In the present study / ten autosomal human-specific Alu insertion polymorphisms / ACE, APO, A25, B65, D1, FXIIIB, HS4.32, HS4.69, PV92 and TPA25 were analyzed in approximately 100 unrelated individuals from Anatolia. Alu insertion polymorphisms offer several advantages over other nuclear DNA polymorphisms for human evolution studies. The frequencies of the ten biallelic Alu insertions in Anatolians were calculated and all systems were found to be in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (p&gt / 0.05). By combining the results of this study with results of previous studies done on worldwide populations, the genetic distance (Nei&rsquo / s DA) between each pair of populations was calculated and neighbor joining trees were constructed. In general, geographically closer populations were found to be also genetically similar. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed and Anatolia was found to be in the European cluster. As a result of PCA / it was concluded that FXIIIB, PV92 and ACE were the variables contributing the most to the explanation of the variation between the populations. Additionally / canonical variates analysis (CVA) concluded that the most discriminative markers for the groups of populations were PV92, D1, ACE and HS4.32. Pair-wise Fst values were also calculated between Anatolians and some of the populations for which the data was available. It was concluded that, Anatolians have non-significant pair-wise Fst values with Swiss and French Acadian populations. Lastly, heterozygosity vs. distance from centroid graph was constructed and it was found that Anatolians and India-Hindu had exactly the expected heterozygosity value predicted by the model of Harpending and Ward (1982).

<p>Soft matter systems exhibiting spatially modulated patterns on a mesoscale are characterized by many long-lived metastable phases for which relaxation to equilibrium is difficult and a satisfactory thermodynamic description is missing. Current dynamical theories suffer as well, because they mostly rely on an understanding of the underlying equilibrium behavior. This thesis relates the study of two canonical examples of modulated systems: microphase and cluster crystal formers. Microphases are the counterpart to gas-liquid phase separation in systems with competing short-range attractive and long-range repulsive interactions. Periodic lamellae, cylinders, clusters, etc., are thus observed in a wide variety of physical and chemical systems, such as multiblock copolymers, oil-water surfactant mixtures, charged colloidal suspensions, and magnetic materials. Cluster crystals in which each lattice site is occupied by multiple particles are formed in systems with steep soft-core repulsive interactions. Dendrimers have been proposed as a potential experimental realization. In order to access and understand the equilibrium properties of modulated systems, we here develop novel Monte Carlo simulation methods. A thermodynamic integration scheme allows us to calculate the free energy of specific modulated phases, while a [N]pT ensemble simulation approach, in which both particle number and lattice spacing fluctuate, allows us to explore their phase space more efficiently. With these two methods, we solve the equilibrium phase behavior of five schematic modulated-phase-forming spin and particle models, including the axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising (ANNNI) model, the Ising-Coulomb (IC) model, the square-well linear (SWL) model, the generalized exponential model of index 4 (GEM-4) and the penetrable sphere model (PSM). Interesting new physics ensues. In the ANNNI layered regime, simple phases are not found to play a particularly significant role in the devil's flowers and interfacial roughening plays at most a small role. With the help of generalized order parameters, the paramagnetic-modulated critical transition of the ANNNI model is also studied. We confirm the XY universality of the paramagnetic-modulated transition and its isotropic nature. With our development of novel free energy minimization schemes, the determination of a first phase diagram of a particle-based microphase former SWL is possible. We identify the low temperature GEM-4 phase diagram to be hybrid between the Gaussian core model (GCM) and the PSM. The system additionally exhibits S-shaped doubly reentrant phase sequences as well as critical isostructural transitions between face-centered cubic (FCC) cluster solids of different integer occupancy. The fluid-solid coexistence in the PSM phase diagram presents a crossover behavior around T~0.1, below which the system approaches the hard sphere limit. Studying this regime allows us to correct and reconcile prior DFT and cell theory work around this transition.</p> / Dissertation

Robots moving about in complex environments must be capable of determining and performing difficult motion sequences to accomplish tasks. As the tasks become more complicated, robots with greater dexterity are required. An increase in the number of degrees of freedom and a desire for autonomy in uncertain environments with real-time requirements leaves much room for improvement in the current popular robot motion planning algorithms. In this thesis, state of the art robot motion planning techniques are surveyed. A solution to the general movers problem in the context of motion planning for robots is presented. The proposed robot motion planner solves the general movers problem using a sample-based tree planner combined with an incremental simulator. The robot motion planner is demonstrated both in simulation and the real world. Experiments are conducted and the results analyzed. Based on the results, methods for tuning the robot motion planner to improve the performance are proposed.

