In this work, we propose using edge valence as a quality predictor when used as a driver for adapting all hexahedral meshes. Edge valence, for hexahedra, is defined as the number of faces attached to an edge. It has shown to be a more reliable quality predictor than node valence for hexahedral meshes. An edge valence of 3, 4, or 5 within the volume of a hexahedral mesh has provided at least a positive scaled Jacobian for all observed meshes, without the presence of over constraining geometry. It is often desirable to adapt an existing mesh through sheet operations such as column collapse, sheet insertion, or sheet extraction. Examples of hexahedral mesh adaptation include refining and coarsening. This work presents a general algorithm for a priori prediction of edge valence when used with column collapse and sheet extraction operations. Using the predicted edge valence we present a method for guiding the mesh adaptation procedure which will result in an overall higher quality mesh than when driven by mesh quality alone. Other quality metrics such as the Jacobian are unfit for predictive algorithms because of their heavy dependence on node positioning instead of hex topology. Results have been derived from application of the algorithm towards the localized coarsening process.

One goal of applied linguistics is to learn languages better and faster. Second language (L2) learners need to acquire large vocabularies to approach native-like proficiency in their targeted language. A number of studies have explored the factors that facilitate and hinder word learning using highly controlled experiments, however, these lack ecological validity and the findings may not generalize to real-world learning. The studies in this thesis respond to this gap in the literature. The studies leverage big data from a popular language learning app called Lingvist to explore how understudied semantic factors such as valence (positivity/negativity) and concreteness impact adult L2 word learning. Chapter 2 explores the shape of valence effects on learning, the interaction between the semantics of the target word and the linguistic context in which the word is learned, and how these effects unfold over multiple exposures to the target word. Users learn both positive and negative words better than neutral ones, and learning improves by 7% when target words appear in emotionally congruent contexts (i.e., positive words in positive sentences, negative words in negative sentences). These effects are strongest on the learner’s second encounter with the word and diminish over subsequent encounters. Chapter 3 examines the interaction between target word valence and concreteness. Increased positivity increased accuracy for concrete words by up to 13%, but had little impact on learning abstract words. On the theoretical front, findings provide support for embodied cognition, the lexical quality hypothesis, and the multimodal induction hypothesis. On the applied front, they indicate that context valence can be manipulated to facilitate learning and identify which words will be most difficult to learn. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Language learners need to know tens of thousands of words to communicate fluently in a language. These studies use data from a popular language learning app called Lingvist to understand how the emotionality of words and the sentences we see them in impact learning. Negative words (e.g., murder) and positive words (e.g., vaccation) were learned better than neutral words. Positive words were learned better when they are part of a positive sentence and negative words are learned better in more negative sentences. The second study found that concrete words like brick or table are easier to learn when they are positive, but emotions have little impact on learning abstract words like hope. These findings help researchers understand how words are represented in the mind and point to ways to make language learning faster and easier.

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No / The right hemisphere has often been viewed as having a dominant role in the processing of emotional information. Other evidence indicates that both hemispheres process emotional information but their involvement is valence specific, with the right hemisphere dealing with negative emotions and the left hemisphere preferentially processing positive emotions. This has been found under both restricted (Reuter-Lorenz & Davidson, 1981) and free viewing conditions (Jansari, Tranel, & Adolphs, 2000). It remains unclear whether the valence-specific laterality effect is also sex specific or is influenced by the handedness of participants. To explore this issue we repeated Jansari et al.'s free-viewing laterality task with 78 participants. We found a valence-specific laterality effect in women but not men, with women discriminating negative emotional expressions more accurately when the face was presented on the left-hand side and discriminating positive emotions more accurately when those faces were presented on the right-hand side. These results indicate that under free viewing conditions women are more lateralised for the processing of facial emotion than are men. Handedness did not affect the lateralised processing of facial emotion. Finally, participants demonstrated a response bias on control trials, where facial emotion did not differ between the faces. Participants selected the left-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was negative and the right-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was positive. This response bias can cause a spurious valence-specific laterality effect which might have contributed to the conflicting findings within the literature.

