This study focuses on relationships between individual condition, measures of ornament expression and mate choice in the Grey Partridge (Perdix perdix). It is based on the correlative data as well as results of manipulative experiments. I found positive correlation between the size of melanin- and carotenoid-based ornaments in partridges. The size and the redness of the carotenoid skin patch, and the size of the melanin-based feather ornamentation were associated with several measures of immunity and overall body condition (complement activity, ratio of immature erythrocytes, heterophil/leucocyte ratio, response to novel antigen). Furthermore, data from natural populations indicate that the expression of carotenoid-based ornamentation is associated with sexual attractiveness (measured as the ability to obtain a social mate) in partridges. Data from captive individuals indicate that carotenoid supplementation improves the redness of carotenoid-based ornament, while the stimulation of the immune system under increasing concentrations of supplemented carotenoids has no measurable effect on condition and physiological state. This seems to contradict predictions of the 'Carotenoid maintenance hypothesis'. Overall, results better understanding the role of carotenoid and melanin-based ornamentation in signaling...

The diploma thesis focuses on subject description unification methods in records aggregated from different sources in digital repositories, using the example of the National Repository of Grey Literature (NRGL). After presenting experiences with systems BASE and LASSO abroad, I describe the current situation in NRGL, where the automatic indexing is used to assign each record a unified subject heading from the Polythematic Structured Subject Heading System (PSSHS). The thesis then presents how the MeSH thesaurus and Conspectus categorization scheme were mapped to PSSHS. These mappings were then applied to records from the National Medical Library. The aim of the experiment was to compare the subject description consisting of PSSHS subject headings created by automatic indexing, and the subject description created by mapping. In addition to that I explore the possibilities of mapping author keywords in records of academic theses. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

My thesis focuses on the problems of ecotourism, or more precisely its borders from an anthropological perspective, using example of a typical Cambodian community named Chambok. Based on five months of research, together with ethnographic methods of research I found out that boundaries of ecotourism are complex, multi-layered, problematic and negotiated and also that there are so called "grey zones" encompassing them. It is the conceptualization of these zones and boundaries, which is my contribution to current anthropological debate about ecotourism, which has been largely left out until now.

The aim of this work was the construction of set of microsatellites for the Grey Partridge (Perdix perdix). I succeeded in isolation of seven new specific microsatellites. Another microsatellite markers were passed from close relative galliform species (Galliformes). On the whole I gained 18 microsatellite loci which were used for study of population charakteristics of three partridge populations from Stodůlky, Písecko and Milešín. The analysis showed conspicuous structuredness of these populations and surprisingly low values (less then 100) of their effective population sizes. Seven of the microsatellites were chosen for analysis of paternity. Indeed I found the evidence of extrapair paternity in this putatively monogamous bird. Finally I conclude, on the basis of sequenation of mitochondrial control region that our populations belong to the western linage of mitochondrial DNA.

This report covers the work and results of the thesis project in Mechanical Engineering from Luleå university of technology performed by Niklas Ydebäck. The objective of the thesis project is to research if it is possible, with general principles of fluid flow between components and the corresponding geometric constraints between them and just a few channels of data, to model the leakage of a radial piston hydraulic motor. The model is of the grey box kind which makes use of both numerical and statistical methods together with known physical properties of a system in order to model the system. The unknown parameters of this system that are estimated using the least squares method are the three different gap heights of the system as well as the two different eccentricities in the system. The model contains the physical properties of the system, stated in equations for the leakage in the relevant lubrication interfaces, but no relational properties for the dynamics and affects between the individual lubricating interfaces. The model developed is due to the model generality together with the data quality accessible not able to model the system with reliable quality. The model is however able to capture the general trend of the leakage in the system over the applied time series datasets. / Den här rapporten presenterar arbetsgången och resultatet av examensarbetet för en civilingenjörsexamen i Maskinteknik från Luleå tekniska universitet utförd av Niklas Ydebäck. Målet med examensarbetet är att utvärdera och undersöka om det är möjligt, med generella och vedertagna principer av fluidflöde mellan smorda komponenter tillsammans med de geometriska begränsningarna som hör dem till och några få kanaler av data, att modellera läckaget för en radialkolvsmotor. Modellen är en grålådemodell som med hjälp av numeriska och statistiska metoder och kända fysikaliska principer av ett system bildar en modell av systemet. De okända parametrarna av systemet som estimeras med hjälp av minsta kvadrat metoden är de tre olika typerna av spalthöjderna och de två olika eccentricitetstyperna som finns i systemets smorda kontakter. Modellen består av de fysikaliska egenskaperna i systemet, formerade i ekvationer för läckaget i de relevanta smorda kontakterna, men inga relationella egenskaper för dynamiken och effekterna mellan de olika smorda kontakterna. Den utvecklade modellen är på grund av den generella karaktären av modellen tillsammans med kvaliteten på den data som finns tillgänglig inte möjlig att modellera läckaget i systemet med tillräcklig noggrannhet. Modellen är trots detta kapabel att fånga de generella trender som återfinns i den uppmätta datan på läckaget för de applicerade dataseten.

