This diploma thesis deals with morphometric analysis and hydrological regime of Skalnaté pleso lake and Hincové Oká lakes, especially the lake level fluctuation, during the period 2011 - 2014. One of the tasks was the bathymetric mapping of observed locations. For Hincové Oká lakes was it the first mapping of bathymetry at all. The hydrological regime and lake level fluctuation regime of observed locations shows interesting differences from the other Tatra lakes whose hydrological regime is controlled by precipitation amounts. The annual culmination of Hincové Oká lakes (the largest lake) is shifted into the spring caused by melting snowpack. When there is no rainfall for a couple of days Skalnaté pleso lake often dries up, even during summer months, when levels of most Tatra lakes reach their maximum values. However summer drying is shortterm. Lake level fluctuation regime is very dynamic. After a strong rainfall event its level rises very steeply, up to 0,14 m per hour. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This thesis deals with the influence of microclimatic conditions (air temperature near tree/shrub top, temperature of the stem and root zone) on the wood phenology of trees (Picea abies) and shrubs (Pinus mugo) growing on the same site in the alpine tree line (ATL) ecotone. Phenological and microclimatic research was carried out in the Giant Mountains at 1,370 m a. s. l. in the 2017 vegetation period, with the aim to compare the course of wood formation depending on the microclimate, to determine the temperature thresholds of wood growth and differences in the morphology of trees and shrubs. Based on the microclimate analysis of trees and shrubs, individual variables were determined (average, average minimum, average maximum, daily amplitude of air, stem and root zone temperatures) characterizing the growing season. The collection of micro-drills of trees and shrubs took place from April to October in an interval of 6 - 11 days, which were subsequently processed and examined in the laboratory. The following phenophases of wood development were distinguished: cambial, enlarging, wall-thickening, mature cells and cells of the previous ring. Subsequently, differences in the number of cells of individual phenophases were identified between trees and shrubs. Furthermore, the temperature thresholds for...

Regarding the vegetation, the most affected areas by high levels of surface ozone (O3) are the mountain ridges. Our study has been carried out in the Jizerske hory Mts. High O3 levels together with the convenient environmental conditions for stomatal conductance could be a threat for the health of recovering ecosystems in this area. The aims of this study was both to assess the influence of O3 on vegetation in the Czech mountains and to provide recommendations and outlooks for possible future using of relatively new methods (visible symptoms and stomatal O3 flux modelling) used for O3 impact assessment on native vegetation in the field; that means physiologically relevant methods for the determination of O3 influence. During 2006 and 2007, O3-like visible symptoms were assessed on the leaves of seven species at four sites. Symptoms on only two species (Fagus sylvatica L. and Rubus idaeus L.) have been determined as O3-induced. To our knowledge, it is the first study in the Czech Republic in which the O3-like symptoms on native plants have been verified by the Ozone Validation Centre for Central Europe. Our results based on O3-induced symptoms indicate that ambient O3 is likely to have a much lower impact than expected, considering the measured O3 concentrations (measured with passive samplers) and...

This Master thesis focuses on a river network characteristics in the Jizerské hory Mts., northern Bohemia. This part of the Czech Republic represents an area, which was during Tertiary and Pleistocene affected by neotectonic movements. Therefore, 30 longitudinal profiles of selected rivers were constructed to determine areas influenced by tectonics most intensively. These profiles were classified into four categories according to shape of profile curve. Also valley cross sections were made on five selected rivers. Additionally, the Jizera and Jizerka rivers were studied to assess changes of their streams in the period of 19382012. On the north-western (the Jeřice river catchment) and northern (the Smědá river catchment) slopes of the Jizerské hory Mts., areas most affected by neotectonic movements were detected. Tectonically controlled valley cross sections are distinctive on the Smědá, Jizera and Kwisa rivers. On the Jizerka and Jizera rivers, lateral erosion rate ranges up to 0,5 m/year.

The main aim of this thesis is assessment of land use changes from half of the 19th century to present in the western part of the České středohoří Mts. Changes in land use categories proportion, development of ecological stability of landscape, development of land use diversity and influence of physical-geographic conditions on land use changes were assessed. The second aim is assessment of abandoned land occurrence in the area. All abandoned lands were mapped and then relationship between abandoned lands occurrence and physical-geographic conditions was assessed. Key words: landscape development, land use, abandoned lands, old maps, České středohoří Mts.

Southwest base of Cordillera Blanca mts. in South American Ands belongs to the most tectonically active fault zones. The core of this thesis was making of a detailed geomorphological map based on remote sensing satellite images for the purpose of analysis of direct and indirect manifestations of neotectonics. The greatest emphasis was placed on morphological manifestations of tectonics movements which are fault scarps facets and vertical fault steps deforming other shapes of relief - e.g. lateral moraines, dejection cones. Vertical steps reach from a few meters to tens of meters (max. 60 m) according to the age of influenced landform. Evaluation of measurements from deformometr from locality Pitec shows main trends of movements - moderate rise of massif, slow opening of fault plane and negligible left-lateral slip. Calculation of mountain-front sinuosity index, whose values were found relatively low, confirms high tectonic activity of fault zone. Analysis of longitudinal stream profiles hasn't showed presence of knick-points in the place of crossing with fault zone. Non-continuous process of lifting movements, whose interval is estimated at 1ka to 3ka (while the very last 2ka has been in relative tectonic calm), could be a possible explanation. Deep erosion of water streams wiped the tectonics...

