ENGLISH ABSTRACT This thesis deals with sexual behavior of young people from fifteen till twenty-five years in the Czech Republic. Their activities are evaluated and interpreted from anthropological perspective of passage rituals. The official passage rituals of adulthood were eliminated in the western society and one universal passage ritual was crumbled in inexhaustible assemblage of particular unofficial hazy and often unclear ritual actions. This transformation begins because the man is according to Mary Douglas a ritual animal and the ritual suppressed in one form appears in another on even stronger. In this large assemblage of passage rituals of adulthood we can include for example dancing courses, school- leaving examination, gaining of the driving licence, smoking, drinking alcohol or just sexual activity. In the period of adolescence we can mark this activity as ritual because it has not the clear utilitarian procreative aim. This work presents original field research which bears on two main pillars: 1. on the quantitative questionnaire investigation and 2. on qualitative questionnaire investigation. The quantitative research was made in the secondary schools in Pilsen region and its main part count one hundred-eighty eight respondents. The research was going on during the year 2008 - 2009. The...

The presented dissertation focuses on the process of transition into adulthood through the eyes of young people and the eyes of their mothers. The research study is based on the theory of J.J. Arnett, who identified a new development period "emerging adulthood" [Arnett, 1998]. We use three different perspectives to look at the process of transition into the adulthood: Developmental psychological, sociological and cultural-anthropological. Description of each period associated with the transition to adulthood is extended by the context of a family in which a young person is raised, and by a culture in which the person grows. By introducting these three perspectives in the first part we are creating a theoretical framework for the empirical part of our work. In the empirical part the qualitative study is presented. As the research method semistructured in-depth interview with young Czechs and their mothers was used. Our goal was to understand the perception of the notion of adulthood by young people aged 18 to 30 years and the way they describe their own process of transition into the adulthood. We wanted to determine whether young Czechs show signs of "emerging adulthood." We were also interested in how the relationship between a mother and her offspring, the upbringing, and the cultural context influence...

Les bases de données répliquées cohérentes à terme récentes encapsulent la complexité de la concurrence et des pannes par le biais d'une interface supportant la cohérence causale, protégeant l'application des problèmes d'ordre, et/ou des Types de Données Répliqués (RDTs), assurant une sémantique convergente des mises-à-jour concurrentes en utilisant une interface objet. Cependant, les algorithmes fiables pour les RDTs et la cohérence causale ont un coût en terme de taille des métadonnées. Cette thèse étudie la conception de tels algorithmes avec une taille de métadonnées minimisée et leurs limites. Notre première contribution est une étude de la complexité des métadonnées des RDTs. Les nombreuses implémentations existantes impliquent un important surcoût en espace de stockage. Nous concevons un ensemble optimisé et un registre RDTs avec un surcoût des métadonnées réduit au nombre de répliques. Nous démontrons également les bornes inférieures de la taille des métadonnées pour six RDTs, prouvant ainsi l'optimalité de quatre implémentations. Notre seconde contribution est le design de SwiftCloud, une base de données répliquée causalement cohérente d'objets RDTs pour les applications côté client. Nous concevons des algorithmes qui supportent un grand nombre de répliques partielles côté client, s'appuyant sur le cloud, tout en étant tolérant aux fautes et avec une faible taille de métadonnées. Nous démontrons comment supporter la disponibilité (y compris la capacité à basculer entre des centre de données lors d'une erreur), la cohérence et le passage à l'échelle (petite taille de métadonnées, parallélisme) au détriment d'un léger retard dans l'actualisation des données. / Eventually consistent replicated databases offer excellent responsiveness and fault-tolerance, but expose applications to the complexity of concurrency andfailures. Recent databases encapsulate these problems behind a stronger interface, supporting causal consistency, which protects the application from orderinganomalies, and/or Replicated Data Types (RDTs), which ensure convergent semantics of concurrent updates using object interface. However, dependable algorithms for RDT and causal consistency come at a cost in metadata size. This thesis studies the design of such algorithms with minimized metadata, and the limits of the design space. Our first contribution is a study of metadata complexity of RDTs. RDTs use metadata to provide rich semantics; many existing RDT implementations incur high overhead in storage space. We design optimized set and register RDTs with metadata overhead reduced to the number of replicas. We also demonstrate metadata lower bounds for six RDTs, thereby proving optimality of four implementations. Our second contribution is the design of SwiftCloud, a replicated causally-consistent RDT object database for client-side applications. We devise algorithms to support high numbers of client-side partial replicas backed by the cloud, in a fault-tolerant manner, with small metadata. We demonstrate how to support availability and consistency, at the expense of some slight data staleness; i.e., our approach trades freshness for scalability (small metadata, parallelism), and availability (ability to fail-over between data centers). We validate our approach with experiments involving thousands of client replicas.

