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Information on Several Interesting Case Reports of Liquid Mercury Intoxication
Navrátil, Tomáš ; Vlčková, Š. ; Mrázová, K. ; Nováková, Kateřina ; Zakharov, S. ; Honsová, Š. ; Pelclová, D.
This contribution reports on several mercury non-professional intoxications. It can be summarized that it is very important to differentiate among forms of mercury which can (acute or chronic) endanger human health. Contrarily to the wide spread fears, liquid mercury represents low danger for men and for environment. Solid amalgams are probably the less toxic forms of mercury compounds. On the other hand, widely spread daily consumer goods can be very dangerous and toxic (saving balls, fluorescent tubes, etc.). Moreover, these goods are not marked as “toxic mercury containing”. The article discusses the instruction for removing mercury from our environment. Most of the reported data are based on database of the Czech Toxicological Information Centre (TIC) (from the years 1995 – 2015).
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Development of interest rates in the mortgage market in the Czech Republic between 2006-2016
Ditrichová, Gabriela ; Strejček, Ivo (advisor) ; Klement, Josef (referee)
This bachelor's thesis is focused on the development of interest rates in the mortgage market in the Czech Republic in the decade between 2006 and 2016. A strong economic growth between 2006 and 2007, which had positive effects in the mortgage loan market, was followed by a deep slump in the form of global financial crisis unleashed by speculations in the real estate market in the U.S. The main aim of the work is based on the development of mortgage interest rates and the significant factors that affect their amount - to verify or disprove the hypothesis that interest rates respond to changes of these factors. The results confirm the hypothesis only in certain areas. The influence of changes of interest rates has been proven in the case of inflation and discount rates by usage of the econometric model. Factors that have not shown a significant direct influence of interest rates may have an indirect influence on their change.
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Marketing communication of commercial insurance companies on social media
Havránek, Jiří ; Gála, Libor (advisor) ; Molnár, Zdeněk (referee)
The diploma thesis deals with marketing communication of commercial insurance companies on social media. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the current state of the communication activities of commercial insurance companies on selected social media. Based on the identified state and detected interest in these communication activities by customers, recommendations are suggested for improvement of communication online commercial insurance companies to support the sales of insurance products. The first section defines the areas of insurance, marketing communication and social media. After that there is identification of activities that companies can perform on social media to increase brand awareness. These activities can be monitored, evaluated and after that optimized. In the second section there is identified the current state of commercial insurance activities on social media and detected interest in these activities from customers by using qualitative research. Based on these findings, draft recommendations are formulated on possible improvements to the current situation. The benefit of this thesis is the identification of the current state of commercial insurance activities on social media.
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Use of Interest Rate Models for Interest Rate Risk Management in the Czech Financial Market Environment
Cíchová Králová, Dana ; Arlt, Josef (advisor) ; Cipra, Tomáš (referee) ; Witzany, Jiří (referee)
The main goal of this thesis is to suggest an appropriate approach to interest rate risk modeling in the Czech financial market environment in various situations. Three distinct periods are analyzed. These periods, which are the period before the global financial crisis, period during the financial crisis and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and calming subsequent debt crisis in the eurozone, are characterized by different evaluation of liquidity and credit risk, different relationship between financial variables and market participants and different degree of market regulations. Within this goal, an application of the BGM model in the Czech financial market environment is crucial. Use of the BGM model for the purpose of predicting a dynamics of a yield curve is not very common. This is firstly due to the fact that primary use of this model is a valuation of interest rate derivatives while ensuring the absence of arbitrage and secondly its application is relatively difficult. Nevertheless, I apply the BGM model to obtain predictions of the probability distributions of interest rates in the Czech and eurozone market environment, because its complexity, direct modeling of a yield curve based on market rates and especially a possibility of parameter estimation based on current swaptions volatilities quotations may lead to a significant improvement of predictions. This improvement was also confirmed in this thesis. Use of swaptions volatilities market quotations is especially useful in the period of unprecedented mone- tary easing and increased number of central banks and other regulators interventions into financial markets that occur after the financial crisis, because it reflects current market expectations which also include future interventions. As a consequence of underdevelopment of the Czech financial market there are no market quotations of Czech koruna denominated swaptions volatilities. I suggest their approximations based on quotations of euro denominated swaptions volatilities and also using volatilities of koruna and euro forward rates. Use of this approach ensures that predictions of the Czech yield curve dynamics contain current market expectations. To my knowledge, any other author has not presented similar application of the BGM model in the Czech financial market environment. In this thesis I further predict a Czech and Euro area money market yield curve dynamics using the CIR and the GP models as representatives of various types of interest rates models to compare these predictions with BGM predictions. I suggest a comprehensive system of three criteria, based on comparison of predicti- ons with reality, to describe a predictive power of selected models and an appropria- teness of their use in the Czech market environment during different situations in the market. This analysis shows that predictions of the Czech money market yield curve dynamics based on the BGM model demonstrate high predictive power and the best 8 quality in comparison with other models. GP model also produces relatively good qua- lity predictions. Conversely, predictions based on the