Classification approaches are used in many areas in order to identify or estimate classes, which different observations belong to. The classification approach, Mahalanobis Taguchi System (MTS) is analyzed and further improved for multi-class classification problems under the scope of this thesis study. MTS tries to explore significant variables and classify a new observation based on its Mahalanobis distance (MD). In this study, first, sample size problems, which are encountered mostly in small data sets, and multicollinearity problems, which constitute some limitations of MTS, are analyzed and a re-sampling approach is explored as a solution. Our re-sampling approach, which only works for data sets with two classes, is a combination of over-sampling and under-sampling. Over-sampling is based on SMOTE, which generates the synthetic observations between the nearest neighbors of observations in the minority class. In addition, MTS models are used to test the performance of several re-sampling parameters, for which the most appropriate values are sought specific to each case. In the second part, multi-class classification methods with MTS are developed. An algorithm, namely Feature Weighted Multi-class MTS-I (FWMMTS-I), is inspired by the descent feature weighted MD. It relaxes adding up of the MDs for variables equally. This provides representations of noisy variables with weights close to zero so that they do not mask the other variables. As a second multi-class classification algorithm, the original MTS method is extended to multi-class problems, which is called Multi-class MTS (MMTS). In addition, a comparable approach to that of Su and Hsiao (2009), which also considers weights of variables, is studied with a modification in MD calculation. It is named as Feature Weighted Multi-class MTS-II (FWMMTS-II). The methods are compared on eight different multi-class data sets using a 5-fold stratified cross validation approach. Results show that FWMMTS-I is as accurate as MMTS, and they are better than FWMMTS-II. Interestingly, the Mahalanobis Distance Classifier (MDC) using all the variables directly in the classification model has performed equally well on the studied data sets.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 DissSDO.pdf: 583517 bytes, checksum: b554029a0300ceef3bc4fe8b2681fca5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Neuropsychology is a science that allows one to draw the profile of cognitive impairment and skills preserved in order to design possible treatments and appropriate educational practices, aiming for better quality of life of the individual. Among the cognitive abilities investigated by neuropsychology, executive functions refers to a system that manages the cognitivebehavioral resources, with the purpose of behavior planning and regulation. This study is a correlational basic research aimed to verify whether the results found in neuropsychological evaluations of executive functions in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are predictive of or show any correlation with the performance of these children in conditional discrimination via identity matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks. A battery of neuropsychological tests were used to evaluate executive function to identify participants’ existing and missing skills, with possible quantification and qualification of the results. The tests used were Wisconsin, Test Tracks Pre-School, Corsi blocks and Attention Test for Cancellation. A portable microcomputer and the Master computer program were used to present MTS tasks. The participants were 13 children with ASD, aged 4 to 12 years, regularly enrolled in a Special Institution / Regular Education School. The correlations revealed significant associations between neuropsychological tests and MTS tasks performance. In general, it was observed that the lower the performance in Test Wisconsin, more perseverative responses were presented and higher correlation was found with the MTS tasks. It was also observed that the better the performance in the Cancellation and trails tests, better performance on MTS tasks. The attention and cognitive flexibility may be pre-requisites for better performances in MTS tasks. Future research could further explore the MTS tasks for evaluation of cognitive and attentional flexibility and intervention of individuals with ASD. Another possibility is to check whether training with several exemplars of identity MTS would improve performance on neuropsychological tests. / A neuropsicologia trata-se de uma ciência que permite traçar o perfil dos comprometimentos cognitivos e das habilidades preservadas afim de possível delineamento de tratamentos e práticas educativas adequadas, almejando melhor qualidade de vida do indivíduo. Assim essa é uma pesquisa básica correlacional, cujo objetivo foi verificar se os resultados encontrados em avaliações neuropsicológicas das funções executivas em crianças com Transtorno do Espectro do Autismo (TEA) são preditivas de ou tem alguma correlação com o desempenho dessas crianças em discriminação condicional por meio de tarefas de escolha de acordo com o modelo (MTS) de identidade. Para isso foi utilizado uma bateria de testes neuropsicológicos para avaliação das funções executivas para identificar habilidades preservadas e comprometidas dos participantes, com possível quantificação e qualificação dos resultados. Os testes utilizados foram: Wisconsin, Teste de Trilhas para Pré-Escolares, Blocos de Corsi e Teste de Atenção por Cancelamento. Foram utilizados também um microcomputador portátil e o programa computacional Mestre para apresentar as tarefas de MTS. Os participantes da pesquisa foram 13 crianças com Transtorno do Espectro do Autismo, com idade entre 4 e 12 anos, regularmente matriculadas em uma Instituição Especial/ Escola Regular de Ensino. As correlações revelaram associações significativas entre os testes neuropsicológicos e as tarefas de MTS. De maneira geral, foi possível observar que quanto menor o desempenho no Teste Wisconsin, mais respostas perseverativas foram apresentadas e maior a correlação com as tarefas de MTS e que quanto melhor foi o desempenho nos testes de Cancelamento e de Trilhas, melhor o desempenho nas tarefas de MTS. Esses resultados sugerem que a atenção e a flexibilidade cognitiva são quesitos para o melhor cumprimento das tarefas de MTS. Pesquisas futuras poderão explorar melhor as tarefas de MTS para avaliação de flexibilidade cognitiva e atencional e intervenção de indivíduos com TEA. Outra possibilidade é verificar se treinos com vários exemplares de relações de identidade em tarefas de MTS melhorariam o desempenho nos testes neuropsicológicos.

