The Alexander romance and the rise of the Ottoman Empire

PostprintPeer reviewe

Legend and historical experience in fifteenth-century Ottoman narratives of the past

PostprintPeer reviewe

Innovative Applications of Natural Language Processing and Digital Media in Theatre and Performing Arts

The objective of our research is to investigate new digital techniques and tools, offering the audience innovative, attractive, enhanced and accessible experiences. The project focuses on performing arts, particularly theatre, aiming at designing, implementing, experimenting and evaluating technologies and tools that expand the semiotic code of a performance by offering new opportunities and aesthetic means in stage art and by introducing parallel accessible narrative flows. In our novel paradigm, modern technologies emphasize the stage elements providing a multilevel, intense and immersive theatrical experience. Moreover, lighting, video projections, audio clips and digital characters are incorporated, bringing unique aesthetic features. We also attempt to remove sensory and language barriers faced by some audiences. Accessibility features consist of subtitles, sign language and audio description. The project emphasises on natural language processing technologies, embedded communication and multimodal interaction to monitor automatically the time flow of a performance. Based on this, pre-designed and directed stage elements are being mapped to appropriate parts of the script and activated automatically by using the virtual "world" and appropriate sensors, while accessibility flows are dynamically synchronized with the stage action. The tools above are currently adapted within two experimental theatrical plays for validation purposes. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.</p

Echantillonnage optique à base sur l'interféromètre Mach-Zehnder avec amplificateurs optiques à semi-conducteurs (SOA-MZI) pour applications analogiques

Photonic sampling is a process employed in various state-of-the-art systems, since it permits a unique combinaison of advantages such as the low temporal jitter, the low-loss, high bandwidth and immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI). This thesis aims at investigating and showing the feasibility of using the SOA-MZI module, a purely photonic device, as a photonic sampler in place of other electro-optics solutions, circumventing the need for additionnal slow and costly electro-optic conversions. The switching and modulation architecture are possible with the SOA-MZI photonic sampler. The major advantage of the modulation architecture is that it enables the use of very high sampling rates. Employing the modulation architecture, a post-distorsion linearzation method is formulated and validated. Experimentally, significant total harmonic distortion (THD)improvement between 7 and 23 dB is observed for sinusoidal signals to be sampled at frequences between 0.25 and 2 Ghz. The SOA-MZI photonic sampler, employed as a photonic up-converter, is theoretically examined by developing a small-signal analysis model, and experimentally validated using switching and modulation architecture in terms of conversion gain (CG). A CG equal to 16 dB is achieved for the 1 to 9 Ghz conversion, while a CG equal to 9 dB for the 1 TO 39 gHZ conversion. A bit rate up to 1 Gbps is reached for up-converted data of complex modulation formats.L'échantillonnage optique est une fonction utilisée dans divers systèmes de pointe, car il permet une combinaison unique d'avantages tels que la faible gigue temporelle, les faibles pertes, une bande passante élevée,et l'immunité aux interférences électromagnétiques (EMI). Cette thèse vise à étudier et à montrer la viabilité d'utiliser un SOA-MZI, un dispositif purement photonique, comme échantillonneur photonique au lieu d'autres solutions électro-optiques, en évitant les lentes et coûteuses conversions électro-optiques supplémentaires. Les architectures de commutation et de modulation sont possibles avec l'échantillonneur SOA-MZI. L'avantage majeur de l'architecture de modulation est qu'elle permet d'utiliser un taux d'échantillonnage très élevé.Utilisant l'architecture de modulation, une méthode de linéarisation par post-distorsion est formulée et validée.Expérimentalement, une amélioration significative de la distorsion harmonique totale (THD) entre 7dB et 23dB est observée pour des signaux sinusoïdaux à échantillonner à des fréquences entre 0.25 et 2 Ghz. L'échantillonneur SOA-MZI; utilisé comme convertisseur photonique de fréquence ,est examiné théoriquement en développant un modèle d'analyse de petit signaux et validé expérimentalement à l'aide des architectures de commutation et de modulation, en termes de gain de conversion (CG). Un CG égal à 16dB est obtenu pour la conversion de 1Ghz à 9 Ghz, tandis qu'un CG égal à 9 dB pour la conversion de 1 Ghz à 39 Ghz . Un débit binaire jusqu'à 1 Gbps est atteint pour des données en formats de modulation complexes converties