L’utilisation de colorants synthétiques se développe depuis de nombreuses années dans des différentes industries. Les procèdes les plus couramment utilises pour le traitement des eaux usées colorées sont les traitements biologiques mais ils ont leurs limites. Les techniques d’oxydation chimique traditionnelle quant a elles conduisent à la coupure de la molécule au niveau du chromophore ne peuvent pas minéraliser totalement des colorants alors que la dépollution complète de ces effluents l’exigerait. Le procède photo-fenton homogène est une technique de traitement qui peut dégrader les effluents colores efficacement. Mais il y a quelques inconvénients majeurs qui limitent l’application industrielle de cette technologie. L’objectif de ce travail de recherche était d’étudier la décoloration et la dégradation des solutions des colorants: acide orange 7 acide orange 8 acide rouge i4 acide rouge 73 et acide bleu 74 par le procède d’oxydation avancée: photo-Fenton heterogene. Dans ce procède la zeolite fe-zsm5 a été utilisée comme un catalyseur heterogene. L’application de ce système nous a permis d une part de diminuer la quantité de boue formée au cours du traitement ainsi que la consommation d’énergie électrique engendrée par l’utilisation d’UV estimée à l aide de la méthode figures-of-merit et d’autre par d’étendre l’application du procède type photo-fenton aux ph plus élevés. La modélisation des procèdes étudies a été faite par deux méthodes à la méthodologie de surface de réponse (RSM) et les réseaux neuronaux artificiels (ANNS) - afin d optimiser la performance de système et également d'évaluer les effets simples et combines des différentes variables sur l’efficacité du traitement. / Large amounts of dyes are annually produced and applied in different industries. The biological methods are widely used for treatment of coloured ef fluents, but they have some limitations. Traditional chemical oxidations that destroy the chromophore of the molecule could not also result the complete mineralisation of the dyes. Homogeneous photo-fenton is a promising technique for treatment of the effluents but there are still some drawbacks that limit the industrial applications of this method. The aim of this work was to study the decolourisation and the degradation of coloured solution containing acid orange 7 acid orange 8 acid red I4 acid red 73 or acid blue 74 by an advanced oxidation process: heterogeneous Photo-fenton. In this study zeolite fe-zsm5 was used as a heterogeneous catalyst. Application of this system not only allowed us to diminish the quantity of sludge formed during the process but also reduced the consummation of electrical energy process keeps its high efficiency even at neutral phs. The modelling of the process was done by two methods - response surface methodology (RSM) and artificial Neural networks (ANNS) in order to optimise the performance of the system and to evaluate the simple and the combined effects of different variables on the process efficiency.

Thesis advisor: Donnah Canavan / Social Energy is an intrinsically attractive, energy generating, and genuinely satisfying construct that occurs when two people who are intrinsically motivated towards a common interest form a relationship over that interest. The following study was conducted to test a new branch of this construct, Imagined Social Energy Relationships. It was believed that this type of relationship would be perceived to lead people to feel less lonely, disconnected, and betrayed and more fulfilled, purposive, validated, understood, and energized than an individual who is depicted as having a strong interest and no one to share it with or a person who originally has this kind of relationship and then loses it. It was also believed that people who feel very strongly connected to their interests and/or are more introverted will be more likely to have personally developed Imagined Social Energy Relationships with media figures. It was found that a person with an Imagined Social Energy Relationship was described as feeling less lonely, disconnected, and betrayed, and more fulfilled, purposive, validated, understood, and energized than someone who lost this type of relationship. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Psychology. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