This study models the energy used for heating in buildings by applying system identification methodology. The model development is grounded in physics to provide guidance and interpretability when evaluated. Time-series of heating demand, outdoor temperature, indoor temperature and solar irradiation are considered for the modelling purpose. Evaluation is done through simulation and relies on quantitative measures, residual analysis and visual inspection of model output. Through model development, the study seeks to extrapolate information of physical properties that drives heating demand in buildings. Seven buildings located in the same geographic area are studied. It is found that linear ARX-models can simulate heating demand with high precision but at times low accuracy. A common system model structure can be identified between buildings, indicating that physical properties shared between buildings can be identified through this methodology. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to derive the contributions from model constituents to simulation results. Two buildings were also modelled as OE-models. These models performed better than the respective ARX-models but were deemed more difficult to use for the purpose of this study. The study finds difficulties in implementing aggregated time-series of indoor temperature, which could be explored further in future studies for more detailed interpretations.

The ability to communicate referentially has been historically viewed as being uniquelly human. However, with the increasing amount of studies discussing the communicative faculty of animals in the context of the evolution of human language, there is now growing evidence that this ability is present in many animal species, too. Although we know a lot about mimetic abilities of domesticated African grey parrots' (Psittacus erithacus) and their competence to use human words in a referential way, we know very little about the elements of referentiality in their natural vocalization. Our goal in this work was to find, whether and in which context is functionally referential vocalization in this species of birds present. We were determining its presence by the experiment, in which we have exposed four captured African grey parrot, in the ownership of FHS UK Prague, to stimuli that in other animal species usually elicit functionally referential vocalization: predators and prefered type of food. We analysed the behaviour and vocalizations of the tested birds by analytic softwares Interact, respectively Soundforge 0.8. We find out, that despite the fact that birds reaponded to our experimental objects appropriatelly (i.e. "predators" caused more fear and the like), they give the major amout of...

E-commerce has seen a rapid growth the last two decades, making it easy for customers to shop wherever they are. The growth has also led to new kinds of fraudulent activities affecting the customers. To make customers feel safe while shopping online, companies like Resurs Bank are implementing different kinds of fraud filters to freeze transactions that are thought to be fraudulent. The latest type of fraud filter is based on machine learning. While this seems to be a promising technology, data and algorithms need to be tuned properly to the task at hand. This thesis project gives a proof of concept of realizing a machine learning based fraud filter for Resurs Bank. Based on a literature study, available data and explainability requirements, this work opts for a supervised learning approach based on Random Forests with a sliding window to overcome concept drift. The inherent class imbalance of the setting makes the area-under-the-receiver operating-curve a suitable metric. This approach provided promising results that a machine learning based fraud filter can add value to companies like Resurs Bank. An alternative approach on how to incorporate non-numerical features by using recurrent neural networks (RNN) was implemented and compared. The non-numerical feature was transformed by a pre-trained RNN-model to a numerical representation that reflects the features suspiciousness. This new numerical feature was then included in the Random Forest model and the result demonstrated that this approach can add valuable insight to the fraud detection field.

