VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
A new strategy for treating frictional contact in shell structures using variational inequalities

Contact plays a fundamental role in the deformation behaviour of shell structures. Despite their importance, however, contact effects are usually ignored and/or oversimplified in finite element modelling. Existing solution techniques for frictional contact problems involving shell structures suffer from two main deficiencies. Firstly, commonly used shell elements involve basic assumptions, which are not appropriate for contact problems, since they do not: (i) account for variations of displacements and stresses in the transverse direction, and (ii) allow for double-sided contact. The second deficiency is in the modelling of contact. To the author's knowledge none of the existing techniques are based on the more accurate and mathematically consistent variational inequalities formulation. Typically, the variational formulations are used which employ contact elements. These contact elements are dependent on user-defined parameters that affect the accuracy of solution. In view of the above, three aspects of the problem are accordingly examined. The first is concerned with the development of a reliable thick shell element, which accounts for the thickness change, the normal stress and strain through the thickness and accommodates double-sided contact. An assumed natural strain formulation is used to avoid shear locking, and a new director interpolation scheme is utilised to prevent thickness locking. Large deformations and rotations are accounted for by invoking the appropriate objective saws and strain measures. The second aspect of the work is concerned with the development of variational inequalities formulations for large deformation analysis of frictional contact in shell structures. The kinematic contact conditions are expressed in terms of the physical contacting surfaces of the shell. Lagrange multipliers are used to ensure that the constraints are accurately satisfied and that the solution is free from user defined parameters. Finally, the numerical predictions are verified experimentally, compared with commercial finite element codes, and with theoretical solutions where available. A number of case studies involving contact, friction, large deformations and double-sided contact are also examined. The results reveal that the new higher order shell element is superior to classical shell elements for thick shell applications, and maintains its high level of accuracy in thin shell problems. Furthermore, the new frictional contact formulation is more accurate than traditional variational techniques.
Esthétique de la canneraie dans le roman des Antilles et des Mascareignes

Nous nous proposons dans notre travail de faire une analyse sémiotique/sémantique d'une sélection de textes littéraires des Antilles (Martinique, Guadeloupe) et des Mascareignes (Maurice, Réunion). Provenant de régions ayant des bases socio-historiques et topographiques semblables (esclavage, système de plantations dans des lies tropicales, engagisme), ces textes forment un mEtatexte où lon peut prélever des lieux communs. Ces topoI sont ceux qui entourent le topos central de la canneraie (ensemble de cannaies: champs de cannes) et convergent tous, comme nous le démontrons, vers une signifiance: celle de la problématique de la canneraie et la relation de ce lieu avec l'être exploité et transbordé du système socio-économique de la canne, nommément le laboureur-esclave, lêtre au plus bas de l'échelle sociale et économique de ce système stratifié. Notre analyse débute par une étude du Savoir chez les protagonistes, et démontre que d'un certain type de Savoir émergent une prise de conscience, la liberté d'un choix et la praxis dans le projet de l'émancipation. Savoir qui connaît la différence entre l'ici et l'ailleurs de la canneraie, car il existe une relation spéciale entre l'être et l'espace-autour dans ce contexte: de notre analyse des Espaces (l'ici, l' ailleurs, les éléments) émerge toute une configuration sémiotique—traces/signes dans le paradigme de notre corpus littéraire—qui entoure l'être exploité de la canneraie et relie ce dernier à son entourage (êtres et espaces). En dernier lieu, nous prouvons que le Corps (et ses extensions) de l'être esclave de la canneraie comporte une sémiologie qui signifie une existence d'être transbordé, écrasé dans le lieu de l'Autre, le maitre de la canneraie.
Some mathematical problems in the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity

In agreement with the Landau theory of phase transitions, a superconductor is described macroscopically by the Ginzburg-Landau equations (1950). These are nonlinear partial differential equations for a complex-valued function, <math> <f> <g>y</g></f> </math> (the order parameter), and a vector-field 'A' (the vector potential). The equations contain a parameter, [lambda], which determines whether they describe a superconductor of the first kind ([lambda] < 1), or of the second kind ([lambda] > 1). It was observed by Abrikosov (1957) that a highly-symmetric family of solutions known as 'n'-vortices plays a central role in the theory. These solutions are classified by their integer topological degree, <math> <f> n&isin;<blkbd>Z</blkbd></f> </math>. The principal goal of this thesis is to establish the stability properties of the 'n'-vortex. The stability question is studied for three types of evolution equations: a gradient flow, a nonlinear wave equation, and a nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Our main result determines the dependence of the stability of 'n'-vortices on the topological degree, 'n', and on the parameter, [lambda]. Specifically, we prove that for [lambda] < 1, all vortices are stable, while for [lambda] > 1, 'n'-vortices are stable if 'n' = ±1 and unstable if @'n'@ >= 2. Previous work on vortex stability (Taubes (1980), Stuart (1994)) has focused on the special case [lambda] = 1, in which the Ginzburg-Landau equations reduce to the first-order Bogomolnyi equations. In particular, our result resolves a long-standing conjecture, first rigorously formulated by Jaffe and Taubes (1980).
Characteristics of the innovation, organization, environment and individual that facilitate the utilization of five systematic overviews among public health decision-makers in Ontario

'Objectives'. To determine which individual, organizational, environmental, and characteristics of the innovation are most strongly associated with systematic overviews influencing policy decisions related to program planning, justification, evaluation, policy development and staff development among individual decision-makers in Ontario. 'Methods'. This cross-sectional study included a telephone survey of senior public health decision-makers in all 41 public health units in Ontario, who had been disseminated 5 systematic overviews two years earlier. A short self-administered organizational demographics questionnaire was also distributed to the administrative assistant of each Medical Officer of Health for each health unit. Multiple logistic and linear regression analyses were conducted to identify significant predictors of the overall use of the systematic overviews, and the influence of these overviews on policy decisions. 'Results'. The response rate was high at 87%. Perception of characteristics of the innovation such as the relevance of the systematic overviews to decisions being made and whether they were easy to use proved to be the most significant predictors of systematic overview use and their influence on public health decisions. The value the organization placed on research evidence, an organizational characteristic, was the third most important variable to predict the research utilization outcomes examined in this study. The explanatory power of the multiple linear regression models were high with 15% to 40% of the variation in the influence of the overviews on public health decisions being explained by the models. The individual and environmental characteristics exerted the least impact on the research utilization outcomes. 'Conclusions'. The results of this study demonstrated the importance of tailoring the presentation of systematic overviews to the specific needs and preferences of the study population. It also clearly demonstrated the importance of characteristics of the innovation in the research utilization process. This study also supported the importance of organizational characteristics in the transfer and uptake of research evidence in policy decision-making. The results of this study will assist in the development of future dissemination strategies among public health decision-makers in public health units.
A 1 V Floating-point Analog-to-Digital Converter for Portable Communication Devices

With the growing demand for portable communications devices, power consumption has become increasingly critical in VLSI designs. In mixed-signal circuits, the push for lower supply voltage to reduce power dissipation in digital systems has forced analog systems to lower their supply voltage as well. This thesis deals with the design of a low power low voltage analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that operates from a single 1 V power supply. Two circuit techniques are utilized to enhance the performance of the converter. First, floating-point technique is employed to improve the dynamic range of the converter by providing a non-uniform quantization of the analog input. This allows the ADC to achieve a wide dynamic range without using high-resolution components. Second, current-mode technique is chosen because it offers characteristics such as good signal swings, high speed and small circuit area. The ADC was implemented using a 0.5 [mu]m, 1V CMOS process with low threshold voltage transistors. Simulation results of the core ADC cell indicate an 8-bit resolution while dissipating only 170 [mu]W. The complete floating-point ADC exhibits a dynamic range of 12 bits, a conversion time of 63 [mu]s and a power dissipation of 450 [mu]W. The total area excluding bonding pads is 1 mm 2.
Particularity of rights, diversity of contexts, women, international human rights and the case of early marriage

