Cette thèse vise à participer à une meilleure connaissance des exostoses oro-faciales comme variation anatomique et préciser leur possible utilisation en anthropologie biologique. Une nouvelle méthodologie a été conçue pour faciliter leur enregistrement tant sur restes squelettiques qu’individus vivants. L’étude a été réalisée sur une population thaïlandaise : la collection anatomique de référence de la faculté de médecine de Chiang Mai. Cette population a été choisie pour ses hautes fréquences et forte expressivité des exostoses oro-faciales, ainsi que son homogénéité génétique. Les exostoses oro-faciales ont été évaluées par présence/absence et métriquement. Leur relation au sexe, à l’âge et entre leurs différents types est détaillée et les étiologies discutées. La composante génétique est évaluée sur la base de l’homogénéité populationnelle et les liens entre exostoses et variations anatomiques dentaires et crâniennes. La composante environnementale inclut des données sur l’alimentation, le stress occlusal et la santé orale. Les exostoses oro-faciales apparaissent comme un ensemble de caractères liés entre eux et très influencés par l’âge. Toutes les exostoses sauf l’exostose palatine sont significativement liées au sexe avec prédominance masculine. Les exostoses oro-faciales n’appartiennent pas aux variations hyperostotiques. Les liens récurrents avec certaines variations anatomiques dentaires suggèrent une base génétique. Les exostoses oro-faciales émergent préférentiellement quand un maximum de dents saines et peu usées sont présentes, mais l’édentation de large étendue ne réduit pas leur prévalence, ni leur expressivité. L’influence environnementale locale n’est pas caractéristique d’un stress fonctionnel. Le régime traditionnel asiatique pourrait être une influence conséquente par son caractère promoteur du tissu osseux. La double participation génétique et environnementale au processus étiologique suggère que les exostoses oro-faciales appartiennent aux variations quasi-continues. / We aim here at participating in a better understanding of oral exostoses as an anatomical variant in order to clarify their possible use in biological anthropology. We propose a new study design that could be applied both on skeletal remains and living individuals and that allows discuss the etiology of oral exostoses. The research has been undertaken on the anatomical reference collection of the faculty of medicine of Chiang Mail, Thailand. The Thai population displays a wide array of expression of oral exostoses and a great genetic homogeneity. The oral exostoses have been scored by presence/absence and their measurements. The genetic component has been evaluated through population homogeneity and the relationships between oral exostoses and dental and cranial anatomical variants. The environmental component includes data on diet, occlusal stress and oral health. Oral exostoses appear as a set of characters linked together and strongly influenced by age. All types of oral exostoses except the palatine exostosis are correlated with sex with a male predominance. Oral exostoses do not belong to hyperostotic variants. The recurring relationships with dental anatomical traits point to a genetic basis. Oral exostoses preferentially arise when the greatest number of healthy, unworn teeth is present, although extensive edentulousnes does not lessen both their presence and their expressivity. The local environmental context is not typical of functional stress. The traditional Asian diet may be a substantial influence because of its bone-promoting composition. A dual participation of both genetic and environmental components to the etiological process implies that oral exostoses are quasi-continuous variants.

The goal of the QPACE project is to build a novel cost-efficient massive parallel supercomputer optimized for LQCD (Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics) applications. Unlike previous projects which use custom ASICs, this is accomplished by using the general purpose multi-core CPU PowerXCell 8i processor tightly coupled with a custom network processor implemented on a modern FPGA. The heterogeneous architecture of the PowerXCell 8i processor and its core-independent OS-bypassing access to the custom network hardware and application-oriented 3D torus topology pose interesting challenges for the implementation of the applications. This work will describe and evaluate the implementation possibilities of message passing APIs: the more general MPI, and the more QCD-oriented QMP, and their performance in PPE centric or SPE centric scenarios. These results will then be employed to optimize HPL for the QPACE architecture. Finally, the developed approaches and concepts will be briefly discussed regarding their applicability to heterogeneous node/network architectures as is the case in the "High-speed Network Interface with Collective Operation Support for Cell BE (NICOLL)" project.

