Passive exoskeletons hold promise in reducing the risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, however further research is essential before widespread adoption can occur. This study explores the feasibility of using subjective measures of physical demand in place of costly and less practical objective measures. Normalized electromyography (nEMG) data and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) were collected from seven different studies conducted by the Occupational Ergonomics and Biomechanics Lab (OEB lab). Employing a repeated measures three-way ANOVA, we assessed the influence of nEMG, gender, and exoskeleton type on RPE. Additionally, mean nEMG and RPE from seven passive exoskeleton-based studies conducted outside the OEB lab were assessed in order to determine if the findings from the OEB lab existed across other research environments. The results demonstrated a general positive linear trend between nEMG and RPE for both the individual and mean results. Substantial inconsistencies emerged when considering the influence of gender, exoskeleton type, and task conditions on the relationship between nEMG and RPE. These discrepancies underscore the need for more in-depth research into this topic, specifically investigating the effects of gender and exoskeleton design. / Master of Science / Passive exoskeletons, devices designed to improve safety and provide support to the body, offer the potential for reducing muscle strain and reducing work-related injury risk. However, before these devices can be widely adopted, more research is necessary. Subjective measures of exertion, an affordable and user-friendly alternative to objective measures, require further investigation before replacing traditional methods in exoskeleton research. This study explores the possible connection between subjective and objective assessments of physical demand during passive exoskeleton usage. We analyzed data from seven studies conducted by the Occupational Ergonomics and Biomechanics Lab (OEB lab), focusing on muscle activity (an objective measure) and perceived exertion (a subjective measure). Our analysis examined the relationship between these objective and subjective measures, as well as how gender, exoskeleton type, and task conditions influenced this relationship. Additionally, we considered mean values from seven passive exoskeleton studies conducted outside the OEB lab, to investigate whether our findings existed in other research environments. The results revealed that as muscle activity increased, perceived exertion tended to increase as well. Moreover, our findings demonstrated that gender, exoskeleton type, and task conditions did influence the relationship, although there was significant variability in how these factors affected it. This research sheds light on the potential for using subjective measures in exoskeleton studies, bringing us closer to making exoskeletons more practical and accessible for real-world applications while acknowledging the complexities of this relationship.

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Même si le surréalisme au 21ème siècle est généralement jugé comme un mouvement dépassé dont les années les plus actives ont eu lieu dans l'entre-deux-guerres, c'est-à-dire de 1918 à 1939, il y a encore des échos et des rémanences du surréalisme aujourd'hui, longtemps après la fin apparente du mouvement. Le présent travail explore les oeuvres de Louis-René des Forêts, à savoir Le Bavard et La Chambre des enfants, par rapport aux oeuvres surréalistes, à savoir Nadja, le "Manifeste du surréalisme," et L'Amour fou, afin de déterminer dans quelle mesure les composantes du surréalisme telles que le hasard objectif, les attributs de l'esprit conscient et inconscient, l'irrationalité, et le jeu de la fiction et de la réalité font encore écho et restent présentes dans les oeuvres littéraires à présent. Les résultats de cette analyse indiquent que les oeuvres littéraires fictives d'aujourd'hui sont largement imprégnées de nombreuses composantes surréalistes dans certains cas directement et dans d'autres cas indirectement. / Master of Arts / Although Surrealism in the 21st century is generally considered to be an outdated movement whose most active years took place in the interwar period from 1918 to 1939, there are still echoes and afterglow of Surrealism today, long after the movement's apparent end. The present work explores the works of Louis-René des Forêts, Le Bavard and La Chambre des enfants, in relation to the Surrealist works, Nadja, le "Manifeste du surréalisme," and L'Amour fou, in order to determine the extent to which components of Surrealism such as objective chance, attributes of the conscious and unconscious mind, irrationality, and the interplay of fiction and reality still echo and remain present in fictional literary works today. The results of this analysis indicate that today's fictional literary works are largely infused with many Surrealist components, in some cases directly and in other cases indirectly.

