Master thesis elaborates on agent-based modelling (ABM, computer simulation method) founded on the concept of analytical sociology and its use in empirical sociology. The use is demonstrated by creation of a model based on the principal of environmental sociology studying the influence of social factors on the environment. Thesis works with the empirical- theoretical concept New ecological paradigm (NEP) measuring the values and opinions on the environment. The origin of the paper was motivated by the absence of the projects combining the method of empirically calibrated agent-based modelling and sociological grounds, particularly in the Czech context, but also abroad. Based on the environmental module of Czech data ISSP 2010 and research question "How parameters of social network influence the willingness to sort waste?" model was created and analyzed. Relationship between both types of agents (sorting and not sorting waste during the whole simulation) and their neighbourhood was found. The higher the number of neighbours, the more agents with this particular type of behaviour. The likelihood of bond creation with long-distance agent at the expence of bond abolition with close neighbour was without any influence on the number of non/sorting agents. It seems the agents tend to replicate behaviour...

Forensic investigation television shows such as police procedurals, rooted in both fact and fiction, have become an ever-popular staple of modern television in the last 20 years. The popularity of these shows has been blamed for generating higher expectations for forensic evidence by juries across America and may also have had the effect of inspiring criminals attempt to cover up their crimes by destroying potential evidence, particularly bloodstains. Luminol is a popular blood detection technique because it can be sprayed throughout an area in a dark room and will chemiluminesce when it interacts with hemoglobin. This chemiluminescence is a signal to investigators that latent blood may be located in that spot. Luminol’s specificity and sensitivity have long been studied. Luminol is a stable molecule that becomes oxidized when it comes in contact with an oxidant such as hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst. In this excited state, the molecule is unstable and forms 3-aminophthalate. This molecule produces light, and the luminescence slowly dies out as the molecule returns to its ground state. Chemicals that disrupt the luminol reaction can be considered interferents. These include cleaning agents, biological agents, foods, and drinks, among others. Compounds such as sodium hypochlorite, sodium percarbonate, and hydrogen peroxide are commonly used as primary cleaning products or as components in popular brands of household cleaners. Such multisurface cleaners, extra strength detergents or other chemicals are readily accessible to someone attempting to clean up a crime scene. Sodium hypochlorite, also known as bleach, has previously been found to cross react with luminol, generating a chemiluminescent reaction whether heme is present or not. Sodium percarbonate is also known as active oxygen and is used in detergents to improve their stain removing capabilities. It can affect the luminol and Bluestar® Forensic tests by causing a negative result, even in the presence of blood. Hydrogen peroxide is a common disinfectant and a necessary component of most presumptive blood tests, however, bulk quantities of it in the luminol reaction stop the reaction from proceeding. Antioxidants, found in many foods and drinks, can inhibit luminescence by preventing heme from being degraded, an important step in order for the luminol reaction to proceed. The purpose of this investigation is to evaluate the effectiveness of common cleaning agents for removing detectable traces of blood based on published studies. Additionally, an attempt was made to determine if cleaning agents completely remove blood or if they disrupt the luminol reaction when a negative luminol result is obtained. To supplement the literature, a limited experiment was carried out and preliminary data was obtained. This investigation finds that some cleaners interfere with the luminol reaction by altering one or more components in a way that prevents the reaction from fully proceeding, even when blood is still present.

<div>Recent interest in tailoring energetic materials designed to combat biological weapons agents (BWAs) has resulted in significant effort to produce and test these munitions. These energetic materials may contain agent defeat additives that enhance the capability of a munition to destroy BWAs through chemical methods in addition to heat. However, quantifying levels of agent and biocidal species and their interaction is difficult, and efforts have primarily focused on either ex-situ culturing of exposed bioagent simulants or in situ laser absorption measurements. These experiments are valuable for exploring long term agent defeat and line of sight averaged defeat. What these experiments do not provide, however, is in-situ, spatio-temporally resolved imaging in the reaction zone. To address this gap, this work develops the use of in-situ, high speed, two-dimensional optical diagnostics of fireballs and biological weapons agents simulants (BWA-S).</div><div> </div><div> Planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF) and laser scattering have been conducted in situ. PLIF of both iodine vapor and BWA-S has demonstrated the ability to qualitatively observe species concentration in fireballs. The application of simultaneous techniques provides imaging of multiple parameters, which is invaluable to the further study of BWA-S and agent defeat interactions. These studies also provide the framework for future work in moving towards quantitative measurements, including the development of absorption and fluorescence models.</div>

This thesis is concerned with the problem of planning paths for autonomous cars through a smart traffic intersection. In this thesis, we describe existing concepts for solving this problem and discuss the possibilities of approaching intersection problems theoretically. Then, we choose one specific approach and design a declarative model for solving the problem. We use that model to perform a series of theoretical experiments to test the throughput and the quality of intersection paths described by different graphs. After that, we translate theoretical plans to actions for real robots and run it. In these experiments, we measure the degree of robots desynchronization and performance success of the plans based on the collision rate. We also describe how to improve action translation to achieve better performance than that for real robots following the straightforward plans.

