Notre thèse s’attache à l’étude des systèmes représentationnels impliqués par la parenté par recours au don de spermatozoïdes. D’un point de vue théorique en psychologie sociale, l’objectif est de saisir la logique de ces systèmes (contenus et processus d’élaboration et de transformation) et leur efficacité au sein de la pratique sociale. La problématique porte sur les manières dont le sens commun traduit les enjeux anthropologiques relatifs à la parenté et au don dans le cas du don de spermatozoïdes. Nous nous inscrivons dans une approche sociogénétique des représentations sociales nous permettant de retracer les éléments et les jalons des processus d’appropriation symbolique en œuvre pour ceux qui ont pour tâche d’institutionnaliser ces pratiques et pour ceux qui en ont une expérience vécue. Nous avons développé un plan de recherche fonctionnant selon le principe de la triangulation des méthodes et organisant une étude multi-niveaux des phénomènes représentationnels. Grâce au partenariat scientifique avec la Fédération française des CECOS, nous avons rencontré des parents par recours au don de spermatozoïdes dans le cadre d’enquêtes quantitative et qualitative (entretiens individuels et focus groups). L’analyse des débats parlementaires de la révision de 2011 de la loi relative à la bioéthique complète ce design méthodologique. Les résultats ont permis de mettre au jour les systèmes représentationnels actualisés dans la sphère publique pour penser la parenté par recours au don, via la mise en évidence des tensions entre catégories de pensée fondamentales (thêmata) qui organisent le champ représentationnel des acteurs parlementaires. Le croisement des analyses dégage des similarités entre les logiques parentales et parlementaires (pro-anonymat) quant à cet anonymat du donneur, sans qu’il n’y ait de détermination, par ce régime anonyme, des pratiques parentales (majoritaires) de récits de sa conception à l’enfant. Les analyses des processus d’inscriptions psychosociales et culturelles du vécu de la parenté par recours au don témoignent toutefois d’un projet représentationnel partagé qui s’ancre dans des modes de parenté normalisés. Il s’actualise de manières paradoxales par un ensemble signifiant de pratiques (récits à l’enfant du recours au don ; dons d’ovocytes) qui se constituent en actions représentationnelles. La discussion souligne l’intérêt qu’il y a à considérer une pluralité de sociogenèses. Elles produisent des états représentationnels composites et la complexité de phénomènes en tensions, dont des actions représentationnelles transgressant et prolongeant l’ordre établi des attendus culturels et des rapports sociaux. / This thesis focuses on the representational systems involved in family building through sperm donation. Drawing on psychosocial theories, it investigates the logic behind these systems and their efficacy in social practices. Specifically, we explore how anthropological issues to do with kinship/relatedness and giving-receiving relationships are transformed into common sense knowledge in the case of sperm donation. This issue is considered using a sociogenetic approach, through the lens of social representations theory. Adopting this theoretical perspective allowed us to trace the elements and milestones of the processes of symbolic coping at play among those whose task is to institutionalise these practices, and among those who experience them.We developed a research programme organised according to principles of method triangulation, hence conducting multi-level studies of representational phenomena. Owing to our scientific partnership with the French federation of CECOS (certified clinics), we conducted quantitative and qualitative research (interviews and focus groups) with parents who conceived their children using sperm donation. A further aspect of our research was based upon an analysis of parliamentary debates regarding the 2011 revision to bioethics legislation in France.Our findings indicated the significance of representational systems for meaning making about parenthood through sperm donation. Specifically, the representational fields of parliamentary players were shown to be organised by tensions between fundamental categories of thought (themata). We found similarities between parental and parliamentary logics that both favoured anonymity, but no relationship between parents’ disclosure decisions and donor anonymity. We did however observe that parents make sense of sperm donation through a shared - yet negotiated - representational project anchored in a rather traditional family model. This project was found to be enacted paradoxically by a set of significant practices (disclosure strategies; egg donation) that constitute representational actions.Our discussion underlines the intense dynamic that underpins the investigated representational systems, studied in different areas of production and transformation. It leads to complex and tense representational phenomena, including actions that transgress and prolong the established cultural and social order.