This thesis presents an alternative way of approaching and analyzing practices that are criticized on the basis of human rights and defended on the basis of culture. I illustrate the thesis through the case of early marriage. Rather than reinforcing the dichotomous debate between universalistic conceptions of human rights and culturally relative challenges to universalistic interpretations of rights, this thesis inhabits the space between the dichotomous poles. I argue that human rights can be appropriated, particularized and used in diverse contexts, but not without attention to the local and global socio-political contexts in which the rights debate takes place. I argue throughout the thesis that, to address practices that are criticized according to international women's rights and defended as integral to culture, the presuppositions of judgement must be exposed and criticized. This methodology includes an understanding of the context in which the practice takes place as well as the context from which criticism emanates. I argue that this is particularly true when the external critics are evaluating practices that take place in a Muslim context, given the problematic manner Muslim women's bodies have taken center stage in the international debates. This thesis critically interrogates the preoccupation with Muslim women in international human rights and the treatment of Muslim women's claims in the case of early marriage. This thesis proceeds along three levels: the international, national and local levels. On examining the international level through the work of the women's committee, CEDAW, I show the predominance of the universalism/relativism dichotomy, with CEDAW invested in rhetorical claims to the universality of human rights. This thesis demonstrates that the practice in the area of marriage age tolerates particularity and variance. Further, I argue that a strength of international law on this point is its flexibility or ambiguity, which can allow for constructive particularity, without sanctioning all instances of cultural particularity. The local level of analysis stems from fieldwork in northern Nigeria and grassroots activism to address early marriage. Finally, I evaluate the national domestication of international norms through the example of Canadian refugee cases concerning marriage and culture.
Liberalism, differential rights and the value of community

A major preoccupation of late twentieth century political theory is the challenge, posed by the politics of difference, that liberal justice fails to respond to problems faced by minority groups in contemporary liberal societies. This dissertation looks at how liberal justice can respond to this challenge. It is possible to isolate three main considerations which motivate the difference theorists' concern for minority groups: autonomy, identity, and equality. Part One focuses on considerations of identity and autonomy; Part Two addresses issues that arise in relation to equality. Considerations of autonomy and identity lead us in different directions. In Part One, I argue that the autonomy approach privileges the personal component of identity--how we define ourselves both in opposition and in relation to others. The identity approach privileges the social aspect of identity--what it means to belong to a group and to share its goals and values. I argue that these two aspects of identity are in fact inextricably linked. It is only by attending to both components of identity that we can appreciate the value of group membership with respect to individual identity. If we agree that group membership is essential to identity, it remains to be seen what claims are justified by this interest. Part Two develops an account of which groups matter to individual development. I identify community as the primary locus of individual development. I argue that community maps on to national minorities, ethnic groups, and many other non-ethnic communities. I discuss what claims might be generated by membership in these groups and consider what it means to ensure that people are treated equally with respect to the good of community membership. Addressing these claims requires differential rights, such as self-government and accommodation rights. These rights are motivated by demands for external protections and internal restrictions, which are interrogated in light of the identity approach developed in Part One. My approach allows us to reconcile some internal restrictions with the individual's freedom to develop her identity and disarms the objection to the Identity approach that it subsumes the individual's identity within the group identity.
An investigation of measures to reduce summer condensation in walls

Summer condensation, an interstitial condensation phenomenon caused by the inward migrating of water vapour due to wetting by driving rain and solar radiation during the summer, has lead to building envelop problems in low-rise residential buildings in Canada. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the moisture performance of three types of wood stud wall systems that were identified by previous researchers. The tests are accomplished by exposing these wall panels to summer conditions simulated in the laboratory environment. The experimental results are presented and supported by analysis of theoretical formulae and calculations. Walls that include an exterior air space between the sheathing paper and the outdoor cladding can be very effective at reducing the risk of summer condensation. Although not as effective, interstitial pressurization and the addition of materials with low vapour permeability such as polystyrene can also be incorporated into the wall construction in order to reduce the likelihood of interstitial condensation in the summer.
On the regulation and function of potassium and chloride channels in human T lymphocytes

