Musculoskeletal computational modeling is a versatile and effective tool which may be used to study joint mechanics, examine muscle and ligament function, and simulate surgical reconstructive procedures. While injury to the elbow joint can be significantly debilitating, questions still remain regarding its normal, pathologic, and repaired behavior. Biomechanical models of the elbow have been developed, but all have assumed fixed joint axes of rotation and ignored the effects of ligaments. Therefore, the objective of this thesis was to develop and validate a computational model of the elbow joint whereby joint kinematics are dictated by three-dimensional bony geometry contact, ligamentous constraints, and muscle loading.Accurate three-dimensional bone geometry was generated by acquiring CT scans, segmenting the images to isolate skeletal features, and fitting surfaces to the segmented data. Ligaments were modeled as tension-only linear springs, and muscle were represented as force vectors with discrete attachment points. Bone contact was modeled by a routine which applied a normal force at points of penetration, with a force magnitude being a function of penetration depth. A rigid body dynamics simulator was used to predict the model's behavior under particular external loading conditions.The computational model was validated by simulating past experimental investigations and comparing results. Passive flexion-extension range of motion predicted by the model correlated exceptionally well with reported values. Bony and ligamentous structures responsible for enforcing motion limits also agreed with past observations. The model's varus stability as a function of elbow flexion and coronoid process resection was also investigated. The trends predicted by the model matched those of the associated cadaver study.This thesis successfully developed an accurate musculoskeletal computational model of the elbow joint complex. While the model may now be used in a predictive manner, further refinements may expand its applicability. These include accounting for the interference between soft tissue and bone, and representing the dynamic behavior of muscles.

Introdução: Alterações nos eixos Hipotálamo-Hipófise-Adrenal (HHA) e Hipotálamo-Hipófise-Tireóide (HHT) estão associados a depressão. Objetivo: Avaliar a associação entre depressão e alterações nos eixos HHA, HHT e o estresse precoce (EP) em deprimidos. Metodologia: Foram avaliados 52 deprimidos e 52 voluntários com idade entre 18 e 45 anos. O diagnóstico de depressão foi baseado no DSM-IV e MINI. A gravidade da depressão foi avaliada pela HAM-D-17 e pelo IDB. Foram aplicados o CTQ buscando avaliar eventos estressantes na infância, além de questionário sócio-demográfico e clínico. Voluntários foram pareados segundo sexo, idade, IMC e submetidos aos mesmos questionários. Foram realizadas dosagem de TSH, T4 livre, anticorpos anti TPO e ATG, Cortisol plasmático, ACTH, DHEA-s, lipidograma, glicemia de jejum e cortisol salivar em 05 tempos. Resultados: Todos os deprimidos apresentaram história de EP. Houve concentrações maiores de TSH, anti TPO, anti TG, cortisol plasmático e salivar, ACTH, colesterol total, LDL, VLDL, triglicérides, AUC 8-23 e AUC0-30-60, além de concentrações menores de DHEA-s e HDL em casos do que controles, considerando a primeira e segunda coleta de dados e conforme a amostra estudada. Houve correlações entre as variáveis estudadas. Conclusão: O EP foi um dos fatores de risco para depressão. Achados desse estudo confirmam a literatura quando se compara deprimidos com controles e se relaciona depressão com os eixos HHT, HHA e o EP. Esse foi o primeiro estudo em que se comparou todas as variáveis supracitadas em pessoas CEP e SEP, gerando resultados positivos, além de revelar diferenças de gênero conforme o resultado. / Introduction: Changes in the axis hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) are associated with depression. Objective: Evaluating the association among depression and changes in the HPA, HPT axes and early stress (ES) in depressed. Methodology: A total of 52 depressed and 52 volunteers aged between 18 and 45 years were evaluated. Depression diagnosis was based on DSM-IV and MINI. The severity of depression was assessed by HAM-D-17 and BDI. The CTQ were applied for assessing stressful events in childhood, as well as socio-demographic and clinical questionnaire. Volunteers were paired by gender, age, BMI, and underwent the same questionnaires. TSH measurement was performed, free T4, anti TPO and ATG antibodies, plasma cortisol, ACTH, DHEA-s, lipid profile, fasting glucose and salivary cortisol in 05 times. Results: All depressed had history of ES. There were higher concentrations of TSH, anti TPO, anti TG, plasma and salivary cortisol, ACTH, total cholesterol, LDL, VLDL, triglycerides, AUC 8-23 and AUC0-30-60 and lower concentrations of DHEA-s and HDL in cases than controls, taking into account the first and second data collection and according to the studied sample. There were correlations between variables. Conclusion: The ES was one of the risk factors for depression. Findings of this study confirm the literature when compared depressed with controls and associated depression with HPT, HPA axes and ES. This was the first study in which we compared all the above variables in people WES and WOES, generating positive results and revealed gender differences according to result.

