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Studies on the drivers of public sector wage setting (PSWS) within the broader political and economic conditions in Central and Eastern Europe are scarce. To fill this gap, the paper questions to what extent the export-led growth model, based on foreign direct investment as driver of economic growth, influenced PSWS in Czechia and Slovakia after the 2008–2009 crisis. The paper provides new evidence of the appropriateness of the growth model literature, integrated by consideration of global production chains integration, for understanding PSWS in CEE conditions. The analysis shows that PSWS followed institutional traditions and established practices that only indirectly related to the countries' export orientation and integration into global production chains. The indirect growth model impact on PSWS in CEE conditions is channeled through a strong role of the statutory minimum wage, which serves as a wage benchmark both for the export sector and PSWS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies how unions used two types of resources, namely, access to national legislation/policy and to collective bargaining, to improve working conditions in healthcare and in agency work in Czechia and Slovakia. It examines how these two types of institutional resources interact, whether they are potentially in competition and how this affects union revitalization. Unions' post-2008 strategies in the two sectors converged towards political action due to their preference for legislative regulation of issues previously bargained about or unregulated. The paper argues that extensive use of institutional safeguards contributes to improving working conditions; however, prioritizing political action may weaken other types of union strategies and undermine future access to collective bargaining. In other words, extensive utilization of one institutional resource (legislation) may gradually weaken other types of resources (collective bargaining) and thereby undermine the overall revitalization capacity of trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Insufficient physical activity (PA) is one of the largest public health challenges of our time and requires a multisectoral public-health response. PA recommendations state that all children and adolescents should accumulate at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) daily and carry out vigorous PA (VPA) three times weekly. While participation in sports club activities is known to enhance the probability of reaching the recommended overall PA level, less is known about the contribution of sports club participation to VPA, and few cross-national comparisons have been carried out. The purpose of this paper is to study whether participation in sports club activities is associated with meeting the overall PA and VPA recommendations among children and adolescents across six European countries, namely Belgium (Flanders), Czech Republic, Finland, France, Ireland and Sweden. Methods: Analyses were carried out on existing self-reported national data sets using descriptive statistics and logistic regression. Results: Results indicate that approximately two-thirds of children and adolescents take part in sports club activities in the given countries. Sports club participants were more likely to meet the overall PA recommendations (OR 2.4–6.4) and VPA recommendation (OR 2.8–5.0) than non-participants. Conclusions: The extent to which overall PA and/or VPA is gained through sports club participation versus other settings needs to be further studied. Nonetheless, it can be argued that sports clubs have an important position in PA promotion for younger populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the phenomenon of celebrity politics in the Czech Republic, particularly the involvement of celebrities in Czech politics between 1996 and 2013. The authors draw from the celebrity politics' typologies of Paul 't Hart and Karen Tindall, and John Street. Employing a content analysis of newspaper articles from the journals MF Dnes and Blesk during the periods preceding the elections of the Chamber of Deputies, the authors shed light on celebrity involvement in Czech politics. Specifically, they trace three categories mentioned in the media: the celebrity expression of political topics in general, celebrity political endorsement and the candidacy of celebrities. Building upon the collected data, the authors interpret the results within the political and social context of the parliamentary period and indicate more general patterns of celebrity involvement in Czech politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We focus on the role of within-family socialisation and the relationship between socialisation and resource transfers in the intergenerational transmission of housing preferences, the formation of familial housing attitudes and thus the reproduction of a normative housing tenure ladder across generations in Czech society. We show that resource transfers and the within-family socialisation of housing preferences, including preferences concerning housing tenure, are closely interconnected. In other words, parental influence on decision to buy own housing (and on housing preferences in general) of their adult children through socialisation is stronger if there is an (actual or assumed) intergenerational resource transfer. This has several implications for how housing markets and systems work. The paper draws on findings from qualitative, quantitative and experimental studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantification has become a privileged form of knowing and vehicle of governance. Anthropological critique has demonstrated that a view of numbers as independent carriers of meaning is