I ulykkessammenheng går to av de vanligste undersøkelsesmetodene ut på henholdsvis å kartlegge det juridiske ansvaret for ulykken og å klarlegge årsaksforholdene. I media får vi stort sett bare høre om førstnevnte i form av oppslag om at ulykken skyldes menneskelig svikt. Årsaksforholdene tar gjerne lengre tid å kartlegge og har heller ikke elementer av helt eller syndebukk i seg, og er således mindre interessante å skrive om. I forebyggende sammenheng er det likevel gjerne her det er mest å hente. I erkjennelsen av at mennesket er og blir feilbarlig, bør man nettopp gripe tak i disse bakenforliggende årsakene, gjerne kalt latente feil, som også kan medvirke til å avverge at et tilløp får lov å utvikle seg til en ulykke. I denne oppgaven blir det gjort rede for bakenforliggende årsaker til en alvorlig samferdselsulykke på Vestlandet i 1999, nemlig hurtigbåten MS Sleipners forlis. Det blir også vist hvordan ulykken kunne vært unngått, eller i det minste at skadeomfanget kunne vært vesentlig redusert, dersom det hadde vært større fokus på å avdekke slike latente forhold. For å få offentligheten til å forstå viktigheten av slik årsakskartlegging, og ikke minst at ansvarlige instanser følger opp funnene i ettertid, er det viktig at media griper fatt i problemstillingen og setter den på dagsorden. / Two of the most common forms of investigations after accidents are the search for the judicial aspects of guilt on the one hand and the investigation to find the causes of the accident on the other hand. Media mainly tell us the result of the first one, namely that “the cause of the accident was human error”. Usually it takes more time to establish an understanding of the underlying causes. This investigation does not point out a hero, neither a scapegoat. Therefore the real causes are less interesting to the media. Still, when it comes to accident prevention, this is where one should make an effort. By recognizing the fact that humans are eligible to fail, it is here one should try to take preventive measures. By recognizing these latent conditions one may succeed to avoid potentially dangerous situations from developing to serious accidents. In this paper the underlying causes related to a serious accident that struck public transportation in Western Norway will be presented. The accident is the shipwreck of the high speed craft MS Sleipner in 1999. It will also be shown how this accident could have been prevented, or at least how the extent of the damage could have been substantially reduced, if only latent conditions had been paid a little more attention to. To make the general public understand the importance of uncovering such latent conditions, not to say make sure that they who are responsible take action to remove these conditions, it is vital that the media put these questions on the agenda.

The objective of this thesis is to improve the performance of real-time communication overa wireless channel, by means of specifically tailored channel coding. The deadlinedependent coding (DDC) communication protocol presented here lets the timeliness and thereliability of the delivered information constitute quality of service (QoS) parametersrequested by the application. The values of these QoS parameters are transformed intoactions taken by the link layer protocol in terms of adaptive coding strategies.Incremental redundancy hybrid automatic repeat request (IR-HARQ) schemes usingrate compatible punctured codes are appealing since no repetition of previously transmittedbits is made. Typically, IR-HARQ schemes treat the packet lengths as fixed and maximizethe throughput by optimizing the puncturing pattern, i.e. the order in which the coded bitsare transmitted. In contrast, we define an IR strategy as the maximum number of allowedtransmissions and the number of code bits to include in each transmission. An approach isthen suggested to find the optimal IR strategy that maximizes the average code rate, i.e., theoptimal partitioning of n-kparity bits over at most M transmissions, assuming a givenpuncturing pattern. Concatenated coding used in IR-HARQ schemes provides a new arrayof possibilities for adaptability in terms of decoding complexity and communication timeversus reliability. Hence, critical reliability and timing constraints can be readily evaluatedas a function of available system resources. This in turn enables quantifiable QoS and thusnegotiable QoS. Multiple concatenated single parity check codes are chosen as examplecodes due to their very low decoding complexity. Specific puncturing patterns for thesecomponent codes are obtained using union bounds based on uniform interleavers. Thepuncturing pattern that has the best performance in terms of frame error rate (FER) at a lowsignal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is chosen. Further, using extrinsic information transfer (EXIT)analysis, rate compatible puncturing ratios for the constituent component code are found.The puncturing ratios are chosen to minimize the SNR required for convergence.The applications targeted in this thesis are not necessarily replacement of cables inexisting wired systems. Instead the motivation lies in the new services that wireless real-time communication enables. Hence, communication within and between cooperatingembedded systems is typically the focus. The resulting IR-HARQ-DDC protocol presentedhere is an efficient and fault tolerant link layer protocol foundation using adaptiveconcatenated coding intended specifically for wireless real-time communications. / Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie, 2198, Technical report. D, 29,

