<p>There is an increasing interest for nanomaterials in biomedical applications and in this work, nanoparticles of gadolinium oxide (Gd₂O₃) have been investigated as a novel contrast agent for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Relaxation properties have been studied in aqueous solutions as well as in cell culture medium and the nanoparticles have been explored as cell labeling agents. The fluorescent properties of the particles were used to visualize the internalization in cells and doped particles were also investigated as a multimodal agent that could work as a fluorescent marker for microscopy and as a contrast enhancer for MRI.</p><p>Results show that in aqueous solutions, there is a twofold increase in relaxivity for Gd₂O₃ compared to commercial agent Gd-DTPA. In cell culture medium as well as in cells, there is a clear T₁ effect and a distinct increase in signal intensity in T₁-mapped images. Fluorescent studies show that the Gd₂O₃ nanoparticles doped with 5% terbium have interesting fluorescent properties and that these particles could work as a multimodal contrast agent.</p><p>This study shows that Gd₂O₃ nanoparticles possess excellent relaxation properties that are retained in more biological environments. Gd₂O₃ particles are suitable as a T₁ contrast agent, but seem also be adequate for T₂ enhancement in for instance cell labeling experiments.</p>

In der Automatisierungstechnik sind Fernzugriffe auf Geräte und Anlagen bereits heute eine wesentliche Anwendung der Teleautomation. Zum Einsatz kommen dabei Teleservice-Systeme unter Nutzung analoger oder digitaler Wählleitungen oder in letzter Zeit auch Web-Verbindungen. Diesen konventionellen Systemen gemeinsam ist die Online-Verbindung zum Zielsystem. Mobile Agenten, die ebenfalls zu den Web-Technologien zu zählen sind, können zukünftig die Technologie der Fernzugriffe innerhalb der Automatisierungstechnik deutlich verbessern. Speziell für die Anwendung mobiler Agenten in der Automatisierungstechnik wird in dieser Arbeit ein sogenannter mobiler Fernzugriff-Agent beschrieben. Ein sehr großer Teil der Automatisierungsgeräte und Systeme ist dem Bereich der eingebetteten Systeme zuzurechnen. Die Agenten-Fähigkeit dieser Systeme, d. h. die Anbindung an ein Netzwerk und die Integration einer Agenten-Plattform, wird eingehend diskutiert. Ein Agenten-System für den Fernzugriff wird definiert und dessen Entwurf, die Entwicklung und eine Testmöglichkeit werden eingehend erläutert. Ein derartiges System besteht aus der Benutzer-Schnittstelle, einem Agenten-Portal und entsprechend ausgerüsteten Zielsystemen. Als Programmiersprache des Agenten wird Java mit einer Java Virtual Machine als Ausführungsumgebung als am besten geeignet befunden. Eine große Schwierigkeit besteht darin, für ein bestimmtes eingebettetes System eine passende Java Virtual Machine (JVM) zur Verfügung zu haben. In der Praxis ist in der Regel die Portierung einer vorhandenen JVM notwendig. Für die Untersuchungen im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurde die Kertasarie-JVM ausgewählt und für den 16-Bit-Mikrocontroller Infineon C167 unter dem Echtzeit-Betriebssystem EUROS® portiert. Abschließend werden vier mögliche Anwendungsgebiete eines Fernzugriff-Agenten für die Automatisierungstechnik näher beschrieben. / In automation technology remote access to single devices or plants is already a significant application for teleautomation today. Systems of teleservice by use of analog or digital switched line and lately web links are applied for these purposes. Common to all these conventional systems is an online link to the destination system. Mobile agents that also belong to web technologies can explicitly improve the techniques of remote access within automation in the very near future. Especially for applications of mobile agents in automation in this scientific treatise a so called „Remote Access Agent“ is defined. The major part of automation devices and systems belongs to the group of embedded systems. The ability of embedded systems to deal and operate with mobile agents is treated in detail also the network link and the integration of an agent operation platform. An agent system for remote access is defined and its design, development and test surrounding are described. Such an agent system is defined to consist of a user interface, an agent control unit and especially equipped destination systems. As a programming language for the agent itself Java and for its execution surrounding a Java Virtual Machine were selected to be suitable best for this agent system. A great problem is to have a suitable Java Virtual Machine available for a given specific embedded system. In practice normally a conversion of an existing JVM is necessary. For the investigations during this work the Kertasarie Java Virtual Machine was selected and converted for the 16 bit microcontroller Infineon C167 and the EUROS® real time operating system. Finally four potential applications in automation technology for a remote access agent are described in detail.

Zugl.: Darmstadt, Techn. University, Diss.