The limited available budget along with old aging infrastructure in nation magnifies the role of strategic decision making for maintenance of infrastructure. The challenging objective is to maintain the infrastructure asset systems in a state of good repair and to improve the efficiency and performance of the infrastructure systems while protecting and enhancing the natural environment. Decision makers are in need of a decision support system to consider these multiple objectives and criteria to effectively allocate funding and achieve the highest possible return on investment on their infrastructure. The research proposes and validates a framework for such decisions. The proposed model aims at finding optimal techniques for maintenance of multiple roadway asset items while taking into account time, cost, level of service and environmental impacts. Therefore, the goal is to answer what are the optimal combinations of maintenance techniques for roadway assets while more than one objective is being optimized. In other words, the main objective is to develop a decision support system for selecting and prioritizing necessary actions for MRandR (Maintenance, Repair and Rehabilitation) of multiple asset items in order for a roadway to function within an acceptable level of service, budget, and time while considering environmental impacts. To achieve these desirable outcomes, this model creates a two-stage framework for a sustainable infrastructure asset management. First a multi-objective problem based on the multi colony ant colony optimization is analyzed. The objectives of the problem are: (i) Minimizing maintenance costs, (ii) Minimizing maintenance time, (iii) Minimizing environmental impacts and (iv) Maximizing level of service improvement. In the second stage, the results of the multi objective optimization will be prioritized using a Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) process. The proposed approach will simultaneously optimize four conflicting objectives along with using a multi criteria decision-making technique for ranking the resulted non-dominated solutions of multi objective optimization. The results of implementation of the proposed model on a section of I-64 highway are presented for a sub-set of asset items. Moreover, the proposed model is validated using a scalable test problem as well as comparison with existing examples. Results reveal the capability of the model in generation of optimal solutions for the selection of maintenance strategies. The model optimizes decision making process and benefits decision makers by providing them with solutions for infrastructure asset management while meeting national goals towards sustainability and performance-based approach. In addition, provides a tool to run sensitivity analysis to evaluate annual budget effects and environmental impacts of different resource allocation scenarios. Application of the proposed approach is implemented on roadway asset items but it is not limited to roadways and is applicable to other infrastructure assets. / Ph. D.

Yes / Purpose: Even during steady fixation, people make small eye movements such as microsaccades, whose rate is altered by presentation of salient stimuli. Our goal was to develop a practical method for objectively and robustly estimating contrast sensitivity from microsaccade rates in a diverse population. Methods: Participants, recruited to cover a range of contrast sensitivities, were visually normal (n = 19), amblyopic (n = 10), or had cataract (n = 9). Monocular contrast sensitivity was estimated behaviorally while binocular eye movements were recorded during interleaved passive trials. A probabilistic inference approach was used to establish the likelihood of observed microsaccade rates given the presence or absence of a salient stimulus. Contrast sensitivity was estimated from a function fitted to the scaled log-likelihood ratio of the observed microsaccades in the presence or absence of a salient stimulus across a range of contrasts. Results: Microsaccade rate signature shapes were heterogeneous; nevertheless, estimates of contrast sensitivity could be obtained in all participants. Microsaccade-estimated contrast sensitivity was unbiased compared to behavioral estimates (1.2% mean), with which they were strongly correlated (Spearman's ρ 0.74, P < 0.001, median absolute difference 7.6%). Measurement precision of microsaccade-based contrast sensitivity estimates was worse than that of behavioral estimates, requiring more than 20 times as many presentations to equate precision. Conclusions: Microsaccade rate signatures are heterogeneous in shape when measured across populations with a broad range of contrast sensitivities. Contrast sensitivity can be robustly estimated from rate signatures by probabilistic inference, but more stimulus presentations are currently required to achieve similarly precise estimates to behavioral techniques. / Supported by a Confidence in Concept grant from the Medical Research Council, a Fight for Sight Project Grant (5059/5060) and a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship to NWR (WT097387).

The implementation of RFID technology has been subject to ever-increasing popularity in relation to the traceability of items as one of the most advance technologies. Implementing such a technology leads to an increase in the visibility management of products. Notwithstanding this, RFID communication performance is potentially greatly affected by interference between the RFID devices. It is also subject to auxiliary costs in investment that should be considered. Hence, seeking a cost-effective design with a desired communication performance for RFID-enabled systems has become a key factor in order to be competitive in today‟s markets. This study introduce a cost and performance-effective design for a proposed RFID-enabled passport tracking system through the development of a multi-objective model that takes in account economic, operation and social criteria. The developed model is aimed at solving the design problem by (i) allocating the optimal numbers of related facilities that should be established and (ii) obtaining trade-offs among three objectives: minimising implementation and operational costs; minimising RFID reader interference; and maximising the social impact measured in the number of created jobs. To come closer to the actual design in terms of considering the uncertain parameters, a fuzzy multi-objective model was developed. To solve the multi-objective optimization problem model, two solution methods were used respectively (epsilon constrain and linear programming) to select the best Pareto solution and a decision-making method was developed to select the final trade-off solution. Moreover, this research aims to provide a user-friendly decision making tool for selecting the best vendor from a group which submitted their tenders for implementing a proposed RFID- based passport tracking system. In addition to that a real case study was applied to examine the applicability of the developed model and the proposed solution methods. The research findings indicate that the developed model is capable of presenting a design for an RFID- enabled passport tracking system. Also, the developed decision-making tool can easily be used to solve similar vendor selection problem. Research findings demonstrate that the proposed RFID-enabled monitoring system for the passport tracking system is economically feasible. The study concludes that the developed mathematical models and optimization approaches can be a useful decision-maker for tackling a number of design and optimization problems for RFID system using artificial intelligence mathematical algorithm based techniques.

