The aim of this diploma thesis is to cover the catching up with the economic level among the countries of middle and eastern Europe. More accurately it analyses GDP per capita and household income per capita as one of the key economic indicators. The thesis concretely focuses on analysis of beta and sigma convergence and cluster analysis of the mentioned regions and concurrently at the background of the analysis explains some theoretical terms from areas of economics, econometrics and statistics. The analysis was concluded in IBM SPSS programme which belongs to the most complex, user friendly and professionally often used expert tools. The data for the analysis were used from Eurostat.

Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union on January 1, 2007 and are so far the last countries to do so. Before this important step, both countries had undergone a long way of economic transformation from planned to free market economy. The transformation began in the early 1990s but so far it has not been finished. Compared to the other Central and Eastern European countries, Bulgaria and Romania still belong to the least developed ones, which is probably the most important reason why these countries did not join the EU in May 2004 together with other Central and Eastern European countries, but almost three years later, in January 2007. The thesis, however, focuses mainly on what happened after January 2007 and aims at analyzing the first years of Bulgaria and Romania in the enlarged European Union and discuss also possible effects of the upcoming economic and financial crisis on both countries. The subject matter of the thesis is divided into three main chapters, accompanied by introduction and summary of main conclusions. First part (Chapter 2) focuses in detail on the process of economic transformation in both countries, on the summarization of the pre-accession period and on the challenges both countries were facing at that time. Main focus here is on the home economy, foreign economic relations and home affairs including current political situation. Analysis of pre-accession negotiations with the EU focuses both on general issues and also on detailed monitoring of the whole process by the European Commission. Second part (Chapter 3) analyzes in detail the first years of Bulgaria and Romania in the EU. The chapter opens with analysis of nominal convergence and fulfillment of Maastricht criteria and continues with real and structural convergence, analysis of external balances and integration of product and financial markets. Labor mobility, structural aid, development of business environment and main challenges for both economies are discussed as well. Third part (Chapter 4) focuses on the latest development and shows the effects of the current economic and financial crisis on Bulgarian and Romanian economies. The chapter discusses development of short term economic indicators and tries to assess the actual impact of the crisis and macroeconomic development in 2009 and 2010. This is, however, extremely difficult due to persisting uncertainty and absence of robust economic predictions. The analysis thus suffers from unavailability of relevant and up-to-date information and economic data.

This Diploma Paper provides an analysis of the Czech Republic convergence process, which importance grows more in the period before entry into the European Monetary Union. The convergence is evaluated on the basis of three criterion units which are standing alone but fading into each other. It is the Nominal convergence including Maastricht criteria which have been stated in the Treaty on European Union, then Real convergence criteria and criteria which accompany the development of the Optimum Currency Areas Theory. The theoretical part gives the definitions of particular criteria and draw the attention to potential problems which can occur by their interpreting. In the practical part there are comparative characteristics used to analyze achieved state of the convergence in the Czech Republic in relation to EU countries and euro area countries. This part attends also to monitoring the current financial and economical crisis and it's impact on individual indicators.

The aim of the thesis is to analyze the process of nominal and real convergence of the Czech Republic to the average of the European Union (EU-27). The text uses comparison with other european transition economies (Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia). The thesis consists of an analysis of the progress of real GDP per capita, comparative price level, labor productivity, employment, labor costs and other indicators. Other topics such as alternative indicators of economical convergence or the accession of the Czech republic into the euro-zone are discussed.

This Thesis deals with the convergence of European states and identifies the influence of the European union enlargement in 2014 on the course of convergence. Both real and price convergences are analyzed by using beta convergence and sigma convergence concepts. The Balassa Samuelson effect is tested as well. The Balassa Samuelson effect explains the existence of price convergence and also indicates the relationship between real and price variables. The existence of real and price convergence was verified for the whole period from 1995 to 2013. During 2004 the integration of European states was strengthened, which was significant for real convergence because the speed of convergence was positively influenced. As for the price convergence, the year 2004 was insignificant as the break point. Despite a similar course of both convergences, price convergence was more affected by the crisis in 2008. The presence of Balassa Samuelson effect was confirmed. Despite the complications during intensity measurement, caused by problematic dividing into tradable and non tradable sectors, corresponding values are realistic.

