Several warm winter events have occurred across the Southeast in the past decade, including 2 major events in 2017 and 2018 in Georgia and South Carolina. Plants will begin their spring growth sooner than climatology would suggest and then be damaged by early spring frosts in what is commonly known as a "false spring" event. Some species of plants, like peaches and blueberries, which produce buds early in the season, are just an example of some of the agricultural products more at risk than others. As an important measure of dormancy time in plants, chill hours present a measurement capable of tracking phenological shifts in plants. While a lack of required chill hours can delay spring emergence, intense warm periods can override the chilling hour requirement and induce spring emergence. This project involves training self-organizing maps (SOMs) to identify periods of anomalous winter warming based on a reduced number of chill hours within a 5-day temporal period compared to the period's climatological average. A second SOM is nested in the node that produced the most anomalous events to identify the range of warming that occurs in the most anomalous events, the synoptic setups of these events, and when these occurred. Hourly 2-meter temperature from ERA5 is used to conduct this analysis over a domain centered primarily over South Carolina and Georgia with a temporal period of 1980-2020. Climatological examination of chill hour accumulations in the past 4 decades show an overall decrease in chill hour accumulation across the past decade (2011-2020) Results indicated that periods of higher-than-average temperatures are increasing with time while periods of average or lower than average temperatures are decreasing with time. Both results were statistically significant by Mann-Kendall test. The results of the nested SOMs suggest that an increase in patterns of southerly flow (a common pattern for warmer temperatures) is occurring through time. A third SOM investigating early spring hard freezes was inconclusive but illustrated that some years had more early spring frosts than others independent of how many warmer than average periods occurred in the main winter. The use of SOMs for investigating climatological and synoptic changes in winter and early spring proved successful and effective. Future modifications to these SOMs could be used to identify more trends that exist within these seasons. / Master of Science / Several warm winter events have occurred across the Southeast in the past decade, including 2 major events in 2017 and 2018 in Georgia and South Carolina. Plants will begin their spring growth sooner than climatology would suggest and then be damaged by early spring frosts in what is commonly known as a "false spring" event. Some species of plants, like peaches and blueberries, which produce buds early in the season, are just an example of some of the agricultural products more at risk than others. As an important measure of dormancy time in plants, chill hours present a measurement capable of tracking shifts from normal winter to spring transition in plants. While a lack of required chill hours can delay leaf emergence and spring blooms, intense warm periods can override the chilling hour requirement and induce this spring emergence. This project involves training self-organizing maps (SOMs), a machine learning model, to identify periods of anomalous winter warming based on a reduced number of chill hours within a 5-day temporal period compared to the period's climatological average. A second SOM is nested in the node that produced the most anomalously warm events to identify the range of warming that occurs in the most anomalous events, the large-scale meteorological setups of these events, and when these occurred. Hourly 2-meter temperature from ERA5, a climatological dataset, is used to conduct this analysis over a domain centered primarily over South Carolina and Georgia with a temporal period of 1980-2020. Climatological examination of chill hour accumulations in the past 4 decades show an overall decrease in chill hour accumulation across the past decade (2011-2020) Results indicated that periods of higher-than-average temperatures are increasing with time while periods of average or lower than average temperatures are decreasing with time. Both of these trend findings were statistically significant by Mann-Kendall test. The results of the nested SOMs suggest that an increase in patterns of southerly flow (a common pattern for warmer temperatures) is occurring through time. A third SOM investigating early spring hard freezes (temperatures low enough to cause damage to plant cellular structures) was inconclusive but illustrated that some years had more early spring frosts than others independent of how many warmer than average periods occurred in the main winter. The use of SOMs for investigating climatological and synoptic changes in winter and early spring proved successful and effective. Future modifications to these SOMs could be used to identify more trends that exist within these seasons.

"This study has two-fold purpose: (1) to determine how the senior high school girls of Big Spring, Texas spend their leisure time and the relation, if any, of certain home and community facilities and instruction as factors which govern the amount and type of leisure activities, (2) to determine whether the public schools are preparing the students for the wise use of leisure time. "-- leaf 3.

This thesis informs reader about main ways of client-server application design and technologies for building an Application Programming Interface (API). It compares mainly modern approaches - REST and GraphQL, which became recently popular. The final product of thesis is a web application for self-improvement of employees in software company. Application provides features like self-improvement activities management or planning of meetings. Employees management, user registration and log in are obvious. Application uses GraphQL technology as an application interface, Java programming language together with Spring Boot for server implementation and Angular for client implementation. Spring Security framework is used for authentication and authorization, MySQL was chosen for database part.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to design and create system for company dealing with telephoning, which will simplify and automate the work of their employees as much as possible. System will meet the requirements on modern information system of telemarketing company and will be connected to telephone private branch exchange, from which it will be getting information about all phone calls including their voice records. The work is focused on usage of modern quality technologies and their integration into one system. First part of this work will closely describe requirements on this system and resulting creation of design. In the second part there will be presented used technologies and implementation of particular sections including configuration and connection with telephone private branch exchange. There will be also description of performance measurement process and resulting optimalization of critical sections in which high performance is required.