Les lasers femtoseconde à fibre dopée Yb sont aujourd'hui largement utilisés dans le domaine industriel parce que leur puissance moyenne est élevée. Cela permet d'accélérer les processus de fabrication. Cependant, les lasers à cristaux dopés Ti-Sa dominent dans les applications scientifiques parce que la durée d'impulsion est souvent le critère principal. Ces derniers produisent des impulsions d'une durée inférieure à 30 fs alors que les lasers à fibre dopée Yb, limités par la bande de gain du milieu amplificateur, ne génèrent que des durées de 300 fs.Cette thèse a permis de démontrer la génération, en sortie d'amplificateur à fibre dopée ytterbium, d'impulsion à haute énergie de quelques cycles optiques. Pour ce faire, la durée des impulsions est d'abord réduite en sortie d'amplificateur grâce à l'optimisation de l'architecture laser par façonnage spectral avant amplificateur de puissance afin de limiter l'impact du rétrécissement spectral par le gain. Cette technique permet de générer des impulsions de 130 fs.Afin d'obtenir des durées encore plus courte, une seconde technique de réduction de la durée des impulsions est utilisée après le laser utilisant l'auto-modulation de phase. Le milieu non-linéaire le plus courant utilisé pour des lasers de haute énergie est le capillaire rempli de gaz. L'utilisation de ce milieu nous permet de générer des durées d'impulsions de 15 fs mais est limité par son encombrement et sa transmission.Un deuxième schéma de compression non-linéaire est étudié afin de dépasser cette limitation : la Cellule Multi-Passage. L'utilisation de ce type d'architecture permet effectivement d'atteindre des transmission très élevées mais la contrainte sur le traitement des miroirs de la cellule limite le facteur de compression.Pour générer des durée d'impulsions de quelques cycles optiques, nous avons donc proposé de combiner les deux architectures étudiées en utilisant les avantages de chacune, permettant ainsi générer des impulsions de 2 cycles optiques (6.8 fs). Cette architecture globale permet la création de sources d'impulsions de haute énergie et de très courtes durées compactes et efficaces. / Femtosecond Yb–doped fiber lasers are commonly used in industry because of their high average power. This permits to increase the speed of fabrication processes. However, in scientific applications, the vast majority of high-intensity physics experiments are nowadays driven using Ti:Sapphire lasers. The key point in these applications is often the pulse duration and Ti:Sapphire lasers typically generate 30 fs pulses whereas Yb-doped fiber lasers generate only 300 fs pulses because of gain narrowing.In this thesis, we have sought to generate few-cycle pulses (< 10fs) from Yb-doped fiber lasers. First, we optimize the laser architecture by using spectral amplitude shaping in order to counterbalance gain narrowing. This allows to generate 130 fs pulse duration.To obtain even shorter pulses we added a nonlinear compression set-up after the laser, based on self-phase modulation. For high energy, the most commonly used nonlinear medium is gas-filled capillaries. This set-up allows us to generate 15 fs pulse duration. Nevertheless the transmission of the set-up is limited to 50 %.A second scheme is studied which overcomes this limitation: the gas-filled Multi-Pass Cell. We experimentally demonstrate for the first time nonlinear compression of a high-energy Yb-doped fiber source in this novel implementation. The use of this architecture permits to reach high transmission but the compression factor at the output of the set-up is limited by the mirror coatings.To produce few-cycles pulse duration, we combine the two aforementionned schemes, allowing the generation of two-cycle (6.8 fs) pulse duration with a high overall transmission. This global architecture will enable a new generation of high-energy compact few-cycle laser sources.

Diploma thesis deals with the new use of the former Franciscan monastery and the modification of the so-called Roman Square in Brno. This district was once Jewish quarter and still has a unique genius loci. The main new function of the monastery is a new branch of the diocesan museum. The Roman Square is a set of diverse places no longer found in the center of Brno. Interventions in its structure are kept to a minimum, in particular the addition of buildings at the gaps. A valuable passage element in the northeastern sector remains accessible through the arcade on the ground floor of the block of flats no. 2. In addition, a new passage will be created in the northwest sector with a covered market. Thanks to these interventions, the whole space of the square will be revived and made more attractive with regard to monument restoration.

