The reaction cross section gives the probability that a particle will undergo a nonelastic process when passing through a nuclear medium. Therefore reaction cross section data are of importance both for theoretical studies and for applications in such diverse fields as medicine, biology, astrophysics and accelerator-driven transmutation of nuclear waste. There exist many data sets with angular distributions of elastic scattering, but very few measurements of the complementary reaction cross section have been performed. The measurement is in principle simple but has in practice proved to be very difficult to perform, and the relatively limited amount of experimental data displays some serious inconsistencies. Results from measurements of reaction cross sections are presented for: • 3He on 9Be, 12C, 16O, 28Si, 40Ca, 58,60Ni, 112,116,118,120,124Sn and 208Pb at 96, 138 and 167 MeV • protons on 12C, 40Ca, 90Zr and 208Pb at six energies in the energy range 80-180 MeV, and on 58Ni at 81 MeV. Experimental uncertainties were 3-9% for 3He and 1.5-8% for protons. The apparatus and the experimental method used for the measurements of reaction cross sections, using a modified attenuation technique, is described. The detection method enables simultaneous measurements of reaction cross sections for five different sizes of the solid angles in steps from 99.0 to 99.8% of the total solid angle. The final results are obtained by extrapolation to the full solid angle. Experimental results are compared with predictions from optical model calculations using phenomenological global optical potentials. Phenomenological parametrizations of reaction cross sections for scattering of projectiles on targets are presented. The parametrizations show that reaction cross sections are very sensitive to matter distributions at very large radii of both the projectile and the target. For protons the derived relations makes it possible to predict the reaction cross sections on targets for which no experimental data exist.

This doctoral thesis concerns the interplay between multinational enterprises (MNE) and spatial economies, with an orientation towards the location and spillover effects of inward foreign direct investments (FDI). The thesis consists of four essays that are self-contained studies. The first essay relates to the shift away from FDI in manufacturing to services and examines whether service FDI locates differently from manufacturing FDI. The second essay concerns the relationship between FDI and public incentives and whether investment promotion schemes are useful to attract FDI. The third essay examines the link between human capital and FDI and how different types of skilled workers influence FDI location. Taken together, these three essays examine conditions and factors that determine the location decision of foreign MNEs in the contemporary era of globalisation. The forth essay examines whether labour mobility is a potential source for spillovers from FDI in a spatial context. Although the latter essay does not provide any final answer to whether spillovers actually arise through this channel, it shows that the potentials for an effect to arise are larger in some regions than others because there are very few or no such knowledge spillover agents in many parts of the country. The thesis concludes by discussing the link between FDI and the policy work on regional development, and some avenues for future studies. / <p>QC 20130816</p>

Functionality for efficient computation of properties of system lifetimes was developed, based on the Mathematica framework. The model of these systems consists of a system structure and the components independent lifetime distributions. The components are assumed to be non-repairable. In this work a very general implementation was created, allowing a large number of lifetime distributions from Mathematica for all the component distributions. All system structures with a monotone increasing structure function can be used. Special effort has been made to compute fast results when using the exponential distribution for component distributions. Standby systems have also been modeled in similar generality. Both warm and cold standby components are supported. During development, a large collection of examples were also used to test functionality and efficiency. A number of these examples are presented. The implementation was evaluated on large real world system examples, and was found to be efficient. New results are presented for standby systems, especially for the case of mixed warm and cold standby components.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 80 pages. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Continuous recognition of sign language has many practical applications and it can help to improve the quality of life of deaf persons by facilitating their interaction with hearing populace in public situations. This has led to some research in automated continuous American Sign Language recognition. But most work in continuous ASL recognition has only used top-down Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based approaches for recognition. There is no work on using facial information, which is considered to be fairly important. In this thesis, we explore bottom-up approach based on the use of Relational Distributions and Space of Probability Functions (SoPF) for intermediate level ASL recognition. We also use non-manual information, firstly, to decrease the number of deletion and insertion errors and secondly, to find whether the ASL sentence has 'Negation' in it, for which we use motion trajectories of the face. / ABSTRACT: The experimental results show: - The SoPF representation works well for ASL recognition. The accuracy based on the number of deletion errors, considering the 8 most probable signs in the sentence is 95%, while when considering 6 most probable signs, is 88%. - Using facial or non-manual information increases accuracy when we consider top 6 signs, from 88% to 92%. Thus face does have information content in it. - It is difficult to directly combine the manual information (information from hand motion) with non-manual (facial information) to improve the accuracy because of following two reasons: 1. Manual images are not synchronized with the non-manual images. For example the same facial expressions is not present at the same manual position in two instances of the same sentences. 2. One another problem in finding the facial expresion related with the sign, occurs when there is presence of a strong non-manual indicating 'Assertion' or 'Negation' in the sentence. / ABSTRACT: In such cases the facial expressions are totally dominated by the face movements which is indicated by 'head shakes' or 'head nods'. - The number of sentences, that have 'Negation' in them and are correctly recognized with the help of motion trajectories of the face are, 27 out of 30. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

No description available.