The presented master’s thesis is focused on the design of device for spring dismount from shock absorber and measuring of its spring characteristic. Then is the thesis focused on the design of device for measuring the spring characteristic of anti-roll and torsion bars. The introductory part of the thesis describes the basic distribution of springs and their properties and also design variants of wheel suspensions. Next part introduces devices already available on the market. The following sections aim to the design of stated devices itself, i.e. the description of their parts and functions, the definition of output parameters and stress-strain analysis. Both designs, including the analyses and technical drawings, were created in Autodesk Inventor software.

This thesis deals with the issue of preparation of final exams at the Faculty of Information Technology of Brno University of Technology. It describes the process of design and implementation of a web application that allows teachers to create and manage room schemes and terms of individual exams. An important part of the application is also the automatic placement of students in the rooms and the generation of individual exam assignments for printing based on the given template and the method of placement. The application provides students with a clear view of individual exam terms and details about them. The work will result in a functional and usable web application written in Java using the Spring and Angular frameworks.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Robert L. Clark / Medieval French literature provides the modern researcher with references to the healing arts in many passages that are incorporated into prose or poetic works. Because there was no clear separation of the genres into modern classifications, references to treatment of sicknesses of body, mind or spirit are woven into many literary works, providing us with a kind of snapshot of the state of the art healing practices of the day. Texts make reference to herbs and plants used to cure the ailments of the body, gardens and flowers that refresh the spirit, miraculous unguents, cures through the intercession of the saints and the Virgin Mary and surgical procedures. Texts examined here include Le Roman de la Rose, Erec et Enide, Aucassin et Nicolette, Les Lais of Marie de France, Le conte du Graal, Le chevalier de la charrette, La Condamnation de Banquet, Yvain, Cligès, La Chanson de Roland and Treize Miracles de Notre-Dame. The picture they provide of the medicine of the time has a certain charm and quaintness that many moderns seek in holistic treatments of today which hearken back to this more rustic medicine.

Master of Arts / Communications Studies / Charles J. Griffin / The 2011 Arab Spring Revolutions across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region drew international attention to the collection action phenomenon of revolutions. Despite having a significant impact on today’s globalized world, revolutions have been widely unexplored by social movement rhetorical scholars. This lack of study has prompted scholars to call for the investigation of the role human agency plays during revolutions (Morris, 2000). Rhetorical scholars are well-suited to meet this call but lack a methodological framework to examine revolutions. In responding to Morris’ call and with an interest in adding to the body of rhetorical social movement literature, this thesis asks two research questions. What are the rhetorical characteristics of revolutions? Are revolutions rhetorically distinct from social movements? To answer these questions, this thesis translates Jack Goldstone’s (1998) Divergent View of Social Movements and Revolutions into a rhetorical model for studying revolutions. This adaptation of the political science model relies heavily on Leland Griffin’s (1969) and Charles Stewart’s (1980) models of social movements. Additionally, the adapted model also incorporates James Wilkinson’s (1989) discussion of revolutionary rhetorical functions. The application of the new rhetorical model to the Egyptian Arab Spring reveals revolutions rhetorically develop and function in ways that creates a clear distinction between revolutions from social movements. These findings prompt discussion of methodological and critical implications.

Master of Science / Department of Computer Science / Mitchell L. Neilsen / Finding jobs that best suits the interests and skill set is quite a challenging task for the job seekers. The difficulties arise from not having proper knowledge on the organization’s objective, their work culture and current job openings. In addition, finding the right candidate with desired qualifications to fill their current job openings is an important task for the recruiters of any organization. Online Job Search Portals have certainly made job seeking convenient on both sides. Job Portal is the solution where recruiter as well as the job seeker meet aiming at fulfilling their individual requirement. They are the cheapest as well as the fastest source of communication reaching wide range of audience on just a single click irrespective of their geographical distance. The web application “Job Search Portal” provides an easy and convenient search application for the job seekers to find their desired jobs and for the recruiters to find the right candidate. Job seekers from any background can search for the current job openings. Job seekers can register with the application and update their details and skill set. They can search for available jobs and apply to their desired positions. Android, being open source has already made its mark in the mobile application development. To make things handy, the user functionalities are developed as an Android application. Employer can register with the application and posts their current openings. They can view the Job applicants and can screen them according to the best fit. Users can provide a review about an organization and share their interview experience, which can be viewed by the Employers.

This thesis starts with the introduction of the general historic moments of postwar Czechoslovakia. Attention is paid to the February 1948, Prague Spring and the events of August 1968. These dates established two waves of emigration from Czechoslovakia. In this context, there are presented personalities of Jiri Pelikan and Pavel Tigrid as leading personalities of exile. The analytical part focuses on the comparison of Tigrid's Svedectvi and Listy published by Jiri Pelikan. Analysis is based on important events in postwar history. The thesis is mainly focused on the different perceptions of the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution in 1989.