O presente trabalho propõe uma investigação sobre as possibilidades do uso da prática da arte marcial chamada Kildo Self Defense voltada a técnicas de preparação de atores para a cena. Empregando essas práticas marciais, realizou-se a preparação corporal dos atores do Grupo Farsa, de Porto Alegre, durante o processo de criação do espetáculo para crianças A Roupa Nova do Rei. Com o objetivo de alcançar uma melhor disposição e presença dos atores em cena, buscou-se criar um treinamento que funcionasse como alicerce para a preparação dos atores, a ser utilizado em trabalhos posteriores do grupo. Este estudo foi construído a partir de pesquisa bibliográfica, entrevistas e estudos práticos sobre os efeitos das técnicas marciais e suas contribuições para o desenvolvimento das possibilidades corporais do ator e para sua eficácia em cena. / The present work intends an investigation about the possibilities to use the practice from the martial art of Kildo Self Defense as a technique for actor‟s in preparation for a scene. Making use of this martial arts techniques, the preparation of the actor‟s body was accomplished by the Grupo Farsa, from Porto Alegre, during the creation process of the play for children “The King‟s New Clothes”. The purpose was to search for a better actor‟s arrangement and presence in the scene, looking for a training that serves from base to preparation of the actor‟s, to being use in future works. This study was analyzed by means of bibliography research, interviews and practical studies about the effects of the martial art techniques and its contribution to the actor and the scene.

O presente trabalho propõe uma investigação sobre as possibilidades do uso da prática da arte marcial chamada Kildo Self Defense voltada a técnicas de preparação de atores para a cena. Empregando essas práticas marciais, realizou-se a preparação corporal dos atores do Grupo Farsa, de Porto Alegre, durante o processo de criação do espetáculo para crianças A Roupa Nova do Rei. Com o objetivo de alcançar uma melhor disposição e presença dos atores em cena, buscou-se criar um treinamento que funcionasse como alicerce para a preparação dos atores, a ser utilizado em trabalhos posteriores do grupo. Este estudo foi construído a partir de pesquisa bibliográfica, entrevistas e estudos práticos sobre os efeitos das técnicas marciais e suas contribuições para o desenvolvimento das possibilidades corporais do ator e para sua eficácia em cena. / The present work intends an investigation about the possibilities to use the practice from the martial art of Kildo Self Defense as a technique for actor‟s in preparation for a scene. Making use of this martial arts techniques, the preparation of the actor‟s body was accomplished by the Grupo Farsa, from Porto Alegre, during the creation process of the play for children “The King‟s New Clothes”. The purpose was to search for a better actor‟s arrangement and presence in the scene, looking for a training that serves from base to preparation of the actor‟s, to being use in future works. This study was analyzed by means of bibliography research, interviews and practical studies about the effects of the martial art techniques and its contribution to the actor and the scene.

The present study proposed to investigate the effects of level of acculturation and of language of the therapy interview on self-disclosure by Mexican-American women. It was predicted that self-disclosure would be affected by both level of acculturation and by the language of the initial therapy interview. The principal implication of this finding is that for the first-generation Mexican-American woman, that is, a woman who has not acculturated to the mainstream society, the language in which therapy is conducted constitutes a significant factor in predicting whether she is likely to self disclose and thereby benefit from the therapy. The findings of this study suggest that less acculturated Mexican-American women would be more likely to utilize mental health services if they are available in Spanish.

This study focuses on preparing surface enhanced fluorescence (SEF) substrates for use in the enhancement of the emission signal of rhodamine B and fluorescein dyes. Fluorescence spectroscopy has been widely utilized owing to its high sensitivity. SEF is a process where the interactions of fluorophores with the localized surface plasmons of metal nanoparticles results in fluorescence enhancement, increased photostability and rates of system radiative decay which leads to a decreased lifetime. One of the most important factors of SEF studies is to provide a uniform distance between fluorophore and metal nanoparticle in a controlled manner / otherwise, F&ouml / rster resonance energy transfer takes place from fluorophore to metal nanoparticle and emission intensity of fluorophore is quenched. The spherical gold and silver nanoparticles were prepared using the well known and straightforward chemical reduction method, in which sodium citrate acted both as a reducing agent and a stabilizer around the formed nanoparticles. Silver and gold were chosen because of their high plasmon field enhancement. Since plasmon field strongly depends on the shape and size of the nanoparticles, the prepared nanoparticles were characterized using absorption spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Prior to deposition of silver or gold nanoparticles on glass slides, the slides were derivatized by immersing them into an aqueous solution of 3-Aminopropylethoxysilane (APTES). Following derivatization, silver or gold nanoparticles were deposited by immersing the slides into the colloid mixture. Metal nanoparticle coated slides were characterized using absorption spectroscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) measurements were carried out to observe the plasmon efficiency of the deposited nanoparticles. The SERS measurements were repeated for the duration of two weeks in order to check the stability of the plasmon efficiency. In this study, different types of materials (silica, zinc oxide, gold, stearic acid.) were employed as spacers to observe their effects on fluorescence enhancement. Physical vapor deposition (PVD) and Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) film deposition techniques were used for the formation of the spacer within the substrate. Fluorescence enhancement of rhodamine B and fluorescein was observed on the prepared SEF substrates. Obtained enhancement factors indicate that SEF substrates have the potential for sensitivity improvements of fluorescence sensing in many fields.