CIR model as a representative of short rate model family completely failed when describing reality. In a situation when the economy allows negative rates and there is simultaneously a significant likelihood of their implementation, I recommend to obtain predictions of Czech money market yield curve dynamics using GP model which allows existence of negative interest rates. This analysis also contains a statistical test for validating the predictive power of each model and information on other tests. Berkowitz test rejects a hypothesis of accurate predictions for each model. However, this fact is common in real data testing even when using relatively good model. This fact is especially caused by difficult fulfilment of test conditions in real world. To my knowledge, such an analysis of the predictive power of selected interest rate models moreover in the Czech financial market environment has not been published yet. The last goal of this thesis is to suggest an appropriate approach to obtaining pre- dictions of Czech government bonds risk premium dynamics. I define this risk premium as a difference between government bond yields and fixed rate of CZK IRS with the same length. I apply the GP model to describe the dynamics of this indicator of the Czech Republic credit risk. In order to obtain a time series of the risk premium which are necessary for estimation of GP model parameters I firstly estimate yield curves of Czech government bonds using Svensson model for each trading day since 2005. Resulting si- mulations of risk premium show that the GP model predicts the real development of risk premiums of all maturities relatively well. Hence, the proposed approach is suitable for modeling of Czech Republic credit risk based on the use of information extracted from financial markets. I have not registered proposed approach to risk premium modeling moreover in the Czech financial market environment in other publications.
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STRAIN ENGINEERING OF THE ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE OF 2D MATERIALS
del Corro, Elena ; Peňa-Alvarez, M. ; Morales-García, A. ; Bouša, Milan ; Řáhová, Jaroslava ; Kavan, Ladislav ; Kalbáč, Martin ; Frank, Otakar
The research on graphene has attracted much attention since its first successful preparation in 2004. It possesses many unique properties, such as an extreme stiffness and strength, high electron mobility, ballistic transport even at room temperature, superior thermal conductivity and many others. The affection for graphene was followed swiftly by a keen interest in other two dimensional materials like transition metal dichalcogenides. As has been predicted and in part proven experimentally, the electronic properties of these materials can be modified by various means. The most common ones include covalent or non-covalent chemistry, electrochemical, gate or atomic doping, or quantum confinement. None of these methods has proven universal enough in terms of the devices' characteristics or scalability. However, another approach is known mechanical strain/stress, but experiments in that direction are scarce, in spite of their high promises.\nThe primary challenge consists in the understanding of the mechanical properties of 2D materials and in the ability to quantify the lattice deformation. Several techniques can be then used to apply strain to the specimens and thus to induce changes in their electronic structure. We will review their basic concepts and some of the examples so far documented experimentally and/or theoretically.
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Awareness of vegetarians about deficit of certain nutritions in vegetarian diet and about ways to compensate them
VORLÍČKOVÁ, Markéta
This thesis deals with vegetarians' awareness of the lack of specific nutritional substances in the vegetarian diet and their compensation. The aim is to explore whether vegetarians have sufficient information about the nutritional composition of their diet, whether they are interested in researching this information and whether the information is available and sufficient. I also looked at whether people with this eating preference are preventing potential nutritional deficits and subsequent health problems. There were designated the following three research questions: "How often and where do most vegetarians get information about a meatless diet?", "How can you achieve a full fledged vegetarian diet?" and "What is vegan awareness on the potential deficiencies in their diet, and how do they try avoid these?". In the theoretical part I deal with vegetarianism as a lifestyle, vegetarianism and its subgroups, the reasons for going to this way of life, the composition of a vegetarian diet with a focus on nutrients that may be deficient, vegetarianism and its impact on the body at different stages of development and ultimately the impact of a meatless diet on human health. The practical section is an elaborated form of qualitative research, specifically I chose semi-structured interviews. I collected the data from the interviews. The interview contained fourteen or fifteen questions, and women were also questioned about the pregnancy period. I asked questions regarding the issue of vegetarianism, veganism or raw foodism. I was interested in individual eating habits, nutrition knowledge and personal experience of the respondents. The data was collected between January 2014 and March 2014. The research group consisted of 6 respondents. The group was made up of women and men in the age range from 20 to 30 years. Among respondents there were vegetarians, vegans and raw foodists and the period of time in which they have been eating this way is different for every person. All respondents were familiar with the purpose of providing an interview and agreed to the publication. The interviews I conducted in person and were recorded on a dictaphone mobile phone. The results of my work show that most respondents do research about a meatless diet. They logically state that most intensive research took place while they were switching their eating habits, but now they still keep finding out new information. The most commonly used way was the Internet, specifically through websites such as www.soucitne.cz or www.vegan-fighter.com. Other sources used are books, articles, studies, and information received from friends or family members. The respondents argue that because the information was obtained this way, their diet is balanced. They are often trying to maintain diversity in their diet, for example, consume legumes and combine various foods such as legumes with cereals. Raw foodists state that they often consume sprouts, seeds, nuts, and of course a large amount of raw vegetables and fruits. All Vegans and Raw foodists know about the possible lack of vitamin B12, and some for this reason, use supplements. Also mentioned are supplements or protein complex supplements designed specifically for vegans.
