Motivés par les développements récents dans le domaine des nanosciences, nous étudions les propriétés statistiques et thermodynamiques des systèmes mésoscopiques. En particulier, nous nous concentrons sur les résultats connus sous le nom de théorèmes de fluctuation. Ces relations donnent des prédictions sur le comportement de différents quantités dynamiques dans des situations loin de l'équilibre, tout en tenant compte des fluctuations de l'évolution temporelle. La première partie de notre étude est consacrée aux relations existants entre les fluctuations et la théorie de la réponse. Nous commençons par dériver une relation fonctionnelle pour les systèmes quantiques forcés dans le temps qui généralise l'égalité de Jarzynski et dont l'expansion en l'intensité du forçage permet de retrouver les résultats de la réponse linéaire. Nous poursuivons ensuite ces considérations en nous intéressant aux états stationnaires de non-équilibre. Ceci est réalisé dans le cadre des processus stochastiques, dans lequel nous dérivons une relation de fluctuation pour les courants de non-équilibre traversant le système. Cette relation lie explicitement les fluctuations aux forces thermodynamiques, ce qui nous permet de développer ses conséquences au niveau de la théorie de la réponse non-linéaire. De cette manière, nous obtenons de nouvelles relations liant fluctuations et coefficients de réponse dans le régime non-linéaire. Dans la deuxième partie de ce travail, nous développons une connexion récente liant l'irréversibilité au désordre dynamique. Nous présentons des résultats expérimentaux montrant que la production d'entropie s'exprime comme la différence de deux quantités mesurant la brisure de symétrie sous renversement du temps au niveau du désordre temporel. Nous étudions ensuite les conséquences de cette relation dans le contexte de l'énergétique du traitement de l'information. En particulier, nous présentons une généralisation du principe de Landauer pour l'effaçage d'information. De la même manière, nous relions la dissipation à la génération d'information par les entités biologiques.

This thesis presents the design and evaluation of the location of a cell phone user, to enable more effective performance monitoring. One of the end-uses I propose is in emergency management, by means of a framework that distributes its functionality between establishing data-set characteristics that are relevant to the problem and a visual tool to evaluate resource-scheduling proposals. Manikarnika is a modular framework, which finds translation in a prototype for Reverse 111. The first steps in the process were to establish whether the parameters I hypothesized as useful, indeed were. Using a statistically significant amount of traces, obtained from real calls placed on the network, the utility of the location metric was established. In order to investigate utilizing a second metric of reputation, a benchmark for evaluating ideas from Social Networks research was proposed, in order to move from arbitrary testing to a more systematic environment. This dissertation details the measurement, design and evaluation of an end-to-end and modular framework for Emergency Management, where the functionality is distributed in order to easily incorporate the changing parameters of sources of information, emergency events, resource requirements of these events and identifying callers that might be able to provide better insight into a situation that is essentially very dynamic. The chasm between research proposals for various end-uses and the application of the same to real life is one that I have tried to bridge in my work. By incorporating pieces from core Electrical Engineering measurements and simulation and extending the use of what was originally a tool built for training Emergency Responders to analyze various resource scheduling agents, which take into account a diversity of administrative domains, I lay the ground work for one possible solution, Reverse 111, which proposes the use of proactive crowd-sourcing for emergency response, with easy extensions to commercial location-based applications.

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This study addressed the question of whether or not a stimulus paired with the termination of shock would acquire a positive conditioned reinforcing function. Previous investigators have suggested that a stimulus paired with shock termination must increase the frequency of a response upon which it is made contingent. This test for conditioned reinforcement is incomplete because multiple stimulus functions will be established during conditioning trials that can influence the rate of responding. The solution to this multiple stimulus control problem involved the effects of reinforcement upon events antecedent to the criterion response. Reinforcement results in the establishment of discriminative stimulus control. The test for conditioned reinforcement from shock termination, therefore, would involve using the presumed conditioned reinforcer to establish discriminative control for a response. Subjects were four male albino rats of the Wistar strain. The experimental procedure was divided into three phases. The initial phase involved consecutive trials in which a tone was paired with shock offset. The next phase continued tone/shock offset pairings and, in addition, the tone alone was presented sometimes for establishment of a lever press. In the third phase an attempt was made to bring the lever press under the discriminative stimulus control of a light. A successful response shaping effect was obtained for two of the four rats. There was no establishment of discriminative stimulus control for level pressing for the two rats who proceeded to the discrimination test for conditioned reinforcement. Conditioned reinforcement from shock termination was not revealed in this study. The establishment of stable discriminative control over the criterion response would require a strong reinforcer relative to the other established stimulus functions. Future research should concentrate on developing procedures to maximize the conditioned reinforcing properties while minimizing the control from competing stimulus functions.