Cloud computing allows on-demand provision, configuration and assignment of computing resources with minimum cost and effort for users and administrators. Managing the physical infrastructure that underlies cloud computing services relies on the need to provision and manage bare-metal computer hardware. Hence there is a need for quick loading of operating systems in bare-metal and virtual machines to service the demands of users. The focus of the study is on developing a technique to load these machines remotely, which is complicated by the fact that the machines can be present in different Ethernet broadcast domains, physically distant from the provisioning server. The use of available bare-metal provisioning frameworks require significant skills and time. Moreover, there is no easily implementable standard method of booting across separate and different Ethernet broadcast domains. This study proposes a new framework to provision bare-metal hardware remotely using layer 2 services in a secure manner. This framework is a composition of existing tools that can be assembled to build the framework.

My thesis focuses on reproductive politics of (un)democratic Czechoslovakia, namely on the discursive construction of abortion as presented in the scientific and political discourses in the 20's and 50's. The aim is to compare the discourses and track the genealogy of control and regulation of women's bodies as biopolitical spaces within the Czechoslovakian nation. The text uses theories of G. Agamben, M. Foucault and R. Miller which deprive from the classical/juridical model of sovereignty and rights and offer a biopolitical one instead. Using this perspective the text tries to answer whether there is a difference between scientific and political discourses of so-called democracy and communism. That is, whether by putting the abortion into the center it is possible to speak about democracy and communism as if they were two different and mutually exclusive systems. Through the lenses of poststructuralist feminist analysis the thesis tries to doubt the binaries of "communism" - "democracy", "East" - "West", in which democracy always signals the good and communism evil. Analysing the discourses surrounding the enactment of 1957 law the text also ponders whether it is possible to read the law as a typical communist product, implanted by someone from the outside.

This thesis deals with the modification of nouns by bare past participles in the pre- and post- head positions and uses authentic examples from the written component of The British National Corpus. The aim is to describe the possibility of corpus excerption of this construction and to qualitatively compare participles in both positions using examples with context. In the first step, a simple search query was entered to retrieve bare past participles in the postnominal position with the result of 21,437 concordance lines which were then manually filtered. The resulting 14,529 lines were used to obtain a random sample of 400 lines which was again manually filtered. The resulting Sample 1 of 247 lines was described quantitatively in terms of the left and right context of the noun phrase and in terms of the head nouns. Sample 1 contained 118 unique participles, from which 10 were randomly selected for a qualitative description (Sample 2; 70 concordance lines per position, 140 lines in total). Sample 2 was then described in terms of the presence or absence of determiners, in terms of the types of definiteness, reference and restrictivity. An interesting feature is the presence of quantifiers, and the generally implied quantificational meaning of the construction. Semantics and the possibility to occur...

The productivity of agricultural and forest ecosystems in regions at higher latitudes is to a large extent governed by low temperature and moisture conditions. Environmental conditions are acting both above- and below-ground and regulating carbon fluxes and evapotranspiration. However, the understanding of various feedbacks between vegetation and environmental conditions is still unclear. In this thesis, two studies were conducted to understand the physical and biological processes. In the first study, the aim was to simulate soil temperature and moisture dynamics in the bare soil with seasonal frost conditions in China. In the second study, the aims were to model seasonal courses of carbon and evapotranspiration and to examine the responses of photosynthesis, transpiration and respiration on environmental conditions in a boreal Scots pine ecosystem in Finland. In both studies the CoupModel was applied to simulate the dynamic responses of the systems. Both sites represented investigations from which a high number of measurements were available. To understand to what extent the data could be used to increase the understanding of the systems, the Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE) was applied. The GLUE method was useful to reduce basic uncertainties with respect to parameter ranges, model structures and measurements. The strong interactions between soil temperature and moisture processes have indicated by a few behavioral models obtained when constrained by combined temperature and moisture criteria. Model performance on sensible and latent heat fluxes and net ecosystem exchange (NEE) also indicated the coupled processes within the system. Seasonal and diurnal courses were reproduced successfully with reduced parameter ranges. However, uncertainties on what is the most general regulation for transpiration and NEE are still unclear and need further systematic investigations. / QC 20101206