Les temps de réponse dans une tache de reconnaissance d’objets visuels diminuent de façon significative lorsque les cibles peuvent être distinguées à partir de deux attributs redondants. Le gain de redondance pour deux attributs est un résultat commun dans la littérature, mais un gain causé par trois attributs redondants n’a été observé que lorsque ces trois attributs venaient de trois modalités différentes (tactile, auditive et visuelle). La présente étude démontre que le gain de redondance pour trois attributs de la même modalité est effectivement possible. Elle inclut aussi une investigation plus détaillée des caractéristiques du gain de redondance. Celles-ci incluent, outre la diminution des temps de réponse, une diminution des temps de réponses minimaux particulièrement et une augmentation de la symétrie de la distribution des temps de réponse. Cette étude présente des indices que ni les modèles de course, ni les modèles de coactivation ne sont en mesure d’expliquer l’ensemble des caractéristiques du gain de redondance. Dans ce contexte, nous introduisons une nouvelle méthode pour évaluer le triple gain de redondance basée sur la performance des cibles doublement redondantes. Le modèle de cascade est présenté afin d’expliquer les résultats de cette étude. Ce modèle comporte plusieurs voies de traitement qui sont déclenchées par une cascade d’activations avant de satisfaire un seul critère de décision. Il offre une approche homogène aux recherches antérieures sur le gain de redondance. L’analyse des caractéristiques des distributions de temps de réponse, soit leur moyenne, leur symétrie, leur décalage ou leur étendue, est un outil essentiel pour cette étude. Il était important de trouver un test statistique capable de refléter les différences au niveau de toutes ces caractéristiques. Nous abordons la problématique d’analyser les temps de réponse sans perte d’information, ainsi que l’insuffisance des méthodes d’analyse communes dans ce contexte, comme grouper les temps de réponses de plusieurs participants (e. g. Vincentizing). Les tests de distributions, le plus connu étant le test de Kolmogorov- Smirnoff, constituent une meilleure alternative pour comparer des distributions, celles des temps de réponse en particulier. Un test encore inconnu en psychologie est introduit : le test d’Anderson-Darling à deux échantillons. Les deux tests sont comparés, et puis nous présentons des indices concluants démontrant la puissance du test d’Anderson-Darling : en comparant des distributions qui varient seulement au niveau de (1) leur décalage, (2) leur étendue, (3) leur symétrie, ou (4) leurs extrémités, nous pouvons affirmer que le test d’Anderson-Darling reconnait mieux les différences. De plus, le test d’Anderson-Darling a un taux d’erreur de type I qui correspond exactement à l’alpha tandis que le test de Kolmogorov-Smirnoff est trop conservateur. En conséquence, le test d’Anderson-Darling nécessite moins de données pour atteindre une puissance statistique suffisante. / Response times in a visual object recognition task decrease significantly if targets can be distinguished by two redundant attributes. Redundancy gain for two attributes is a common finding, but redundancy gain from three attributes has been found only for stimuli from three different modalities (tactile, auditory, and visual). This study extends those results by showing that redundancy gain from three attributes within the visual modality is possible. It also provides a more detailed investigation of the characteristics of redundancy gain. Apart from a decrease in response times for redundant targets, these include a decrease in minimal response times and an increase in symmetry of the response time distribution. This study further presents evidence that neither race models nor coactivation models can account for all characteristics of redundancy gain. In this context, we discuss the problem of calculating an upper limit for the performance of race models for triple redundant targets, and introduce a new method of evaluating triple redundancy gain based on performance for double redundant targets. In order to explain the results from this study, the cascade race model is introduced. The cascade race model consists of several input channels, which are triggered by a cascade of activations before satisfying a single decision criterion, and is able to provide a unifying approach to previous research on the causes of redundancy gain. The analysis of the characteristics of response time distributions, including their mean, symmetry, onset, and scale, is an essential tool in this study. It was therefore important to find an adequate statistical test capable of reflecting differences in all these characteristics. We discuss the problem and importance of analysing response times without data loss, as well as the inadequacy of common methods of analysis such as the pooling of response times across participants (e.g. Vincentizing) in the present context. We present tests of distributions as an alternative method for comparing distributions, response time distributions in particular, the most common of these being the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test. We also introduce a test yet unknown in psychology: the two-sample Anderson-Darling test of goodness of fit. We compare both tests, presenting conclusive evidence that the Anderson-Darling test is more accurate and powerful: when comparing two distributions that vary (1) in onset only, (2) in scale only, (3) in symmetry only, or (4) that have the same mean and standard deviation but differ on the tail ends only, the Anderson-Darling test proves to detect differences better than the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test. Finally, the Anderson-Darling test has a type I error rate corresponding to alpha whereas the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test is overly conservative. Consequently, the Anderson- Darling test requires less data than the Kolmogorov-Smirnoff test to reach sufficient statistical power.

