The development of ethics with samples of period fine art pieces with the emphasis on Christian view. (Range 14.-16. century). The base of this thesis is a brief description of eschatology, developing in the frame of Christian ethics in the midstream of the pestilence's apocalypse of the late Middle Ages. The main part of the thesis is focused on changes in individual as well as social perception of death during the very demanding era of extreme wave of pestilence's epidemic in late Middle Ages even early modern history. The changes in approach and coping with the attribute of death are being observed. The aim of the thesis, on the basis of literary studies, is to gather and analyze the changes in interpretation of death during the mentioned period, evaluate their influence of people's behavior by verification or denial of given hypothesis. The accessible materials are supplemented by previews of period fine art pieces showing the attitude of people in given era towards the perception of their own death. Key words Ars moriendi, Bible, carpe diem, pestilence, eschatology, flagellant, macabre art, dying memento mori, death, death dances, vanitas.

A fatty acid amide is precisely as the name suggests: A fatty acid (CHn-COOH), in which the hydroxyl group of the carboxylic acid is displaced by an amine functional group from a biogenic amine (R-NH2), ultimately forming an amide bond. Furthermore, these fatty acid amides can be composed of a variety of different acyl chain lengths donated by the fatty acid and a myriad of different biogenic amines. Thus, these molecules can be subdivided in a number of different ways including the separation of short chain (acetyl to heptanoyl) and long chain (palmitoyl to arachidonoyl) and also based off the biogenic amine type. The long chain fatty acid amides quickly gained the interest of the scientific community through the discovery of anandamide (N-arachidonoylethanolamide), which was found to be the endogenous ligand for the cannabinoid receptor-1 (CB1) found in the mammalian brain. This particular neural molecule is an N-acylethanolamide, which is one specific classification of long chain fatty acid amide. However, there exist other types of long chain fatty acid amides including the N-acylglycines, primary fatty acid amides (PFAMs) and N-acylarylalkylamides. Yet, despite the type of fatty acid amide, it has been shown many of these types of molecules are synthesized using a type of N-acyltransferase. These N-acyltransferases are believed to be members of the GCN5-related superfamily of N-acyltransferases (GNAT), which share the feature of being able to accept acyl-CoA thioester substrates. This dissertation will discuss and demonstrate the extraction of all types of the aforementioned classifications of long chain fatty acid amides but will have a particular focus on the N-acylarylalkylamides. Elucidating more about the biosynthetic pathways and metabolic routes of the long chain fatty acid amides could lead to the development of potential therapeutics and pest control agents. We have determined Drosophila melanogaster arylalkylamine N-acyltransferase like 2 is responsible for the in vivo biosynthesis of N-acyldopamines. We have also demonstrated Bombyx mori is another suitable model systems for the study of long chain fatty acid amides, as three insect arylalkylamine N-acyltrasnferase from Bombyx mori (Bm-iAANAT) were found to share some homology in primary sequence (25-29%) to AAANTL2 in Drosophila melanogaster. We show herein that one of these enzymes is able to catalyze the formation of long chain N-acylarylalkylamides in vivo. The change in the transcription of these enzymes was tracked to try and understand if these enzymes serve a focused purpose in the physiological development of the insect. If it is found one of these Bm-iAANAT are crucial for growth, it may elucidate a general function of the enzyme, which may be able to inhibit growth of specific insects that are known pests, while not targeting endangered insects like Apis melliferra (honey bee). Understanding this would help in the eventual creation of targeted insecticides on specific insect pests Furthermore, a novel panel of fatty acid amides was characterized and quantified in extracts from this organism via LC-QToF-MS, ultimately showing it is very possible the Bm-iAANATs are performing this catalysis in vivo.

