In the present work I compare the search strategies for solving scheduling problems from the view of constraint programming. The thesis is focused on scheduling problems containing alternative activities. An analysis of previously published various ways of modelling the problems is provided, next description and experimental comparison of search strategies targetting these models is provided. The influence of strategies on the speed of the solver is studied primarily. As a sideeffect the work studies the ways how Choco solver, which was utililized for implementation of the experiments, can be used to solve the scheduling problems with alternative activities.

Title: MS SQL Application Development Framework Author: Bc. Marek Hanes Department: Department of Software Engineering Supervisor: RNDr. Michal Kopecký, Ph.D. Supervisor's e-mail address: kopecky@ksi.mff.cuni.cz Abstract: The thesis deals with a database application development and tries to find ways to optimize the most common problems encountered. The goal of this thesis is to design and develop a modular framework that simplifies the database application development and prevents inexperienced users from using unsafe SQL statements and/or expressions. The example of such a statement can be the insert statement without explicit column list, unsafe XPath expression, etc. The framework provides among others manipulation with history tables allowing versioning of data and reverting unwanted data changes asynchronous and parallel SQL execution support, error management and logging support, monitoring of schema changes as well as procedure and function debugging Together with means of data manipulation, the framework provides the simple way of publishing stored procedure as web service as well. The framework is accompanied by well-written programmers and users guide to allow its further development. Keywords: application development, framework, modular design, safe statements, constraints 1

La composition musicale utilise de plus en plus les outils informatiques, mais la question de l'interprétation des pièces soit résoule. Dans le cas des pièces électro-acoustiques sur support, enregistrement d'une organisation temporelle de sons, l'exécution des oeuvres se restreint à leur diffusion. A la différence des pièces instrumentales, un interprète ne peut modifier certains paramètres musicaux lors de l'exécution. Nous cherchons à définir un système de composition et d'exécution de pièces interprétables, en nous focalisant sur les modifications de dates d'événements de la partition. Nous proposons un formalisme de partitions interactives utilisant la programmation par contraintes pour définir l'organisation temporelle et les limites de l'interprétation. Nous présentons un modèle de machine abstraite pour l'exécution des partitions, basée sur les réseaux de Petri et la propagation de contraintes. Enfin, nous exposons quelques applications du système. / Abstract

La vérification de programmes avec des calculs sur les nombres à virgule flottante est une étape très importante dans le développement de logiciels critiques. Les calculs sur les nombres flottants sont généralement imprécis, et peuvent dans certains cas diverger par rapport au résultat attendu sur les nombres réels. L’objectif de cette thèse est de concevoir un solveur de contraintes sur les nombres à virgule flottante dédié à la vérification de programmes. Nous présentons dans ce manuscrit une nouvelle méthode de résolution de contraintes sur les flottants. Cette méthode se base principalement sur la sur-approximation des contraintes sur les flottants par des contraintes sur les réels. Cette sur-approximation doit être conservative des solutions sur les flottants. Les contraintes obtenues sont ensuite résolues par un solveur de contraintes sur les réels. Nous avons proposé un algorithme de filtrage des domaines sur les flottants basé sur le concept de la sur-approximation qui utilise des techniques de programmation linéaire. Nous avons aussi proposé une méthode de recherche de solutions basée sur des heuristiques. Cette méthode offre aussi la possibilité de comparer le comportement des programmes par rapport à une spécification sur les réels. Ces méthodes ont été implémentées et expérimentées sur un ensemble de programmes avec du calcul sur les nombres flottants. / The verification of programs with floating-point numbers computation is an important issue in the development of critical software systems. Computations over floating-point numbers are not accurate, and the results may be very different from the expected results over real numbers. The aim of this thesis is to design a constraint solver over floating-point numbers for program verification purposes. We introduce a new method for solving constraints over floating-point numbers. This method is based on an over-approximation of floating-point constraints using constraints over real numbers. This overapproximation is safe, that’s to say it doesn’t loose any solution over the floats. The generated constraints are then solved with a constraint solver over real numbers. We propose a new filtering algorithm using linear programming techniques, which takes advantage of these over-approximations of floating-point constraints. We introduce also new search methods and heuristics to find floating-point solutions of these constraints. Using our implementation, we show on a set of counter-examples the difference of the execution of programs over the floats with the specification over real numbers.

