Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-75).

Thesis (MSc (Mathematics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / The aim of this thesis is to study the unital subrings contained in associative algebras arising as the endomorphism algebras of hyperelliptic Jacobians over finite fields. In the first part we study associative algebras with special emphasis on maximal orders. In the second part we introduce the theory of abelian varieties over finite fields and study the ideal structures of their endomorphism rings. Finally we specialize to hyperelliptic Jacobians and study their endomorphism rings.

Comment le travail de santé fabrique-t-il de l’inégalité ? Le présent travail vise à expliciter les pratiques de classement des agents de santé publique et leurs effets sociaux. Sur le terrain du dépistage du sida, les individus consultent tous pour le même motif, dans un cadre de consultation anonyme et gratuit. Celui-ci permet d’observer comment des soignant.e.s classent les usager.e.s des services de santé dans des catégories de classe/ de genre/ sexuelles/ raciales, et différencient leur offre de biens de santé face à une demande identique et en l’absence de contrainte budgétaire.L’enquête, qui combine analyse d’archives directes, analyse quantitative, entretiens avec des agents du dépistage et observation de leur travail dans des centres de dépistage publics et associatifs, met en évidence une faible prise en compte des appartenances de genre et de classe, et une racialisation des catégories sexuelles : seuls les hommes blancs sont interrogés sur leur (homo)sexualité et reçoivent des informations plus personnalisées, quand les femmes et hommes non-blancs sont supposés hétérosexuels, et reçoivent dès lors des conseils plus standardisés.Le cas du dépistage du sida permet de comprendre comment des savoirs d’État désignent des cibles prioritaires et, ce faisant, produisent des effets sur le travail des agents de santé publique. Alors que les agents s’avèrent équipés pour prendre en compte les appartenances sociales dans leur travail, l’accent mis sur la prévention et l’éradication de la maladie les empêche de penser les inégalités sociales entre les malades et, ce faisant, contribue à les amplifier. / How providing health services can generate inequality? This work aims at clarifying the classification public health workers practice and their social impact. In a free and anonymous AIDS screening setting, all people consult for one single reason. This allows observing how health service providers classify their clients in social categories such as class, gender, sexuality and race and propose different service responses although the request is essentially identical and economical conditions are not an issue in this setting.The research analyzes archives, quantitative data and interviews with health workers as well as observation of their work in public and NGO’s screening centers. It highlights that little consideration is given to gender and class affiliations, whereas racial and sexual categories are of prime importance. Only white men are asked about their (homo) sexuality and receive more personalized information. Women and non-white men are supposed to be heterosexual, and therefore receive more standardized advice. The case of AIDS screening helps us understand how State’s policies and knowledge designate priority targets and thereby have an impact on how health workers perform. While agents are highly skilled to take into account social environment in their work, the focus on prevention and eradication of the disease prevents them from thinking about social inequalities between patients and thereby contributes to amplify these inequalities.

Ce travail de thèse porte sur la synthèse et l'étude physico-chimique de polymères associatifs hydrosolubles à associations complémentaires. Utilisant la chimie covalente réversible, ce système met en jeu l'association d'un poly(diol) et d'un poly(acrylamide) partiellement hydrolysé portant des fonctions d'acide boronique. Ces dernières sont introduites par une technique de greffage qui a été optimisée et finement caractérisée. Le mélange des deux polymères permet d'obtenir des solutions visqueuses et des gels dynamiques et ceci pour de faibles concentrations. La possibilité de viscosifier des formulations en-dessous de la concentration de gélification constitue un résultat marquant qui distingue ce système de nombreux polymères à association hydrophobe. Dans le régime de gel, les propriétés rhéologiques linéaires sont analysées en relation avec l'étude de la force des interactions moléculaires qui ont été mesurées par la RMN du bore et une technique de fluorescence. La rhéologie non-linéaire apporte des informations essentielles sur la relation entre le cisaillement et la structure du réseau réversible formé. L'utilisation d'un système de visualisation de l'échantillon sous écoulement permet l'observation d'effets locaux fortement non-linéaires. L'influence des différents paramètres, comme le pH et la température, sur les propriétés dynamiques des solutions peut être rationalisée et modélisée en termes de lois d'échelles. L'originalité de ce concept de système associatif par associations complémentaires est mise en perspective au travers d'une revue de la littérature rationalisant le lien entre architecture et rhéologie des polymères associatifs hydrosolubles. / This thesis deals with the synthesis and the physical chemistry study of water-soluble complementary associative polymers. Based on reversible covalent chemistry, this system brings into play the association of a poly(diol) and of a partially hydrolyzed poly(acrylamide) bearing boronic acid moieties. The latter are introduced by a grafting technique which has been optimized and finely characterized. The mixing of these two polymers allows obtaining viscous solutions and visco-elastic gels at relatively low polymer concentrations. The possibility to make formulations viscous below the gel point represents a remarkable result, which differentiates this system to numerous associative polymers based on hydrophobic interactions. In the gel regime, the linear rheological properties are analyzed with regard to the strength of molecular interactions which have been measured by boron NMR and a fluorescence technique. Non-linear rheology brings essential information about the relationship between shearing and the structure of the formed reversible network. The use of a visualization setup of samples under flow enables the observation of very non-linear local effects such as wall slip and shear-banding. The influence of various parameters, as pH and temperature, on the dynamical properties of solutions and gels can be rationalized and modeled in terms of scaling laws. The originality of this concept of associative system with complementary associations is put into perspective through a literature review on the relationship between architecture and molecular interactions on one hand, and rheological properties of associative polymers on the other hand.

