La correction du facteur de puissance a été récemment introduite dans les convertisseurs pour remplacer le filtrage passif en amont des convertisseurs et pour répondre aux nouvelles normes en vigueur. La correction de facteur de puissance dite mono-étage a succédé à celle en deux étages qui est caractérisée par un coût et un volume élevés. Cette étude vise deux types d'applications. Les applications à faible puissance (300 W) sous une tension d'alimentation de 230 Veff et une tension de 54 V en sortie. Pour des raisons de coût et de volume, les structures asymétriques Flyback et Sepic sont des solutions répondant au cahier des charges et qui restent incontournables. U ressort également de cette étude, que si les contraintes du convertisseur à résonance série fonctionnant en conduction discontinue sont acceptables, alors ce dernier peut aussi répondre au cahier de charge. Le second type d'applications visées par cette étude concerne la moyenne puissance (3 kW) avec une tension de 150 V en sortie. Dans ce cadre, seules les structures symétriques à résonance à commutateur de courant ou à onduleur de tension sont susceptibles de répondre au cahier des charges. Pour la seconde catégorie, et en vue d'une généralisation, une discussion sur la nature du circuit résonant est faite pour étudier le prélèvement sinusoïdal. En évaluant les avantages et les inconvénients de chaque structure, deux convertisseurs ont été retenus et les prototypes réalisés ont montré un bon facteur de puissance et le respect de la norme en vigueur (EN 61000-3-2).

The car has become bigger, faster and more advanced for each passing year since its first appearance, and the safety requirements have also become stricter. Computer vision based support is a growing area of safety features where the car is equipped with a mono- or stereo camera. It can be used for detecting pedestrians walking out in the street, give a warning for wild-life during a cold January night using night-vision cameras and much more. This master thesis investigates the problem of detecting and tracking overtaking vehicles. Vehicles that overtake are only partly visible in the beginning, rendering it hard for standard detection/classification algorithms to get a positive detection. The need to quickly detect an incoming vehicle is crucial to be able to take fast counter-measure, such as braking, if needed. A novel approach referred to as the \textit{Wall detector} is suggested, detecting incoming vehicles using one-dimensional optical flow. Under the assumption that an overtaking car is moving in parallel to the ego-vehicle, both cars are moving towards the vanishing point in the image. A detection wall, consisting of several detection lines moving towards the vanishing point, is created, making all objects that are moving parallel to the ego-vehicle move along these lines. The result is a light-weight and fast detector with good detection performance in real-time. Several approaches for the Wall detector are implemented and evaluated, revealing that a feature based approach is the best choice. The information from the system can be used as input to heavier algorithms, boosting the confidence or to initialize a track.

Phthalates are industrial plasticizers with a wide range of applications. Di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) is one of the most highly produced and frequently studied phthalates. Its metabolite, mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP) is known as a testicular toxicant. The objective of this study was to examine expression of the genes of interest in testicular germ cells exposed to MEHP in a dose- and time-dependent manner at concentrations of 1µM, 10µM, and 100µM at 24, 48, 72 and 96hr time points. The genes consisted of Testisin, GSPT1, and MGMT genes which are a tumor suppressors, phase II xenobiotic metabolizing enzyme and DNA repair gene respectively. These genes were analyzed by Quantitative Real Time PCR (RT-PCR). The results revealed an overall down-regulation for each gene as the concentration and/or time increased. Testisin was the focus of the gene expression analysis. Testisin is epigenetically silenced in testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) by DNA methylation at the 5’CpG island of the gene. To investigate if MEHP is capable of DNA hypermethylation, a co-exposure with 5-azacytidine (demethylating agent) was conducted. Compared with the 5-azacytidine treatment alone, there was a significant down-regulation of the Testisin gene in the co-exposure. This suggests that MEHP may down-regulate Testisin gene expression by DNA methylation. These findings provide evidence that MEHP can alter the expression of Testisin, GSTP1 and MGMT, genes that are associated in the risk of developing testicular germ cell tumors. In addition, results indicated that MEHP may cause DNA methylation leading to the down-regulation/silencing of genes such as Testisin.

The purpose of this study is to explore the differences and similarities regarding the causes of and approaches to bullying among a number of girls and boys in third grade in two schools. One of the schools is in a mono-ethnic area and the other in a multi-ethnic. The purpose isto compare the results between the schools and the questions proposed are: What is the reason for the bullying? What are the differences and similarities in existing opinions on the practice of bullying? What are the differences and similarities of students' opinions on bullying in a mono-ethnic and in a multi-ethnic school? I have chosen to use gender and ethnicity theories and the study was conducted through qualitative group interviews. The results have shown that boys' explanations for bullying are more aggressive than girls, although approaches to bullying were more related with violence among boys. The multi-ethnic school uses more direct bullying compared to the mono-ethnic school where indirect bullying occurred more often. My conclusions are that general knowledge about the subject is not enough to be able to counter bullying. It’s necessary to be familiar with how bullying occurs in that individual school because there can be large differences in the approaches when dealing with bullying from school to school.