Due to the high energy consumption demand and restrictions in the installation of new transmission lines, using Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices is inevitable. In power system analysis, transferring high-quality power is essential. In fact, one of the important factors that has a special role in terms of efficiency and operation is maximum power transfer capability. FACTS devices are used for controlling the voltage, stability, power flow and security of transmission lines. However, it is necessary to find the optimal location for these devices in power networks. Many optimization techniques have been deployed to find the optimal location for FACTS devices in power networks. There are several varieties of FACTS devices with different characteristics that are used for different purposes. The imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is a recently developed optimization technique that is used widely in power systems. This study presents an approach to find the optimal location and size of FACTS devices in power networks using the imperialist competitive algorithm technique. This technique is based on human social evolution. ICA technique is a new heuristic algorithm for global optimization searches that is based on the concept of imperialistic competition. This algorithm is used for mathematical issues; it can be categorized on the same level as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) techniques. Also, in this study, the enhancement of voltage profile, stability and loss reduction and increasing of load-ability were investigated and carried out. In this case, to apply FACTS devices in power networks, the MATLAB program was used. Indeed, in this program all power network parameters were defined and analysed. IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 68-bus with 16 machine systems are used as a case study. All the simulation results, including voltage profile improvement and convergence characteristics, have been illustrated. The results show the advantages of the imperialist competitive algorithm technique over the conventional approaches.

Master of Science - Agricultural Education and Communication / Department of Communications and Agricultural Education / Lauri M. Baker / Kansas and Oklahoma were in the top five cattle producing states in the United States. Beef cattle producers across Kansas and Oklahoma had access to best management practices (BMPs) for proper grazing land management, but were still underutilizing these practices. This study sought to understand why producers did not adopt grazing BMPs suggested by Extension professionals and to identify opportunities to improve communication and adoption. Under the postulates of elaboration likelihood model (ELM), if BMPs were communicated to producers in a way that persuaded them to adopt BMPs, the resiliency of the entire beef cattle grazing system, would increase. This study was guided by community-based social marketing (CBSM) and elaboration likelihood model (ELM). Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 43 producers in north central Oklahoma and south central Kansas during the summer of 2015. Initial participants were recruited using a purposive sampling method through Extension contacts with a snowball sample after initial participants were identified. Interviews were transcribed by a professional transcription service and analyzed using Glaser’s constant comparative method. Producers in the study were aware of BMPs like rotational grazing, prescribed burning, and the usage of alternative forages. The major themes discovered in this study include Producers had varying definitions of both rotational grazing and cover crops; Producers used each other, Extension and university materials and personnel as information sources; Practices producers used were determined by visual observations and past experiences. Barriers and social constrains to the adoption of BMPs that were discovered included: water availability and quality, land leases, time and labor, land lords, generational gaps, and a lack of skilled employees. Producers saw the benefits of burning practices and rotational grazing. Another major theme was drought tested the resiliency of producer’s operations. This study offers several recommendations for Extension professionals and research. The way that Extension agents were communicating BMPs should be researched and analyzed. The implementation of CBSM and ELM by Extension professionals could increase the adoption of BMPs in grazing systems. A major implication of this study was the need for Extension to more openly communicate with producers rather than just exchange information.

Alternating traditional classroom-based teaching techniques with hands-on learning activities outdoors is beneficial for children of all ages. The purpose of this thesis was to explore whether and how teachers may negotiate the constraints to facilitating hands-on learning opportunities outdoors. A snowball sample was used to identify twelve outdoor educators for semi-structured interviews documenting their characteristics, skills and experiences, perceptions of the constraints to outdoor education and recommendations for building interest in and supporting outdoor education. The findings suggested that participants’ childhood experiences outdoors were influential on their decisions to start teaching outdoor education, and that the participants’ perceptions of the constraints varied dependent on their experiences, objectives and attitudes. The participants’ recommendations were focused on what teachers could do to help themselves and each other to succeed. Altogether, the participants’ experiences suggest that passionate and engaged outdoor educators can have a lasting impact on students’ relationships with the natural world. / October 2016

The value of a state is a measure of its worth, so that, for example, waypoints have high value and regions inside of obstacles have very small value. We propose two methods of incorporating world information as state-dependent modifications to the interacting multiple models (IMM) algorithm, and then we use a game's player-controlled trajectories as ground truths to compare the normal IMM algorithm to versions with our proposed modifications. The two methods involve modifying the model probabilities in the update step and modifying the transition probability matrix in the mixing step based on the assigned values of different target states. The state-dependent value assignment modifications are shown experimentally to perform better than the normal IMM algorithm in both estimating the target's current state and predicting the target's next state.