Introdução: Alterações nos eixos Hipotálamo-Hipófise-Adrenal (HHA) e Hipotálamo-Hipófise-Tireóide (HHT) estão associados a depressão. Objetivo: Avaliar a associação entre depressão e alterações nos eixos HHA, HHT e o estresse precoce (EP) em deprimidos. Metodologia: Foram avaliados 52 deprimidos e 52 voluntários com idade entre 18 e 45 anos. O diagnóstico de depressão foi baseado no DSM-IV e MINI. A gravidade da depressão foi avaliada pela HAM-D-17 e pelo IDB. Foram aplicados o CTQ buscando avaliar eventos estressantes na infância, além de questionário sócio-demográfico e clínico. Voluntários foram pareados segundo sexo, idade, IMC e submetidos aos mesmos questionários. Foram realizadas dosagem de TSH, T4 livre, anticorpos anti TPO e ATG, Cortisol plasmático, ACTH, DHEA-s, lipidograma, glicemia de jejum e cortisol salivar em 05 tempos. Resultados: Todos os deprimidos apresentaram história de EP. Houve concentrações maiores de TSH, anti TPO, anti TG, cortisol plasmático e salivar, ACTH, colesterol total, LDL, VLDL, triglicérides, AUC 8-23 e AUC0-30-60, além de concentrações menores de DHEA-s e HDL em casos do que controles, considerando a primeira e segunda coleta de dados e conforme a amostra estudada. Houve correlações entre as variáveis estudadas. Conclusão: O EP foi um dos fatores de risco para depressão. Achados desse estudo confirmam a literatura quando se compara deprimidos com controles e se relaciona depressão com os eixos HHT, HHA e o EP. Esse foi o primeiro estudo em que se comparou todas as variáveis supracitadas em pessoas CEP e SEP, gerando resultados positivos, além de revelar diferenças de gênero conforme o resultado. / Introduction: Changes in the axis hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) are associated with depression. Objective: Evaluating the association among depression and changes in the HPA, HPT axes and early stress (ES) in depressed. Methodology: A total of 52 depressed and 52 volunteers aged between 18 and 45 years were evaluated. Depression diagnosis was based on DSM-IV and MINI. The severity of depression was assessed by HAM-D-17 and BDI. The CTQ were applied for assessing stressful events in childhood, as well as socio-demographic and clinical questionnaire. Volunteers were paired by gender, age, BMI, and underwent the same questionnaires. TSH measurement was performed, free T4, anti TPO and ATG antibodies, plasma cortisol, ACTH, DHEA-s, lipid profile, fasting glucose and salivary cortisol in 05 times. Results: All depressed had history of ES. There were higher concentrations of TSH, anti TPO, anti TG, plasma and salivary cortisol, ACTH, total cholesterol, LDL, VLDL, triglycerides, AUC 8-23 and AUC0-30-60 and lower concentrations of DHEA-s and HDL in cases than controls, taking into account the first and second data collection and according to the studied sample. There were correlations between variables. Conclusion: The ES was one of the risk factors for depression. Findings of this study confirm the literature when compared depressed with controls and associated depression with HPT, HPA axes and ES. This was the first study in which we compared all the above variables in people WES and WOES, generating positive results and revealed gender differences according to result.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-08T16:44:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 PGPV15MA177.pdf: 752563 bytes, checksum: 4fce88fb9643f9cfe11263390f3012f4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-15 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Nowadays Brazil is self sustaining in apple. The production is located in micro regions in Southern Brazil, in Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul State. The technology and innovation need to be allied of the technicians and growers, responsible for the nacional production. The decision of which training system that will be used, it is one of the decisions that needs to do at planning to plant a new orchard. Is there so many training systems around the world. The choosed system wills interfer directlly in the profitability of the orchard. Nationally, the traditional system used is central leader system, with some changes, depending on the region that it is installed. With those informations, the aim of this study was evaluate different training systems in trials that combine the two most growed cultivars, Gala and Fuji, combined with the two most used rootstocks, M.9 and Marubakaido with interstem of M.9. The training systems evaluated were Vertical Axis, Tall Spindle and Solaxe at Vacaria-RS. The study concludes that Kiku-8®‟, grafted on M.9 tends to be a bi-annual bearing in all systems, the same cultivar was more vigorous when grafted on Marubakaido‟ trained in Vertical Axis. Maxi Gala‟ showed more vigour when trained in Vertical Axis in both rootstocks. All systems did not have effect in fruit quality parameters, like total soluble solids, flesh firmness and fruit size. It is necessary more labor hours Solaxe System in the most part of the combinations.The choice of which training system is the best to use, needs to be embased with data of more years of study / O Brasil é autossustentável em maçãs. A produção está concentrada em micro regiões no Sul do Brasil, nos estados de Santa Catarina e Rio Grande do Sul. A tecnologia e inovação devem ser aliadas dos técnicos e produtores responsáveis pela produção nacional. A decisão de qual sistema de condução é um dos intens a ser planejados antes mesmo da implantação do pomar. Diversos são os sistemas de condução existentes, existindo diferentes preferências nas diversas regiões produtoras ao redor do mundo. O sistema de condução escolhido vai inferir diretamente na rentabilidade do pomar. Nacionalmente o sistema de condução