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The article aims to discuss conditions of spatial organization of elementary schools in the Czech countryside and to validate whether there is any relation between the different types of rural schools and the diverse types of rural areas. Usually, rural schools are perceived in contrast to urban schools as a homogenous group of institutions with common characteristics – despite their diversity. The article compares the typology of municipalities according to data about elementary schools with the typology of municipalities according to its societal and cultural characteristics. Based on three indicators describing main characteristics of the school network – the number of elementary schools in a municipality, their average utilization of the maximum reported capacity, the average extent of area serviced by the school – eleven types of municipalities were identified. Statistically significant connections were shown between the two typologies. Rural schools thus should not be assessed as internally homogenous group of institutions with broadly common characteristics. This is because problems that rural schools face during their existence reflect wider societal, cultural, and economic conditions of areas in which they are located.

The aim of this contribution is to evaluate the cooperation of the European countries in projects related to the AI in the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) and in the current Horizon 2020 Programme. The analysis is based on the information obtained from European Commission database eCORDA (External COmmon Research DAtawarehouse). Dynamic scientometric maps were constructed to describe in more detail the collaboration of European subjects in the EC funded AI research. Within the FP7, 1223 projects in the AI field received roughly 2,8 billion €. In the current H2020 programme the EC has already provided 2,1 billion € for 1081 projects in AI. In the FP7, higher education institutions dominated in both the number of awarded project and the received financial support. In the H2020 programme, a profound shift favouring business enterprise sector occurred. Approximately one third of AI projects in the FP7 was in the thematic area Information and Communication Technologies. In the H2020 programme the EC extended the support further to other thematic areas including global societal challenges especially in the field of transport and security. The extent of the involvement of the member countries varies extensively. The countries above average participating in the AI projects are Germany, Italy, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Slovenia. The Czech Republic falls in the group of less participating countries. The Czech Republic also exhibits a smaller increase of the participation between RP7 and H2020. Universities involved in approximately two thirds of AI project have dominated in the Czech participation in the FP7. In the H2020 program their share in the AI project decreased by approximately 10 percent points. On the other side, their share of financial support was conserved. The most participating universities were the Czech Technical University Prague (24 projects, and 30% share of the EC contribution for the Czech AI projects) and the Brno University of Technology (14 projects, and 12,4% financial share). In the business enterprise sector Honeywell International s. r. o. attained the highest participation. The Czech subjects collaborate most frequently with German, British, Italian and French research teams.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the dynamically evolving research fields on the global scale. The world production of publication associated with the AI field increased by a third over the four-year period 2013–2017. Even less research intensive countries as Iran, Turkey, India and Indonesia appear to increase the share of the AI topics in their publication output. In the Czech Republic the fraction of publications in the AI field increased by approximately 10 % over this period. It makes the lowest increase within the EU/EEA. The field normalized citation index of the Czech publications in the year 2016 was above the world average but it is deeply below the top countries USA, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Singapore, and Norway. The extent of international cooperation in AI is generally below the world average. The Czech Republic falls into the group of less cooperating countries. The countries exhibiting the highest growth in AI research are underrepresented in the Czech cooperation portfolio. The fraction of Czech publications in AI coauthored by foreign authors is lower than the national average. It indicates a lower international collaboration in comparison with other research fields. CR falls also in the group of countries less engaged in the international cooperation. The Czech international collaboration misses the countries exhibiting the most vigorous R&D in AI. The international collaboration adds to the quality of the research. The Czech publications originating from the international collaboration are cited above the country average for the AI field. It is even more significant in the collaboration with researchers from the top countries in the AI R&D. The patent activity in the AI field has grown significantly in recent years. There is a marked increase of patent applications having inventors/applicants from more than one country. It indicates that the applied R&D in AI has a more international character in comparison with other technology fields. A high intensity of collaboration in the authorship of patent applications is within language and geographically neighbouring countries and with countries having a highly internationalized R&D system. Multinational corporations involved in international innovation networks contribute also to the international cooperation. ICT corporations like IBM, Google, or Microsoft which often employ foreign researchers have a dominant role in international cooperation. The R&D of the Czech enterprises is relatively closed to the international cooperation. Domestic enterprises in AI use foreign employees in a small extent. The domestic enterprises even do not tap into the pool of intellectual property authored by the Czech researchers. The majority of patents with participation of Czech inventors is registered by foreign corporations.

