Thèses sur le sujet « Body metric »

The dimensions and proportion of our body parts are typically misestimated. For instance, the hand is perceived as distorted, with its width overrepresented compared to its length. Even though we misperceive its shape and dimensions, our hand is the protagonist of extremely accurate fine movements, as well as the means by which we sense the world. This thesis is organised into two chapters. The first one describes two studies aimed at investigating the role of the biased representation of the hand in motor planning and execution. In Study 1, we provided evidence in support of the hypothesis that our motor system makes use of the distorted hand representation when movements are performed in absence of visual guidance: we observed that the pattern of errors in a proprioceptive matching task was compatible with biases affecting the hand representation. However, we also found that the errors magnitude was reduced compared to what predicted by that hypothesis. Results of Study 2 suggest that the motor system refines the movement trajectories, partially overcoming the misestimation of the hand dimensions, by integrating current somatosensory inflow and motor outflow. Our results highlight the role of these systematic biases, as an important source of error, in movement driven by proprioception only, and prompt to shift the focus from the body as an isolated system, to the body as integrated and active into the environment. In this vein, the second chapter enters the debate regarding the specificity of the metric biases affecting body representations, by testing whether these biases extend to the surrounding environment, and which sensorial information and higher-order factors modulate them. Study 3 addresses the role of visual and somatosensory information in estimating the size of our body, by comparing the perceived dimensions of body parts affording different degrees of tactile acuity and visual accessibility. We found that both visual and somatosensory factors are likely to shape biases affecting body representations, and that somatosensory factors come into play mostly when visual cues are poor, ambiguous or unavailable. In Study 4, we investigated whether the metric biases are specific to the size estimation of the body, or whether they generalise to the size estimation of objects, too. We reasoned that, from an ecological perspective, the selective misestimation of our body dimensions may not be functional to an efficient interaction with the environment. An extensive investigation of the perceived dimensions of the hand and several objects showed that metric biases indeed extended to objects, were stable over time and were unrelated to the degree of familiarity or sense of ownership for the object. Yet, the pattern of the distortions might depend, at least to a degree, on the manipulability of the object, since objects which do not afford manipulation and interaction were differently represented. Finally, Study 5 sought to elucidate the neural underpinnings associated with these last results. We recruited six patients with refractory epilepsy undergoing stereo-EEG recordings for diagnostic reasons, to study the electrophysiological responses elicited during the size estimation of the participants hand and of a highly familiar and manipulable object (participants mobile phone). The similar behavioural pattern of distortions affecting those two targets was reflected by similar activity in the high-γ band, spreading over occipito-temporal, posterior parietal and frontal areas, consistent with the involvement of the visual imagery network. In two patients, we also registered a higher activity over the precentral area during the size estimation of the hand compared to that of the mobile phone, possibly supporting the additional role of the sensorimotor cortex in hand metric representation.
The dimensions and proportion of our body parts are typically misestimated. For instance, the hand is perceived as distorted, with its width overrepresented compared to its length. Even though we misperceive its shape and dimensions, our hand is the protagonist of extremely accurate fine movements, as well as the means by which we sense the world. This thesis is organised into two chapters. The first one describes two studies aimed at investigating the role of the biased representation of the hand in motor planning and execution. In Study 1, we provided evidence in support of the hypothesis that our motor system makes use of the distorted hand representation when movements are performed in absence of visual guidance: we observed that the pattern of errors in a proprioceptive matching task was compatible with biases affecting the hand representation. However, we also found that the errors magnitude was reduced compared to what predicted by that hypothesis. Results of Study 2 suggest that the motor system refines the movement trajectories, partially overcoming the misestimation of the hand dimensions, by integrating current somatosensory inflow and motor outflow. Our results highlight the role of these systematic biases, as an important source of error, in movement driven by proprioception only, and prompt to shift the focus from the body as an isolated system, to the body as integrated and active into the environment. In this vein, the second chapter enters the debate regarding the specificity of the metric biases affecting body representations, by testing whether these biases extend to the surrounding environment, and which sensorial information and higher-order factors modulate them. Study 3 addresses the role of visual and somatosensory information in estimating the size of our body, by comparing the perceived dimensions of body parts affording different degrees of tactile acuity and visual accessibility. We found that both visual and somatosensory factors are likely to shape biases affecting body representations, and that somatosensory factors come into play mostly when visual cues are poor, ambiguous or unavailable. In Study 4, we investigated whether the metric biases are specific to the size estimation of the body, or whether they generalise to the size estimation of objects, too. We reasoned that, from an ecological perspective, the selective misestimation of our body dimensions may not be functional to an efficient interaction with the environment. An extensive investigation of the perceived dimensions of the hand and several objects showed that metric biases indeed extended to objects, were stable over time and were unrelated to the degree of familiarity or sense of ownership for the object. Yet, the pattern of the distortions might depend, at least to a degree, on the manipulability of the object, since objects which do not afford manipulation and interaction were differently represented. Finally, Study 5 sought to elucidate the neural underpinnings associated with these last results. We recruited six patients with refractory epilepsy undergoing stereo-EEG recordings for diagnostic reasons, to study the electrophysiological responses elicited during the size estimation of the participants hand and of a highly familiar and manipulable object (participants mobile phone). The similar behavioural pattern of distortions affecting those two targets was reflected by similar activity in the high-γ band, spreading over occipito-temporal, posterior parietal and frontal areas, consistent with the involvement of the visual imagery network. In two patients, we also registered a higher activity over the precentral area during the size estimation of the hand compared to that of the mobile phone, possibly supporting the additional role of the sensorimotor cortex in hand metric representation.