Alors que de nombreuses recherches se sont intéressées à la variabilité perçue des groupes (Park & Rothbart, 1982; Quattrone & Jones, 1980), l’existence de différences de variabilité objective entre les groupes sociaux n’a suscité que peu de recherches. Il a néanmoins été montré que le pouvoir détenu par un groupe pouvait augmenter sa variabilité objective. Si les résultats des quelques études réalisées sur le sujet tendent vers cette conclusion, des résultats contradictoires ont également pu être observés. L’objectif de cette thèse est de mieux comprendre ces différences de variabilité objective, notamment via l’étude de l’(in)certitude, définie comme la capacité à comprendre et à prédire son environnement. Après une revue des nombreux concepts associés au terme d’ « incertitude »,nous proposons cinq études qui visent à définir précisément l’« (in)certitude » manipulée dans cette thèse. Par la suite, nous testons l’hypothèse d’une augmentation de la variabilité objective avec le degré de certitude au travers de six études, dont trois en contexte écologique. Dans les expériences en laboratoire, le degré d’(in)certitude ressentie par les membres de groupes artificiels a été expérimentalement manipulé et la variabilité des groupes mesurée par diverses méthodes (écart à la norme et distance entre les choix des membres). Cette manipulation expérimentale de l’(in)certitude a également été testée en contexte écologique avec les membres de groupes naturels. Enfin, deux études ont traité des données écologiques recueillies lors de la Coupe du Monde de Football 2010 et dans une enquête internationale et longitudinale, l’European Values Survey. Nos résultats montrent qu’il semble possible d’influencer la variabilité des groupes par une modification de l’(in)certitude ressentie par leurs membres. Les groupes composés de membres certains sont objectivement plus variables que les groupes composés de membres incertains. De plus, en laboratoire comme avec les données écologiques, nous avons pu établir un lien entre nos recherches et les précédentes concernant l’effet du pouvoir sur la variabilité objective. / A lot of studies have focused on perceived group variability (Park & Rothbart, 1982;Quattrone & Jones, 1980) while very few were interested in the existence of objectivedifferences in variability between groups. Nevertheless, it was shown that the power held bya group could increase its objective variability. If the results of some studies tend to this conclusion, contradictory results have also been observed. The aim of this work is to better understand differences in variability objective, particularly through the study of(un)certainty, defined as the ability to understand and predict the environment. After are view of numerous concepts associated with the term "uncertainty", we propose five studies aimed at defining precisely the "(un)certainty" handled in our work. Subsequently, we testour hypothesis about the influence of (un)certainty on the objective variability through six studies, three of them in ecological context. In laboratory, the degree of (un)certainty felt by artificial group members was experimentally manipulated and variability of groups wasmeasured by different methods (deviation from the norm and distance between the choicesof members). This experimental manipulation of (un)certainty was also carried out in an ecological context with members of natural groups. Finally, two studies have dealt with ecological data collected during the Football World Cup 2009 and in an international and longitudinal investigation, the European Values Survey. Our results show that it seemspossible to influence the variability of groups by a modification of the (un)certainty felt bytheir members. Groups composed of members who are certain are objectively more variable than groups composed of members who are uncertain. In both type of data, in laboratory and in ecological context, we were able to establish a link with the previous research on the effect of power on objective variability.

A distributed variant of multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) called multi-objective parallel asynchronous particle swarm optimization (MOPAPSO) is presented, and the effects of distribution of objective function calculations to slave processors on the results and performance are investigated and employed for the synthesis of Grashof mechanisms. By using a formal multi-objective handling scheme based on Pareto dominance criteria, the need to pre-weight competing systemic objective functions is removed and the optimal solution for a design problem can be selected from a front of candidates after the parameter optimization has been completed. MOPAPSO's ability to match MOPSO's results using parallelization for improved performance is presented. Results for both four and ve bar mechanism synthesis examples are shown. / UOIT

TRIZ is a method that can be applied to analyze and solve engineering problem with contradiction effectively, but design problem does not easy to clarify. Thus, the purpose of the research is to propose a systematic methodology to make clear engineering problem and get just principles to design, designs of transmission system and frame of bicycle are the examples to explain. First, utilizing object tree method transform design question to better parameter, simultaneously the better parameter transformed to worse parameter. According to better and worse parameter suitable principles are selected with Contradiction Matrix and design transmission system of bicycle. Next, Inventive Principles is categorized by characteristic of design, and getting suite attribute. Thus, using asymmetry principle to design frame. Finally the Bottom Bracket be load force that deform magnitude is evaluating, and influence the result of position of tube of frame find out batter frame.

The Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is a classical method for solving nonlinear systems of equations that can come from various applications in engineering and economics. Recently, Levenberg-Marquardt methods turned out to be a valuable principle for obtaining fast convergence to a solution of the nonlinear system if the classical nonsingularity assumption is replaced by a weaker error bound condition. In this way also problems with nonisolated solutions can be treated successfully. Such problems increasingly arise in engineering applications and in mathematical programming. In this thesis we use Levenberg-Marquardt algorithms to deal with nonlinear equations, multi-objective optimization and complementarity problems. We develop new algorithms for solving these problems and investigate their convergence properties. For sufficiently smooth nonlinear equations we provide convergence results for inexact Levenberg-Marquardt type algorithms. In particular, a sharp bound on the maximal level of inexactness that is sufficient for a quadratic (or a superlinear) rate of convergence is derived. Moreover, the theory developed is used to show quadratic convergence of a robust projected Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm. The use of Levenberg-Marquardt type algorithms for unconstrained multi-objective optimization problems is investigated in detail. In particular, two globally and locally quadratically convergent algorithms for these problems are developed. Moreover, assumptions under which the error bound condition for a Pareto-critical system is fulfilled are derived. We also treat nonsmooth equations arising from reformulating complementarity problems by means of NCP functions. For these reformulations, we show that existing smoothness conditions are not satisfied at degenerate solutions. Moreover, we derive new results for positively homogeneous functions. The latter results are used to show that appropriate weaker smoothness conditions (enabling a local Q-quadratic rate of convergence) hold for certain reformulations. / Der Levenberg-Marquardt-Algorithmus ist ein klassisches Verfahren zur Lösung von nichtlinearen Gleichungssystemen, welches in verschiedenen Anwendungen der Ingenieur-und Wirtschaftswissenschaften vorkommen kann. Kürzlich, erwies sich das Verfahren als ein wertvolles Instrument für die Gewährleistung einer schnelleren Konvergenz für eine Lösung des nichtlinearen Systems, wenn die klassische nichtsinguläre Annahme durch eine schwächere Fehlerschranke der eingebundenen Bedingung ersetzt wird. Auf diese Weise, lassen sich ebenfalls Probleme mit nicht isolierten Lösungen erfolgreich behandeln. Solche Probleme ergeben sich zunehmend in den praktischen, ingenieurwissenschaftlichen Anwendungen und in der mathematischen Programmierung. In dieser Arbeit verwenden wir Levenberg-Marquardt- Algorithmus für nichtlinearere Gleichungen, multikriterielle Optimierung - und nichtlineare Komplementaritätsprobleme. Wir entwickeln neue Algorithmen zur Lösung dieser Probleme und untersuchen ihre Konvergenzeigenschaften. Für ausreichend differenzierbare nichtlineare Gleichungen, analysieren und bieten wir Konvergenzergebnisse für ungenaue Levenberg-Marquardt-Algorithmen Typen. Insbesondere, bieten wir eine strenge Schranke für die maximale Höhe der Ungenauigkeit, die ausreichend ist für eine quadratische (oder eine superlineare) Rate der Konvergenz. Darüber hinaus, die entwickelte Theorie wird verwendet, um quadratische Konvergenz eines robusten projizierten Levenberg-Marquardt-Algorithmus zu zeigen. Die Verwendung von Levenberg-Marquardt-Algorithmen Typen für unbeschränkte multikriterielle Optimierungsprobleme im Detail zu untersucht. Insbesondere sind zwei globale und lokale quadratische konvergente Algorithmen für multikriterielle Optimierungsprobleme entwickelt worden. Die Annahmen wurden hergeleitet, unter welche die Fehlerschranke der eingebundenen Bedingung für ein Pareto-kritisches System erfüllt ist. Wir behandeln auch nicht differenzierbare nichtlineare Gleichungen aus Umformulierung der nichtlinearen Komplementaritätsprobleme durch NCP-Funktionen. Wir zeigen für diese Umformulierungen, dass die bestehenden differenzierbaren Bedingungen nicht zufrieden mit degenerierten Lösungen sind. Außerdem, leiten wir neue Ergebnisse für positiv homogene NCP-Funktionen. Letztere Ergebnisse werden verwendet um zu zeigen, dass geeignete schwächeren differenzierbare Bedingungen (so dass eine lokale Q-quadratische Konvergenzgeschwindigkeit ermöglichen) für bestimmte Umformulierungen gelten.