La réalisation des moules pour l'injection des thermoplastiques demande un gros investissement financier; en conséquence, les industriels souhaitent parvenir à prédire correctement la géométrie finale des pièces injectées. Pour cela, un calcul rhéologique couplé à un calcul thermo-mécanique par éléments finis dans le solide doit être mené et requiert les propriétés du matériau. Aujourd'hui, les propriétés mécaniques des matériaux utilisées dans les codes de calcul ne sont généralement ni thermo-dépendantes, ni directement dépendantes de l'orientation locale des fibres. L'objectif de cette étude est de parvenir à prédire les propriétés élastiques et les coefficients de dilatation de composites injectés et chargés de fibres courtes, en ayant recours à des techniques d'homogénéisation. L'originalité du travail réside dans le fait d'estimer ces propriétés sur une large gamme de température en fonction de l'orientation locale des fibres. Une 1ère partie présente les techniques de mesure de l'état d'orientation des fibres: dans le cas particulier de l'injection où la plupart des fibres sont contenues dans un plan, nous avons mis au point une nouvelle méthode rapide et précise afin de déterminer l'orientation spatiale des fibres. Elle consiste à analyser l'image, prise au microscope électronique à balayage, d'un seul plan de coupe incliné par rapport à la direction d'injection. Dans une 2ème partie, les propriétés thermo-élastiques des composites sont obtenues par le modèle de Mori-Tanaka. Pour tenir compte de l'orientation, plusieurs méthodologies sont évaluées. Finalement, nous proposons d'utiliser une fonction capable de décrire la forme de la distribution d'orientation et dont les paramètres sont identifiés à partir du tenseur d'orientation d'ordre 2. Les prédictions obtenues sont cohérentes avec les mesures de modules d'Young et de coefficients de dilatation.

Les polymères naturels présentent de plus en plus une alternative crédible pour de nombreuses applications techniques et biomédicales. Ils possèdent des qualités de modularité, de durabilité, souvent de biocompatibilité, qui leurs sont propres. Mais la compréhension détaillée des mécanismes qui gouvernent le comportement de tels matériaux est difficile et reste souvent incomplète. Cette étude a cherché à mieux comprendre le lien qui existe entre le comportement mécanique et la microstructure pour la fibre de soie. Une caractérisation minutieuse du comportement mécanique a donc été effectuée par des moyens parfois originaux comme l'association entre une machine de traction et une observation en microscopie électronique. Il a ainsi été montré l'aspect composite du fil de soie industriel et l'importance des différents éléments constitutifs de la soie. Le comportement de la fibre a également été décrit dans différentes conditions atmosphériques d'humidité et de température. Cette caractérisation s'est accompagnée d'une description de la microstructure en utilisant des techniques telles que la diffraction aux rayons X et la spectrométrie Raman. Notamment, la spectrométrie Raman a pu être associée à une traction in situ. Ceci a permis d'établir des liens entre mécanique et microstructure. Il a ainsi été prouvé notre capacité à modifier la microstructure et le comportement mécanique de la soie par voie biotechnologique en modifiant le génome du Bombyx mori. Ce qui ouvre une nouvelle voie d'innovation prometteuse pour améliorer ce type de matériau. Enfin, une modélisation simple mais robuste basée sur une description physique du matériau a permis de valider les avancées faites quant à la compréhension de ce polymère. Le comportement en environnement contrôlé a été étudié. Ces résultats pourraient alimenter des études numériques sur des assemblages, plus proches du produit fini.

Dans cette thèse nous étudions deux aspects distincts des variétés toriques, l'un purement géométrique, sur C, et l'autre de nature arithmétique, sur des corps quasi algébriquement clos (corps C1). Les courbes extrémales qui engendrent le cône de Mori d'une variété torique projective sont des courbes primitives (V. Batyrev). En 2009, D. Cox et C. von Renesse ont conjecturé que les courbes primitives engendrent le cône de Mori de toute variété torique dont l'éventail est à support convexe, de dimension maximale. Nous présentons une famille de contre-exemples à cette conjecture et en proposons une nouvelle formulation basée sur la notion de contractibilité locale, généralisant la notion de contractibilité de C. Casagrande. Grâce aux couloirs, outils combinatoires que nous introduisons, nous montrons comment écrire une classe de 1-cycle donnée comme combinaison linéaire à coefficients entiers de classes de courbes toriques. Les couloirs nous permettent de donner une décomposition explicite de toute classe qui n'est pas contractible (couloirs droits) ainsi que de certaines classes contractibles (couloirs circulaires). Les corps C1 sont les corps sur lesquels l'existence de points rationnels dans une variété Y est assurée par le plongement en petit degré de Y dans un espace projectif (par définition) ou dans un espace projectif pondéré (d'après un théorème facile de Kollar). Pour un diviseur ample dans une variété torique dont l'éventail est simplicial et complet, nous montrons qu'il existe encore une notion de petit degré qui assure l'existence de points rationnels. Ceci nous permet notamment de montrer l'existence de points rationnels sur une large classe de variétés rationnellement connexes.