untenable; instead, numbers should be conceptualized as being part of relations and temporalities, opening space for shifts in understanding. Proposing the perspective of 'ecologies of quantification', we acknowledge the wider notion of ecology that accommodates materiality, cognition, and experience, and acknowledges that the constituents of the relations are always in a process of becoming. We put waste management at the centre of our interest to explore the ways quantification attempts to conquer arguably one of the unruliest domains of contemporary social life. Based on our collaborative ethnographic research on the management of municipal solid waste, discarded electrical and electronic devices, and junked cars in Czechia, we point to problems emerging when numbers become stripped of their relations. Our research sheds light on experience in the process of quantification and demonstrates that there are multiple ways to know quantity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to interpret recent developments in the field of adult education in the Czech Republic through the theory of social acceleration. The study is designed as focused ethnography, drawing upon observation, interviewing, and document analysis. The material is read through the concepts of acceleration and frenetic standstill and contextualized in the discourses on industry 4.0 and recognition of prior learning. The study shows how the notion of constant technological change drives the Czech discourse of adult education, introducing a sense of urgency and pressing for faster developments in the further education of adults. However, the field of adult education exhibits a lack of consistency in its development, translating into absenting sense of progress. Within this context, the Czech National Qualifications Framework (NQF) has produced a steady output of qualification standards even though its internal processes have been prolonged. The tempo of the NQF and the absenting sense of progress can be read as signs of a frenetic standstill, accompanied by a high fluctuation of individuals on all levels of an organizational hierarchy. The study argues that acceleration is not driven by technological change in the observed context as the examined discourses expect. Instead, social acceleration seems to be perpetuating itself as a relatively independent force, eroding institutions that are seen as key in adapting to the incoming transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has exposed profound governance challenges that demand more diverse and creative approaches to global health governance moving forward. This article works towards such a pluralization of the field by foregrounding the vital role played by heterodox actors during the pandemic. Heterodox global health actors are backgrounded actors who improve health in different parts of the world, but who remain politically marginalized – and epistemically invisibilized – because they depart in crucial respects from the liberal orthodoxy pervading the field of global health governance. The article analytically foregrounds those heterodox actors through an architectural inversion – a relational approach to the study of global health governance that builds upon recent methodological insights from postcolonial studies, infrastructure studies, and science and technology studies. The article then harnesses that methodological approach to empirically investigate the COVID-19 activities of three different heterodox actors: rebel groups providing public health in the borderlands of Myanmar, a women's vigilante movement stitching face masks in the Czech Republic, and a maverick scientific platform for the international sharing of viral sequence data. Performing that architectural inversion begins to loosen the dominance of the liberal episteme within the practice and study of global health governance. It further visibilizes how that field is continually co-produced by the background activities of many such heterodox actors. It also lays conceptual foundations for a more heterodox future research agenda on global health governance – and arguably global governance more broadly – in response to the numerous unresolved challenges revealed by COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Languages vary in the type of contexts that affect prosodic prominence. This paper reports on a production study investigating how different types of foci influence prosody in Polish and Czech noun phrases. The results show that in both languages, focus and givenness are marked prosodically, with pitch and intensity as the main acoustic correlates. Like Germanic languages, Polish and Czech patterns show prosodic focus marking in a broad range of contexts and differ in this regard from other fixed-word-stress languages such as French. This suggests that (a) Polish and Czech are similar to Germanic languages and are unlike Romance languages in marking a variety of types of focus prosodically; (b) there is no close correlation between fixed word stress and lack of prosodic focus marking because Polish, which has fixed stress on the penult, shows prosodic focus marking for all types of focus; and (c) there is no straightforward relationship between flexible word order and whether focus and givenness are prosodically marked, contrary to earlier claims, because both Czech and Polish, with their relatively flexible word order, are more similar to English than Romance languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable and circular production models, such as the circular economy and circular bioeconomy, have become key mechanisms to leave behind the traditional linear model of food production. Under this approach and considering the waste biomass potential available in Spain and the Czech