"A Thesis presented to the faculty of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies for completion of graduation requirements." / "June 2003." Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-80).

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2005. / Thesis Advisor(s): Daniel Moran. Includes bibliographical references (p. 63-67). Also available online.

Thesis--University of Oklahoma. / Bibliography: leaves 33-36.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis deals with the issues associated with the legal regulation of air quality protection. The main objective is to describe, analyse and evaluate the condition of the current legal regulation which is mainly represented by the Act no. 201/2012 Coll., on the protection of air. The introductory part of the thesis focuses on the historical development of the legal regulation, its primary milestones, as well as legal regulation according to International and European Law and its impact on the internal national legislation. Furthermore, the thesis also focuses on the currently valid legal regulation and its components and clarifies its basic terminology. The largest portion of the thesis focuses on the legal regulation of the individual instruments regulated primarily by the Act no. 201/2012 Coll., on the protection of air, with the primary focus being the stationary sources of pollution. These instruments are sorted into traditional groups, each respectively representing conceptual, administrative-legal and economic instruments. The chapter on conceptual instruments primarily focuses on the two fundamental instrumental programs, that is a) - The National Emission Reduction Program of the Czech Republic, and b) - programs aimed at improving air quality and their importance in legal regulation....

Although sexual reproductive development is a critical phase in the life cycle of plants, the effects of air pollutants on the processes involved have not been investigated extensively. This thesis describes experiments undertaken to determine the direct effects of short-term exposures to ozone on the reproductive biology of species with contrasting reproductive growth habits, Brassica campestris L., an indeterminate species, and Plantago major L., a more determinate species. Two purpose-designed exposure chambers were constructed, each of which permitted the reproductive structures of up to twelve plants to be isolated from the vegetative parts and exposed simultaneously to ozone-enriched or charcoal-filtered air. The design of these chambers also permitted whole plant exposures. The occurrence of significant decreases in stomatal conductance and the net rate of photosynthesis following exposure to 70 ppb ozone established that the vegetative structures of both B. campestris and P. major were sensitive to ozone. Visible leaf injury also developed in B. campestris, the extent of which varied with the stomatal conductance of plants prior to fumigation and therefore ozone uptake. The growth of B. campestris and P. major was also reduced following 10 and 14 days of exposure respectively to 70 ppb ozone for 7 h d-1. The effects of ozone on growth differed between the four populations of P. major examined in this study. While a single 6 h exposure of the terminal inflorescence of B. campestris to 100 ppb ozone had no significant effect on reproductive development, repeated exposures over four consecutive days increased the abortion of seeds in apical pods and the precocious germination of seeds in older pods. However, the impact on final seed yield was dependent upon the timing of exposure; thus seed yield was significantly reduced following exposure during the early flowering phase, but was unaffected following exposure during the later stages of reproductive development. The compensation for seed losses in more mature plants resulted from their ability to retain naturally aborting seeds in older pods. Nonetheless, single and multiple exposures to ozone both reduced the rate of germination of harvested seeds and multiple exposures affected seed colour. In P. major, exposure of the fIrst spike to 120 ppb ozone for 7 h d-1 during flowering primarily affected seed number per capsule. Both significant increases and decreases in seed number were observed in the four populations examined, and seed number was also affected in spikes which had not been exposed to ozone, indicating the existence of possible compensation mechanisms. Pollen from both species was also shown to be sensitive to a 6 h in vivo exposure to ozone. The complex responses of B. campestris and P. major following direct exposure of the reproductive structures to ozone suggest that factors other than the type of reproductive growth habit are important in determining the extent of ozone damage and the ability of plants to compensate for reproductive site losses.

Thesis analyses present status of air traffic management in European area from historical and legislative point of view. Subjects of thesis are present projects in ATM and future variants of organization of air traffic in EU. Practical part focuses on impact of ATM on air transportation.

Black carbon (BC) is the light-absorbing component of soot, a combustion-generated aerosol that warms the climate by absorbing solar radiation. Its impacts on climate depend on its microphysical properties, which are modified by atmospheric processes including condensation, coagulation and wet removal. State of the art climate models consider soot in a concentric core/shell configuration, with a BC core coated by nonrefractory material such as organics or sulphate. Within this model, thicker coatings enhance visible light absorption, but also wet removal efficiency, and these have opposing effects on the total amount of light absorbed over BC’s lifetime. How well the core/shell model can calculate Mass Absorption Coefficient (MAC, the ratio of absorption to BC mass) is uncertain, as real soot forms more complex (often fractal) shapes, and detailed optical models using these morphologies predict the core/shell model may under- or over-estimate MAC depending on the precise properties of the particles. Few reliable measurements of variations in ambient MAC are available, as most older measurement techniques suffer from systematic uncertainties. In this work, a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2) and PhotoAcoustic Soot Spectrometer (PASS) were used to measure BC mass concentration and absorption, and these instruments do not suffer from such uncertainties. The SP2 was also used to report core size and coating thickness distributions that are required to test state of the art climate models. Firstly, a method was developed to minimise bias in the measured coating thicknesses related to the limited detection range of the SP2. The sensitivity of this technique to the assumed density and refractive index of the BC core was also explored, and the most appropriate parameters to use with ambient measurements were determined. Core and shell distributions were measured in Pasadena, California under a range of different photochemical ages. These were then used to calculate MAC, which was compared to that measured using the SP2 and PASS. The measured and modelled MAC agreed within 10% at 532 nm, though this was dependent on the assumed refractive index of the BC core. Overall MAC increased by 15 –25% in around one third of a day of photochemical ageing. This is quite modest compared to some climate models, but not compared to the previous best estimate, which predicted MAC may increase by a factor of ~1.5 over BC’s lifetime. Core and coating distributions were also measured in Canadian boreal biomass burning plumes. A case study was presented comparing the properties of BC in three plumes, one of which had passed through a precipitating cloud. It was demonstrated that larger and more coated BC-containing particles were removed more efficiently, in agreement with previous thermodynamic theory. By calculating MAC using the measured core/shell distributions and comparing to measured scattering, it was demonstrated that the MAC and single-scattering albedo in the plumes were likely not significantly affected by the wet removal, as greater differences were observed between the two plumes not affected by precipitation.

The diploma thesis deals with the cleaning of car air conditioning system with ozone. The aim is to design equipment for ozone production, its location and cleaning algorithm. The thesis is divided into two parts. The introductory theoretical part describes the principle of operation of conventional automotive air conditioning, then discusses the methods of pollution and solutions to remove these pollutions. The theoretical part ends with a summary of information on ozone. The practical part is continuously followed by the design of device for the ozone production directly in the car. The final part deals with the location of such a device in a car, measuring its parameters and evaluating the results.

Focusing on reducing the air consumption of an air flotation rail system, a flowrate-amplified flotation element was recently developed. This new flotation element ulitises the rotational flow to intake extra air via an intake hole, and thus, effectively improves the flotation height. Compared to a conventional flotation element, the flowrate-amplified flotation element can reduce air consumption by approximately 50% for the same load and flotation height. To gain an understanding of the flow phenomenon in the flowrate-amplified flotation element, experiments and CFD simulations are conducted in this study. Based on the results, we found that the flowrate-amplified flotation element could take a part of the kinetic energy of the rotating air to suck in extra air. The intake hole greatly affects the pressure field and velocity field of the flotation element. Additionally, the effects of the variant gap height and supplied flow rate were also discussed. The results indicate that the pressure distribution decreases as the gap height increases and increases as the supplied flow rate increases.