Les avancées en biotechnologie ont permis l’identification d’un grand nombre de mécanismes moléculaires, soulignant également la complexité de la régulation génique. Néanmoins, avoir une vision globale de l’homéostasie cellulaire, nous est pour l’instant inaccessible et nous ne sommes en mesure que d’en avoir qu’une vue fractionnée. Étant donné l’avancement des connaissances des dysfonctionnements moléculaires observés dans les maladies génétiques telles que la fibrose kystique, il est encore difficile de produire des thérapies efficaces. La fibrose kystique est causée par la mutation de gène CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator), qui code pour un canal chlorique transmembranaire. La mutation la plus fréquente (ΔF508) induit un repliement incorrect de la protéine et sa rétention dans le réticulum endoplasmique. L’absence de CFTR fonctionnel à la membrane a un impact sur l’homéostasie ionique et sur l’hydratation de la muqueuse respiratoire. Ceci a pour conséquence un défaut dans la clairance mucocilliaire, induisant infection chronique et inflammation excessive, deux facteurs fondamentaux de la physiopathologie. L’inflammation joue un rôle très important dans l’évolution de la maladie et malgré le nombre important d’études sur le sujet, la régulation du processus inflammatoire est encore très mal comprise et la place qu’y occupe le CFTR n’est pas établie. Toutefois, plusieurs autres facteurs, tels que le stress oxydatif participent à la physiopathologie de la maladie, et considérer leurs impacts est important pour permettre une vision globale des acteurs impliqués. Dans notre étude, nous exploitons la technologie des puces à ADN, pour évaluer l’état transcriptionnel d’une cellule épithéliale pulmonaire humaine fibro-kystique. Dans un premier temps, l’analyse de notre expérience identifie 128 gènes inflammatoires sur-exprimés dans les cellules FK par rapport aux cellules non FK où apparaissent plusieurs familles de gènes inflammatoires comme les cytokines ou les calgranulines. L’analyse de la littérature et des annotations suggèrent que la modulation de ces transcripts dépend de la cascade de NF-κB et/ou des voies de signalisation associées aux interférons (IFN). En outre, leurs modulations pourraient être associées à des modifications épigénétiques de leurs loci chromosomiques. Dans un second temps, nous étudions l’activité transcriptionnelle d’une cellule épithéliale pulmonaire humaine FK en présence de DMNQ, une molécule cytotoxique. Notre but est d’identifier les processus biologiques perturbés par la mutation du gène CFTR en présence du stress oxydatif. Fondé sur une analyse canonique de redondance, nous identifions 60 gènes associés à la mort cellulaire et leur variance, observée dans notre expérience, s’explique par un effet conjoint de la mutation et du stress oxydatif. La mesure de l’activité des caspases 3/7, des effecteurs de l’apoptose (la mort cellulaire programmée), montre que les cellules porteuses de la mutation ΔF508, dans des conditions de stress oxydatif, seraient moins apoptotiques que les cellules saines. Nos données transcriptomiques suggèrent que la sous-activité de la cascade des MAPK et la sur-expression des gènes anti-apoptotiques pourraient être impliquées dans le déséquilibre de la balance apoptotique. / Biotechnical advances have allowed a large number of molecular mechanisms to be identified, and have also underlined the complexity of gene regulation. Nonetheless, we still only have a partial understanding of cellular homeostasis. Even with our current knowledge, molecular dysfunctionality observed in genetic illnesses such as cystic fibrosis remain largely misunderstood, prohibiting us from developing efficient treatments. Cystic fibrosis is caused by a mutation of the CFTR (cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator) gene which codes for a chloric transmembrane channel. The most frequent mutation (ΔF508) causes the unfolding of the protein and its retention in the endoplasmic reticulum. This absence of a functional CFTR to the membrane has an impact on the ionic homeostasis and the hydration of the respiratory mucus. Consequently, the mucociliary clearance is disrupted, which leads to chronic infection and excessive inflammation - two fundamental factors of CF’s physiopathology. Inflammation plays a key role in the evolution of the illness and despite many studies on this subject, the regulation of the inflammatory process remains a mystery and CFTR’s role is not well established. Additionally, since the physiopathology cannot be explained by mutation alone, several authors suggest the importance of other factors (genetic and/or environmental) which are factors in the clinical picture of the illness. In our study, we use microarray technology