Roads are long linear features on the landscape that impact wildlife and their habitats. Among all forms of wildlife turtles are one of the most negatively affected by roads. Wildlife biologists and civil engineers have developed and implemented road design measures to mitigate the negative effects associated with roads. One common approach used to reduce road mortality and to facilitate movement of turtles is to construct a road mitigation system. There are currently 28 road mitigation systems for wildlife in Massachusetts, of which 14 were specifically built for turtles. We identified all known systems in Massachusetts and collected site and structural design information for each. In addition, we also examined the relative effectiveness of experimental passages for freshwater turtles. Structures were evaluated with respect to how their height, width, and position (at or below-grade), influenced the movements of painted turtles. A total of 190 turtles were exposed to the experiential trials and their behavior was characterized by 3 response variables (Total time to complete the trial, Total hesitations observed, and Success based on no hesitations and completion of the trial in less than 120 minutes). We concluded that painted turtles exposed to below-grade tunnels were less hesitant and traveled faster through them as the tunnel size increased from 0.6 m x 0.6 m to 1.2 m x 1.2 m. The 1.2 m x 1.2 m tunnel size overall proved to be the size with the fewest hesitations observed, fastest total times, and highest success rate.

Goddess-based civilisations worshipped the divine as a parthenogentic primordial creative force. Parthenogensis a Greek word that derives from parthenos “virgin” and genesis “from the beginning” was the path of liberation or rebirth into one’s divine nature. Thus, the supreme deity was worshipped as the Virgin Goddess who alone, without male intervention created the Universe by entering liminal states or otherwise altered states of consciousness. Ontologically these states in goddess worshipping cultures were entered during rites of passage through dance, repetitive action, song and descending into underground grottoes. It is the intention of this thesis to explore two rites of passage, pre-menarche and menarche to establish if spiritualising these two events in our lives can lead to women having a vision of the divine, which is the intention of parthenogenesis – our own self-realisation.            Using the kaleidoscope theory as the primary methodology - a method which incorporates a consideration of linguistics, mythology, history, and folklore as well as archaeology - this thesis follows several lines of approach. First, by reviewing the belief systems around parthenogenesis through a matriarchal cosmogony myth and other ancient religious interpretations, it shows that in the pre-patriarchal western world a Virgin Mother Goddess was worshipped due to her parthenogenesis.        Second, it argues that the prepubescent initiation for Artemis of Brauron known as the arkteia, where young girls up to the age of 10 would play the She bear for Artemis was pre-menarchial rite of passage that set the stage for the divine experience during menarche, by retaining our instincts and intuition through our wild nature. To illustrate this, archaeological data as well as historical and mythological clues provide substantive evidence for this. Thirdly, it argues that the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary could have actually been her own menarche or first blood, whereby her spiritual conception of Christ-consciousness is announced by Gabriel and begins her journey to liberation through parthenogenesis. This will be illustrated through early century iconography and theological interpretations of Mary as she weaves the red thread to create the veil of the temple of Jerusalem. Additionally, through the Gospel of Mary Magdalene who was the first Apostle to see a vision of the resurrected Christ and is today considered the keeper of women’s blood mysteries, I argue that the spiritualising of menarche can also lead women to eventually have a vision of the divine, which culminates the path and intention of parthenogenesis – our own self-realisation.            Lastly it explores through existential health how these two rites of passage are reclaimed in the modern world and how they provide an embodied relationship for women with the divine.      This study pulls together fragmented elements of pre-history to make a compelling case for menarche as being the foundation for self-realisation and contemporary understanding of mythological and biblical narratives, rites of passage and their liminal spaces. The lost matriarchal path of parthenogenesis is determined to be applicable ontologically in the modern world.