L’expérience I.C.E a pour objectif de tester le principe d’équivalence faible (WEP) à la base de la théorie de la relativité générale d’Einstein et postulant l’équivalence entre masse inertielle et masse grave. Si ce principe a toujours été vérifié jusqu’à aujourd’hui, il est d’un intérêt fondamental pour la physique moderne de poursuivre les mesures avec une précision accrue. En effet, de nouvelles théories d’unification de la mécanique quantique et de la relativité générale prévoient une violation de ce principe. Pour réaliser un test du WEP, il suffit de comparer les accélérations de deux objets en chute libre dans un même champ de gravitation, et c’est ce que réalise l’expérience I.C.E à l’échelle quantique (à la différence de la mission spatiale Microscope qui à ce jour a pu vérifier le WEP avec des objets macroscopiques avec une sensibilité sur le paramètre de 2.10−14). Ainsi, l’expérience consiste à réaliser, par une méthode interférométrique, la mesure de l’accélération de deux espèces atomiques (87Rb et 39K) de masses et de compositions différentes, en chute libre dans une enceinte à vide. La sensibilité de la mesure des effets inertiels auxquels les atomes sont sensibles (accélérations et rotations) est d’autant plus grande que la durée de chute libre des atomes est élevée et que la température des nuages est faible. Or, sur Terre au laboratoire, les atomes finissent par tomber au fond de l’enceinte les contenant sous l’effet de la gravité, ce qui limite grandement la sensibilité de la mesure. C’est pourquoi il est intéressant de placer l’expérience dans un environnement de micropesanteur dans lequel les atomes restent au centre de la chambre à vide afin d’atteindre des temps d’interrogation beaucoup plus longs. A ce titre, l’expérience est embarquée jusqu’à plusieurs fois par an, à bord de l’avion Zéro-g de la société Novespace. Les durées de micropesanteur proposées permettent d’atteindre des temps d’interrogation théoriques de l’ordre de la seconde ce qui doit porter le niveau de sensibilité à 10−11. Cependant, nous sommes aujourd’hui très fortement limités par le niveau élevé de vibrations et de rotations de l’avion : la perte de contraste des franges d’interférence engendrée ainsi que le bruit de phase introduit, ne nous permettent pas de dépasser des temps d’interrogation de 5 ms en 0 g. En parallèle, le laboratoire s’est récemment doté d’un simulateur de microgravité sur lequel est montée l’expérience, donnant accès à des temps d’interrogation de plus de 200 ms avec des trajectoires paraboliques d’une très bonne répétabilité (de l’ordre de 3 mg). La cohérence d’une source atomique étant directement reliée à sa température, l’utilisation de nuages ultra-froids est d’un grand intérêt pour améliorer le contraste des franges d’interférence, d’autant plus pour les longs temps d’interrogation visés. Le présent manuscrit synthétise les travaux ayant permis de produire le tout premier condensat de Bose-Einstein (la source atomique ultime) de 87Rb en microgravité par une méthode tout optique, et ce, de manière répétable toutes les 13,5 secondes. Nous démontrons l’efficacité de note méthode de chargement du piège dipolaire basée sur l’association d’un refroidissement par mélasse grise et d’une modulation spatiale des faisceaux dipolaires. Ces résultats ouvrent la voie vers de futures mesures interférométriques très sensibles à grand facteur d’échelle. / The I.C.E experiment aims at testing the weak equivalence principle (WEP) underlying Einstein’s theory of general relativity and which postulates the equivalence between inertial mass and gravitationnal mass. If this principle has always been verified until today, it is of fundamental interest for physics to continue the measurements with greater precision. Indeed, new unifying theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity predict a violation of this principle. To carry out a test of the WEP, it suffices to compare the accelerations of two objects in free fall in the same gravitationnal field. This is what the I.C.E experiment, on the quantum scale, achieves (unlike the spatial Microscope mission, which to date has been able to verify the principle of equivalence with macroscopic objects with a sensitivity on of 2.10−14). Thus, the experiment consists in performing, by an interferometric method, the measurement of the acceleration of two atomic species (87Rb and 39K) of different mass and composition in free fall in a vacuum chamber. The measurement sensitivity of the inertial effects to which the atoms are sensitive (accelerations and rotations) is all the greater as the free fall time of the atoms is high and their temperature is low. But on Earth, in the laboratory, the atoms eventually fall to the bottom of the vacuum chamber containing them under the effect of gravity, which greatly limits the measurement sensitivity achievable. This is why it is interesting to place the experiment in a microgravity environment in which the atoms stay in the center of the vacuum chamber in order to reach much longer interrogation times. As such, several times a year, the experiment is put aboard the aircraft Zero-g of the Novespace company. The available microgravity durations make it possible to reach theoretical interrogation times of the order of one second, which should raise the sensitivity level to 10−11. However, we are today very strongly limited by the high level of vibrations of the aircraft as well as its rotations : the loss of contrast of the interference fringes and the phase noise caused, do not allow us to exceed 5 ms of interrogation times in 0 g. Since the coherence of an atomic source is directly related to its temperature, the use of ultra-cold clouds is of great interest to improve the contrast of the interference fringes, especially for the long interrogation times targeted. In parallel, the laboratory is now equipped with a microgravity simulator on which is mounted the experiment, giving access to interrogation times of more than 250 ms with parabolic trajectories of a very good repeatability (of the order of 3 mg). This manuscript synthesizes the work that produced the very first 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate in microgravity by all-optical methods, with a repetition rate of 13,5 seconds. We demonstrate the efficiency of our dipole trap loading method based on the association of a grey molasses cooling and a spatial modulation of the dipole beams. These results pave the way for future highly sensitive interferometric measurements with a large scale factor.

