Coordinated movement is critical not only to sports technique and performance but to daily living and as such represents a fundamental area of research. Coordination requires being able to produce the right actions at the right time and has to incorporate perception, cognition, and forceful neuro-muscular interaction with the environment. Coordinated movements of the hands and fingers are some of the most complex activities undertaken where continuous learning and adaptation take place, but the temporal variability of the most basic movement components is still unknown. This thesis investigates the extent of temporal variability in the execution of four different simple hand and finger coordination tasks, with the purpose to find the various intrinsic temporal variability which limit the ability to coordinate the hands in space and time. Study one showed that in a synchronized bi-lateral two finger tapping test (<<1 cm movement to target) the best participant had a temporaltiming variability of 4.8 ms whereas the largest time variability could be as high as 24.8 ms. No obvious improvement was found after transfer practice, whereas the average time variability for asynchronized tapping decreased from 62.1 ms to 30.3 ms after instructed practice indicating a likely change in task grouping. Study two showed that in a unilateral thumb-index finger pinch and release test, the largest mean timing variability was 12 ms for pinching irrespective of performing the task in a slow alert manner or at a faster speed. However, the mean temporal variability for release was only 6.3 ms when the task was performed in a more alert manner and indicates that release is more accurately controlled temporally than grip. Study three suggested that in a unilateral sagittal plane throwing action of the lower arm and hand, that elbow and wrist coordination for dynamic index finger tip location was better with a radial-ulnar deviation, darts-type, throwing action than a wrist flexor-extensor type action, basketball free throw type action (the mean variability was 37.5 ms and 27.2 ms, respectively). Study four compared the variability in bi-lateral finger tapping between voluntary tapping and involuntary finger contraction tapping. Electrically stimulated neural contractions had significantly lower force onset variability than voluntary or direct magnetic stimulation of muscles (6 ms, 9.5 ms, and 10.3 ms for electrically stimulated, voluntary and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation stimulated contraction). This work provides a comprehensive analysis of the temporal variability in various fundamental digital movement tasks that can aid with the understanding of basic human coordination in sporting, daily living and clinical areas.

This dissertation addresses the problem of inferring scene depth information from a collection of calibrated images taken from different viewpoints via stereo matching. Although it has been heavily investigated for decades, depth from stereo remains a long-standing challenge and popular research topic for several reasons. First of all, in order to be of practical use for many real-time applications such as autonomous driving, accurate depth estimation in real-time is of great importance and one of the core challenges in stereo. Second, for applications such as 3D reconstruction and view synthesis, high-quality depth estimation is crucial to achieve photo realistic results. However, due to the matching ambiguities, accurate dense depth estimates are difficult to achieve. Last but not least, most stereo algorithms rely on identification of corresponding points among images and only work effectively when scenes are Lambertian. For non-Lambertian surfaces, the "brightness constancy" assumption is no longer valid. This dissertation contributes three novel stereo algorithms that are motivated by the specific requirements and limitations imposed by different applications. In addressing high speed depth estimation from images, we present a stereo algorithm that achieves high quality results while maintaining real-time performance. We introduce an adaptive aggregation step in a dynamic-programming framework. Matching costs are aggregated in the vertical direction using a computationally expensive weighting scheme based on color and distance proximity. We utilize the vector processing capability and parallelism in commodity graphics hardware to speed up this process over two orders of magnitude. In addressing high accuracy depth estimation, we present a stereo model that makes use of constraints from points with known depths - the Ground Control Points (GCPs) as referred to in stereo literature. Our formulation explicitly models the influences of GCPs in a Markov Random Field. A novel regularization prior is naturally integrated into a global inference framework in a principled way using the Bayes rule. Our probabilistic framework allows GCPs to be obtained from various modalities and provides a natural way to integrate information from various sensors. In addressing non-Lambertian reflectance, we introduce a new invariant for stereo correspondence which allows completely arbitrary scene reflectance (bidirectional reflectance distribution functions - BRDFs). This invariant can be used to formulate a rank constraint on stereo matching when the scene is observed by several lighting configurations in which only the lighting intensity varies.

Power inequalities and mistrust have characterized many interstate relationships. Yet most international relations theories do not take into account power and mistrust when explaining cooperation. While some scholars argue that power relations inhibit cooperation between states, other scholars expect interstate cooperation regardless of the power relations and level of trust. I argue that although states benefit from cooperation, they are also wary of the power relations between states, making cooperation difficult. Successful and cooperative bilateral relationships are formed between strong and weak states that are power asymmetric and have mistrust of one another, but they are built in such as way as to overcome the problem of power asymmetry and distrust. In this dissertation, I answer how and why states that are in power asymmetry and have mistrust of one another are able to build a cooperative bilateral relationship. I argue that states forge a relationship due to strategic needs such as economic or security needs. I have developed a database composed of the whole population of bilateral treaties between Russia and each of the former Soviet republics, and examine all of the bilateral relationships formed between Russia and the former Soviet republics. I find that Russia indeed forged relationships with the former republics based on its strategic interests. However, despite Russia's strategic interests, it had to build a bilateral relationship that would address the issues of mistrust and power asymmetry between the states. To achieve this, Russia and the former Soviet republics created treaty networks, which served to legitimize as well as legalize the independent status of each of the former republics while also increasing the cost to Russia of violating any of the treaties. I argue that strong treaty networks account for a more cooperative relationship between states, allowing both states to cooperate by alleviating the problems of mistrust and power asymmetry.

