The dynamic behaviour of high-rise buildings has become a critical design consideration as buildings are built taller and more slender. Large wind vibrations cause an increase in the lateral wind loads, but more importantly, they can be perceived by building occupants creating levels of discomfort ranging from minor annoyance to severe motion sickness. The current techniques to address these issues include stiffening the lateral load resisting system, reducing the number of stories, or incorporating a vibration absorber at the top of the building. All of which have consequences on the overall project cost. The dynamic response of high-rise buildings is highly dependent on damping. Full-scale measurements of high-rise buildings have shown that the inherent damping decreases with height and recent in-situ measurements have shown that the majority of buildings over 250 meters have levels of damping less than 1% of critical. Studies have shown that small increases in the inherent damping can lead to vast improvement in dynamic response. A new damping system, the viscoelastic (VE) Fork Configuration Damper (FCD), has been developed at the University of Toronto to address these design challenges. The proposed FCDs are introduced in lieu of coupling beams in reinforced concrete (RC) coupled wall buildings and take advantage of the large shear deformations at these locations when the building is subjected to lateral loads. An experimental study was conducted on 5 small-scale VE dampers to characterize the VE material behaviour and 6 full-scale FCD samples in an RC coupled wall configuration (one designed for areas where low to moderate ductility is required and one with built-in ductile structural “fuse” for areas where high ductility is required). The VE material tests exhibited stable hysteretic behaviour under expected high-rise loading conditions and the full-scale tests validated the overall system performance based on the kinematic behaviour of coupled walls, wall anchorage and VE material behaviour. Analytical models were developed that capture the VE material behaviour and the FCD system performance well. An 85-storey high-rise building was studied analytically to validate the design approach and to highlight the improvements in building response resulting from the addition of FCDs.

The dynamic behaviour of high-rise buildings has become a critical design consideration as buildings are built taller and more slender. Large wind vibrations cause an increase in the lateral wind loads, but more importantly, they can be perceived by building occupants creating levels of discomfort ranging from minor annoyance to severe motion sickness. The current techniques to address these issues include stiffening the lateral load resisting system, reducing the number of stories, or incorporating a vibration absorber at the top of the building. All of which have consequences on the overall project cost. The dynamic response of high-rise buildings is highly dependent on damping. Full-scale measurements of high-rise buildings have shown that the inherent damping decreases with height and recent in-situ measurements have shown that the majority of buildings over 250 meters have levels of damping less than 1% of critical. Studies have shown that small increases in the inherent damping can lead to vast improvement in dynamic response. A new damping system, the viscoelastic (VE) Fork Configuration Damper (FCD), has been developed at the University of Toronto to address these design challenges. The proposed FCDs are introduced in lieu of coupling beams in reinforced concrete (RC) coupled wall buildings and take advantage of the large shear deformations at these locations when the building is subjected to lateral loads. An experimental study was conducted on 5 small-scale VE dampers to characterize the VE material behaviour and 6 full-scale FCD samples in an RC coupled wall configuration (one designed for areas where low to moderate ductility is required and one with built-in ductile structural “fuse” for areas where high ductility is required). The VE material tests exhibited stable hysteretic behaviour under expected high-rise loading conditions and the full-scale tests validated the overall system performance based on the kinematic behaviour of coupled walls, wall anchorage and VE material behaviour. Analytical models were developed that capture the VE material behaviour and the FCD system performance well. An 85-storey high-rise building was studied analytically to validate the design approach and to highlight the improvements in building response resulting from the addition of FCDs.

