Economic growth in emerging economies has been changing the livelihoods of many smallholders. Typically, disparity increases as economies emerge, and the agricultural sector experiences lower growth relative to other sectors. Growing inequalities and economic vulnerabilities during this critical period of development in emerging economies are often associated with social problems and political tensions, as this is the case in Thailand. In the latter, the Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy (SE) has been employed through the monarchy in a number of ways. Due to laws prohibiting critique of the monarchy, these projects are not fairly evaluated and the perspectives of smallholders affected are largely unknown. Knowledge on the effectiveness of Thailand’s Philosophy of SE in combating the disparity problem and economic vulnerability in the agricultural sectors of emerging economies was gained through semi-structured interviews. An organic farming project run by a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), called ISAC follows the principles of Sufficiency Economy, and is located in the Mae Taeng district in the north of the province of Chiang Mai. A sample of 20 farmers from two villages (Don Chiang and San Pa Yang) who participate in the project was interviewed. Questions regarding age and education level of all family members also created a quantitative sample of 72 individuals. An epistemological framework based in critical realism was employed with the use of purposive interview sampling methods Results indicate that employing SE can help a select group of farmers to escape economic vulnerability. This group includes farmers in an older age group with sufficient land and access to guidance. The philosophy may help keep this group of farmers satisfied as the countries economy evolves. The project appears to be sustainable only in the short-term as younger generations seem to be reaching higher levels of education than their elders and are likely to pursue lives outside of agriculture. In addition, some benefits of farming with the principles of SE include, lower financial stress, improved health, and a better family life. Conversely, a decision to live by the principles of SE can lead to a stigmatization of farmers within their community, creating in-groups and out-groups.

