Similarities between golden mice (Ochrotomys nuttalli) and white-footed mice (Peromyscus leucopus) have been well-studied in both field and laboratory settings. Often sympatric, these species share similar habitat, as well as other resources, yet previous researchers have found little evidence for interspecific competition. Niche partitioning may reduce direct competition through specialization of resource use. Although the golden mouse is considered a resource specialist, it is likely that the degree of habitat specialization differs by locality, and thus, the degree of interspecific competition with similar species is variable. To determine the extent to which microhabitat use differs between golden mice and white-footed mice, I measured 16 and 15 microhabitat variables during the leaf-on and leaf-off seasons, respectively, in Jackson County, Illinois. Trapping took place on 3 grids from March 2010 to September 2011. The ratio of individual golden mice (n = 74) to white-footed mice (n = 85) was unusually high during this study. Microhabitat use models were constructed for both species during both seasons using logistic regression by comparing microhabitat at trapping stations where each species was captured vs. stations without captures. Few variables described habitat occupied by golden mice. Overall, dense vegetation up to 2.0 m was most important for golden mice and ground-level structures such as logs were most important for white-footed mice. Captures and noncaptures were predicted with a high degree of accuracy by logistic regression (81.5-90.3%). Discriminant function analysis was used to identify which microhabitat variables optimally discriminated between habitat used by golden mice, white-footed mice, and neither species. More variables discriminated between species during the leaf-on season than the leaf-off season although discriminating variables during leaf-off were more important overall. Habitat where either species was captured was combined and compared against habitat where no mice were captured; microhabitat used by mice was statistically distinct within the study area. Captures and noncaptures were classified correctly more than would be expected by chance by discriminant function analysis but moderate classification success values indicated microhabitat differences between species were subtle. Microhabitat and elevated trap use varied between seasons for both species, but neither species used ground or elevated traps more than expected during the leaf-on season. Spatial segregation was more apparent during the leaf-off season when golden mice used elevated traps more than expected and white-footed mice used ground traps more than expected. Overall results suggest that golden mice exhibited a great deal of plasticity in microhabitat use seasonally, and are more habitat generalists than previous literature would suggest. Although some spatial segregation was apparent between golden mice and white-footed mice, there was no evidence for avoidance between species, which implies a lack of interference competition. It is likely that other life-history factors (such as metabolic rate, nest building, or sociality) in combination with microhabitat and vertical partitioning allow coexistence between these species rather than microhabitat segregation alone.

Durante décadas, a visão prevalente em ecologia de microrganismos era de que os fatores ambientais locais seriam os únicos agentes estruturantes das comunidades e dos padrões de coexistência das espécies. Entretando, estudos recentes têm fornecido evidência de que processos ligados a dispersão possam ser tão importantes quanto o ambiente local na estruturação das comunidades, reacendendo o debate em torno da hipótese clássica sobre a ubiquidade dos microrganismos. Neste estudo, nós examinamos os padrões de coexistência do fitoplâncton e os possíveis determinantes da variação espacial na composição das comunidades em 9 lagoas do sul do Brasil. Nós testamos se as espécies fitoplanctônicas apresentam um padrão não aleatório de coexistência através de um modelo nulo e se distância espacial ou a distância ambiental possuem relação com a similaridade na composição das comunidades. Nós também investigamos se as variáveis ambientais locais são bons preditores da abundância das espécies. Na análise de coexistência, nós não observamos um padrão significativo de estruturação dentro das lagoas, mas encontramos um padrão não-aleatório e segregado das espécies ao longo das lagoas, indicando que as espécies coexistem menos do que o esperado ao acaso nesta escala. A similaridade na composição das comunidades mostrou correlação significativa com a distância ambiental, mas não foi correlacionada com a distância geográfica entre os sítios. Além disso, a variação na abundância das espécies apresentou correlação significativa com as variáveis ambientais locais (transparência da água, condutividade, nitrato e ortofosfato). Em conclusão, nossos resultados apoiam a visão de que a variação espacial do fitoplâncton é melhor explicada pelo ambiente local. Nós não testamos a influência de variáveis históricas e filogenéticas sobre esses padrões, que podem ser temas de estudos futuros, a fim de elucidar ainda mais essas questões. / For decades, the main hypothesis in microbial ecology was that local environment would be the only mechanism structuring communities and patterns of species coexistence. However, recent studies have provided evidence that processes related to dispersion can be as important as the local environment for shaping biological communities, stimulating new debates on the classical hypothesis about the ubiquity of microorganisms. In this study, we examined the phytoplankton coexistence patterns and possible determinants of spatial variation in community composition in 9 lakes of southern Brazil. First, we use a null model analysis for tested whether the phytoplankton species show a nonrandom pattern of coexistence. We also tested whether spatial distance or environmental distance act as potential factors controlling community composition. Finally, we investigated whether local environmental variables are good predictors of species abundance. We did not observe a significant pattern of coexistence species in the within-lakes analysis, but we found a nonrandom pattern of coexistence and segregation of species across-lakes analysis, indicating that the species coexist less than expected by chance on this scale. Phytoplankton community composition showed a strong positive correlation with the environmental distance but was not correlated with the geographical distance between sites. Moreover, the variation in the abundance of species showed significant correlation with local environmental variables (water transparency, conductivity, nitrate and orthophosphate). In conclusion, our results support the view that the spatial variation of phytoplankton is best explained by the local environmental conditions. We suggest that the influences of historical and phylogenetic variables on these patterns, here not measured, be analyzed in future studies, to further elucidate these questions.