The application of GPS probes in traffic management is growing rapidly as the required data collection infrastructure is increasingly in place in urban areas with significant number of mobile sensors moving around covering expansive areas of the road network. Most travelers carry with them at least one device with a built-in GPS receiver. Furthermore, vehicles are becoming more and more location aware. Currently, systems that collect floating car data are designed to transmit the data in a limited form and relatively infrequently due to the cost of data transmission. That means the reported locations of vehicles are far apart in time and space. In order to extract traffic information from the data, it first needs to be matched to the underlying digital road network. Matching such sparse data to the network, especially in dense urban, area is challenging. This thesis introduces a map-matching and path inference algorithm for sparse GPS probes in urban networks. The method is utilized in a case study in Stockholm and showed robustness and high accuracy compared to a number of other methods in the literature. The method is used to process floating car data from 1500 taxis in Stockholm City. The taxi data had been ignored because of its low frequency and minimal information. The proposed method showed that the data can be processed and transformed into information that is suitable for traffic studies. The thesis implemented the main components of an experimental ITS laboratory, called iMobility Lab. It is designed to explore GPS and other emerging traffic and traffic-related data for traffic monitoring and control. / <p>QC 20121107</p>

Floating Car Data (FCD) besitzen eine sehr breite Palette an Anwendungsmöglichkeiten, die aber teilweise noch keine massenhafte Verbreitung gefunden haben, auch wenn das Innovationspotenzial als sehr hoch eingeschätzt wird. Dies begründet sich in erster Linie durch die meist relativ großen Erfassungsintervalle bei der derzeitigen FCD-Erfassung. In Dresden ist ein Taxi-FCD-System in Betrieb, welches sich durch eine sehr hohe Detektionsdichte auszeichnet. Die Fahrzeugpositionen werden mindestens alle 5 Sekunden aufgezeichnet. Damit bestehen ausgezeichnete Möglichkeiten, mögliche Mehrwerte zu prüfen und Prototypen zu etablieren. Getestet wurde u. a. die Generierung von Straßennetzabbildern. Im Dauerbetrieb befindet sich die FCD-basierte Verkehrslageermittlung.

La maturité de la télématique et des technologies de l’information et la communication (TIC), ainsi que l’avènement du big data dans le transport ont conduit à des développements foisonnants dans le domaine des systèmes de transports intelligents (ITS), aussi bien sur le plan des technologies de recueil que du traitement innovant de l’information. Il est désormais possible de connaître les conditions de circulation et les états de trafic sur la plupart des sections d’un réseau routier sans avoir recours à des infrastructures intrusives de collecte de données, de transmettre l’information résultante via des réseaux sans fil et de traiter rapidement toutes ces données multi-sources disponibles. La constitution de grandes bases de données a naturellement fait évoluer la pratique de gestion du trafic et plus particulièrement les méthodes de prévision. Ces méthodes ont connu un renouveau en s’inspirant des travaux produits en apprentissage statistique. Néanmoins, la façon d’appréhender le problème de la prévision est restée à une échelle locale. Pour chaque section de route, un modèle de prévision est adapté et optimisé. Notre travail de thèse présente un cadre de prévision du trafic routier qui aborde la question à l’échelle du réseau. L’étude menée au sein de ces travaux de thèse vise à exposer et évaluer cette nouvelle approche, dite globale, au regard d’approches usuelles, puis à analyser sa sensibilité vis-à-vis de divers facteurs. Après un positionnement par rapport à l’état de l’art en théorie du trafic, le cadre prédictif fondé sur des méthodes de prévision multi-variées par apprentissage est détaillé. Une version multidimensionnelle des k plus proches voisins, modèle parcimonieux et simple, est évaluée sur divers cas d’études. L’originalité réside dans l’exploitation de données issues de méthodes innovantes de collecte (e.g. Bluetooth, véhicules traceurs, véhicules connectés). Par la suite, les performances de l’approche initiale sont comparées à d’autres méthodes d’apprentissage. Un effort particulier est porté sur l’adaptation de méthodes à noyaux au cadre prédictif global. Les