Microarray technology permit us to study the expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously. The technique has a wide range of applications including identification of genes that change their expression in cells due to disease or drug stimuli. The dissertation is addressing statistical methods for the selection of differentially expressed genes in two experimental conditions. We propose two different methods for the selection of differentially expressed genes. The first method is a classical approach, where we consider a common distribution for the summary measure of equally expressed genes. To estimate this common distribution, the Johnson system of distribution is used. The advantage of using Johnson system is that, there is no need of a parametric assumption for gene expression data. In contrast to other classical methods, in the proposed method, there is a sharing of information across the genes by the assumption of a common distribution for the summary measure of equally expressed genes. The second method is the gene selection using a mixture model approach and Baye's theorem. This approach also uses the Johnson System of distribution for the estimation of distribution of summary measure. Johnson system of distribution has the flexibility of covering a wide variety of distributional shapes. This system provides a unique distribution corresponding to each pair of mathematically possible values of skewness and kurtosis. The significant flexibility of Johnson system is very useful in characterizing the complicated data set like microarray data. In this dissertation we propose a novel algorithm for the estimation of the four parameters of the Johnson system.

Before launching into ultrasound research, it is important to recall that the ultimate goal is to provide the clinician with the best possible information needed to make an accurate diagnosis. Ultrasound images are inherently affected by speckle noise, which is due to image formation under coherent waves. Thus, it appears to be sensible to reduce speckle artifacts before performing image analysis, provided that image texture that might distinguish one tissue from another is preserved. The main goal of this thesis was the development of novel speckle suppression methods from medical ultrasound images in the multiscale wavelet domain. We started by showing, through extensive modeling, that the subband decompositions of ultrasound images have significantly non-Gaussian statistics that are best described by families of heavy-tailed distributions such as the alpha-stable. Then, we developed Bayesian estimators that exploit these statistics. We used the alpha-stable model to design both the minimum absolute error (MAE) and the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimators for alpha-stable signal mixed in Gaussian noise. The resulting noise-removal processors perform non-linear operations on the data and we relate this non-linearity to the degree of non-Gaussianity of the data. We compared our techniques to classical speckle filters and current state-of-the-art soft and hard thresholding methods applied on actual ultrasound medical images and we quantified the achieved performance improvement. Finally, we have shown that our proposed processors can find application in other areas of interest as well, and we have chosen as an illustrative example the case of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. / Ο απώτερος σκοπός της έρευνας που παρουσιάζεται σε αυτή τη διδακτορική διατριβή είναι η διάθεση στην κοινότητα των κλινικών επιστημόνων μεθόδων οι οποίες να παρέχουν την καλύτερη δυνατή πληροφορία για να γίνει μια σωστή ιατρική διάγνωση. Οι εικόνες υπερήχων προσβάλλονται ενδογενώς από θόρυβο, ο οποίος οφείλεται στην διαδικασία δημιουργίας των εικόνων μέσω ακτινοβολίας που χρησιμοποιεί σύμφωνες κυματομορφές. Είναι σημαντικό πριν τη διαδικασία ανάλυσης της εικόνας να γίνεται απάλειψη του θορύβου με κατάλληλο τρόπο ώστε να διατηρείται η υφή της εικόνας, η οποία βοηθά στην διάκριση ενός ιστού από έναν άλλο. Κύριος στόχος της διατριβής αυτής υπήρξε η ανάπτυξη νέων μεθόδων καταστολής του θορύβου σε ιατρικές εικόνες υπερήχων στο πεδίο του μετασχηματισμού κυματιδίων. Αρχικά αποδείξαμε μέσω εκτενών πειραμάτων μοντελοποίησης, ότι τα δεδομένα που προκύπτουν από τον διαχωρισμό των εικόνων υπερήχων σε υποπεριοχές συχνοτήτων περιγράφονται επακριβώς από μη-γκαουσιανές κατανομές βαρέων ουρών, όπως είναι οι άλφα-ευσταθείς κατανομές. Κατόπιν, αναπτύξαμε Μπεϋζιανούς εκτιμητές που αξιοποιούν αυτή τη στατιστική περιγραφή. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, χρησιμοποιήσαμε το άλφα-ευσταθές μοντέλο για να σχεδιάσουμε εκτιμητές ελάχιστου απόλυτου λάθος και μέγιστης εκ των υστέρων πιθανότητας για άλφα-ευσταθή σήματα αναμεμειγμένα με μη-γκαουσιανό θόρυβο. Οι επεξεργαστές αφαίρεσης θορύβου που προέκυψαν επενεργούν κατά μη-γραμμικό τρόπο στα δεδομένα και συσχετίζουν με βέλτιστο τρόπο αυτή την μη-γραμμικότητα με τον βαθμό κατά τον οποίο τα δεδομένα είναι μη-γκαουσιανά. Συγκρίναμε τις τεχνικές μας με κλασσικά φίλτρα καθώς και σύγχρονες μεθόδους αυστηρού και μαλακού κατωφλίου εφαρμόζοντάς τες σε πραγματικές ιατρικές εικόνες υπερήχων και ποσοτικοποιήσαμε την απόδοση που επιτεύχθηκε. Τέλος, δείξαμε ότι οι προτεινόμενοι επεξεργαστές μπορούν να βρουν εφαρμογές και σε άλλες περιοχές ενδιαφέροντος και επιλέξαμε ως ενδεικτικό παράδειγμα την περίπτωση εικόνων ραντάρ συνθετικής διατομής.

