is of concern that injuries have not reduced in this cohort over the past 11 seasons. Due to the significant and negative impact of injuries in professional football it is of interest to prevent such injuries from occurring. It is important to determine new methods and processes to detect and prevent injuries in professional footballers. Additionally, within the scientific research literature there are conflicting results and ongoing debates in regards to risk factors, testing and preventative exercises for non-contact injury in professional football. Scientific research should aim to influence practice by either validating or refuting certain processes and procedures, however, there is currently a gap between science and practice (Bishop, 2008). Purpose: The purpose of this thesis was to (a) investigate new and innovative methods to detect and prevent non-contact injuries at the highest level of professional male football and (b) (b) to reduce the gap between science and practice. Studies: The specific research studies conducted in this thesis were (1) Risk factors, testing and preventative strategies for non-contact injuries in professional football: Current perceptions and practices of teams from 44 premier leagues. (2) Risk factors, testing and preventative strategies for non-contact injuries in professional football: A systematic review, (3) Reliability and sensibility of a simple isometric posterior lower limb muscle test in professional soccer players, (4) Effect of an injury prevention program on injury rate in a professional football team participating in European competition. Conclusion: The present thesis successfully reduced the gap between science and practice by revealing the top 3 perceptions and practices of top-level football teams concerning risk factors (previous injury, fatigue, muscle imbalance), testing (functional movement screen, questionnaire, isokinetic) and preventative exercises (eccentric, balance/proprioception and hamstring eccentric). A systematic review of the research literature provided a scientific level of evidence for the top 3 risk factors, while both a scientific level of evidence and overall graded recommendation was provided for the top 3 tests and preventative exercises. A simple and practical test to assess the isometric force of the posterior lower limb muscles was verified and implemented successfully in the professional football setting. The test was found to be both reliable and sensitive enough to detect changes in force following a competitive soccer match. Finally, an injury prevention program with high compliance was successfully and effectively implemented in a top-level team competing in European competition and significantly reduced injury rates even when playing during a congested match period i.e. 2 matches per week. The present thesis can help to guide practitioners in using the current best evidence based practice. Additionally, from a research perspective, the findings provides researchers with avenues of where to concentrate future research concerning injury prevention in professional football.

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences in the stimulus value of the Bender Gestalt designs. It is concerned with both differences in structural values and affective values of the nine figures. The investigation is primarily concerned with the reliability of such differences, and secondarily with the general nature of the differences in stimulus value.