performances obtenues laissent entrevoir une typologie des méthodes en fonction des caractéristiques spatiotemporelles du réseau. Afin d’améliorer les performances en prévision et de réduire les temps de calcul, une méthode d’identification et de sélection des sections critiques du réseau est proposée. Les résultats prouvent qu’un sous-ensemble restreint de sections est en effet suffisant pour garantir des performances satisfaisantes en généralisation. Enfin, la résilience du cadre prédictif est évaluée au regard des événements non récurrents affectant le fonctionnement nominal du réseau, comme des incidents ou des conditions météorologiques dégradées. Les résultats soulignent l’impact de ces conditions non récurrentes sur la prévision temps-réel de la dynamique court-terme d’un réseau et permettent de dresser une feuille de route pour l’élaboration d’un cadre prédictif résilient et opérationnel. Cette nouvelle vision de la prévision s’inscrit dans les perspectives actuelles en termes d’applications sur les modules embarqués et les objectifs des gestionnaires d’infrastructures. / The maturity of information and communication technologies and the advent of Big Data have led to substantial developments in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) : from data collection to innovative processing solutions. Knowledge of current traffic states is available over most of the network range without the use of intrusive infrastructure-side collection devices, instead relying on wireless transmission of multi-source data. The increasing use of huge databases had a strong influence on traffic management, including forecasting methods. These approaches followed the recent trend towards innovative works on statistical learning. However, the prediction problem remains mainly focused on the local scale. The prediction for each road link relies on a dedicated, optimized and adapted prediction model. Our work introduces a traffic-forecasting framework able to tackle network scale problems. The study conducted in this thesis aims to present and evaluate this new “global” approach, in comparison to most-used existing works, and then to analyze its sensitivity to several factors. The traffic-forecasting framework, based on multi-variate learning methods, is detailed after a review of the literature on traffic flow theory. A multi-dimensional version of the k nearest-neighbors, a simple and sparse model, is evaluated through several use cases. The originality of the work stands on the processing approach, applied to data collected through new measurement process (e.g. Bluetooth, floating car data, connected vehicles). Then, the performance of our primary approach is compared to other learning-based methods. We propose an adaptation of kernel-based methods for the global prediction framework. The obtained results show that global approaches perform as well as usual approaches. The spatial and temporal specificities of the methods are highlighted according to the prediction accuracy. To improve the forecasting accuracy and reduce the computation time, we propose an identification and selection method targeting critical links. The results demonstrate that the use of a restricted subset of links is sufficient to ensure acceptable performances during validation tests. Finally, the prediction framework resilience is evaluated with respect to non-recurrent events as incidents or adverse weather conditions affecting the nominal network operations. The results highlight the impact of these non-recurrent conditions on real-time forecasting of short-term network dynamics. This enables the design of a further operational and resilient prediction framework. This perspective of forecasting matches the current applications relying on embedded systems and addressing the traffic network supervisor’s expectations.

p83 é uma proteína com massa molecular aparente de 83 kDa, supostamente ainda não descrita, específica de sistema nervoso, e desenvolvimento regulada. p83 interage fortemente com laminina, Tau, tubulina e heat shock protein 90. p83 foi inicialmente detectada por imunohistoquímica e western blot usando-se um anticorpo anti-lectina KM+ purificado por afinidade. Sua purificação a partir de cérebro de rato está em progresso. Identificar o envolvimento de p83 em processos do Sistema Nervoso Central humano é um passo necessário em direção à compreensão de sua função biológica. Uma biblioteca de expressão de cDNA de cerebelo de rato (Lambda ZAP II, Stratagene) foi submetida ao screening, usando-se