Lorsque l'impulsion longitudinale des partons contenus dans un hadron ultra-relativiste diminue, on observe un accroissement de leur densité. Quand la densité approche une valeur d'ordre $1/\alpha_s$, elle n'augmente plus, elle sature. Ces effets de haute densité semblent être correctement décrits par la théorie effective du "Color Glass Condensate". Du point de vue expérimental, le LHC est le meilleur outil jamais disponible pour atteindre la phase saturée de la matière hadronique. Pour cette raison, la physique de la saturation est une branche très active de la QCD dans les années passées et à venir car la théorie et les expériences peuvent être comparées. En premier lieu, je discute de la phénoménologie des collisions proton-plomb qui ont eu lieu à l'hiver 2013 et dont les données sont sur le point d'être disponibles. Je calcule la section efficace pour la production de deux gluons qui est l'observable la plus simple pour trouver des preuves quantitatives de la saturation dans le régime cinématique du LHC. Je traite également la limite des états finaux fortement corrélés à grandes impulsions transverses et, par la même occasion, généralise la distribution de partons au régime dense. Le second sujet principal est l'évolution quantique des spectres de gluons et de quarks dans les collisions noyau-noyau, ayant à l'esprit son caractère universel. Ce résultat est déjà connu pour les gluons et je détaille ici le calcul avec attention. Pour les quarks, l'universalité n'a toujours pas été prouvée mais je dérive une formule de récursion intermédiaire entre l'ordre dominant et l'ordre sous-dominant qui constitue une étape cruciale dans l'extraction de l'évolution quantique. Enfin, je présente brievement un travail indépendant de théorie des groupes. Je détaille une méthode personnelle permettant de calculer des traces impliquant un nombre arbritraire de générateurs, une situation souvent rencontrée dans les calculs de QCD.

No description available.

Cette thèse a pour sujet l'étude de la réaction de la Diffusion Compton Profondément Virtuelle (DVCS) sur le proton e + p -> e' + p' + gamma (DVCS). Cette réaction est mesurée en analysant l'expérience e1-dvcs2 qui a eu lieu dans le Hall B du Jefferson Laboratory avec CLAS. La prise de données s'est déroulée du 22 octobre 2008 jusqu'au 23 janvier 2009. Cette analyse a pour but la détermination des sections efficaces non polarisées et les différences de sections efficaces polarisées du DVCS, dans divers bins en xB, Q^2, t et phi. Cette analyse compare les sections efficaces avec plusieurs mesures existantes du DVCS: une analyse parallèle de e1-dvcs2 et une analyse de e1-dvcs1. En factorisant l'élément de matrice qui correspond au DVCS en deux parties, calculables en QCD perturbative et non perturbative, on peut accéder aux Distributions de Partons Généralisées (GPDs) du proton, et ainsi obtenir une vue en 3D des distributions spatiales et en impulsion des quarks et des gluons dans le proton.