In presenting their correspondence, I highlight the means in which Hobbes is able to divorce nature and politics in his philosophy. This is done by bringing to light Hobbes’s agreement with Descartes’s deceiving God argument. First, I demonstrate Hobbes’s hidden agreement with it by analyzing his objection to Descartes’s first Meditation. Second, I show that Hobbes and Descartes both retreat into consciousness in order to deal with the possibility of deception on the behalf of God. Third, I trace Hobbes’s rational justification for entertaining that very possibility. Fourth, I bring forward Hobbes’s certain principle, that God is incomprehensible. Fifth, I demonstrate Hobbes’s rationalization for rendering nature incomprehensible in turn. From this key insight, the differences between the two philosophers stand out more. Whereas Descartes rids himself of the possibility of a deceiving God, Hobbes does not. Sixth, I show that Descartes needs to rid himself of that possibility in order to have a basis for science, Hobbes’s science is such that he does not need to rid himself of that possibility. My investigation ends by considering both Hobbes’s and Descartes’s stance on nature, in relation to politics. I find that Hobbes’s principle is much more practical that Descartes’s principle. Hobbes’s principle is shown to be much more instructive and sustainable for human life. In conclusion, this analysis of the origins, principles, and orientation of the two philosopher’s thought brings forward the overarching question, whether the recovery of value and meaning is to be brought about in nature, or in civilization.

Disertační práce se zabývá zpracováním mračenen bodů z laserových skenerů pomocí vektorizace a následnému vyhledávání korespondencí mezi takto získanými aproximacemi pro potřeby současné sebelokalizace a mapování v mobilní robotice. První nová metoda je určena pro segmentaci a filtraci surových dat a realizuje obě operace najednou v jednom algoritmu. Pro vektorizaci je představen optimalizovaný algoritmus založený na úplné metodě nejmenších čtverců, který je v současnosti patrně nejrychlejší ve své třídě a blíží se tak eliminačním metodám, které ovšem produkují výrazně horší aproxi- mace. Inovativní analytické metody jsou představeny i pro účely vyjádření podobnosti mezi dvěma vektorizovanými skeny, pro jejich optimální sesazení a pro vyhledávání korespondencí mezi nimi. Všechny představené algoritmy jsou intezivně testovány a jejich vlastnosti ověřeny množstvím experimentů.

This master's thesis deals with the interest point detection in images. The main goal is to create an application for making panoramic photos, which is based on this detection. The application uses the SIFT detector for finding keypoints of the image. Afterwards the geometrical consistence of image points using the RANSAC algorithm is finds out and images are transform into panorama in accordance with this geometrical consistence. Finally techniques for blending of transition between photos are used.

MEDEM / Department of Curriculum Studies and Educational Management

Title: The Letters of Jakub Deml to Josef Florian Author: Igor Pejchal <igor.pejchal@seznam.cz> Department: Institute of Czech Literature and Literary Theory Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Daniela Iwashita, Ph.D. <daniela.iwashita@gmail.com> Key Words: correspondence, Jakub Deml, Josef Florian, Josef Ševčík, Otokar Březina, František Bílek, Pavla Kytlicová, Curia of Brno, Studium edition Abstract: The diploma thesis named The Letters of Jakub Deml to Josef Florian includes the edition of all the letters of the writer Jakub Deml (1878-1961). The correspondence from 1903 to 1935 includes 346 units and exploits 6 sources: the copies of letters done by Jaroslav Staněk, handwritten letters archived in Moravian Museum in Brno and LA PNP, Prague, letters addressed to Josef Florian as edited by Jiří Olič and hand-written originals possessed by two private owners. The edition of the collected letters is accompanied by a list of letters, an editorial note and translations of excerpts which are not in Czech. An accompanying study deals with the editorial history of these collected letters, the relationship of Jakup Deml and Josef Florian in the time of their collaboration and provides an outline of the future research tasks regarding this edition. The letters of Jakub Deml to Josef Florian are published in print in...

