When an intense laser beam interacts with matter, the Kerr nonlinearity results in self-focusing. Above the critical intensity, self-focusing dominates pulse spreading through diffraction leading to continuous pulse narrowing and thus an increase of the laser peak intensity. Collapse is prevented through the fact that peak intensities ultimately reach a level where ionization occurs. The profile of ionized electrons represents a negative lens which balances Kerr nonlinear self-focusing and causes the formation of stable filaments. From filaments radiation is emitted in a cone around the filament which has been termed conical emission. Filament formation happens at non-perturbative intensities where the formalism of perturbative nonlinear optics loses its validity. This opens the question of how the Kerr nonlinearity behaves in the non-perturbative limit and how large the Kerr nonlinear coefficient is. The expression for the Kerr nonlinearity is derived by perturbation theory; the validity of this expression in the non-perturbative limit is questionable. Further, experimentally the Kerr nonlinear index is extracted from measurements of the self-focusing distance as a function of beam intensity which is called the Z-scan method. This method fails at non-perturbative intensities due to the presence of the negative lens coming from the ionized electrons. The effects of the positive focusing and negative self-defocusing lens cannot be separated by the Z-scan method. As a result, not much is known about the Kerr nonlinearity in the regime of non-perturbative nonlinear optics. The purpose of this thesis is twofold. First, recently it has been discovered that conical emission can be utilized as a broadband and very efficient amplification mechanism in the far infrared. The process has been dubbed Kerr instability amplification. The difference between conical emission and Kerr instability amplification is that they take place in two different regimes of the nonlinear interaction. Whereas conical emission grows out of noise and therewith only takes place once the pump pulse has been substantially restructured due to filamentation, Kerr instability amplification is seeded with a second pulse and therewith occurs long before filamentation happens. The theory developed for Kerr instability amplification has been developed based on a stability analysis of the scalar wave equation. This analysis has shown that with pump lasers in the 1-2 μm range amplification of infrared radiation up to the 10’s of μm can be achieved. For amplification over such a wide range it is not adhoc clear to which exent vectorial wave effects can be neglected. The first part of the thesis closes this gap by developing the vectorial theory of vector instability amplification. The second part uses the results derived for Kerr instability amplification to answer the question of how to measure the Kerr nonlinear index in the nonperturbative laser intensity limit. The idea rests on the fact that Kerr instability amplification is maximum for a specific angle between pump and seed beam which varies as a function of laser pump intensity. A relation is derived that connects this angle with the Kerr nonlinear refractive index. As a result, from the maximum angle measured as a function of pump intensity, both magnitude and functional form of the Kerr nonlinear index as a function of laser intensity can be determined.

The reason why I chose the issue of determination of paternity as a topic of my thesis is the fact that most of us will meet with this institute during our lifetime. The aim of this thesis is to analyze and describe the institute of determination of paternity, especially in the view of the applicable legislation. The thesis is composed of eight chapters. Chapter One deals with family and parenthood and defines the basic terms, sucha as the biological, social and legal parenthood. Chapter Two is subdivided into two parts and focuses on the legislation of paternity. Part One describes the historical development of parenthood, part Two briefly describes the source of law witch contains the current legislation. The next chapter concerns the determination of maternity, which is closely connected to the institute of paternity. Chapter Three, apart from the applicable legislation, also includes a subchapter about hidden birth and a subchapter that documents surrogacy. The following chapter already concentrates on the current Czech legislation of determination of paternity, which is included in the civil code. This chapter consists of six parts that closely describe various possibilities of determination of paternity in the Czech republic. I particularly focus on the assumption of paternity that there is a...