The work deals with regional disparities that play a key role in regional development process. Regional disparities are a major problem of regional development because they cause an uneven regional development. This work focuses specifically on disparities in tourism and it looks for suitable indicators to do a research on these disparities in the Central Bohemia Region. In this work, tourism figures as an instrument of regional policy for developing the region and, if possible, to reduce the regional disparities. Disparities in tourism are primarily characterized as spatial disparities that are mainly determined by indicators of transport infrastructure, natural environment and the potential for tourism. Using selected indicators of the indicators above, this work assesses the disparities of tourism in the Central Bohemian Region and it recommends some ways to reduce these disparities.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le contexte de l'optimisation convexe. Elle apporte à ce domaine deux contributions principales. La première porte sur les méthodes d'optimisation convexe non lisse appliquées à la vision par ordinateur. Quant à la seconde, elle fournit de nouveaux résultats théoriques concernant la manipulation de mesures de divergences, telles que celles utilisées en théorie de l'information et dans divers problèmes d'optimisation. Le principe de la stéréovision consiste à exploiter deux images d'une même scène prises sous deux points de vue, afin de retrouver les pixels homologues et de se ramener ainsi à un problème d'estimation d'un champ de disparité. Dans ce travail, le problème de l'estimation de la disparité est considéré en présence de variations d'illumination. Ceci se traduit par l'ajout, dans la fonction objective globale à minimiser, d'un facteur multiplicatif variant spatialement, estimé conjointement avec la disparité. Nous avons mis l'accent sur l'avantage de considérer plusieurs critères convexes et non-nécessairement différentiables, et d'exploiter des images multicomposantes (par exemple, des images couleurs) pour améliorer les performances de notre méthode. Le problème d'estimation posé est résolu en utilisant un algorithme parallèle proximal basé sur des développements récents en analyse convexe. Dans une seconde partie, nous avons étendu notre approche au cas multi-vues qui est un sujet de recherche relativement nouveau. Cette extension s'avère particulièrement utile dans le cadre d'applications où les zones d'occultation sont très larges et posent de nombreuses difficultés. Pour résoudre le problème d'optimisation associé, nous avons utilisé des algorithmes proximaux en suivant des approches multi-étiquettes relaxés de manière convexe. Les algorithmes employés présentent l'avantage de pouvoir gérer simultanément un grand nombre d'images et de contraintes, ainsi que des critères convexes et non convexes. Des résultats sur des images synthétiques ont permis de valider l'efficacité de ces méthodes, pour différentes mesures d'erreur. La dernière partie de cette thèse porte sur les problèmes d'optimisation convexe impliquant des mesures d'information (Phi-divergences), qui sont largement utilisés dans le codage source et le codage canal. Ces mesures peuvent être également employées avec succès dans des problèmes inverses rencontrés dans le traitement du signal et de l'image. Les problèmes d'optimisation associés sont souvent difficiles à résoudre en raison de leur grande taille. Dans ce travail, nous avons établi les expressions des opérateurs proximaux de ces divergences. En s'appuyant sur ces résultats, nous avons développé une approche proximale reposant sur l'usage de méthodes primales-duales. Ceci nous a permis de répondre à une large gamme de problèmes d'optimisation convexe dont la fonction objective comprend un terme qui s'exprime sous la forme de l'une de ces divergences / Convex optimization aims at searching for the minimum of a convex function over a convex set. While the theory of convex optimization has been largely explored for about a century, several related developments have stimulated a new interest in the topic. The first one is the emergence of efficient optimization algorithms, such as proximal methods, which allow one to easily solve large-size nonsmooth convex problems in a parallel manner. The second development is the discovery of the fact that convex optimization problems are more ubiquitous in practice than was thought previously. In this thesis, we address two different problems within the framework of convex optimization. The first one is an application to computer stereo vision, where the goal is to recover the depth information of a scene from a pair of images taken from the left and right positions. The second one is the proposition of new mathematical tools to deal with convex optimization problems involving information measures, where the objective is to minimize the divergence between two statistical objects such as random variables or probability distributions. We propose a convex approach to address the problem of dense disparity estimation under varying illumination conditions. A convex energy function is derived for jointly estimating the disparity and the illumination variation. The resulting problem is tackled in a set theoretic framework and solved using proximal tools. It is worth emphasizing the ability of this method to process multicomponent images under illumination variation. The conducted experiments indicate that this approach can effectively deal with the local illumination changes and yields better results compared with existing methods. We then extend the previous approach to the problem of multi-view disparity estimation. Rather than estimating a single depth map, we estimate a sequence of disparity maps, one for each input image. We address this problem by adopting a discrete reformulation that can be efficiently solved through a convex relaxation. This approach offers the advantage of handling both convex and nonconvex similarity measures within the same framework. We have shown that the additional complexity required by the application of our method to the multi-view case is small with respect to the stereo case. Finally, we have proposed a novel approach to handle a broad class of statistical distances, called $varphi$-divergences, within the framework of proximal algorithms. In particular, we have developed the expression of the proximity operators of several $varphi$-divergences, such as Kulback-Leibler, Jeffrey-Kulback, Hellinger, Chi-Square, I$_{alpha}$, and Renyi divergences. This allows proximal algorithms to deal with problems involving such divergences, thus overcoming the limitations of current state-of-the-art approaches for similar problems. The proposed approach is validated in two different contexts. The first is an application to image restoration that illustrates how to employ divergences as a regularization term, while the second is an application to image registration that employs divergences as a data fidelity term

The diploma thesis consists of an analysis of the secondary education in the Czech Republic in relation to the demand for the labor force of the labor market. The main aim of the thesis is to identify whether the structure of secondary school graduates who enter the labor market corresponds with the structure of the demand for a labor. The basic terms and concepts of education and labor market and basic characteristics of the selected regions are mentioned in the theoretical part of the thesis. In addition the basic legislation and strategic documents related to education are described in the theoretical part. The practical part of the thesis is focused on analysis of the number and structure of secondary schools graduates and the number of vacant positions in selected regions of the Czech Republic. For the purposes of the analysis the data from years 2006-2011 in South Bohemia, South Moravia and Moravian-Silesian Region will be used.

There is a large economic inequality between the autonomous communities of Spain. The EU Regional Policy contributes to reduce regional disparities by providing funds to support the convergence of backward regions and the competitiveness of more developed areas. The aim of the thesis is to compare the evolution of socioeconomic indicators and evaluate their impact on the economy of Spain.

