ANOTATION The work deals with translation and interpretation of the original Hebrew text of Genesis 11, making the use of synchronous exegetical method. The method focuses mostly on careful observation of multi-layered meanings of Hebrew terms, direct speeches, macrosyntactical markers, parallelisms and sentence constituents. To reach deeper dimension of the text, the work also takes into account the original non-vocalized text, graphical form of the text, consonances and metathesis. One of the most significant features of this work is the attention paid to the timeless nature of Hebrew verbs, which allows to read the narrative about human desire, pride, non-hearing, illusions, inner decay and the way back to God not as a story from the past, but as a lively anthropological message.

La cessation des paiements, c’est sans aucun doute l’une des notions clés du droit des procédures collectives. Pour s’en rendre compte, il suffit de vérifier le contentieux qui en la matière est très abondant. Légalement définie au sein du premier alinéa de l’article L. 631-1 du Code de commerce comme l’impossibilité pou un débiteur de faire face à son passif exigible avec son actif disponible, cette définition, a été, à l’origine, l’œuvre d’une décision de la Cour de cassation rendue le 14 février 1978. Sous l’empire des dispositions antérieures à la loi de sauvegarde des entreprises, la cessation des paiements est un « curseur » qui sert de ligne de démarcation entre les procédures amiables et les procédures judiciaires. Un tel système a été dénoncé car il manquait cruellement de souplesse et d’efficacité dans la lutte contre les défaillances des entreprises. La loi du 26 juillet 2005, dans l’optique d’anticiper le traitement des difficultés des entreprises a mis un terme au système de « la cessation-curseur » en instituant la procédure amiable de conciliation et la procédure collective de sauvegarde. Toutefois, lorsque les « digues » que constituent les outils de l’anticipation n’ont pas pu enrayer le risque de cessation des paiements, le chef d’entreprise qui se retrouve dans une telle situation doit, dans un délai de quarante-cinq jours, demander l’ouverture d’une procédure de redressement ou de liquidation judiciaire. Lorsqu’il ouvre l’une ou l’autre de ces deux procédures, le tribunal saisi doit fixer une date de cessation des paiements. Cette date sera décisive pour la détermination de la période suspecte. De plus, l’ouverture des procédures collectives aura une incidence sur l’entreprise, elle joue sa survie, sur les créanciers dont le recouvrement de la créance est menacé, sur les fournisseurs qui craignent pour leurs relations contractuelles avec le débiteur, sur les garants qui craignent d’être appelés et sur la personne du débiteur elle-même. Sa gestion antérieure de l’entreprise sera scrutée et s’il en résulte des fautes en relation plus ou moins directe avec la cessation des paiements, il encourt des sanctions ou des actions en responsabilité. / Cessation of payments is certainly one of the key concepts in the law on collective insolvency proceedings. This can be seen by checking the litigation, which is very abundant in this matter. Legally defined in the first paragraph of Article L. 631-1 of the Commercial Code as the inability of a debtor to meet its accrued liabilities with its quick assets, this definition originated in a decision of the Court of Cassation issued on February 14, 1978. Under the provisions prior to the insolvency act, cessation of payments is a "cursor" which serves as a line of demarcation between amicable proceedings and judicial proceedings. Such a system has been criticized for being sorely lacking in flexibility and effectiveness in preventing business failures. The law of July 26, 2005, with the objective of anticipating treatment of company difficulties, put an end to the "cessation-cursor" by instituting the amicable conciliation proceeding and the collective insolvency proceeding. However, when the "barriers" formed by the anticipation tools have not been able to halt the risk of cessation of payments, the company director in such a situation must, within a period of forty-five days, request the initiation of a receivership or court-supervised liquidation proceeding. When either of these proceedings is initiated, the court must fix a date of cessation of payments. This date will be final for the determination of the suspect period. Moreover, the initiation of collective insolvency proceedings will have an effect on the enterprise fighting for survival, on the creditors whose ability to collect their debt is threatened, on the suppliers worried about their contractual relations with the debtor, on the guarantors who fear being called upon and on the debtor itself. Prior management of the enterprise will be probed and if faults more or less closely connected to the cessation of payments are revealed, sanctions or tort actions may result.