Proximity problems and point set embeddability problems are fundamental and well-studied in computational geometry and graph drawing. Examples of such problems that are of particular interest to us in this dissertation include: finding the closest pair among a set P of points, finding the k-nearest neighbors to each point p in P, answering reverse k-nearest neighbor queries, computing the Yao graph, the Semi-Yao graph and the Euclidean minimum spanning tree of P, and mapping the vertices of a planar graph to a set P of points without inducing edge crossings. In this dissertation, we consider so-called kinetic version of these problems, that is, the points are allowed to move continuously along known trajectories, which are subject to change. We design a set of data structures and a mechanism to efficiently update the data structures. These updates occur at critical, discrete times. Also, a query may arrive at any time. We want to answer queries quickly without solving problems from scratch, so we maintain solutions continuously. We present new techniques for giving kinetic solutions with better performance for some these problems, and we provide the first kinetic results for others. In particular, we provide: • A simple kinetic data structure (KDS) to maintain all the nearest neighbors and the closest pair. Our deterministic kinetic approach for maintenance of all the nearest neighbors improves the previous randomized kinetic algorithm. • An exact KDS for maintenance of the Euclidean minimum spanning tree, which improves the previous KDS. • The first KDS's for maintenance of the Yao graph and the Semi-Yao graph. • The first KDS to consider maintaining plane graphs on moving points. • The first KDS for maintenance of all the k-nearest neighbors, for any k ≥ 1. • The first KDS to answer the reverse k-nearest neighbor queries, for any k ≥ 1 in any fixed dimension, on a set of moving points. / Graduate

A diesel particulate filter (DPF) is designed to physically remove diesel particulate matter or soot from the exhaust gas of a diesel engine. Frequently replacing DPF is a waste of resource and waiting for full utilization is risky and very costly, so, what is the optimal time/milage to change DPF? Answering this question is very difficult without knowing when the DPF is changed in a vehicle. We are finding the answer with supervised machine learning algorithms for detecting anomalies in vehicles off-board sensor data (operational data of vehicles). Filter change is considered an anomaly because it is rare as compared to normal data. Non-sequential machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection like oneclass support vector machine (OC-SVM), k-nearest neighbor (K-NN), and random forest (RF) are applied for the first time on DPF dataset. The dataset is unbalanced, and accuracy is found misleading as a performance measure for the algorithms. Precision, recall, and F1-score are found good measure for the performance of the machine learning algorithms when the data is unbalanced. RF gave highest F1-score of 0.55 than K-NN (0.52) and OCSVM (0.51). It means that RF perform better than K-NN and OC-SVM but after further investigation it is concluded that the results are not satisfactory. However, a sequential approach should have been tried which could yield better result.

Contact detection algorithms are needed in different areas of science and technology. From digital games and computer graphics to high-performance simulations and robotics. These algorithms require great computational effort and are prone to become the bottlenecks of its applications, even more when this computation must be done in real-time or large-scale systems. With the popularization of GPU cards use for both science and business, it is only natural that parallel implementations for this problem arise in the scientific community. In this work the main contact detection algorithms are analyzed and a numerical experiment is performed, with the goal of finding out which algorithm has better computational performance and memory use, or if they efficiency depends on different scenario features. For performing the experiment, a parallel Discrete ElementMethod application was developed using CUDA/C++ with the main algorithms presented in literature, besides these, the author proposes and implements the Sorting Contact Detection algorithm parallelization, that hadn’t been parallelized until now. The tests have found that the parallel Sorting Contact Detection algorithm is the most efficient in all studied scenarios, achieving a good performance and a superiormemory usage than its peers. / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Algoritmos de detecção de contatos são necessários em diferentes áreas da ciência e tecnologia, de jogos digitais e computação gráfica à simulações de alto desempenho e robótica. Esses algoritmos exigem grande esforço computacional e tendem a ser os gargalos das aplicação as quais fazem parte, principalmente em sistemas de grande escala ou em tempo real. Com a popularização das placas GPUs para uso científico e comercial, é natural que surjam implementações paralelas para esse problema. Nesse trabalho os principais algoritmos de detecção de contatos para GPU são analisados e é realizado umexperimento numérico, com objetivo de descobrir qual algoritmo é o melhor emtermos de desempenho computacional e uso de memória, ou se a eficiência de cada umdepende das diferentes características do cenários. Para a realização do experimento, foi implementado em CUDA/C++ uma aplicação paralela doMétodo dos Elementos Discretos comos principais algoritmos apresentados na literatura, além desses o autor propõe e implementa a paralelização do algoritmo de detecção com ordenação e busca binária que ainda não havia sido paralelizado. Após os testes é constatado que o algoritmo com ordenação e busca é o mais eficiente para todos os cenários estudados, obtendo nos resultados um bom desempenho em tempo de execução e com uso de memória muito superior aos outros.