Two types of mathematical models incorporating several types of competition between two species of African carnivores were constructed and analysed. The heuristic model focuses on population dynamics of both carnivores and their shared prey. The individual-based model focuses on the role of habitat heterogeneity and unique features of ecology of one of the predators, using the African wild dogs and hyaenas as a case study.

Children´s awareness of dealing with dogs starts to gain importance nowadays. More often we meet the problems of injuries caused in children by our best animal fellows.This situation needs to be solved. Problem cannot be seen only in accused animal. In most cases neither dog nor child is the deliquent. The main cause of a conflict between, in other way, harmonious coexistence of both partners seems to be children´s ignorance of behaviour, body speech and complex responsible attitude towards dogs. However,they cannot learn these basic rules themselves. Theoretical part of the thesis devotes attention to general outline of child {--} dog relation. Separate chapters are focused not only on psychological and social development of both arbiters, but also on their mutual impact, behaviour, care, communication and cooperation. At the same time, the thesis outlines the problems of dog bite-related injuries in children of our or foreign latitude. Last but not least it underlines the need of prevention and measures which could reduce or generally eliminate the rise of dramatic situations between a dog and a child. The main aim of this work was to chart awareness (informedness) of middle school- aged children of treating, care, behaviour and communication with dogs. Further presumption is to find out the knowledge differences in children who have dogs and those who haven´t. The output of practical part of the thesis are the results of quantitative research. There was used a method of questioning {--} technique standard questionnaire for children within the range of 3.-5. class of basic school. Research specimen represents pupils´ knowledge of four basic schools, in total 200 respondents. From the point of regional representation there were children of South Bohemia and Olomouc regions. According to the research there is evident absence in knowledge of dogs´ body speech and consequently the safety of mutual contact that represent the main problem in arising of risk situation between a child and a dog company. Therefore it is important to devote them more attention in future.

A lot of handicapped people need help while meeting their everyday needs provided by another person. Not only their family members, any close people, specialists and non-profit organisations can provide them with needful help but also an assistance dog that can become a companion and a friend as well. Those for disabled people specially trained dogs may be helpful with such a handicapped person to cope better with his/her daily life. At present, there are four organisations in the Czech Republic which are engaged in the training of assistance dogs. Generally those organisations are non-government and no-profit institutions. It is this Work{\crq}s objective to show and present the conditions regarding social consultancy for handicapped people in relation to the assistance dogs and to make out a project design for a Counselling and Training Centre of Assistance Dogs whereas the design would appropriately complete the already existing net of training centres of assistance dogs and social services for disabled people. A research was performed which served as a basis to draw up the project design of Counselling and Training Centre of Assistance Dogs and it resulted from that the handicapped people who possess an assistance dog had all available information how to procure a dog and how to finance the dog{\crq}s training; they were provided with advice and they are satisfied with the present training centres services. The disabled people who don{\crq}t possess an assistance dog are short of information about such a possibility and they don{\crq}t actually know who to address to in case if they are interested in an assistance dog. Further, it resulted from the research that more than a half of the enquired organisations, which provide social services, don{\crq}t supply their clients with any information about the assistance dogs and related topics. Based on those results I worked out a proposal of the Counselling and Training Centre of Assistance Dogs which could enhance the existing net of services in relation to the assistance dogs. This Centre will deal with special social consultancy, training of assistance dogs and an enlightening activity. The research results also demonstrate that it is necessary in terms of such a Centre to co-operate with organisations which provide social services to handicapped people and to do the enlightening activity with general public.