The understanding and treatment of brain disorders as well as the development of intelligent machines is hampered by the lack of knowledge of how the brain fundamentally functions. Over the past century, we have learned much about how individual neurons and neural networks behave, however new tools are critically needed to interrogate how neural networks give rise to complex brain processes and disease conditions. Recent innovations in molecular techniques, such as optogenetics, have enabled neuroscientists unprecedented precision to excite, inhibit and record defined neurons. The impressive sensitivity of currently available optogenetic sensors and actuators has now enabled the possibility of analyzing a large number of individual neurons in the brains of behaving animals. To promote the use of these optogenetic tools, this thesis integrates cutting edge optogenetic molecular sensors which is ultrasensitive for imaging neuronal activity with custom wide field optical microscope to analyze a large number of individual neurons in living brains. Wide-field microscopy provides a large field of view and better spatial resolution approaching the Abbe diffraction limit of fluorescent microscope. To demonstrate the advantages of this optical platform, we imaged a deep brain structure, the Hippocampus, and tracked hundreds of neurons over time while mouse was performing a memory task to investigate how those individual neurons related to behavior. In addition, we tested our optical platform in investigating transient neural network changes upon mechanical perturbation related to blast injuries. In this experiment, all blasted mice show a consistent change in neural network. A small portion of neurons showed a sustained calcium increase for an extended period of time, whereas the majority lost their activities. Finally, using optogenetic silencer to control selective motor cortex neurons, we examined their contributions to the network pathology of basal ganglia related to Parkinson’s disease. We found that inhibition of motor cortex does not alter exaggerated beta oscillations in the striatum that are associated with parkinsonianism. Together, these results demonstrate the potential of developing integrated optogenetic system to advance our understanding of the principles underlying neural network computation, which would have broad applications from advancing artificial intelligence to disease diagnosis and treatment.