La variabilité de la pollution urbaine est liée à l'activité humaine qui est elle-même très variable (journalière, hebdomadaire, annuelle, pluri-annuelle). Afin de développer un modèle qui permet de prédire ces différentes variabilités, nous avons analysé des études démographiques, de l'utilisation de l'espace à partir de données cadastrales et des photographies aériennes et réalisés, des campagnes de prélèvements sur 24h. L'exemple de la Communauté Urbaine du Grand Nancy sur l'utilisation de ces outils est illustré dans ce travail. Les résultats de campagnes de prélèvements sur trois type de sous-bassins (village semi-rural, zone résidentielle, zone résidentielle avec un grand hôpital) en fonction de l?activité humaine (jour versus nuit, repas, lavage) sont discutés. Une meilleure anticipation de la variabilité de la pollution arrivant dans les installations de traitement des eaux résiduaires permettrait d'améliorer leur gestion et donc de leur performance. Les campagnes ont également permis une meilleure compréhension de la variabilité de certains micropolluants tels que les métaux lourds. La pollution est moins variable dans une grande ville que dans une localité rurale, elle est liée aux apports des activités professionnelles sur les différents sites. La variabilité dépend de la nature du réseau de collecte, de style de vie, de la démographie du bassin de collecte (en termes de répartition spatiale et de classe d'âge, etc.), des zones étudiées. Les macro-polluants (C, N-NH4, P) et les micro-polluants métalliques (Na, K, Mg, Ca, Cu, Zn, Mn, Fe, Al) ont été caractérisés. Deux pics de pollution ont été observés : le premier pendant le matin vers 10h00 et le second pic en début de soirée vers 20h00. Pour les zones résidentielles le premier pic correspond à l'activité humaine du matin avant de quitter la maison pour travailler, le deuxième pic correspond aux activités à l'heure du retour à la maison après une journée de travail. On n'a pas trouvé un schéma propre aux zones mixtes (résidentielles avec des activités commerciales, industrielles et hospitalières). Les variations du débit et de la composition des eaux usées reproduisent très bien le cycle humain. Dans ce travail, on a tenu en compte les modifications démographiques, l'occupation du sol et le déplacement domicile-travail sur les sites étudiés / The variation of urban pollution related to human activity depends on several spatial and temporal scales: daily, weekly, annual, multi-year. To develop a model predicting this variations, different tools are used including demographic characteristics (age, sex, income), on the basis of cadastral data and aerial photographs and sampling campaigns on 24h. The use of these tools is illustrated with the example of the Urban area of Nancy. The results of sampling campaigns in three different catchments (semi-rural village, residential area, and residential area with large hospital) are discussed, considering its relation with the human activities (day versus night, meals, laundry). Better anticipating the variability of pollution which arrived to the wastewater treatment plant would improve their management and therefore their performances. These measurements also allowed a better understanding of the variability of some micropollutants such as heavy metals. The daily variation pattern in the big city is less marked than rural communities. This variability is probably related to the contributions of professional activities on different sites. It depends on the modification of the collection network, lifestyle, demographics on the water catchment, in terms of spatial distribution and age class in the studied area. The macropollution (C, N-NH4, P) and metal micropollution (Na, K, Mg, Ca, Cu, Zn, Mn, Fe, Al) were considered. Pollution peaks were observed: For residential areas, the first peak corresponds to human activity in the morning (around 10:00) before leaving home to work, the second peak corresponds to the activities at the time of returning home (around 20:00) after a day's work. We did not find a proper scheme for mixed zones (residential with commercial, industrial and hospital activities). Variations in flow and composition of the wastewater reproduce very well the human cycle, taking into account modifications in population, information on land use and daily journeys between home and work in the studied sites