Republic, the main objective of this study is to analyse the most relevant aspects of the generation, use and regulation of agricultural waste biomass (AWB) in both countries. For this purpose, a scientometric analysis and systematic review of published research in the Scopus database were carried out. A complementary analysis of AWB management policies and regulations was also part of the methodology. The results show that Spain has published almost twice as much research as the Czech Republic. Furthermore, 91% of the retrieved research prioritizes the characterization and estimation of the potential of more than 15 AWB types. Among the main ones are olive residues, horticultural residues and wheat straw, which are used for producing organic amendments, bioenergy and biofuels. The results confirm that the reduction and valorization of AWB is an issue that has become more important in the last 13 years, mainly due to the policies and strategies for circular economy and circular bioeconomy. With this in mind, this study provides relevant information for governments on the aspects that need to be improved to advance in the valorization of AWB. This study also provides guidance to farmers on the reduction and/or recovery alternatives that they can implement to move towards sustainable and circular agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate on how political parties that form coalition governments keep tabs on each other during the drafting and negotiation of new bills. Our article complements existing studies focused on the parliamentary stage of law-making by enriching current knowledge with an analysis of the executive phase, where bills may be significantly changed before they are submitted to the legislature. Contrary to theoretical expectations, results based on unique data from the Czech Republic reveal that bills which are heavily altered during the executive phase are subsequently significantly changed in the parliament. Additional interaction models indicate the effect is stronger for bills that are highly significant for the proposing minister and are a greater distance from any coalition compromise. Our findings open the question of why the coalition parties leave the resolution of some controversial issues to the parliamentary phase: the outstanding conflict may be genuine, or the coalition MPs may just be playing out a prearranged and staged battle that enables the coalition partners to show their distinctive qualities to the voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effect of the personal characteristics of ministers on their party and coalition partners' pledge fulfilment. Partisanship and additional party-related experience is expected to help party pledge fulfilment. Previous field-related experience should additionally open up the space for alternative principals. However, partisan motivation should be the leading mechanism for the behaviour of the minister – and field-related experience can help partisan ministers to follow party mandates better. The joint dataset of objectively testable pledges in the Czech Republic (2007–2015) supplemented by information on government ministers is used to test hypotheses. The article shows that not only holding the portfolio but also the particular features of ministers, especially those related to party-related experience, influence their ability to fulfil party promised policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial planning practice is increasingly facing the challenge of managing the complexity of daily urban systems. As a normatively defined spatial imaginary, the concept of polycentricity has become widely used in planning practice in order to mitigate territorial disparities and to enhance urban competitiveness. Although polycentricity has been thoroughly studied as an analytical concept for understanding the dynamics of urban networks, the operationalization of the concept in planning practice has not yet been subjected to critical evaluation, despite recent metropolitan planning practices signalling a misunderstanding of the basic principles of polycentricity. Based on a case study of Czech metropolitan areas, this article addresses the question: Are there any shortcomings related to the operationalization of a normatively defined polycentric vision of spatial development at the level of metropolitan planning agendas? Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, the study compares different spatial settings of metropolitan areas with spatial visions defined by planning and policy documents. The findings point to several limitations related to a missing link between spatial reality and planning agendas, the weak operationalization of polycentricity, and scale-related miscomprehension. In order to translate the polycentric narrative into planning practice more efficiently, we will argue for a strengthening and formalization of metropolitan planning agendas and a more intensive interconnection of theoretical knowledge with territorial management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the Czech-Slovak businessman Andrej Babiš decided to widen the scope of his activities by buying the Czech media house, Mafra. He was also pursuing a political career and in 2017 became Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. Both the purchase and the political ascent of the new owner have contributed to the departure of many journalists from the two national newspapers in the Mafra Group. The journalists left in waves that corresponded to the stages of Babiš's takeover and the gradual tightening of his grip on the newsrooms, and their departure has done fatal damage to the reputation of Mafra newspapers. Through 10 in-depth interviews with some of the journalists who left, this case study charts