La ligne directrice du présent travail participe pour l'essentiel de la sémantique onomastique. Les fondements de la sémantique cognitive propriale reposent, dans les recherches en linguistique, sur l'hypothèse que l'unité onomastique a déjà inévitablement perdu sa singularité. Or, si les Npr constituent des signes monoréférentiels lorsqu'ils sont employés en discours, l'approche lexicologique conduit précisément à les contextualiser, en montrant comment leur contenu se construit par des déterminations successives qui permettent autant de propagations de sèmes par afférence. Les Npr relevant des domaines culturels français, russe, anglais et allemand, et par ailleurs repérés dans les dictionnaires lexicographiques, font l'objet de notre recherche. Le sujet de l'étude est la sémantique des onymes dans les micro- et macrocontextes, et leur interprétation en fonction des connaissances de l'allocutaire.L'objectif principal est de décrire les associations que l'onoma évoque chez les franco-, russo-, anglo- et germanophones, et par là, de déterminer comment les Npr sont utilisés, selon les conventions linguistico-discursives, en tant que stéréotypes culturels. Nous avons en particulier exploité les théories des onomasticiens russes sur la problématique de l'unité propriale et de sa sémantique. L'objectif fixé dans cette thèse est également de révéler les différents degrés de " propritude " et de " communitude " des Npr recatégorisés, et l'évolution des Npr à référent stéréotypé. On admet que la signification non assertive de ces unités référentiellement modifiées est constituée, de façon associative, par des représentations. Reconnaître la nature de ces représentations, c'est essayer de comprendre les processus cognitifs mis en jeu pour qu'une telle entité onymique puisse s'inscrire (d'un point de vue logique et sémantiquement) dans le discours. / The studies of Proper Names start to be very fruitful. The present work allows an illuminating insight into some of the major issues at stake in contemporary proprial semantics. In fact, one of the main implicit presuppositions underlying onomastics is a certain vacuity, or, quite the contrary, superfluity of the sense. Our purpose is to acknowledge the personal name as the linguistic sign with its meaning and sense, by recognizing the "reflecting faculty of semantics" by means of the associations and representations in the culture or a context. We bestow on onoma's dialectics a leading role in the correlation of the generalized meaning in the language and the personalized sense in the discourse, reflecting the time-varying changing world. Our Ph.D. thesis aims at a twofold task. The objective is to survey the literature on the meaning of proper names from the point of view of appellativization, that is semantic change of proper names. The second task is closely linked to this : to find a possible model for the appellativisation of proper names which is acceptable for different languages and various types of proper names; we attempt at stressing those factors which contribute to the formation of such semantic change and at exploring the general characteristics of such a change. Finally we show the characteristics of this change on a selected material of given names. Onomastic material to be analysed now was selected in a way appropriate for the illustration of significant proportions and tendencies. This helped to develop our own proposal regarding both the semantics and the pragmatics of Proper Names. According to this view a semantic theory dealing with Proper Names should account for the connotative semantics of Names, their foundational semantics, and the semantics of modal statements in which they figure. Connotative semantics focuses on the contribution a Recategorized Proper Name makes to the associative fields in which it occurs. Based on such an analysis, a semantically Modified Proper Name is assigned a psychosemantic value, which is supposed to provide us with an interpretation of that name, /deonym/. A crucial part of this task is to see just what kind of thing the associatively semantic value of a Proper Name is and how this appellativization is gradually proceed.

abstract: In geographical locations with hot-arid climates, sun control in buildings is one primary problem to solve for the building envelope design. Today's technological advances in building science bring with them the opportunity to design dynamic façade systems for sun radiation control and daylighting. Although dynamic systems can become an attractive visual element, they can be costly and challenging to maintain for building owners. Alternatively, fixed solar-shading systems can be designed to create dynamism in the façade of the building, while providing similar functionalities for sun control. The work presented in this project focuses on the use of a visual scripting editor for modeling software, Grasshopper, to develop a Solar Control Visual Script that evaluates building envelope surfaces with planar and non-uniform rational basis-spline (NURBS) forms and provides projections for fixed sun control systems. The design platform of Grasshopper allows individuals with no experience or prior computer coding education to build up programming-like capabilities; this feature permits users to discover new design possibilities within flexible frames that can contribute to the overall design being pursued, while also having an environmental response. The Solar Control Visual Script provides minimum sizing geometries that achieve shading in openings at a particular date and time of the year. The model for this method of analysis makes use of three components to derive the appropriate values for the projections of shading geometries: typical meteorological year (TMY) data, irradiation isotropic equations and shading profile angles equations for vertical and tilted surfaces. Providing an automatic visual of generated geometries uncovers the opportunity to test several model forms and reiterates the analysis when modifying control parameters. By employing building science as a set of environmental parameters, the design outcome bears a dynamic form that responds to natural force conditions. The optimized results promote an efficient environmental design solution for sun control as an integral alternative into the building envelope. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Built Environment 2012