<p>Ostensibly, BITs are the ideal international treaty. First, until just recently, they almost uniformly came with explicit dispute resolution mechanisms through which countries could face real costs for violation (Montt 2009). Second, the signing, ratification, and violation of them are easily accessible public knowledge. Thus countries presumably would face reputational costs for violating these agreements. Yet, these compliance devices have not dissuaded states from violating these agreements. Even more interestingly, in recent years, both developed and developing countries have moved towards modifying the investor-friendly provisions of these agreements. These deviations from the expectations of the credible commitment argument raise important questions about the field's assumptions regarding the ability of international treaties with commitment devices to effectively constrain state behavior.</p> / Dissertation

The aim of this study was to establish whether the asymmetry of bilateral elements of the skeleton is useful for the reassociation of paired elements in the analysis of commingled skeletal remains; particularly addressing the forensic scenario of Chilean Human Rights cases. The asymmetry of the appendicular skeleton of the modern adult Chilean population was investigated in its morphological aspect, using both traditional anthropometry and geometric morphometrics. The sample was selected from the Colección Subactual de Santiago, housed in the University of Chile, Santiago, Chile, with N= 131 (69 males and 62 females). The traditional metric analysis of size and the geometric morphometric analysis of shape showed that there was a significant difference between sides in both sexes with a strong component of directional asymmetry. Mean metrics and ranges of asymmetry were established, contributing to the characterization of this population. A method to pair match elements from commingled settings, which is a combination of metric ranges of asymmetry and principal component analysis of shape variables, was created resulting in 95% accuracy when pair matching the humerus, radius, femur and tibia. This constitutes an important contribution to the analysis of shape in forensic contexts due to its strong mathematical component, objectivity and repeatability.

Symmetry in biological systems is the occurrence of an event on both sides of the system. The term bilateralism was introduced to represent this phenomenon, and it was defined as the conditional co-occurrence of two events given that at least at one of them has occurred. This phenomenon is highly associated with the prevalence of each of the events. Two parameters were developed to evaluate the presence of this phenomenon, testing whether events co-occur with higher probability than would be expected by chance. Nonparametric confidence intervals were constructed using the bootstrap percentile method. These non parametric confidence intervals were used in testing the null hypothesis of no bilateralism.A simulation study was performed to examine the properties of the two bilateralism parameters' estimates. The size and power of the tests of bilateralism were examined under a variety of sample sizes and prevalences of the two events. The simulation study showed that both parameter estimates have similar properties, and the tests have similar size and power. The power of the test was affected by the prevalence of either event, the differences in the prevalences, the sample size and by number of events that occur simultaneously. The methodology of testing for bilateralism was applied on data from the Pain in Sickle Cell Epidemiology Study (PiSCES). This study collected up to 6 months worth of daily diaries about pain and medical utilization from patients with sickle cell disease. Each diary recorded the body site and side where pain was experienced over the past 24 hours. The sample consists of 119 subjects who completed at least 50 daily pain diaries (reference). Information about the subjects age, gender and sickle cell genotype were also available. Nine body sites (5 upper peripheral, and 4 lower peripheral site) were analyzed to test for bilateralism. Bilateralism was tested for each subject and each site separately. The associations of prevalence of bilateralism on each site, and percentages of sites that hurt bilaterally with age, gender and genotype where studied.The results show a high prevalence of bilateral pain among sickle cell patients at all sites. Age gender and genotype were associated with higher prevalence in bilateral pain in some, but not all sites. The percentage of sites that have bilateral pain is also associated with the number of sites that have pain.

VI Abstract International investment activity plays in the capitalistic globalized world, which is aimed at sustainable economic growth, an important role. Effort of the states to ensure the most favourable investment conditions for foreign investors strikes in some spheres on legitimate regulatory state measures, which are adopted with reference to the international law principle of state sovereignty. Expropriation or nationalisation together with the seizure represented in the past the most compelling taking of foreign investor property rights and their identification didn't make pronounced troubles. It's clear that confiscatory or nationalizing states measure doesn't increase its investment attractivity and so states are nowadays in the sphere of takings into foreign investor property interests much more careful and more inventive. The task of submitted work is among other things to characterize these takings referred to by notion indirect expropriation and to differentiate them from legitimate state measures regarding the general social aims and social interests, which don't require any compensation in contrast to indirect expropriation. By reason that the right to expropriate is seen to be part of customary international law, there was especially a developed states effort to regulate the conditions of...

Daniel Conk 5 January 2012 Thesis Abstract This thesis is an empirical research on the impact that preferential trade agreements have on the welfare of individuals and nation-states. As the number of preferential trade agreements has been growing steadily, the on-going clash between regionalism and multilateralism will be a key topic throughout the research. Fair trade movements have been becoming more popular over the fast few years as some organizations have strived to raise consumers awareness regarding the great disparities among the profit margins of the producers or farmers in developing countries in comparison to those of the merchants and distributors in developed countries. Even though quantitative data will be used in order to portray the growing economic inequalities present in today s world, arguments will also be supported on grounds of ethics and morals relating to social justice.

Agricultural support levels are at a crossroad with reduced distortions in OECD countries and increasing support for agricultural producers in emerging economies over the last decades. This paper studies the determinants of distortions in the agricultural markets by putting a specific focus on the role of trade policy. Applying various different dynamic panel data estimators and explicitly accounting for potential endogeneity of trade policy agreements, we find that an increase in the number of bilateral free trade agreements exhibits significant short- and long-run distortion reducing effects. By contrast, WTO's Uruguay Agreement on Agriculture has not been able to systematically contribute to a reduction in agriculture trade distortions. From a policy point of view our findings thus point to a lack of effectiveness of multilateral trade negotiations. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This thesis investigates the bilateral relations between Czech Republic and Tunisia from their beginnigs until the present time. Special emphasis is put on the analysis of the opportunities for the Czech companies willing to penatrate the Tunisian market. The gained knowledge is based on practical experience of some companies which suceeded on the local market.