No description available.

En vision industrielle, de nombreuses applications de mesure et de contrôle qualité évoluent vers des problématiques tri-dimensionnelles. Les systèmes de stéréovision sont des solutions technologiques qui attirent les industriels par leur simplicité mécanique. Deux caméras statiques disposées à des endroits stratégiques peut s'avérer suffisantes pour répondre à cette problématique bien que les contraintes industrielles imposent de respecter des temps de traitement courts et des mesures précises. La diversité des applications nous amènent à envisager deux approches afin de répondre à deux types d'application. La première technique consiste en la reconstruction 3D à partir de paires de points images qui se correspondent dans les deux images. Elle est destinée à répondre à la problématique de mesure 3D. Les méthodes de calibration monoculaire et de calcul 3D par triangulation sont la base de la reconstruction 3D. Nous étudions la précision de mesure et son évolution selon la pose du système de capture par rapport à la scène observée. La seconde technique consiste à construire des images de disparité afin de répondre à des problématiques de construction de profil et d'analyse de défaut. La contrainte d'alignement des caméras, nécessaire pour accélérer le processus de mise en correspondance, implique d'utiliser des méthodes de calibration stéréoscopique et de rectification des images. Nous étudions l'impact de l'alignement sur la qualité de la rectification. La production de carte dense de disparité se base sur les techniques de stéréo-corrélation. Nous montrons les limites de l'utilisation d'un noyau de corrélation carré et proposons une alternative par production de deux cartes denses de disparité à partir de deux noyaux mono-directionnels, améliorant la mesure de disparité sur les zones de contours et d'occultations. / In industrial vision, many applications for measuring and quality control are moving to three-dimensional problems. Stereovision systems are technological solutions that attract industry by their mechanical simplicity. Two static cameras placed at strategic locations may be sufficient to address this problem although the industrial constraints imposed to respect a short processing time and precise measurements. The diversity of applications lead us to consider two approaches to resolve the two types of application. The first technique consists in the 3D reconstruction from pairs of image points which correspond in both images. It is intended to address the problem of 3D measurement. The methods of monocular calibration and 3D triangulation are the basis of 3D reconstruction. We study the accuracy and its evolution according to the capture system pose compared to the observed scene. The second technique is to construct disparity maps to address problems of building profile and default analysis. The alignment constraint of cameras needed to accelerate the process of matching involves the use of methods of stereoscopic calibration and image rectification. We study the impact of alignment on the quality of the rectification. The production of dense disparity map is based on the stereo-correlation techniques. We show the limits of the use of a squared correlation kernel and propose an alternative production of two dense disparity maps from two mono-directional kernels, improving the measurement of disparity around edges and occlusions.

