L’ange n’a jamais été aussi présent qu’à l’heure de la modernité, c’est-à-dire à l’époque où le religieux, en son expression, sa forme et sa substance, ses objets, se trouvait remis en question par l’intense réflexion philosophique et par les découvertes scientifiques et techniques issues des Lumières. C’est ce constat fondé sur l’omniprésence des anges tant dans l’art que dans la littérature du dix-neuvième et du vingtième siècles qui nous a conduit à nous poser une question simple : de quoi l’ange fait-il signe ? Que symbolise-t-il ? Quel sens donner à cette présence ?Nous avons décidé, pour le savoir, de remonter aux sources de l’ange afin de mettre au jour les fondements de ce qui, de toute évidence, s’affirme comme l’un des mythes les plus importants de notre imaginaire contemporain. Nous avons également décidé de montrer comment ce passage d’une figure biblique à un mythe profane avait été rendu possible et quels mécanismes cette métamorphose avait empruntés ;nous avons aussi cherché à savoir quels enjeux ce processus mettait en jeu.Cette étude se propose d’étudier les représentations des anges dans l’art et la littérature de 1850 à 1950 afin de découvrir comment l’on passe d’une figure traditionnelle à un véritable mythe moderne. En quoi les représentations modernes de l’ange témoignent-elles des nouveaux rapports qui se tissent au divin ? Il s’agit ensuite d’étudier ses deux symboliques majeures : celle de l’ange inspirateur et celle de l’ange gardien, en mettant au jour les procédés qui permettent à l’ange de devenir un mythe personnel de l’individu et du créateur en particulier. / The angel was never as present as during the modernist era, that is at a time when thereligious figure, in its expression, its form, and even in its substance, its objects, waschallenged by the intense philosophical reflection and by the scientific and technicaldiscoveries stemming from the Enlightenment era. It is this acknowledgement basedon an omnipresence of angels, in nineteenth and twentieth art and literature alike,which led us to ask a simple question – what is the angel a sign of? What does itsymbolize? What meaning may be given its large presence?We have decided, to understand it, to get back to the sources of the angel in order toshed light onto the foundations of that which, quite obviously, establishes itself asone of the most important myths in the present-day imagination. We have alsodecided to show how the mutation from a biblical figure to a profane myth hadmanaged to happen and what were the mechanisms through which thismetamorphosis had taken place; we have also tried to know what was at stake in thisprocess.This study proposes to examine the representations of angels in art and literaturefrom 1850 to 1950 in order to discover how these traditional figures came to becomemodern myths. How can their contemporary representations testify of a newrelationship with the divine ? We'll try to answer this question by studying two majorsymbolics - the inspiring angel and the guardian angel - and by revealing the processin which the angel becomes a personal myth of the individual and especially of thecreator.

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This dissertation thematically belongs to the field of "History of Science and Scholarly Knowledge" with significant reach to theology and exegesis. It concerns the dispute of whether the annunciated text of the Old Testament was in all respects original or if it in some respects followed the traditions of ancient Near Eastern civilizations, particularly the Sumero-Akkadian one. The purpose of this thesis is to introduce the fundamental information on the "Babel-Bibel" dispute to the Czech scholarly community for the very first time. The dissertation includes an analysis of the course and consequences of the dispute as well as a discussion of the impact of Oriental scholarship on Old Testament exegesis.

Europe of the early 19th century is searching for its new artistic persona. Several new and distinct directions come into being, all vying for a spot on the landscape of arts and for the leading position. This desire to search for new directions deepens Europe's interest in the Orient. Meeting of the West with the East goes all the way back to early Middle Ages and manifests through several phases all the way to the present day. Fascination by the Orient in the 19th century was connected mainly to Napoleon's Egypt campaign, Greek uprising against the Turks, France's conquest of Northern Africa, World Exhibition in London and excursions into exotic lands themselves undertaken by contemporary enthusiasts. The wave of orientalism permeated all levels of fine art. It is most often seen in painting, graphic arts and photography and seen the least in sculpture. The thesis follows the orientalism phenomenon from the end of 18th century to the First World War. The goal is to provide some insight into its influence on areas of the fine arts in central Europe and provide background for future research in doing so. Key focus of the thesis is the research of exotic tendencies in architecture in the Kingdom of Bohemia and presenting it in the context of oriental architecture of other countries under the...