the disintegration of the newsrooms to assess the decline of journalistic autonomy within the oligarchized media systems of central and eastern Europe. We aim to identify the point at which the erosion of workplace autonomy becomes unacceptable for media professionals and when the situation becomes inconsistent with their professional identities. The findings suggest that the gradual erosion of journalistic autonomy, caused mainly by changes in the organization's culture, led journalists first to accommodate to the changes and later to leave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the focus on emotions has been associated with the rise of psychosocial welfare and has promised a gateway to accommodate individually diversified needs of citizens in policies, the article shows that the role of emotions needs to be better understood. Highlighting emotions can serve both to empower and to patronize those who experience them. Referring to emotions can thus strengthen hierarchies and downplay individual requests to initiate a change. The analysis of professional discourses on birth care in Czechia shows the value of contextualising emotions. While midwifery discourses apply the emotional context of birth to support women in their specific birth choices, medical discourses use the emotional context to patronize them and to limit their requirements. As a result, policy demands are seen as illegitimate when coming from midwives, who want to see women's choices more respected in care. We analyse this dynamic through intimacy. As a conceptual framework used in sociology of care, 'intimacy' ties individual emotional experiences to collective discourses on care, the body and related feelings. Viewing professional discourses on birth care through intimacy reveals the role of emotions in the collective recognition of the personal struggle for the right to give birth in conditions that respect bodily and emotional integrity, which informs how we think of the role of emotions in policies in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines social media as a site for identity negotiation and community building among Roma in the Czech Republic. As Roma are continually denied authority over the construction of their identities, their Czech-ness, claim to physical spaces, and generally made to feel that they do not belong—both in the material and symbolic sense—this article examines how individual activists and community organizers utilize media as a resource to combat spatial alienation. This ethnographic study pays close attention to the cultivation of community through Facebook groups, the utilization of groups and event pages to organize, and the affordances and challenges of moving online efforts offline. At the same time, this article explores tensions and contradictions of these digital spaces that may involve issues like the lack of resources and the fragmentation of community—and of communal space—by such variables as age, language, and technological access and literacy. Ultimately, this article suggests that social media may embody both emotional and material places manifesting as additional/alternative places to negotiate identities and belonging for Roma in the Czech Republic. The findings of this research carry important implications for those with complicated relationships to home(lands), including geographically displaced people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the everyday experience of visually disabled people with norms and normality and confronts it with three approaches discussed in disability studies: (i) the medical model, (ii) the social model, and (iii) critical disability studies. The most available model to the people in the study, as well as the most widespread approach in Czech society, is the medical model. However, the text shows that although other approaches are rather marginal, their logic is present in the everyday experience of the communication partners in the research. They can espouse the rigid, medical model, while, at the same time, confronting the construction of norms that both the social model and critical disability studies defy. This finding reveals both the normative and subversive character of disability, manifested in visually impaired experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study illustrates the need to develop efforts that define scientific terms, namely, 'religion'. Despite the fact that such efforts may seem to be practically unattainable, current phenomena testify to the need to continually improve standardized scholarly terminology (such as Invented Religion, Parody Religion). Using specific material (of new religious phenomena in the Czech Republic, specifically the Jedi religion and the Church of Beer), the study identifies several key ambiguities stemming from the cultural and social context in which both contemporary new religions and academic study of religions coexist. The study concludes that in a highly secular society, where the continuity of religious memory is disrupted (as in the Czech Republic), the academic study of religions plays an important role, functioning as an authority for the decision-making of state institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on IFSW 2023 European Conference, the President of the Czech Republic national of social work association. Topics include Pavel's great concern, social work education being today again under challenge with limitations being placed on professional training; and development of the state's responsibility in building the social infrastructure necessary to support and protect people.