um anticorpo específico para isolar o cDNA de p83. O anticorpo anti-KM+ foi pré-adsorvido contra proteínas de E. coli XL1 Blue MRF, antes de ser usado no screening. As membranas foram reveladas por imunodetecção cromogênica (fosfatase alcalina e NBT/BCIP). A análise de todos os clones Lambda ZAP II foi feita por excisão in vivo do fagomídeo pBluescript, subclonagem em E. coli XL1 Blue MRF, purificação do DNA plasmidial e digestão com Eco RI. A seqüência correspondente ao clone isolado foi analisada usando-se ferramentas e bancos de dados do NCBI. A seqüência nucleotídica mostrou identidade com as isoformas A e E de drebrina. As isoformas A e E de drebrina foram detectadas em adulto e embrião, respectivamente. Drebrina A é uma proteína sistema nervoso-específica, desenvolvimento regulada e associa-se com F-actina. Embora drebrina e p83 compartilhem propriedades em comum, nossos dados de western blot indicaram que parecem não se tratar da mesma proteína. Nós investigamos a expressão de drebrina em Displasia Cortical Focal tipo IIB, comparando com córtex normal. As secções de tecido foram coradas com hematoxilina-eosina e prata (Bielchowsky). Secções foram processadas por imunohistoquímica usando-se os anticorpos anti-drebrina M2F6 e o DAS2, e recuperação antigênica. A detecção foi feita usando-se um anticorpo biotinilado, e DAB como cromógeno. Os tecidos displásicos (13 casos) foram obtidos cirurgicamente de tecidos exibindo epilepsia droga-resistente. Os controles foram obtidos de necrópsia de 15 pacientes sem história prévia de doenças neurológicas ou alterações patológicas. Nossos resultados sugerem uma associação entre drebrina e DCF IIB, um distúrbio do desenvolvimento cortical. / p83 is 83 kDa protein supposedly not yet described, nervous system specific, and developmentally regulated. p83 strongly interacts with laminin, Tau, tubulin and heat shock protein 90. It was initially detected by immunohistochemistry and western blot using an affinity-purified anti-lectin KM+ antibody. Its purification from rat brain is in progress. Identifying the involvement of p83 in human Central Nervous System processes is a required step towards understanding its biological roles. A premade cDNA rat cerebellum expression library (Lambda ZAP II, Stratagene) has been screened, using a specific antibody to isolate p83 cDNA. Anti-KM+ antibody was pre-adsorbed against E. coli XL1 Blue MRF proteins, before using in screening. Membranes were revealed by cromogenic immunodetection (alcaline fostase and NBT/BCIP). The analysis of all positive Lambda ZAP II clones was carried out by in vivo excision of pBluescript, subcloning in E. coli XL1 Blue MRF, plasmidial DNA purification and Eco RI digestion. The sequence corresponding to the clone isolated was analyzed using the NCBI tools and database. The nucleotide sequence showed identity with drebrin A and E isoforms. Drebrin A and E isoforms were detected in adults and embryos. Drebrin A is a neuron-specific, development-regulated F-actin-binding protein. It participates in growth cone extension and dendritic spine formation. Although have same drebrin and p83 properties in common, they not seem to be the same protein. We have investigated the expression of drebrin in Focal Cortical Dysplasia type IIB (FCD IIB) as compared to normal cortex. Tissue sections were stained with hematoxylin-eosin and silver (Bielchowsky). Sections were processed for immunohistochemistry using anti-drebrin antibodies M2F6 and DAS2, and an antigen retrieval technique. Detection was carried out using a biotinylated antibody, using DAB as chromogen. Dysplastic tissues (13 cases) were obtained at surgery for drug-resistant epilepsy. Controls were obtained at autopsy from 15 patients without history of neurological disorder and gross pathological changes. A specific drebrin labeling in dysplastic tissue was more intense than in controls. Indeed, most control cases exhibited at most a slightly higher staining than the background. Balloon, clear and undetermined cells, and giant, dysmorphic neurons, showed a conspicuous labeling by anti-drebrin. These cells showed a thin rim labeling of the nuclear membrane, and a finely punctate nuclear labeling. In contrast, a coarse nuclear, but a faint cytoplasm labeling was observed in autopsy cases. Our data suggest an association between Drebrin expression and the FCD IIB, a disturbance of cortical development.