This thesis describes the basic breeds of work dogs presently used by the Police of the Czech Republic, divides the dogs by their character and psychologic features, and processes the current literature and regulations relating to work dogs training. The thesis summarizes the data collected from 8 Regional Directorates of the Police of the Czech Republic regarding the number of casas when the work dogs were utilized in practice in 2007, 2008 and up to the 3rd quarter of 2009. All the stated information has been processed in the thesis with the aim to elaborate a methodology of training of work dogs intended for guns and ammunition search, and to set the standards for assesment of suitability of individual dogs for training for guns and ammunition search, and for their subsequent utilization in practice. The obtained data were used in the thesis for elaboration of the methodology of work dogs training for guns and ammunition search. While elaborating the methodology it was ascertained thatdespite the existing universal training methodology each dog requires an individual approach with due regard to its physical and mental characteristics. The thesis also includes setting the standards for assesment of suitability of individual dogs for traning for guns and ammunition search, and for their subsequent utilization in practice. This thesis may be used in practice as a methodology of work dogs training for guns and ammunition search in training centres of the Police of the Czech Republic and in individual Special Cynology Groups of the Police of the Czech Republic, and subsequent utilization of trained dogs in practice for protection of citizens.

Despite substantial investments in biodiversity conservation interventions over the past two decades there is relatively little evidence about whether interventions work, and how they work. Whether an intervention is deemed to “work” depends upon how goals are defined and then measured, which is complex given that different stakeholders have very different expectations for any intervention (including species conservation, habitat protection, human wellbeing or participation goals), and because the process of measuring impacts can involve a simplification of more sophisticated ideals. These questions were investigated for a suite of biodiversity conservation interventions, implemented during 2005-2012 in the Northern Plains landscape of Cambodia. The interventions included the establishment of Protected Areas (PAs), village-level land-use planning, and three different types of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) instituted within the PAs. The PES programmes were (1) direct payments for species protection; (2) community-managed ecotourism linked to wildlife and habitat protection; and (3) payments to keep within land-use plans. The impact evaluation compared the results of each of the interventions with appropriate matched controls, considering both environmental and social impacts between 2005-2011. Both PAs and PES delivered additional environmental outcomes: reducing deforestation rates significantly in comparison with controls and protecting species for those cases where appropriate data was available. PAs increased security of access to land and forest resources for local households, benefiting forest resource users, but restricting households’ ability to expand and diversify their agriculture. PES impacts on household wellbeing were related to the magnitude of the payments provided: the two higher-paying PES programmes had significant positive impacts for participants, whereas a lower-paying programme that targeted biodiversity protection had no detectable effect on livelihoods, despite its positive environmental outcomes. Households that signed up to the higher-paying PES programmes, however, typically needed more capital assets and hence they were less poor and more food secure than other villagers. Therefore, whereas the impacts of PAs on household wellbeing were limited overall and varied between livelihood strategies, the PES programmes had significant positive impacts on livelihoods for those that could afford to participate. This is one of the first evaluations of the social impacts of PES that has been completed globally. The PA authorities were primarily effective at deterring external drivers of biodiversity loss, especially large-scale developments, land grabbing and in-migration, and had much more limited impact on local residents as the impact evaluation results demonstrated. The PES programmes had little or no effect on the external drivers, and instead explicitly targeted the behaviour of local residents. The three PES programmes differed in the extent to which they rewarded changes in individual or collective behaviour, and whether or not they were managed locally or externally. Household-level, conditional, payments were more effective at changing individual behaviour than collective payments; although there was evidence that both types of payments did lead to protection of forests at the village scale. Village-managed PES programmes empowered a subset of households that were then effective at enforcing regulations within the village. Externally managed PES programmes were more popular and viewed as fairer, but did not change collective behaviour. The general conclusion is that the design and institutional arrangements of PES programmes determines how participants perceive the programmes, and then the extent to which they bring about changes in behaviour.

