Due to massive expansion of the mass spectrometry and constant price growth of the human labour the optimalisation of the microbial samples preparation comes into question. This master thesis deals with design and implementation of a machine learning algorithm for segmentation of images of microbial colonies cultivated on Petri dishes. This algorithm is going to be a part of a controlling software of a MBT Pathfinder device developed by the company Bruker s. r. o. that automates the process of smearing microbial colonies onto a MALDI target plates. In terms of this thesis a several models of neural networks based on the UNet, UNet++ and ENet architecture were implemented. Based on a number of experiments investigating various configurations of the networks and pre-processing of the training datatset there was chosen an ENet model with quadruplet filter count and additional convolutional block of the encoder trained on a dataset pre-processed with round mask.

This master thesis is dealing with a system for receiving meteorological images from satellites placed on lower orbit. Furthermore it gives basic information about satellites NOAA, METOP and FY. It also includes derivations of equations, that define minimal requirements for receiving antenna and LNA. From reached parametres, energetic balance for connection of the satellite and Earth is calculated. The main part of the master thesis is designing of low-noise amplifier for L band. LNA is implemented on the substrate FR4 and Arlon DiClad 870, circuit is designed with elements of parametres, which are spread out or concentrated. The last part of the thesis describes design of antenna for reception of meteorological images.

The thesis describe issue of segmentation and classification of Petri dishes colored images. There is proposed a segmentation method that extracts positions of cells from the image. Another techniques focues on classification to groups according to the parameters obtained from images. Reliability of each optimalized algorithm is tested on database containing 250 colored images received from company BioVendor Instruents a.s.

Diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) is a spondyloarthropathy traditionally defined as having spinal and extra-spinal manifestations. However its diagnostic criteria only allow the identification of advanced DISH and there is little consensus regarding the extra-spinal enthesopathies. In this project, individuals with DISH from the WM Bass Donated Skeletal Collection were analysed to investigate the pathogenesis of DISH and archaeological English and Catalan samples (3rd–18th century AD) were studied to investigate how diet might have influenced the development of DISH. From the individuals from the Bass Collection, isolated vertical lesions representing the early stages of DISH (‘early DISH’) were identified. Both sample sets showed that the presence of extra-spinal manifestations varies significantly between individuals and that discarthrosis and DISH can co-exist in the same individual. In all archaeological samples, the prevalence of DISH was significantly higher in males and older individuals showed a higher prevalence of DISH. In both regions, the prevalence of DISH was the lowest in the Roman samples, the highest in the early medieval ones and intermediate in the late medieval samples. While when using documentary resources and archaeological data, it was hypothesised that the prevalence of DISH in the English and Catalan samples might have been different, the results show no significant differences even if English samples tend to show higher prevalence of DISH than the Catalan samples. This possibly suggests that the development of DISH depends on a combination of dietary habits and, possibly, genetic predisposition might influence the development of DISH. The individuals from the Bass Collection showed high prevalence of metabolic and cardiovascular conditions. In contrast, no association was found between DISH and rich-diet associated conditions (e.g. carious lesions and gout) or deficiency-related conditions (e.g. scurvy, healed rickets). / Institute of Life Sciences Research from the University of Bradford

Les recettes de cuisine sont partout de nos jours, dans les livres, à la télévision, sur l’Internet, ainsi que dans les restaurants et les entreprises alimentaires industrielles. Cette grande présence médiatique et économique soulève la question de savoir s’il est possible de les protéger par le droit de la propriété intellectuelle canadien. L’auteure commence par décrire les recettes et les plats, puis examine si ceux de nature traditionnelle et familiale sont des éléments de culture et s’ils peuvent constituer des savoirs traditionnels. Cela amène l’auteure à examiner si les indications géographiques peuvent procurer aux recettes et aux plats une certaine forme de protection contre leur appropriation à l’usage exclusif d’une personne. L’auteure aborde ensuite les régimes usuels de propriété intellectuelle à l’aune de la recette et du plat de chefs ou de l’industrie. Elle examine en premier ceux de la propriété industrielle. Les recettes et les plats peuvent-ils être des marques de commerce? Peuvent-ils être des secrets de commerce? Peuvent-ils constituer des inventions brevetables? Elle se penche ensuite sur le droit d’auteur et examine si les recettes et les plats peuvent être des œuvres protégeables et s’ils se qualifieraient comme œuvres littéraires ou artistiques. Cet examen l’amène à regarder le développement de la protection des œuvres musicales pour mieux cerner les enjeux pour les recettes. Au terme de son analyse, l’auteure fait ressortir quel régime appert le plus approprié selon la nature des recettes et des pratiques des chefs et des entreprises industrielles. / Nowadays, we are surrounded by recipes; they are in books, on television, on the Web, as well as in restaurants and in industrial food businesses. This great economic and media weight naturally begs the question whether recipes can be protected under Canadian intellectual property law. The author starts by describing recipes and dishes and then examines whether traditional and family recipes and dishes are elements of culture and whether they can be considered traditional knowledge. That leads the author to consider whether geographical indications can provide recipes and dishes with some kind of protection against their appropriation by a person for his or her exclusive use. The author then examines the usual intellectual property schemes for industrial and chefs’ recipes and dishes. She starts with industrial property schemes. Can recipes and dishes act as trademarks? Can they be trade secrets? Can they be patentable inventions? She then moves on to copyright, to examine whether recipes and dishes can be copyrightable works and, if so, whether they would be literary or artistic works. That leads her to look at how musical works came to be protected in order to better understand what is at issue for recipes. The author concludes her analysis by stating which scheme seems to be the most appropriate for recipes depending on their nature and the practices of chefs and industrial businesses.