This essay will treat the Gotlandic textile production during the Viking period (790 AD­–1150 AD) by studying the three grave fields, Barshalder in Grötlingbo parish, Broe in Halla parish and Ire in Hellvi parish. The focus of the study are the textile related objects, spindle whorls, weaving tablets, needles and needle cases found at the grave fields. The study will mainly examine the spindle whorls since differences in the weight and diameter can tell us about what type of yarn or thread that was produced and in extent the textiles that were produced. The results will be catalogued, and a correspondence analysis will be done in hope it will show patterns in the material. The study will also look at if there are differences between the three grave fields and in extent on the island.

Determining auditory functioning in difficult-to-test populations such as cerebral palsy (CP) remains a challenge in paediatric audiology. The auditory brainstem response (ABR) is favoured as the procedure to assess auditory functioning in difficult-to-test populations such as CP. The CP population, however, offers unique challenges for the ABR procedure due to the presence of involuntary muscular movements that may compromise the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the ABR. Conventional ABR technology attempts to improve the SNR by the modification of acquisition parameters e.g. adjusting the low cut filter or implementing stricter artifact rejection criteria. However, such modifications may compromise the waveform morphology of the ABR. Furthermore, sedation or general anesthesia can also be used to improve the SNR by reducing excessive muscular movements. The CP population, however, displays a high risk for developing upper airway obstruction when being sedated or anesthetized. Thus, the feasibility and reliability of the conventional ABR may be compromised when being employed in the CP population. In recent years a novel ABR system, the Vivosonic Integrity (VS) ABR has become clinically available. The device incorporates features such as pre-amplification of the ABR signal, Kalman filtering and wireless recording. These features promise to address the limitations of conventional ABR technology to obtain a reliable recording in the midst of excessive myogenic artifact. The aim of this study was therefore to evaluate the clinical utility of the VS system when assessing a sample of children with CP without the use of sedation. The clinical utility of the VS ABR system was determined by comparing its success rates, the threshold correspondence to behavioural pure tone (PT) thresholds and recording time to a conventional ABR system when using click and 0.5 kHz TB stimuli. A cross-sectional within-subject comparison research design was selected in order to compare thresholds obtained with different procedures. The experimental part of this study was represented by the within-subject control condition where the VS ABR system and the conventional ABR system were simultaneously conducted in each subject. This unique setup was important in the research as equivalent test conditions in terms of EEG and environmental conditions had to be ensured for both ABR systems. 15 CP subjects between the ages of 12 and 18 years were included in the project. A diagnostic audiological test battery including immittance, distortion product otoacoustic emissions and behavioural audiometry was conducted on each subject prior the administration of the ABR procedures. The variability of the audiological test battery results – between the subjects and when compared to previous research – emphasized the heterogeneity of the CP population. Furthermore, more than half of the research sample (53%; n=15) responded inconsistently to behavioural pure tone (PT) stimuli. It was suggested that the severity of physical impairments as well as additional impairments such as mental retardation might have influenced the consistency of the subjects’ responses during behavioural PT audiometry. The ABR results indicated that there were no significant differences with regards to threshold correspondence and recording time between the two ABR systems when using click and 0.5 kHz TB stimuli (p>0.05). With regards to the success rates, the VS system was successful in more cases than the conventional ABR system using click and 0.5 kHz TB stimuli. Although results also showed no statistically significant value for click p=.1121) and 0.5 kHz TB stimuli p=.1648), there was a tendency towards the 95% confidence level in both cases suggesting that the VS ABR system may produce a statistically significant success rate for click as well as for 0.5 kHz TB stimuli, provided a larger sample is tested. The research indicated that, since the VS ABR system was more successful across a wider range of subjects during click-evoked and 0.5 kHz TB recordings, it may increase the clinical usefulness of the ABR especially in terms of hearing screening in the CP population. The research suggested that excessive muscular movements during the recordings influenced not only the VS ABR’s, but also the conventional ABR’s threshold correspondences to PT thresholds as well as the recording time of the measurements. Therefore it may still be necessary to use a light sedative in some CP patients to reduce excessive myogenic interference despite the possible advantages of the VS ABR system. / Dissertation (MCommunication Pathology)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / unrestricted