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-25T16:44:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ADM - Liliam R Ferreira.pdf: 642937 bytes, checksum: bfdeee1dcf21f47f5384fa0c6e3ca81c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-10-05 / Inventories are an important component of companies assets in agriculture, mining, manufacturing and commerce sectors where they have a representative weight in the company valuation. The last decade was marked by important advances in inventories management, especially with Information Technology evolution. The oil industry has very peculiar challenges in inventories management due to a extensive global supply chain, with uncertainties about supply, pressures from ecologists, strong political issues and with great commodity prices variation verified during the last years. The subject has an increasing importance particularly regarding the market oil situation and with the general business environment that registers merger and acquisitions movements between companies which demands a necessary evaluation of the involved companies´ value. This work investigates the relationship between inventories´ value and companies´ value in order to identify whether or not a proper inventory management is related to company valuation by market value and also by Deducted Cash Flow (DCF). To develop this work, we carried and evaluated a quantitative research regarding performance data from 35 oil companies.. These companies are from different sizes and regions of the planet. The finding results indicate that the market does not penalize the oil companies inefficient inventories management., but the market gives a small award for the efficient companies. This award is larger than the one verified in previous studies with a wider range of activity sectors. For DCF valuation there is a small penalty for inefficient companies, however there is an excellent award for efficient companies. Considering other performance factors regarded in this study as control variables, efficient companies showed better general financial performance than the inefficient ones / Os estoques correspondem a uma parcela importante dos ativos de empresas dos setores de agricultura, mineração, indústria e comércio tendo assim peso representativo na avaliação da empresa. A última década foi marcada por avanços importantes na gestão dos estoques, especialmente com a evolução da Tecnologia da Informação. O setor do petróleo tem desafios muito peculiares na gestão dos estoques devido à extensão global da cadeia produtiva, às incertezas quanto ao fornecimento, às pressões de ecologistas, às fortes questões políticas associadas e à grande variação de preços da commodity verificada nos últimos anos. O tema possui importância crescente diante da situação do mercado de petróleo em particular e do ambiente empresarial como um topo, com movimentações de fusões e aquisições entre empresas que demandam uma avaliação precisa do valor das empresas envolvidas. Esta dissertação investiga as relações entre valor de estoque e valor da empresa identificando se uma boa gestão de estoques está relacionada com uma valorização da empresa do ponto de vista do valor de mercado e também da análise por Fluxo de Caixa Descontado (FCD). Para está avaliação é feito uma pesquisa quantitativa com dados do setor de petróleo e dados de desempenho de 35 empresas do setor, de diferentes portes e de diversas regiões do planeta. Os resultados encontrados indicam que o mercado não penaliza as empresas do setor petrolífero com gestão ineficiente de estoques, mas concede um pequeno prêmio para as empresas com gestão eficiente, maior que o prêmio verificado em estudos anteriores para uma gama maior de setores de atividade. Para avaliação com a metodologia FCD, existe uma pequena penalização para as empresas ineficientes, mas existe uma forte e relevante premiação para as empresas eficientes. Na dependência também com outros fatores tratados como variável de controle, as empresas eficientes mostraram melhor desempenho geral nos índices contábeis analisados

