This master's thesis deals with implementation of a system for creating general image operations using an image processing chain. The text introduces the concept of image processing using chains and shows its advantages and possibilities. Furthermore, the text focuses on the detailed design of a system based on that concept. The system was successfully implemented and tested, while the results were described and discussed. Finally, the system is shown in a practical application of several image processing tasks.

Cette thèse d'histoire politique, à cheval sur le XVIIIe siècle et le XIXe siècle vise à mettre en évidence les mutations de la vie politique locale et les ruptures opérées par la Révolution française dans la vallée du Rhône, un espace de forte conflictualité politique ayant une longue tradition municipale. L’objectif principal de notre travail est d’observer à différentes échelles géographiques les bouleversements sociopolitiques rhodaniens à l’aune de la Révolution française et leurs ramifications au cours du premier XIXe siècle. Il s’agit de comprendre comment l’élargissement de la sphère politique et la nationalisation de la vie politique locale changent considérablement les règles des jeux politiques au village ou dans la petite ville en intégrant de nouveaux protagonistes tout en relançant les conflits politiques anciens qui trouvent une nouvelle caisse de résonnance à partir de 1789, ou en créant de nouveaux. L’intérêt majeur du sujet réside dans la démarche adoptée, mêlant à la fois micro-histoire, prosopographie et jeux d’échelles. En menant nos investigations au ras du sol, au plus proche des acteurs politiques, notre enquête ambitionne également d’appréhender, à l’aune des mutations de la conflictualité politique locale, les mécanismes qui conduisent les populations rhodaniennes à adapter des pratiques politiques d’Ancien Régime, avec ses codes et ses gestes, aux nouveaux contextes institutionnels se succédant à partir de 1789. / This thesis of political history, astride the XVIII and the XIX centuries, aims to study the mutations of the local politics and the consequences of the Frenc revolution in the rhodanian furrow, an area with a great municipal tradition plagued by political conflicts. The main objective is to follow the political evolution of the rhodanian furrow from the Old regime to the first decades of the XIX century by multiplying geographical scales. It’s important to understand how widening the political sphere and nationalizing the local political life considerably changes the rules of the political games in villages or small towns by accepting new protagonists while reopening old political conflicts that find a new echo from 1789, or by creating aboves. The main interest of the subject resides in its approach, intertwining micro-history, prosopography and geographical scales. While conducting our local investigations, closer as can to political actors, we aim to study, in the light of the changes of the local political conflicts, the mecanics that lead the populations to adapt political culture of the Old regime, with its codes and gestures, to the new institutional contexts that take over from 1789.

The central objects of study in this thesis are metric measure spaces. These are metric spaces which are endowed with a reference measure and enriched with basic topological, geometric and measure theoretical properties. The objective of the first part of the work is to characterize metric measure spaces whose symmetry groups admit a differential structure making them Lie groups. The second part is concerned with the analysis of the induced geometry of spaces admitting non-trivial symmetries. More in detail, it is shown that in many cases synthetic notions of Ricci curvature lower bounds are inherited by quotient spaces.

Due to its prevalence over large, densely populated areas, ammonium nitrate is an important chemical species in aerosol research. However, due to its volatility at ambient temperatures and over low temperature gradients, ammonium nitrate can be a difficult species to accurately measure. The volatility of ammonium nitrate is known to be dependent on temperature, relative humidity, the internal mixing state of the particle, and availability of the precursor gas constituents. The particle's physical state affects the equilibrium constant value of the ammonium nitrate - nitric acid / ammonia exchange and helps determine the dissociation rate. For indoor aerosol research, the outdoor originating aerosol particles' exposure to the new physical conditions indoors, such as changes in temperature, humidity, and particle-surface reactions within the microenvironment all accelerate ammonium nitrate dissociation. This increased rate of partitioning can generate artifacts on datasets, increase indoor particle formation, and accelerate the corrosion of cultural antiquities through acidification. The magnitude of these impacts is uncertain due to the current lack of knowledge on particle transformation processes when outdoor originating particles migrate indoors. To address this gap in knowledge, this thesis...

This study deals with phase transformations in metastable β titanium alloys, focusing on the investigation of evolution of nanoparticles of thermodynamically metastable ω phase. For the purpose of this research, single crystals of two metastable β titanium alloys - LCB (Ti-6.8Mo-4.5Fe-1.5Al) and Ti-15Mo (in wt. %) - were grown in an optical floating zone furnace. It was established by differential scanning calorimetry that the phase transformations occurring in the material did not change significantly as a result of the single crystal growth process. Using single crystal X-ray diffraction, the shape and the size of ω particles were determined in a series of aged samples. The lattice parameters of ω particles and the β matrix, as well as the misfit between the two structures were calculated. The β phase was found to be locally deformed in compression around ω particles. Small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) experiments revealed a spatial ordering of ω particles in the β matrix in a disordered cubic array with the basis vectors along 100 β directions. The SAXS data also allowed the evaluation of the mean ω particle sizes and distances and confirmed that the ω particle growth obeys the t1/3 law following from the Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner theory. In situ SAXS performed during isothermal ageing at selected...