Föreliggande studie syftar till att undersöka hur elevers berättande texterpåverkas av att skriva med bild som inspirationskälla och utan. Elevernastexter genomgår en textanalys där de två texterna analyseras utifrån dess längd,röd tråd och struktur samt formord och innehållsord för att vidare jämföras. Vidare lyfts sex elevers tankar och åsikter gällande de två metoderna genomintervjuer. Utifrån studiens frågeställningar sammanställs texternas analyseroch elevernas transkriberade intervjuer för att senare presenteras i resultatet. Studiens teoretiska ram har sin utgångspunkt i intermediala studier som vidarekopplas till det resultat studien presenterar. Det framkommer i resultatet att detexter eleverna skriver utan bilden innehåller fler formord och innehållsordsamt att en högre procent av eleverna uppvisar en tydlig struktur och en rödtråd. Vidare visar resultatet att eleverna skriver längre texter med bilden. Tvåelever hade valt att skriva med en bild som inspirationskälla igen om de fåttchansen, detta för att utmana sig, dock ansåg alla intervjuade elever att det varsvårare att skriva med en bild som inspiration.

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Based on the design decision making process from an architect’s point of view, a related literature review, theoretical analyses, and inductive inferences, this thesis proposes a new interpretation of high-performance building (HPB), translates/maps criteria issues related to building environmental assessment (BEA) tools for key design decision making elements, and identifies sources of inspiration for HPB designs. This thesis intends to propose an integrated conceptual model for the design of HPBs to provide direct knowledge-based decision making support to architects in the early design phase. Studies on key design decision making elements, sources of inspiration, and building information modeling are integrated into this genesis of conceptual design. The concept of the HPB proposed in this thesis emphasizes comprehensive sustainable building performance in environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects. The concept takes the view that HPBs should be aesthetically attractive, socio-culturally adapted, safe, healthy, and comfortable, and should operate at a high level of environmental, resource, and economic efficiency throughout their life cycle. This thesis discusses the topics of the necessity, benefits, and design principles of HPBs. An analysis of the characteristics of BEA tools and HPB design decision making revealed their relationship: the consequence of goals and the mismatch of practices. BEA tools provide the basic information (such as framework, content, evaluation methods, and processes) related to decision making to promote a holistic HPB design at a practical level. However, given the mismatch of practices between BEA tools and HPB design decision making, most such tools are still used for testing and verifying the design results and do not consider the design decision making process. Existing BEA tools primarily guide or indirectly affect the design work but, in practice, play a limited role in directly helping architects make early decisions regarding HPB design. First, for a detailed comparison, this thesis identified the common criteria issues for the three existing BEA tools: SBTool 2012 (maximum version), LEED NC-v3, and the Chinese Evaluation Standard for Green Building (ESGB). A total of 51 common/similar criteria issues were identified and such issues were found to be primarily allocated in the energy and resources, indoor environmental quality, environmental loads, and site areas. SBTool 2012 contains the widest range and most comprehensive criteria issues of building performance, whereas the LEED NC-v3 and ESGB frameworks poorly cover social- and economic-related issues. Second, this thesis separated the criteria into whether they relate to decision making factors or building performance factors. Third, this thesis mapped HPB criteria issues into HPB design decision making elements. This thesis establishes a framework for key design decision elements for Chinese residential buildings by selecting a residential building type in China as a case study for the mapping approach application. The optimum criteria issues for Chinese residential buildings contain 10 primary criteria issues and 35 sub-criteria issues that cover aspects within the entire sustainable performance range and that correspond to key design decision making elements in this framework. This thesis also proposes two fundamental support approaches to creative design for HPBs: rational technical support and irrational divergent inspirational support. Based on practical design examples, three major types of irrational sources of inspiration in an architect’s design for HPBs have been identified: previous empirics, nature objects and phenomena, and advanced science and technologies. Finally, a new integrated conceptual model to support an architect’s early design decisions is established based on the BIM platform. The model contains two main aspects of the work: an initial building information model and an optimal building information model for HPBs during the early design stage. This conceptual model is presented as a generic approach that can be customized for different designers and project conditions. The model can also be used as a framework for providing knowledge-based creative support for decision making related to HPB design. In summary, this thesis intends to provide both a theoretical base and feasible measures for better HPB design and references for developing design decision making support tools for architects to use during the early HPB design process. / <p>QC 20131115</p>