We contribute to the literature on firm-level determinants of gender wage inequality by studying the link between a firm's age and the size of its gender pay gap. Using European Structure of Earnings data for eight European countries, we find that in all these countries, the gender wage gaps are smallest in the youngest firms. Our results also show that in Central European countries, the size of the gender pay gap clearly increases with the age of the company; whereas in the older EU member states such link is not as apparent. Levels of gender wage inequality appear to be highest in companies that were previously state owned but were privatized during the transition. We interpret our findings with the support of competition and monopsony theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Europe, as elsewhere in the global North, the label "Made in China" has become synonymous with low wages, excessive overtime, and exploitative working conditions. Conventional literature on the international division of labor reifies the North–South divide in particular with respect to class formation and labor agency. Contrasting the working conditions in China to those in Europe sets these up as opposites in their managerial practices and treatment of the workforce. This article challenges such dualism and makes visible the commonalities of contemporary global capitalism. It does so by examining Foxconn's production regimes in China and the Czech Republic and identifying a specific set of strategies on the part of the firm that enable its global organization of production. In indicating which practices Foxconn imported from China and which are an outcome of global extended production, the article challenges the Chinese political economy literature that posits the "Chinese model" as warranted when production is globally organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how financialized subjectivities have been performed in household economy manuals under two successive socio-economic regimes in the former Czechoslovakia and the current Czech Republic: state socialism and neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on a layered performativity framework, we studied how rhetoric, devices and instructions used in manuals construct households into self-reliant actors who embrace financial products. We found that subjects were already being financialized by the manuals of the socialist era, particularly those from the 1980s. The main change concerned the treatment of temporality and the occurrence of calculative devices. Our findings challenge the idea that financialization has emerged under the regime of neoliberal capitalism and implies that financialization is part of a longer trend in modern economic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the complexity of trade-union approaches to board-level employee representation in the Visegrád countries, and the barriers it faces in particular national settings. Trade unionists in these countries accept the relevance of such employee representation in theory, but their practical agenda covers other issues which they perceive as more important as they struggle to survive at many levels of activity, and face growing existential uncertainty and risk. Unions also lack capacity to overcome obstacles such as reluctance on the part of the political class and managerial hostility to board-level representation; they cannot exert influence on major policy decisions at national level. They are operating in a more and more difficult environment, reflecting not merely a declining membership base, but also the recent economic crisis that failed to change the economic policy paradigm in the Visegrád countries: policies there still rely on a neoliberal approach and hence are not conducive to labour participation. What can still be seen as the predominant model is the traditional one of the market economy in which rights of ownership reign supreme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the core dilemmas of current welfare politics is the question of how to ensure social protection while providing incentives to seek employment at the same time. A way to address this dilemma is to base policies and policy models on the principle notion that 'work must pay'; in other words, income from employment should be higher than the social support of the unemployed. However, how accurately do these approaches and models represent the reality of benefit recipients, particularly in the context of increased employment precariousness? In this article, we use the cases of two disadvantaged regions in Czech Republic in order to contrast the presumptions of 'making work pay' policies with the everyday experience of welfare recipients. As we show, their situations are strongly shaped by current changes in the labour market, particularly the precarious character of accessible employment and high levels of indebtedness. The modelling of financial employment incentives and the public policies based on these calculations often do not correspond with the reality of welfare recipients that are often cycling in and out of precarious forms of employment. However, the authors' main claim is that the very idea of the 'work must pay' approach focuses on the wrong question. A truly functioning financial incentive would need to focus not solely on the difference in income between those who work and those who do not work, but rather should analyse what type of arrangements allow working households to rise permanently above the poverty line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: There is evidence that young people are less satisfied with their lives when they are unemployed or working in precarious conditions. This study aims to shed light on how the life satisfaction of unemployed and precariously employed young people varies across welfare states with different labour market policies and levels of social protection. Methods: The analyses