The mental representation of the body is being a subject of intensive research from different perspectives starting from the 20th Century. Indeed, the body is a peculiar object for the brain, being at the same time a physical, space-occupying object and the critical mean for perception and action in the world around us. The present doctoral work focussed on the spatial representation of the body; in particular it was investigated whether the body holds a specific metric representation, which is supposed to be useful for action programming and interaction with the environment, as introduced in Chapter 1. To this aim Experimental Part 1 (Chapter 2 and 3) investigated the stable properties of the body metrics, while Experimental Part 2 (Chapter 4) focussed on its plastic and dynamic features. Chapter 2 discusses the differences between the spatial metric representation of body parts and non bodily three-dimensional objects. In particular, Experiment 1 investigated the possibility that Unilateral Spatial Neglect (USN) may affect to a different extent the spatial analysis of body parts relative to extrapersonal three-dimensional objects. Participants were required to bisect their left forearm and a length-matched cylinder with their right index finger. Both USN patients and neurologically unimpaired participants showed a significantly more accurate estimation of the subjective midpoint of the forearm, relative to the solid object. Besides the main pattern of an advantage in the forearm bisection, a further analysis suggested the possibility of a double dissociation, with two patients exhibiting the opposite advantage in the solid bisection. Experiment 2, asking unimpaired volunteers to perform the same bisection task in three different conditions (Forearm, Fake Forearm, Cylinder), showed a similar kind of spatial analysis for stimuli displaying bodily features, either real or fake, relative to non-corporeal objects. Thus, it can be suggested that the spatial processing of body parts critically depends upon their prototypical visuo-spatial shape and that the spatial metrics of body parts, relatively to noncorporeal objects, is also more resistant to the disruption of spatial processing and representation brought about by USN. Chapter 3, starting from recent evidence showing how the body can be used as an intrinsic metric system for the representation of near space, illustrates how the length of extrapersonal objects can be scaled using the metric representation of body parts, and to what extent a higher-order metric representation of the body relays upon the somatosensory system. Experiment 3 showed, by means of a bisection task, that the spatial encoding of an extracorporeal object (i.e., a cylinder) may be facilitated by the presence of the forearm in that space –i.e. when the forearm was placed inside the cylinder- as if participants can unconsciously rely on its well known metric representation in order to better estimate the length of the cylinder. In Experiment 4 the same task was administered to a group of right-brain damaged patients, with or without somatosensory and proprioceptive defict, and to a matched control group. The results showed that the spatial metric representation of body parts might be distorted, or even not available, when the somatosensory sensitivity is altered by a cerebral lesion. Data about the plasticity of the metric representation of body parts are presented in Chapter 4. In this last group of experiments, blindfolded participants were required to perform a radial proprioceptive bisection of their forearm before and after a training with a tool, which allowed an extension of the action space in the far space. The results of Experiment 5 supported the working hypothesis that the arm metric representation can be changed by tool-use. In this experiment participants performed a radial bisection of their arm and indicated the subjective midpoint of their arm more distally after the training, suggesting that the perceived length of their own arm was increased. Interestingly, no effect was obtained following a training with a shorter tool (i.e., 20 cm long). Experiment 6 further supported this interpretation by showing, through a proprioceptive control task, that the dynamic lengthening induced in the metric representation of the arm was not due to a mere illusory distal drift of the whole arm. Furthermore, it demonstrated that the spatial metric representations of the dominant and the non-dominant arms share similar plastic features, being both equally prone to be modified by tool use. In conclusion this doctoral work showed that body size holds a mental representation that is very stable (even more than that of extrapersonal objects), but also characterized by flexible functional plasticity.