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Afin d'explorer la transition du genre Gothique vers le Policier dans la fiction de Dickens, notre étude suivra un plan général en trois grandes parties, divisées elles-mêmes en trois chapitres chacune. Il s'agira tout d'abord de présenter le contexte sociétal qui a conduit à la collision de deux genres littéraires, le Gothique et le Policier. Pour cela nous définirons les caractéristiques du Gothique dickensien. Dickens met en scène un univers doublement familier – un univers qui appartient au passé, un monde réel connu de ses lecteurs, mais également un univers qui appartient à l'histoire de la fiction, qui relève d'une intertextualité forte, que l'on pourrait qualifier de typique, aisément partagée par ses lecteurs. En second lieu, nous nous tournerons vers les effets de cette transition violente sur la mémoire des personnages, en définissant d'abord l'expression du trauma dans la fiction de Dickens. Nous verrons que le trauma repose en particulier sur le trouble identitaire que créent le sentiment d'une faillite de l'appartenance, ainsi que la disparition des repères que les Victoriens, et les personnages que Dickens met en scène, pensaient immuables. Dans un troisième temps, nous montrerons comment le Gothique et le Policier interagissent dans la fiction de Dickens, en analysant les éléments de société qui expliquent, à notre avis, cette rencontre presque contre nature – puisqu'on pourrait supposer que l'explication rationnelle obtenue au terme d'une fiction policière résolve les tensions gothiques. Nous verrons qu'il n'en est rien, et que la résolution des enquêtes ne libère pas complètement la fiction d'un après-coup gothique. Afin d'illustrer cette ligne d'analyse, nous étudierons la passation des pouvoirs entre les hommes de loi et les détectives, une passation des pouvoirs visible à la fois dans la société victorienne et dans le texte dickensien, et enfin la rémanence du Gothique qui fait des détectives les antiquaires d'un nouveau genre. / In order to investigate the transition from the Gothic genre to the detective fiction in Charles Dickens's works, our study will first concentrate on the Victorian social context that led to the collision of two literary genres, the Gothic and the detective fiction. We will define Dickensian Gothic. Actually, Dickens stages a twofold familiar universe. One universe belongs to the past – a real world that is well known to the readers. The second universe shows an insertion in literary history of an intertextual fabric – described as typical and easily shared by his readers. We will then deal with the effects of this violent collision upon the characters' memories and will define the expression of trauma in Dickens's fiction. Trauma primarily rests upon identity confusion. It originates from a sense of failure of identity belonging together with a sense of loss of society bearings that Dickens's characters experience and thought to be immutable. Finally, we will show how Gothic and Detective fictions interact in Dickens's fiction. We will analyse the societal elements that explain this almost against nature meeting for we could assume that the rational explanation that comes at the end of the detective novel should solve the Gothic tensions. But in fact, the solving of the inquests doesn't free the fiction from a Gothic aftermath. We will then study the transfer of powers from lawyers to detective police officers. This transfer of powers is noticeable both in Victorian society and the Dickensian text. We will then conclude with the persistence of Gothic in Dickens's fiction that makes detective police officers some sort of antiquarians of a new genre.