to evaluate the transcriptional state of an epithelial lung cell issued from a human with cystic fibrosis. Initially, our analysis identifies 128 inflammatory genes which are over-expressed in the cystic fibrosis cells versus non-cystic fibrosis cells, showing several inflammatory gene families such as cytokines or calgranulins. An analysis of the publications and annotations of these transcripts suggests that their modulations depend upon the cascade of NF-κB and/or signalling pathways associated with interferons (IFN). In other words, their modulations could be associated with epigenetic modifications of their chromosomal loci. Secondly, we study the transcriptional activity of an epithelial lung cell issued from a human with cystic fibrosis in the presence of DMNQ, a cytotoxic molecule. Our goal is to identify the biological processus which are disturbed by the mutation of the CFTR gene in the presence of oxidative stress. Based on a canonical redundancy analysis, we identify 60 genes associated with cell death and their modulation in our study explained by the combined effect of mutation and oxidative stress. By measuring the activity of caspase 3/7, an effector of apoptosis (programmed cell death), we see that the cells containing the mutation ΔF508 could present a problem with apoptosis. Our transcriptomic data suggest that decreased activity of the MAPK cascade and over-expression of anti-apoptotic genes would be a factor in apoptotic imbalance.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

No description available.

Current submerged science projects such as VENUS and NEPTUNE have revealed the need for small, low-cost and easily deployed underwater remotely operated vehiclemanipulator (ROVM) systems. Unfortunately, existing small remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV) are not equipped to complete the complex and interactive submerged tasks required for these projects. Therefore, this thesis is aimed at adapting a popular small ROV into a ROVM that is capable of low-cost and time-efficient underwater manipulation. To realize this objective, the coordinated control of ROVM systems is required, which, in the context of this research, is defined as the collection of hardware and software that provides advanced functionalities to small ROVM systems. In light of this, the primary focus of this dissertation is to propose various technical building blocks that ultimately lead to the realization of such a coordinated control system for small ROVMs. To develop such a coordinated control of ROVM systems, it is proposed that ROV and manipulator motion be coordinated optimally and intelligently. With coordination, the system becomes redundant: there are more degrees of freedom (DOF) than required. Hence, the extra DOFs can be used to achieve secondary objectives in addition to the primary end-effector following task with a redundancy resolution scheme. This eliminates the standard practice of holding the ROV stationary during a task and uncovers significant potential in the small ROVM platform. In the proposed scheme, the ROV and manipulator motion is first coordinated such that singular configurations of the manipulator are avoided, and hence dexterous manipulation is ensured. This is done by using the ROV's mobility in an optimal, coordinated manner. Later, to accommodate a more comprehensive set of secondary objectives, a fuzzy based approach is proposed. The method considers the human pilot as the main operator and the fuzzy machine as an artificial assistant pilot that dynamically prioritizes the secondary objectives and then determines the optimal motion. Several model-based control methodologies are proposed for small ROV/ROVM systems to realize the desired motion produced by the redundancy resolution, including an adaptive sliding-mode control, an upper bound adaptive sliding-mode control with adaptive PID layer, and an H∞ sliding-mode control. For the unified system (redundancy resolution and controller), a new human-machine interface (HMI) is designed that can facilitate the coordinated control of ROVM systems. This HMI involves a 6-DOF parallel joystick, and a 3-D visual display and a graphical user interface (GUI) that enables a human pilot to smoothly interact with the ROVM systems. Hardware-in-theloop simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the coordination schemes. On the thrust allocation side, a novel fault-tolerant thrust allocation scheme is proposed to distribute forces and moments commanded by the controller over the thrusters. The method utilizes the redundancy in the thruster layout of ROVM systems. The proposed scheme minimizes the largest component of the thrust vector instead of the two-norm, and hence provides better manoeuvrability. In the first phase of implementation, a small inspection-class ROV, a Saab-Seaeye Falcon™ ROV, is adopted. To improve the navigation, a navigation skid is designed that contains a Doppler Velocity Log, a compass, an inertial measurement unit, and acoustic position data. The sensor data is blended using an Extended Kalman Filter. The developed ROV system uses the upper bound adaptive sliding-mode control with adaptive PID layer. The theoretical and practical results illustrate that the proposed tools can transform, a small, low-cost ROVM system into a highly capable, time-efficient system that can complete complex subsea tasks. / Graduate