Depuis une quinzaine d'années, l'Imagerie par Résonance Magnétique fonctionnelle (IRMf) permet d'extraire de l'information sur le fonctionnement cérébral et particulièrement sur la localisation des processus cognitifs. L'information contenue par les acquisitions en IRMf est extraite à l'aide du modèle linéaire général et du processus d'inférence statistique. Bien que cette méthode dite « classique » ait permis de valider la plupart des modèles lésionnels de manière non invasive, elle souffre de certaines limites. Pour résoudre ce problème, différentes techniques d'analyse ont émergé et proposent une nouvelle façon d'interpréter les données de la neuroimagerie. Nous présentons deux nouvelles méthodes multivariées basées sur les cartes de Kohonen. Nos méthodes analysent les données IRMf avec le moins d'a priori possibles. En parallèle, nous tentons d'extraire de l'information sur les réseaux neuronaux impliqués dans les émotions. La première de ces méthodes s'intéresse à l'information de spécialisation fonctionnelle et la seconde à l'information de connectivité fonctionnelle. Nous présentons les résultats qui en découlent, puis chacune des méthodes est comparée à l'analyse dite classique en termes d'informations extraites. De plus, notre attention s'est focalisée sur la notion de valence émotionnelle et nous tentons d'établir l'existence d'un éventuel réseau partagé entre valence positive et valence négative. La constance de ce réseau est évaluée à la fois entre modalités perceptives et entre catégories de stimuli. Chacune des méthodes proposées permet de corroborer l'information recueillie par la méthode classique, en apportant de nouvelles informations sur les processus étudiés. Du point de vue des émotions, notre travail met en lumière un partage du réseau cérébral pour les va-lences négative et positive ainsi qu'une constance de cette information dans certaines régions cérébrales entre modalités perceptives et entre catégories. / In the last fifteen years, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have been used to extract information about cognitive processes location. The information contained in fMRI acquisitions is usually extracted using the general linear model coupled to the statistical inference process. Although this classical method has validated noninvasively most of the lesional models, it suffers from some limitations. To solve this problem, various analysis techniques have emerged and propose a new way of interpreting neuroimaging data. In this thesis, we present two multivariate methods to analyze fMRI data with the least possible a priori. In parallel, we are trying to extract information about brain emotion processing. The first method focuses on the brain functional specialization and the second method on the brain functional connectivity. After results presentation, each method is compared to the so-called classical analysis in terms of extracted information. In addition, emphasis was put on the concept of emotional valence. We try to establish the existence of a possible split between positive and negative valence networks. The consistency of the network is evaluated across both perceptual modalities and stimuli categories. Each of the proposed methods are as accurate as the conventional method and provide new highlights on the studied processes. From the perspective of emotions, our work highlights a shared brain network for positive and negative valences and a consistency of this information in some brain regions across both perceptual modalities and stimuli categories.

Here we describe the fitting and testing, via molecular dynamics simulation, of a bond-order potential for water with a unique force field parameterization. Most potentials for water, including some bond-order (reactive) potentials, are based on a traditional, many-body decomposition to describe water's structure with bond stretch, angle bend, electrostatics, and non-bonded terms. Our model uses an expanded version of the Bond Valence Model, the Valence Multipole Model, to describe all aspects of molecular structure using multibody, bond-order terms. Prior work successfully related these multibody, bond order terms to energy, provided the structures were close to equilibrium. The success of this equilibrium energy model demonstrated the plausibility of adapting its parameterization to a molecular dynamics force field. Further, we present extensive testing of ab initio methods to show that the ab initio data we obtained, using the CCSD(t)/cc-pwCVTZ level of theory, to augment the fitting set of our parameters is of the highest quality currently available for the OH system. While the force field is not yet finished, the model has demonstrated remarkable improvement since its initial testing. The test results and the insights gleaned from them have brought us significantly closer to adapting our unique parametrization to a fully functional molecular dynamics force field. Once the water potential is finished, it is our intent to develop and expand the Valence Multipole Model into a fully reactive alternative to CLAYFF, a non-reactive potential typically used to simulate fluid interfaces with clays and other minerals.