La conoscenza della grandezza delle proprie parti corporee è essenziale per muoversi in maniera efficiente nell’ambiente esterno e per interagire accuratamente sia con gli oggetti sia con le altre persone. Attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare che combina paradigmi neurofisiologici (stimolazione cerebrale non invasiva) e comportamentali, la presente tesi indaga i meccanismi cognitivi e neurali sottostanti la rappresentazione della grandezza delle parti corporee. Lo Studio #1 dimostra il ruolo causale della corteccia somatosensoriale primaria nell’elaborazione della grandezza delle proprie parti del corpo. Nei soggetti adulti neurologicamente sani, la Stimolazione Magnetica Transcranica ripetitiva a 1-Hz della rappresentazione della mano nella mappa somatosensoriale di entrambi gli emisferi, induce delle distorsioni percettive (sovrastima) della grandezza della propria mano – come valutato con un compito visuo-percettivo – che non si estendono ad altri distretti corporei (il piede). Invece, cambiamenti nell’eccitabilità corticale indotti da Stimolazione Magnetica Transcranica ripetitiva del lobulo parietale inferiore destro o sinistro non influenzano la stima percettiva della grandezza della propria mano. Tale evidenza sottolinea il coinvolgimento causale della corteccia somatosensoriale primaria nella costruzione e nell’aggiornamento della rappresentazione metrica del proprio corpo. Lo Studio #2 si focalizza sui cambiamenti plastici che avvengono manipolando il senso di appartenenza corporea mostrando che, negli adulti neurologicamente sani, l’embodiment di mani più grandi (ma non più piccole) della propria influenza la rappresentazione percettiva cosciente della dimensione della propria mano. Infine, comparando la rappresentazione metrica del corpo in bambini a sviluppo tipico con quella degli adulti neurologicamente sani, lo Studio #3 mostra come le distorsioni percettive della rappresentazione corporea emergono durante il corso dello sviluppo. Complessivamente, i risultati della presente tesi supportano la natura estremamente flessibile della rappresentazione metrica del proprio corpo, mostrando come le distorsioni plastiche della grandezza delle proprie parti corporee si sviluppano gradualmente nell’arco della vita e possono essere modulate sia da cambiamenti neurofisiologici, sia da manipolazioni illusorie del senso di embodiment.
The knowledge of the size of the own body-parts is essential for efficiently moving in the external environment and accurately interacting both with objects and with other people. In an interdisciplinary approach which combines neurophysiological (i.e., non-invasive brain stimulation) and behavioral paradigms, the present dissertation investigates the cognitive and neural signatures underlying the representation of body-parts size. Study #1 demonstrates the casual role of the primary somatosensory cortex in one’s own body-parts size processing. In healthy adults, 1-Hz repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation over the hand representation in the somatosensory map of both hemispheres leads to perceptual distortions (i.e., overestimation) of the own hand size – as assessed with a visual perceptual task – which do not extend to other body districts (namely, the foot). Instead, cortical excitability shifts induced by repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation over the right or left inferior parietal lobule do not affect the perceptual estimation of the own hand size. This evidence highlights the causal involvement of the primary somatosensory cortex in the construction and updating of one’s own body metric representation. Study #2 focuses on the plastic changes which occur by manipulating the sense of body ownership, showing that, in healthy adults, the embodiment of external hands bigger (but not smaller) than the own affects the perceptual conscious representation of the own hand dimension. Finally, by comparing body metric representation in typically developing children and healthy adults, Study #3 shows how perceptual distortions of body-parts representation arise during the developmental course. Overall, findings from this dissertation support the extremely flexible nature of one’s own body metric representation, showing how plastic distortions of the own body-parts size develop gradually during the lifespan and can be modulated by neurophysiological changes as well as by illusory manipulations of self-attribution.

Una grande varietà di input sensoriali dal mondo e dal corpo, sono continuamente integrati nel cervello al fine di creare rappresentazioni mentali sovramodali e coerenti del nostro stesso corpo. La plasticità è una caratteristica fondamentale di tali rappresentazioni, che consente costanti cambiamenti adattativi nelle funzioni mentali e nel comportamento. Anche le rappresentazioni corporee possono cambiare in base all'esperienza e, soprattutto, possono essere temporaneamente modificate mediante protocolli sperimentali. Nel presente lavoro, eravamo interessati a valutare la plasticità della percezione metrica del corpo e l'effetto di cambiamenti temporanei in essa sull'elaborazione delle informazioni corporee e spaziali. A tale scopo, sono stati utilizzati due illusioni corporee: la Mirror Box Illusion (MB) e la Full-Body Illusion (FBI). Il meccanismo principale che spiega l'efficacia di queste procedure sperimentali è il processo di incorporazione di una parte del corpo aliena. Nell'esperimento 1 abbiamo usato un paradigma visuo-tattile di FBI per valutarne la fattibilità e la replicabilità con corpi di dimensioni diverse. Abbiamo confermato che è possibile indurre e replicare nello stesso partecipante l'incorporazione verso manichini di dimensioni standard o più grandi. Nell'esperimento 2 e 3 abbiamo studiato la rappresentazione metrica della gamba e la sua malleabilità. Abbiamo quindi misurato l'effetto dell'FBI indotto da diverse dimensioni corporee, su un compito di valutazione della distanza percepita tra due tocchi applicati alla gamba del partecipante. Abbiamo scoperto che l'esperienza soggettiva di incorporazione è accompagnata da un cambiamento nella percezione della metrica del corpo che va di pari passo con la dimensione delle gambe incarnate. Poiché abbiamo confermato che, in soggetti sani, la rappresentazione metrica del corpo può essere modulata, abbiamo affrontato una domanda simile in pazienti con emiplegia. Nell'esperimento 4, usando un compito di bisezione del corpo abbiamo osservato che pazienti emiparetici mostrano una distorsione prossimale nella rappresentazione metrica dell'arto interessato. Abbiamo, inoltre, scoperto che la bisezione si sposta verso il punto medio reale dopo una sessione di trattamento con MB, rispetto a un trattamento di controllo senza specchio. Nell'esperimento 5 abbiamo trovato una modulazione simile della metrica corporea che, in un gruppo di pazienti affetti da aprassia ideomotoria trattati con una versione modificata della MB, era accompagnata da un miglioramento della programmazione dei piani motori. Negli esperimenti 6 e 7 ci siamo concentrati maggiormente sulla relazione tra metrica del corpo e rappresentazione dello spazio. In primo luogo, abbiamo testato l'ipotesi che una rappresentazione del corpo alterata influenzasse la percezione delle proprie attività motorie immaginate. I risultati hanno mostrato che i partecipanti immaginavano di camminare più velocemente dopo essere stati esposti a una FBI con gambe più lunghe. Inoltre, abbiamo scoperto che l'incorporazione illusoria di gambe più lunghe può influenzare la stima delle distanze allocentriche nello spazio extra-personale. L'incorporazione di gambe più lunghe, da un lato, ha, infatti, ridotto la distanza percepita in metri, dall'altro, ha prodotto un aumento del numero di passi che i partecipanti immaginavano di dover percorrere tra gli stessi punti di riferimento. In conclusione, abbiamo confermato che è possibile manipolare la rappresentazione metrica del corpo, mediante illusioni corporee e che ciò influenza la nostra capacità di stimare le distanze nel mondo esterno sia in termini di raggiungibilità che di stima allocentrica della distanza. Tale plasticità della rappresentazione corporea e dell'interazione spazio-corpo fornisce importanti indizi per la comprensione della rappresentazione corporea e della sua riabilitazione nei pazienti neurologici.
A large variety of sensory input from the world and the body, are continuously integrated in the brain in order to create supra-modal and coherent mental representations of our own body. Plasticity is a fundamental characteristic of the nervous systems, allowing constant adaptive changes in mental functions and behaviour. Thanks to this, even body representations can change according to experience and, crucially, they can be temporarily altered by means of experimental protocols. In the present work, we were interested in assessing the plasticity of the subjective metric of the body, and the effect of temporary changes in it on the processing of corporeal and spatial information. To this aim, two types of bodily illusion were used, i.e. the Mirror Box Illusion (MB) and the Full-Body Illusion (FBI), due to their known effects inducing strong modulations of body representation. The core mechanism accounting for the efficacy of these experimental procedures is likely to be the process of embodiment of an alien body part. In experiment 1 we used a visuotactile FBI-like paradigm to assess the feasibility and the replicability of the FBI for bodies of different sizes. Using this paradigm, we confirmed that it is possible to induce and replicate in the same participant, the embodiment towards mannequins of standard or bigger sizes. In experiment 2 and 3 we investigated body metric representation of the leg, and whether it can be plastically modulated by embodying mannequins of different sizes. To address this issue, we measured the effect of FBI induced by different body sizes, over a Body Distance Task (BDT), i.e. the assessment of the perceived distance between two touches applied to the participant’s leg. We found that the subjective experience of embodiment is also accompanied by a change in the perception of body metric that goes hand-in-hand with the current size of the embodied legs. Since we confirmed that, in healthy subjects, the metric representation of the body can be modulated, we addressed a similar question in patients with hemiplegia. In experiment 4, using a body bisection task we first observed that hemiparetic post-stroke patients show a proximal bias in the metric representation of their affected upper limb. Critically, we found that this bias shifts distally, towards the objective midpoint after a MB training session, compared to a control training without the mirror. In Experiment 5 we found a similar modulation of subjective body metric in a group of patients suffering from Ideomotor Apraxia, treated with a modified version of the MB setup, which was accompanied by an improvement in the programming of motor plans. In experiments 6 and 7 we focused more on the relationship between body metric and space representations. First, we tested the hypothesis that an altered body representation could modify the way in which individuals estimate their body affordances during a Motor Imagery Task. Our results showed that participants imagined walking faster after having been exposed to an illusion of longer legs. Furthermore, we found that the illusory embodiment of longer legs can affect the estimation of allocentric distances in extra-personal space. The embodiment of longer legs, on the one hand, reduced the perceived distance in meters, on the other hand, produced an enhancement of the number of steps that participants imagined they would have needed to walk between the same landmarks. In conclusion, we confirmed that it is possible to induce provisional modifications of the metric representation of the body, by means of body illusions. We showed that body representation is malleable to the point to shape our ability to estimate distances in the external world both in terms of reachability and allocentric distance estimation. Such plasticity of body representation and body-space interaction gives important clues for the understanding of body representation and its rehabilitation in neurological patients.