The article provides an overview of the opinions and attitudes of a selected group of experts on the introduction of electronic healthcare in the Czech healthcare system. The research used the DELPHI method, the first wave of which took place in the first quarter of this year and the second wave is planned for the second half of this year. A total of forty respondents assessed the relevance of the individual steps of electronization and digitization, as well as the obstacles that need to be overcome in the implementation of the National eHealth Strategy. Respondents consider electronic information on health promotion and prevention programs (87%) and support for chronic patients (77%) to be the most appropriate or important, while the least supported is the publication of service level assessments of providers (27%) and on-line access to documentation of the authorizing person (30%), less support is also given to the optimization of waiting times with the help of digitization (35%) and electronic consultation with a doctor (35%). Respondents see the biggest obstacles to eHealth implementation in the resistance of providers (up to 70% for some measures) and in unsatisfactory or missing legislation (up to 85% for some steps). The survey was carried out as part of the project Structural Reform Support Service (SRSS) of the European Commission at the Ministry of Health and under coordination of National eHealth Centre (NeHC).

We have examined the recent development of the knowledge base in the fields of cognitive computing and robotics. The proxies for the evaluation of the R&D in these fields are the publication activity and the patents production spanning the years 1998 to 2016. A comparison with selected EU countries, USA, China, Japan and South Korea is presented. The publication activities grow much faster than the overall volume of world publications. In the number of publications per year in the field of cognitive computing China surpassed in 2004 USA and trails the EU-28 since. The robotics seems less in the focus of China’s R&D as the Chinese publications output just reached the USA level in the last two years of the examined interval. A common feature of the Asian countries is a significantly below the world average citation impact of the publications in both fields. The number of patent applications in cognitive computing and robotics has been growing in recent years. The patent activity in the China is growing very fast, the EU and USA are gradually losing their position and China dominated in the patent activity in cognitive computing and robotics in 2015. The Czech Republic exhibits a significantly above the EU average dynamics of the publication activity in both R&D fields. Though the robotics publications occupy a smaller fraction of the total national publications output, their citation impact at the roughly 150 percent level of the world average is on par with the publication output of EU-15 countries. The number of patent applications in cognitive computing and robotics with Czech invertors has been growing fast and their share in the total number of patent applications with Czech inventors is above the EU average. However, these applications are very often owned by foreign companies, in particular from the USA. Our study indicates that the Czech Republic has, in the world context, a robust and dynamic R&D capable to address the challenges associated with the implementation of Industry 4.0 and advanced information processing.

The purpose of the article is to examine the ways in which regional geography textbooks are used in elementary education, using north-west Bohemia as a case study. The authors analysed 18 textbooks...

The topic of this contribution is a comparison of the research & development related to the “key enabling technologies” (KETs) in the Czech Republic and the European Union as a whole with selected non-European economies. A further aim of this article is an appraisal of the effect of the European strategies and action programmes which have been implemented since the turn of the decade and which target the lagging of EU in innovations in critical technologies. We use the publication and the patent activities as a proxy to assess the intensity of the KETs oriented R&D. The Asian countries Japan, South Korea and the fast growing China have the highest fraction of KETs oriented publications and patents in their national output. The Chinese State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) recorded in 2015 a half of the world patent applications related to KETs. Measured by their share of publications, the Asian countries exhibit a significantly more intensive R&D in the majority of KETs. Whereas the patent activity of the Asian countries grows the number of patent applications in the EU stagnates in the recent years and EU visibly lags behind the Asian competitors. The EU R&D policies and strategies aimed at the promotion of KET and the financial support does not seem exhibiting visible effects. In the Czech republic KETs became an organic component of the National Research and Innovation Strategy for the intelligent specialisation (National RIS3 strategy) and a number of targeted public financing programmes support KETs related projects. The situation in the Czech Republic has been evolving in a positive way between 2008 and 2016. Both the number of publications and patent applications related to KETs has been increasing and the growth dynamics approaches the Asian countries. The number of publications per research worker in the Czech Republic is on par with the EU. Due to a stronger growth in recent years of the number of patent applications in comparison to EU the Czech republic reached the EU average per researcher and the fraction of the KETs related applications surpasses the EU average and even some developed countries.

