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Es wird aufgezeigt, wie durch die Notwendigkeit, in (Chemie-Transport-)Modellen diskretisieren zu müssen, die natürliche Heterogenität einer Landschaft bei der Modellierung reduziert wird. Es wird ein Maß definiert, mit dessen Hilfe die Heterogenität eines Gebiets, z.B. einer Gitterzelle erfaßt werden kann. Das Maß erlaubt auch, unterschiedliche Gebiete bezüglich ihrer Heterogenität zu vergleichen. Es bezieht sowohl den Wechsel von Flächen unterschiedlicher Landnutzung als auch die Anzahl der Ökosysteme ein. / The loss of information due to discretization is illustrated. A measure is defined that allows to characterize the degree of heterogeneity of an area, for instance a grid cell, with respect to the boundaries between areas of different landuse as well as the amount of ecosystems. lt also allows to compare different landscapes with respect to their heterogeneity.

Decision making in environmental management is faced with uncertainties associated with related environmental variables and processes. Decision makers are inclined to use resources to acquire better information in one or more uncertain variable(s). Typically, with limited resources available, characterizing the feasibility of such investment is desirable yet complicated. In the context of reducing inherent uncertainty, decision makers need to tackle two difficult questions, first, the optimal selection of variable(s) and second, the optimal level of information collection which produces maximum gain in benefits. We develop a new framework to assess the socioeconomic value of potential decisions of collecting additional information for given variable(s) to reduce inherent uncertainty. The suggested framework employs advanced social welfare concepts to facilitate eliciting the social acceptability of decisions to collect better information. The framework produces estimates of changes in utility levels and willingness to pay for target population using the benefit transfer method. The practicality of the framework is established using the following common problems in the field of water resources: 1) the uncertainty in exposure to health risk due to drinking a groundwater source contaminated with a carcinogen, 2) the uncertainty in non point source pollution loadings due to unknown hydrologic processes variability, and 3) the equity level in allocating mitigation responsibilities among polluters. For the three applications, the social acceptability of potential decisions is expressed in monetary terms which represent an extension on typical cost benefit analysis by including the socioeconomic value of a decision. The specific contribution of this research is a theoretical framework for a detailed preliminary analysis to transform and represent the given problem in useable terms for the social welfare analysis. The practical framework is attractive because it avoids the need to employ prohibitively expensive survey-based contingent valuation methods. Instead, the framework utilizes benefit transfer method, which imposes a theoretical behavioral structure on population characteristics such as age and income and to produce empirical estimates for a new problem setting.