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-03T12:19:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paulo Cappelletti .pdf: 1008787 bytes, checksum: 66dfcb218c40360175a5e377af710ada (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-09-24 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In the present study on the topic Concept of Conversion and Social Justice in the thoughts of Joseph Comblin I attempted to develop the concept of the theme proposed above. This thesis, developed in the Graduate Program in Science of Religion belongs to the Religion, Society and Culture line of research. The methodology for data collection was a bibliographical research. The question that guided the research was: what is the concept of conversion and social justice in the thought of Joseph Comblin? With the responses we developed the first chapter with Joseph Julles Comblin's biography along with people who somehow inspired and influenced his career in Brazil and in Latin America. In the second chapter Comblin's concept of conversion was presented; coming to a conclusion that a conversion is for the Kingdom of God and not for any religions institution. In the third chapter the concept of Social Justice was presented; coming to a conclusion that social justice happens when society becomes homeless with a practical love and not just words. / No presente estudo sobre o tema Conceito de Conversão e Justiça Social no pensamento de José Comblin , procurei desenvolver o conceito do tema proposto. Esta dissertação desenvolvida no Programa da Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Religião pertence à linha de pesquisa Religião, Sociedade e Cultura . A metodologia adotada na coleta de dados foi de uma pesquisa bibliográfica. O questionamento que norteou a pesquisa foi: qual o conceito de conversão e justiça social no pensamento de José Comblin? Com as respostas obtidas foi possível desenvolver o primeiro capítulo com a biografia de José Julles Comblin juntamente com as pessoas que de alguma forma inspiraram e influenciaram sua carreira no Brasil e na América Latina. No segundo capítulo foi apresentado o conceito de Conversão para Comblin chegando a uma conclusão que a conversão é para o Reino de Deus e não para qualquer instituição religiosa. Já no terceiro capítulo foi apresentado o conceito de Justiça Social chegando a uma conclusão que justiça social acontece quando a sociedade se converte ao pobre com amor prático e não somente de palavras.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / To conceive a movie as a document and as a historic tool is important nowadays, when images are considered fundamental in the acceptance and reception of specific purposes in the teaching level or in people s everyday lives. This dissertation intends to study the representative connections of the American approach policies in the 40 s through a cinematographic perspective, especially through the Disney movies Saludos, amigos! (1942) and The three caballeros (1945). These movies highlight some aspects of the Argentinean and Brazilian history, as well as of some other Latin-American countries, revealing the American impressions about South American countries and Mexico during World War II. This period featured the approximation of the North American and Latin American politics. This dissertation intends to provide a critical analysis of the historical and political fields in relation to the cultural and cinematographic universes, highlighting their closeness and detachments, taking in consideration the theoretic studies that relate the movies as an advertisement tool, spreader of ideologies, of moral codes, of philosophical divagations and of political propositions that would result in the spectator s acceptance and abidance. / Conceber um filme como documento e instrumento da história é importante nos tempos de hoje em que as imagens são tratadas como fundamentais na aceitação e na recepção de determinados propósitos sejam eles em nível de docência ou no cotidiano das pessoas. Esta dissertação pretende estudar os vínculos representativos das políticas de aproximação dos Estados Unidos na década de 1940 a partir do viés cinematográfico, em especial o cinema de Walt Disney nos filmes Saludos, amigos! (1942) e The three caballeros (1945). Esses filmes evidenciam aspectos da história da Argentina e do Brasil e de outros países latino-americanos -, a partir de questões culturais e históricas, revelando, também, uma visão dos Estados Unidos sobre os países sul americanos e sobre o México, durante o período da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Esse momento se caracterizou pelo estreitamento dos laços entre a política norte-americana e a América Latina. Desse modo, a realização desta dissertação visa proporcionar uma análise crítica entre os campos históricos e políticos com os universos culturais e cinematográficos, evidenciando suas proximidades, seus distanciamentos e, levando em conta os estudos de teóricos que relacionam o cinema enquanto instrumento de propaganda, divulgador de ideologias, de questões morais, de divagações filosóficas e de proposições políticas que remeteriam à aceitação e a cooptação do espectador.

