Multi-target tracking (MTT) methods estimate the trajectory of targets from noisy measurement; therefore, they can be used to handle the pedestrian-vehicle interaction for a moving vehicle. MTT has an important part in assisting the Automated Driving System and the Advanced Driving Assistance System to avoid pedestrian-vehicle collisions. ADAS and ADS rely on correct estimates of the pedestrians' position and velocity, to avoid collisions or unnecessary emergency breaking of the vehicle. Therefore, to help the risk evaluation in these systems, the MTT needs to provide accurate and robust information of the trajectories (in terms of position and velocity) of the pedestrians in different environments. Several factors can make this problem difficult to handle for instance in crowded environments the pedestrians can suffer from occlusion or missed detection. Classical MTT methods, such as the global nearest neighbour filter, can in crowded environments fail to provide robust and accurate estimates. Therefore, more sophisticated MTT methods should be used to increase the accuracy and robustness and, in general, to improve the tracking of targets close to each other. The aim of this master's thesis is to improve the situational awareness with respect to pedestrians and pedestrian-vehicle interactions. In particular, the task is to investigate if the GM-PHD and the GM-CPHD filter improve pedestrian tracking in urban environments, compared to other methods presented in the literature.  The proposed task can be divided into three parts that deal with different issues. The first part regards the significance of different clustering methods and how the pedestrians are grouped together. The implemented algorithms are the distance partitioning algorithm and the Gaussian mean shift clustering algorithm. The second part regards how modifications of the measurement noise levels and the survival of targets based on the target location, with respect to the vehicle's position, can improve the tracking performance and remove unwanted estimates. Finally, the last part regards the impact the filter estimates have on the tracking performance and how important accurate detections of the pedestrians are to improve the overall tracking. From the result the distance partitioning algorithm is the favourable algorithm, since it does not split larger groups. It is also seen that the proposed filters provide correct estimates of pedestrians in events of occlusion or missed detections but suffer from false estimates close to the ego vehicle due to uncertain detections. For the comparison, regarding the improvements, a classic standard MTT filter applying the global nearest neighbour method for the data association is used as the baseline. To conclude; the GM-CPHD filter proved to be the best out of the two proposed filters in this thesis work and performed better also compared to other methods known in the literature. In particular, its estimates survived for a longer period of time in presence of missed detection or occlusion. The conclusion of this thesis work is that the GM-CPHD filter improves the tracking performance and the situational awareness of the pedestrians.

Direct fitness is measured as the number of surviving offspring. Thus adult males may try to produce as many offspring as possible or to increase the survival of their offspring. Recent findings have shown the many potential benefits of fathers’ presence and support on infants’ development and survival. However, little is known about the influence of socio-ecological factors on male-infant interactions. The main aim of this thesis was therefore to investigate male-infant interactions in wild crested macaques (Macaca nigra). In particular, we aimed to examine the affiliative and agonistic interactions taking place in this species, along with the factors influencing these interactions and offspring survival. Data collection for this thesis took place in the Tangkoko-Duasudara Reserve in Sulawesi, Indonesia, on 3 wild groups of crested macaques. For the first study, data were collected on migrations, births, disappearances, and encounters between groups over 5 years. We analyzed the influence of socio-ecological factors (e.g. rainfall, alpha-male position takeover, and male hierarchy stability) on pre- and post-natal loss. The results showed that high infant mortality was mainly associated to male alpha-position takeover, which suggests that infanticide may indeed occur in this species. In addition, we found that female within-group competition for food sources and between-group resource defense influenced fetal and infant loss. Based on these findings, we were interested to see whether fathers protected their own offspring against male attacks. Thus, in the second study, we investigated the social determinants and characteristics of male-infant affiliations. Our results indicate that adult males and infants form preferential association, and that infants initiate the majority of male-infant affiliations. Infants initiated affiliations mainly towards a high ranking male or a male in a close relationship with their mother. In addition, infants affiliated mainly with adult males in the absence of their mother, while males affiliated mostly with infants when the infants‘ mother was present in proximity. Furthermore, males initiated affiliations towards an infant when they held a high rank or when they had a strong bond with the infant‘s mother. Interestingly, paternity did not affect male-infant affiliations. In conclusion, these studies provide insights in the specifics of both infant survival strategies and male reproductive strategies. In addition, we show that infants are active agents in establishing and maintaining preferential relationships with males. This thesis, thus, confirm that male-infant interactions, although rare, have a strong influence both on males’ and infants’ direct fitness.:Contents ........................................................................................................................................ 5 List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. 7 List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ 8 Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Zusammenfassung .................................................................................................................. 13 1 General Introduction .......................................................................................................... 17 1.1 Infants and adult males in mammals ...................................................................... 18 1.2 Primate males’ use and abuse of infants ................................................................ 19 1.3 Male care and paternal care in primates ............................................................... 20 1.4 Crested macaques as study species ......................................................................... 21 1.5 Aims of this thesis ........................................................................................................... 23 2 Social and ecological factors influencing offspring survival in wild macaques ................................................................................................................................... 25 2.1 Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 26 2.2 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 26 2.3 Methods .............................................................................................................................. 29 2.4 Results ................................................................................................................................. 34 2.5 Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 37 3 Mother-male bond, but not paternity, influences male-infant affiliation in wild crested macaques .......................................................................................................... 45 3.1 Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 46 3.2 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 46 3.3 Methods .............................................................................................................................. 50 3.4 Results ................................................................................................................................. 58 3.5 Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 61 4 Thesis Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 71 Appendices ................................................................................................................................ 75 Supplementary figure and tables for Chapter 2 ......................................................... 76 Supplementary methods and tables for Chapter 3 ................................................... 79 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 83 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 99 Contributions of co-authors .............................................................................................. 101 Curriculum vitae .................................................................................................................... 105 Publications and conference contributions ................................................................. 107 Selbstständigkeitserklärung ............................................................................................. 109

