The ability to precisely locate appropriate acupoints is, according to both traditional and contemporary theories, essential to deliver acupuncture treatments. More than half of the acupoints defined in acupuncture literature are sufficiently distant to anatomical landmarks, to require the use of specialised techniques in order to locate them. However no research has been conducted to investigate the precision of any manual method (electrical detection is discussed at detail with reference to numerous conflicting research papers). This thesis details the design, conduct and results of experimentation carried out to measure the precision of four methods (named the directional, proportional, elastic and ruler methods) used to locate acupoints. The methods include two based upon the traditional Chinese anatomical unit of measurement, the cun, and two based upon the traditionally reported lengths of areas of the human body. The reasons for selecting these methods, and for excluding others, are explained. Seventy two subjects were involved in testing the precision of the four methods by applying them when locating a fictitious acupoint. The subjects marked the attempts to locate the fictitious acupoint with invisible ink. The marks were transferred to plastic films and measurements made from reference points. A significant difference was found between the methods (F3,120 = 11.74, p less than 0.0001). No significant difference was found between the two traditional methods of point location (directional mean = 11.35, and proportional mean = 11.17) (p less than 0.998), nor between the two variant methods of point location (elastic mean = 7.63, and ruler mean = 6.34) (p less than 0.68). Significant differences were found between the two traditional methods and the two variant methods. The directional method was less precise than both the elastic method (F3,120 = 11.74, p less than 0.007) and the ruler method (p less than 0.00009). The proportional method was also less precise than both the elastic method (F3,120 = 11.74, p less than 0.011) and the ruler method (p less than 0.0002). Each subject also completed a short questionnaire regarding ease and comfort of use of the four methods. The two more precise methods were generally not well received by subjects in this study. Their two primary concerns were not with precision, but rather of application of the method, and its perceived appearance to patients. An analysis was also carried out to describe any variation in acupoint location descriptions reported by prominent authors. 151 clinical research papers reporting acupuncture studies were selected according to a number of criteria. The five most frequently prescribed acupoints in these papers comprised the sample used in the examination of seven acupuncture texts. Variability was found between the texts, and is discussed in consideration of the presently poor understanding of the anatomical make-up of an acupoint. Also examined was the usefulness of measures of sensitivity to palpation used when locating acupoints. No statistically significant difference was found between any of the acupoints tested and the related control points. The thesis discusses the implications for acupuncture practice, research and education in light of the lack of precision measured, the subjects' preference for the more imprecise methods, the inability to locate or even verify the location of an acupoint using pressure, variability in reported acupoint locations between reference texts, and the related short-comings in published acupuncture research.

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The ability to precisely locate appropriate acupoints is, according to both traditional and contemporary theories, essential to deliver acupuncture treatments. More than half of the acupoints defined in acupuncture literature are sufficiently distant to anatomical landmarks, to require the use of specialised techniques in order to locate them. However no research has been conducted to investigate the precision of any manual method (electrical detection is discussed at detail with reference to numerous conflicting research papers). This thesis details the design, conduct and results of experimentation carried out to measure the precision of four methods (named the directional, proportional, elastic and ruler methods) used to locate acupoints. The methods include two based upon the traditional Chinese anatomical unit of measurement, the cun, and two based upon the traditionally reported lengths of areas of the human body. The reasons for selecting these methods, and for excluding others, are explained. Seventy two subjects were involved in testing the precision of the four methods by applying them when locating a fictitious acupoint. The subjects marked the attempts to locate the fictitious acupoint with invisible ink. The marks were transferred to plastic films and measurements made from reference points. A significant difference was found between the methods (F3,120 = 11.74, p less than 0.0001). No significant difference was found between the two traditional methods of point location (directional mean = 11.35, and proportional mean = 11.17) (p less than 0.998), nor between the two variant methods of point location (elastic mean = 7.63, and ruler mean = 6.34) (p less than 0.68). Significant differences were found between the two traditional methods and the two variant methods. The directional method was less precise than both the elastic method (F3,120 = 11.74, p less than 0.007) and the ruler method (p less than 0.00009). The proportional method was also less precise than both the elastic method (F3,120 = 11.74, p less than 0.011) and the ruler method (p less than 0.0002). Each subject also completed a short questionnaire regarding ease and comfort of use of the four methods. The two more precise methods were generally not well received by subjects in this study. Their two primary concerns were not with precision, but rather of application of the method, and its perceived appearance to patients. An analysis was also carried out to describe any variation in acupoint location descriptions reported by prominent authors. 151 clinical research papers reporting acupuncture studies were selected according to a number of criteria. The five most frequently prescribed acupoints in these papers comprised the sample used in the examination of seven acupuncture texts. Variability was found between the texts, and is discussed in consideration of the presently poor understanding of the anatomical make-up of an acupoint. Also examined was the usefulness of measures of sensitivity to palpation used when locating acupoints. No statistically significant difference was found between any of the acupoints tested and the related control points. The thesis discusses the implications for acupuncture practice, research and education in light of the lack of precision measured, the subjects' preference for the more imprecise methods, the inability to locate or even verify the location of an acupoint using pressure, variability in reported acupoint locations between reference texts, and the related short-comings in published acupuncture research.