The coexistence of Czech and Roma communities is beset with numerous issues. Despite the Roma population being a part of the country?s population for centuries, the Roma still find themselves foreigners within the society, perceive the Czech population as hostile and reject even its positive values. The Roma minority blames the Czech society for coldness, hostility and above all discrimination, xenophobia and racism. The Czech population on the other hand upbraids the Roma for noisiness, lack of education, poor work ethics, high unemployment and crime rates, among other things. The theoretical part of the paper is divided according to separate issues relevant for the Roma population in the Czech Republic. The history of the Roma population is presented, since it is considered a notable part of history as well as a significant factor in the current situation. The theoretical part also presents the issues of myth and stereotype, forming a part of any society and affecting its actions from its historical beginnings to the present time. This part of the paper also introduces other key topics relevant for the Roma minority, such as coexistence with the majority society, levels of education, unemployment, crime rates, and socially excluded neighbourhoods. For the practical part of the work, plausible hypotheses were developed for the two objectives described above, to be verified or disproved by practical experiment. H 1: More than half of the representatives of the investigated majority holds the opinion that Roma employment is less than one-third. H 2: The representatives of the investigated majority in more than half amount have personally or vicariously encountered crime perpetrated by Roma. H 3: Representatives of the majority society believes that the most common source of finance for Roma in the investigated localities are social benefits. H 4: Most of the representatives of the investigated majority hold the opinion that Roma are poorly mindful of their children's education. H 5: Most of the majority society in the village of Větřní is of the opinion that better education of Roma has no effect on better employment of Roma. For the practical part of the work, quantitative research employing controlled interview was used to obtain necessary data about the selected locations. The particular sites chosen were: in České Budějovice, the housing estate ?Máj? at the V. Volf Street and its surroundings; in Český Krumlov, the housing estate ?Mír? and the surroundings of the Lipová Street. In the village of Větřní, the research focused on the geographically lower part of the settlement. All three locations are considered socially excluded according to an analysis of socially excluded neighbourhoods. 50 respondents were interviewed in each of České Budějovice and Český Krumlov, and 30 respondents were interviewed in Větřní. The thesis set out to achieve two tasks. The first was to identify the perceptions held by the majority society about the Roma minority in the selected neighbourhoods and about its some of the issues. This objective was achieved, and the practical part of the paper describes in detail the perceptions of the majority society about the minority and its issues. The second task was to describe the differences in these perceptions between the investigated neighbourhoods. This second objective was also achieved. In the practical part of my thesis I have confirmed that the perceptions between the investigated neighbourhoods about the minority is not very different.