In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s. In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity. In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning.

In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s. In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity. In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning.

In the mid-1990s, Japanese artists Mariko Mori (b. 1962) and Takashi Murakami (b. 1967) began creating works that referenced Japanese popular culture tropes such as sexuality, technology and the idea of kawaii, or cute. These tropes were associated with emerging youth cultures instigating a “soft rebellion” against social conventions. While emancipated female youths, or shōjo, were criticized for lifestyles based on the consumption of kawaii goods, their male contemporaries, the otaku were demonized for a fetishization of kawaii girls and technology through anime and manga, or animation and comic books. Destabilizing the nation’s patriarchal theory of cultural uniqueness, or nihonjinron, the youth triggered fears of a growing infantilized, feminized automaton ‘alien’ society during Japan’s economically tumultuous 1990s. In response to these trends, Mori and Murakami create works and personae that celebrate Japan’s emerging heterogeneity and reveal that Japan’s fear of the ‘alien within’ is a result of a tenuous post-war Japanese-American relationship. But in denoting America’s position in Japan’s psyche, Mori’s and Murakami’s illustration of Japan as both victim and threat encourages Orientalist and Techno-Orientalist readings. The artists’ ambivalence towards Western stereotypes in their works and personae, as well as their distortion of boundaries between commercial and fine art, intimate a collusion between commercialization, art and cultural identity. Such acts suggest that in the global economy of art production, Japanese cultural identity has become as much as a brand, as art a commodity. In this ambivalent perspective, the artists isolate the relatively recent difficulty of enunciating Japanese cultural identity in the international framework. With the downfall of its cultural homogeneity theory, Japan faced a crisis of representation. Self-Orientalization emerged as a cultural imperative for stabilizing a coherent national identity, transposing blame for Japan’s social and economic disrepair onto America. But by relocating Japanese self-Orientalization within the global art market, Mori and Murakami suggest that as non-Western artists, economic viability is based upon their ability to cultivate desirability, not necessarily authenticity. In the international realm, national identity has become a brand based upon the economies of desire, predicated by external consumption, rather than an internalized production of meaning. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Hamlet's tragedy is constructed as a perspective of matter that is destined for decay, and this "objective," or "object-focused," mode of viewing the material world enhances theatrical and theological understandings of the play's props, figurative language, and characters. Hamlet's "objective mode" evokes early modern materialist philosophies of vanitas and memento mori, and it is communicated in theatre through semiotic means, whereby material items stand for moral ideas according to an established sign-signified relation. Extending an objective reading to Hamlet's characters reveals their function as images, or two-dimensional emblems, in moments of slowing narrative time. In the graveyard scene (5.1), characters and theatrical props cooperate to materialize the objective perspective. As a prop, Ophelia's corpse complicates the objective mode through its semantic complexity. Thus, she stands apart from other characters as one that both serves to construct and to deconstruct the objective mode. Hamlet's tragic outlook, which depends upon an understanding of matter as destined for decay, and of material items as ends in themselves rather than vehicles for spiritual transformation, is an early modern notion concurrent with theological debates surrounding the Eucharist. Drawing upon art-historical, linguistic, feminist, theological, and theatrical approaches, this thesis contributes to concurrent discourse on Hamlet's tragic genre.

