Successful applications of Reinforcement Learning (RL) in the robotics field has proliferated after DeepMind and OpenAI showed the ability of RL techniques to develop intelligent robotic systems that could learn to perform complex tasks. Ever since the use of robots for surgical procedures, researchers have been trying to bring some sort of autonomy into the operating room. Surgical robotic systems such as da Vinci currently provide the surgeons with direct control. To relieve the stress and the burden on the surgeon using the da Vinci robot, semi-automating or automating surgical tasks such as suturing can be beneficial. This work presents a RL-based approach to automate the needle hand-off task. It puts forward two approaches based on the type of environment, a discrete and continuous space approach. For capturing a unique suturing style, user data was collected using the da Vinci Research Kit to generate a sparse reward function. It was used to derive an optimal policy using Q-learning for a discretized environment. Further, a RL framework for da Vinci Research Kit was developed using a real-time dynamics simulator - Asynchronous Multi-Body Framework (AMBF). A model was trained and evaluated to reach the desired goal using model-free RL techniques while considering the dynamics of the robot to help mitigate the difficulty in transferring trained model to real-world robots. Therefore, the developed RL framework would enable the RL community to train surgical robots using state of the art RL techniques and transfer it to real-world robots with minimal effort. Based on the results obtained, the viability of applying RL techniques to develop a supervised level of autonomy for performing surgical tasks is discussed. To summarize, this work mainly focuses on using RL to automate the suture hand-off task in order to move a step towards solving the greater problem of automating suturing.

Tras la época oscura de la Edad Media, en Italia durante los años 1400 surge el Renacimiento, como una búsqueda de regresar a una cultura de la antigua Roma y Grecia y tener mayor interés por el ser humano. Este resurgimiento cultural se vio reflejado también en el arte. Según el autor Argan (2001), los artistas renacentistas volvieron a pintar al hombre y la naturaleza, que durante la Edad Media habían dejado de ser los protagonistas de las obras. Asimismo, Riutort (2010), afirma que pintores y escultores empezaron a estudiar el cuerpo humano, entre ellos destaca Leonardo da Vinci. Quien es considero para muchos autores como el referente principal de anatomía artística, ya que sus descubrimientos siguen siendo importantes temas de estudio en diferentes en el campo del arte y la medicina. Entre los estudios realizados por Leonardo da Vinci, destacan el de proporcionalidad del cuerpo humano, músculos, movimiento de articulaciones y la expresividad facial. Mediante la investigación de dichos estudios, se realizo una colección en donde destaquen las formas, siluetas y texturas inspiradas en las obras de Leonardo da Vinci. / After the dark ages of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance arose in Italy in the 1400s as a quest for a return to the culture of ancient Rome and Greece and a greater concern for the human being. This cultural revival was also reflected in art. According to the author Argan (2001), Renaissance artists returned to painting man and nature, which during the Middle Ages had ceased to be the protagonists of the works. Likewise, Riutort (2010), states that painters and sculptors began to study the human body, among them Leonardo da Vinci. He is considered by many authors as the main reference of artistic anatomy, since his discoveries are still important subjects of study in different fields of art and medicine. Among the studies carried out by Leonardo da Vinci, the proportionality of the human body, muscles, movement of joints and facial expressiveness stand out. Through the investigation of these studies, a collection was made in which the forms, silhouettes and textures inspired by the works of Leonardo da Vinci stand out. / Trabajo de investigación