A high level of competition in the food industry, specifically in the Middle East and the UK has forced companies to improve their processes by reducing lead time, waste, and costs and increasing production efficiency. The main challenge to the achievement of the process improvement objectives is the high level of process variability. Therefore, this research investigates the different types of variability in food production system and proposes a methodology to reduce the effect variability in food production system. The variability can be caused by several factors, for instance, in biscuit production lines variability can be induced due to short breakdown and long breakdown, variable processing times, variable temperature, etc. The proposed approach addresses process time variability issues associated with both make-to-stock (MTS) and make-to-order (MTO) manufacturing environments using an iterated approach. The proposed methodology integrates process mapping, (which is a lean tool for identifying value added and non-value added activities), discrete event simulation (to mirror the real production line), Taguchi orthogonal arrays (to generate different scenarios in order to investigate the effect of variability on the simulation model), correlation analysis (to identify the highest variability factors), and the rule based system (to improve food production system performance based on identified key performance indicators (KPIs)). The research uses a biscuit production line as a case study to validate the proposed methodology. The application of the proposed approach determines that the highest effected KPI is %working. The results showed that after implementation of the rule-based system, key performance improved in high variable areas. Results analysis based on before scenario shows that %working performance indicator is highly effected by variable temperature, speed, and breakdown factors for high variable areas such as baking, cooling, aligning, and packing. Based on identified factors and high variable areas, rules are developed by applying standardisation setting (SOP, WI, PP) in high variable areas and the results shows %working improved in baking by 4.78%, in cooling by 16.06%, in aligning by 0.35%, in packing machine1 by 2.5%, in packing machine2 by 2.37%, in packaging1 by 3.35%, and in packaging2 by 3.16%. The integrated method allow quick response , control the environment without production interruption, reduce number of experiments , and reducing variability in high variable areas, which narrowed the improvement in the required areas and increased its effectiveness.

Pancreatic cancer is relatively uncommon. Despite its relative scarcity, it is the fourth-ranked cancer killer in the Western world with less than a 5% 5-year survival rate. The high mortality rate is due to the asymptomatic nature of the disease and the advanced stage at which it is usually diagnosed. S100P is a calcium-binding protein that has been shown to be highly expressed in the early stages of pancreatic cancer and has been proposed as a potential therapeutic target via the blocking of its interaction with its receptor RAGE, the receptor for advanced glycation end-products. In this thesis, computational techniques were employed on the NMR ensemble of S100P (PDB Accession code 1OZO) to identify potential inhibitors of the S100P-RAGE interaction in the hope of identifying a series of novel leads that could be developed into clinical candidates for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. In silico studies identified putative binding sites at the S100P dimeric interface capable of accommodating cromolyn, an anti-allergy drug shown to bind to the protein both in vitro and in vivo. Virtual screening of >1 million lead-like compounds using 3D pharmacophore models derived from the predicted binding interactions between S100P and cromolyn, identified 9,408 'hits'. These were hierarchically clustered according to similarities between chemical structures into 299 clusters and 77 singletons. Biological screening of 17 of the 'hits' identified from virtual screening stuidies, 4 of which were synthesised in-house, against pancreatic cancer cell lines identified five compounds that demonstrated an equal or greater capacity to reduce BxPC-3 S100P-expressing pancreatic cells' metastatic potential in vitro relative to cromolyn. Compound 24 in particular, showed significant (p<0.05) inhibition of invasion of these cells at a concentration of 100 μM that was comparable to cromolyn at the same concentration. This compound, structurally distinct from cromolyn, was successfully synthesised, purified and characterised in-house alongside 39 of its analogues. Biological screening of compound 24 and four of its analogues for anti-proliferative activity against BxPC-3 and Panc-1 pancreatic cancer cell lines showed all five compounds significantly (p < 0.0001) inhibiting proliferation in both cell lines at a concentration of 1 μM relative to the non-treated control. Hence, structurally distinct compounds that show promising inhibitory activity on the metastasis and proliferation of pancreatic cancer cells have been identified using a structure-based drug design methodology. These compounds, with further optimisation, could provide good starting points as therapeutic lead candidates for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.