tradicional é em líder central, variando sua forma conforme local e tecnologia empregada. A partir dessas considerações objetivouse nesse trabalho avaliar diferentes sistemas de condução que utilizam líder central, em experimentos combinados com as cultivares mais produzidas no país, Gala e Fuji e com dois dos portaenxertos, M.9 e Marubakaido com interenxerto de M.9. Os sistemas de condução são o Vertical Axis, Solaxe e Tall Spindle, no município de Vacaria (RS). Pode-se concluir neste estudo que Kiku-8®‟ enxertado sobre M.9 mostra tendência a alternância de produção em todos os sistemas de condução, a mesma foi mais vigorosa quando enxertada sobre Marubakaido‟ e conduzida em Vertical Axis. Para a Maxi Gala‟ também o sistema Vetical Axis foi o qu mais induziu vigor nos dois portaenxertos utilizados. Os sistemas de condução não interferem nos fatores de qualidade de frutos como teor de sólidos solúveis, firmeza de polpa e tamanho de fruto. É necessário maior número de horas de mãode- obra no sistema Solaxe na maior parte das combinaçõe. A decisão para seleção de sistemas de condução terá que ser feita com base em resultados de mais safras

The possibility to save energy in synchronous machines operation by dismissing d-axis damping bars and surrogating them with active excitation current control in sectored field winding is proved. In particular a way to recover the energy of rotor oscillations during power regulation is shown by means of a studycase generator whereas a self-starting machine is analytically and numerically designed in view of its next construction and test. Principal design requirements and limits for both applications are presented and discussed.

Background. Neural Networks have mainly been used in behavior and gameplayrelated areas in games, but they have not yet been used specifically for intersection testing. This thesis explores the possibility to use deep neural networks for intersection testing of two 3D meshes. Objectives. The main goal of the thesis is to train a Deep Neural Network that can be used to replace traditional intersection test algorithms by having similar accuracy and a faster execution time. Methods. The research methods used in this thesis are implementation and experimentation. The deep neural network is trained using TensorFlow. Two different mesh generation techniques are implemented, one generating heightmaps and one generating planets. The two mesh types are combined to test all combinations of generated meshes. Attempts to make the network as general as possible are done through importance sampling to expose the network to tricky situations. A test application is developed where the intersection testing can be performed and compared to the Separating Axis Theorem (SAT). Heatmaps are also created to see how accurate the network is. Results. The results show that the network is accurate at classifying intersection between meshes similar to the ones it trained on. However, the network lacks generality and has bad accuracy if new meshes are introduced. The measured execution times show that the trained Deep Neural Network is 15.6 times as fast as a singlethreaded implementation of the SAT and 2.3 times as fast as the multi-threaded SAT. Conclusions. The trained network can be used as an early exit intersection test before using more expensive algorithms. The faster intersection testing can be useful in game physics by allowing faster classification of which meshes need to be tested for collisions. However, the main outcome is the shown potential for future work in the area including training a more general network, allowing variable mesh sizes, and providing information for solving collision responses. / Bakgrund. Neurala Nätverk har främst använts för beteende- och spelmekanikrelaterade områden inom spel, men de har ännu inte använts för genomskärningstester. Det här examensarbetet utförskar möjligheten att använda djupinlärning för att utföra genomskärningstester mellan två tredimensionella spelobjekt. Syfte. Huvudmålet med det här examensarbetet är att träna ett djupinlärt neuralt nätverk som kan ersätta traditionella genomskärningstestalgoritmer genom likvärdig precision och snabbare exekveringstid. Metod. Forskningsmetoderna som användes under examensarbetet är implementation och experimentation. Det djupinlärda neurala nätverket tränas med TensorFlow. Två olika spelobjektsgenereringsmetoder implementeras, där den ena genererar heightmaps och den andra genererar planeter. De två objekttyperna kombineras så att alla kombinationer av spelobjekt kan testas. För att göra nätverket så generellt som möjligt används importance sampling som utsätter nätverket för svåra situationer. Ett testprogram utvecklas där genomskärningstester kan utföras och jämföras mot Separating Axis Theorem (SAT). Grafer av typen heatmaps skapas också för att visa hur hög precision nätverket har. Resultat. Resultaten visar att nätverket har hög precision vid klassificering av spelobjekt liknande de som den tidigare har tränat på. Nätverket har sämre precision när nya spelobjekt introduceras. De uppmätta exekveringstiderna visar att det neurala nätverket är 15.6 gånger så snabbt som singeltrådade implementationen av SAT och 2.3 gånger så snabbt som den flertrådade SAT-implementationen. Slutsatser. Det tränade nätverket kan användas som ett tidig avbrott innan en dyrare algoritm används. Den snabbare genomskärningstestningen kan vara användbar i spelfysik eftersom den tillåter snabbare klassificering av vilka spelobjekt som behöver testas för kollision. Det huvudsakliga utfallet är den visade potentialen för vidare forskning inom området vilket inkluderar träning av ett mer generellt nätverk, möjlighet att variera spelobjektens storlek samt ge information för att kunna lösa kollisioner.