Conhecer o comportamento espacial e demográfico e a dinâmica genética das espécies madeireiras e manter uma distância entre as árvores que permita sua reprodução é essencial para o desenvolvimento de procedimentos de manejo que visem a conservação das espécies e garantia de estoques futuros de madeira. No entanto, quando uma área é explorada para fins madeireiros, as árvores remanescentes podem não ficar a uma distância viável a polinização. A legislação brasileira atual limita a exploração de espécies com baixa densidade de ocorrência e define alguns critérios para a escolha das árvores remanescentes, porém, eles levam em consideração apenas o número de indivíduos e não os fatores ecológicos e genéticos das espécies além de serem os mesmos aplicados a toda Amazônia. O objetivo deste trabalho foi analisar o comportamento espacial de três espécies madeireiras, a Manilkara huberi, a Hymenaea courbaril e o Handroanthus serratifolius, em quatro áreas de estudo na Amazônia brasileira a partir de inventários de empresas florestais e verificar a implicação das últimas mudanças ocorridas na legislação no processo de polinização dessas espécies. O trabalho foi dividido em duas partes. A primeira verificou se essas três espécies possuem o mesmo padrão espacial em diferentes regiões da Amazônia e discutiu a questão da raridade presente na legislação. Foi calculada a densidade e a matriz do vizinho mais próximo para todos os indivíduos antes do corte das três espécies em cada área de estudo e as distâncias plotadas em um gráfico quantil-quantil. Os resultados mostraram que a Manilkara huberi é uma espécie que pode ser encontrada em alta ou baixa densidade e em agregados ou não dependendo da região de ocorrência, diferente do Handroanthus serratifolius que apresenta uma densidade e padrão de distribuição semelhante independente da região de ocorrência. A Hymenaea courbaril permeia entre essas duas situações. Notou-se uma semelhança na distribuição das espécies entre as áreas próximas. A segunda parte analisou as consequências da alteração da legislação na distância entre as árvores remanescentes das três espécies e verificou se essa distância era viável para o processo de polinização. Foi simulado o corte a partir de cenários legislativos, em que apenas o diâmetro mínimo de corte (DMC) foi alterado. Os resultados mostraram que houve uma diminuição na distância entre árvores. A diminuição favoreceu o processo de polinização visto que os polinizadores precisam percorrer menores distâncias na busca por alimento. A legislação tem tomado um caminho mais conservativo, porém há muito o que ser desenvolvido, visto que cada espécie possui sua própria ecologia reprodutiva mas são manejadas da mesma forma. / The information about the spatial and demographic behavior and the genetic dynamic of timber species and maintaining a distance between trees that allows their reproduction is essential for the development of management procedures to conserve species and guarantee future wood stocks. However, when an area is harvested for timber purposes, the remaining trees may not stay at a feasible distance for pollination. Current Brazilian legislation limits the exploitation of low-density species and defines some criteria for choosing the remaining trees. However, they take into account only the number of individuals and not the ecology and genetic aspects of the species. Besides, the same criteria are applied to the entire Amazon. The aim of this study was to analyze the spatial behavior of three timber species, Manilkara huberi, Hymenaea courbaril and Handroanthus serratifolius, in four study areas in the Brazilian Amazon Forest. Companies inventories were used to verify the implication of the latest changes in the Brazilian legislation on the pollination process of these species. The study was divided into two parts. The first one verified if these three species have the same spatial pattern in different regions of the Amazon and discussed the rarity issue in the legislation. The density and the nearest neighbor distance matrix were calculated for all individuals before cutting for the three species in each study area and the distances were plotted on a quantile-quantile plot. The results showed that Manilkara huberi can be found in high or low density and aggregated or not depending on the region of occurrence. On the other hand, other than Handroanthus serratifolius populations present similar densities and distribution patterns despite region of occurrence. Hymenaea courbaril permeates between these two situations. The distribution of this species among nearby areas showed similarity. The second part of this work analyzed the consequences of changes in Brazilian forest management legislation on the distance between the remaining trees of the three species and verified whether this distance was feasible for the pollination process. The cutting was simulated based on two legislative scenarios, in which only the minimum cut diameter (MCD) was changed. The results showed that there was a decrease in the distance between trees due to the increase of the density of remaining individuals. The distance decrease favored the pollination process, since pollinators need to travel shorter distances searching for food. Brazilian forest legislation has taken a more conservative path, but there is still much to be developed, since each species has its own reproductive ecology, even so are managed the same way.

