On Projective Plane of Order 13 with a Frobenius Group of Order 39 as a Collineation Group

One of the most outstanding problems in combinatorial mathematics and geometry is the problem of existence of finite projective planes whose order is not a prime power

Henry of Carinthia as a Czech king in the light of contemporary narrative sources

The aim of the presented thesis is to show how the personality of Henry of Carinthia was reflected by contemporary narrative sources including primarily annals, chronicles and a court poetry. We focus mainly on his Czech reign in the years 1306 - 1310, which is in our opinion a very controversial topic in the Czech historiography. The picture of this period is strongly influenced by the chronicle of Peter of Žitava who was a great political opponent of the regime established by Henry of Carinthia in the Czech lands. His attitude towards king Henry is therefore remarkably hostile. We suppose that Peter used certain literary pattems, so-called topoi, to describe the personality of Henry of Carinthia, especiaHy those caHed rex-tyrannus and rex-puer that can be commonly found in the medievalliterature. In order to point out similarities between these topoi and the picture of Henry of Carinthia in the chronicle of Peter of Žitava we make use of an anonymous treatise De duodecim abusivis saeculi that was written down in Ireland in the 7th century. A completely different attitude takes on the contrary the court poetry written in the alpine countries that describes Henry of Carinthia as an ideal knight, which is another widespread topos in the middle Ages. Between these two extremes many other historical sources...České děj iny od roku 13 06 do roku 1310 se staly v minulosti tématem mnoha historických zpracování. Vynikají mezi nimi zejména práce Josefa Šusty (viz. kap. o literatuře), vzbuzující respekt jak svou heuristickou důkladností, tak bohatstvím nashromážděných údajů. Následující odstavce podávající nástin vlády Jindřicha Korutanského v Čechách nemají za cíl jeho názory nějakým zásadním způsobem revidovat, nýbrž dát je do souvislosti s dobovými vyprávěcími prameny, které vždy byly, jsou a pravděpodobně také zůstanou alfou i omegou historické reflexe zmíněného období. Srovnání s dikcí dobových zpráv, zařazených do poznámkového aparátu, se zdá být o to důležitějšÍ, o co složitější je rekonstruovat politické události let 1306 - 1310 na základě torzovitých a nezřídka protikladných pramenných dokladů. Ačkoliv v sobě následující přehled zahrnuje výsledky historické interpretace a měl by být tudíž logicky zařazen až na závěr, pro lepší orientaci v textu si dovolíme toto pořadí obrátit.Institute of Czech HistoryÚstav českých dějinFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Skryté nástrahy rituálu smíření a neslavný konec přemyslovského knížete Jaromíra

Po letech strávených na českém trůně v rozmezí 1004 až 1012 byl Přemyslovec Jaromír postaven před výzvu, která dalekosáhle poznamenala jeho někdejší harmonický poměr vůči otonské říši i jeho budoucí vyhlídky na knížecí důstojenství. Jaromírovým panstvím otřásl roku 1012 kníže Oldřich, jemuž se silou zbraní podařilo uchvátit moc v Čechách a přinutit staršího bratra Jaromíra k útěku. Poté, co vyhnaný Přemyslovec překročil hranici země, začala se na říšské půdě odvíjet zápletka dalšího ze strastiplných příběhů, jimiž Jaromírův život překypoval. Nesl se tentokrát ve znamení pokusu o usmíření s římským králem Jindřichem II., kterého si Jaromír stihnul nahněvat tím, že nechal pobít bavorské poselstvo putující přes Čechy do Polska. Sehnaný z trůnu a v nemilosti otonského dvora, vsadil Jaromír vše na říšskou kartu a na rituální pokání, kterým chtěl vykoupit svá provinění v očích krále Jindřicha

Soft Lithography for Applications in Microfluidic Thermometry, Isoelectric Focusing, and Micromixers

