This work is focused on identification and species specification of a collection of 44 clostridial strains using molecular-genetic methods. DNA of bacteria isolated from late-blowing defected cheeses was used. The purified DNA was diluted to 10 ng/µl and its ability to be amplified was verified by PCR with universal primers. By genus-specific PCR was proved that DNA of all samples belongs to Clostridium genus. Based on species-specific PCR reactions, it was determined that 7 strains belong to C. butyricum and 12 strains belong to C. tyrobutyricum. 15 strains were positively detected in both species-specific PCRs and therefore identified as mixed cultures. Another 10 strains were not classified into tested species. Strains with the gene encoding the enzyme hydrogenase hydA were searched using PCR. Specific PCR products for this gene were detected in 30 strains of the analysed collection. Especially intense were the amplicons by all strains belonging to C. butyricum species.

Les protectores diuini lateris Augusti, soldats de haut rang attestés dans l’armée romaine entre le IIIe siècle et le VIe siècle, ont été considérés tour à tour par les historiens comme des gardes du corps impériaux, des officiers d’état-major, ou les successeurs des centurions. Mais ces interprétations soulèvent bien des contradictions que cette étude d’histoire militaire et sociale, appuyée sur un corpus prosopographique, vise à résoudre. Les évolutions du recrutement, des carrières et des fonctions des protectores sont révélatrices des recompositions du commandement de l’armée romaine tardive. L’analyse ouvre également une fenêtre sur l’environnement social et culturel de ces soldats privilégiés, amenés à fréquenter tant les champs de bataille que la cour impériale. Enfin, en plaçant au centre de la réflexion la relation de ces soldats avec l’empereur, à la fois chef de l’armée et garant de l’ordre social et symbolique du monde de l’Antiquité tardive, on comprend comment les protectores s’inscrivaient, aux yeux des Romains, au sein d’un ordre terrestre des dignités reflétant la hiérarchie céleste. / The protectores diuini lateris Augusti, high-ranking soldiers attested in the Roman army from the 3rd c. to the 6th c. AD, have been alternately defined by historians as imperial bodyguards, staff officers, or centurions under a new name. This study, based on a prosopography, aims to resolve the contradictions raised by these interpretations, from a military and social point of view. The evolutions of these soldiers’ recruitment, careers and functions, reflect deep changes in the command structure of the Late Roman army. The analysis also sheds light on the social and cultural background of these privileged soldiers, who were familiar with both the battlefield and the imperial court. By focusing on their privileged relationship with the emperor, who was at the same time general in chief and responsible for the social and symbolic order of the Late Antique world, we can finally understand how the protectores were part, in the eyes of the Romans, of an earthly order of dignities reflecting the celestial hierarchy.

Dans le Bas-Languedoc de la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle, avec l’aggravation de la guerre franco-anglaise, l’insécurité devient permanente à cause de l’incursion des armées anglo-gasconnes et du pillage des routiers, et augmentent les exigences royales liées à l’état de guerre : fortification, mobilisation et taxation. Quel impact la guerre a-t-elle sur le village ? Comment les villageois répondent-ils à ce nouvel environnement caractérisé par l’insécurité montante et par la pression accrue de la fiscalité royale ? La guerre ne suscite-t-elle pas une profonde transformation de la société villageoise ? Notre thèse a pour objectif d’éclaircir le fonctionnement et le changement du gouvernement villageois face à la guerre dans la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle. Nous avons choisi comme les objets centraux de notre recherche deux villages : Sérignan et Vendres. Ceux-ci se trouvent à proximité de Béziers, dans le Biterrois, au centre du Bas-Languedoc. Avant tout, ces deux villages conservent les comptes consulaires les plus volumineux du Biterrois de la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle, qui contiennent de riches renseignements sur la société, en général, et des individus, en particulier. En vue d’étudier le village en guerre, se posent quatre pistes de recherche : 1. Actions défensives de la communauté villageoise ; 2. Emprise de la guerre sur les finances villageoises ; 3. Politique et administration au sein du village ; 4. Relations extérieures de la communauté villageoise. Les valeurs du gouvernement villageois dans le Biterrois de la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle peuvent être résumées en trois mots : liberté, équité, généralité. C’est-à-dire la liberté politique contre les pouvoirs extérieurs, l’équité fiscale au sein de la communauté, le consensus général entre les habitants. / In Bas-Languedoc of the latter half of the XIVth century, with the aggravation of the French-English war, the insecurity becomes normalized because of the incursion of the Anglo-Gascon army and of the pillage of the campaigners, and the royal demands ― fortification, mobilization and taxation ― increase in relation with the state of war. What impact does the war make on the village? How do the villagers respond to this new and unprecedented environment characterized by the mounting insecurity and the huge pressure of the royal taxation? Doesn’t the war spark off a profound transformation of the village society? The objective of our thesis is to shed light on the functioning and the reorganizing of village government in face of the war during the latter half of the XIVth century. We have chosen as the central objects of our research two villages: Sérignan and Vendres. These are situated near Béziers, in Biterrois, in the middle of Bas-Languedoc. Above all, these two villages conserve the consular account books, which are the most voluminous in Biterrois of the latter half of the XIVth century and contain rich and significant information about the society and individual villagers. In order to study the villages in wartime, we take four courses of research: 1. defensive actions of the village community; 2. influence of the war on the village finance; 3. politics and administration inside the village; 4. external relations of the village community. The values of village government in Biterrois of the latter half of the XIVth century can be summarized in three words: liberty, equity, and ‘‘generality’’. That is to say, the political liberty against external powers, the fiscal equity inside the community, and the general consensus among inhabitants.