p83 é uma proteína com massa molecular aparente de 83 kDa, supostamente ainda não descrita, específica de sistema nervoso, e desenvolvimento regulada. p83 interage fortemente com laminina, Tau, tubulina e heat shock protein 90. p83 foi inicialmente detectada por imunohistoquímica e western blot usando-se um anticorpo anti-lectina KM+ purificado por afinidade. Sua purificação a partir de cérebro de rato está em progresso. Identificar o envolvimento de p83 em processos do Sistema Nervoso Central humano é um passo necessário em direção à compreensão de sua função biológica. Uma biblioteca de expressão de cDNA de cerebelo de rato (Lambda ZAP II, Stratagene) foi submetida ao screening, usando-se um anticorpo específico para isolar o cDNA de p83. O anticorpo anti-KM+ foi pré-adsorvido contra proteínas de E. coli XL1 Blue MRF, antes de ser usado no screening. As membranas foram reveladas por imunodetecção cromogênica (fosfatase alcalina e NBT/BCIP). A análise de todos os clones Lambda ZAP II foi feita por excisão in vivo do fagomídeo pBluescript, subclonagem em E. coli XL1 Blue MRF, purificação do DNA plasmidial e digestão com Eco RI. A seqüência correspondente ao clone isolado foi analisada usando-se ferramentas e bancos de dados do NCBI. A seqüência nucleotídica mostrou identidade com as isoformas A e E de drebrina. As isoformas A e E de drebrina foram detectadas em adulto e embrião, respectivamente. Drebrina A é uma proteína sistema nervoso-específica, desenvolvimento regulada e associa-se com F-actina. Embora drebrina e p83 compartilhem propriedades em comum, nossos dados de western blot indicaram que parecem não se tratar da mesma proteína. Nós investigamos a expressão de drebrina em Displasia Cortical Focal tipo IIB, comparando com córtex normal. As secções de tecido foram coradas com hematoxilina-eosina e prata (Bielchowsky). Secções foram processadas por imunohistoquímica usando-se os anticorpos anti-drebrina M2F6 e o DAS2, e recuperação antigênica. A detecção foi feita usando-se um anticorpo biotinilado, e DAB como cromógeno. Os tecidos displásicos (13 casos) foram obtidos cirurgicamente de tecidos exibindo epilepsia droga-resistente. Os controles foram obtidos de necrópsia de 15 pacientes sem história prévia de doenças neurológicas ou alterações patológicas. Nossos resultados sugerem uma associação entre drebrina e DCF IIB, um distúrbio do desenvolvimento cortical. / p83 is 83 kDa protein supposedly not yet described, nervous system specific, and developmentally regulated. p83 strongly interacts with laminin, Tau, tubulin and heat shock protein 90. It was initially detected by immunohistochemistry and western blot using an affinity-purified anti-lectin KM+ antibody. Its purification from rat brain is in progress. Identifying the involvement of p83 in human Central Nervous System processes is a required step towards understanding its biological roles. A premade cDNA rat cerebellum expression library (Lambda ZAP II, Stratagene) has been screened, using a specific antibody to isolate p83 cDNA. Anti-KM+ antibody was pre-adsorbed against E. coli XL1 Blue MRF proteins, before using in screening. Membranes were revealed by cromogenic immunodetection (alcaline fostase and NBT/BCIP). The analysis of all positive Lambda ZAP II clones was carried out by in vivo excision of pBluescript, subcloning in E. coli XL1 Blue MRF, plasmidial DNA purification and Eco RI digestion. The sequence corresponding to the clone isolated was analyzed using the NCBI tools and database. The nucleotide sequence showed identity with drebrin A and E isoforms. Drebrin A and E isoforms were detected in adults and embryos. Drebrin A is a neuron-specific, development-regulated F-actin-binding protein. It participates in growth cone extension and dendritic spine formation. Although have same drebrin and p83 properties in common, they not seem to be the same protein. We have investigated the expression of drebrin in Focal Cortical Dysplasia type IIB (FCD IIB) as compared to normal cortex. Tissue sections were stained with hematoxylin-eosin and silver (Bielchowsky). Sections were processed for immunohistochemistry using anti-drebrin antibodies M2F6 and DAS2, and an antigen retrieval technique. Detection was carried out using a biotinylated antibody, using DAB as chromogen. Dysplastic tissues (13 cases) were obtained at surgery for drug-resistant epilepsy. Controls were obtained at autopsy from 15 patients without history of neurological disorder and gross pathological changes. A specific drebrin labeling in dysplastic tissue was more intense than in controls. Indeed, most control cases exhibited at most a slightly higher staining than the background. Balloon, clear and undetermined cells, and giant, dysmorphic neurons, showed a conspicuous labeling by anti-drebrin. These cells showed a thin rim labeling of the nuclear membrane, and a finely punctate nuclear labeling. In contrast, a coarse nuclear, but a faint cytoplasm labeling was observed in autopsy cases. Our data suggest an association between Drebrin expression and the FCD IIB, a disturbance of cortical development.