The objective of this dissertation is the application of Minkowskian cross-section measures (i.e., section and projection measures in finite-dimensional linear normed spaces over the real field) to various topics of geometric convexity in Minkowski spaces, such as bodies of constant Minkowskian width, Minkowskian geometry of simplices, geometric inequalities and the corresponding optimization problems for convex bodies. First we examine one-dimensional Minkowskian cross-section measures deriving (in a unified manner) various properties of these measures. Some of these properties are extensions of the corresponding Euclidean properties, while others are purely Minkowskian. Further on, we discover some new results on the geometry of a simplex in Minkowski spaces, involving descriptions of the so-called tangent Minkowskian balls and of simplices with equal Minkowskian heights. We also give some (characteristic) properties of bodies of constant width in Minkowski planes and in higher dimensional Minkowski spaces. This part of investigation has relations to the well known \emph{Borsuk problem} from the combinatorial geometry and to the widely used monotonicity lemma from the theory of Minkowski spaces. Finally, we study bodies of given Minkowskian thickness ($=$ minimal width) having least possible volume. In the planar case a complete description of this class of bodies is given, while in case of arbitrary dimension sharp estimates for the coefficient in the corresponding geometric inequality are found
Die Dissertation befasst sich mit Problemen fuer spezielle konvexe Koerper in Minkowski-Raeumen (d.h. in endlich-dimensionalen Banach-Raeumen). Es wurden Klassen der Koerper mit verschiedenen metrischen Eigenschaften betrachtet (z.B., Koerper konstante Breite, reduzierte Koerper, Simplexe mit Inhaltsgleichen Facetten usw.) und einige kennzeichnende und andere Eigenschaften fuer diese Klassen herleitet

