This thesis integrates hardware development, data analysis, and mathematical modeling to facilitate our understanding of brain cognition. Exploration of these brain mechanisms requires both structural and functional knowledge to (i) reconstruct the spatial distribution of the activity, (ii) to estimate…

Design and optimization of distillation columns for ethanol dehydration, using a hydrocarbon as entrainer, implies a good knowledge of vapor-liquid (VLE), liquid-liquid (LLE) and vapor-liquid-liquid equilibrium (VLLE). Chemical process simulation programs always require the use of a thermodynamic model that…

The supervision of postgraduate Master's Degree dissertations has attracted little attention in the
academic literature and is an under researched area of supervisory activity. This research was a
response to generate new knowledge concerning the praxis of supervisors who supervise…

This thesis scientifically investigates the setup and tuning of cylindrical membranophones as musical instruments. To date there has been very little quantitative analysis of drum tuning with respect to performance sound, studio recording and music production. Digital signal analysis has…

We examine semantic interoperability problems in the fixed income securities industry
and propose a knowledge representation architecture for context interchange
mediation to support dynamic integration of autonomous database, web, and
procedural sources of information. For sources and…

The design of intelligent agents is greatly influenced by the many different models that exist to represent knowledge. It is essential that such agents have computationally adequate mechanisms to manage its knowledge, which more often than not is incomplete and/or…

This paper presents a proposal for an architecture that integrates knowledge discovery systems (automatic acquisition) and knowledge based systems (experts systems). This work formulates considerations over the viability of the implementation of this architecture according to the advance of the…

Une préoccupation essentielle traverse cette thèse: l'indifférence systémique de la Loi internationale sur la propriété intellectuelle a l'égard des savoirs traditionnels autochtones. De manière générale, un écart semble d'ailleurs croissant entre l'importance des accords internationaux sur les questions d'intérêt commercial…

The first two chapters of this thesis investigate a possibly fundamental aspect of technological progress. If knowledge accumulates as technology progresses, then successive generations of innovators may face an increasing educational burden, forcing them to spend longer periods in education…

The thesis explores architectural form generation through two behavior based artificial intelligence approaches: the communication of agents in an unpredictable simulation system, and the codification of information within an evolutionary process. Both concepts stem from the evaluation of potentially definable…