These are the abstracts of the oral and poster presentations of the 4th PhD conference held on 06. June 2019 in Freiberg.

The document is the PhD thesis of Stanislav Nikitin. It summarizes results of the comprehensive investigation of the magnetic fluctuations in several quantum magnets by means of elastic and inelastic neutron scattering.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal. / Chez les mammifères, rétablissement de la circulation est critique pour la formation des différents organes et la programmation du développement embryonnaire. Ceci implique la formation du cœur et des vaisseaux et la différenciation des cellules hématopoïétiques. Malgré leur importance pour la formation des vaisseaux, les mécanismes cellulaires et moléculaires qui régulent la différenciation et la fonction des cellules endothéliales demeurent peu compris. L'identification de facteurs de transcription impliqués dans la régulation du programme génétique et ou de la différenciation endothéliale pourrait aider à élucider les diverse étapes du développement vasculaire. Au cours de cette étude, nous avons cherché à identifier de nouveaux gènes, potentiellement des facteurs de transcription qui seraient régulés durant les étapes précoces de la différenciation endothéliale. A cette fin, nous avons utilisé un modèle in vitro de différenciation endothéliale pour isoler des gènes dont l'expression est induite tôt durant ce processus. Ceci a permis le clonage et la caractérisation d'un nouveau gène qui code pour END01, une nouvelle protéine à domaine PHD finger régulée durant la différenciation précoce des cellules endothéliales. END01 est une protéine de 26.6 kd exprimée dans le cytoplasme et dans les corps nucléaires. Les analyses fonctionnelles indiquent qu'ENDOl est un activateur transcriptionel d'au moins un promoteur endothélial, l'endothélinel. L'expression d'ENDOl dans les cellules endothéliales des vaisseaux, dans l'endocarde, dans les cellules sanguines, dans différentes lignées hématopoïétiques et dans le foie fetal suggère un rôle d'ENDOl au cours du développement des cellules endothéliales et hématopoïétiques. L'expression d'ENDOl dans ces deux types cellulaires suggère qu'il s'agit d'un marqueur des hémangioblastes précurseurs communs des cellules endothéliales et hématopoïétiques. L'analyse de ce marqueur aidera à mieux comprendre le développement et la différenciation endothéliale dans le contexte du développement vasculaire normal et de l'angiogénèse.