Les systèmes d'aide à la conduite (ADAS) visent à automatiser/ adapter/ améliorer les systèmes de transport pour une meilleure sécurité et une conduite plus sûre. Plusieurs thématiques de recherche traitent des problématiques autour des ADAS, à savoir la détection des obstacles, la reconnaissance de formes, la compréhension des images, la stéréovision, etc. La présence des réflexions spéculaires limite l'efficacité et la précision de ces algorithmes. Elles masquent les textures de l'image originale et contribuent à la perte de l'information utile. La polarisation de la lumière traduit implicitement l'information attachée à l'objet, telle que la direction de la surface, la nature de la matière, sa rugosité etc. Dans le contexte des ADAS, l'imagerie polarimétrique pourrait être utilisée efficacement pour éliminer les réflexions parasites des images et analyser d'une manière précise les scènes routières. Dans un premier temps, nous proposons dans cette thèse de supprimer les réflexions spéculaires des images via la polarisation en appliquant une minimisation d'énergie globale. L'information polarimétrique fournit une contrainte qui réduit les distorsions couleurs et produit une image diffuse beaucoup plus améliorée. Nous avons ensuite proposé d'utiliser les images de polarisation comme une caractéristique vu que dans les scènes routières, les hautes réflexions proviennent particulièrement de certains objets telles que les voitures. Les attributs polarimétriques sont utilisés pour la compréhension de la scène et la détection des voitures. Les résultats expérimentaux montrent que, une fois correctement fusionnés avec les caractéristiques couleur, les attributs polarimétriques offrent une information complémentaire qui améliore considérablement les résultats de la détection.Nous avons enfin testé l'imagerie de polarisation pour l'estimation de la carte de disparité. Une méthode d'appariement est proposée et validée d'abord sur une base de données couleur. Ensuite, Une règle de fusion est proposée afin d'utiliser l'imagerie polarimétrique comme une contrainte pour le calcul de la carte de disparité. A partir des différents résultats obtenus, nous avons prouvé le potentiel et la faisabilité d'appliquer l'imagerie de polarisation dans différentes applications liées aux systèmes d’aide à la conduite. / Advance Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) aim to automate/adapt/enhance trans-portation systems for safety and better driving. Various research topics are emerged to focus around the ADAS, including the object detection and recognition, image understanding, disparity map estimation etc. The presence of the specular highlights restricts the accuracy of such algorithms, since it covers the original image texture and leads to the lost of information. Light polarization implicitly encodes the object related information, such as the surface direction, material nature, roughness etc. Under the context of ADAS, we are inspired to further inspect the usage of polarization imaging to remove image highlights and analyze the road scenes.We firstly propose in this thesis to remove the image specularity through polarization by applying a global energy minimization. Polarization information provides a color constraint that reduces the color distortion of the results. The global smoothness assumption further integrates the long range information in the image and produces an improved diffuse image.We secondly propose to use polarization images as a new feature, since for the road scenes, the high reflection appears only upon certain objects such as cars. Polarization features are applied in image understanding and car detection in two different ways. The experimental results show that, once properly fused with rgb-based features, the complementary information provided by the polarization images improve the algorithm accuracy. We finally test the polarization imaging for depth estimation. A post-aggregation stereo matching method is firstly proposed and validated on a color database. A fusion rule is then proposed to use the polarization imaging as a constraint to the disparity map estimation. From these applications, we proved the potential and the feasibility to apply polariza-tion imaging in outdoor tasks for ADAS.

Disparities in academic and social outcomes for ethnically diverse students in educational settings has been identified in the literature as the achievement gap. This study examined the impact of teacher training interventions on establishing equity in teacher implementation of a common positive behavior classroom support strategy, behavior-specific praise in four elementary classrooms. Teacher self-monitoring and written performance feedback were used to facilitate teachers to improve classroom practices by establishing proportionate praise and discipline practices across racially diverse students. A multiple-baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the impact of self-monitoring and written performance feedback with and without equity-focused procedures on teacher delivery of behavior-specific praise and reprimands and their perception of student classroom behavior. Results indicated that the typical self-monitoring and written performance feedback were effective in increasing the participating teachers’ overall rates of delivering behavior-specific praise and reducing reprimands; however, substantial disparities in praise delivery were observed between demographic groups across all four teachers. Additional feedback regarding equity was necessary for reducing disparities in teacher behavior between demographic groups. The results also indicated that teacher perception of student classroom behavior improved, demonstrating decreased levels of disruptive student behavior and increased levels of respect and student engagement across all participants

The Diploma Thesis "The Factors Affecting the Low Numbers of Women Working as IT Professionals in Czech Republic" does focus on the issue of disproportion of men and women working in IT field in the Czech labor market. The theoretical background reaching up to 1980's is presented on the first pages . I slightly come across the issue of low numbers of women working as IT professionals in the Czech Republic, but I also briefly comment on international findings for solution of this situation. The important part of the text is the description of current situation of the Czech Republic labour market. Last but not least I debate on factors influencing womens decisions when choosing future profession and what stops them from choosing the information technology field. Part of the thesis is also survey which provides detailed information of the experience of women working as IT professionals in Czech Republic. The theoretical point of the thesis is the gender concept, according to this concept the skills and abilities of women and men aren't biologically given as we often stereotype, but they are formed socially.