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Awareness of women about nutrition problems such as breast cancer prevention
STAŇKOVÁ, Denisa
This thesis focuses on the awareness of women of the nutrition issue as the prevention of breast cancer. The aim of this thesis is to find out whether the women have enough information about nutrition and life style as the prevention of breast carcinoma, where they look for information, if they are interested in this issue and whether they consume food that could work as the prevention. Another goal is to detect possible differences in the attitude to the prevention between women without the potential risk and women with the increased risk, i.e. women over 45. Research questions were determined as follows: "What is the knowledge of women about the issues of nutrition as the prevention of breast cancer?", "What is the proportion of the food that has preventive effect on the rise of breast carcinoma and, on the contrary, the food that supports the tumour growth in the eating habits of women?", "Where do women get information on this issue?", "What is the difference in awareness and consumption of food between women without the potential risk and women with the increased risk, i.e. over 45. The thesis is divided into two parts, a theoretical and a practical one. In the theoretical part I focus on the breast anatomy, basic information on breast cancer and risk factors that are divided into influenceble ones and non-influenceble ones. In the most extensive part of my thesis focuses on the influenceble factors, that is nutrition and life style. I focus especially on nutriments, food and other life style factors that are most connected with breast cancer and have antitumour effects or, conversely, support the tumour growth. The practical part was made by means of a questionnaire which I placed on the Internet and handed out in the waiting room at the general practitioner. The questionnaire was anonymous with 34 questions of a closed and semi-enclosed type. Questions concerned nutrition and life style in relation to the risk of breast cancer and were devised to answer previously defined research questions. The questionnaire survey took place in January and February 2013. I acquired 105 filled in questionnaires from which I randomly chose 86 to obtain two numerously equal groups of women without the potential risk and with the increased risk, i.e. over 45. The result of the research part is that women do not have much information on the life style in connection with the breast cancer. Some respondents, while selecting food with preventive effect, were only guessing and often also marked food which was not related to the breast carcinoma at all. About one third of the respondents even believe that nutrition and other factors are not related to this disease at all. One third of the respondents also stated that they had no interest in learning more information on this issue. Women that have some information usually get it from the magazines and from the Internet. In terms of eating habits, the food of most respondents does not reach the needed quantity to have preventive effects. On the other hand, the food and drinks that support tumour growth do not occur on the menu of the respondents very often. While comparing answers of the women younger 45 and the older group of respondents, it was found out that the younger respondents showed greater unawareness of this issue. No significant differences were recorded in other questions. The results of the survey are graphically processed and evaluated in the final part of this thesis. I suppose this thesis is the contribution to clarifying the current situation of this issue. I believe that the topic of my thesis is up-to-date and that I managed to summarize the most significant information regarding this topic and fulfil the aims I set down. I would be very glad if my work led to the contemplation of this issue and subsequently to a more extensive propagation of the breast cancer prevention.
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Determination of content substances for selected species and varieties of roses.