Les cellules souches embryonnaires (ES) sont des cellules pluripotentes, capables de s'auto-renouveller indéfiniment dans des conditions de culture appropriées. Cela signifie que ces cellules restent dans un état prolifératif et indifferencié en culture et ont le potentiel de se différencier dans les trois feuillets embryonnaires, à savoir l'ectoderme, le mésoderme et l’endoderme, et leurs dérivés. Cette capacité à se différencier dans tous les types cellulaires, souligne la diffculté à contrôler la différenciation des cellules ES in vitro et à les guider vers un lignage spécifique. Mon projet de thèse porte sur la différenciation des cellules ES murines. Une étape importante du développement embryonnaire est le choix entre l’ectoderme et le mésendoderme. Dans ce but, j'ai développé une lignée ES qui permet de suivre exclusivement l'expression de Brachyury (T) dans le mésendoderme à l'exclusion de la notochorde: la lignée TRepV. Pour cela, jai cloné un fragment de 1 kb du promoteur murin de Brachyuryen amont du rapporteur Venus (YFP). Avant d'utiliser cette lignée, j’ai cherché à la valider. Malheureusement l'expression du rapporteur TRepV ne reproduit pas fidèlement l'expression endogène de T. Une hypothèse est que le fragment de 1kb ne contient pas tous les éléments de régulation de T nécessaires pour expression fidèle in vitro. De manière surprenante, j’ai observé que le rapporteur TRepV est exprimé de façon hétérogène dans les cellules ES non différenciées. Au cours de mon travail de thèse, je me suis intéressée à cette expression hétérogène. J'ai montré que les cellules ES TRepV+ représentent une sous-population distincte des cellules souches, qui peut être maintenue séparément exprimant le rapporteur de manère stable, à la difference d'autres gènes exprimés de manière hétérogène dans les cellules ES. Nous avons trouvé un marqueur d'une population distincte parmi les cellules ES et de nouveaux gènes impliqués dans pluripotence, qui seront abordés dans des études futures. / Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are a powerful system to investigate developmental processes in vitro, and a promising tool to generate specific cell types for cellular therapies and regenerative medicine. ESCs are self-renewing, pluripotent cells, maintaining a proliferative and undifferentiated state in culture, while retaining the capacity to differentiate into the three embryonic lineages: ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm, and all their derivatives. Here, I established a primitive streak specific Brachyury/T Reporter ESC line (TRepV) to investigate early ESC differentiation. In contrast to previously published Tknock-in line, we established a transgene T ESCs reporter line, in order to avoid the disruption of the T locus, which may result in a hapoinsuficient phenotype. During the validation process, I observed discrepancies in expression between the TRepV and the endogenous T locus. I followed upon these observations with a more detailed analysis and obtained evidence that T is regulated differently in the ESC system compared to in vivo development. Against expectations, I also observed heterogeneous expression of the TRepV reporter in undifferentiated ESCs. Undifferentiated ESCs were found to be a mix of TRepV+ and TRepV- cells. This finding became the focus of my studies: I found TRepV+ cells represent a distinct population of ESCs with a unique identity. Unlike other heterogeneous ESC populations (such as Stella or Nanog), TRepV+ cells do not interconvert in their fate and represent an explicit, stable subpopulation of ESCs. Finally, I performed a microarray analysis of TRepV+ and TRepV- ESCs and identifed new genes which may be involved in the regulation of self-renewal and pluripotency.

The aim of this thesis is to verify the hypothesis on real data based on economic theory and these theories to confirm or reject. The first part deals with testing of hypotheses based on the game theory and tests whether tennis players play according to the minimax theory. The Hypotheses analyse the data for strong and weak players, considering their service, and verify which group of players converge in their strategies toward minimax theory assumptions. Specifically, theory components of the hypotheses are tested within this part: i) the probability of winning the game serving from the right side of a court is the same as the probability of winning the game serving from the left side, ii) this hypothesis will hold true rather in case of stronger players serving against weaker players than in case equally strong players playing against each other and iii) Based on the assumption that women do not excel distinctively in serving, the results in the women's matches will be worse in the minimax theory than results from men's matches. Hypotheses derived from the theory of elimination tournaments are tested in the second part of the diploma thesis. The hypotheses are analysed on the tennis data whether players make less effort in uneven tournaments, regardless of their position as favourite or outsider, than the theory presumes. The analysis of the above mentioned hypotheses was performed on the data from the Grand Slam tournaments in the years 2011 and 2012. Hypotheses are tested using both male and female data. The results obtained from analysis of the data confirm the hypotheses.

Es wird aufgezeigt, wie durch die Notwendigkeit, in (Chemie-Transport-)Modellen diskretisieren zu müssen, die natürliche Heterogenität einer Landschaft bei der Modellierung reduziert wird. Es wird ein Maß definiert, mit dessen Hilfe die Heterogenität eines Gebiets, z.B. einer Gitterzelle erfaßt werden kann. Das Maß erlaubt auch, unterschiedliche Gebiete bezüglich ihrer Heterogenität zu vergleichen. Es bezieht sowohl den Wechsel von Flächen unterschiedlicher Landnutzung als auch die Anzahl der Ökosysteme ein. / The loss of information due to discretization is illustrated. A measure is defined that allows to characterize the degree of heterogeneity of an area, for instance a grid cell, with respect to the boundaries between areas of different landuse as well as the amount of ecosystems. lt also allows to compare different landscapes with respect to their heterogeneity.