Submitted by Flavia Baptistini (flaviabaptistini@gmail.com) on 2017-09-28T18:39:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Flavia_LDV_dissertação_v7_final_comtudo.pdf: 5972920 bytes, checksum: 308c60af028f1e152d82a4499e232d94 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Diego Andrade (diego.andrade@fgv.br) on 2017-09-29T20:18:59Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Flavia_LDV_dissertação_v7_final_comtudo.pdf: 5972920 bytes, checksum: 308c60af028f1e152d82a4499e232d94 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-10-16T11:55:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Flavia_LDV_dissertação_v7_final_comtudo.pdf: 5972920 bytes, checksum: 308c60af028f1e152d82a4499e232d94 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-07-06 / This research aims to rescue Leonardo da Vinci Bookshop’s history based in Rio de Janeiro, which had been in the care of the same family for more than sixty years and was sold at the beginning of 2016. It was acknowledged nationally for its high-quality imported books catalog from all over the world and for the high-standard bookseller’s performance of the founder and her staff, the Da Vinci Bookshop – as well as other previous bookshops that proved to be part of the city’s memory. Its relationship with the urban everyday life enabled not only the production and the development of the humanistic knowledge in the old Republic capital, but also promoted ways of sociability of several scholars living in Rio de Janeiro during the second half of the 20th century. The purpose of this study is to reflect about the symbolic dimension of certain kinds of commercial activities, focusing on the bookseller diversity in the cultural life of the cities. Besides being a purchase point, nowadays the few remaining bookshops are used as leisure centers and a place designed mainly for literary activities and they make part of the powerful international companies / Esta pesquisa intenta resgatar a trajetória da Livraria Leonardo da Vinci, sediada na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, que esteve por mais de sessenta anos sob os cuidados da mesma família e foi vendida no início de 2016. Reconhecida nacionalmente pela qualidade do catálogo de obras importadas de diversas partes do mundo e pelo exercício do ofício livreiro pela fundadora e por seus funcionários, a Da Vinci – bem como outras livrarias antes dela – mostrou ser parte integrante da memória da cidade. Sua relação com o cotidiano urbano permitiu não só a produção e o fomento do conhecimento humanístico na antiga capital da República como ensejou formas de sociabilidade de uma série de intelectuais residentes no Rio durante a segunda metade do século XX. Com este estudo pretende-se refletir sobre a dimensão simbólica presente em determinados tipos de atividades comerciais, dando destaque à diversidade livreira na vida cultural das cidades. Além de ponto de venda, hoje as poucas livrarias remanescentes são moduladas como espaços de lazer e fruição de atividades do campo literário e fazem parte de grandes redes ou conglomerados internacionais.

Set in 16th century Florence, Italy, "La Gioconda" takes you on the journey of Lisa del Gioconda, the woman behind one of the most recognized paintings in the world, The Mona Lisa. Married off at a young age, Lisa finds comfort in her secret love affair with Art. Her secret world crosses paths with an Art apprentice, Leonardo da Vinci, who takes her on as his student. Lisa tells her husband that she is at church praying while spending her afternoons with Da Vinci, mastering her craft and technique. A love affair begins to blossom and Lisa is forced to make a big decision in the end. Secrets begin to unravel including the truth behind Da Vinci's original painting of the Mona Lisa before it became what we all know it to be today.

La technique du sfumato, de Léonard de Vinci, permet, par un jeu subtil des ombres et des lumières, de créer un effet vaporeux ‘sans lignes, ni contours, à la façon de la fumée'. Léonard de Vinci, pour la réalisation des ombres des carnations, superpose des glacis, fines couches de peintures translucides, composés d'un pigment sombre et très riches en liant organique. Les livres de recettes et traités de peinture anciens constituent une première source d'informations sur cette technique. La reconstitution de certaines recettes de liants suivie par la caractérisation de leurs propriétés rhéologiques et mécaniques a permis de mieux comprendre la formulation des glacis. Les critères définis par l'industrie des peintures peuvent être utilisés comme autant d'indices pour retrouver les recettes des peintres des siècles passées. L'analyse de prélèvements peut apporter certaines informations sur la formulation des couches picturales chez Leonard de Vinci et ses contemporains. La combinaison de deux méthodes d'analyse par faisceau d'ions (PIXE et BS) permet d'obtenir la proportion liant-pigment d'une couche de peinture, information jusqu'alors non accessible. Enfin, des œuvres de Léonard de Vinci ont été analysées de façon quantitative par spectrométrie de fluorescence des rayons X. En considérant l'atténuation des rayons X par absorption, il est possible de calculer la composition et l'épaisseur des couches à partir d'une modélisation de la stratigraphie de l'œuvre.

La tesi tratta il profilo umano e la produzione letteraria degli studiosi di Leonardo da Vinci in ambito milanese tra il tardo Settecento e i primi due decenni dell'Ottocento. La discussione critica di tali contributi (talvolta inediti) posti in successione cronologica ha permesso di delineare le principali acquisizioni storiografiche su Leonardo da Vinci e la sua produzione artistica. / Thesis deals with the literary production made by Leonardo da Vinci's scholars in Milan area between the late eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth century. The critical discussion of these contributions (sometimes unpublished) placed in chronological sequence has enabled us to identify the major historiographical acquisitions on Leonardo da Vinci and his art.