Histopathology studies of metal nanoparticles (NPs) compared to traditional forms of metal in fish are scarce. Additionally, it is unclear whether metal nanoparticles cause greater or different pathologies compared to other forms of metal. The current study aimed to assess the pathological effects of Cu-NPs and TiO2 NPs on rainbow trout via various routes of exposure and, where appropriate, to compare them to either the equivalent dissolved metal salts or bulk powder forms. The first experiment showed that waterborne exposure to Cu-NPs and CuSO4 caused similar types of organ pathologies and alteration in the spleen content, however there were some material-type effects in the incidence injuries; with Cu-NPs in some organs by causing more injury in the intestine, liver, and brain when compared to effects caused by the equivalent concentration of CuSO4. Lowering water pH did have an effect on the toxicity of Cu-NPs and dissolved Cu in trout, and the results illustrated that both Cu treatments are more toxic at pH 5 than pH 7 by causing more physiological and pathological changes, although both CuSO4 and Cu-NP treatments showed similar types of organ lesions. Waterborne exposure to TiO2 NPs and bulk forms of TiO2 showed similar types of organ pathologies and alteration in the spleen contents, but there was a material-type effect in some organs (more injury with the bulk treatment than the NP form). After 96 h following intravenous injections of bulk or TiO2 NPs in trout, organs showed similar types of pathologies; except the spleen and kidney which showed a material-type effects (more injury with NPs than the bulk forms). This could be attributed to the highest Ti accumulation from the TiO2 NP treatment in the kidney and spleens, or to the role of these organs in filtrating the circulating blood. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that metal-NPs produced similar types of organ pathologies to traditional forms of metals through different routes of exposure, but there were some material-type effects on the incidence of injuries in some organs. The results have also added some understanding on the fate, and effects of NPs by identifying the target organs involved. Some of the nano-specific effects may need to be given extra consideration in environmental and human health risk assessments.

Although tracking data have completely revolutionized the whole data science paradigm in sports competitions with the largest economic resources, its use in a European context is still unexplored. In this thesis, three tracking-related contributions are presented in the sports domain. First, the creation of vision-based basketball multi-tracking methods is studied from a single-camera perspective, which could be useful for clubs with low resources or for the recovery of vintage games’ tracking. Then, tracking data in the soccer domain is enriched by adding a novel layer of information: player body-orientation, thus complementing 2D location data, which falls short in some scenarios. Finally, the effect of proper orientation is detailed in the most common soccer action: passes. By building passing computational models that express which is the safest pass at a given time, the relevance of orientation is contextualized, hence proving that it is indeed a vital skill for soccer players.
Tot i que les dades de seguiment han revolucionat el paradigma de la ciència de dades esportiva dins les competicions amb més recursos, el seu ús en un context europeu és encara una incògnita. En aquesta tesi, presentem tres contribucions dins d’aquest camp. Primer s’ha estudiat, a través de la visió per computador, la creació de sistemes de seguiment de jugadors/es de bàsquet utilitzant una sola càmera, el que podria servir per equips amb pocs recursos o per recuperar dades de partits antics. A més, donat que la manca de context és la principal limitació de les dades posicionals, la segona proposta en presenta l’enriquiment amb una nova capa d’informació: l’orientació corporal de jugadors/ es de futbol. Finalment, s’ha analitzat l’impacte de l’orientació mitjançant la creació de models computacionals de passades, els quals esbrinen quina és la passada més viable i demostren que l’orientació és una capacitat clau per als jugadors/es.

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A exposição a metais e pesticidas presentes no meio ambiente apresenta efeitos prejudiciais à saúde da população. Em especial, mulheres grávidas e fetos em desenvolvimento apresentam maiores riscos. O presente estudo foi delineado para avaliar o índice de contaminação por metais e pesticidas em mulheres grávidas na região de Botucatu, estado de São Paulo, Brasil. Os metais estudados foram: Mo, Cd, Hg, Pb, Co, As, Zn, Mn, Se e Cu e os pesticidas foram: (α- HCH, β-HCH, γ-HCH) hexaclorocicloexano, hexaclorobenzeno (HCB), derivados do clordano, cisclordano, trans-clordano, oxi-clordano, cis e trans-nonaclor nonaclor e mirex. As concentrações de cada metal e cada pesticida foram determinadas nas amostras de sangue das mães e dos respectivos cordões umbilicais. Para os metais, foi utilizada a técnica da espectrometria de massa e, para os pesticidas, as análises foram determinadas por cromatógrafo a gás equipado a um espectrômetro de massa. Após a obtenção dessas concentrações, foi calculado um novo parâmetro de análise, o índice de contaminação total na mãe e no recém-nascido (RN), que consiste na somatória das concentrações dos metais na mãe/RN multiplicado pelo número de metais exposto adicionado à somatória das concentrações dos pesticidas na mãe/RN multiplicado pelo número de pesticidas exposto. Além desse índice, foram avaliados parâmetros clínicos dos recém-nascidos. Não houve correlação (p>0,05) entre os índices de contaminação materno e dos recém-nascidos com os parâmetros clínicos dos RN. Portanto, o índice de contaminação proposto para análise da contaminação a metais e pesticidas não mostrou relação entre a exposição materna e as repercussões perinatais de forma tão evidente, mas poderia ser um parâmetro para ser considerado em estudos toxicológicos especialmente com relação à análise dos efeitos a longo prazo. Palavras-chave: pesticidas, metais, índice de ...