This study examines gaze patterns of monolinguals and bilinguals encoding speech in familiar and unfamiliar languages. In condition 1 English monolinguals viewed videos in familiar and unfamiliar languages (English and Spanish or Icelandic). They performed a task to ensure encoding: on each trial, two videos of short sentences were presented, followed by an audio-only recording of one of those sentences. Participants choose whether the audio-clip matched the first or second video. Participants gazed significantly longer at speaker's mouths when viewing unfamiliar languages. In condition 2 Spanish-English bilingual's viewed English and Spanish, no difference was found between the languages. In condition 3 the task was removed, English monolinguals viewed 20 English and 20 Icelandic videos, no difference in the gaze patterns was found, suggesting this phenomenon relies on encoding. Results indicate people encoding unfamiliar speech attend to the mouth presumably to extract more accurate audiovisually invariant and highly salient speech information. / by Lauren Wood Mavica. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Introducing robots into human environments requires them to handle settings designed specifically for human size and morphology, however, large, conventional humanoid robots with stiff, high powered joint actuators pose a significant danger to humans. By contrast, “anthropomimetic” robots mimic both human morphology and internal structure; skeleton, muscles, compliance and high redundancy. Although far safer, their resultant compliant structure presents a formidable challenge to conventional control. Here we review, and seek to address, characteristic control issues of this class of robot, whilst exploiting their biomimetic nature by drawing upon biological motor control research. We derive a novel learning controller for discovering effective reaching actions created through sustained activation of one or more muscle synergies, an approach which draws upon strong, recent evidence from animal and humans studies, but is almost unexplored to date in musculoskeletal robot literature. Since the best synergies for a given robot will be unknown, we derive a deliberately simple reinforcement learning approach intended to allow their emergence, in particular those patterns which aid linearization of control. We also draw upon optimal control theories to encourage the emergence of smoother movement by incorporating signal dependent noise and trial repetition. In addition, we argue the utility of developing a detailed dynamic model of a complete robot and present a stable, physics-based model, of the anthropomimetic ECCERobot, running in real time with 55 muscles and 88 degrees of freedom. Using the model, we find that effective reaching actions can be learned which employ only two sequential motor co-activation patterns, each controlled by just a single common driving signal. Factor analysis shows the emergent muscle co-activations can be reconstructed to significant accuracy using weighted combinations of only 13 common fragments, labelled “candidate synergies”. Using these synergies as drivable units the same controller learns the same task both faster and better, however, other reaching tasks perform less well, proportional to dissimilarity; we therefore propose that modifications enabling emergence of a more generic set of synergies are required. Finally, we propose a continuous controller for the robot, based on model predictive control, incorporating our model as a predictive component for state estimation, delay-compensation and planning, including merging of the robot and sensed environment into a single model. We test the delay compensation mechanism by controlling a second copy of the model acting as a proxy for the real robot, finding that performance is significantly improved if a precise degree of compensation is applied and show how rapidly an un-compensated controller fails as the model accuracy degrades.

The temporal structure of neural oscillations has become a widespread hypothetical \mechanism" to explain how neurodynamics give rise to neural functions. Despite the great number of empirical experiments in neuroscience and mathematical and computa- tional modelling investigating the temporal structure of the oscillations, there are still few systematic studies proposing dynamical explanations of how it operates within closed sensorimotor loops of agents performing minimally cognitive behaviours. In this thesis we explore this problem by developing and analysing theoretical models of evolutionary robotics controlled by oscillatory networks. The results obtained suggest that: i) the in- formational content in an oscillatory network about the sensorimotor dynamics is equally distributed throughout the entire range of phase relations; neither synchronous nor desyn- chronous oscillations carries a privileged status in terms of informational content in relation to an agent's sensorimotor activity; ii) although the phase relations of oscillations with a narrow frequency difference carry a relatively higher causal relevance than the rest of the phase relations to sensorimotor coordinations, overall there is no privileged functional causal contribution to either synchronous or desynchronous oscillations; and iii) oscilla- tory regimes underlying functional behaviours (e.g. phototaxis, categorical perception) are generated and sustained by the agent's sensorimotor loop dynamics, they depend not only on the dynamic structure of a sensory input but also on the coordinated coupling of the agent's motor-sensory dynamics. This thesis also contributes to the Coordination Dynam- ics framework (Kelso, 1995) by analysing the dynamics of the HKB (Haken-Kelso-Bunz) equation within a closed sensorimotor loop and by discussing the theoretical implications of such an analysis. Besides, it contributes to the ongoing philosophical debate about whether actions are either causally relevant or a constituent of cognitive functionalities by bringing this debate to the context of oscillatory neurodynamics and by illustrating the constitutive notion of actions to cognition.