Durante décadas, a visão prevalente em ecologia de microrganismos era de que os fatores ambientais locais seriam os únicos agentes estruturantes das comunidades e dos padrões de coexistência das espécies. Entretando, estudos recentes têm fornecido evidência de que processos ligados a dispersão possam ser tão importantes quanto o ambiente local na estruturação das comunidades, reacendendo o debate em torno da hipótese clássica sobre a ubiquidade dos microrganismos. Neste estudo, nós examinamos os padrões de coexistência do fitoplâncton e os possíveis determinantes da variação espacial na composição das comunidades em 9 lagoas do sul do Brasil. Nós testamos se as espécies fitoplanctônicas apresentam um padrão não aleatório de coexistência através de um modelo nulo e se distância espacial ou a distância ambiental possuem relação com a similaridade na composição das comunidades. Nós também investigamos se as variáveis ambientais locais são bons preditores da abundância das espécies. Na análise de coexistência, nós não observamos um padrão significativo de estruturação dentro das lagoas, mas encontramos um padrão não-aleatório e segregado das espécies ao longo das lagoas, indicando que as espécies coexistem menos do que o esperado ao acaso nesta escala. A similaridade na composição das comunidades mostrou correlação significativa com a distância ambiental, mas não foi correlacionada com a distância geográfica entre os sítios. Além disso, a variação na abundância das espécies apresentou correlação significativa com as variáveis ambientais locais (transparência da água, condutividade, nitrato e ortofosfato). Em conclusão, nossos resultados apoiam a visão de que a variação espacial do fitoplâncton é melhor explicada pelo ambiente local. Nós não testamos a influência de variáveis históricas e filogenéticas sobre esses padrões, que podem ser temas de estudos futuros, a fim de elucidar ainda mais essas questões. / For decades, the main hypothesis in microbial ecology was that local environment would be the only mechanism structuring communities and patterns of species coexistence. However, recent studies have provided evidence that processes related to dispersion can be as important as the local environment for shaping biological communities, stimulating new debates on the classical hypothesis about the ubiquity of microorganisms. In this study, we examined the phytoplankton coexistence patterns and possible determinants of spatial variation in community composition in 9 lakes of southern Brazil. First, we use a null model analysis for tested whether the phytoplankton species show a nonrandom pattern of coexistence. We also tested whether spatial distance or environmental distance act as potential factors controlling community composition. Finally, we investigated whether local environmental variables are good predictors of species abundance. We did not observe a significant pattern of coexistence species in the within-lakes analysis, but we found a nonrandom pattern of coexistence and segregation of species across-lakes analysis, indicating that the species coexist less than expected by chance on this scale. Phytoplankton community composition showed a strong positive correlation with the environmental distance but was not correlated with the geographical distance between sites. Moreover, the variation in the abundance of species showed significant correlation with local environmental variables (water transparency, conductivity, nitrate and orthophosphate). In conclusion, our results support the view that the spatial variation of phytoplankton is best explained by the local environmental conditions. We suggest that the influences of historical and phylogenetic variables on these patterns, here not measured, be analyzed in future studies, to further elucidate these questions.

Promulgué par Henri IV en avril 1598, l’édit de Nantes mit fin aux guerres de religion et propulsa la France dans une situation inédite en Europe à l’époque, soit celle d’une coexistence religieuse légale entre catholiques et protestants. S’inscrivant dans cette période, l’analyse se situe à la croisée de plusieurs axes historiographiques et s’oriente selon le paradigme de « l’ordre », plus spécifiquement celui des ordres urbains, dans une optique où la religion demeurait indissociable des autres sphères d’activités de la vie citadine. Globalement, il s’agit de déterminer comment ce régime de coexistence a influencé les villes, dont le tissu social pouvait désormais être composé de membres appartenant aux deux dénominations religieuses. La thèse observe cet impact à travers l’étude des cérémonies publiques qui faisaient partie intégrante de l’expérience urbaine des Français des XVIe-XVIIe siècles. L’étude se penche sur trois cas qui se situaient dans le Midi, en plein coeur du « croissant réformé », soit Toulouse, Montauban et Castres. Plus spécifiquement, l’analyse démontre comment leur ordre urbain respectif s’est transformé durant le régime de l’édit de Nantes (1598-1685), comment ils ont influencé la teneur des cérémonies publiques et le sens que ces dernières ont procuré à ces sociétés urbaines en retour. Essentiellement qualitative, la démarche mobilise des cas de cérémonies publiques spécifiques dont les motifs furent tantôt religieux (Fête-Dieu, Délivrance, élévations de reliques et jeûnes publics), tantôt politiques (entrées royales, entrées solennelles et réjouissances commandées par le régime monarchique). La thèse met au jour le destin de trois villes qui se distinguaient par un choix confessionnel déterminant au moment de la rupture des guerres de religion, mais aussi par l’imbrication originale des divers corps urbains qui y oeuvraient et leurs interactions en lien avec l’organisation et le déroulement des cérémonies. La démarche expose les résultantes locales de dynamiques plus générales qui traversent la période, dont celle de la centralisation monarchique et de la catholicisation de la société, deux tendances lourdes qui se répercutèrent sur l’ensemble de la société française d’Ancien régime, mais qui entraînèrent des conséquences propres à chacune des villes.

This dissertation explores the formation and evolution of religious identities in the latter half of the sixteenth century, particularly as they developed in the bi-confessional imperial free city of Augsburg. Taking as its primary focus the city’s evangelical ministers, it argues that the agency of these local clerics—in both promoting and resisting the social, political, and cultural effects of confessionalization—has been underappreciated. By exploring manuscript city chronicles, interrogation transcripts, contemporary public histories, and, above all, these clerics’ own written works, this dissertation will shed light on the systemic “adversarialism” of early modern confessional identities and ideologies, as well as on those local clergy who recognized the inherent danger of allowing their society to by riven by two competing identities. The proponents of “moderation” referenced in the title of this work were those clerics who tried to keep their religion nominally ambiguous, eschewing polarizing confessional identities. In contrast, the “militants” were those who reduced complex theological and liturgical systems to the level of identity-politics. They took tragedies like war, famine, and plague, and redirected blame for these tribulations on rhetorically-constructed enemies of the faith. Principally, I have elected to focus this analysis on a family of preachers whose service to the city over three generations spans a period of nearly six decades (1528-1586)—the Meckharts. Insofar as my sources allow, I use these three men—Johann, Georg, and Johann Baptist—to provide a narrative anchor for my analysis of developments within the city respecting religious culture, community, and identity. Within this one family, we see clearly the push and pull of conflict and concord as both communities and individuals struggled to reconcile the Reformation with the emergence of confessions. In short, I argue that the real drama of confessionalization was not simply that which played out between princes and theologians, or even, for that matter, between religions; rather, it lay in the daily struggle of clerics in the proverbial trenches of their ministry, who were increasingly pressured to choose for themselves and for their congregations between doctrinal purity and civil peace.