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-08-09T18:04:07Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ANTONIO MARCOS DUARTE DE FRANÇA - DISSERTAÇÃO 2014..pdf: 1066992 bytes, checksum: 6e270db1611e61d65507f5f99e9bd161 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-09T18:04:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ANTONIO MARCOS DUARTE DE FRANÇA - DISSERTAÇÃO 2014..pdf: 1066992 bytes, checksum: 6e270db1611e61d65507f5f99e9bd161 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-10 / Capes / Para ler o resumo deste trabalho recomendamos o download do arquivo, uma vez que o mesmo possui fórmulas e caracteres matemáticos que não foram possíveis trascreve-los aqui. / To read the summary of this work we recommend downloading the file, since it has formulas and mathematical characters that were not possible to transcribe them here.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-08-10T16:27:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 ALAN DE ARAÚJO GUIMARÃES - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGMAT 2014..pdf: 389630 bytes, checksum: 8fee4901dc2c6f4008991c541e1728b0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-10T16:27:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ALAN DE ARAÚJO GUIMARÃES - DISSERTAÇÃO PPGMAT 2014..pdf: 389630 bytes, checksum: 8fee4901dc2c6f4008991c541e1728b0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12 / Capes / O tema central da presente dissertação é o estudo das graduações de um grupo G nas álgebras UTn(F) eUT(d1,...,dm).Inicialmente, no Capítulo 2, supondo o grupo G abeliano e infnito e o corpo F algebricamente fechado e de característica zero, provamos que qualquer graduação em UTn(F) é elementar (a menos de automorfismo G-graduado). Ainda no Capítulo 2,sem fazer qualquer suposição sobre o grupo G e ocorpo F, chegamos à mesma conclusão. Para tanto, foi necessário utilizar técnicas mais sutis na demonstração. No Capítulo 3, novamente supondo o grupo G abeliano e infinito e o corpo F algebricamente fechado e de característica zero,classificamos as G-graduações da F-álgebra UT(d1,...,dm). Veremos que,neste caso, existe uma decomposição d1 = tp1,...,dm = tpm talqueUT(d1,...,dm) é isomorfa, como álgebra G-graduada ,ao produto tensorial Mt(F)⊗UT(p1,...,pm), onde Mt(F) tem uma G-graduação na e UT(p1,...,pm) tem uma G-graduação elementar. / The central theme of this dissertation is the study the of the gradings of a group G in the algebras UTn(F) and UT(d1, . . . , dm). Initially, in Chapter 2, assuming G a nite abelian group and F an algebraically closed eld and of characteristic zero, we prove that any grading in UTn(F) is elementary (up to graded isomorphism). Still in Chapter 2, without making any assumption about the group G and the eld F, we obtain the same conclusion. To prove this was necessary to use more subtle techniques in demonstration. In Chapter 3, again assuming G a nite abelian group and F an algebraically closed eld of characteristic zero, we classify the gradings of the algebra UT(d1, . . . , dm). We will see that there is a decomposition d1 = tp1, . . . , dm = tpm such that UT(d1, ..., dm) is isomorphic, as graded algebra, to the tensor product Mt(F) ⊗ UT(p1, . . . , pm), where Mt(F) has a ne grading and UT(p1, . . . , pm) has a elementary grading.

The experiments reported in this thesis were conducted to examine the effects of executive-control and associative-learning processes on performance in conventional executive-control paradigms. For this purpose, I developed comparative task-switching and response-inhibition paradigms, which were used to assess the performance of pigeons, whose behaviour is presumably based purely on associative processes, and of humans, whose behaviour may be guided by executive control and by associative processes. Pigeons were able to perform accurately in the comparative paradigms; hence, associative-learning processes are sufficient to account for successful performance. However, some task-specific effects that can be attributed to executive-control processes, and which were found in humans applying executive control, were absent or greatly reduced in pigeons. Those effects either reflect the mental operations that are performed to ensure that a specific set of stimulus-response-contingencies is applied and any contingencies belonging to a different set are suppressed, or reflect mental preparations for the possibility that the requirement to execute a certain response suddenly changes. In particular, in Chapter 3, it is shown that the benefits of repeatedly applying the same set of stimulus-response contingencies (or, in reverse, the costs of switching from one set to another) do not apply when Pavlovian processes dominate learning, which is likely the case for pigeons. Furthermore, as shown in Chapters 4 and 5, the behavioural effects of preparing for an unpredicted change in response requirements appeared to be absent when behaviour was based purely on associative processes. Instead, associatively mediated performance was primarily influenced by the stimulus-response contingencies that were effective in each paradigm. Repeating the same response in consecutive trials facilitated the performance of pigeons and associatively learning human participants in the task-switching paradigms, and performing a particular Go response increased the pigeons' likelihood of executing that response in the following trial in two response-inhibition paradigms. In summary, any behavioural effects that can be observed at the level of abstract task requirements reflect the influence of executive-control processes, both in task-switching paradigms and in response-inhibition paradigms.