Thesis advisor: Keerthi Madapusi Pera / We study the necessary and sufficient conditions for a Newton stratum on a Shimura variety of Hodge type to admit a hypersymmetric point, more explicitly by showing that hypersymmetric points arise as the image of points in the basic stratum of a smaller Shimura variety. We compare this condition with the combinatorial conditions proved by Chai-Oort and Zong in certain PEL-type cases. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Mathematics.

Cette thèse porte sur l'étude de deux modèles mathématiques pour une tâchevisuelle élémentaire: le regroupement perceptuel de points 2D. Le premier modèletraite la détection d'alignements de point perceptuellement relevant. Ledeuxième modèle étend ce cadre au cas plus général de la bonne continuation depoints. Dans les deux cas, les modèles proposés sont invariants au changementd'échelle, et non supervisés. Ils sont conçus pour être robustes au bruit,jusqu'au point où les structures à détecter deviennent mathématiquementimpossibles de distinguer du bruit. Les expériences presentées montrent unecohérence entre notre théorie de détéction et les processus de démasquage ayantlieu dans la perception humaine.Les modèles proposés sont basés dans la méthodologie a contrario, uneformalisation du principe de non accidentalité dans la théorie de laperception. Cette thèse fait deux contributions au méthodes a contrario. Une estl'introduction de seuils de détection adaptatifs qui sont conditionnels auxenvirons des structures évaluées. La deuxième contribution est une nouvellestratégie raffinée pour résoudre la redondance de plusieurs détectionssignificatives.Finalement, l'utilité du détecteur d'alignements de points comme outil générald'analyse de données est démontrée avec son application a une problème classiqueen vision par ordinateur: la détection de points de fuite. Le détecteurd'alignements de points proposé, utilisé avec des outils standards, produit desrésultats améliorant l'état de l'art.Visant à la recherche reproductible, toutes les méthodes sont soumis au journalIPOL, en incluant descriptions détaillées des algorithmes, du code sourcecommenté et démonstrations en ligne pour chaque méthode. / This thesis studies two mathematical models for an elementary visual task: theperceptual grouping of dot patterns. The first model handles the detection ofperceptually relevant arrangements of collinear dots. The second model extendsthis framework to the more general case of good continuation of dots. In bothcases, the proposed models are scale invariant and unsupervised. They aredesigned to be robust to noise, up to the point where the structures to detectbecome mathematically indistinguishable from noise. The experiments presentedshow a good match of our detection theory with the unmasking processes takingplace in human perception, supporting their perceptual plausibility.The proposed models are based on the a contrario framework, a formalization ofthe non-accidentalness principle in perception theory. This thesis makes twocontributions to the a contrario methodology. One is the introduction ofadaptive detection thresholds that are conditional to the structure's localsurroundings. The second is a new refined strategy for resolving the redundancyof multiple meaningful detections. Finally, the usefulness of the collinear point detector as a general patternanalysis tool is demonstrated by its application to a classic problem incomputer vision: the detection of vanishing points. The proposed dot alignmentdetector, used in conjunction with standard tools, produces improved resultsover the state-of-the-art methods in the literature.Aiming at reproducible research, all methods are submitted to the IPOL journal,including detailed descriptions of the algorithms, commented reference sourcecodes, and online demonstrations for each one.

Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 28, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine general properties, convergence, and limit points of sequences of real numbers.

This thesis presents a series of theorems and proofs describing a twenty-five point geometry in which exists exactly thirty lines.

Ce mémoire se focalise sur les systèmes de communication sans fil ayant plusieurs antennes en réception et en émission. D'abord, on étudie les performances de ces systèmes en se basant sur un schéma de multiplexage spatial en transmission et sur un détecteur ML en réception. On en déduit une bonne approximation de la probabilité d'erreur conditionnelle pour un canal quasi statique. Cette approximation est obtenue dans le cas où différentes modulations seraient appliquées sur les antennes de transmission et pour toute configuration de canal MIMO. Ensuite, on met en avant des techniques adaptatives pour les systèmes MIMO : modulation adaptative et sélection d'antennes. La première adapte les modulations en émission en fonction des conditions radio afin de maximiser l'efficacité spectrale tout en respectant une contrainte sur la probabilité d'erreur. Alors que la deuxième, sélectionne un sous ensemble d'antennes actives pour optimiser le critère de sélection (par exemple : maximiser la capacité, etc.) étant donnée une estimation de canal. Les deux techniques adaptatives ont besoin d'une métrique pour évaluer les performances du système MIMO. On propose donc un nouveau schéma de modulation adaptative et un nouvel algorithme de sélection d'antennes où l'approximation de la probabilité d'erreur obtenue précédemment est utilisée comme métrique. Finalement, on considère la quantification des canaux MIMO. Cette quantification, dans notre terminologie classification, permet de faire une partition de l'ensemble des canaux MIMO en des classes différentes, où chaque classe est identifiée par un représentant. Cette méthode peut être utilisée pour les techniques adaptatives afin de trouver le meilleur jeu de paramètre. Dans ce chapitre, on décrit l'algorithme de classification et on illustre son application pour les systèmes MIMO à boucle fermée comme le " beamforming ".