Linear Estimation in Interconnected Sensor Systems with Information Constraints

A ubiquitous challenge in many technical applications is to estimate an unknown state by means of data that stems from several, often heterogeneous sensor sources. In this book, information is interpreted stochastically, and techniques for the distributed processing of data are derived that minimize the error of estimates about the unknown state. Methods for the reconstruction of dependencies are proposed and novel approaches for the distributed processing of noisy data are developed

Linear Estimation in Interconnected Sensor Systems with Information Constraints

A ubiquitous challenge in many technical applications is to estimate an unknown state by means of data that stems from several, often heterogeneous sensor sources. In this book, information is interpreted stochastically, and techniques for the distributed processing of data are derived that minimize the error of estimates about the unknown state. Methods for the reconstruction of dependencies are proposed and novel approaches for the distributed processing of noisy data are developed

Attention an-archaïque : la tâche de traduire à l’ère séculière

[À l'origine dans / Was originally part of : Thèses et mémoires - FAS - Département de littérature comparée]L’époque actuelle se caractérise par un processus de sécularisation irrésolu. Les inconsistances de notre modernité relèvent à la fois d’une dissolution de l’hégémonie de la religion en occident et d’une diversification de régimes de valeurs, croyances et représentations ayant pour effet la persistance de différends idéologiques que le phénomène de globalisation à la fois accentue et résorbe sans les abolir. Cette thèse examine la pertinence de la traduction pour interroger les fondements littéraires des enjeux esthétiques et politiques de cette condition. En tant que procédé poïétique, modèle de subjectivité éthique et figure de pensée, la traduction constitue un dispositif littéraire intimement relié au problème de la sécularisation. Chacune des études qui composent la thèse cherche à approfondir, dans une perspective comparatiste, une intuition de base : le mode de dépossession inhérent au fait littéraire de traduire permet d’appréhender un certain ethos séculier dont le caractère historique ne serait pas totalement coupé d’un rapport à la transcendance dans le contexte de l’économie culturelle globale. Le problème de la traduction est abordé à partir de deux axes principaux : la distorsion de la tradition religieuse par la formation d’une religiosité d’ordre littéraire (un ethos séculier) et la distorsion d’un certain humanisme d’après l’expérience catastrophique et la manière dont cet ethos permet d’y survivre. Cette thèse vise à dégager de l’idée de traduction une capacité de régénérer un rapport éthique à autrui par la construction de liens inédits avec le passé et l’avenir ; une attention à la finitude humaine caractérisée par une disposition critique et affective face à ces artefacts humains que nous nommons littérature. Les écrits de la poète et traductrice Anne Carson jouent un rôle déterminant dans le cadre de cette recherche puisqu’ils exemplifient une capacité singulière de faire usage de la tradition qui permet d’envisager, ultimement, une régénération de la question du sens de l’humain, c’est-à-dire, d’une pensée sensible à l’inhumain entre nous.Our age is one fashioned by an unresolved and deeply problematic process of secularization. The waning of the hegemony of religion in the West and the reconfigurations of values, beliefs and representations in a global cultural economy calls for a certain mode of inquiry able to reflect changing social, political and aesthetic conditions of our discrepant contemporaneity. This thesis contends that translation embodies a relevant ethos for the humanities and a critical fulcrum to investigate an experience of incommensurability sustained in the tensions within secularization manifested through literary works and especially poetry. Secular imagination is bound to the problem and practice of translation that is framed here as a poïetic process, a model of ethical subjectivity and a figure of thought. This is exposed through a constellation of cultural inscriptions that reflect a sense of sundered transcendence in the midst of a secular world, most notably through the construction of a dislocated relationship to time. These inscriptions are examined along two lines of investigation that bring into focus a radical form of secular thought cultivated through an ambiguous relationship to a spiritual experience of fidelity deprived of a fixed, metaphysical, grounding: first, the emergence of a translational ethos from the distortion of the sacred/poetical economy of texts; second, the distortion of humanism in light of the untimely experience of catastrophe and how this ethos may be a way of working through it. This thesis aims to show how the task of translation shapes a certain critical attitude embedded in one’s affective dispossession that upholds the task of a return to the human. It fashions a mode of attention to radical human finitude that, in the end, does nothing more than expose its inhumanity. Anne Carson’s poetics of translation is exemplary of such an attention, of a daring spiritual disposition that may be a way to understand how literature and comparative literary inquiry can learn to regenerate the unresolved sense of secularization

Téléphone, phonographe et radio : l'imaginaire sonore entre textualité et reproduction technique