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Mental toughness has received extensive research attention in recent years because of its intuitive and theoretical association with successful performance. However, several significant omissions in understanding remained. This thesis aimed to address these gaps through various research approaches and methodologies, collectively resulting in a biopsychological perspective. The primary objectives were to provide a more holistic perspective of mental toughness and generate quantitative support for the various biological (2D:4D) cognitive-affective (self-structure), physiological (cortisol response) and behavioural (performance) differences that have been associated with the construct. The findings suggested that mental toughness is a multifaceted construct and manifests in several areas of human functioning; specifically, a particular cognitive-affective profile may underlie mental toughness (they possess a positive self-concept and a particular self-structuring style, namely integration). Furthermore, levels of cortisol during a competitive event (a physiological indicator of perceived stress levels) were significantly negatively related to mental toughness, suggesting that mentally tough individuals have a reduced perception of threat in competitive situations (giving support for the notion that they perceive competition or stress as a potential challenge for personal growth and improvement). An objective marker of mental toughness was also supported; specifically, 2D:4D ratio (indicative of prenatal testosterone levels) related significantly with scores on a mental toughness scale, giving support for the biological underpinning of the construct and an objective marker of mental toughness. Finally, two case examples are provided to demonstrate the usability of these important markers (cognitive, biological and physiological) in an applied context.

The world health organization has identified cardiovascular disease as the leading cause of non-accidental deaths in the world. The heart is identified as diseased when it is not operating at peak efficiency. Early diagnosis of heart disease can impact treatment and improve a patient's outcome. An early sign of a diseased heart is a reduction in its pumping ability, which can be measured by performing functional evaluations. These are typically focused on the ability of the ventricles to pump blood to the lungs (right ventricle) or to the rest of the body (left ventricle). Non-invasive imaging modalities such as cardiac magnetic resonance have allowed the use of quantitative methods for ventricular functional evaluation. The evaluation still requires the tracing of the ventricles in the end-diastolic and end-systolic phases. Even though manual tracing is still considered the gold standard, it is prone to intra- and inter-observer variability and is time consuming. Therefore, substantial research work has been focused on the development of semi- and fully automated ventricle segmentation algorithms. In 2009 a medical imaging conference issued a challenge for short-axis left ventricle segmentation. A semi-automated technique using polar dynamic programming generated results that were within human variability. This is because a path in a polar coordinate system yields a circular object in the Cartesian grid and the left ventricle can be approximated as a circular object. In 2012 there was a right ventricle segmentation challenge, but no polar dynamic programming algorithms were proposed. One reason may be that polar dynamic programming can only segment circular shapes. To use polar dynamic programming for the segmentation of the right ventricle we first expanded the capability of the technique to segment non-circular shapes. We apply this new polar dynamic programming in a framework that uses user-selected landmarks to segment the right ventricle in the four chamber view. We also explore the use of four chamber right ventricular segmentation to segment short-axis views of the right ventricle.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 28-31, 1996 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / The tracking system is part of a telemetry ground station being developed for the UK Ministry of Defence. The design objective is a self-contained transportable system for field use in a vehicle or workshop environment, so that the system components are required to be man portable. Comprehensive facilities are required for the reception, display and analysis of telemetry data from a remote 1430-1450MHz airborne source at ranges of up to 205km. Since tracking over water is a prime requirement the system must accommodate severe multipath fading. A detailed analysis of the link budget indicates that there is a major conflict between cost, portability, antenna size and the receiver complexity required to achieve a satisfactory performance margin. A baseline system is analysed using a four foot antenna. Methods for improving the performance are then considered including polarisation, frequency and space diversity coupled with alternative antenna types and configurations. The optimum solution utilises two six foot diameter shaped beam single axis antennas of unique design in conjunction with a receiving system which economically combines the elements of polarisation, frequency and space diversity.