Submitted by Valquíria Barbieri (kikibarbi@hotmail.com) on 2017-05-12T18:33:19Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2015_Rodicrisller Rodrigues.pdf: 2841204 bytes, checksum: 1323b47d2b97ea08fb569431626c4ed1 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Jordan (jordanbiblio@gmail.com) on 2017-05-18T16:24:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2015_Rodicrisller Rodrigues.pdf: 2841204 bytes, checksum: 1323b47d2b97ea08fb569431626c4ed1 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-05-18T16:24:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISS_2015_Rodicrisller Rodrigues.pdf: 2841204 bytes, checksum: 1323b47d2b97ea08fb569431626c4ed1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-30 / Com a difusão dos dispositivos eletrônicos e a facilidade na troca de informações qualquer projeto científico usa dados oriundos de diversas fontes. Nesse contexto, dados científicos possuem aspectos semânticos inerentes ao seu processo de aquisição e área de domínio, de forma que para trabalhar com conjuntos de dados de origens diferentes é preciso resolver o problema da heterogeneidade semântica entre eles. Este trabalho enfoca a mitigação da heterogeneidade em dados científicos através do uso de infraestruturas virtuais de Computação Científica. O objetivo principal é demonstrar que soluções em nuvem computacional possuem os requisitos necessários para atender às demandas atuais de um contexto de Computação Científica e e-Science, de forma a facilitar a troca e interação de dados entre contextos heterogêneos / With the diffusion of electronic devices and the facility in exchange of information any scientific project uses data from different sources. In this context, scientific data have semantic aspects inherent to the process of acquisition and domain area, in such a way to work with different sources of data sets is necessary to solve the problem of semantic heterogeneity between them. This work focuses on the mitigation of the heterogeneity on scientific data using virtual infrastructures for Scientific Computing. The main objective is to demonstrate that computational cloud solutions have the necessary requirements to meet the current demands of the context of Scientific Computing and e-Science, in order to facilitate the exchange and interaction of data between heterogeneous environments.

The thesis describes and analyzes the strategies by which organizations in the non-profit and profit sector fight against ethnic discrimination on the example of employment. The first part deals with general discrimination in the labor market in the context of civil society. The topic is discussed in more depth up to the individual concepts of discrimination, discrimination in the labor market, ethnicity, and ethnic discrimination. The second part compares how non-profit organizations and the advertising market organizations as representatives of the profit sector fight against ethnic discrimination in the process of gaining employment. The thesis aims to reveal and further compare the strategies of the concrete non-profit and profit organizations against discrimination by using the theory of the relationship between the civil sector and the market, the theory of heterogeneity.

The thesis is concerned with relationships between progressive technological processes of spheroidal graphite cast iron’s production and their structural properties. The aim of the work is to explain causal relationship between parameters of the proposed manufacturing technology of the iron type given (involving selected variants of modification and inoculation of melt and the parameters of melt crystallization, solidification and cooling down in a mould), their structure and even chemical heterogeneity of elements in this structure. For close specification of presented relationships three-dimensional model of spheroidal graphite growth was used, which was developed at the Brno University of Technology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. Its usability in praxis has been verified on the basisis of the application of this model on experimentally acquired data. The U GRAFIT 20 model of the authors Stránský and Million counting segregation in the frame of eutectic cell has not still been used for prediction of segregation in real condition in greater extent. On the basis of the above mentioned model microsegregation within “on average” of the cell has been discovered during experimental melts. Microsegregation has been described by segregation and heterogeneity indexes. Calculated values of segregation and heterogeneity indexes have been compared with experimentally verified values. On the basis of comparison of calculated and measured values the possibility of further usage of the mentioned model in praxis has been explored.

No description available.