Die vorliegende Dissertation ist dreiteilig: i) deskriptiv, ii) komparatistisch, und iii) theoretisch. Nach einer allgemeinen Diskussion über die Geschichte und Grammatik des Guinea-Bissau Kreol (GBK) und einer Übersicht über die Herangehensweisen an artikellose Nominalphrasen (Bare Noun Phrases; BNPs), bietet die vorliegende Arbeit eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Distribution und Interpretation von BNPs in GBK. Sie können als Argumente und nicht-Argumente erscheinen. Bei Subjekten, indirekten Objekten, bei Topikalisierung, “dislocation” und “clefting” ergeben sie definite Interpretationen. Artikellose direkte Objekte können alle möglichen Interpretationen haben, ausgenommen eine pluralisch-spezifische Lesart. Die Interpretation von BNPs wird von kontextuellen Zusammenhängen als auch von Aspekt und Prädikattyp bestimmt. Perfektive und kontinuativ-imperfektive Kontexte lösen definit-spezifische Lesarten für artikellose Objekte aus. Artikellose Objekte in habituell-imperfektiven Kontexten ergeben eine indefinite, nicht-spezifische Lesart. Artikellose Subjekte von “stage level”-Prädikaten ergeben eine existentiale Interpretation, indeterminierte Subjekte von “individual level”-Prädikaten dagegen leiten definit-generische Lesarten ab. Die vorliegende Arbeit beinhaltet auch einen interlingualen Vergleich zwischen Kreol- und Nicht-Kreolsprachen: i) Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu und Brazilianisches Portugiesisch; und ii) Mandarin Chinesisch, Vietnamesisch und Gbe Sprachen. Die Distribution und Interpretation von BNPs ist sehr homogen. Alle erlauben sowohl singularische als auch pluralische Lesarten für BNPs: BNPs sind bezüglich Numerus unspezifiziert. Das führt uns zur theoretischen Diskussion über Numerus: ausgehend von Depréz’s (2007) Plural Parameter und seinen grundlegenden Annahmen (BNPs sind unspezifiziert für Numerus, und die grundlegende Denotation von Nomen ist Art vom Typ e), wird ein neues Modell sowie eine konsequente Sprachtypologie entwickelt. / The nature of the present dissertation is threefold: i) descriptive, ii) comparative, and iii) theoretical. After a brief general discussion on the history and grammar of Guinea-Bissau Creole, and after an extensive review of various approaches on BNPs, both from the semantic and syntactic perspective, the present work will offer an exhaustive description of the distribution and interpretation of Bare Noun Phrases in GBC. They may be found in both argument and nonargument positions. The general tendency for BNPs in GBC is to yield a definite reading (subjects, recipient objects, in topicalizion, dislocation and clefting). One difference is that bare patient objects may yield any possible interpretation, except from the specific plural. BNPs interpretation is driven by contextual factors as well as by aspect and predicate type. Perfective and continuous imperfective contexts trigger definite specific readings for bare objects. One difference is that bare objects in habitual imperfective contexts yield indefinite nonspecific interpretations. As for predicate types, bare subjects of stage-level predicates yield existential readings, whereas bare subjects of individual-level predicates derive definite generic readings. The present work also undertakes a crosslinguistic comparison between creoles and noncreoles: i) Cape Verdean Creole, Santome, Papiamentu and Brazilian Portuguese; and ii) Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese and Gbe languages. It turns out that BNPs distribution and interpretation are quite homogeneous. Importantly, BNPs in any of these languages may yield both singular and plural readings: BNPs are thus unspecified as for Number. This leads us to our theoretical discussion on Number: starting from Depréz’s (2007) Plural Parameter and its basic assumptions (e.g. BNPs are unspecified as for Number, and the basic denotation of nouns is kind of type e), a new model, and the consequent linguistic typology, is developed.

