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The autonomic nervous system (ANS) and the central nervous system (CNS) interplay during sleep, particularly during phasic events such as micro-arousals, has been the subject of several studies. The underlying mechanisms of such relationship which remain unclear, specifically during daytime sleep, were partly investigated in this study. Napping polysomnography was performed on two occasions at least one week apart in 15 healthy subjects. The following cardiorespiratory variables were extracted from the recordings: tachogram, pulse transit time (PTT), pulse wave amplitude, respiratory cycle amplitude, and frequency. Two experts first detected micro-arousal events, then, cardiorespiratory variables were averaged by 30-s epochs over 2 min centered on the onset of the micro-arousals. We found that in the 30 s preceding the arousal events as detected on the electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, there was a decrease in tachogram, pulse wave amplitude, and PTT values while the respiratory amplitude increased. These changes were more prominent in stage N2 and N3 sleep than in stage N1. The present findings provide new insights into the autonomic changes during the pre-arousal period in daytime naps, as all the variables investigated suggest a sympathetic physiological origin for the changes.

This paper examines the efficiency and public transport accessibility of indirect (devolved) state administration performed by municipalities with extended powers (hereinafter MEPs) in the Czech Republic. Our aim is to evaluate the efficiency of the revenues made by municipalities with extended powers, through performing powers delegated to them by the state administration, and those municipalities’ public transport accessibility as of 31 December, 2014. The rate of efficiency is tested on an output-oriented Free Disposable Hull model. One input variable is selected - the operating expenses of the municipal offices recalculated per inhabitant of the municipality’s administrative district - and two output variables are selected: contribution to the performance of state administration, recalculated per inhabitant of the municipality’s administrative district, and revenues from administrative fees per inhabitant of the municipality’s administrative district. The municipality’s offices’ transport accessibility is evaluated via network analysis using ArcGIS software. The article investigates the hypothesis that public administration deconcentration practices logically result in higher security costs and therefore inefficiency. The results reveal that only 66 of the country’s 205 MEPs are efficient and that operating expenses and state contributions for the performance of state administrative tasks play a significant role in these results. Efficiency is less significantly influenced by administrative fee revenues. Public transport accessibility is analyzed for two time intervals - 6:00 to 8:00 am and 1:00 to 2:00 pm - on Tuesdays. The degree of accessibility is defined using a six-point scale of accessibility. The results show that the best accessibility is in the morning hours, when the offices are accessible for 68.8% of the population aged 15+ in the Czech Republic; the worst accessibility is in the afternoon hours when only 2% of the population aged 15+ can access the offices.

Este estudio cualitativo tuvo como objetivo comparar los resultados referentes al comportamiento proambiental obtenido con personas mayores practicantes de actividades de aventura y con los conductores de dichas actividades. La Escala de Ecocenrismo y Antropocentrismo (THOMPSON; BARTON, 1994) se aplicó a muestras intencionales de mayores y adultos jóvenes conductores de actividades de aventura en la naturaleza. Los datos, analizados descriptivamente por Análisis de Contenido, indican que personas mayores y adultos jóvenes son clasificados en la dimensión ecocéntrica, sin embargo, los mayores son más antropocéntricos y apáticos con el ambiente. Se proponen nuevos estudios para apoyar nuevas estrategias de actuación en el campo de la Motricidad Humana, para estimular el desarrollo del comportamiento proambiental.