Slavíková, Eva ; Sus, Josef (advisor) ; Súkeníková, Tereza (referee)
This bachelor's work is focused on comparing the most significant content substance, vitamin C, in fruits of chosen rose kinds species and varieties. Herbal products are often seen by people as products of "second choice", when failure of allopathic treatment occurs, which is focused especially on suppressing symptoms of illness, but it ignores health of the human body as whole. That's why are herbal products often alternative for therapy of chronic diseases. The base of this work is extensive literary research and results of laboratory measurings. Literary part of this work includes description of botanical classification of rose plants. There is stated basic characteristic of individual rose species and their morphological features. In following chapters is composed overview of effective substances in rose fruits and their effect on human health. In practical part of this work are included results of laboratory tests for determining ascorbic acid content for chosen samples of rose species and it also includes results of weighing and measuring of fruit samples of chosen rose species. There are also stated chosen rose species and shortly their origin and description, in the beginning of practical part. For practical part were chosen samples of species. Results of practical part are compiled into statistic tables and graphs and it confirms high content of ascorbic acid in rose fruits. This content is in range of cca 300 - 900 mg.100 g-1. Due to growing interest in alternative treatment options and "clean" natural product, it can be assumed, that many plants of Rosaceae family will keep its place in treatment practice. Those plants will be used not only for treatment of acute and chronic diseases, but also for cosmetic products production, thanks to its large effects and process options.
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Antioxidant, anti-proliferative and immunomodulatory effect of fruits, vegetables and mushrooms in vitro
Doskočil, Ivo ; Havlík, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Orsák, Matyáš (referee)
Recently there has been an increasing interest in discovering of new species of plants and mushrooms which have antioxidant or anti proliferative activity. The interest is caused by the fact that these species have medicinal and food utilization. These properties of plants and mushrooms can be used when dealing with many diseases which may be connected with oxidative stress (inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and tumour disease, etc.).
The thesis propounds characteristics of in vitro antioxidant and anti proliferative activity of 19 types of juices and 28 methanol extracts of fruits and vegetables, which are common parts of a diet. In the thesis there are also characteristics of 13 ethanol extracts of edible mushrooms of the order of Polypore (Popyporales). Antioxidant activity was quantifie by 2, 2 diphenyl 1 picrylhydrazyl (DPPH), oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), and inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) production. Cytotoxicity was measured by MTT (3 (4,5 dimethylthiazol 2 yl) 2,5 diphenyltetrazolium bromide. Immunomodulatory activity was determined by an assay of phagocytic activity of human neutrophil granulocytes. Further a total phenolic content (TPC) and total beta glucan content were investigated; these are considered to be the potentially active constituents participating in mentioned activities.
From the obtained results it is evident that juices (TPC = 1603.2 mg GAE/L; ORAC = 438.5 umol TE/g)
and a bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) fruit extract (ORAC 836.6 umol TE/g; DPPH = 404.6 umol TE/g) showed
the highest antioxidant activity of all tested samples of fruits and vegetables. Capsicum (Capsicum L.)
juices (TPC = 642.1 mg GAE/L; ORAC = 127.9 umol TE/g) and a radish (Raphanus sativus L.) extract
(ORAC 724.5 umol TE/g; DPPH = 52.2 umol TE/g) also proved to have the high values of antioxidant activity. From the tested fruits and vegetables the following inhibited to produce a nitric oxide: onion (Allium cepa L) juices (lowered the NO production by 57%), tangerine juices (Citrus reticulata Blanco)(by 52%), broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. botrytis italic) extract (by 21%), and orange (Citrus sinensis Pers.) extract (by 10%). Concerning edible
mushrooms, Lentinus tigrinus (Bull.) Fr. (TPC = 216.2 umol GAE/g of extract), Ganoderma lucidum (Curtis) P. Kras (TPC = 257.9 umol GAE/g of extract), and Royoporus badius (Pers.) A.B. De (TPC = 257.8 umol GAE/g of extract) presented the highest phenolic content. Sparassis crispa (Wulfen) Fr. (117.4 mg/g of extract) had the highest content of beta glucan. Substantial effect on phagocytic activity of granulocytes was noticed in connection with Neolentinus lepideus (Fr.) Redhead & Ginns, Polyporus squamosus (Huds.) Fr., and S. crispa. In connection with the latter of mentioned mushrooms, a moderate inhibitory effect towards HT 29 human colorectal adenocarcinoma cell line
(IC50 = 107 ug/ml of extract) was noticed.
The results indicate that the tested plants and mushrooms can be beneficial when reducing the negative effects of oxidative stress. The oxidative stress has been recognized as a contributing factor to a whole range of diseases and the reduction of the oxidative stress may lead to the decrease in the possibility of the diseases´ progression. The results show the possible favourable effects on the human health. When evaluating the results, the following fact should be taken into consideration; the in vitro tests and screenings are considered to be the first phase of systematic research of the effects and serve for the choice of respondents for further detailed studies.
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