Kinder, welche nach 34 (+0) bis 36 (+6) Gestationswochen geboren werden, bezeichnet man als späte Frühgeborene. Genau wie Kinder eines jüngeren Gestationsalters sind diese von einer höheren postnatalen Morbidität und Mortalität betroffen als reif geborene Kinder. Diese Studie betrachtet die pulmonale Funktionsleistung dieser Kinder weit über die Neonatalperiode hinaus. Ehemals späte Frühgeborene wurden im Alter von 6 Jahren untersucht. Eine gleichaltrige Kontrollgruppe, bestehend aus ehemals reifen Neugeborenen, diente dem Vergleich. Vor allem Parameter der Spirometrie sowie Peak-Flow- und Atemwegswiderstandsmessungen ermöglichten dabei die Objektivierung der pulmonalen Funktion. Statistisch signifikante Unterschiede ließen sich in der mittleren FVC (forcierte Vitalkapazität) sowie dem FEV1 (forciertes exspiratorisches Volumen in einer Sekunde) feststellen, wobei Kinder der Indexgruppe jeweils im Mittel nur geringere Werte erreichten als Kinder der Kontrollgruppe. Der mittlere Atemwegswiderstand unterschied sich in Index-und Kontrollgruppe ebenso signifikant, wobei bei ehemals späten Frühgeborenen der Atemwegswiderstand im Mittel höher war als bei ehemals reifen Neugeborenen.

Bulbuls (Pycnonotidae) are a biologically diverse group of songbirds that produce a variety of vocalisations. Their songs are very audible, yet the vocal behaviour of the majority of bulbul species has not been formally described or subject to bioacoustical study. The Philippine bulbul (Ixos philippinus) is a sedentary and endemic species of the Philippine archipelago. This thesis presents the first detailed descriptions of its song. The songs were recorded on five islands locations that covered eight different habitats. Nine song features of these species were compared, in order to understand song variations between different islands. In searching for correlations, habitat types and geographical distances between the islands were also measured. The songs of the species found on five islands were readily split up into three groups based on end frequency, syllable number and song duration. The correlations possibly relate to a late Pleistocene connection between the islands and colonization routes of the species. It was found that song frequency parameters in bulbul species is primarily affected by habitat, whilst the effect of current distances between islands was shown to be weak.

(F. Horáček: Antropologie Synesiova spisu O snech) 30. 8. 2017 Synesiusʼ treatise On Dreams (early 5th cent. AD) contains a Neoplatonic conception of the so-called pneuma (called also ʻvehicleʼ, ʻluminous bodyʼ etc.) that, among its other functions, ʻrepresentsʼ the immaterial Neoplatonic soul in the material universe. As against the other Neoplatonic texts from Late Antiquity, the authorʼs book is relatively concetrated and detailed so that it offers a comparatively full picture of the pneuma even though the text is no clear cut self-explanatory piece of writing due to its intended esoteric Neoplatonic readership. In my work I try to discover possible implications for the pneuma against the background of other Neoplatonic conceptions of the earlier and also of slightly later time. Synesiusʼ views of the pneuma are not always identical with those of the earlier thinkers. As he switches backgrounds it is often hard to tell whether what he has in mind is identical, like or different from them. I address predominantly - beside contextualization of On Dreams and efforts to solve individual small-scale problems in the text - questions of physical existence of the pneuma before, during, and after reincarnation chain of individual souls, further I discuss the interface between materiality and...