Wave energy converters of point absorber type have been developed and constructed. Full scale experiments have been carried out at sea and electricity has been successfully delivered. Linear permanent magnet generators together with a subsea substation and buoys of various geometric shapes have been investigated theoretically and experimentally. The design has in large extent an electronic approach, keeping the mechanical part of it as simple as possible, due to the long life span and reliability of electric components. Because of the nature of a linear generator, the internal translator with permanent magnets has a limited stroke length which will be reached when the buoy is exposed to large wave heights. Internal springs at the top and bottom of the generator prevent the translator from hitting the generator hull. Inertial forces due to the mass and velocity of the translator and the buoy and its heave added mass compresses the spring. The added mass is a rather large part of the total moving mass. Simulations of a converter with a vertical cylindrical buoy and with a toroidal buoy were conducted, as well as real sea experiments with converters with cylindrical buoys of two different sizes and a toroidal buoy. The overloads are likely to affect the design and service life of the generator, the buoy and the wire which interconnects them. Buoy shapes with as much excitation force as possible and as little heave added mass as possible were sought. A toroidal buoy caused less overloads on the generator at sea states with short wave periods and relatively large wave height, but for sea states with very long wave periods or extremely high waves, the magnitude of the overloads was mainly determined by the maximum displacement of the buoy. Snap loads on the interconnecting wire, as the slack wire tensed up after a very deep wave trough, were found to be greater but of the same order of magnitude as forces during the rest of the wave cycle. During a 4 day period at various wave conditions, two converters with cylindrical buoys proved efficiency between 11.1 % and 24.4 %. The larger buoy had 78 % larger water plane area than the other buoy which resulted in 11 % more power production. Short wave period was beneficial for the power production. Infinite frequency heave added mass was measured for a cylindrical buoy at real sea and found to be greater than the linearly calculated theoretical added mass.

La géométrie non commutative, du fait qu'elle permet de généraliser des objets géométriques sous forme algébrique, offre des perspectives intéressantes pour réunir la théorie quantique des champs et la relativité générale dans un seul cadre. Elle peut être abordée selon différents points de vue et deux d'entre eux sont présentés dans cette thèse. Le premier, le calcul différentiel basé sur les dérivations, nous a permis de construire une action de Yang-Mills-Higgs dans laquelle apparait des champs pouvant être interprétés comme des champs de Higgs. Avec le second, les triplets spectraux, on peut généraliser la notion de distance entre état et calculer des formules de distance. C'est ce que nous avons fait dans le cas de l'espace de Moyal et du tore non commutatif. / Noncommutative geometry offers interesting prospects to gather the quantum field theory and relativity in one general framework because it allows one to generalize geometric objects algebraically. It can be approached from different points of view and two of them are presented in this PhD. The first, calculus based on derivations, allowed us to construct a Yang-Mills-Higgs action which appears in fields that can be interpreted as Higgs fields. With the second, spectral triples, we can generalize the notion of distance between states. We calculated the distance formulas in the case of the Moyal space and the noncommutative torus.

In the present project we study compactifications of type IIA/IIB string theories on toroidal orbifolds. We present the moduli space for N=1 four-dimensional reductions and its topological properties. To fix the value of all moduli, we will construct the most general holomorphic superpotential W using a set of T-dual iterations for the fluxes. Using a 3-torus toy-model, we will give an introductory description to the background of these generalised fluxes.

Este trabalho foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de estudar a aplicação, para sistema de frenagem veicular, de uma máquina elétrica sem escovas, de armadura toroidal, e fluxo magnético axial produzido por ímãs permanentes de terras raras, a chamada máquina Torus. A máquina foi construída no LMEAE e estudada inicialmente como motor em outro trabalho. Mas, para que se possa avaliar seu funcionamento em sistema de frenagem, o foco é do ponto de vista da máquina como gerador. São realizados testes dinâmicos e estáticos experimentalmente e modelo numérico pelo método dos elementos finitos com um formato de ímãs permanentes de seção setorial, possibilitando o comparativo com a versão anterior da máquina que empregou ímãs de seção quadrada. Mudanças físicas e no sistema de acionamento da máquina, e ensaios de frenagem dinâmica foram realizados. Modelagem analítica para indução magnética foi desenvolvida utilizando-se da técnica de Transformação Conforme. O trabalho busca apresentar as características da máquina e justificativas que demonstram o seu potencial de aplicabilidade em um subsistema veicular sob frenagem regenerativa e a capacidade de fornecimento de energia a um sistema de armazenamento com uma parte de energia cinética, ou seja, baterias e supercapacitores. / This work is carried out with the aim to study the application, by a vehicular braking system, of a brushless electrical machine with a toroidal armature core, and axial magnetic flux delivered by rare earth permanent magnets, the so-called Torus machine. The machine was built in the LMEAE, and previously studied as a motor by other work. However, in order to assess its performance in a braking system, the focus is the point of view of the machine as a generator. Static and dynamic tests are implemented as well as a numerical model by means of the finite element method, in order to compare the machine with sector poles permanent magnets and with square magnet poles. Physical changes and on the driving system of the machine, and dynamic braking tests are performed. The analytical modelling for the magnetic induction was developed using the technique of conformal transformation. The study aims to present the features of the machine and demonstrates its potential applicability to a vehicular subsystem under regenerative braking and the ability to supply an energy storage system with part of the kinetic energy, i.e. batteries and super capacitors.

While magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities are considered one of the intriguing topics in tokamak physics, a feasibility study was conducted in the Saskatchewan Torus-Modified (STOR-M) tokamak to investigate the global MHD activities during the normal (L-mode) and improved (H-mode) confinement regimes. The experimental setup consists of 32 discrete Mirnov coils arranged into four poloidal arrays and mounted on STOR-M at even toroidal distances. The perturbed magnetic field fluctuations during STOR-M discharges were acquired and processed by the Fourier transform (FT), the wavelet analysis and the singular value decomposition (SVD) techniques. In L-mode discharges, the poloidal MHD mode numbers varied from 2 to 4 with peak frequencies in the range 20-40 kHz. The dominant toroidal modes were reported between 1 and 2 oscillating at frequencies 15-35 kHz. In another experiment, a noticeable MHD suppression was observed during the H-mode-like phase induced by the compact torus (CT) injection into STOR-M. However, a burst-like mode called the gong mode was triggered prior to the H-L transition, followed by coherent Mirnov oscillations. Mirnov oscillations with strong amplitude modulations were observed in the STOR-M tokamak. Correlations between Mirnov signals and soft x-ray (SXR) signals were found.

Communicating bits over a network is expensive. Therefore, cryptosystems that transmit as little data as possible are valuable. This thesis studies several cryptosystems that require significantly less bandwidth than conventional analogues. The systems we study, called torus-based cryptosystems, were analyzed by Karl Rubin and Alice Silverberg in 2003 [RS03]. They interpreted the XTR [LV00] and LUC [SL93] cryptosystems in terms of quotients of algebraic tori and birational parameterizations, and they also presented CEILIDH, a new torus-based cryptosystem. This thesis introduces the geometry of algebraic tori, uses it to explain the XTR, LUC, and CEILIDH cryptosystems, and presents torus-based extensions of van Dijk, Woodruff, et al. [vDW04, vDGP⁺05] that require even less bandwidth. In addition, a new algorithm of Granger and Vercauteren [GV05] that attacks the security of torus-based cryptosystems is presented. Finally, we list some open research problems.

Communicating bits over a network is expensive. Therefore, cryptosystems that transmit as little data as possible are valuable. This thesis studies several cryptosystems that require significantly less bandwidth than conventional analogues. The systems we study, called torus-based cryptosystems, were analyzed by Karl Rubin and Alice Silverberg in 2003 [RS03]. They interpreted the XTR [LV00] and LUC [SL93] cryptosystems in terms of quotients of algebraic tori and birational parameterizations, and they also presented CEILIDH, a new torus-based cryptosystem. This thesis introduces the geometry of algebraic tori, uses it to explain the XTR, LUC, and CEILIDH cryptosystems, and presents torus-based extensions of van Dijk, Woodruff, et al. [vDW04, vDGP⁺05] that require even less bandwidth. In addition, a new algorithm of Granger and Vercauteren [GV05] that attacks the security of torus-based cryptosystems is presented. Finally, we list some open research problems.

While magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities are considered one of the intriguing topics in tokamak physics, a feasibility study was conducted in the Saskatchewan Torus-Modified (STOR-M) tokamak to investigate the global MHD activities during the normal (L-mode) and improved (H-mode) confinement regimes. The experimental setup consists of 32 discrete Mirnov coils arranged into four poloidal arrays and mounted on STOR-M at even toroidal distances. The perturbed magnetic field fluctuations during STOR-M discharges were acquired and processed by the Fourier transform (FT), the wavelet analysis and the singular value decomposition (SVD) techniques. In L-mode discharges, the poloidal MHD mode numbers varied from 2 to 4 with peak frequencies in the range 20-40 kHz. The dominant toroidal modes were reported between 1 and 2 oscillating at frequencies 15-35 kHz. In another experiment, a noticeable MHD suppression was observed during the H-mode-like phase induced by the compact torus (CT) injection into STOR-M. However, a burst-like mode called the gong mode was triggered prior to the H-L transition, followed by coherent Mirnov oscillations. Mirnov oscillations with strong amplitude modulations were observed in the STOR-M tokamak. Correlations between Mirnov signals and soft x-ray (SXR) signals were found.