The article is devoted to an analysis of the public support and results of the security oriented R&D in Czechia in the years 2011–2015. The aim is to provide a knowledge base for active participation of users of results and existing and potential beneficiaries of public support in the development of the system and programs of the security research after 2017. The introductory part of the text describes the national environment of the security R&D, and the methodology of the data analysis of projects and programs and the bibliometric analyses of results of the security research. The analysis is focused in particular upon the distribution of the public funding, and the results obtained in R&D programs financed by the Ministry of the interior (MoI). The existing overlaps between R&D activities sponsored by MoI and by other governmental bodies are also examined.

The aim of the paper is to assess the Czech participation in international cooperation in the security research and to identify obstacles which prevent a higher involvement of research teams from the Czech Republic in this cooperation. The methodological approach to the analysis and the used data sources are briefly described in the first part of the paper. In the next part we present the results of the analysis of the participation of entities from the Czech Republic in projects dealing with security issues, which were supported by the 7th Framework Program for Research and Technological Development and Horizon 2020, and by some other programs supporting the international cooperation in R&D. The obtained information is supplemented by results of the questionnaire survey between research organizations active in security research and by the findings of the expert workshop.

The Czech enterprise sector shows in a long term a significantly lower patent activity in comparison with both the most innovation-intensive EU economies, and the EU-15 average. The topic of this contribution is a comparison of the quality and the volume of the industrial property rights created in the Czech enterprises with a selected EU-15 countries classified as innovation leaders, strong and moderate innovators. Two new EU members, namely Poland and Hungary, were also included in the comparisons. The analysis shows that the number of the international patent applications registered by enterprises with the EPO and under the PCT treaty is by more than one order lower in comparison with both the innovation-intensive countries like Denmark, Germany, or Netherlands and the countries whose innovation performance is comparable to the Czech Republic. The Czech enterprises unlike their counterparts in the innovation-intensive countries register the priority applications with the home country patent office and only a small fraction is subsequently registered with EPO and under the PCT. Also the size of the patent families and subsequent citations of the Czech patents by other patent applications lags behind the innovation-intensive countries. The low patenting activity of the Czech enterprises correlates with a low expenditure on R&D. The Czech enterprises are somehow limited in the creation of knowledge giving rise to internationally competitive products which would demand international industrial property claims. The analysis also indicates that patent applications co-authored by Czech inventors are extensively owned by foreign corporations. The Czech enterprises produce a larger fraction of patents in collaboration with research organizations than foreign ones. It indicates that enterprises are interested in tapping in the research capacity of the universities and governmental R&D establishment. The detail analysis of the data in the national R&D Information System indicates that the number of patents created by enterprises supported by applied R&D programs is currently rather low. Beside the stimulation of the Czech enterprises to the in-house R&D spending it is necessary to support long-term strategic alliances of enterprises with research organizations. It will create a fertile environment for the development of radical innovations which are a key factor for the increase of international competitiveness and market shares.

The article addresses denominations of specific regions, Local Action Groups (LAGs), in Czechia, and contributes to the academic debate regarding: relationships between formation of regions, their symbolic shape and regional identity; formation of regions by means of regional development. A set of 179 LAG names registered in the database of the National Network of Local Action Groups in the Czech Republic as of March 2014 are examined. LAG names are first analyzed in terms of the phenomena that constitute their essence, and subsequently their territorial differentiation is discussed. The analysis affirms the importance of territorial approach towards regional denomination. It has equally been affirmed that region naming strategies are spatially fragmented. Nevertheless, the territorial differentiation of names of LAG regions mirrors the elementary spatial patterns traditionally reproduced in the Czech context, namely west-east gradient of development level, distinctions between historical lands and differences between inland and borderland resettled after WWII.