Ion channels play important roles in T-lymphocyte activation, and thus immune function as a whole. Early in the T-cell signal transduction cascade, both the voltage-gated Kv1.3 and the intermediate-conductance (IK) Ca 2+-activated K+ channels help mediate a prolonged Ca 2+ rise. This leads to the activation of Ca2+-dependent signals, such as calmodulin (CaM), which in turn activates CaM-dependent enzymes required in downstream transcriptional events leading to T-cell activation. CaM antagonists reduced both Kv1.3 and IK activity, showing that CaM may act not only on downstream molecules in the cascade, but also on both lymphocyte K+ channels. A likely pathway for the CaM-dependent regulation of Kv1.3 is CaM kinase, which physically associated with the Kv1.3 channel protein. IK may also be regulated by CaM kinase, as the CaM-kinase antagonist, KN-62, inhibited both Kv1.3 and IK channels at physiological temperature. The CaM-antagonist effect on IK in lymphocytes led to the hypothesis that CaM regulates IK activity. In part, this led to the discovery that CaM binds to IK-channel proteins and mediates Ca2+-dependent activation. Lymphocytes also express a small-conductance Cl- channel called "mini-Cl", which is volume sensitive. Using stationary noise analysis, I showed that mini-Cl is distinct from a class of intermediate-conductance volume-sensitive Cl- channels. The control of Kv1.3 and mini-Cl expression might share common mechanisms in immunological development; in Kv1.3-knockout mouse thymocytes, the mini-Cl current was highly upregulated. When exposed to a hyposmotic shock, T cells swell passively, but then K + and Cl- efflux, and concomitant loss of water, effect a regulatory volume decrease (RVD) and cell volume returns to near the original value. Although previous studies have emphasized the importance of Kv1.3 and mini-Cl in RVD, I showed that IK channels also play an important role, especially when they are highly expressed, as they are in T lymphoblasts. Taken together, my results show that ion channels interact both with signals within the T cell and with each other, and that this interaction may be a means to control key aspects of overall T-cell function.
The expression of Christianity, themes from the letters of Paulinus of Nola

This study uses a close reading of the letters of Paulinus of Nola (c. 355-43 1) to produce a thematic commentary. Chapter one is a systematic examination of the circumstances of delivery of letters in late antiquity: the chapter discusses such issues as the norms (or their contravention) for composing letters, the role of the letter-carrier in augmenting their message, the directions to explicit and implicit audiences, and the sacramental nature of Christian epistolography, to conclude that the process of composition and distribution of letters has important implications for ideas of public/private divisions in late antiquity and for appreciation of the texture of Christian life at the period. The second chapter contains a study of ideas of Christian friendship as they are developed and played out in epistolary exchange. Letters express the love of friends, which reflects and is enriched by Christ's love; in loving a friend more fully, one will also love Christ more fully, and hence become more fully Christian. The entire process of communication surrounding the composition of the physical letters constantly explores and reenacts this experience. Chapter three explores the patterns of thought with which this perpetual relation of the spiritual to the temporal, the invisible to the visible, is accomplished, and concludes that it is due to an essentially imagistic (and hence non-linear) manner of framing experience and making connections. This assertion, based on densely imagistic passages in Paulinus, is supported with reference to the more developed critique of these phenomena in the study of the visual arts. The concluding chapter investigates ideas of the self and of personal identity that the conclusions of the preceding studies entail. "Personal identity" is considered as not necessarily coextensive with either the philosophical self or the soul, but as something closer to the modern, untechnical "sense of self". This chapter finds that the self in late antiquity is, in a most thoroughgoing sense, relational. This has important consequences for the notion of the transformation wrought by conversion and is explored in a detailed reading of the renowned correspondence between Ausonius and Paulinus.
Computing rigorous bounds on the solution of an initial value problem for an ordinary differential equation

Compared to standard numerical methods for initial value problems (IVPs) for ordinary differential equations (ODEs), validated (also called interval) methods for IVPs for ODEs have two important advantages: if they return a solution to a problem, then (1) the problem is guaranteed to have a unique solution, and (2) an enclosure of the true solution is produced. To date, the only effective approach for computing guaranteed enclosures of the solution of an IVP for an ODE has been interval methods based on Taylor series. This thesis derives a new approach, an interval Hermite-Obreschkoff (IHO) method, for computing such enclosures. Compared to interval Taylor series (ITS) methods, for the same order and stepsize, our IHO scheme has a smaller truncation error and better stability. As a result, the IHO method allows larger stepsizes than the corresponding ITS methods, thus saving computation time. In addition, since fewer Taylor coefficients are required by IHO than ITS methods, the IHO method performs better than the ITS methods when the function for computing the right side contains many terms. The stability properties of the ITS and IHO methods are investigated. We show as an important by-product of this analysis that the stability of an interval method is determined not only by the stability function of the underlying formula, as in a standard method for an IVP for an ODE, but also by the associated formula for the truncation error. This thesis also proposes a Taylor series method for validating existence and uniqueness of the solution, a simple stepsize control, and a program structure appropriate for a large class of validated ODE solvers.