Sous l’Ancien Régime, l’armée française était, en principe, composée de troupes professionnelles recrutées sur le mode du volontariat. Son recrutement était par ailleurs complété par différentes formes d’obligations militaires comme le ban, le guet et garde ou encore la milice provinciale. Les aspects techniques de ces institutions, leurs origines, leur évolution ou encore leur ampleur, sont connues. Il n’en va pas de même des fondements et des limites de l’exercice du pouvoir de contrainte qu’elles supposent. Il existe certes des études classiques sur l’histoire de la conscription, du pro patria mori ou de l’obligation to die for the state. Mais leurs conclusions sont contradictoires, elles négligent la doctrine et la législation d’Ancien Régime, et leur perspective n’embrasse qu’une partie des conditions de légitimité d’une obligation qui impose aux sujets de risquer leur vie et de tuer. L’objet du présent travail est donc d’offrir un exposé des justifications avancées en faveur ou contre l’obligation militaire, et d’identifier les débats auxquels celle-ci a donné lieu entre le XVIe et le XVIIIe siècle. Pour éclairer et ordonner le syncrétisme des préambules de la législation royale et déceler les obstacles que permettent de surmonter les arguments, il a paru nécessaire de calquer le plan de la thèse sur l’ordre du traitement de l’obligation militaire dans les ouvrages doctrinaux. Or, ceux-ci abordent l’obligation militaire sous trois angles complémentaires, trois séries de conditions cumulatives correspondant aux trois appartenances qui définissent l’état des personnes : citoyens membres du corps politique ; chrétiens membres du corps mystique de l’Église ; hommes intégrés dans un ordre et considérés dans leur individualité. À ces trois séries de personnes correspondent alors trois séries de biens : le bien commun de l’État, le bien divin, commun lui aussi, et le bien propre des individus. Ces trois biens correspondent aux conditions classiques de la légitimité des lois qui, dans la doctrine thomiste, sont orientées vers le bien commun, doivent respecter la loi divine et être justement réparties. Ces séries de considérations permettent de structurer la thèse en trois parties. Deux enseignements peuvent être tirés du tableau des conditions de légitimité de l’obligation militaire sous l’Ancien Régime. En premier lieu, il révèle un besoin constant de légitimation d’un devoir mortel. Tout absolu qu’il était, le roi de France ne pouvait exiger ad nutum l’obligation militaire. Il lui fallait, au moins, avancer une argumentation et, au mieux, respecter certaines conditions. En second lieu, l’histoire des justifications de l’obligation militaire sous l’Ancien Régime est celle de la progression du bien commun qui permet de repousser les limites traditionnelles qui encadrent le pouvoir royal. Cette évolution n’est pas sans susciter des critiques de la doctrine qui, d’une certaine façon, cherche à protéger l’individu. / Under the Ancien Régime, the French army was, in principle, composed of professional troops recruited on a voluntary basis. In addition, recruitment included various forms of military obligation, such as the arrière-ban, the watch and guard or the territorial militia. The technical aspects of those institutions are well known, as are their origins, their evolutions, and their scope. But the underlying foundations and limitations of the enforcement powers implied by them are not. There have been classic accounts of the history of conscription, pro patria mori, or the obligation to die for the state. But their conclusions are contradictory; they overlook the doctrine and legislation of the Ancien Régime, and they embrace but a fraction of the conditions governing the legitimacy of the obligation for subjects to risk their lives and kill. The subject of this present work is to offer an account of the justifications put forward in favor or against military obligation, and to identify the debates it has generated between the 16th and the 18th century. In order to clarify and organise the syncretism of the preambles of the royal legislation and detect the challenges that allows to overcome the arguments, it was deemed necessary to model the thesis plan on the treatment order of the military obligation in doctrinal publications. They address that topic from three complementary perspectives, with three sets of cumulative conditions corresponding to three affiliations that define a person’s status: citizen, who are members of the body politic; Christians, who are members of the mystical body of the Church; men members of an order or considered in their individuality. Three series of goods correspond to those three types: the common good of the State, the divine good, common as well, and the individual good. Those three goods correspond to the classical conditions of the law’s legitimacy that, in Thomistic doctrine, are aimed at the common good, must abide by the divine law and be justly distributed. These sets of considerations help to structure the thesis in three parts. Two conclusions can be drawn from the overview of the conditions for the legitimacy of military obligation under the Ancien Régime. Firstly, it shows a constant need of legitimation of a deadly duty. As absolute as he was, the King of France could not demand ad nutum military obligation. He needed to, at least, put forward an argument and, at best, respect certain conditions. Secondly, the history of the justifications for military obligation under the Ancien Régime is that of a progress of the common good, which led to push back the traditional limitations to the royal power. This evolution is not without instigating criticism of the doctrine that, in a certain way, seeks to protect the individual.