This dissertation is a study of the comic intermezzo’s literary origins and musical practice in the years before Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1733). It begins with a chronological examination of Italian comic plays and operas written between 1660 and 1723. During these years comic playwrights adopted a style of writing speech from the improvised theatre which makes use of what Richard Andrews (1993) refers to as “elastic gags.” This style of comedy flourished under Medici patronage in Florence in the last decades of the seventeenth century and then spread to Venice, Rome and Naples during the first years of the intermezzo’s development. It is a style of comedy shared with the plays of Molière, and other contemporaneous French authors. This dissertation examines several scenes based on French works which have previously not been identified as having earlier sources. The decision to adapt these earlier sources for the intermezzo did not occur in a vacuum. The practice of comedy in the intermezzo was conditioned by the artistic, social and political climate of Italy. This study investigates the relationship between intermezzos and the milieus which produced them. The success of some intermezzos, like Il marito giocatore (1719), resulted from a combination of their artistic merit and their broad social appeal, while others, like Albino e Plautilla (1723), were musically adept but remained obscure because their humour was specific to the world they satirized. Both intermezzos are indebted to earlier French sources. Many others which are metatheatrical in nature draw on contemporary debates about opera. A final section examines selected arias from the intermezzo repertory using incongruity theory. Comic theory makes clear that the intermezzo’s musical language was not a new development. Just as librettists drew on earlier written traditions to form the literary text of the intermezzo, composers drew on existing musical practices to create humour. The intermezzo was therefore not naively comic—a portrait of the genre which is all too common—but rather a repertory which was thoroughly enmeshed within contemporary artistic practice and a wider social and cultural world.

This dissertation is a study of the comic intermezzo’s literary origins and musical practice in the years before Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1733). It begins with a chronological examination of Italian comic plays and operas written between 1660 and 1723. During these years comic playwrights adopted a style of writing speech from the improvised theatre which makes use of what Richard Andrews (1993) refers to as “elastic gags.” This style of comedy flourished under Medici patronage in Florence in the last decades of the seventeenth century and then spread to Venice, Rome and Naples during the first years of the intermezzo’s development. It is a style of comedy shared with the plays of Molière, and other contemporaneous French authors. This dissertation examines several scenes based on French works which have previously not been identified as having earlier sources. The decision to adapt these earlier sources for the intermezzo did not occur in a vacuum. The practice of comedy in the intermezzo was conditioned by the artistic, social and political climate of Italy. This study investigates the relationship between intermezzos and the milieus which produced them. The success of some intermezzos, like Il marito giocatore (1719), resulted from a combination of their artistic merit and their broad social appeal, while others, like Albino e Plautilla (1723), were musically adept but remained obscure because their humour was specific to the world they satirized. Both intermezzos are indebted to earlier French sources. Many others which are metatheatrical in nature draw on contemporary debates about opera. A final section examines selected arias from the intermezzo repertory using incongruity theory. Comic theory makes clear that the intermezzo’s musical language was not a new development. Just as librettists drew on earlier written traditions to form the literary text of the intermezzo, composers drew on existing musical practices to create humour. The intermezzo was therefore not naively comic—a portrait of the genre which is all too common—but rather a repertory which was thoroughly enmeshed within contemporary artistic practice and a wider social and cultural world.

Throughout much of Christian history, the church had predominant control over religious ritual and belief. As early as the 1st Century, institutions representing "orthodoxy" were banning, forbidding or destroying the "heretical", separating it from what eventually would become canon and religious practice. The 21st Century provides new ways for spiritual knowledge to spread, bypassing traditional methods. Modern Martin Luthers can nail a manifesto to an internet door while the media's obsession with non-canonical texts provides no shortage of material for movies and television. A multi-media barrage challenges orthodox concepts and scriptural definition, often blurring the line between religion and entertainment. The initial clash between the churches and media has evolved over the last century to a point where the media may now produce beneficial results, educating many who may have either left the church or never joined it.

<p>Turistiskt kulturutövande – en studie om autentiska kulturarv fiktiva kontexter i Skara och Skottland, är en magisteruppsats som studerar ett fenomen kallat för ”fiktiva kulturarv”. Två fallstudier, ”Arnfenomenet” och ”Da Vinci- effekten”, analyseras utifrån uppkomst, kulturturistisk form och marknadsföring. Turistiskt kulturutövande har allt mer börjat innebära samarbetsprojekt mellan kultursektorn och turismnäringen vilket fört med sig både positiva och negativa reaktioner. Uppsatsen presenterar hur det fiktiva kulturarvet med dess autentiska och fiktiva delar kan bidra till både möjligheter och begränsningar inom kulturturistiska samarbetsprojekt.</p> / <p>“A study of fictional context in the intermediary of authentic cultural heritage in Skara and Scotland” is a study about a phenomenon called “fictional cultural heritage”. Two case studies, “the Arnphenomena” and “the Da Vinci- effect”, are analysed from their origin, marketing and different aspects of cultural tourism. Cultural tourism has more frequently been used as collaborated projects between the tourism industry and the heritage industry. These projects have brought both positive and negative reactions. This study shows the “fictional cultural heritage” and how it’s authentic and fictional aspects can entail both possibilities and limitations.</p>