There is mounting evidence that sustainable scale thresholds are now being exceeded worldwide and environmental resource shocks (e.g. climate change, water and oil shortages) may be inevitable in some regions of the world in the near future. These could result in severe economic breakdowns, welfare loss, and in the worst-case, the collapse of modern civilization. Therefore, a pre-eminent challenge of our times is to determine how to design a resilient (safe-fail) economy – one that can endure, adapt to and successfully recover from breakdowns when they occur. Surprisingly, while ecological economic theory relies heavily on natural science concepts such as thermodynamics, insufficient attention has been paid to the important ecological concept of resilience, particularly as it applies to economic design. The three major policy goals of current ecological economic theory (sustainable scale, just distribution and efficient allocation) focus instead on preventing environmental resource shocks and breakdowns, but given their unpredictability prevention may not always be possible. How resilience can inform the blossoming field of ecological economics is thus explored in this theoretical, transdisciplinary paper. Drawing on literature as diverse as archaeology and disaster planning, it develops six key principles of economic resilience and applies them to analyze the resilience of key societal systems including our money, electricity, water, transportation, information/communication and emergency response systems. Overall, economic resilience appears to be a unique concern that is not readily subsumed under any of the three existing ecological economic policy pillars. In fact, efforts to build in resilience have the potential to both complement and at times contradict the other three goals, especially efficiency. The need to further study these possible tradeoffs provides strong justification for adding a fourth distinct policy pillar, namely “Resilient Design”, to core ecological economic theory. Indeed, ecological economist’s longstanding criticism of economic growth meshes readily with the Resilience Alliance’s own figure-8 adaptive cycle theory critiquing the resilience costs of growth, providing significant opportunities for the future collaboration of these two fields in broadening global system theory.

The primary research objective was to develop a methodology to support conceptual design of the Hybrid Wing Body (HWB) configuration. The absence of a horizontal tail imposes new stability and control requirements on the planform, and therefore requiring greater emphasis on control authority assessment than is typical for conceptual design. This required investigations into three primary areas of research. The first was to develop a method for designing an appropriate amount of redundancy. This was motivated widely varying numbers of trailing edge elevons in the HWB literature, and inadequate explanations for these early design decisions. The method identifies stakeholders, metrics of interest, and synthesizes these metrics using the Breguet range equation for system level comparison of control surface layouts. The second area of research was the development trim analysis methods that could accommodate redundant control surfaces, for which conventional methods performed poorly. A new measure of control authority was developed for vehicles with redundant controls. This is accomplished using concepts from the control allocation literature such as the attainable moment subset and the direct allocation method. The result is a continuous measure of remaining control authority suitable for use during HWB sizing and optimization. The final research area integrated performance and control authority to create a HWB sizing environment, and investigations into how to use it for design space exploration and vehicle optimization complete the methodology. The Monte Carlo Simulation method is used to map the design space, identify good designs for optimization, and to develop design heuristics. Finally, HWB optimization experiments were performed to discover best practices for conceptual design.