To support the rapidly increasing number of mobile users and mobile multimedia services, and the related demands for bandwidth, wireless communication technology is facing a potentially scarcity of radio spectrum resources. However, spectrum measurement campaigns have shown that the shortage of radio spectrum is due to inefficient usage and inflexible spectrum allocation policies. Thus, to be able to meet the requirements of bandwidth and spectrum utilization, spectrum underlay access, one of the techniques in cognitive radio networks (CRNs), has been proposed as a frontier solution to deal with this problem. In a spectrum underlay network, the secondary user (SU) is allowed to simultaneously access the licensed frequency band of the primary user (PU) as long as the interference caused by the SU to the PU is kept below a predefined threshold. By doing so, the spectrum utilization can be improved significantly. Moreover, the spectrum underlay network is not only considered as the least sophisticated in implementation, but also can operate in dense areas where the number of temporal spectrum holes is small. Inspired by the above discussion, this thesis provides a performance analysis of spectrum underlay networks which are subject to interference constraints. The thesis is divided into an introduction part and five parts based on peer-reviewed international research publications. The introduction part provides the reader with an overview and background on CRNs. The first part investigates the performance of secondary networks in terms of outage probability and ergodic capacity subject to the joint outage constraint of the PU and the peak transmit power constraint of the SU. The second part evaluates the performance of CRNs with a buffered relay. Subject to the timeout probability constraint of the PU and the peak transmit power constraint of the SU, system performance in terms of end-to-end throughput, end-to-end transmission time, and stable transmission condition for the relay buffer is studied. The third part analyzes a cognitive cooperative radio network under the peak interference power constraint of multiple PUs with best relay selection. The obtained results readily reveal insights into the impact of the number of PUs, channel mean powers of the communication and interference links on the system performance. The fourth part studies the delay performance of CRNs under the peak interference power constraint of multiple PUs for point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications. A closedform expression for outage probability and an analytical expression for the average waiting time of packets are obtained for point-to-point communications. Moreover, the outage probability and successful transmission probability for packets in point-to-multipoint communications are presented. Finally, the fifth part presents work on the performance analysis of a spectrum underlay network for a general fading channel. A lower bound on the packet timeout probability and the average number of transmissions per packet are obtained for the secondary network.

Figure éminente du groupe des Fantaisistes, Tristan Derème (1889-1941) est surtout connu pour sa production poétique. Y réduire son œuvre serait, cependant, faire fi d’une masse de livres (Le Quatorze juillet ou petit art de rimer quand on manque de rimes, Le Poisson Rouge, L’Onagre Orangé, La Libellule Violette, parmi beaucoup d’autres) qui constituent, sous la forme spéciale d’une réflexion à plusieurs voix, autant d’essais sur un très grand nombre de questions, surtout d’ordre formel, touchant la poésie française.Il s’agit d'abord de voir en quoi et comment ce massif ignoré de la littérature du XXe siècle se situe au carrefour d’une tradition très classique, qu’il prolonge, et des perspectives les plus modernes, qu’il préfigure, aussi bien à travers son « dit » (les conceptions et positions développées, qui font l'objet d'une première partie), qu’à travers son « faire » (les créations, avec diverses contraintes inédites d'écriture et de réécriture, analysées dans un deuxième temps). Cette réflexion polylogale, menée dans un salon littéraire fictif, interroge de façon essentielle la théorie littéraire. La forme ludique et originale de ce « dire » occupe la troisième et dernière partie de l'étude, avec pour horizon une perspective métathéorique : et si une poétique de la poésie ne pouvait s'écrire que dans la fantaisie ? / An eminent figure in the group of French writers known as the « Fantaisistes », Tristan Derème (1889-1941) is best known for his poetical works. However, limiting Derème’s achievement to his poetry implies putting aside a considerable number of books (Le Quatorze Juillet ou petit art de rimer quand on manque de rimes, Le Poisson rouge, L’Onagre orangé, La Libellule Violette, to name but a few) which constitute a series of essays employing multiple voices to explore a wide range of questions relating to French poetry, particularly its formal properties.This thesis first explores the ways and means by which this little-commented opus of twentieth century literature operates at a theoretical crossroads, extending an undoubtedly classical tradition whilst anticipating strikingly modern perspectives. Consideration is given both to the substance of Derème’s writing (the conceptions and positions which he develops, which are the subject of the first part of the thesis) and do the literary form of his work (his formal innovations, experimenting with diverse writing and re-writing constraints, which are analyzed in the second part). Set in a fictional literary salon, Derème’s polyvocal reflections raise fundamental questions concerning literary theory. The ludic and original form of these reflections is the subject of the last part of the study, which opens up a meta-theoretical perspective: what if a poetics of poetry could only be written as fantasy ?