Un très grand nombre de représentations a été proposé pour modéliser la liaison chimique, mais les structures de Lewis en particulier sont largement utilisées par la communauté des chimistes expérimentateurs. Les méthodes théoriques se développant sur des structures chimiques claires de type Lewis sont essentiellement utilisées pour la description des états fondamentaux. Par ailleurs, la majorité des chimistes théoriciens utilise des orbitales moléculaires pour décrire les état excités, et manque ainsi de lisibilité. Les états excités sont difficiles à prédire, il convient donc d’utiliser un langage simple pour aboutir à une compréhension commune de ces états. Nous proposons dans cette thèse deux méthodes afin d'accéder aux états excités décrits sur des structures facilement lisibles. D’abord, une méthode de projection permettant de développer un état excité en structure chimique claire de type VB. Cette méthode est rapide car elle ne diagonalise pas d’Hamiltonien VB et elle calcule un taux de confiance servant de garde-fou pour juger la fiabilité de la description de l’état excité. Ensuite, une méthode itérative utilisant un Hamiltonien Super-IC optimise des orbitales VB pour un état excité. Cette méthode couplée à la méthode de projection ouvre un passage vers une compréhension simple des états excités. / A large number of chemical representations has been proposed to model the chemical bond, but in particular Lewis structures are widely used by the experimenters community. The theoretical methods on developing the clear chemical Lewis structures are mainly used for the description of the ground states. Moreover, the majority of theoretical chemists uses molecular orbitals to describe the excited states, and thus lacks clarity. The excited states are difficult to predict, it is appropriate to use simple language to reach a common understanding of these states. We propose in this thesis two methods to access the excited states described on easily readable structures. First, a projection method developing an excited state in clear chemical structure type VB. This method is fast because it does not VB Hamiltonian diagonalizes and calculates a trust factor for a safeguard to judge the description of the excited state. Then an iterative method using a Super-CI Hamiltonian to optimize VB orbitals to an excited state. This method coupled with the projection method opens a way to a simple understanding of the excited states.

This research concentrates on the visual aesthetics of a website, investigating the web user's affective/emotional reactions to different designs of web homepage aesthetics and their influence on subsequent behaviors of web users. Drawing on the existing theories and empirical findings in environmental psychology, human-computer interaction, aesthetics, and marketing research literature, a research model is developed to explore the relationships between the visual aesthetic qualities of a website homepage - webpage visual complexity and order, induced emotional states in users, and users' approach behaviors toward the website. The model predicts that the visual aesthetics of a web homepage elicit specific emotional responses by provoking intrinsic feelings of pleasantness / unpleasantness, arousal, as well as motivational pleasantness / unpleasantness in web users. These elicited emotional responses, which mediate the effect of homepage aesthetic features, in turn affect web users' subsequent behaviors toward the website, such as further approaching/exploring or avoiding the website. A set of pilot studies and a main laboratory experiment were conducted to test the model and its associated hypotheses. Based on the results of pilot studies, 12 versions of a Gift website's homepage, which varied at four levels of complexity and three levels of order, were selected the stimuli materials for the main experiment. A total of 467 undergraduate students participated in the main study. During the main study, we instructed the participants to browse the homepage stimuli for a goal-oriented web search activity or an excitement/enjoyment-seeking web browsing activity, measured how they felt about the homepage and their degree of approach/avoidance tendencies toward the entire website. The results of the study generally confirmed the belief that a web user's initial emotional responses (i.e., pleasantness and arousal) evoked by the aesthetic qualities of a website's homepage he/she first encounters will have carry-over effects on his/her subsequent approach behaviors toward the website.

This research concentrates on the visual aesthetics of a website, investigating the web user's affective/emotional reactions to different designs of web homepage aesthetics and their influence on subsequent behaviors of web users. Drawing on the existing theories and empirical findings in environmental psychology, human-computer interaction, aesthetics, and marketing research literature, a research model is developed to explore the relationships between the visual aesthetic qualities of a website homepage - webpage visual complexity and order, induced emotional states in users, and users' approach behaviors toward the website. The model predicts that the visual aesthetics of a web homepage elicit specific emotional responses by provoking intrinsic feelings of pleasantness / unpleasantness, arousal, as well as motivational pleasantness / unpleasantness in web users. These elicited emotional responses, which mediate the effect of homepage aesthetic features, in turn affect web users' subsequent behaviors toward the website, such as further approaching/exploring or avoiding the website. A set of pilot studies and a main laboratory experiment were conducted to test the model and its associated hypotheses. Based on the results of pilot studies, 12 versions of a Gift website's homepage, which varied at four levels of complexity and three levels of order, were selected the stimuli materials for the main experiment. A total of 467 undergraduate students participated in the main study. During the main study, we instructed the participants to browse the homepage stimuli for a goal-oriented web search activity or an excitement/enjoyment-seeking web browsing activity, measured how they felt about the homepage and their degree of approach/avoidance tendencies toward the entire website. The results of the study generally confirmed the belief that a web user's initial emotional responses (i.e., pleasantness and arousal) evoked by the aesthetic qualities of a website's homepage he/she first encounters will have carry-over effects on his/her subsequent approach behaviors toward the website.

Texte remanié de: Tesis de doctorado. / La p. de faux-titre porte en plus "Los locos del Hospital de los inocentes (1409-1512) y del Hospital general (1512-1699)" Bibliogr. p. 387-425.