Microfluidics is gaining in importance due to its wide ranging benefits and applicability in chemical and biological analysis. Although traditional microfluidic devices are created with glass or silicon based fabrication technologies, polymer based devices are gaining in popularity. Soft lithography and replica molding are techniques for the rapid prototyping of such devices, utilizing Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the dominant material. Other benefits include its low costs and ease of fabrication. Even though soft lithography is a well researched and developed fabrication process, new applications have been discovered in which the technology can be applied. Often, changes in the fabrication process are necessary for their application in other areas of research. This thesis will address several microfluidic applications using soft lithography. These areas of research include microfluidic thermometry, isoelectric focusing (IEF), and micromixers. In microfluidic thermometry, a novel thin film PDMS/Rhodamine B has been developed allowing whole-chip temperature measurements. In addition, compatibility problems between Rhodamine B and PDMS microfluidic devices were resolved. The thin film fabrication process, experimental results, and issues with its use are discussed. Future work and attempts at improving the thin film performance are also provided. IEF involves applications in which samples are separated according to its electrostatic charge. Two types of IEF applications are shown in which soft lithography has been shown to be beneficial to its development and performance. In isoelectric focusing with the use of thermally generated pH gradients, soft lithography allows for the rapid design, production and testing of different channel layouts. In general, due to PDMS insulation and overall low heat transfer rates, the temperatures detected are more gradual than those previously reported in literature. IEF using carrier ampholytes are also discussed, with preliminary results in which devices fabricated using soft lithography are compared to commercially available IEF cartridges. Its fabrication issues are discussed in detail. In micromixers, soft lithography fabrication issues and overall integration with flow mechanisms is discussed. In general it is difficult to perform mixing in the microscale due to the predominantly laminar flow and flow rate restrictions. Channel geometry is insignificant, as can be seen through numerical simulations

Excellence in teaching at Azerbaijani universities: a conceptualisation

A qualitative empirical study of how higher education actorsin Azerbaijan conceptualise excellence in teaching and howthey promote it at different levels. The findings provide anoriginal insight into how the concept of excellence is under-stood in the higher education of Azerbaijan. Intriguingly,there is no definition of teaching excellence nor an equiva-lent of it in the Azerbaijani language, let alone an existingpolicy on framing its standards. Furthermore, both socio-eco-nomic and cultural contributors make educational contextsdifferent, thus affecting the conceptualisation of the phe-nomenon in focus. The article’s key findings indicate severalserious barriers to achieving excellence, mainly associatedwith the apparent lack of a practical framework for definingthe standards of excellence in teaching, measuring these andestablishing a resources-enhanced system that can allow forcontinuity of the process

COSMOS2015 dataset machine learning photo-z

In order to answer the open questions of modern cosmology and galaxy evolution theory, robust algorithms for calculating photometric redshifts (photo-z) for very large samples of galaxies are needed. Correct estimation of the various photo-z algorithms' performance requires attention to both the performance metrics and the data used for the estimation. In this work, we use the supervised machine learning algorithm MLPQNA (Multi-Layer Perceptron with Quasi-Newton Algorithm) to calculate photometric redshifts for the galaxies in the COSMOS2015 catalogue and the unsupervised Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) to determine the reliability of the resulting estimates. We find that for zspec<1.2, MLPQNA photo-z predictions are on the same level of quality as spectral energy distribution fitting photo-z. We show that the SOM successfully detects unreliable zspec that cause biases in the estimation of the photo-z algorithms' performance. Additionally, we use SOM to select the objects with reliable photo-z predictions. Our cleaning procedures allow us to extract the subset of objects for which the quality of the final photo-z catalogues is improved by a factor of 2, compared to the overall statistics

Mode II Shear Behavior of a Glass Fabric/Epoxy and a Multi Scale Glass Fabric/Epoxy Thick Beam Composite Containing Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes

AbstractThe mode II shear behavior of a glass fabric/epoxy composite and a multiscale hybrid glass fabric/epoxy composite containing Multi Walled Carbon Nano Tubes (MWCNT) are compared here in the interlaminar mode of loading. The thick composites were fabricated through the vacuum bagging technique and two sets of specimens were prepared with and without carbon nano tubes. One set of each of these specimens were prepared with a Teflon® film crack initiator at the end of the specimens exactly at the centroidal line of the laminate to study the fracture behavior and strain energy release rates. This study addresses the issue of testing thick laminated composites and thick multiscale laminated composites in Mode II Inter Laminar Shear (ILS). The Inter Laminar Shear Strengths (ILSS) of these composites were evaluated. The theories on the strain energy release rate are also revisited and useful conclusions drawn regarding the applicability of the same to multiscale composites loaded in the ILS test set up. Thus, a comparison is made between the mode II behavior in flexure and ILS of these composites

Improving the reliability of photometric redshift with machine learning

In order to answer the open questions of modern cosmology and galaxy evolution theory, robust algorithms for calculating photometric redshifts (photo-z) for very large samples of galaxies are needed. Correct estimation of the various photo-z algorithms' performance requires attention to both the performance metrics and the data used for the estimation. In this work, we use the supervised machine learning algorithm MLPQNA (Multi-Layer Perceptron with Quasi-Newton Algorithm) to calculate photometric redshifts for the galaxies in the COSMOS2015 catalogue and the unsupervised Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) to determine the reliability of the resulting estimates. We find that for zspec < 1.2, MLPQNA photo-z predictions are on the same level of quality as spectral energy distribution fitting photo-z. We show that the SOM successfully detects unreliable zspec that cause biases in the estimation of the photo-z algorithms' performance. Additionally, we use SOM to select the objects with reliable photo-z predictions. Our cleaning procedures allow us to extract the subset of objects for which the quality of the final photo-z catalogues is improved by a factor of 2, compared to the overall statistics

Photometric Redshifts With Machine Learning, Lights and Shadows on a Complex Data Science Use Case

The importance of the current role of data-driven science is constantly increasing within Astrophysics, due to the huge amount of multi-wavelength data collected every day, characterized by complex and high-volume information requiring efficient and, as much as possible, automated exploration tools. Furthermore, to accomplish main and legacy science objectives of future or incoming large and deep survey projects, such as James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), James Webb Space Telescope (LSST), and Euclid, a crucial role is played by an accurate estimation of photometric redshifts, whose knowledge would permit the detection and analysis of extended and peculiar sources by disentangling low-z from high-z sources and would contribute to solve the modern cosmological discrepancies. The recent photometric redshift data challenges, organized within several survey projects, like LSST and Euclid, pushed the exploitation of the observed multi-wavelength and multi-dimensional data or ad hoc simulated data to improve and optimize the photometric redshifts prediction and statistical characterization based on both Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) template fitting and machine learning methodologies. They also provided a new impetus in the investigation of hybrid and deep learning techniques, aimed at conjugating the positive peculiarities of different methodologies, thus optimizing the estimation accuracy and maximizing the photometric range coverage, which are particularly important in the high-z regime, where the spectroscopic ground truth is poorly available. In such a context, we summarize what was learned and proposed in more than a decade of research

Sustainability Route for Industry 4.0: The Future of Global Circular Economic Transition

The traditional linear models have proved to be ineffective in perspective of the limited resources of the earth and there is an intensifying stress on the resource side due to the ever-rising global population. Moreover, this results in the unsustainable and inefficient consumption of natural resources, increasing costs of commodities and volatility in the markets, which are unaffordable for the manufacturing base of our economy. The current business models based on the traditional economic policies are not only blindly followed globally but they also neglect the organizational specifics. The circular economy or closed-loop economy is an approach in which the waste or residuals from an industry can be used as raw material for another industry there by reducing the demand on earth’s natural resources. The expected ultimate goal of this circular system is the reduction of gap between the organizational characteristics like profitability, organizational structure and decision making policies, market position and the adoption of circular economic practices