Currently the central challenge facing evolutionary robotics is to determine how best to extend the range and complexity of behaviour supported by evolved neural systems. Implicit in the work described in this thesis is the idea that this might best be achieved through devising neural circuits (tractable to evolutionary exploration) that exhibit complementary functional characteristics. We concentrate on two problem domains; locomotion and sequence learning. For locomotion we compare the use of GasNets and other adaptive networks. For sequence learning we introduce a novel connectionist model inspired by the role of dopamine in the basal ganglia (commonly interpreted as a form of reinforcement learning). This connectionist approach relies upon a new neuron model inspired by notions of energy efficient signalling. Two reward adaptive circuit variants were investigated. These were applied respectively to two learning problems; where action sequences are required to take place in a strict order, and secondly, where action sequences are robust to intermediate arbitrary states. We conclude the thesis by proposing a formal model of functional integration, encompassing locomotion and sequence learning, extending ideas proposed by W. Ross Ashby. A general model of the adaptive replicator is presented, incoporating subsystems that are tuned to continuous variation and discrete or conditional events. Comparisons are made with Ross W. Ashby's model of ultrastability and his ideas on adaptive behaviour. This model is intended to support our assertion that, GasNets (and similar networks) and reward adaptive circuits of the type presented here, are intrinsically complementary. In conclusion we present some ideas on how the co-evolution of GasNet and reward adaptive circuits might lead us to significant improvements in the synthesis of agents capable of exhibiting complex adaptive behaviour.

A tese analisa as cinco primeiras peças teatrais de Beckett - Esperando Godot, Fim de Partida, A Última Fita de Krapp, Dias Felizes e Peça e procura identificar seus procedimentos formais básicos, chamados de figuras infernais. Na esteira de Adorno, o estudo da forma aqui realizado encontra na obra de Beckett uma reflexão das configurações sociais e do estado paradoxal da arte dentro deste quadro. As figuras infernais circularidade, confinamento, paradoxo, inconcludência, intermitência, dissimulação e coatividade erigemse também como instrumental crítico para a compreensão do teatro subsecutivo de Beckett, bem como de outros gêneros explorados pelo autor. / The thesis analyses the first five plays written by Beckett Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Krapps Last Tape, Happy Days and Play aiming to identify their fundamental formal procedures, which we call here hellish figures. Inspired by Adorno, our study of form finds in the work of Beckett a reflection about the social configuration and the paradoxal state of the Arts during his time. The hellish figures circularity, confinement, paradox, inconclusiveness, interminttence, dissimulation and enforcement can be used as a critical tool to understand Becketts other plays and writings.

Sex offenders are commonly grouped into categories based on the characteristics (e.g., victim age, relationship to offender) of their victims for criminal sentencing and treatment purposes. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to address the gap in the lack of literature comparing recidivism rates among biological fathers and male parental figures who committed incestuous child sexual abuse in Hawai'i against children 15 years or younger. This study was the first attempt in the state to examine the number of inmates who had completed their maximum sentences and were later returned to prison for new felony incest offenses. Secondary data were obtained from the Safety Sex Offender Treatment Program (SOTP) within the state of Hawai'i Department of Public Safety (DPS) from the years 1988 to 2013. Areas of recidivism and crimes involving biological fathers, stepfathers, boyfriends of the victims' mothers, foster parents, and hana'i family members were included (N = 1,727). Three hundred and ten met the criteria for the current study. The study had 2 independent variables: the offender's relationship to the victim (e.g., biological, adoptive, stepparent, foster parent or hana'i family members); or the residency status of the offender (e.g., lived with the victim versus did not live with the victim). The dependent variable was the recidivism rates of the incest offenders (i.e., new incest offense convictions). Analysis of these variables using the ï?£2 with Cramer's V statistical test lacked statistical significance as there was no documented evidence of recidivism in either group. The potential for social change and clinical significance still exists. Further analysis of the effectiveness of the SOTP may aid in sustaining low recidivism rates.

The objective of this thesis is to examine and analyze the presentation of spaces, figures, and the processes of judgment in afterlife films. American and foreign titles as well as television series are assessed as afterlife films by two criteria: (1) A character has clinically died yet continues to exist and (2) a living character finds his or her self in an afterlife space. Films with characters that have near-death experiences (NDEs) are included in relation to the above three qualities. After screening nearly one hundred and thirty titles, I have found there is a basic formula structure that has been expanded and transformed into seven other structures, plus those that are combined for a unique narrative. The afterlife corpus is divided into five distinct eras by the quantity of releases that fluctuate in accordance with 20th and early 21st century cultural anxieties and technological advances. A secondary argument proposes why the afterlife story is perfectly suited to the film medium plus why the industry and audiences are incessantly drawn to the afterlife film premise. The afterlife film perpetuates universal and age-old questions on the significance of life and death in the guise of enticing sights and stories. Each afterlife film may have its own identifiable design and theme but they are connected to higher concerns of mortality and second chances.

Thèse--Lettres--Université de Lausanne, 1992. / La mention de collection figure dans la bibliographie suisse. Bibliogr. p. 222-251.