The themes of uncertainty, muddle and imprisonment, which are inextricably linked, permeate Charles Dickens’s novels. In his ‘early’ first five novels, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge, society is depicted as emerging from the Classical episteme of the eighteenth century into a period of uncertainty that is dominated by values inspired by mercantilism. Social and bureaucratic institutional practices have been outpaced by commercial developments and are shown to be lacking; they are outdated and irrelevant in meeting the needs of a society that is in the process of rejecting its feudal history. Yet, during these uncertain times, these archaic instruments of social control continue to exert a power over the individual in the absence of something more relevant to a commercialised nineteenth-century society. The legislature, the judiciary and the executive all continue to exercise their misguided power over those under their control, capturing these in webs and labyrinths of uncertainty, with the result that Mr Pickwick, Oliver, Nicholas, Little Nell and Barnaby all fall victim to these vagaries, and experience prison in one form or another. The second, or ‘middle’ group of novels, comprising Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House and Hard Times, reveal something different. Although institutions are still depicted as deeply flawed, Dickens shifts his focus from the inadequacies of social institutions to the flawed individuals who inhabit this defective society; individuals who are required to rid themselves of their flaws in order to achieve authenticity and, thus, enable a regeneration within society to take place. The ‘final’ novels, Little Dorrit, The Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, seem to suggest that the ambit of commercialisation, with its skewed values, is so all-encompassing that no character is able to escape its clutches. The result is a society and its citizens who are inescapably imprisoned in their respective physical, emotional and moral prisons. This thesis examines the development and consequences of institutional uncertainty on the individual and on society. It is argued that Dickens follows a Foucauldian trajectory, initially visiting the uncertainties of the times on the bodies of his characters during the early nineteenth century, attempting to create ‘docile bodies’ of his characters through discipline and punishment of the soul in the middle of the century and, finally, in the second half of the century, revealing an entire society caught up in the morass of uncertainty from which there appears to be no escape. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil.(English)

Predictive power of classification models can be evaluated by various measures. The most popular measures in data mining (DM) are Gini coefficient, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic and lift. These measures are each based on a completely different way of calculation. If an analyst is used to one of these measures it can be difficult for him to asses the predictive power of a model evaluated by another measure. The aim of this thesis is to develop a method how to convert one performance measure into another. Even though this thesis focuses mainly on the above-mentioned measures, it deals also with other measures like sensitivity, specificity, total accuracy and area under ROC curve. During development of DM models you may need to work with a sample that is stratified by values of the target variable Y instead of working with the whole population containing millions of observations. If you evaluate a model developed on a stratified data you may need to convert these measures to the whole population. This thesis describes a way, how to carry out this conversion. A software application (CPM) enabling all these conversions makes part of this thesis. With this application you can not only convert one performance measure to another, but you can also convert measures calculated on a stratified sample to the whole population. Besides the above mentioned performance measures (sensitivity, specificity, total accuracy, Gini coefficient, Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic), CPM will also generate confusion matrix and performance charts (lift chart, gains chart, ROC chart and KS chart). This thesis comprises the user manual to this application as well as the web address where the application can be downloaded. The theory described in this thesis was verified on the real data.

Les maladies humaines les plus fréquentes sont complexes avec plusieurs facteurs génétiques et environnementaux qui interagissent. Ce travail propose deux nouvelles méthodes statistiques pour étudier les interactions gène-environnement. La première méthode utilise la récurrence familiale de la maladie pour identifier une interaction entre un facteur environnemental et la composante génétique impliquée dans la maladie. La seconde méthode permet de prendre en compte ces interactions dans les études d'associations pangénomiques lorsque l'information sur le facteur d'exposition n'est pas disponible chez les témoins. Cette situation est devenue fréquente avec l'utilisation de panels de témoins de référence. Ces deux méthodes apportent de nouveaux outils pour étudier simultanément les facteurs génétiques et environnementaux dans les maladies complexes. Elles ont été appliquées sur deux jeux de données concernant le diabète de type 2 et les réactions cutanées sévères aux médicaments.

Nondestructive testing is used extensively throughout the industry for quality assessment and detection of defects in engineering materials. The range and variety of anomalies is enormous and critical assessment of their location and size is often complicated. Depending upon final operational considerations, some of these anomalies may be critical and their detection and classification is therefore of importance. Despite the several advantages of using Nondestructive testing for flaw detection, the conventional NDT techniques based on the heuristic experience-based pattern identification methods have many drawbacks in terms of cost, length and result in erratic analysis and thus lead to discrepancies in results. The use of several statistical and soft computing techniques in the evaluation and classification operations result in the development of an automatic decision support system for defect characterization that offers the possibility of an impartial standardized performance. The present work evaluates the application of both supervised and unsupervised classification techniques for flaw detection and classification in a semi-infinite half space. Finite element models to simulate the MASW test in the presence and absence of voids were developed using the commercial package LS-DYNA. To simulate anomalies, voids of different sizes were inserted on elastic medium. Features for the discrimination of received responses were extracted in time and frequency domains by applying suitable transformations. The compact feature vector is then classified by different techniques: supervised classification (backpropagation neural network, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, k-nearest neighbor classifier, linear discriminate classifier) and unsupervised classification (fuzzy c-means clustering). The classification results show that the performance of k-nearest Neighbor Classifier proved superior when compared with the other techniques with an overall accuracy of 94% in detection of presence of voids and an accuracy of 81% in determining the size of the void in the medium. The assessment of the various classifiers’ performance proved to be valuable in comparing the different techniques and establishing the applicability of simplified classification methods such as k-NN in defect characterization. The obtained classification accuracies for the detection and classification of voids are very encouraging, showing the suitability of the proposed approach to the development of a decision support system for non-destructive testing of materials for defect characterization.