C’est désormais un fait acquis : la population française a vieilli. Cette évolution démographique n’est pas sans incidence sur le droit des successions et libéralités. D’une part, la personne âgée est incitée à transmettre précocement aux générations plus jeunes et plus actives. D’autre part, elle est sommée de songer au coût de la prise en charge d’une éventuelle dépendance liée au grand âge. Ces injonctions contradictoires conduisent à adopter une approche différente de l'anticipation successorale. Bien entendu, l'acte d'anticipation sera toujours considéré comme efficace lorsqu’il permettra au de cujus d’imposer durablement sa volonté, au-delà même de la mort. Mais, désormais, l’acte doit en outre faire montre d’une certaine capacité d’adaptation. Face aux différents événements jalonnant une longue existence, les besoins de chacun évoluent, si bien que les arbitrages réalisés plusieurs décennies auparavant se révéleront parfois peu judicieux. C'est pourquoi la stabilité et l'adaptabilité sont désormais devenues les deux caractéristiques primordiales, bien qu’apparemment inconciliables, d’une stratégie de transmission pérenne. Pour triompher de l’épreuve du temps, le projet doit ainsi allier tout à la fois les qualités du chêne et du roseau, c’est-à-dire aussi bien la robustesse de l’arbre séculaire que la souplesse de la jeune plante. / It’s a fact : the French population is aging. This demographic trend has an impact on inheritance law and estate planning. On one hand, seniors are encouraged to hand down property to younger generations early on. On the other hand, they are asked to put aside money for their own care. Estate planning must adapt to this new context. As of now, stability and adaptability are the two primordial characteristics of good estate planning, although they’re apparently irreconcilable. First, you must be sure that wishes will be respected and not betrayed by the heirs after your death. Then, Estate planning will be more efficient if it can adapt. Life changes, needs change, so the elderly must be free to change their mind when a project made years ago becomes irrelevant. To be more efficient, estate planning must combine the qualities of the oak and the reed : the robustness of the old tree and the flexibility of the young plant.

Organ donation is traditionally based on the notion of making a gift based on altruism. An important aspect of ‘altruistic gifting’ is commitment to a solidaristic approach to meeting transplant needs. In line with this, people are encouraged to donate their organs at death to a common pool for collective provision, or donate a live organ to another freely. Given a chronic organ shortage, proposals have been made to change this system to increase donation. Proposals include introducing some organ market or payment in the form of a reward to incentivise live or deceased donation. However, these proposals have been opposed because of the grip of ‘altruistic gift’ as the only ethically acceptable way to procure and distribute organs. To support the ethical acceptability of other systems, ‘altruistic gift’ has been subject to various criticisms. One criticism is the moral relevance of altruism: people may donate on other motives other than altruism; or, altruism is not the motive that underpins most deceased organ donations. Another criticism is the moral value of altruism: even if deceased organ donations are in general altruistic, altruism does not express communal virtues like generosity that support solidarity. A third criticism is the value of the concept of altruism when understood in the pure sense: ‘pure altruism’ fashions an unnecessary or false dichotomy – gift versus sale – in the way people can ethically relate and help each other. Consistent with or following this criticism, it has been argued that use of a financial reward to incentivise donation can be compatible with preserving donation as altruistic albeit in a ‘non-pure’ sense. ‘Altruism’ and reward can co-exist as motives for donation. This thesis concerns itself centrally with the third criticism. It argues that the concept of altruism delineates a distinctive moral ‘perspective’ of a common humanity that engenders a devotion to others’ interests. Accordingly, as I argue, ‘non-pure’ definitions of altruism are misleading as to how a financial reward can be compatible with altruism. From this, the thesis argues that introduction of a financial reward for organ donation would not preserve donation as altruistic. Based on an understanding of altruism as also a motive for ‘creative’ relationships, the thesis counters criticisms of its relevance and value to deceased organ donation under a gift model. As part of its legal analysis, the thesis considers the antithesis of ‘altruistic gift’: the idea of organs as property which places individual control on their disposition at its moral centre. It has been argued that organs should be owned as property so that individuals can sell them, or transmit them to relatives so that relatives can claim payment from donation. To provoke thought on whether organs should be owned as private property like any other, the thesis proposes an inheritance regime for organs with family as default successor.

The objective of this theses is to explore the development of gift-giving in Czech Republic after the velvet revolution in 1989. First part of the theses deals with the theoretical basis of altruism and philanthropy. The gift-giving explored in the theses is viewed as a specific case when the beneficient does not know the beneficiary. This specific case is then discussed with the theoretical aspect of altruism and philanthropy. Further on the civil society and its connection to the gift-giving is observed and the role of the foundations in czech society reflected. The analysis of the gift-giving is provided in the second part of the theses, based on the financial history of four czech foundations. A clear cut trend is not obvious, thus some other aspects coming out of the analysis are accented.

The main aim of this thesis is to create a business plan to open the e-shop with secret gifts and evaluate the viability of the plan. Thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The practical part is formed on basis of theoretical information: purpose, users, principles and main points of structure of the business plan. The practical part is formed by own business plan. This part includes description of the product and owner, market, customer analysis, suppliers, competitor analysis, human resources and marketing, risk, and financial analysis. The suitability for implementation of the business plans is evaluated in conclusion of the thesis.

The main task of this work is to design an algorithm for suppressing unwanted noise and artifacts in fMRI data using the analysis of independent components and multi-echo data. The theoretical part deals with the basic principles of magnetic resonance, including construction and image data processing. The practical part presents a pilot design of a method inspired by a professional publication in the Matlab software environment, where this design is subsequently tested on real fMRI data provided by the Laboratory of Multimodal and Functional Imaging, CEITEC MU.