Orientador: Marilza Vieira Cunha Rudge
Coorientador: Débora Cristina Damasceno
Banca: Yuri Karen Sinzato
Banca: Ana Carolina Inhasz Kiss
Banca: Gustavo Tadeu Volpato
Banca: Kleber Eduardo de Campos
Resumo: A exposição a metais e pesticidas presentes no meio ambiente apresenta efeitos prejudiciais à saúde da população. Em especial, mulheres grávidas e fetos em desenvolvimento apresentam maiores riscos. O presente estudo foi delineado para avaliar o índice de contaminação por metais e pesticidas em mulheres grávidas na região de Botucatu, estado de São Paulo, Brasil. Os metais estudados foram: Mo, Cd, Hg, Pb, Co, As, Zn, Mn, Se e Cu e os pesticidas foram: (α- HCH, β-HCH, γ-HCH) hexaclorocicloexano, hexaclorobenzeno (HCB), derivados do clordano, cisclordano, trans-clordano, oxi-clordano, cis e trans-nonaclor nonaclor e mirex. As concentrações de cada metal e cada pesticida foram determinadas nas amostras de sangue das mães e dos respectivos cordões umbilicais. Para os metais, foi utilizada a técnica da espectrometria de massa e, para os pesticidas, as análises foram determinadas por cromatógrafo a gás equipado a um espectrômetro de massa. Após a obtenção dessas concentrações, foi calculado um novo parâmetro de análise, o índice de contaminação total na mãe e no recém-nascido (RN), que consiste na somatória das concentrações dos metais na mãe/RN multiplicado pelo número de metais exposto adicionado à somatória das concentrações dos pesticidas na mãe/RN multiplicado pelo número de pesticidas exposto. Além desse índice, foram avaliados parâmetros clínicos dos recém-nascidos. Não houve correlação (p>0,05) entre os índices de contaminação materno e dos recém-nascidos com os parâmetros clínicos dos RN. Portanto, o índice de contaminação proposto para análise da contaminação a metais e pesticidas não mostrou relação entre a exposição materna e as repercussões perinatais de forma tão evidente, mas poderia ser um parâmetro para ser considerado em estudos toxicológicos especialmente com relação à análise dos efeitos a longo prazo. Palavras-chave: pesticidas, metais, índice de ...
Abstract: Not available
Doutor

Tato práce se zaměřuje na problém počítání vozidel v statickém obraze bez znalosti geometrických vlastností scény. V rámci řešení bylo implementováno a natrénováno 5 architektur konvolučních neuronových sítí. Také byl pořízen rozsáhlý dataset s 19 310 snímky pořízených z 12pohledů a zachycujících 7 různých scén. Použité konvoluční sítě mapují vstupní vzorek na mapu hustoty vozidel, ze které lze získat jejich počet a lokalizaci v kontextu vstupního snímku. Hlavním přínosem této práce je porovnání a aplikace dosavadních nejlepších řešení pro počítání objektů v obraze. Většina z těchto architektur byla navržena pro počítání lidí v obraze, proto musely být uzpůsobeny pro potřeby počítání vozidel v statickém obraze. Natrénované modely jsou vyhodnoceny GAME metrikou na TRANCOS datasetu a na velkém spojeném datasetu. Dosažené výsledky všech modelů jsou následně popsány a porovnány.

Detecting human actions using a camera has many possible applications in the security industry. When a human performs an action, his/her body goes through a signature sequence of poses. To detect these pose changes and hence the activities performed, a pattern recogniser needs to be built into the video system. Due to the temporal nature of the patterns, Hidden Markov Models (HMM), used extensively in speech recognition, were investigated. Initially a gesture recognition system was built using novel features. These features were obtained by approximating the contour of the foreground object with a polygon and extracting the polygon's vertices. A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) was fit to the vertices obtained from a few frames and the parameters of the GMM itself were used as features for the HMM. A more practical activity detection system using a more sophisticated foreground segmentation algorithm immune to varying lighting conditions and permanent changes to the foreground was then built. The foreground segmentation algorithm models each of the pixel values using clusters and continually uses incoming pixels to update the cluster parameters. Cast shadows were identified and removed by assuming that shadow regions were less likely to produce strong edges in the image than real objects and that this likelihood further decreases after colour segmentation. Colour segmentation itself was performed by clustering together pixel values in the feature space using a gradient ascent algorithm called mean shift. More robust features in the form of mesh features were also obtained by dividing the bounding box of the binarised object into grid elements and calculating the ratio of foreground to background pixels in each of the grid elements. These features were vector quantized to reduce their dimensionality and the resulting symbols presented as features to the HMM to achieve a recognition rate of 62% for an event involving a person writing on a white board. The recognition rate increased to 80% for the "seen" person sequences, i.e. the sequences of the person used to train the models. With a fixed lighting position, the lack of a shadow removal subsystem improved the detection rate. This is because of the consistent profile of the shadows in both the training and testing sequences due to the fixed lighting positions. Even with a lower recognition rate, the shadow removal subsystem was considered an indispensable part of a practical, generic surveillance system.

Detecting human actions using a camera has many possible applications in the security industry. When a human performs an action, his/her body goes through a signature sequence of poses. To detect these pose changes and hence the activities performed, a pattern recogniser needs to be built into the video system. Due to the temporal nature of the patterns, Hidden Markov Models (HMM), used extensively in speech recognition, were investigated. Initially a gesture recognition system was built using novel features. These features were obtained by approximating the contour of the foreground object with a polygon and extracting the polygon's vertices. A Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) was fit to the vertices obtained from a few frames and the parameters of the GMM itself were used as features for the HMM. A more practical activity detection system using a more sophisticated foreground segmentation algorithm immune to varying lighting conditions and permanent changes to the foreground was then built. The foreground segmentation algorithm models each of the pixel values using clusters and continually uses incoming pixels to update the cluster parameters. Cast shadows were identified and removed by assuming that shadow regions were less likely to produce strong edges in the image than real objects and that this likelihood further decreases after colour segmentation. Colour segmentation itself was performed by clustering together pixel values in the feature space using a gradient ascent algorithm called mean shift. More robust features in the form of mesh features were also obtained by dividing the bounding box of the binarised object into grid elements and calculating the ratio of foreground to background pixels in each of the grid elements. These features were vector quantized to reduce their dimensionality and the resulting symbols presented as features to the HMM to achieve a recognition rate of 62% for an event involving a person writing on a white board. The recognition rate increased to 80% for the "seen" person sequences, i.e. the sequences of the person used to train the models. With a fixed lighting position, the lack of a shadow removal subsystem improved the detection rate. This is because of the consistent profile of the shadows in both the training and testing sequences due to the fixed lighting positions. Even with a lower recognition rate, the shadow removal subsystem was considered an indispensable part of a practical, generic surveillance system.