La stimulation électrique fonctionnelle (SEF) a le potentiel de fournir une amélioration active aux blessés médullaires en termes de mobilité, de stabilité et de prévention des effets secondaires.Dans le domaine des système SEF pour les membres inférieurs, le couple articulaire adéquat doit être fournie de façon appropriée pour effectuer le mouvement prévu et maintenir l'équilibre postural. Toutefois, les changements d'état du muscle tels que la fatigue musculaire est une cause majeure qui dégrade ses performances. En outre, la plupart des patients, dont la blessure médullaire est complète, n'ont pas le retour sensorielle qui permet de détecter la fatigue et les capteurs de couples in-vivo ne sont pas disponible à l'heure actuelle. Les systèmes conventionnels de commande SEF sont soit en boucle ouverte ou pas assez robustes aux changements d'état du muscle. L'objectif de cette thèse est le développement de la prédiction du couple articulaire et la commande en boucle fermée afin d'améliorer les performances de la commande SEF en termes de précision, de robustesse et de sécurité pour les patients.Afin de prédire le couple articulaire induit de la SEF, l'électromyographie (EMG) induit est utilisé pour corréler l'activité musculaire électrique et mécanique. Bien que la fatigue musculaire représente une variation dans le temps, une dépendance aux sujets et aux protocoles, la méthode proposée d'identification adaptative, basée sur le filtre de Kalman, est capable de prédire le couple articulaire variant dans le temps de manière systématique. La robustesse de la prédiction du couple articulaire a été évaluée lors d'une tâche de suivi de la fatigue en expérimentation chez des sujets blessés médulaires.Les résultats montrent une bonne performance de suivi des variations d'état des muscles en présence de fatigue et face à d'autres perturbations. Basé sur les performances de précision de la méthode prédictive proposée, une nouvelle stratégie de commande basée sur le retour EMG, «EMG-Feedback Predictive Control» (EFPC), est proposée afin de contrôler de manière adaptative les séquences de stimulation en compensant la variation dans le temps de l'état du muscle. De plus, cette stratégie de commande permet explicitement d'éviter d'appliquer une stimulation excessive aux patients, et de générer les séquences de stimulation appropriées pour obtenir la trajectoire désirée des couples articulaires. / Functional electrical stimulation (FES) has the potential to provide active improvement to spinal cord injured (SCI) patients in terms of mobility, stability and side-effect prevention. In the domain of lower limb FES system, elicited muscle force must be provided appropriately to perform intended movement and the torque generation by FES should be accurate not to lose the posture balance. However, muscle state changes such as muscle fatigue is a major cause which degrades its performance. In addition, most of the complete SCI patients don't have sensory feedback to detect the fatigue and in-vivo joint torque sensor is not available yet. Conventional FES control systems are either in open-loop or not robust to muscle state changes. This thesis aims at a development of joint torque prediction and feedback control in order to enhance the FES performance in terms of accuracy, robustness, and safety to the patients.In order to predict FES-induced joint torque, evoked-Electromyography (eEMG) has been applied to correlate muscle electrical activity and mechanical activity. Although muscle fatigue represents time-variant, subject-specific and protocol-specific characteristics, the proposed Kalman filter-based adaptive identification was able to predict the time-variant torque systematically. The robustness of the torque prediction has been investigated in a fatigue tracking task in experiment with SCI subjects. The results demonstrated good tracking performance for muscle variations and against some disturbances.Based on accurate predictive performance of the proposed method, a new control strategy, EMG-Feedback Predictive Control (EFPC), was proposed to adaptively control stimulation pattern compensating to time-varying muscle state changes. In addition, this control strategy was able to explicitly avoid overstimulation to the patients, and conveniently generate appropriate stimulation pattern for desired torque trajectory.