Training the sages of integrity

Drawing on his experience in the field and his familiarity with theatrical techniques, Marian Popescu offers us a stimulating reflection on what he ends up calling academic "integrative ethics" and on the role that "wise men of integrity" should play in its implementation. The author develops his proposal by understanding the historical flaws and advances in the field of character education. The training, combining cognitive devices and communicative and dramatic skills of these experts, mediators and referents appears, in his view, to be the key element in the current fight for integrity

Peter Blumenthal, Iva Novakova, Dirk Siepman, éds, Les Émotions dans le discours/Emotions in Discourse

Ce recueil d’études issu d’un colloque tenu à Osnabrück en 2013 n’est pas seulement une simple addition de travaux, mais aussi le résultat d’une vision sur le fait linguistique comme porteur des multiples significations quand il s’agit des émotions. L’imposant volume est divisé en sept sections qui cherchent à associer ou alterner l’onomasiologie et la sémasiologie, comme l’affirment les éditeurs dans l’introduction (pp. 9-14). La démarche est justifiée par la conviction que « chaque unité le..

MOTIVATION AND PERFORMANCE AT S.C. TASMANIA – OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE

The paper deals with a research made for S.C. Tasmania involving the motivation of employees. A system of values is involved in motivation, values which give a precise meaning and influences the degree of individual freedom, the accession to certain values. Optimal performance gave the result that, in research, intrinsic reasons are leading to higher and more stable performance over time than extrinsic ones.motivation, employees, organizational factors.

Conception d’un quadrirotor à rotors inclinables pour le suivi de trajectoires agressives

RÉSUMÉ Les quadrirotors sont des plateformes robotiques aériennes peu coûteuses et agiles. Plusieurs applications sont envisageables avec ces robots tels que l’exploration des mines ou les opérations de reconnaissance et sauvetage. Ces missions nécessitent de naviguer dans des environnements encombrés et imprédictibles. Le véhicule utilisé doit pouvoir éviter rapidement des obstacles tout en circulant à haute vitesse. Le quadrirotor étant sous-actionné est limité dans son agressivité puisqu’il doit s’incliner avant d’accélérer. De plus, les contrôleurs conventionnels utilisés ne prédisent pas le comportement qu’aura le véhicule durant la trajectoire en utilisant sa dynamique ce qui l’empêche de planifier assidument les manœuvres complexes. Dans ce contexte, l’objectif principal de ce mémoire est de s’affranchir de ces deux limitations en développant un quadrirotor capable d’incliner ses moteurs pour accélérer plus rapidement et d’utiliser un contrôleur prédictif pour le suivi de trajectoire. Plus spécifiquement, une modification au design conventionnel du quadrirotor est proposée par l’ajout d’un seul actuateur pour permettre des manœuvres agressives dans un seul axe. Puis, un ILQR qui est un contrôleur prédictif sans optimisation numérique, est développé. Celui-ci tient compte de l’état à jour du quadrirotor pour la linéarisation et la résolution du problème de contrôle optimal. En premier lieu, le modèle dynamique du quadrirotor à moteurs inclinables est présenté. Puis, une loi de contrôle basé sur un schéma de contrôle en cascade avec une boucle régulant la dynamique en translation à l’aide d’un ILQR et une autre la dynamique en rotation avec un régulateur PD sont implémentées. Ensuite, la solution proposée est testée en simulation et comparée aux approches conventionnelles tant en termes de conception mécanique qu’en asservissement. L’erreur en suivi de trajectoire est diminuée de plus de 1483% avec un impact supérieur de l’ajout de l’inclinaison des moteurs. Enfin, un prototype expérimental est conçu avec des pièces électroniques et mécaniques standards et largement accessibles. La différence entre le design conventionnel et le quadrirotor à moteurs inclinables est étudiée sur des trajectoires agressives. L’erreur diminue de plus de 26% avec l’ajout d’un actionneur alors qu’en simulation pour la même trajectoire l’erreur diminue de 38% ce qui indique que la même tendance est conservée.----------ABSTRACT Quadrotors are cost-effective and agile aerial robotic platforms. Numerous applications are possible with these robots like mines exploration or search and rescue operations. Nevertheless, these missions require navigating through cluttered and unpredictable environments. The vehicle used for these operations must be able to avoid newly located obstacles fast while travelling at high speeds for time critical missions. Quadrotors are underactuated systems and therefore limited in their overall maneuvers because they need to tilt their whole body before accelerating in a direction. Also, conventional controllers used with these systems don’t predict the behavior of the vehicle during a trajectory by using the systems dynamics which prevents them from planning diligently complex maneuvers. In this context, the main objective of this master thesis is to mitigate these two limitations by developing a quadrotor able to tilt his motors thrust to accelerate faster and to use a predictive controller for the trajectory tracking problem. Specifically, a modification to the conventional quadrotor mechanical system is proposed by adding a single actuator to enable aggressive motions in a single axis. Then, an ILQR, which is a predictive controller and does not require parameter optimization, is developed. The latter is a state- dependent controller who behaves as a nonlinear controller by considering the known updated state of the vehicle to solve the optimal control problem. First, the dynamic model of the quadrotor with tilting motors is found. Then, a control law based on a cascade control scheme with a loop for the translational dynamics regulated by an ILQR controller and another loop for the rotational dynamics with a PD controller is implemented. Afterwards, the proposed solution is tested in simulations and compared with conventional approaches in terms of mechanical design and control. Trajectory tracking error is reduced by more than 1483% with the tilting motors modification having a superior impact on performance. Finally, an experimental prototype is designed with standard electronic and mechanical pieces available off-the-shelf. The difference between the conventional design and the quadrotor with tilting motors is studied on this custom-made quadrotor on aggressive trajectories. The error has decreased by more than 26% by adding an actuator while in simulation for the same trajectory this error decrease by 38% which indicates that the same trend is maintained