The diploma thesis is focused on analysis of external and internal company´s environment. Analysis allows a selection of appropriate strategy leading to analysing of user´s requirements of information system and innovative proposals. It is analysed market of information systems. It is used qualitative research gathering up the information about requirements of financial brokers. This information is processed and helps to create innovative suggestions of current information system.

Background: There is an increasing importance of sustainable development in today’s society as a result of various social, environmental, and economic challenges facing the people and planet. To create the change needed to shift from unsustainable activities, everyone must participate, including business organizations. Here, the concept of change readiness is highly relevant as it helps prepare individuals and organizations to accept and not be resistant to change initiatives.  Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate and explore (1) how change agents create change readiness to prepare employees for organizational change towards sustainability and (2) how these efforts are perceived and experienced by employees.   Method: This thesis uses a qualitative approach with an exploratory nature where two companies (case studies) are included. In total, five organizational members were interviewed to collect empirical data: two change agents and three employees.    Conclusion: The findings display that change agents use two strategies for spreading the change message (persuasive communication and active participation) and unintentionally use the five cognitive components of change readiness (discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support and personal valence) to prepare employees for organizational change towards sustainability. In turn, these efforts are perceived and experienced by employees as enhancing their level of change readiness.

Microspheres are spherically shaped particles within the size range of 1-1000 μm in diameter. Due to the their small size and round shape, microspheres show many advantages in various applications such as pharmaceuticals, composites and coatings. The microspheres can be customized to fit a specific application and are manufactured in various forms such as solid, hollow and encapsulating. Encapsulating cellulose microspheres have been produced in this project by the emulsionsolvent evaporation technique. The purpose of this study was to further investigate the possibility of producing encapsulating microspheres with a size range of 10-50 μm that will have a high encapsulation. A second purpose of this study was optimizing the emulsifier system for the preparation of these spheres. This has been accomplished by varying several process parameters such as type of emulsifiers and solvents to study the effect on morphology and encapsulation efficiency. The analyses of the spheres were performed with optical microscopy, thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The emulsifier type and concentration affected the encapsulation and size distribution but had no direct effect on the internal and external structure, which was multi-cellular and porous, respectively. The highest encapsulation in relation to average size was obtained with 0.1 v/v- % of the emulsifier mixture Emulsifier 1 (E1)/Emulsifier 2 (E2) (70/30 %). The solvent used to dissolve the polymer had a direct effect on encapsulation, a combination of Solvent 2 (S2) and Solvent 1 (S1) proved best for the three tested cellulose derivatives with low, medium and high number average molecular weight. The solvent also had an effect on the internal structure of the microspheres, becoming more core-shell when using the S1/S2 combination.

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Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are effective for surveillance and monitoring, but struggle with persistent, long-term tracking, especially without GPS, due to limited flight time. Persistent tracking can be accomplished using multiple vehicles if one vehicle can effectively hand off the tracking information to another replacement vehicle. This work presents a solution to the moving-target handoff problem in the absence of GPS. The proposed solution (a) a nonlinear complementary filter for self-pose estimation using only an IMU, (b) a particle filter for relative pose estimation between UAS using a relative range (c) visual target tracking using a gimballed camera when the target is close to the handoff UAS, and (d) track correlation logic using Procrustes analysis to perform the final target handoff between vehicles. We present hardware results of the self-pose estimation and visual target tracking, as well as an extensive simulation result that demonstrates the effectiveness of our full system, and perform Monte-Carlo simulations that indicate a 97% successful handoff rate using the proposed methods.

Municipalities increasingly have less financial resources to spend on implementation of transport strategies and plans. This situation is putting pressure on transport professionals to minimize wasteful expenditure on projects that do not deliver high transport service improvements. As such, the need for efficient, pragmatic decision making on policy direction, infrastructure expenditure, or any transport interventions is becoming very critical. Thus, transport professionals are increasingly in need of tools to help them predict with increased accuracy the outcomes of their intended transport interventions. The City of Cape Town has a Bus Rapid Transport system called MyCiTi. Current MyCiTi operations are incurring losses. The service is kept running on the back of subsidies from the federal government. There is a need for rationalization of the system. However, with strained resources, the interventions on the system have to guarantee improvements. Overemphasis on the ability of MyCiTi BRT service to support transportation during the 2010 soccer world cup event heavily influenced the design of the network. As a result, network appraisal is one area that can be done on the system to identify areas of improvement. In this thesis, decision making support will be demonstrated using a network design appraisal process for the MyCiTi BRT system in Cape Town. The existing MyCiTi network will undergo network improvement using heuristic node insertion technique leading to multiple network scenarios in a modeling environment. Agent-Based demand mobility behavior simulation will be used on each of the network scenarios to come up with network performance indicators. These network performance indicators will be used in the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) model to come up with a ranking of the network scenarios and help in deciding on the optimum network improvement intervention. Overall, findings of this research show the importance of weighting of the performance indicators. Where networks that score well in the performance indicator with the high weights also rank high. In conclusion, the study has demonstrated the importance of decision making support in interventions on complex systems like bus systems. Recommendations on the possible avenues of research stemming from this thesis have also been outlined.