are based on representative cross-sectional survey data from five European countries (Denmark, the UK, Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic), corresponding to five different welfare state regimes. For economically active young adults (N =6681), the prevalence ratios of low life satisfaction were estimated through multivariate logistic regressions. Results: In all five countries, unemployed young adults presented a higher prevalence of low life satisfaction. When we compared employees with people with permanent and temporary contracts, the former were more satisfied with their lives only in Germany and the UK, examples of conservative and liberal welfare regimes, respectively. Experience of unemployment decreased young adults' life satisfaction only in Germany and the Czech Republic, examples of a conservative and an eastern European welfare regime, respectively. In almost all countries, young adults with low economic self-sufficiency presented a higher prevalence of low life satisfaction. Conclusions: There are nuanced patterns of employment type and life satisfaction across European states that hint at welfare state regimes as possible moderators in this relationship. The results suggest that the psychological burdens of unemployment or work uncertainty cannot be overlooked and should be addressed according to different types of social provisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our study of Czech homeschooling families, we discovered that the unifying theme of their justifying narratives was how the families rearranged the norm of “good parenting,” defined as the amount of time families spent together. The parents argued the importance of sacrificing their own time and educating their children themselves. They distinguished themselves from parents who are not willing to attend the children’s needs as much. Finally, we show that homeschooled children also actively adopt the family time management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of legitimate culture plays a crucial role in the study of the relationship between the differentiation of tastes and the reproduction of social inequalities. Nevertheless, the actual role of legitimate culture in present society is often disputed in light of a supposed crumbling of the privileged structure of the fine arts. Meanwhile, the existing practice of survey research often neglects this institutional dimension of the legitimisation of taste and researchers often withdraw from attempts to develop an empirically-based scale to measure the legitimacy of taste. The aim of this paper is to develop a method of measurement of cultural capital which is based on empirical evaluation of the legitimacy of respondents' taste. Specifically, this measurement links responses to open-ended questions about favourite cultural goods with institutionalized critical ratings. The particular focus is to answer how this methodologically innovative approach relates to prevalent instruments for measurement of cultural capital (highbrow culture attendance, educational credentials) and how it could inform the study of the change of legitimate culture. The study uses data from a survey of Czech youth cultural consumption (N=524). The results show close ties between the institutional measurement of cultural capital and the Bourdieusian application of Multiple Correspondence Analysis as a mean to identify significant cultural differences. While the feasibility of institutional measurement of cultural capital in survey data could be disputed, it is a useful tool to advance our understanding of how legitimate culture operates in present society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a rich body of literature dealing with suburbanization across Central and East Europe, the issues of crime and safety in residential suburbs have not been addressed. At the same time it is obvious that the existing knowledge on suburban crime derived mainly from Western experience cannot be simply transferred to the post-socialist transition context. This research investigates the issues of crime and safety in new residential neighbourhoods in the hinterland of Prague, the Czech Republic. Suburbanites’ fear of crime and feeling of safety are discussed in the context of registered crime patterns in the Prague metropolitan region. The research draws on data gathered in a questionnaire survey of newcomers to suburban housing. The findings confirm the generally high feelings of safety in low-crime suburban districts. Our analysis further showed that age, previous victimization and length of residency are the main determinants of fear of crime in Prague’s suburban communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memorial spaces can reinforce consensus or deepen conflict over the past. Memories of communism in Europe are particularly fraught mnemonic landscapes. Although they experienced the communist regime as a single country, Czechs and Slovaks now manifest very different political memories in public spaces with different levels of contention surrounding them. Through a media analysis (1993–2012) of events surrounding the 12 memorials addressing the communist past in the capital cities of Prague and Bratislava, this study generates a theory of differing levels of contention between societies with similar ‘difficult’ pasts. The Czech case is characterized by official and unofficial actors, who are cooperative or noncooperative, presenting often competing versions of the past through an individualistic, human rights-focused mnemonic frame. Slovak memory politics are less contentious, dominated by official memory actors, and interpreted through religion and nationalism. The collective memory literature lacks a way to understand when contention is more or less