A regime switching on Covid19 analysis and prediction in Romania

In this paper we propose a regime separation for the analysis of Covid19 on Romania combined with mathematical models of SIR and SIRD. The main regimes we study are, the free spread of the virus, the quarantine and partial relaxation and the last one is the relaxation regime. The main model we use is SIR which is a classical model, but because we can not fully trust the numbers of infected or recovered we base our analysis on the number of deceased people which is more reliable. To actually deal with this we introduce a simple modification of the SIR model to account for the deceased separately. This in turn will be our base for fitting the parameters. The estimation of the parameters is done in two steps. The first one consists in training a neural network based on SIR models to detect the regime changes. Once this is done we fit the main parameters of the SIRD model using a grid search. At the end, we make some predictions on what the evolution will be in a timeframe of a month with the fitted parameters

PMA-Treatment of Human Monocytes Induces a M1 Phenotype in Adherent Macrophages

Background: Human monocyte lines are widely used in basic research as model of inflammation, mostly following adherence with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA). However, the SC line, of normal human monocytes is not well documented, unlike tumour-derived cell lines, such as THP-1. Aim: The purpose of this study was to determine the phenotype of adherent macrophages, induced after the treatment with PMA in three different concentrations, starting from the most widely reported concentration in the literature. Methods: Normal human monocytes SC (ATCC CRL-9855) were routinely maintained according to manufacturer’s instructions. Cells were treated with Phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA Sigma Aldrich P1585), in concentrations of 200 ng/mL, 100 ng/mL, 25 ng/mL and adhesion was documented using an Evos phase-contrast inverted microscope. Cell behaviour was validated by real-time impedance readings. The adhered cells were treated with bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in concentrations of 50 ng/mL (mimicking chronic inflammation) and 1 μg/mL (mimicking acute inflammation). The supernatant was collected twice, after 4 hours, respectively after 18 hours of treatment with LPS. A screening of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines was performed using the multiplexing platform Luminex 200. ELISA tests were performed to validate the cytokines secretion: IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-23 and TNF-ɑ, using a LEGEND MAX Human ELISA kit specific to each cytokine.   Results: Cell adhesion was studied by time-lapse microscopy for 48 hrs. The lowest concentration of PMA which induced cell adherence was 25 ng/mL. Multiplex screening of cytokines showed a pro-inflammatory phenotype of macrophages stimulated with LPS. This finding was validated by ELISA tests for IL-6, IL-8, IL-23 and TNF-ɑ (as pro-inflammatory cytokine) and IL-10 (an anti-inflammatory molecule). For the first category, we noticed a time-dependent response, present in adherent macrophages, but not in circulating monocytes. Regarding the second category of cytokines, the secretion is present only for the adhered and LPS treated cells. It is also present in a time-dependent manner (a higher concentration can be noticed in the collected supernatant after 18 hours of treatment compared with the one collected after 4 hours of treatment). Conclusion: The macrophages obtained from normal human monocytes with PMA are M1 type, regardless of the concentration used for differentiation