Thèse doctorat : Chimie : Strasbourg 1 : 2006. Thèse doctorat : Chimie : Milano-Bicocca - Italie : 2006. / Thèse soutenue en co-tutelle. Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. 12 p.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Génie des procédés et de l'environnement : Toulouse, INPT : 2007. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. 179 réf.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2004. / Thesis directed by W. David Solomon for the Department of Philosophy. "May 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 234-239).

Real-Time Strategy (RTS) is a sub-genre of strategy games which is running in real-time, typically in a war setting. The player uses workers to gather resources, which in turn are used for creating new buildings, training combat units, build upgrades and do research. The game is won when all buildings of the opponent(s) have been destroyed. The numerous tasks that need to be handled in real-time can be very demanding for a player. Computer players (bots) for RTS games face the same challenges, and also have to navigate units in highly dynamic game worlds and deal with other low-level tasks such as attacking enemy units within fire range. This thesis is a compilation grouped into three parts. The first part deals with navigation in dynamic game worlds which can be a complex and resource demanding task. Typically it is solved by using pathfinding algorithms. We investigate an alternative approach based on Artificial Potential Fields and show how an APF based navigation system can be used without any need of pathfinding algorithms. In RTS games players usually have a limited visibility of the game world, known as Fog of War. Bots on the other hand often have complete visibility to aid the AI in making better decisions. We show that a Multi-Agent PF based bot with limited visibility can match and even surpass bots with complete visibility in some RTS scenarios. We also show how the bot can be extended and used in a full RTS scenario with base building and unit construction. In the next section we propose a flexible and expandable RTS game architecture that can be modified at several levels of abstraction to test different techniques and ideas. The proposed architecture is implemented in the famous RTS game StarCraft, and we show how the high-level architecture goals of flexibility and expandability can be achieved. In the last section we present two studies related to gameplay experience in RTS games. In games players usually have to select a static difficulty level when playing against computer oppo- nents. In the first study we use a bot that during runtime can adapt the difficulty level depending on the skills of the opponent, and study how it affects the perceived enjoyment and variation in playing against the bot. To create bots that are interesting and challenging for human players a goal is often to create bots that play more human-like. In the second study we asked participants to watch replays of recorded RTS games between bots and human players. The participants were asked to guess and motivate if a player was controlled by a human or a bot. This information was then used to identify human-like and bot-like characteristics for RTS game players.

Nowadays, facility managers and related staffs are facing with much maintenance requests every day. The more complicated building system generates the more diverse and complex maintenance issues. With the limited budget and staff, not all the maintenance requests can be solved immediately. To schedule the maintenance work, facility managers first consider the impact of requested problem on system failure and life safety. Besides these two factors, the author proposed the importance of considering the energy efficiency and occupant satisfaction based on the former research for sustainability. This paper firstly tries to quantify the occupant satisfaction for normal daily maintenance requests which will provide the facility managers with suggestions on work prioritization. For a long time, it is a difficult task to quantify the occupant satisfaction, even though there are enough researches concerning the people satisfaction. In this research, author first designed a structured questionnaire including normal maintenance issues and they are measured by different factors such as thermal impact, acoustic impact, and so on. Then based on the classical disconfirmation theory, a framework was built to prioritize numerous works based on occupant satisfaction. For energy efficiency, due to the limitation of collecting real measured data, this paper referred the work from Lawrance Lab. They conducted the research to simulate the daily HVAC faults to quantify the energy impact through EnergyPlus, which provided the data of energy increase for some daily HVAC faults. An agent based model is proposed to both consider these two factors. Simulation was used to verify the framework and the result showed that the total satisfaction level and energy efficiency can be increased by 30% and 97% respectively.

An Instructable Software Agent (ISA) is a software agent that humans can teach through Natural Instruction Methods (NIMs)—methods humans naturally use to teach one another. Some examples of NIMs include giving demonstrations, guided practice sessions, and definitions of concepts. If software agents were instructable, humans would be able to impart knowledge to software systems though a more natural interface. In this dissertation, I address generating benchmarks for evaluating the learning ability of ISAs despite the important differences that may exist between human learners and ISAs. I first present three years of case studies uncovering the challenges of such a comparison and then make recommendations for future studies. The main contributions of this dissertation are 1. a theory of using humans to evaluate the learning ability of Instructable Software Agents (ISAs), 2. a refined method for developing curricula and benchmarks for evaluating ISAs, including a scalable lab configuration for performing human benchmarking and a suite of accompanying software tools, and 3. the case studies themselves, amounting to an in-depth ethnographic study of the issues involved in using humans to develop curricula and benchmarks for ISAs. / text

This thesis proposes and tests a recursive, adpative, and computationally inexpensive method for partitioning real-number spaces. When tested for proof-of-concept on both one- and two- dimensional classification and control problems, the Fern algorithm was found to work well in one dimension, moderately well for two-dimensional classification, and not at all for two-dimensional control. Testing ferns as pure discretizers - which would involve a secondary discrete learner - has been left to future work. / text