Abstract Determination of blood glucose level is a frequently occurring procedure in diabetes care. As the most common method involves collecting blood drops for chemical analysis, it is invasive and liable to afflict a degree of pain and cause a skin injury. To eliminate these disadvantages, this thesis focuses on pulsed photoacoustic techniques, which have potential ability in non-invasive blood glucose measurement. The fundamental theory of photoacoustics in liquid and soft tissue was studied systematically. The distributions of photoacoustic sources in a near-infrared optical skin model were simulated by the Monte Carlo method. Expansion coefficient and specific heat of glucose solution were measured by thermodynamic method, while the sound velocity in it was determined by photoacoustic approach. The effect of glucose on blood optical scattering was studied by a picosecond pulsed laser together with a streak camera. A photoacoustic apparatus comprising a pulsed laser diode and a piezoelectric transducer was built and applied to measure glucose concentration in water and scattering media. Moreover, this apparatus was also used to non-invasive experiment on human fingers. The measurements showed that the expansion coefficient, specific heat and acoustic velocity change by 1.2%, -0.6% and 0.28%, respectively, in response to a 1% change in glucose concentration. The sum effect of these parameters to photoacoustic signal was much larger than that of optical absorption of glucose in near infrared wavelengths, which provided photoacoustic technique a higher degree of sensitivity than offered by the optical absorption method. At the wavelength of 905 nm, the measured glucose detection sensitivity in a 3% milk solution, a tissue sample and whole human blood was 5.4%, 2.5% and 14%, respectively. Each figure is higher than that of glucose in water, about 2%, for a one percent change in glucose concentration. This was supported by the temporal dispersion curves of glucose in blood samples, which demonstrated that glucose decreased the optical scattering of tissues. The currently photoacoustic apparatus could detect the minimal glucose concentration of 100 mg/dl in whole blood samples. It is sensitive to physiological changes in non-invasive measurement, but insufficient for evaluating change in the physiological glucose concentration. Current photoacoustic techniques have apparently advantages in study of scattering media and made great progress in tissue imaging and diagnosis. However, in non-invasive blood glucose measurement they met similar problems as optical approaches based on scattering effect.

1 ABSTRACT Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Biophysics and Physical Chemistry Candidate: Karolina Palickova Consultant: Ing. Vladimir Kubicek, CSc. Title of Thesis: HPLC Determination of Potencial Drugs The diploma thesis describes selection of the most suitable conditions for HPLC determination of a recently prepared potential bronchodilatans. The aim of the thesis was to find a suitable isocratic method for the HPLC determination of the substance in rat plasma to be used during pharmacokinetic experiments. The chromatographic column Ascentis® Express RP - Amide was utilized. Best results were achieved with mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and phosphate buffer (pH = 3,0) in volume ratio 12:88. The column was thermostated at 20 řC. Fluorescence detection (λex = 228 nm, λem = 380 nm) was applied to get a sufficient sensitivity. 4-quinazolinole was chosen as an internal standard. Biological samples were processed by LLE before the HPLC analyses. The proposed method was validated successfully and then employed in pharmacokinetic studies.

With the estabilishment of paternity sooner or later encountered almost every one of us. Although the paternity law and estabilishment of paternity is already known from the times of ancient Rome, it remains a relevant and contentious topic. The aim of this thesis is to comprehensively explore and explain the establishment and denial of paternity in the Czech legal system. The thesis is divided into eight chapters. The first chapter deals with the conceptualization of family and parenthood. It is necessary, because the current Civil Code contains these concepts. However, it does not define them. To further develop the thesis, it is therefore crucial to specify, what exactly those concepts mean within the Czech legal system. The first part of this chapter examines in detail the concept of family, in the second part is dealt with parenthood. In this context, it is illuminated exclusively legal parenthood and disputes between legal, biological and social parenthood. The second chapter focuses on the history of establishment and denial of parentage from the time of ancient Rome, through the period of General Civil Code (1811), the Law on the Right to Family (1949) to the Law on Family (1963). The second chapter is also divided into two sections, namely the historical development and establishing...

The Kichwa Añangu Community lives in Ecuador's Yasuní National Park. As a community, they have chosen to dedicate their livelihood to community-owned tourism, or what is commonly called turismo comunitario in Ecuador. Tourism brings multiple, ongoing challenges to the Añangu Community. Shifting market demands, growing regional and transnational competition, and large-scale climate events each present ongoing vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the Añangu do not own rights to the petroleum reserves quietly resting under their land. Nonetheless, they persist in their tourism project and have become recognized as a model for community-owned tourism in Ecuador. In part, this thesis seeks to explore why the Añangu Community has chosen to not only pursue, but expand their involvement in community-owned tourism. This research will demonstrate that tourism is locally embraced as a vehicle for livelihood wellbeing, environmental stewardship, and cultural reclamation. The key question then becomes, why is the Añangu Community’s tourism project successful? Here, I argue that through community agency and governance, the Añangu Community is able to practice economic, environmental, and cultural self-determination via their local control of the tourism project.