A complexidade dos dados armazenados em grandes bases de dados aumenta cada vez mais, criando a necessidade de novas operações de consulta. Uma classe de operações que tem apresentado interesse crescente são as chamadas Consultas por Similaridade, sendo as mais conhecidas as consultas por Abrangência (\'R IND. q\') e por k-Vizinhos mais Proximos (kNN), sendo que esta ultima obtem quais são os k elementos armazenados mais similares a um dado elemento de referência. Outra consulta que é interessante tanto para consultas diretas quanto como parte de operações de análises mais complexas e a operação de consulta aos k-Vizinhos mais Próximos Reversos (RkNN). Seu objetivo e obter todos os elementos armazenados que têm um dado elemento de referência como um dos seus k elementos mais similares. Devido a complexidade de execução da operação de RkNN, a grande maioria das soluções existentes restringem-se a dados representados em espaços multidimensionais euclidianos (nos quais estão denidas tambem operações cardinais e topológicas, além de se considerar a similaridade como sendo a distância Euclidiana entre dois elementos), ou então obtém apenas respostas aproximadas, sujeitas a existência de falsos negativos. Várias aplicações de análise de dados científicos, médicos, de engenharia, financeiros, etc. requerem soluções eficientes para o problema da operação de RkNN sobre dados representados em espaços métricos, onde os elementos não podem ser considerados estar em um espaço nem Euclidiano nem multidimensional. Num espaço métrico, além dos próprios elementos armazenados existe apenas uma função de comparação métrica entre pares de objetos. Neste trabalho, são propostas novas podas de espaço de busca e o algoritmo RkNN-MG que utiliza essas novas podas para solucionar o problema de consultas RkNN exatas em espaços métricos sem limitações. Toda a proposta supõe que o conjunto de dados esta em um espaço métrico imerso isometricamente em espaço euclidiano e utiliza propriedades da geometria métrica válida neste espaço para realizar podas eficientes por lei dos cossenos combinada com as podas tradicionais por desigualdade triangular. Os experimentos demonstram comparativamente que as novas podas são mais eficientes que as tradicionais podas por desigualdade triangular, tendo desempenhos equivalente quando comparadas em conjuntos de alta dimensionalidade ou com dimensão fractal alta. Assim, os resultados confirmam as novas podas propostas como soluções alternativas eficientes para o problema de consultas RkNN / Data stored in large databases present an ever increasing complexity, pressing for the development of new classes of query operators. One such class, which is enticing an increasing interest, is the so-called Similarity Queries, where the most common are the similarity range queries (\'R IND. q\') and the k-nearest neighbor queries (kNN). A k-nearest neighbor query aims at retrieving the k stored elements nearer (or more similar) to a given reference element. Another important similarity query is the reverse k-nearest neighbor (RkNN), useful both for queries posed directly by the analyst and for queries that are part of more complex analysis processes. The objective of a reverse k-nearest neighbor queries is obtaining the stored elements that has the query reference element as one of their k-nearest neighbors. As the RkNN operation is a rather expensive operation, from the computational standpoint, most existing solutions only solve the query when applied over Euclidean multidimensional spaces (as these spaces also define cardinal and topological operations besides the Euclidean distance between pairs of elements) or retrieve only approximate answers, where false negatives can occur. Several applications, like the analysis of scientific, medical, engineering or financial data, require efficient and exact answers for the RkNN queries over data which is frequently represented in metric spaces, that is where no other property besides the similarity measure exists. Therefore, for applications handling metrical data, the assumption of Euclidean metric or even multidimensional data cannot be used. In this work, we propose new pruning rules based on the law of cosines, and the RkNN-MG algorithm, which uses them to solve RkNN queries in a way that is exact, faster than the existing approaches, that is not limited for any value of k, and that can be applied both over static and over dynamic datasets. The new pruning rules assume that the data set is in a metric space that can be embedded into an Euclidean space and use metric geometry properties valid in this space to perform effective pruning based on the law of cosines combined with the traditional pruning based on the triangle inequality property. The experiments show that the new pruning rules are alkways more efficient than the traditional pruning rules based solely on the triangle inequality. The experiments show that for high high dimensionality datasets, or for metric datasets with high fractal dimensionality, the performance improvement is smaller than for for lower dimensioinality datasets, but it\'s never worse. Thus, the results confirm that the our pruning rules are efficient alternative to solve RkNN queries in general