An effective knowledge transfer between research institutions and industry is a significant bottleneck in the national innovation system. CR adopted in recent years a series of systemic measures aimed to stimulate the orientation of the R&D organizations towards the generation of knowledge directly applicable in the innovation process and more generally to improve the collaboration of the R&D establishment with the industry. In the majority of programs supporting the applied research patents and industrial designs and utility models are among the anticipated results. The Methodology of the evaluation of R&D organizations implemented in the second half of the last decade brought financial bonuses for the creation of the results in the category of industrial property. Despite of this stimulus CR lags behind the technologically advanced EU countries in the patent activities. The topic of this article is a comparison of the protection of the industrial property rights in the Czech higher education institutions and governmental R&D institutions with selected EU countries. We make use of a couple of quantitative indicators to assess the quality and the technological and the commercial potential of the produced industrial property. Despite a dynamic growth of the patent applications in the CR the number of patent applications relative to the country size is far below the EU-15 average. The Czech research organizations contribute to a higher extent to the number of patent applications then do the analogous institutions in EU-15 countries where the majority of patent applications come from the industrial sphere. The Czech research organizations mainly limit the patent rights to the Czech Republic whereas in the EU-15 countries the opposite is preponderant and only a small fraction of patent applications remains limited to the national environment. Thus the majority of the Czech patents created by research organizations cannot be commercialized on the international scene nor can contribute to the international competitiveness of the Czech industry. The patent applications submitted by the Czech research organizations are significantly less cited. This indicates that the protected intellectual property is of lesser importance. The Methodology of the evaluation of research organizations which was implemented in the second half of the last decade has visibly stimulated the patent activities of the research organizations but simultaneously an absence of any assessment of a future commercialization promoted a production of intellectual property of a limited commercial usability.

From the Middle Ages until the twentieth century, water meadows in Europe were primarily irrigated to improve their productivity and to lengthen the growing season. They were water management systems designed to collect and use water and to discharge it: water had to be kept moving. This chapter presents a general overview and a history of research on European water meadows. It also examines examples from the sandy landscapes of northwestern Europe, from Slovakia, and Norway. Three main types of water meadows are distinguished: simple dam systems, more elaborate catchworks, and highly developed bedworks. Of these, bedworks were technically and organizationally the most complex; they were also the most costly in construction and maintenance. Most water meadows were abandoned in the twentieth century; in many places, however, their traces can still be recognized in the landscape. They are both an interesting part of European agrarian and landscape heritage and a carrier of regional identity. In recent years, a number of water meadows have been restored, for ecological, water management, tourism, and heritage purposes.

The Czech Republic is at the forefront of the EU in the contribution of the manufacturing to the total gross value added. The Czech industry contributes significantly to the positive balance of trade of the country. The overall international competitiveness of the Czech Republic will depend upon the innovation performance of the manufacturing sector and its competitiveness on the foreign markets. A necessary condition for extending the share on the foreign markets is the effective harnessing of the national R&D capacity and a strong qualified local workforce. This contribution uses a bibliometric and a patent analysis for the assessment of the R&D carried out by the Czech higher education institutions (HEIs) oriented towards the engineering fields, and selected more general universities, and compares them with similar HEIs in a selected group of developed countries. The analysis indicates that the Czech publication activity in the field of engineering grows. The Czech publications in engineering are cited below the world average which indicates that their impact (and to some extent the quality of the underlying R&D) lags behind the world. The patent activity of the Czech HEIs is on the international scale rather weak. The patenting activity of the Czech HEIs strongly grows since the middle of the last decade. This may by a side effect of the new evaluation methodology which takes into account also the patents. The number of patents registered with the Czech Industrial Property Office increases but on the other hand the international patenting activities tend to stagnate. This gives rise to questions about the real value of the produced patents from the point of their importance for the export competitiveness of the Czech industry.