Nondestructive testing is used extensively throughout the industry for quality assessment and detection of defects in engineering materials. The range and variety of anomalies is enormous and critical assessment of their location and size is often complicated. Depending upon final operational considerations, some of these anomalies may be critical and their detection and classification is therefore of importance. Despite the several advantages of using Nondestructive testing for flaw detection, the conventional NDT techniques based on the heuristic experience-based pattern identification methods have many drawbacks in terms of cost, length and result in erratic analysis and thus lead to discrepancies in results. The use of several statistical and soft computing techniques in the evaluation and classification operations result in the development of an automatic decision support system for defect characterization that offers the possibility of an impartial standardized performance. The present work evaluates the application of both supervised and unsupervised classification techniques for flaw detection and classification in a semi-infinite half space. Finite element models to simulate the MASW test in the presence and absence of voids were developed using the commercial package LS-DYNA. To simulate anomalies, voids of different sizes were inserted on elastic medium. Features for the discrimination of received responses were extracted in time and frequency domains by applying suitable transformations. The compact feature vector is then classified by different techniques: supervised classification (backpropagation neural network, adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, k-nearest neighbor classifier, linear discriminate classifier) and unsupervised classification (fuzzy c-means clustering). The classification results show that the performance of k-nearest Neighbor Classifier proved superior when compared with the other techniques with an overall accuracy of 94% in detection of presence of voids and an accuracy of 81% in determining the size of the void in the medium. The assessment of the various classifiers’ performance proved to be valuable in comparing the different techniques and establishing the applicability of simplified classification methods such as k-NN in defect characterization. The obtained classification accuracies for the detection and classification of voids are very encouraging, showing the suitability of the proposed approach to the development of a decision support system for non-destructive testing of materials for defect characterization.

Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais / Skeletal muscle consists of muscle fiber types that have different physiological and biochemical characteristics. Basically, the muscle fiber can be classified into type I and type II, presenting, among other features, contraction speed and sensitivity to fatigue different for each type of muscle fiber. These fibers coexist in the skeletal muscles and their relative proportions are modulated according to the muscle functionality and the stimulus that is submitted. To identify the different proportions of fiber types in the muscle composition, many studies use biopsy as standard procedure. As the surface electromyography (EMGs) allows to extract information about the recruitment of different motor units, this study is based on the assumption that it is possible to use the EMG to identify different proportions of fiber types in a muscle. The goal of this study was to identify the characteristics of the EMG signals which are able to distinguish, more precisely, different proportions of fiber types. Also was investigated the combination of characteristics using appropriate mathematical models. To achieve the proposed objective, simulated signals were developed with different proportions of motor units recruited and with different signal-to-noise ratios. Thirteen characteristics in function of time and the frequency were extracted from emulated signals. The results for each extracted feature of the signals were submitted to the clustering algorithm k-means to separate the different proportions of motor units recruited on the emulated signals. Mathematical techniques (confusion matrix and analysis of capability) were implemented to select the characteristics able to identify different proportions of muscle fiber types. As a result, the average frequency and median frequency were selected as able to distinguish, with more precision, the proportions of different muscle fiber types. Posteriorly, the features considered most able were analyzed in an associated way through principal component analysis. Were found two principal components of the signals emulated without noise (CP1 and CP2) and two principal components of the noisy signals (CP1 and CP2 ). The first principal components (CP1 and CP1 ) were identified as being able to distinguish different proportions of muscle fiber types. The selected characteristics (median frequency, mean frequency, CP1 and CP1 ) were used to analyze real EMGs signals, comparing sedentary people with physically active people who practice strength training (weight training). The results obtained with the different groups of volunteers show that the physically active people obtained higher values