瑪格麗特‧愛特伍的《瘋狂亞當三部曲》描繪了當代讀者所熟悉的世界: 一個受新自由主義浪潮席捲的社會。當政府權力被龐大財團架空，自由國家的民主核心價值早已崩解。 本篇論文的論點延伸自Chris Vials 的文章，並試圖以新自由主義統治論述來解釋小說中民主與極權融為一體的情況。第一章解釋新經濟思維使個人與社會產生疏離，以統治極端分化的社會階層。第二章則闡述小說中的國家已陷入例外狀態，法律受到懸置，而圍牆的設立強化了排除生命的機制並且產生 “裸命”。在最後的章節將探討上帝的園丁會 “生命-形式” 的革命以及《瘋狂亞當》的主角澤伯所展現的 “無身份” 抵抗的可能性。 如同書中角色，身處於當代的讀者正受到這股 “未來的浪潮” 推進向前卻同時又受到過去的夢靨所困。世界大戰、猶太人集中營不只是已過去的歷史事實，他們以不同形式再現且縈繞不去。如何撿拾過去的傷痛與錯誤，承接死去之人的意志正是我們必須肩負的責任。 / In Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, the author imagines a near future that is too familiar for the reader who live in the contemporary period, a neoliberal society. Through the depiction of a hollowed-out nation replaced by a giant consortium, she lays bare a truth that democracy is going to collapse. Based on Chris Vials’ article, “Margaret Atwood’s Dystopic Fiction and the Contradictions of Neoliberal Freedom,” this thesis furthers to elaborate the integration of democratic regime and totalitarianism by discourse of neoliberal governance: the neoliberal rationality alienates individuals, uniting the divided social stratifications. In the second part, I suggest that the nation falls into an anarchy since it has already entered into a state of exception, which gives rise to “bare life.” The exclusion mechanism is represented by the construction of “the Walls.” The third chapter aims to discuss the possibility of resisting the new form of sovereign power in practice of the God’s Gardeners about how to live “form-of-life” and politics of “(non)-identity” deployed by Zeb, the protagonist of MaddAddam. Like the characters, we stand in the intersection of the “Wave of future” and the recurring nightmare in the past. Global wars and concentration camp are not only historical facts but recurring events. It is our responsibility to recall the memory, remember the pain, and inherit the will of the dead.

From the Proceedings of the 1974 Meetings of the Arizona Section - American Water Resources Assn. and the Hydrology Section - Arizona Academy of Science - April 19-20, 1974, Flagstaff, Arizona / Reliable information on soil-water status is required in order to make accurate water balance studies of watersheds, to determine the survival probabilities of various types of vegetation between rainfalls in low rainfall areas, and to determine the susceptibility of the uppermost soil to wind erosion. Simple solarimeters may help to accomplish this objective. Bare soil albedo was a linear function of the water content of a very thin surface layer of soil, and albedo correlated well with water contents of thicker soil layers. In addition, albedo measurements could be used to delineate the 3 classical stages of soil drying. Albedo may also be used to differentiate between the initial potential rate phase of evaporation following an application of water, and the succeeding falling rate phase. Results of applying this technique to a field of Avondale clay loam indicate that 20% to 25% of the water applied by either irrigation or rain will be lost by stage 1 potential evaporation, independent of seasonal variations in evaporative demand. Presently the techniques developed are applicable only to bare soil surfaces.

The dissertation describes several types of low and high voltage distribution networks including their implementation in specified location with regards to the reliability and quality of electric power supply. The distributions networks are classified according to ways of cable routing, distribution line voltage levels as well as according to types of network interconnections. The high and low voltage distribution networks are further categorized based on used cable types, where, more attention is paid to insulated lines used in the Czech Republic, low voltage lines called „AES“ and „PAS“ high voltage lines used more and more during the distribution network reconstruction. Attention is also given to the description of used methodology for the calculation of network performance stability. An individual part of the dissertation is devoted to a low voltage distribution network proposal in the village of Kovalovice. Based on performed analysis of distribution network conditions, several reconstruction versions were proposed with the help of „KASI“ software, the description of which is also included. The proposed versions are further analysed for both, technical and economical aspects and is selected most suitable version of the distribution network.