Students with emotional disturbance experience many problems that affect their academic and social success in the school environment, including academic performance, relationships with teachers and peers, and a lack of engagement in the school community (Anderson, Kutash, & Duchnowski, 2001; Villarreal, 2015). Currently, a handful of interventions exist to assist students with behavioral challenges. Many of these interventions aim to increase academic achievement, or to curb disruptive behavior in students with ED so that they can achieve improved school success (Algozzine, Wang, & Violette, 2011). Research with students with emotional disabilities also suggests that improving their self-determination skills and providing opportunities for self-determination are also effective in improving school success (Green, Mays, & Jolivette, 2011; Sebag, 2010; Skerbetz & Kostewicz, 2013). While some research has been conducted with middle and high school students with ED, fewer research studies exist on strategies that promote self-determination in elementary students. This purpose of this study was to explore the effect of a choice-making intervention on the academic engagement and disruptive behaviors of elementary students with ED. Findings revealed a functional relationship between the offering of choice and the students' disruptive behaviors and academic engagement. Students also increased in their work completion and social interactions with one another and with the adults. Social validity data indicated that the teacher viewed the intervention as being feasible and valuable in his classroom.

In recent years Stewart platforms have been increasingly studied and developed. These parallel manipulators offer a number of advantages over traditional serial manipulators including high rigidity, good positioning accuracy and high load to weight ratio. The main disadvantage associated with parallel manipulators is that they have relatively limited workspaces. Numerous researchers have thus emphasized the need to develop refined methods for the determination of workspaces of such manipulators. This study is primarily concerned with extensions to a novel optimization approach for the determination of manipulator accessible output sets. The optimization approach provides a general method for the determination of workspaces of both serial and parallel manipulators and has the considerable advantage that it may easily be automated. Furthermore, the approach allows for the easy and systematic implementation of various physical constraints acting on manipulators. Established methods for workspace determination are reviewed and illustrated by application to a simple two degree of freedom example. The original optimization approach is extended and generalize< to enable the determination of non-convex workspaces. Simply stated, the approach consists of finding the points of intersection of the workspace boundary with a number of successive search elements. The points of intersection are determined by means of optimization techniques in which a dynamic constrained optimization algorithm is used. Two new methodologies, the modified ray method and the chord method, are proposed. Differences between these methods are illustrated using a simple example. The optimization approach, embodied in the proposed methodologies, is applied to the determination of workspaces of planar Stewart platforms of varied designs. A formulation for all constraints acting on planar Stewart platforms is introduced and implemented in the optimization approach. A special case of manipulator geometry, where the orientation of the platform is effectively redundant in determining the extreme reach of the manipulat'1r, is identified and studied. A slight modification to the optimization methodologies is introduced to allow for the determination of workspaces of such redundant manipulators. The modified ray and chord methods proposed in this study have proven capable of determining convex and non-convex manipulator workspaces. Of the two new methods, the chord approach is the most reliable in determining non-convex workspaces. Both optimization methodologies have been implemented in practical interactive computer systems, which allow for the easy determination of workspaces of planar Stewart pla1 forms of arbitrary geometry. / Dissertation (M Eng (Mechanical Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering / unrestricted

Traditionally Sweden has had a liberal migration policy and has been opened to both refugees, asylum seekers and labor immigrants. In year 2015 Sweden introduced internal border controls to stop the inflow of people by reason of the overloaded asylum system, internal borders that earlier had been open for over 60 years. The purpose of this survey is to analyze the Swedish governments’ view on migration during the years 2015 and 2016 based on ideas about migration as a universal human right and the states self-determination. This is interesting because Sweden has had a liberal migration policy, and besides, calls itself for a humanitarian superpower. The questions in this survey is first how the relationship look like in the governments’ view on migration based on universal human rights and state self-determination during the refugee crisis 2015 and 2016 and how they express themselves in the various government documents. The second question is what ideas are specifically emphasized by the government in the view of who the central actor is, the view of state borders and the view of who the state should help? The method in this survey is a qualitative actor-centered and descriptive idea and ideology analysis where dimensions are used as an analysis tool. The material used in the survey is government documents from 2015 and 2016 consisting government declarations, propositions and debate articles. The result shows that both ideas of migration as a universal human right and the state self-determination can be found in the Swedish government view on migration during this years. The first idea is most prominent in the principal view of what the government wants to do in the migration politics and the second idea is most prominent in the documents about how the government actually act, such as in law suggestions. In addition, the government’s view is also different between the dimensions of the various government documents.

This study investigated how students perceived their motivation in high school social studies classes in school and to determine if a correlation exists between students’ grade level, race, gender, and their motivation. The sample included 337 high school students in Broward County, Florida. To assess students’ perceptions on their motivation the academic self-regulation questionnaire was utilized. Results indicate that social studies students show high levels of external regulation, with a mean score at 22.31 on a scale of 36 points. The results show a mean score of 24 on a scale of 28 points for identified regulation among social studies students. Findings revealed that student motivation could be gauged. No statistical significance was found between high school students’ grade level, race, gender, and their motivation in social studies classes. The findings of this study have shown that students at Boyd H. Anderson High School want to learn social studies.