Les recettes de cuisine sont partout de nos jours, dans les livres, à la télévision, sur l’Internet, ainsi que dans les restaurants et les entreprises alimentaires industrielles. Cette grande présence médiatique et économique soulève la question de savoir s’il est possible de les protéger par le droit de la propriété intellectuelle canadien. L’auteure commence par décrire les recettes et les plats, puis examine si ceux de nature traditionnelle et familiale sont des éléments de culture et s’ils peuvent constituer des savoirs traditionnels. Cela amène l’auteure à examiner si les indications géographiques peuvent procurer aux recettes et aux plats une certaine forme de protection contre leur appropriation à l’usage exclusif d’une personne. L’auteure aborde ensuite les régimes usuels de propriété intellectuelle à l’aune de la recette et du plat de chefs ou de l’industrie. Elle examine en premier ceux de la propriété industrielle. Les recettes et les plats peuvent-ils être des marques de commerce? Peuvent-ils être des secrets de commerce? Peuvent-ils constituer des inventions brevetables? Elle se penche ensuite sur le droit d’auteur et examine si les recettes et les plats peuvent être des œuvres protégeables et s’ils se qualifieraient comme œuvres littéraires ou artistiques. Cet examen l’amène à regarder le développement de la protection des œuvres musicales pour mieux cerner les enjeux pour les recettes. Au terme de son analyse, l’auteure fait ressortir quel régime appert le plus approprié selon la nature des recettes et des pratiques des chefs et des entreprises industrielles. / Nowadays, we are surrounded by recipes; they are in books, on television, on the Web, as well as in restaurants and in industrial food businesses. This great economic and media weight naturally begs the question whether recipes can be protected under Canadian intellectual property law. The author starts by describing recipes and dishes and then examines whether traditional and family recipes and dishes are elements of culture and whether they can be considered traditional knowledge. That leads the author to consider whether geographical indications can provide recipes and dishes with some kind of protection against their appropriation by a person for his or her exclusive use. The author then examines the usual intellectual property schemes for industrial and chefs’ recipes and dishes. She starts with industrial property schemes. Can recipes and dishes act as trademarks? Can they be trade secrets? Can they be patentable inventions? She then moves on to copyright, to examine whether recipes and dishes can be copyrightable works and, if so, whether they would be literary or artistic works. That leads her to look at how musical works came to be protected in order to better understand what is at issue for recipes. The author concludes her analysis by stating which scheme seems to be the most appropriate for recipes depending on their nature and the practices of chefs and industrial businesses.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Technology: Electrical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2013 / Networked Control Systems is a control system where the plant and the controller exchange information via a shared communication network and the network is considered as part of the closed loop control system. Unfortunately the network introduces network induced random varying time delays and data packet loss amongst the communication network imperfections. The network delays are considered to be between the controller and the actuator and between the sensor and the controller. These network imperfections degrade the performance of the closed loop control system and result in closed loop system instability. The complexity of measuring the communication network imperfection in networked control systems makes it difficult for the control engineers to develop methods for design of controllers that can incorporate and compensate these imperfections in order to improve the performance of the networked control systems. In this thesis a co-simulation toolset called LabNS2 is developed to address the first problem of measuring the communication network imperfections by providing an ideal environment that can be used to investigate the influence of network time delays or packet loss. The software environment of the toolset is based on LabVIEWTM and Network Simulator Version 2 (NS2). A new robust predictive optimal controller design method is developed to address the problem of the destabilising effect of the network induced time delay between the controller and the actuator. The design approach is based on time shifting of the optimisation horizon and a state predictor. The design of the controller is based on a model of the plant with delay in the control vector equal to the delay between the controller and the actuator or to the sum of the delays between the controller and the actuator and between the sensor and the controller. The time shifting approach allows the design of the controller to be performed for a model without time delay. Then the control action is based on the future values of the state space vector estimates. The state predictor is developed to predict these future values of the state using the present and past values of the state estimates and control actions. This technique is made possible by the use of the plant model Transition Matrix. A Discrete Kalman Filter is modified to address the problem of the destabilising effect of the network induced time delay between the sensor and the controller. An additional state estimation vector is added to the filter estimate at every current moment of time. iv The developed methods are implemented for networked control of a dish antenna driven by two stepper motors. The outcomes of the thesis can be used for the education and fundamental research purposes, but the developed control strategies have significant sense towards the Square Kilometer Array projects and satellite systems industry. / National Research Foundation

The aim of this research is to explore the influence of magnetic field on early somatic embryos (ESEs) of spruce and pine. The magnetic field is gradual. This is important for the experiment, each cluster of ESE was exposed to magnetic field of different intensity. The resulting report of this experiment consists of the comparison between various methods of image analysis and the difference in growth of ESEs due to different exposure to magnetic field and surrounding temperature. Enclosed is a proposal of ESE size computing algorithm from a given image.

This master thesis deals with image processing of Petri dishes. The first part is about terms and procedures in laboratory practice. The following part is about devices and algorithms for image analysis of Petri dishes. The second part is about draft and implementation of own colony counting application, which was developed in cooperation with the microbiological laboratory. The application is developed for mobile devices running Android OS. The master thesis also includes the design and creation of two lighting units, which uses as an accessory for better results in the analysis of Petri dishes. In conclusion are presented results, compared lighting units and various types of mobile devices, on which the application was tested.

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