När någon blir sjuk händer något i kroppen som vi till en början inte kan se. Något främmande börjar växa och det sjuka vill sakta men säkert ta över det friska. I de fall vi inte kan stoppa det sjuka, växer det och tar över tills inget av det friska längre orkar leva kvar. Det här projektet handlar om ett sätt att illustrera ett förlopp av den mänskliga skörheten och hur det kan gå till med en inredningsarkitekt och möbeldesigners verktyg. Möbeln har blivit en metafor för kroppen och det sjuka och det friska symboliseras av två olika material, trä och metall. Bit för bit sker en visuell förändring där det ena materialet stilla ersätter det andra. I projektet har jag som inredningsarkitekt och möbeldesigner undersökt materialmöten, förlopp och hur en serie möbler kan berätta en historia. Jag har använt mig av en metod som jag har utvecklat under arbetets gång, där jag utan att fokusera på resultatet, gång på gång låtit ett material ta över ett annat och utgått ifrån ett objekt för att sedan göra små förskjutningar och förändringar för varje ny möbel jag bygger. Med den här metoden har resultatet inte varit det viktiga utan processen i sig. Att arbeta iterativt genom att gång på gång låta ett material ta över ett annat i en experimentell process har gjort att jag kunnat släppa fokus på resultatet och istället kunnat arbeta fritt i en kreativ process. / When someone gets sick, something happens in the body that we can't see at first. Something foreign starts to grow and the sick wants to slowly but surely take over the healthy. In cases where we cannot stop the sick, it grows and takes over until none of the healthy can survive. This project is about a way to illustrate a course of human frailty and how it can be done with the tools of an interior designer and furniture designer. The furniture has become a metaphor for the body and the sick and the healthy are symbolized by two different materials, wood and metal. Piece by piece, a visual change takes place where one material quietly replaces the other. In the project, as an interior architect and furniture designer, I have investigated material meetings, processes and how a series of furniture can tell a story. I have used a method that I have developed during the work, where without focusing on the result, time and time again I let one material take over another and started from an object and then make small shifts and changes for each new piece of furniture I'm building. With this method, the result has not been the important thing, but the process itself. Working iteratively by repeatedly letting one material take over another in an experimental process has allowed me to let go of the focus on the result and instead work freely in a creative process.

Culverts throughout the country are approaching or are past their original design lives. These ‘baby boomer’ culverts will need to be repaired, rehabilitated, or replaced. Because entire culvert replacement is so expensive and intrusive, alternate measures to extend the culvert project life are growing increasingly popular. One such method is slip lining, where a ‘sleeve’ is installed within an existing culvert barrel and stabilized. Plastic pipe sleeves are very popular for slip lining primarily because the plastic material's lower Manning's roughness values allow for the culvert capacity to be maintained despite a reduction in culvert size. Unfortunately, the reduced friction within the barrel can create a barrier to fish passage due to increased water velocities. The increased velocities also cause greater outlet scour which can result in further obstacles to fish passage. These new fish barriers can greatly affect aquatic ecosystems by limiting the access that fish have to smaller tributaries used for spawning and rearing—access that is critical to the life cycles of many fish. It is suggested that mitigation of the increased velocities should go hand-in-hand with slip lined culvert design projects where fish passage (present or future) is to be considered. Can the demand for hydraulic capacity as well as the demand for fish passage be satisfied? Careful design and installation, coupled with post-project monitoring can result in slip lined culvert retrofits which successfully pass fish. Investigation of federal and state laws and various agency guidelines has informed the creation of a list of culvert conditions which should prompt consideration of slip lined culvert retrofit among other design alternatives. Additionally, a literature review and survey of all U.S. state Departments of Transportation as well as state Fish and Wildlife Departments has shown that there has been very limited experience in providing for fish passage through slip lined culverts. Literature and practice has pointed to the use of baffles and tailwater control weirs for velocity mitigation. Site visits have been made to the few states with this experience to assess developing technologies and record successful and unsuccessful installations. Additional hydraulic analysis using current software suggests general trends in the effects slip lined culvert retrofits on flow type, headwater, velocity as well as the effects of tailwater control weirs. Issues of sustainability, constructability and maintenance, as well as monitoring are addressed.

The field between Stockholm University Frescati campus and the student housing area of Lappkärrsberget, commonly known as Lappis, is today used as a passage – otherwise it is completely empty. This passage is a naturally created shortcut by thousands of students living there, because it is simply a faster way home than the constructed pathway beside it. This proposal is about adding a structure along a passage, an open ground level available for everyone passing by. What geometries are formed from the angle of this specific one? What about the evident lack of student housing in Stockholm today? Can architectural representation be used to develop these design decisions? Drawings, models or even composed techniques are all important ways of explaining spatial atmospheres and logics, especially as architecture students, because these are usually the only physical element that bring our projects to life.