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-active systems based on macroscopic Ag nanosponge aggregates as well as the conditions of SERS spectral measurements were optimized for selective and sensitive detection of a biomedically important, amphiphilic bile pigment bilirubin (BR) in alkaline aqueous solutions and in its solutions in a selected water miscible solvent, namely dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) and/or water-immiscible solvent, namely CH2Cl2. Ag nanosponges assembled by using HCl as a pre-aggregation agent were found to be the optimal SERS-active systems for a reliable detection of BR in all the above-mentioned solvents. In all cases, the protonated form of adsorbed BR has been detected upon BR incorporation into Ag nanosponges, and its marker bands have been established by SERS spectral probing at excitation wavelengths in the 445-780 nm range. The sensitivity of SERS spectral detection was evaluated in terms of the concentration values of SERS spectral detection limits (SERS LODs) of BR incorporated into Ag nanosponges. In particular, the SERS LOD for BR incorporated from its alkaline aqueous solution is 1 x 10-8 M (at 532 nm excitation), for BR incorporated from its solution in DMSO, its value is also 1 x 10-8 M (at 532 and/or 633 nm excitations), and for incorporation from the solution of BR...

Copulas are real functions representing the dependence structure of the distribution of a random vector, and measures of concordance associate with every copula a numerical value in order to allow for the comparison of different degrees of dependence. We first introduce and study a group of transformations mapping the collection of all copulas of fixed but arbitrary dimension into itself. These transformations may be used to construct new copulas from a given one or to prove that certain real functions on the unit cube are indeed copulas. It turns out that certain transformations of a symmetric copula may be asymmetric, and vice versa. Applying this group, we then propose a concise definition of a measure of concordance for copulas. This definition, in which the properties of a measure of concordance are defined in terms of two particular subgroups of the group, provides an easy access to the investigation of invariance properties of a measure of concordance. In particular, it turns out that for copulas which are invariant under a certain subgroup the value of every measure of concordance is equal to zero. We also show that the collections of all transformations which preserve symmetry or the concordance order or the value of every measure of concordance each form a subgroup and that these three subgroups are identical. Finally, we discuss a class of measures of concordance in which every element is defined as the expectation with respect to the probability measure induced by a fixed copula having an invariance property with respect to two subgroups of the group. This class is rich and includes the well-known examples Spearman's rho and Gini's gamma.

This diploma thesis aims to describe the transformations in selected ethical aspects of journalism with the advent of artificial intelligence, i.e. in other words to present a list of areas where ethical problems can occur in journalism when media organisations begin to apply artificial intelligence systems. It does so with the help of a synthesis of information from foreign studies that are already dealing with this issue. At the same time, however, it also offers the results of semi-structured interviews with three Czech experts in artificial intelligence, which list other possible changes in ethical aspects in journalism using artificial intelligence. Through synthesis and interviews, we answer questions about which aspects they are and how they change, and the results show that the range of things that will need to be paid attention to when involving artificial intelligence in journalism is varied. Some problems are based on existing ones, some are completely new and unprecedented. The results outline a theoretical framework that can serve as a basis for research into various case studies of this issue.

The following remarks are intended as philosophical comments on Gilles Deleuze’s groundbreaking reflections on a control society emerging at the end of the 20th century (cf. Deleuze 1992). Following Foucault, Deleuze’s interpretations of the ‘contemporary’ socio-technological transformations are mostly of a spatio-technical nature; the aim of this article is to complement his diagnosis with a time-philosophical analysis. Here, the guiding question is how to best characterize the time-political dimension of the new forms of social (“apprenticeships and permanent training”) and economic control, which has only further increased with the financialization of the 21st century (“Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt”) (1992: 6-7). Deleuze’s text already contains a number of clues that are relevant in this context, for example his references to the work of the dromonihilist Paul Virilio, specifically to the “ultrarapid forms of free-floating control” (1992: 4) that the latter outlined. Behind the acceleration paradigm sketched out by Virilio, however, we recognize an explanatory model of a different temporality, that is, both a different model of explanation and a different model of time. According to our working hypothesis, complex societies or societies that, under the influence of algorithms and computer-based infrastructures, are temporally complex can no longer be understood from the perspective of the present. The type of economy that Deleuze subsumed under the concept of ‘control society’ corresponds to a logic that is no longer centered on the present or the contemporary. Rather, under the digital technological conditions of the 21st century, control turns out to be time control and control of (as well as from) the future.

A growing body of research is calling for radical transformation of society to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change and create a more sustainable and just future. To make this possible, climate researcher will need new approaches and methods that help envision and enable transformations. In this thesis I explore how transformative scenario studies can incorporate critical social theory to enable more reflexive and actionable results. I develop climate change scenarios for a Swedish municipality and adopt a novel combination of the Manoa method and causal layered analysis. This methodological contribution, combining the creativity of the Manoa method and critical perspective of causal layered analysis, is coupled with a transdisciplinary approach. Through collaboration with local actors, including political, private, and civil society representatives, the study maximizes the relevance of the results to the local community. Building on the area’s cultural heritage of oral storytelling, the final scenarios are developed in collaboration with local storytellers and presented back to the community as a set of short stories.  The study makes two noteworthy contributions. First, by allowing local context and culture to guide the creation and dissemination of results the study shows the power of a transdisciplinary approach. Second, by applying a critical theory lens, the study unveils how underlying assumptions limit our capacity to imagine different futures and that challenging these assumptions can increase the transformative potential of scenario research.