This article aims to examine the character of the international relationships of the Czech Republic in R&D in the Key Enabling Technologies (KETs), and in the protection of international industrial property rights. The analysis of the publication activities indicates an increase of the internationalization of the Czech R&D in nanotechnology and to a lesser extent in advanced manufacturing technologies both in an absolute volume and relatively to the overall internalization of the whole Czech R&D system. The R&D related to KETs uses the foreign expertise less than is the overall extent of the R&D international collaboration of the Czech Republic. The traditional Czech R&D partners USA, UK, and Germany dominate in the KETs oriented collaborations. The collaboration in photonics and micro- and nanoelectronic with Japan, in nanotechnology with Malaysia and in advanced materials with Singapore is significantly higher than the overall collaboration with these countries. On the other side it is rather disquieting, that countries with advanced R&D like Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden are underrepresented in the KETs oriented Czech collaborative research. The patent analysis indicates that almost a half of the inventions in which the Czech researchers participated, is co-owned by foreign subjects. This probably relates to a significant number of global corporations or subsidiaries with R&D operating in the Czech Republic. In micro- and nanolelectronics and to a significant extent in photonics more than half of patent applications are co-owned by foreign entities. Most of the patent applications originating from Czech inventors are owned by US subjects. On the other hand the fraction of patent applications which have foreign inventors and are co-owned by Czech subjects is significantly lower in comparison with developed countries.

„Klíčové umožňující technologie“ (Key Enabling Technologies, KETs) představující technologie náročné na znalosti a spojené s intenzivním VaV, rychlými inovačními cykly, vysokými kapitálovými náklady a vysoce kvalifikovanými pracovními místy, jsou zdrojem inovací v celé řadě technologických oblastí. KETs proto stojí v popředí zájmu tvůrců politiky výzkumu, vývoje a inovací a jsou zapracovány do řady strategicko-koncepčních dokumentů zaměřených na oblast VaVaI. V ČR jsou KETs zapracovány do Strategie pro inteligentní specializaci (RIS3) a také některé nově připravené programy na podporu VaVaI svými cíli a zaměřením zohledňují tyto technologické oblasti. Jak však vyplývá z provedené analýzy, ČR ve VaV zatím ve většině KETs zaostává nejen za předními technologicky vyspělými zeměmi, jako jsou USA či Korejská republika, ale i za průměrem zemí EU-28. Uspokojivou pozici má ČR pouze v případě nanotechnologií, kde patentová i publikační aktivita předstihuje většinu členských států EU. Naopak největší „zaostávání“ je patrné v případě mikro- a nanoelektroniky. Také podíl produktů využívajících KETs v celkovém vývozu je v ČR poněkud nižší, než je tomu v případě technologicky vyspělých zemí zařazených do této srovnávací studie. Vzhledem k tomu, že KETs jsou zapracovány do národní RIS3 strategie a do připravovaných operačních programů i některých programů připravených na národní úrovni, lze očekávat, že kvalita VaV se v těchto významných technologických oblastech bude v ČR postupně zvyšovat a nové poznatky budou využívány efektivněji v podnikových inovacích.

Transformations in the spatial organization of elementary education in the Czech Republic over the last 50 years are examined in this article, via case studies of two rural regions (Turnov district and Zábřeh district). The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of general development trends in elementary schools in territorial detail. Changes in the spatial distribution of schools, the size of school catchment areas, and the main education-related commuter flows are analyzed and visualized in cartographic form, in the context of educational policy and management.

Since 1980s, we can observe a changing paradigm within the approaches towards regions which understand and deconstruct the “region” as a social process. Instead of understanding the region as an object or a category, this change transforms the region into a subject of interest for scholars. The study of regions is from now on considered a research topic which requires a holistic understanding of geography, broad interdisciplinary approaches as well as local and historical sensitivity. The paper is using a conceptual understanding of a region based on the combination of territorial, symbolic and institutional configurations. Regional identity that permeates through all of these layers is viewed as one of the most important elements of the very existence of the region and its recognition in the regional system. This paper contributes to the discussion on the importance of regional identity in regional development. The case study of the Bohemian Paradise region proves the significant influence of landscape features on the process of regional identity reproduction.

Energy research is one of the fields of the National Priorities of Oriented Research, Experimental Development and Innovations. The Czech Republic is facing rather ambitious targets in the utilization of renewable energy resources, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and improvement of the overall energetic efficiency of the national economy. The fulfilling of these goals will require an intensive R&D in a broad spectrum of disciplines and technology fields. The present article evaluates the extent and the structure of the support of the energy research in the Czech Republic and brings comparisons with foreign countries both in expenditure and results in various research fields. The Czech Republic spends relatively more public resources in the nuclear technology research. It is accompanied by higher publication activities. It is in a stark contrast with significantly lower patenting activities in this field, except of the branch of non-fossil fuel production, in comparison with both the World and EU-27 countries.