This diploma thesis is concerned with reconstruction of distribution network in Hruba Vrbka. The diploma thesis is divided in two parts. For better understanding to this issue, the first theoretical part is shortly dedicated to the history of electrical power system, to the several types of distribution network of low voltage and high voltage and their utilization in the area, considering the reliability and the quality of delivery of the electric energy. In this thesis there is mentioned division of distribution grids according to placing of cable lines, according to voltage and according to type of grid connection. Next part of this work is dedicated to the description of overhead lines and cable lines and their characteristics. For the proper concept of the grid we should know some characteristics of the electric line’s proposal: mechanical strength, warming, voltage drop, efficiency, degree of safety and provision of delivery. In the end of the theoretical part there are described methods for calculation of grid’s steady state as a linear task and also non-linear task, elimination of the balancing node, the iterative method, the reduction of external power take-off nodes and the solution of the steady state of the network through the direct current model. The second part of the diploma thesis is concerned with the calculation of the steady state in the village Hruba Vrbka. In this part is also described the KASI program which was used for the calculation of the grid’s steady state. Firstly low voltage grid’s balance in Hruba Vrbka was found out and evaluated and then there were proposed some solutions of the reconstruction for the grid improving. The suggested options of the reconstruction are considered from technical and economical point of view and the best solution is chosen. For this solution there is suggested the protection through program SICHR 9. In the end of this diploma thesis there is checked the load of the high voltage line.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) affects every fifth person in the world. The gold-standard treatment for CAD is stent implantation, however, the existing therapy is not sufficient due to many reasons. For instance, in-stent restenosis, biocompatibility, controlled degradation rate, protein adsorption, and adequate endothelialization are still the main concerns. In the last two decades, the field of stent technology has been grown rapidly and many new stent types and in vitro testing methods for stent characterization have been developed to minimize the aforementioned issues. In this vicinity, there are still many unaddressed issues: i) the quantitative analysis of corrosion is conducted with simpler samples made of stent material instead of stents, in most cases due to the absence of a mathematical model to calculate the entire stent surface area (ESSA); ii) in vitro stent testing in environments that are very far from actual physiological environments; iii) Evaluation of the influence of in-vitro test conditions on coated metallic stents; iv) absence of flow-induced shear stress (FISS) corrosion model, to mention a few. This thesis presents the novel ESSA model, the fluid dynamic experimental setup with the integration of various sensors and pH control, the influence of in vitro degradation behavior of the titanium oxynitride (TiOxNy) coated stainless steel stents and anodized AZ31 samples, and the FISS corrosion model. The results show some important contributions in this field, however, there is still a huge potential for the development of promising stent characterization solutions. / Die koronare Herzkrankheit (KHK) betrifft jeden fünften Menschen auf der Welt. Der Goldstandard bei der Behandlung von KHK ist die Stent-Implantation, doch die bestehende Therapie ist aus vielen Gründen nicht ausreichend. So sind beispielsweise die Restenose im Stent, die Biokompatibilität, die kontrollierte Abbaugeschwindigkeit, die Proteinadsorption und die angemessene Endothelialisierung nach wie vor die Hauptprobleme. In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten hat sich die Stenttechnologie rasant weiterentwickelt, und es wurden viele neue Stenttypen und In-vitro-Testmethoden zur Stentcharakterisierung entwickelt, um die oben genannten Probleme zu minimieren. In dieser Umgebung gibt es noch viele ungelöste Probleme: i) die quantitative Analyse der Korrosion wird mit einfacheren Proben aus Stentmaterial anstelle von Stents durchgeführt, in den meisten Fällen aufgrund des Fehlens eines mathematischen Modells zur Berechnung der gesamten Stentoberfläche (ESSA); ii) In-vitro-Stent-Tests in Umgebungen, die sehr weit von der tatsächlichen physiologischen Umgebung entfernt sind; iii) Bewertung des Einflusses von In-vitro-Testbedingungen auf beschichtete metallische Stents; iv) Fehlen eines FISS-Korrosionsmodells (flow-induced shear stress), um nur einige zu nennen. In dieser Arbeit werden das neuartige ESSA-Modell, der strömungsdynamische Versuchsaufbau mit der Integration verschiedener Sensoren und pH-Kontrolle, der Einfluss des In-vitro-Degradationsverhaltens der mit Titanoxynitrid (TiOxNy) beschichteten Edelstahlstents und anodisierten AZ31-Proben sowie das FISS-Korrosionsmodell vorgestellt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen einige wichtige Beiträge in diesem Bereich, jedoch gibt es noch ein großes Potenzial für die Entwicklung von vielversprechenden Lösungen zur Charakterisierung von Stents.