The field of autonomous vehicle navigation and localization is a highly active research topic. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the feasibility to use outdoor visual navigation in a semi-structured environment. The goal is to develop a visual navigation system for an autonomous golf ball collection vehicle operating on driving ranges. The image feature extractors SIFT and PCA-SIFT was evaluated on an image database consisting of images acquired from 19 outdoor locations over a period of several weeks to allow different environmental conditions. The results from these tests show that SIFT-type feature extractors are able to find and match image features with high accuracy. The results also show that this can be improved further by a combination of a lower nearest neighbour threshold and an outlier rejection method to allow more matches and a higher ratio of correct matches. Outliers were found and rejected by fitting the data to a homography model with the RANSAC robust estimator algorithm. A simulator was developed to evaluate the suggested system with respect to pixel noise from illumination changes, weather and feature position accuracy as well as the distance to features, path shapes and the visual servoing target image (milestone) interval. The system was evaluated on a total of 3 paths, 40 test combinations and 137km driven. The results show that with the relatively simple visual servoing navigation system it is possible to use mono-vision as a sole sensor and navigate semi-structured outdoor environments such as driving ranges.

A set of three through-bond energy transfer cassettes based on BODIPY as a donor and cyanine dyes as acceptors has been prepared via Sonogashira couplings, and their photophysical properties were examined. These cassettes fluoresce around 600 to 800 nm and are resolved by approximately 100 nm. This property is an important factor for multiplexing study in cellular imaging. Several useful fluorescent probes such as 5- and 6-carboxyfluorescein, water-soluble BODIPY, and water-soluble Nile Blue dyes, have also been synthesized and their photophysical properties studied. We have also attempted to develop a method for protein mono-labeling via a solidphase approach. The labeling of protein with one fluorescent dye facilitates quantification and single molecule imaging in biological applications. Various solidsupports such as PEGA, CPG, and BSA-coated CPG, were tested. Photolabile and chemically cleavable linkers were prepared to connect solid-supports and fluorophores. Unfortunately, our approach to the fluorescent mono-labeling of native proteins did not give us any conclusive results.

L'alternateur à griffes est utilisé comme générateur d'électricité dans les véhicules. Il<br />a pour rôle d'alimenter en courant continu tous les récepteurs reliés au réseau de bord, et<br />plus particulièrement de charger la batterie. Les travaux de cette thèse ont pour but<br />d'augmenter le courant fourni par l'alternateur, d'augmenter son rendement et de réduire<br />son bruit acoustique d'origine magnétique. L'application de la méthode des pertes<br />séparées a permis d'étudier la répartition des pertes en fonction de la vitesse de rotation et<br />du courant débité. En s'appuyant sur des simulations éléments finis, les principales<br />causes des pertes Joule statoriques et des pertes fer totales sont déterminées, aussi bien<br />les pertes fer statoriques dues à la composante axiale du flux. Des solutions sont<br />proposées dans le but d'augmenter le courant fourni ainsi que le rendement et de réduire<br />le bruit acoustique d'origine magnétique, toutes ces solutions ont fait l'objet d'une<br />validation expérimentale sur prototypes. Pour finir, une méthode fondée sur des<br />optimisations mono objectif est proposée dans le but d'augmenter le débit et de réduire<br />les ondulations de couple sources du bruit acoustique d'origine magnétique.