The present investigation analyses the political thought of the Czech philosopher Jan Patočka. It focuses on the question of how we are to understand political life: what are its distinguishing features and how we are to circumscribe it conceptually. According to Patočka the experience of politics is one characterized by a loss of meaning, a loss of a foundation or principle that could lend stability to our lives. It is an experience of a tremor by and through which the foundations of our experience are shaken. Philosophy’s political task is, however, not to provide any foundation for political life, but rather to address the question of why man is inclined to posit metaphysical foundations and why refuge in ideological principles is sought. Philosophy must instead engage with the groundlessness and negativity permeating human existence as such. In order to provide an analysis of human existence, and how this very groundlessness of existence is exposed in politics, Patočka calls for an “a-subjective phenomenology” that abandons the traditional notion of the subject and of subjectivity. An “a-subjective” phenomenological analysis is central for the present investigation. The author shows that it is only by and through Patočka’s a-subjective phenomenology that his political thought can be understood; out of his distinctive phenomenological analyses, the negativity, instability and groundlessness of human existence is brought to the fore. Politically, this negativity manifests itself in two phenomena, which, when taken together, constitute the very bedrock for politics: freedom and human coexistence. Human existence is neither stable nor self-sufficient.  On the contrary, it is always already exposed to others, always already engaged in the self-transcending movement of its freedom. Freedom and coexistence are in this respect two interrelated expressions of the inherent negativity of human existence and two phenomena that, accordingly, occupy a privileged position in this study. The author seeks to show that it is by way of an in-depth analysis of freedom and coexistence that the question of politics can be addressed in the work of Patočka since they give testament to the trembling, unnerving, and disorienting nature of politics. / Loss of Grounds as Common Ground

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) technologies have been comprehensively developed and deployed during recent years. Since commercial WLAN and WSN products share the same free of license frequency band, the low power, low rate ZigBee based WSNs are vulnerable to the interference from Wi-Fi WLANs. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the performance of ZigBee WSNs that are subjected to interference generated by collocated Wi-Fi WLANs and to design effective counter-measuring techniques should performance improvement is needed. In this research, a versatile testbed for conducting various experiments is established and the ZigBee system’s performance with different clear channel assessment (CCA) modes and energy detection (ED) thresholds are evaluated through extensive experimental measurements in the testbed. It can be concluded from the results that CCA has significant impact on ZigBee’s performance. An existing theoretical analysis approach that is based on the collision time model between ZigBee and Wi-Fi packets is suitably modified to provide analytical evaluation means of the cases we examined. In order to mitigate the interference from the collocated Wi-Fi system, a novel and effective interference-aware adaptive CCA (IAACCA) scheme is proposed and implemented as firmware flashed into Crossbow motes. Experiments confirmed the ability of IAACCA to countermeasure effectively interference generated by Wi-Fi and thus improve the performance of ZigBee WSNs. Finally, a thorough statistical analysis is performed to understand the factors impacting the performance of ZigBee system and is used to further verify our experimental methods.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the most frequent models describing population dynamics and then to perform some numerical experiments in the MATLAB environment. These simulations should validate our theoretical results. The models are sorted from the basic models to the most complicated and are divided into the models which describe dynamics of one population and models of coexistence of two biological species. The master's thesis icludes also a program for drawing graphs and trajectories of solutions of models described in this thesis including a description of this MATLAB program.

This diploma thesis deals with the character and form of today's family, which is based on traditional marriage. It draws its foundations from theological interpretations of biblical passages that address this topic. These passages primarily present the family as God's will for people and His behavior as the model for marital ethics. The next section introduces the preferences and attitudes of people from the Czech Republic based on public opinion polls towards marriage, family, and other forms of social coexistence. Afterward, these public opinions are compared with the reality, as presented by the Czech statistical office, which monitors divorces and marriages in the region. The last chapters then focus on the negative effects of divorce and the factors which lead to the disruption of marital integrity. They also address the moral values that strengthen marital roles, relational permanency and "a healthy family".