<p>Asthma is a disease characterized by transient airway smooth muscle contraction leading to episodes of reversible airway narrowing. It affects over 300 million people worldwide and is implicated in over 250 000 deaths annually. The primary clinical features of asthma include airway inflammation, hyperresponsiveness, and remodeling. Generally, asthmatic patients experience exacerbations between periods of diminished symptoms. Interestingly, in addition to these above mentioned hallmarks, asthmatics have also been shown to react differently to ventilatory mechanical strain. This is most evident when assessing the effect of a deep inspiration (DI), clinically measured as a breath taken from functional residual capacity to total lung capacity, in healthy individuals <em>versus</em> asthmatics. These deep inspiratory efforts have been shown to produce a bronchodilatory response in healthy individuals, whereas in asthmatics, DIs are less effective in producing bronchodilation, can cause more rapid airway re-narrowing, and even bronchoconstriction in moderate to severe asthmatics. The mechanism by which a DI is able to cause bronchoconstriction remains ambiguous. Previous theories suggest that this phenomenon is intrinsic to airway smooth muscle (ASM) itself. However, the airway inflammation present in asthmatic airways may also add to the increased ASM contractility following stretch, by the release of mediators that can prime the contractile apparatus to react excessively in the presence of stretch.</p> <p>Thus, collectively, the studies contained in this thesis are linked to the general theme of greater characterization of the signalling mechanisms that regulate airway stretch-activated contractions using a pharmacological approach in intact bovine bronchial segments, with the hope of providing novel insights into the mechanisms that regulate the DI-induced bronchoconstriction seen in asthmatics.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (Medical Science)

My thesis project explores a new paradigm of mood board tool that challenges the current paradigm of confining everything to 2D, flat interfaces. while investi- gating how AI can inspire and assist industrial designers during the form explora- tion process. Using a human-centered design approach, the project led to the development of COSMO, an AI-integrated, inspiration-triggering mood board tool for industrial designers. It addresses the issue of limited variety in current digital inspiration platforms, where similar content is often suggested due to AI algorithms. COSMO encourages using a variety of inspiration sources, including digital visuals and real-life experiences. This approach fosters creativity and personal connection, helping designers deeply resonate with the inspiration they collect and retrieve it at a more profound level. COSMO also utilizes Mixed Reality technology to offer an immersive, distrac- tion-free experience when organizing and internalizing inspiration sources. It offers a virtual meditative space that uses AI-assisted association loops to build associations. These loops create multiple layers of associations, assisting human designers in widening their initial associations. This leads to inspiration sources that are semantically different but insightful.

In hope of lessening the inequal division between the amount of women and men studying and working in technical fields a project to create an inspirational platform has been initiated by the organisation Pepp. By the end of the first stage of the project a webpage has been created with frontend programming. This webpage contains several imaginary person portraits of imaginary individuals studying or working in technical fields. JavaScript filter functions have been created in order to filter between these individuals. All the necessary data for the portraits are collected in a database in form of an array in JavaScript. User tests were conducted where seven separate subjects were allowed to test the finished person portrait webpage. In the future the website will be improved and expanded with several webpages. Portraits of real individuals will also be collected and replace the imaginary individuals on the webpage.