Pathogenic bacteria use an arsenal of toxic protein virulence factors to cause disease in host cells. The mono-ADP-ribosyltransferase (mART) toxins are a family of exotoxins produced by pathogens which contribute to a wide range of diseases including cholera, diphtheria and whooping cough. Specifically, mART toxins act by transferring ADP-ribose from NAD+ to target proteins in host cells, altering or inhibiting target activity with deleterious downstream effects. Recently, in silico analyses have revealed two novel mARTs, Photox and Certhrax, from pathogenic organisms. Photox, from Photorhabdus luminescens was successfully expressed and purified from E. coli and was shown to target actin, specifically at Arg177. This covalent modification inhibits actin polymerization and leads to observed cytotoxicity in yeast cells. Photox has 35% identity with SpvB from Salmonella enterica, which allowed for a structural model to be built, showing the location of all characteristic mART active site components, and the binding site for potential inhibitors. Certhrax originates from Bacillus cereus G9241, implicated in a number of severe pneumonia cases. Certhrax shares 31% sequence identity with anthrax lethal factor from Bacillus anthracis; however, we demonstrated that the toxicity of Certhrax resides in the mART domain, whereas anthrax uses a metalloprotease mechanism. In vivo tests employing toxin gene expression in yeast, and receptor-mediated infection of mammalian, cells showed the extreme cytotoxicity of Certhrax (LD50 = 100 pg/mL against mouse macrophage cells), making it 60 times more toxic than its infamous counterpart, anthrax lethal factor. In vitro analysis indicated that Certhrax possesses NAD+ glycohydrolase activity, characteristic of many mART toxins, but we continue to search for the natural host protein target of this toxic enzyme. We determined the crystal structure of Certhrax to 2.2 Å, which illustrates a close structural similarity with anthrax lethal factor. Furthermore, we identified several small molecule inhibitors which show protection against Certhrax both in vitro and in vivo. We determined a 1.9 Å crystal structure of one inhibitor in complex with Certhrax. Through identification and characterization of novel mART enzymes, we seek to better understand this family of toxic enzymes to aid in the discovery and development of more potent therapeutics. / National Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Cette thèse porte sur l'analyse d'un phénomène particulièrement important dérivant des conséquences mécaniques des transformations de phases solide-solide dans les aciers : la plasticité de transformation ou TRIP (Transformation Induced Plasticity) et son interaction avec la plasticité classique. Ce sujet est abordé à la fois par des investigations expérimentales et par une approche de modélisation numérique, pour les transformations martensitiques.

Microbial succession, composition and ecological distribution within the gastro-intestinal tract are critical areas of study since commensal bacteria have been shown to affect animal health and development. A series of experiments were conducted to determine whether altered microbial succession in neonatal animals would modulate the development and health of pigs later in life. An initial experiment in conventional pigs was conducted to establish the early postnatal microbial succession profile and to identify early colonizing bacterial species. Culture-independent analysis of digesta and mucosal microbiota showed distinct variation between the proximal and distal gastro-intestinal tract (GIT) indicating that fecal or distal gut profiles cannot be used to predict succession in the upper GIT. Temporally, Clostridium spp. were found to be most prevalent in the GIT microbiota of the neonatal pig up to 0.5 d of age, accompanied by a high abundance of Escherichia and Shigella spp. These genera were transiently displaced by Streptococcus spp. followed by a preponderance of Lactobacillus spp. between 3 and 20 d of age. Subsequently, a “snatch-farrow” model was employed to modulate early postnatal microbial succession and investigate the effects on postweaning microbial composition. Pigs were collected into sterile towels directly from the vaginal canal and transferred to a sterile isolator environment for the first 4 days. Pigs were either inoculated with sow feces or not at 1 d of age resulting in significant differences in fecal microbial profile at 4 days of age, prior to removal from isolators. Analysis using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphisms (TRFLP) of intestinal microbiota at 28 d of age did not show significant clustering or variation in diversity indices for either group during the 4-d postnatal isolator phase. However, enumeration of selected taxa using quantitative PCR did indicate significant treatment differences in postweaning microbiota. Despite these results, this approach was rejected for further use as the protocol provided only moderate control of early postnatal colonization and variation and unpredictability of the timing of natural farrowing contributed to significant litter effects. Finally, a gnotobiotic monoassociation model was used investigate the effects of modulating early postnatal microbial succession on postweaning physiology, microbial composition and mucosal gene expression. Twenty-four cesarean-section derived piglets were monoassociated for the first 4 days of life with either L. mucosae (L), S. infantarius (S), C. perfringens (C) or E. coli (E). Pigs from treatments E and L animals showed the highest growth rate during the conventional rearing period (7-28 d of age). Monoassociation with different bacterial species during the first 4 d of life resulted in significant changes in postweaning microbial composition in small intestine and colon as assessed by quantitative PCR, although TRFLP did not identify unique clustering by treatment or variation in diversity. L. mucosae was the only inoculant species with significant variation, with a reduction in the colonic mucosa at 28 days of age. Monoassociation with L. mucosae was also associated with increased nutrition related gene expression in small intestine. Pigs monoassociated with E. coli had low expression of microbial sensing (TLR2 and 4), NFkappaB complex genes and mucins at 28 d of age. This study clearly showed that controlled early microbial succession in neonatal pigs altered post-weaning commensal microbiota composition, postweaning physiology and host gene expression in small and large intestine. The findings suggest the importance of peri-natal management and feeding strategies in promoting postweaning health and performance.