This thesis examines the parasite dynamics and the mechanisms affecting parasite load and transmission focalising on the role played by host and habitat heterogeneities. This study is based on the gastrointestinal nematode Heligmosomoides polygyrus and the small mammal yellow necked mouse and uses data gathered from experimental field manipulations of parasites intensities and data gathered from trapping monitoring. Initially the parasite community of yellow-necked mouse (Apodemus flavicollis) was explored in North-Eastern Italian Alps with the aim to describe the major patterns and identify the factors affecting parasite community structure. Despite the observed spatial variability it has been found that differences within the host population such age and secondly sex and breeding conditions, were the major factors acting on parasite occurrence and intensity. Habitat differences had a less apparent effect on parasite community structure. The consequences of H. polygyrus infection on other parasite species infections have been analysed, in specific the infestation of the tick Ixodes ricinus in populations of A. flavicollis. H. polygyrus load and tick infestation were monitored as well as were carried out field manipulations of H. polygyrus intensity and were monitored changes in tick infestation. It has been found that H. polygyrus load was negatively related to I. ricinus infestations. Host factors mediated the H. polygyrus-I. ricinus interaction such that young and non-breeding mice exhibited higher I. ricinus to H. polygyrus intensity respect breeding adults. The role of host sex on parasite abundance was then investigated carrying out a field experiment where the H. polygyrus intensity were manipulated in relation to mice gender. In specific, H. polygyrus was removed alternately from either sexes and the parasite load was analysed in the untreated sex. It was found that males mice were responsible to drive parasite transmission in the host population and this was observed in absence of sex-bias in parasite infection, suggesting that this pattern was not a mere consequence of quantitative differences in parasite loads between sexes. To disentangle the possible mechanism causing this sex bias in parasite transmission mathematical simulations based on parameters obtained for the field experiment were used. Two non mutually exclusive hypotheses causing sex bias in parasite transmission were tested: a- males immune response is less efficient and this causes the development of more successful parasite infective stages or b-males behaviours allow them to be more efficient is spreading in more exposed areas parasite infective stages. Multi-host models were developed and simulations were compared with field results. While it was not disentangled the most dominant mechanism causing sex bias in parasite transmission this study underlined the importance of host sexes in affecting parasite dynamics and host-parasite interaction. In conclusion this thesis highlighted the importance of considering host and environmental differences when investigating host parasite interactions. This finding could be extremely important when planning measured of disease control or to avoid disease outbreak. Controlling target group of individuals host could avoid economical losses and a more effective measure of intervention.

Dans les systèmes de perception multicapteurs, un point central concerne le suivi d'objets multiples. Dans mes travaux de thèse, le capteur principal est un télémètre laser à balayage qui perçoit des cibles étendues. Le problème desuivi multi-objets se décompose généralement en plusieurs étapes (détection, association et suivi) réalisées de manière séquentielle ou conjointe. Mes travaux ont permis de proposer des alternatives à ces méthodes en adoptant une approche "track-before-detect" sur cibles distribuées qui permet d'éviter la succession des traitements en proposant un cadre global de résolution de ce problème d'estimation. Dans une première partie, nous proposons une méthode de détection travaillant directement en coordonnées naturelles (polaires) qui exploite les propriétés d'invariance géométrique des objets suivis. Cette solution est ensuite intégrée dans le cadre des approches JPDA et PHD de suivi multicibles résolues grâce aux méthodes de Monte-Carlo séquentielles. La seconde partie du manuscrit vise à s'affranchir du détecteur pour proposer une méthode dans laquelle le modèle d'objet est directement intégré au processus de suivi. C'est sur ce point clé que les avancées ont été les plus significatives permettant d'aboutir à une méthode conjointe de détection et de suivi. Un processus d'agrégation a été développé afin de permettre une formalisation des données qui évite tout prétraitement sous-optimal. Nous avons finalement proposé un formalisme général pour les systèmes multicapteurs (multilidar, centrale inertielle, GPS). D'un point de vue applicatif, ces travaux ont été validés dans le domaine du suivi de véhicules pour les systèmes d'aide à la conduite. / In multi-sensor perception systems, an active topic concerns the multiple object tracking methodes. In this work, the main sensor is a scanning laser rangefinder perceiving extended targets. Tracking methods are generally composed of a three-step scheme (detection, association and tracking) which is jointly or sequentially implemented. This work proposes alternative solutions by considering a track-before-detect approach on extended targets. It avoids the classic procedures by proposing a global framework to solve this estimation problem. Firstly, we propose a detection method dealing with measurements in natural coordinates (polar) which is founded on geometrical invariance properties of the tracked objects. This solution is then integrated in the JPDA and PHD multi-target tracking frameworks solved with the sequential Monte-Carlo methods. The second part of this thesis aims at avoiding the detection step to propose an approach where the object model is directly embedded in the tracking process. This lets to build a novel joint detection and tracking approach. An aggregation process was developed to construct a measurement modeling avoiding any suboptimal preprocessing. We finally proposed a general framework for multi-sensor systems ( multiple lidar, inertial sensor, GPS). Theses methods were applied in the area of multiple vehicle tracking for the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems.