Novel techniques, mainly three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions from image stacks and finite element analysis (FEA), were combined to study the oxygen transport mechanism in the human placenta and its relationship to placental structure. Initial research relates to the development of a platform suitable for realistic computational simulations. The work shows how the 3D architecture of a terminal villus can be accurately reconstructed from confocal laser scanning microscopic (CLSM) images. By combining the resultant 3D structures of terminal villi with finite element analysis, the diffusion of oxygen from the maternal bloodstream towards the fetal blood across the villous membrane is assessed. The results correlate with theoretical studies demonstrating that image-based computational modelling is a robust platform to explore the structure-function relationship in the placenta. Following work deals with the study of blood flow through the fetal capillary network, with particular interest in its role on the oxygen transport capacity of the terminal villi. The computational models are corroborated by a particle image velocimetry (PIV) experiment. The study shows that the variation in capillary diameter is key for effective oxygen uptake by the fetus. The fetus invests minimum energy needed for the blood to travel fast enough in order to provide oxygenated blood, but at the same time slow enough to allow for good oxygenation. This is achieved by the combination of narrow and dilated segments. Additionally, the results demonstrate that there is no vortical flow or whirling. In the subsequent work, the effect of blood properties is investigated. The calculated oxygen flux is 75 times higher than in the previous study (blood flow models), highlighting the importance of haemoglobin molecules in transporting oxygen. Fetal blood affinity is shown to improve fetal oxygen uptake by 11.5%. However, when accounting for haemoglobin concentration the data suggest that the different villous structures have a constant oxygen transport capacity. The methodology developed herein helps to elucidate the structure-function relationship in the human placenta. Additionally, 3D image-based multi-physics computational modelling is demonstrated to be a powerful tool to investigate in detail the mechanics of transport in the human placenta. This technique has the potential to enlighten on the development of pregnancy complications and serve as an in vivo diagnostic tool.

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Artificial life modelling is an extensive subject to exert effort in one piece of work such as this work. For that reason this work is limited to keep the base line of modelling of human behavior. Presented work deal with a creation of an artificial agent whose human-like behavior is implemented according to the PECS reference model. Specification of the PECS reference model is implemented in Java to build a simulation of artificial human being in some environment. Modeled human being has been assigned to imitate human activities, react adequately to sensed events from the environment and change the environment to achieve its goals. Modeled human being is a behavior controled entity acting according to its current role.

Cette thèse cherche à explorer le rôle que les perceptions culturelles peuvent jouer pour redéfinir collectivement l’action humaine envers la nature. Dans le temps long, de manière accidentelle ou intentionnelle, l’homme a globalement modifié puis progressivement détruit de manière exponentielle la nature. Or, l’étude de l’idée de nature démontre la multiplicité et la force des attachements culturels à la nature. Cette thèse cherche donc à étudier plus précisément la diversité, la multiplicité des perceptions culturelles, et dans quelle mesure celles-ci pourraient aider à redéfinir l’activité humaine envers la nature. A cette fin, les idées de nature et leurs évolutions à travers l’histoire sont étudiées dans plusieurs pays cultures afin de déterminer si et comment la diversité peut devenir un facteur de changement de paradigme. Trois pays sont étudiés à cette fin : la France, le Japon et les États-Unis, afin de dégager les perceptions culturelles uniques et d’envisager comment cette unicité peut servir à refonder l’action collective. / This thesis aims at exploring the role cultural perceptions of nature could play in redefining in depth human action towards nature. Whether on purpose or as an incidental result, humankind has since the dawn of humanity first modified then destroyed nature. Yet, when looking at cultural perceptions of nature it appears that cultures developed a strong attachment to some representations of nature. The presumption explored here is that these cultural perceptions, in their diversity, in their multiplicity, could be key to redefining our whole relation towards nature. To that effect, this thesis studies the idea of nature and its evolutions throughout history in different cultures in order to render it effective in international negotiations. Three countries are explored: France, Japan and the United States in order to isolate cultural perceptions and to understand how they can be mobilized to redefine collective action.

There is an increasing concern for the impact of humans on the environment. Traditionally, ecological models consider human influence as a constant or linearly varying parameter, whereas socioeconomic models and frameworks tend to oversimplify the ecological system. But tackling complex environmental challenges faced by our societies requires interdisciplinary approaches due to the intricate feedbacks between the socioeconomic and ecological systems involved. Thus, models of social-ecological systems couple an ecological system with a socioeconomic system to investigate their interaction in the integrated dynamical system. We define this coupling formally and apply the social-ecological approach to three ecological cases. Indeed, we focus on eutrophication in shallow freshwater lakes, which is a well-known system showing bistability between a clear water state and a turbid polluted state. We also study a model accounting for an aquifer (water stock) and a model accounting for a biotic population exhibiting bistability through an Allee effect. The socioeconomic dynamics is driven by the incentive that agents feel to act in a desirable or undesirable way. This incentive can be represented by a difference in utility, or in payoff, between two strategies that each agent can adopt: agents can cooperate and act in an environment-friendly way, or they can defect and act in an ecologically undesirable way. The agents' motivation includes such factors as the economic cost of their choice, the concern they feel for the environment and conformism to the collective attitude of the human group. Thus, the incentive to cooperate responds to the state of the ecological system and to the agents' collective opinion, and this response can be linear, nonlinear and monotonic, or non-monotonic. When investigating the mathematical form of this response, we find that monotonic non-linear responses may result in additional equilibria, cycles and basins of attraction compared to the linear case. Non-monotonic responses, such as resignation effects, may produce much more complicated nullclines such as a closed nullcline and weaken our ability to anticipate the dynamics of a social-ecological system. Regarding the modelling of the socioeconomic subsystem, the replicator dynamics and the logit best-response dynamics are widely used mathematical formulations from evolutionary game theory. There seems to be little awareness about the impact of choosing one or the other. The replicator dynamics assumes that the socioeconomic subsystem is stationary when all agents adopt the same behaviour, whereas the best-response dynamics assumes that this situation is not stationary. The replicator dynamics has formal game theoretical foundations, whereas best-response dynamics comes from psychology. Recent experiments found that the best-response dynamics explains empirical data better. We find that the two dynamics can produce a different number of equilibria as well as differences in their stability. The replicator dynamics is a limit case of the logit best-response dynamics when agents have an infinite rationality. We show that even generic social-ecological models can show multistability. In many cases, multistability allows for counterintuitive equilibria to emerge, where ecological desirability and socioeconomic desirability are not correlated. This makes generic management recommendations difficult to find and several policies with and without socioeconomic impact should be considered. Even in cases where there is a unique equilibrium, it can lose stability and give rise to sustained oscillations. We can interpret these oscillations in a way similar to the cycles found in classical predator-prey systems. In the lake pollution social-ecological model for instance, the agents' defection increases the lake pollution, which makes agents feel concerned and convince the majority to cooperate. Then, the ecological concern decreases because the lake is not polluted and the incentive to cooperate plummets, so that it becomes more advantageous for the agents to defect again. We show that the oscillations obtained when using the replicator dynamics tend to produce a make-or-break dynamics, where a random perturbation could shift the system to either full cooperation or full defection depending on its timing along the cycle. Management measures may shift the location of the social-ecological system at equilibrium, but also make attractors appear or disappear in the phase plane or change the resilience of stable steady states. The resilience of equilibria relates to basins of attraction and is especially important in the face of potential regime shifts. Sources of uncertainty that should be taken into account for the management of social-ecological systems include multistability and the possibility of counterintuitive equilibria, the wide range of possible policy measures with or without socioeconomic interventions, and the behaviour of human collectives involved, which may be described by different dynamics. Yet, uncertainty coming from the collective behaviour of agents is mitigated if they do not give up or rely on the other agents' efforts, which allows modelling to better inform decision makers.