[pt] Este trabalho argumenta que a renovação das possibilidades da democracia passa tanto pelo desenvolvimento de práticas cooperativas e de um vocabulário a elas associado, quanto pelo adensamento de redes de resistência à hegemonia neoliberal. Apreciaremos o papel das tecnologias de comunicação a partir de dois eixos analíticos, cooperação e conflito, articulados desde uma perspectiva contrahegemônica. No primeiro capítulo, observamos que a produção social em commons tem impacto subjetivo emancipatório a despeito de contribuir para a acumulação capitalista: dá ensejo a uma pedagogia do comum que gera um registro ético que nos leva a considerar nosso relacionamento com aquilo que criamos em termos de proximidade, não de autoria. No segundo capítulo, duas hipóteses sobre as Jornadas de Junho: que um de seus efeitos foi a criação de solidariedade entre classes, e que a principal razão para o que muitos entendem ser seu fracasso não foi nem a falta de liderança centralizada, nem o repúdio a atores políticos tradicionais, mas a união entre governo e mídia corporativa em torno da repressão. Observa-se a disputa simbólica pela configuração do sentido das manifestações: de um lado, a análise de framing dos jornais revela sua contribuição no sentido de elevar a violência ao centro dos protestos, através da nomeação do sujeito-vândalo e da normalização da exceção no intuito de asfixiálo; de outro, o enquadramento polifônico operado pela multidão via Twitcam desconsagrou o mito fundador do jornalismo, ampliou o escopo das vozes na esfera pública e contribuiu para construir o sujeito-político-multidão durante o processo de representá-lo. / [en] Examining the role of communication technologies from two distinct analytical grounds, cooperation and conflict, articulated through a counterhegemonic perspective, we argue that the renewal of democracy rests upon cooperative practices and its vocabularies, as well as the thickening of networks of resistance against neoliberal hegemony. In the first chapter, we argue that social production initiatives can sustain a emancipatory subjective impact, despite its contribution to capitalist accumulation, for it makes room for a pedagogy of the common which leads us to think of our creations in terms of closeness, not authorship. The second chapter puts forward two hypothesis regarding Jornadas de Junho: first, that it ended up creating solidarities bonds among classes, and second, that the main reason for the so called failure of the protests wasn t either its lack of a centralized leadership or its rejection to established political actors, but the alliance between State and corporate media around repression. By way of a framing analysis of the corporate media, we concluded that they managed to put violence at the core of the protests through a double movement that included the naming of a subject-of-violence and the normalization of the state of exception devoted to abort its existence. We also examine the broadcasting of protests through Twitcam, arguing that its polyphonic framing by a multitude of media activists publicly debunked the founding myth of journalism, broadened the scope of voices in the public sphere, thus helping to develop a new political subject in the process of representing it.

Thesis discusses the principles and methodology for measuring functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), basically the origin and use of BOLD signal types used experiments. Further attention is paid fMRI data processing and statistical analysis. Subsequent chapters are devoted to a brief description of the most common software tools used to analyze data from fMRI. The main section was to create a program in MATLAB with a detailed graphic user interface for easy visualization and export output from analyzes of fMRI data. The second half is devoted to describing the program developer and graphic user interface, including key functionality. The final section describes the application program with real data from clinical studies of dynamic connectivity and use in an international project APGem.

The present diploma thesis deals with the phenomenon of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS). Using the method of ethnographic research, the author sought a holistic description during her six-month participation in a LETS group in Toulouse. Drawing upon theoretical literature, she discusses the local forms of exchange, debt, the relationship to money and to the virtual currency. The findings show that such a system can change the perception of debt and the relation to money. The most common reasons for involvement are the need to establish social contacts, while the most pressing problem appears to be the lack of interest of young people in this phenomenon. Keywords LETS, ethnographic research, exchange, gift, debt, individualization, Toulouse

This thesis contributes to the knowledge of how computer-mediated communication and information sharing works in large groups and networks. In more detail, the research question put forward is: in large sharing networks, what concerns do end-users have regarding to whom to provide material? A theoretical framework of gift-giving was applied to identify, label and classify qualitative end-user concerns with provision. The data collection was performed through online ethnographical research methods in two large sharing networks, one music-oriented and one photo-oriented. The methods included forum message elicitation, online interviews, application use and observation. The result of the data collection was a total of 1360 relevant forum messages. A part from this there are also 27 informal interview logs, field notes and samples of user profiles and sharing policies. The qualitative analysis led up to a model of relationships based on the observation that many users experienced conflicts of interest between various groups of receivers and that these conflicts, or social dilemmas, evoked concerns regarding public and non-public provision of material. The groups of potential recipients were often at different relationship levels. The levels ranged from the individual (ego), to the small group of close peers (micro), to a larger network of acquaintances (meso) to the anonymous larger network (macro). It is argued that an important focal point for analysis of cooperation and conflict is situated in the relations between these levels. Deepened studies and analysis also revealed needs to address dynamic recipient groupings, the need to control the level of publicness of both digital material and its metadata (tags, contacts, comments and links to other networks) and that users often refrained from providing material unless they felt able to control its direction. A central conclusion is that public and non-public gifting need to co-emerge in large sharing networks and that non-public gifting might be an important factor for the support of continued provision of goods in sustainable networks and communities.