expected over a problematic past. I propose that when official memory actors privilege an individualistic mnemonic frame, contention becomes likely through the interpretations of unofficial memory actors, while a more collectivistic frame results in less contentious memory politics. In other words, the variation in mnemonic frame helps to explain why unofficial actors sometimes contest official representations of the past and other times leave them unchallenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s the inner city residential areas of CEE post-socialist cities have experienced substantial physical and social transformation. Previous studies have recorded a gradual rehabilitation of inner city housing stock and the displacement of lower status groups by middle and higher social status residents, but they have also shown that diverse social groups continue to live in the inner city. The scholarly emphasis on identifying the macro-scale factors that influence inner city change has resulted in a lack of studies considering micro-scale processes. We therefore herein attempt to address this gap in the literature by providing qualitative insight into the drivers of inner city dynamics at the level of the individual actors concerned. Our study is based on an investigation of two second-tier cities: Tartu in Estonia and České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. We found that, besides supply side factors which emphasise the conditions of urban spatial fabric, relocations to inner cities can best be explained by a combination of household socio-economic, life course and lifestyle factors. We also provide a typology of relocators to post-socialist inner cities, based on our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: There is some controversy as to whether there is a benefit from the use of a centrifugal pump compared with a roller pump during cardiopulmonary bypass to facilitate cardiac surgery. We compared the two pumps, with the primary aim of determining any difference in the effects on inflammation after pulmonary endarterectomy surgery which required prolonged cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. Methods: Between September 2010 and July 2013, 58 elective patients undergoing pulmonary endarterectomy were included in this prospective, randomised, controlled study; 30 patients were randomly allocated to the control group, which used a roller pump, and 28 patients to the treatment group, which used a centrifugal pump. Interleukin-6, procalcitonin, C-reactive protein, thromboelastographic parameters, P-selectin, international normalised ratio, activated prothrombin time, free haemoglobin, haematocrit, red blood cell count, white blood cell count, platelet count and protein S100β were recorded during and after the procedure. We also recorded the length of intensive care unit stay, blood loss and transfusion, neurological outcomes and respiratory and renal failure. Results: There was a significant difference in the primary outcome measure: Interleukin-6 was significantly higher in the roller pump group (587±38 ng·l-1 vs. 327±37 ng·l-1; p<0.001) 24 hours after surgery, which we interpreted as an increased inflammatory response. This was confirmed by a significant rise in the procalcitonin level in the roller pump group 48 hours following surgery (0.79 (0.08-25.25) ng·ml-1 vs. 0.36 (0.02-5.83) ng·ml-1; p<0.05). There were, however, no significant differences in clinical outcome data. Conclusions: We have shown that the use of a centrifugal pump during prolonged cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest is associated with a reduced inflammatory response compared to the standard roller pump. Larger multi-centre trials in this area of practice are required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have measured pollen, aluminum, and lead abundances in a Czech peat bog at Bozi Dar in order to investigate the environmental impact of Holocene climate changes and mining activities in Central Europe. The pollen record shows a continuous vegetal cover since 13 kyr BP. Aluminum and pollen deposition characterize the Younger Dryas (YD) cold event at 12.3–11.0 kyr BP, within its expected time frame in Northern Europe. Aluminum fluxes reveal four other significant dust events with significant Asian and Saharan sources, as shown with variations in stable 204Pb, 206Pb, and 207Pb isotopes. Recurrent Asian incursions are seen at Bozi Dar during the YD and Mid-Holocene dust events (at 7.1, 6.5, and 5.9 kyr BP). These Asian imprints are also observed by Le Roux and colleagues during the YD in the nearest Holocene-long geochemical peat record from Switzerland (Etang de la Gruère). We do not see at Bozi Dar the distinct western European volcanic inputs identified in the Swiss peat by Shotyk and colleagues. However, isotopic ratios characteristics of Mediterranean airflows are evident at both locations during the Mid- and Late Holocene. The occurrence of these various air mass sources in Switzerland and the Czech Republic substantiates Holocene atmospheric circulation models in Central Europe with dominating zonal airflows during the Early Holocene, followed by a governing meridian dispersion during the Mid- and Late Holocene. Lead inputs at 5.1–4.3 and 1.9 kyr BP cannot be explained by increased dust deposition only. The 1.9 kyr event fits local Bohemian ore isotopic imprints of which isotopic signatures are seen as early as 2.2 kyr BP in our core, hence revealing the oldest ever environmental record of mining-related activities in the Czech Republic. Relatively elevated Pb deposition at 5.1 and 4.3 kyr BP are tentatively attributed to contamination that may be from local sources and/or long-range transport. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]