of mean frequency, median frequency and principal components compared with the sedentary people. Moreover, these values decreased with increasing power level for both groups, however, the decline was more accented for the group of physically active people. Based on these results, it is assumed that the volunteers of the physically active group have higher proportions of type II fibers than sedentary people. Finally, based on these results, we can conclude that the selected characteristics were able to distinguish different proportions of muscle fiber types, both for the emulated signals as to the real signals. These characteristics can be used in several studies, for example, to evaluate the progress of people with myopathy and neuromyopathy due to the physiotherapy, and also to analyze the development of athletes to improve their muscle capacity according to their sport. In both cases, the extraction of these characteristics from the surface electromyography signals provides a feedback to the physiotherapist and the coach physical, who can analyze the increase in the proportion of a given type of fiber, as desired in each case. / A musculatura esquelética é constituída por tipos de fibras musculares que possuem características fisiológicas e bioquímicas distintas. Basicamente, elas podem ser classificadas em fibras do tipo I e fibras do tipo II, apresentando, dentre outras características, velocidade de contração e sensibilidade à fadiga diferentes para cada tipo de fibra muscular. Estas fibras coexistem na musculatura esquelética e suas proporções relativas são moduladas de acordo com a funcionalidade do músculo e com o estímulo a que é submetido. Para identificar as diferentes proporções de tipos de fibra na composição muscular, muitos estudos utilizam a biópsia como procedimento padrão. Como a eletromiografia de superfície (EMGs) nos permite extrair informações sobre o recrutamento de diferentes unidades motoras, este estudo parte da hipótese de que seja possível utilizar a EMGs para identificar diferentes proporções de tipos de fibras em uma musculatura. O objetivo deste estudo foi identificar as características dos sinais EMGs que sejam capazes de distinguir, com maior precisão, diferentes proporções de tipos de fibras. Também foi investigado a combinação de características por meio de modelos matemáticos apropriados. Para alcançar o objetivo proposto, sinais emulados foram desenvolvidos com diferentes proporções de unidades motoras recrutadas e diferentes razões sinal-ruído. Treze características no domínio do tempo e da frequência foram extraídas do sinais emulados. Os resultados de cada característica extraída dos sinais emulados foram submetidos ao algorítimo de agrupamento k-means para separar as diferentes proporções de unidades motoras recrutadas nos sinais emulados. Técnicas matemáticas (matriz confusão e técnica de capabilidade) foram implementadas para selecionar as características capazes de identificar diferentes proporções de tipos de fibras musculares. Como resultado, a frequência média e a frequência mediana foram selecionadas como capazes de distinguir com maior precisão as diferentes proporções de tipos de fibras musculares. Posteriormente, as características consideradas mais capazes foram analisadas de forma associada por meio da análise de componentes principais. Foram encontradas duas componentes principais para os sinais emulados sem ruído (CP1 e CP2) e duas componentes principais para os sinais com ruído (CP1 e CP2 ), sendo as primeiras componentes principais (CP1 e CP1 ) identificadas como capazes de distinguirem diferentes proporções de fibras. As características selecionadas (frequência mediana, frequência média, CP1 e CP1 ) foram utilizadas para analisar sinais EMGs reais, comparando pessoas sedentárias com pessoas fisicamente ativas praticantes de treinamentos físicos de força (musculação). Os resultados obtidos com os diferentes grupos de voluntários mostram que as pessoas fisicamente ativas obtiveram valores mais elevados de frequência média, frequência mediana e componentes principais em comparação com as pessoas sedentárias. Além disto, estes valores decaíram com o aumento do nível de força para ambos os grupo, entretanto, o decaimento foi mais acentuado para o grupo de pessoas fisicamente ativas. Com base nestes resultados, presume-se que os voluntários do grupo fisicamente ativo apresentam maiores proporções de fibras do tipo II, se comparado com as pessoas sedentárias. Por fim, com base nos resultados obtidos, pode-se concluir que as características selecionadas foram capazes de distinguir diferentes proporções de tipos de fibras musculares, tanto para os sinais emulados quanto para os sinais reais. Estas características podem ser utilizadas em vários estudos, como por exemplo, para avaliar a evolução de pessoas com miopatias e neuromiopatia em decorrência da reabilitação fisioterápica, e também para analisar o desenvolvimento de atletas que visam melhorar sua capacidade muscular de acordo com sua modalidade esportiva. Em ambos os casos, a extração destas características dos sinais de eletromiografia de superfície proporciona um feedback ao fisioterapeuta e ao treinador físico, que podem analisar o aumento na proporção de determinado tipo de fibra, conforme desejado em cada caso. / Mestre em Ciências