Title: The effect of a six-week physiotherapeutic intervention in child patients with clubfoot evaluated with a change in ROM of ankle dorsiflexion and the quality of gait measured by 2D analysis. Objectives: The aim of this work was evaluation of six-week physiotherapeutic intervention focused on movement and stability improvement in child patients with clubfoot based on a change in ROM of ankle dorsiflexion and the quality of gait measured by 2D analysis. Methods: The work consists of a theoretical part, which summarizes the theoretical background to the chosen topic, and a practical part. For the purposes of the practical part, an intervention group of patients (aged from 3 to 6 years) who have already received medical treatment for clubfoot, was created. The physiotherapeutic intervention period was six weeks, during that period there were from 4 to 5 individual exercises supplemented with home exercises. At the beginning and at the end there were control measurements. The control measurements consisted of a clinical examination and a 2D analysis of gait, supplemented by a dynamometric examination of gait. Results: There were no verifiable improvements in measured parameters, especially in a combination of several factors related to both the intensity of the physiotherapeutic intervention and...

At the end of the 20th century the issue of so called "dangerous" dog breeds has become increasingly discussed in some European countries. These dogs are considered so threatening that some countries have decided to regulate or restrict their breeding by law. This thesis looks at the articles in Blesk tabloid and Lidové noviny daily newspaper in the years 2001 and 2011 and explores how the dangerous aspect of these breeds was constructed there. Through discourse analysis it investigates the image of "dangerous dogs" presented in these newspapers and what these representations imply. The results of the analysis confirm that all the selected materials explicitly construct the image of dangerous dogs and at the same time implicitly suggest the existence of their "positive" counterparts which helps drawing the line between "good" and "bad" dogs, and hence also between "good" and "bad" owners of the dogs. In all cases, it is apparent that the issue thematised on the level of dog breeds in fact charaterises the relation of man to the animal as well as the society. The representation of the dog witnesses far more about a man than the dog itself. Keywords: dangerous dog, representation, media, human-animal relationship, discourse analysis

The overarching question that this thesis sheds some light on is whether making PES more equitable increases the likelihood that they will be successful. The findings of the three empirical chapters suggest that policy-makers would do well to keep equity consideration in mind when designing PES. The first of these chapters is based on the results of a survey of dozens of PES in Latin America. The second and third chapters use a deliberative choice experiments approach to measure participant preferences towards different equity design characteristics of PES in an indigenous community in Colombia, where one of these programs is likely to be implemented in the near future.

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The increasing demand for renewable energy has led to substantial research on different solar cell technologies. The dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC) is a technology utilizing dye molecules for light absorption. Dye molecules are adsorbed to a mesoporous semiconductor surface and after light absorption in the dye, charge separation occurs at this interface. Traditionally, DSCs have used layers of single dye species, but in recent efforts to enhance power conversion efficiency, more complex molecular layers have been designed to increase the light absorption. For example, the most efficient DSCs use a combination of two dye molecules, and such dye co-adsorption is studied in this thesis. A key to highly efficient DSCs is to understand the dye/semiconductor interface from a molecular perspective. One way of gaining this understanding is by using an element specific, surface sensitive technique, such as photoelectron spectroscopy (PES). In this thesis, PES is used to understand new complex dye/semiconductor interfaces. Dyes adsorbed to semiconductor surfaces are analyzed using PES in terms of geometric and electronic surface structure.  The investigations ultimately target the effects of co-adsorbing dyes with other dyes or co-adsorbents. PES shows that Ru dyes can adsorb in mixed configurations to TiO2. Co-adsorption with an organic dye affects the configuration of the Ru dyes. As a consequence, shifts in energy level alignment and increased dye coverage are observed. The dyes are affected at a molecular level in ways beneficial for solar cell performance. This is called collaborative sensitization and is also observed in todays most efficient DSC. Dye molecules are generally sensitive to high temperatures and the substantial decrease in power conversion efficiency after heat-treatment can be understood using PES. Furthermore, comparing two mesoscopic TiO2 morphologies used in DSCs show differences in trap state density in the band gap, explaining the photovoltage difference in DSCs comprising these morphologies. Using mixed molecular layers on NiO results in significant improvements of p-type DSC power conversion efficiency. PES shows that changed adsorption configuration contribute to this effect. This thesis shows that PES studies can be used to obtain insight into functional properties of complex DSC interfaces at a molecular level.