This work introduces a brief summary of softcomputing and the solutions to NP-hard problems. It especially deals with evolution algorithms and their basic types. The next part involves the study of cartesian genetic programming, which belongs to the field of evolution algorithms, used mainly in the evolution of digital circuits, symbolic regression, etc. A special chapter is devoted to the studies of new technique Age layered population structure, which deals with the problems of premature convergence, which suggests the way of how the population could be divided into subpopulations split up according to the age criteria. Thanks to the maintaining of sufficient diversity, it achieves substantially better solutions in comparison to the classical evolution algorithms. This papier includes the suggestion of two ways of incorporation of the ALPS technique into CGP. In the next part of work there were carried out tests on the classic problems, that would be solved with evolution algorithms. These tests were made with and without using ALPS technique. In the part of work "Experimental results" there was discussed a contribution of using ALPS technique in CGP against the classic CGP.

In this paper, we look at a media controversy that took effect at the release of the third game of the Mass Effect videogame series. The fans hated the ending of the game and demanded the publisher change it, which later happened. The fans have thus been given a certain amount of power and influence that wasn't too standard. The first part of the paper deals with videogame theory - we talk about the expressive power of videogames and how it can influence people. With the help of Henry Jenkins and Pierre Lévy we then showcase several media theories which attempt to explain the relationship between the fans, authors and content. Central to this paper is a qualitative research of chosen internet forum posts where we have attempted to learn the reasons for the fans' outrage. In the summary, we summarize what we have learned so far and attempt to put it all together.

The thesis focuses on the status of the blogosphere in traditional journalism. It defines blogs, describes their history, typology and audience, which has changed from passive recipients of media content to its active creators. The thesis depicts convergence as a process in which amateur journalists affect the institution of traditional journalism by publishing online. This gave rise to a new phenomenon, called participative journalism, which is a potential source of discrepancy between traditional and new media. The thesis voices mutual criticism and arguments from both professional journalists and bloggers. This need not prevail if these two media systems learn to live in symbiosis. The thesis further mentions the legal protection of bloggers in the Czech Republic and the democratizing potential of the blogosphere. The conducted qualitative research is based on twelve structured in-depth respondent interviews (both bloggers and editors) and focuses on the cooperation between lifestyle magazines (and newspapers) and bloggers. It examines motivations to take up the cooperation, its progress and its advantages and disadvantages. The research demonstrates that a symbiotic relationship is possible. It also discusses some notions introduced in the theoretical part of the thesis.

The purpose of this thesis is to introduce theoretical and analytical approaches to mortality convergence and divergence tendencies and assessment of these tendencies in the European area since late 1950s using selected analytical tools. In the considered period fundamental changes in mortality development in Europe were observed. The theoretical part of this study deals with the assumptions of mortality convergence and divergence which are included in significant demographic theories and concepts. In the practical part of this thesis, there are analyzed convergence and divergence tendencies of life expectancy at birth in 28 European countries between the years 1959 and 2009 using selected basic statistical characteristics of variability as well as of indicators that consider state population size. Divergence tendencies of mortality since the 1970s are documented and quantified, the specific development of convergence and divergence from the mortality point of view in post-communist states at the end of the 20th century is observed. Next, possibilities of future convergence of mortality in the Czech Republic to states with more favorable initial mortality conditions on the basis of the development of life expectancy at the exact age of 65 in the period 1990-2009 are evaluated. According to this approach,...

Title: Analysis of Krylov subspace methods Author: Tomáš Gergelits Department: Department of Numerical Mathematics Supervisor: prof. Ing. Zdeněk Strakoš, DrSc. Abstract: After the derivation of the Conjugate Gradient method (CG) and the short review of its relationship with other fields of mathematics, this thesis is focused on its convergence behaviour both in exact and finite precision arith- metic. Fundamental difference between the CG and the Chebyshev semi-iterative method is described in detail. Then we investigate the use of the widespread lin- ear convergence bound based on Chebyshev polynomials. Through the example of the composite polynomial convergence bounds it is showed that the effects of rounding errors must be included in any consideration concerning the CG rate of convergence relevant to practical computations. Furthermore, the close corre- spondence between the trajectories of the CG approximations generated in finite precision and exact arithmetic is studied. The thesis is concluded with the discus- sion concerning the sensitivity of the closely related Gauss-Christoffel quadrature. The last two topics may motivate our further research. Keywords: Conjugate Gradient Method, Chebyshev semi-iterative method, fi- nite precision computations, delay of convergence, composite polynomial conver-...