The paper investigates if and where registered crime and the fear of crime intersect in the four locations. This information is important to reduce crime and increase the sense of security of the population. In the past, research was applied to small parts of a city or a whole city, but not in as much detail as this paper. Our research is detailed, and at the same time is applied to four entire locations - three Czech cities (Ostrava, Olomouc, and Kolín) and one Prague district (Prague 12). We placed registered crime and fear of crime on one map to show locations where people feel afraid, where crime happens, and where both events occur together. We drew these phenomena using Moran's I in a bivariate map. The outputs will be applied by Municipal governments and police departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For landslide surface monitoring, the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) has been widely used in landslides due to its real-time, all-weather, high-precision, simple operation and a high degree of automation. However, these data are not intuitive and visual data will be more interesting for users without professional knowledge. At the same time, the conventional data representation method is in the form of curves or tables for three-dimensional data of landslide surface deformation collected by GNSS. To make the data more intuitive, clear and valuable, it is easier for people to understand the process of landslide deformation and finally realize the visualization of decision. Here we show that a polar coordinate system rather than a Cartesian coordinate system is adopted to visualize the horizontal data, which not only shows the horizontal deformation of the landslide, but also easily knows the direction of the landslide deformation. The vertical data is in the form of slices rather than curves, which not only shows the deformation of the landslide surface, but also shows the process of the vertical change of the landslide in terms of the time series. Single GNSS monitoring station is composed of a GNSS receiver, GNSS antenna with random, a solar power unit, and a network transmission module. The system can be powered by the solar energy system, which can realize 24-hour unmanned operation, 7 days a week. The system can receive satellite signals in real-time process and analyze deformation data, then it automatically broadcast early warning information. Our results demonstrate that it is a better choice that the thematic map of Geographic Information System (GIS) is a technical system for collecting, storing, managing, calculating, analyzing and displaying geographic data supported by computer hardware and software systems. Here we show that the multi-dimensional properties of deformation monitoring and multiple expressions of the attribute values are displayed synchronously in order to obtain more useful information from the visual graphics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the ways of improving the attractiveness of public transport is to bring it closer to its potential users. A long walking distance from a stop is often one of the critical factors limiting its more frequent and extensive use. Studies dealing with the accessibility of transport networks usually work only with the closest stop. This article analyses the actual walking distance from the place of residence to the preferred stop. The survey used a questionnaire method and was conducted in two cities in the Czech Republic—Ostrava and Olomouc. Based on the results of the study, the average walking distance was assessed and the impact of demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, number of members in the household, economic activity, the presence of a child in the household, and car ownership), transport behavior (preferred mode of transportation, car convenience and opinions on public transport), and urban characteristics (prevailing housing type) on the walking distance were analyzed. The main findings prove a significant impact on walking distance by a number of these factors, but the preferred use of a car for commuting or unemployment does not significantly affect walking distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a methodology for localizing theoretical interchange nodes used for interchange between suburban and urban public transport in thirteen regional capitals in the Czech Republic. This methodology is based on the use of current timetables and simulation of more than 2,500 public transport connections between selected surrounding municipalities with significant commuter flows and randomly selected urban public transport stops within the regional capitals. The second part of the paper focuses on particular interchange nodes. Regional capitals are divided into groups according to the level of centrality of interchange nodes and the prevailing orientation of the transport mode. The article also analyzes the time stability of localized interchange nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal objective of this paper is to evaluate the spatial patterns of creative industries in a micro-geographic perspective. As the creative industries represent a highly heterogeneous complex, only selected creative industries were studied (culture, marketing and advertising, printing, publishing, architecture). The polycentric industrial city of Ostrava was chosen as the surveyed area. Various spatial statistical methods (e.g. nearest neighbour analysis, kernel density estimation) were applied for the needs of assessment. The results show that spatial patterns of creative industries at intra-urban level do not vary significantly from their counterparts in Western Europe. Despite the fact that Ostrava is highly industrialized polycentric city with relatively weak position of the city centre, creative industries are highly concentrated into the historical city centre and the inner city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on mapping and monitoring of unemployment hot spots using registers of local authorities in the Ostrava City (Czech Republic) to identify socially excluded localities at the micro-scale. The register of unemployed persons and the population register provide data for quantification of specific indicators of a local labour situation. A share of the registered unemployed in reference to residents in productive age can substitute the rate of unemployment due to the high correlation of both indicators. The mapping of unemployment hot spots has been based on data from 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 using kernel density estimation. Various settings of bandwidths have been tested to identify socially excluded localities in the city in hopes of identifying the most accurate way to visualise the pattern. These localities have been identified in two expert studies and the most significant sign is considered to be increased unemployment. Appropriate settings of kernel density estimations of the unemployment indicator enable to identify the majority of experts' localised spots. The hot spots have been delimited by an isoline with a suitable boundary value obtained from an optimisation technique based on a coefficient of areal correspondence and an indicator of spatial extension. This method of isolines is recommended for mapping and monitoring of the development of localities in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare intra-urban localization patterns of advertising and IT companies in three large Czech cities. The main aim of our analysis is an empirically-based contribution to the question to what extent do knowledge bases affect the spatial distribution of various knowledge-intensive business industries. The central research question is: To what extent is the localization of these two industries influenced by different modes of innovation/knowledge bases (symbolic vs. synthetic) and to what extent by contextual factors, such as urban size, morphology, position in the urban hierarchy and economic profile of the given city. We found that the urban contexts shape the localization patterns of advertising and IT companies more than differences in knowledge bases—both industries cluster primarily in the inner cities and urban cores. Formation of more suburban IT "scientific neighborhoods" is limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fear of crime is an established research topic, not only in sociology, environmental psychology and criminology, but also in GIScience. Using spatial analysis to analyse patterns, explore hotspots and determine the significance of respective surveys is one reason for the increase in popularity of such research topics for geographers, cartographers and spatial data scientists. This paper presents the results of an intensive online map-based questionnaire with 1551 respondents from the city of Ostrava, Czech Republic. The respondents marked 3792 points associated with the fear of crime over a ten week period. The perception data were compared with recorded crime data acquired from police department records for the years 2015–2018. This paper explores the spatial autocorrelation from perceived hotspots and from recorded crime hotspots. Our findings fit into the literature confirming results about the locations that most frequently attract fear, but there is still room for more investigations regarding the links between recorded crime and the fear of crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a quantitative study in the Czech Republic to understand travellers’ attitudes towards and motivation to use different means of transport. Two Czech cities, Olomouc and Ostrava, are compared from the point of view of factors influencing spatial and temporal patterns and citizen’s selection of transport mode and transport behaviour (range and daily movements of the population, perception of the quality of public transport etc.). The data for the analysis were obtained from the survey with more than 500 respondents in each city. Spatial and temporal behaviour represented by the pattern of the movement in Olomouc and Ostrava city was identified by statistical and visual analytics methods. Based on a case study of two cities of a different size, we conclude that the size and shape of the city centre (spatial structure) influence not only the distances travelled but also the average speed of public transportation (slower for a smaller city). Distances and choice of transport mode also vary with the density of urban areas but can also be influenced by the spatial structure of the city. The walking distance to a public transport stop does not influence the most frequently used mode of transport. Temporal patterns in both cities are very similar and are not dependent on city size or city spatial structure. The spatial patterns of the car and public transport flows are similar in both cities. Different patterns can be observed for walking and shopping routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]