This master thesis studies the learning of dense feature descriptors where camera poses are the only supervisory signal. The use of camera poses as a supervisory signal has only been published once before, and this thesis expands on this previous work by utilizing a couple of different techniques meant increase the robustness of the method, which is particularly important when not having access to ground-truth correspondences. Firstly, an adaptive robust loss is utilized to better differentiate inliers and outliers. Secondly, statistical properties during training are both enforced and adapted to, in an attempt to alleviate problems with uncertainties introduced by not having true correspondences available. These additions are shown to slightly increase performance, and also highlights some key ideas related to prediction certainty and robustness when working with camera poses as a supervisory signal. Finally, possible directions for future work are discussed.

Dirac fermions provide a prototypical description of topological insulators and their gapless boundary states, which are predicted by the bulk-boundary correspondence. Motivated by the unusual physical properties of these states, we study them in two different Hermitian quantum systems. In non-Hermitian systems, we investigate the failure of the bulk-boundary correspondence and show that non-Hermitian topological invariants impact a system’s bulk response. First, we study electronic topological insulators in three dimensions with time-reversal symmetry. These can be characterized by a quantized magnetoelectric coefficient in the bulk, which, however, does not yield an experimentally observable response. We show that the signature response of a time-reversal-invariant topological insulator is a nonlinear magnetoelectric effect, which in the presence of a small electric field leads to the appearance of half-integer charges bound to a magnetic flux quantum. Next, we consider topological superconducting nanowires. These feature Majorana zero modes at their ends, which combine nonlocally into a single electronic state. An electron tunneling through such a state will be transmitted phase-coherently from one end of the wire to the other. We compute the transmission phase for nanowires with broken time-reversal symmetry and confirm that it is independent of the wire length. Turning to non-Hermitian systems, we consider planar optical microcavities with an anisotropic cavity material, which may feature topological degeneracies known as excep- tional points in their complex frequency spectrum. We present a quantitative method to extract an effective non-Hermitian Hamiltonian for the eigenmodes, and describe how a pair of exceptional points arises from a Dirac point due to the cavity loss. Finally, we investigate generalized topological invariants that can be defined for non- Hermitian systems, but which have no counterpart (i.e. vanish) in Hermitian systems, for example the so-called non-Hermitian winding number in one dimension. Contrary to Hermitian systems, the bulk-boundary correspondence breaks down: Comparing Green functions for periodic and open boundary conditions, we find that in general there is no correspondence between topological invariants computed for periodic boundary con- ditions, and boundary eigenstates observed for open boundary conditions. Instead, we prove that the non-Hermitian winding number in one dimension signals a topological phase transition in the bulk: It implies spatial growth of the bulk Green function, which we define as the response of a gapped system to an external perturbation on timescales where the induced excitations have not propagated to the boundary yet. Since periodic systems cannot accommodate such spatial growth, they differ from open ones.

Bibliographic note STAHL, C. (2014): Cleavage Politics and Europeanisation-induced transformation of the national political space - The Case of the Czech Republic, 94 p. Master thesis, Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of International Studies. Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Jiří Vykoukal, CSc. Abstract This research seeks to map the national political space and assess the prevailing cleavage patterns in the Czech Republic. Processes of globalisation and Europeanisation have left their imprint in Western Europe - splitting the electorate into winners and losers of globalisation and denationalisation. This demarcation vs. integration magnet is also relevant in the CEE region - altering and reshuffling the underlying structure of party competition and EU contestation. By employing quantitative content analysis of print media the prevailing issue and cleavage dimensions will be reconstructed both during early stages of democratic transition (1996 Parliamentary elections) and after the 2004-EU-enlargement (2010 elections). While the political discourse and politics in the 1990s are primarily structured by issues of economic transition and post-communist transformation (underlying the classical socio-economic cleavage between market and state), in 2010 also cultural and post-materialist political...