[À l'origine dans / Was originally part of : Thèses et mémoires - FAS - Département de littérature comparée]Ce mémoire décrit l’imaginaire sonore tel qu’il s’est transformé par l’apparition de dispositifs de reproduction (téléphone, phonographe et radio) à la fin du 19ème siècle et au début du 20ème siècle. Si ces appareils de reproduction sonore signalent un nouveau contexte socioculturel permettant la captation, la conservation et la transmission de manifestations sensibles, ils transforment également la manière de concevoir le son, ils modifient le statut de l’audition par rapport aux autres sens et reconfigurent un imaginaire qui traduit un rapport à soi, à autrui et au monde. Cette étude littéraire de la reproductibilité sonore propose une réflexion entre technologie et poétique en questionnant l’idée de communication. L’élément spécifique qui caractérise les appareils de reproduction sonore est un objet technique nommé «transducteur ». Je considère le transducteur à la fois comme métaphore et matérialité de médiation; conçu en termes de dispositif de transduction, ce concept permet une différente compréhension des pratiques sociales et de l’imaginaire constituant cet artefact culturel.This thesis focuses on sound reproduction devices (telephone, phonograph and radio) that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These aural technologies brought forth a new social and cultural context in which hearing became a distinctive characteristic of modern communication. But more importantly, they present new figures which translate different modalities of technological mediation. Technical means to inscribe, preserve, and broadcast matter are embedded socially in a constellation of institutions, practices and discourses ; they also configure particular relations that present a singular worldview that literary thought articulates. Understanding the unfolding of modern sound technologies and how we embody them calls for a critical account of a cordoned off visualist imaginary that accompanies technocultural analysis. This study takes up this question by elaborating a concept which encompasses the imaginary intertwined with sound reproduction media. The telephone, the phonograph and radio use a device called a « transducer ». By conceiving this specific object’s tropological and material structure, I argue that this transduction apparatus presents a new interpretative model that conveys the resonance of modern auditory cultural productions

Stiff Structures for Loose Folks – A Platform for an Open Innovation Community

The increasing opening of the innovation process fairly neglected an important group of potential innovators so far: the employees of a company. Their integration offers promising potentials, but also requires an adequate IT support. A virtual innovation community seems to be an adequate construct to funnel the employees’ creativity and knowledge into innovation management, but per se points out the need for structural support. For the implementation we used a social networking based innovation platform prototype, which aims to allow for the integration of all employees into the innovation process. Here, two options are shown to provide transparency and orientation within the innovation platform to the users as well as controlling mechanism to the innovation managers: First, the fundamental innovation structure, which allows for the flexible treatment of elements in the data model and their integrated display at the front end. Second, a semi-structured innovation process is shown, which allows for management and flexible customization

Tracking Salmonella-Specific CD4 T Cells In Vivo Reveals a Local Mucosal Response to a Disseminated Infection

AbstractA novel adoptive transfer system was used to track the fate of naive Salmonella-specific CD4 T cells in vivo. These cells showed signs of activation in the Peyer's patches as early as 3 hr after oral infection. The activated CD4 T cells then produced IL-2 and proliferated in the T cell areas of these tissues before migrating into the B cell-rich follicles. In contrast, Salmonella-specific CD4 T cells were not activated in the spleen and very few of these cells migrated to the liver, despite the presence of bacteria in both organs. These results show that the T cell response to pathogenic Salmonella infection is localized to the gut-associated lymphoid tissue and does not extend efficiently to the major sites of late infection

Preferential Accumulation of Antigen-specific Effector CD4 T Cells at an Antigen Injection Site Involves CD62E-dependent Migration but Not Local Proliferation

The migration of antigen-specific T cells to nonlymphoid tissues is thought to be important for the elimination of foreign antigens from the body. However, recent results showing the migration of activated T cells into many nonlymphoid tissues raised the possibility that antigen-specific T cells do not migrate preferentially to nonlymphoid tissues containing antigen. We addressed this question by tracking antigen-specific CD4 T cells in the whole body after a localized subcutaneous antigen injection. Antigen-specific CD4 T cells proliferated in the skin-draining lymph nodes and the cells that underwent the most cell divisions acquired the ability to bind to CD62P. As time passed, CD62P-binding antigen-specific CD4 T cells with interferon γ production potential accumulated preferentially at the site of antigen injection but only in recipients that expressed CD62E. Surprisingly, these T cells did not proliferate in the injection site despite showing evidence of more cell divisions than the T cells in the draining lymph nodes. The results suggest that the most divided effector CD4 T cells from the lymph nodes enter the site of antigen deposition via recognition of CD62E on blood vessels and are retained there in a nonproliferative state via recognition of peptide–major histocompatibility complex II molecules

Analysis of Set-theoretic and Stochastic Models for Fusion under Unknown Correlations

In data fusion theory, multiple estimates are combined to yield an optimal result. In this paper, the set of all possible results is investigated, when two random variables with unknown correlations are fused. As a first step, recursive processing of the set of estimates is examined. Besides set-theoretic considerations, the lack of knowledge about the unknown correlation coefficient is modeled as a stochastic quantity. Especially, a uniform model is analyzed, which provides a new optimization criterion for the covariance intersection algorithm in scalar state spaces. This approach is also generalized to multi-dimensional state spaces in an approximative, but fast and scalable way, so that consistent estimates are obtained