Ausgehend von den jüngeren Arbeiten zur Rekonstruktion der späthallstattzeitlichen Gesellschaftsstruktur soll eine forschungsgeschichtliche Einordnung der neoevolutionistischen Modelle von E. Service und M. Fried, die als Analogien zur Deutung herangezogen werden, einige wesentliche Aspekte zur Methodik des analogischen Deutens beleuchten. / Starting from recent research on late Hallstatt social structures which uses the neo-evolutionistic models of E. Service and M. Fried as analogies, the attempt is here made to put these models into their historical context of research and thus to highlight a few methodological aspects of using analogies in interpretation.

M dwarf stars make up over 70% of stars by number in the Milky Way Galaxy and are known to host at least two exoplanets per star on average. Using mutually eclipsing double-lined spectroscopic binary stars (SB2 EBs), astronomers can empirically measure stellar properties of M dwarf stars including mass and radius. However, empirical measurements systematically differ from the predictions of stellar evolutionary models and show large scatter. Some M dwarf stars are outliers, with radii that are a factor of 2-to-3 larger than model predictions, assuming they were measured accurately. In this dissertation, I investigated whether the outliers, systematic offset, and the scatter seen in the mass-radius diagram are physical, using SB2 EBs with photometry from NASA's Kepler Mission and high-resolution near-infrared ground-based spectroscopy. Empirical measurements using space-based photometry and high-resolution near-infrared ground-based spectroscopy, together with Bayesian model-fitting techniques, provide significant advancements over previous measurements. For this dissertation work, a sample of Kepler EBs were carefully chosen to be detached and non-interacting. I conducted a radial velocity survey of the sample using Immersion GRating INfrared Spectrometer (IGRINS) with the Discovery Channel Telescope (DCT) and iSHELL with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). Combined with high-precision Kepler data, I determined the masses and radii of the component stars in the sample. I also determined a new mass-radius relationship of M dwarf stars using the sample of Kepler EB systems. My investigation showed that the outliers in the mass-radius diagram of M dwarf stars are not physical and they are due to the quality of data and from analysis using different pipelines. I also showed that the offset and scatter in the mass-radius diagram are persistent, which are not from the measurement uncertainties. This suggests the need for an extra degree of freedom to accurately capture the discrepancies between the empirical measurements and model predictions. Lastly, I showed that reduced convective heat flow due to enhanced magnetic fields from rapid stellar rotation can account for the offset and scatter in the measurements.

Strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analyses have been used effectively to reconstruct the origin of osteological remains that have not been exposed to increasing temperatures (Bentley, 2006; Juarez, 2008; Knudson et al., 2005). However, previous research has shown that no thermally induced changes occur to original strontium isotope values (87Sr/86Sr) of bone and teeth specimens that have been subjected to temperatures between 212 and 1832 degrees Fahrenheit (Beard and Johnson, 2000; Grupe and Hummel, 1991; Harbeck et al., 2011), though the published literature regarding strontium isotope ratio stability and survivorship in thermally altered bone and teeth is limited. This is surprising given the potential implications for geolocation inquiries of cremains (or severely burnt remains) in both forensic and archaeological contexts. This research will focus on the latter context by using strontium isotope analyses, via thermal ionization mass spectrometry, to reconstruct the origins of human remains from a unique late Woodland period (A.D. 600-850) archaeological burial site known as the Perrins Ledge crematory, located in the lower Illinois River valley. Strontium isotope signatures derived from the Perrins Ledge cremains will be compared with values obtained from osteological faunal remains from three contemporary neighboring sites (Carlin, Apple Creek, and Newbridge). It is expected that the Perrins Ledge values will mirror those derived from the neighboring contemporary habitation sites suggesting local groups used the crematorium.

The thesis is focused on Marian devotion with great emphasis on Rosary. In regard on this matter papers presents Olomouc as an important catholic town of Central Europe. Result of this development are unique monuments, concretely rare mural paintings. Presented thesis includes five chapters that deals with political and social history of the town, just as global development of Marian devotion and Rosary in Europe, together with acceptance of these ideas and establishment of Rosary Confraternity in Olomouc. The most important aims of thesis are: to particularize knowledge of confraternities in town, of their activity and operations and to conduct a complex iconographic analyse of wall paintings with pinpoint of their donators. And last but not least to discuss the still unreflected inscriptions on the wall of the Chapel of St John the Baptist of St Wenceslas Cathedral in Olomouc.