In movement science with inertial sensor many different methodologies resolving specific aspects of movement recognition have been proposed. They are very interesting, and useful, but none of them are generally explicative of what is going on in the semantic sense. When we go down to the movement recognition/classification area (for example in Ambient Intelligence) we do not have a feasible model that can be considered generally predictive or usable for activity recognition. Also, in the field of movement recognition with inertial sensors many technological issues arise: technological diversity, calibration matters, sensor model problems, orientation and position of sensors, and a lot of numerous specificities that, with all the above aspects, and the lack of public dataset of movements sufficiently generic and semantically rich, contribute to create a strong barrier to any approach to a classification matters with wearable sensors. We have also to notice that a movement is a phenomenon explicitly or implicitly (voluntary or involuntary) controlled by brain. The individual free-will introduce a further matter when we want to temporary predict the movements looking at the close past. Pattern can change at any time when ambient, psychological context, age of the subject change. Also, pathological issues, and physiological differences and the will of the subject, introduce important differences. For all these reasons I considered that a semantical /lexical approach to movement recognition with sensors, driven by machine learning techniques could be a promising way to solve some of these challenge and problems. In this Ph.D. Thesis wearable inertial sensors has been used to classify movements, the choice of inertial sensors has been driven by technological and practical advantages, they are cheap, lightweight, and - differently from video cameras - are not prone to the hidden face, or luminance problems. The main idea is to use inertial sensor to understand what a person is doing for ambient-intelligent, healthcare, medical-sport applications. My principal concerns was to propose a method that was not centered on technology issues but on data analysis, that could be a general framework and could also create a general representation of movement,that could be useful also in other area of research, like reasoning. Inertial sensors are treated just as an example, a particular type of sensors, the method is new, reusable, algorithmically simple, net and easy to understand. Accuracy is very high outperforming the best results given in literature, reducing the error rate of 4 times.

Estimation of the biological profile from as many skeletal elements as possible is a necessity in both forensic and bioarchaeological contexts; this includes non-standard aspects of the biological profile, such as body mass index (BMI). BMI is a measure that allows for understanding of the composition of an individual and is traditionally divided into four groups: underweight, normal weight, overweight, and obese. BMI estimation incorporates both estimation of stature and body mass. The estimation of stature from skeletal elements is commonly included into the standard biological profile but the estimation of body mass needs to be further statistically validated to be consistently included. The bones of the foot, specifically the first metatarsal, may have the ability to estimate BMI given an allometric relationship to stature and the mechanical relationship to body mass. There are two commonly used methods for stature estimation, the anatomical method and the regression method. The anatomical method takes into account all of the skeletal elements that contribute to stature while the regression method relies on the allometric relationship between a skeletal element and living stature. A correlation between the metrics of the first metatarsal and living stature has been observed, and proposed as a method for valid stature estimation from the boney foot (Byers et al., 1989). Body mass estimation from skeletal elements relies on two theoretical frameworks: the morphometric and the mechanical approaches. The morphometric approach relies on the size relationship of the individual to body mass; the basic relationship between volume, density, and weight allows for body mass estimation. The body is thought of as a cylinder, and in order to understand the volume of this cylinder the diameter is needed. A commonly used proxy for this in the human body is skeletal bi-iliac breadth from rearticulated pelvic girdle. The mechanical method of body mass estimation relies on the ideas of biomechanical bone remodeling; the elements of the skeleton that are under higher forces, including weight, will remodel to minimize stress. A commonly used metric for the mechanical method of body mass estimation is the diameter of the head of the femur. The foot experiences nearly the entire weight force of the individual at any point in the gait cycle and is subject to the biomechanical remodeling that this force would induce. Therefore, the application of the mechanical framework for body mass estimation could stand true for the elements of the foot. The morphometric and mechanical approaches have been validated against one another on a large, geographically disparate population (Auerbach and Ruff, 2004), but have yet to be validated on a sample of known body mass. DeGroote and Humphrey (2011) test the ability of the first metatarsal to estimate femoral head diameter, body mass, and femoral length. The estimated femoral head diameter from the first metatarsal is used to estimate body mass via the morphometric approach and the femoral length is used to estimate living stature. The authors find that body mass and stature estimation methods from more commonly used skeletal elements compared well with the methods developed from the first metatarsal. This study examines 388 `White' individuals from the William M. Bass donated skeletal collection to test the reliability of the body mass estimates from femoral head diameter and bi-iliac breadth, stature from maximum femoral length, and body mass and stature from the metrics of the first metatarsal. This sample included individuals from all four of the BMI classes. This study finds that all of the skeletal indicators compare well with one another; there is no statistical difference in the stature estimates from the first metatarsal and the maximum length of the femur, and there is no statistical between all three of the body mass estimation methods. When compared to the forensic estimates of stature neither of the tested methods had statistical difference. Conversely, when the body mass estimates are compared to forensic body mass there was a statistical difference and when further investigated the most difference in the body mass estimates was in the extremes of body mass (the underweight and obese categories). These findings indicate that the estimation of stature from both the maximum femoral length and the metrics of the metatarsal are accurate methods. Furthermore, the estimation of body mass is accurate when the individual is in the middle range of the BMI spectrum while these methods for outlying individuals are inaccurate. These findings have implications for the application of stature and body mass estimation in the fields of bioarchaeology, forensic anthropology, and paleoanthropology.

碩士
朝陽科技大學
數位化產品設計產業研發研究所
96
The automobile industries in Taiwan are facing environment of more international competition pressure since Taiwan joined with WTO. Especially automobile industries in Taiwan are under difficult running and managing technique is hard to break through such large environment which situation is more obvious after import duty has reduced every year gradually, the only solution is R&D, innovation, aggressiveness, involve and improve the performance in management which is more important, so that managing work of R&D performance has been formed. How to make cost and technique meets common consideration support, in order to ensure more efficiency & benefit of involved R&D work, during R&D process and result performance & management becomes the existing focused topic within enterprise industries. As local automobile market in Taiwan has reduced year by year, the history of automobile industries established here for decades, it settled very excellent competitive ability in technical direction. However , how to enhance performance management effectively when developing new product, it is also the main focus in this research. Firstly after interviewed with many advanced company director in this field, there is no background of related thesis in automobile industries, as I am a developing worker of this field, herewith in brief to conclude 4 constructing sides and 35 items of performance index, as a related index of investigation, development, designing organization in automobile industries, also as reference for advanced company director in this filed and enterprise managing director and is a important index to improve R&D performance for automobile body parts industries in Taiwan. The concluded constructing side of customer has obtained the most attention in this filed,learning and growth always get less respect.

The thesis deals with two separate problems. In the first part we show that the regular n×n grid of points in Z2 cannot be recovered from an arbitrary n2 -element subset of Z2 using only mappings with prescribed maximum stretch independent of n. This provides a negative answer to a question of Uriel Feige from 2002. The present approach builds on the work of Burago and Kleiner and McMullen from 1998 on bilipschitz non-realisable densities and bilipschitz non-equivalence of separated nets in the plane. We describe a procedure that takes a positive, measurable function and encodes it into a sequence of discrete sets. Then we show that applying this procedure to a typical positive, continuous function on the unit square yields a counter-example to Feige's question. Along the way we provide a new proof of a result on bilipschitz decomposition for Lipschitz regular mappings, which was originally proved by Bonk and Kleiner in 2002. In the second part we provide a constructive proof for the strong Hanani- Tutte theorem on the projective plane. In contrast to the previous proof by Pelsmajer, Schaefer and Stasi from 2009, the presented approach does not rely on characterisation of embeddability into the projective plane via forbidden minors. 1

The human bony pelvis has evolved into its current form through competing selective forces. Bipedalism and parturition of large headed babies resulted in a form that is a complex compromise. While the morphology of the human pelvis has been extensively studied, the changes that have occurred since the adoption of the modern form, the secular changes that continue to alter the size and shape of the pelvis, have not received nearly as much attention. This research aims to examine the changes that have altered the morphology of the human bony pelvic girdle of individuals in the United States born between 1840 and1981. Secular changes in the human skeleton have been documented. Improvements in nutrition, decreased disease load, exogamy, activity, climate, and other factors have led to unprecedented growth in stature and weight. The size and shape of the pelvic canal, os coxa, and bi-iliac breadth were all examined in this study. Coordinate data from males and females, blacks and whites were digitized. Calculated inter-landmark data was analyzed using traditional metric methods and the coordinate data was analyzed using 3D geometric morphometrics. After separating the samples into cohorts by sex and ancestry, results indicate that there is secular change occurring in the modern human bony pelvis. Changes in shape are significant across the groups while only white males exhibit increases in size. The dimensions of the pelvic canal have changed over time. The birth canal is becoming more rounded with the inlet anteroposterior diameter and the outlet transverse diameter becoming longer. These diameters, once limiters, are believed to have led to an adoption of the rotational birth method practiced by modern humans. In addition, the bowl of the pelvis is becoming less flared. Childhood improvements in nutrition and decreases in strenuous activity may be the cause of the dimension changes in the bony pelvis. The similar changes across both sexes and ancestries indicate a similar environmental cause. However, it is likely a combination of factors that are difficult to tease apart. Whether the increases continue remains to be determined.

The lack of emotional intelligence can be linked to problem behaviour in adolescent boys between 14 and 18 years of age. The concepts of emotions, emotional intelligence, adolescents and adaptation formed the focal point of this research. Profiles were compiled from data obtained from the Q-metrics emotional intelligence questionnaire, the Sacks Sentence Completion Test, an unstructured interview and the projection media (Draw a person). Detailed information with regards to risk and protective factors for each adolescent boy were provided. The above techniques and measuring instruments provided a holistic picture of the adolescent's level of emotional functioning as well as hypotheses for future therapy. The importance of the father-son relationship in the adolescent years was stressed. Early identification of adolescent boys in a private school (with low levels of emotional development) enables the school to implement programmes aimed at developing emotional intelligence.
Educational Studies
M. Ed.