International collaboration is an important factor stimulating the advancement of national research and development. In this paper we use bibliometric analysis for the evaluation of the extent and the intensity of collaboration of EU countries with partners beyond the EU group. The main partner of the EU is the USA whose authors participate on nearly one tenth of European scientific publications. Within the 6th and 7th Framework Programme, measured by the number of R&D teams, Russia dominates. Former socialist countries exhibit a broader orientation towards Russia and other countries of the former USSR than the EU-15 countries. The number of US R&D teams involved in collaboration with Czech entities is only about one third of the Russian ones.

Health literacy survey was carried out at the end of 2014 in the context of preparation of implementation strategy of the Program Health 2020 in the Czech Republic. The survey was conducted by the National Institute of Public Health with financial support from the Ministry of Health and the Czech WHO office. Sociological survey replicated comparative research conducted in eight EU countries in the first half of this decade. Representative survey in 1037 respondents in the age over 16 years, selected in all regions of the country. The identical methodology as used in the original study was utilized. Health literacy was measured in the areas of health care, disease prevention and health promotion.We found that 59,4 % of respondents showed limited general health literacy; health literacy in health care is proved to be 49.5 % of the population, in the area of disease prevention it was 54.1 % respondents and in health promotion it was even even 64.3 % of respondents. Compared to the other countries surveyed, Czech Republic occupies the eighth, penultimate place. Health literacy is correlated negatively with age and positively with education. We found a strong social gradient of health literacy which rises with social status. Health literacy quite significantly influences the health status and health behaviors.Key words: health literacy, health behaviour, health promotion, social determinants of health.

Wooded grasslands have always played an important role in rural life with changing issues: They are of high importance for questions of biodiversity, soil, and water resources and in preserving agricultural heritage, but their maintenance is labor intensive. Abandoned wooded grasslands undergo succession, and food production alone does not support their survival. They require special attention and at the beginning a well-established subsidy system can help to contribute to their survival. Their sustainable use in the present-day landscapes can only be conceivable in complexity where food production, reintroduction of their cultural values, biodiversity and landscape protection, and ecotourism are playing an important role. This chapter gives an overview on the recent situation of wooded grasslands and their historical development, based on the work done by the Institute for Research on European Agricultural Landscapes (www.​eucalandnetwork.​eu). National pictures, definitions, history (including local names), threats, potentials, cultural values, spatial distributions, subtypes, and available databases have been collected, described, and analyzed. The main results of this survey are as follows: (1) Wooded grasslands are known to the public but mainly to local communities where they occur; (2) Many subtypes of wooded grasslands exist in various European countries; (3) Wooded grasslands underwent tremendous changes during the past centuries and lost their importance for various reasons; (4) There are many local and regional projects focusing on wooded grasslands, often as “lighthouse” projects to valorise cultural achievements.

International collaboration is an important factor stimulating the advancement of national research and development. In this paper we use bibliometric analysis for the evaluation of the extent and the intensity of collaboration of the EU countries with partners beyond the EU group. The main partner of EU is the USA whose authors participate on nearly one tenth of the European scientifi c publications. Within the 6th and 7th Framework Programme, measured by the number of R&D teams, Russia dominates. Former socialist countries exhibit a broader orientation towards Russia and other countries of the former USSR than the EU-15 countries. The number of American R&D teams involved in the collaboration with Czech subjects is about only one third of the Russian ones.

The aim of the article is to identify changes in the distance and time accessibility of elementary schools in Czechia, during the second half of the twentieth century, using geo-informational analytical methods. to the article focuses particularly on quality of life in disadvantaged, peripheral areas. The elementary school network has been changing, in accordance with general changes in the geographical organization of society and school catchment areas have been expanding due to improved transportation possibilities. The second part of the article addresses the impact of changes in elementary school accessibility on life in rural peripheral regions, utilizing in-depth interviews with inhabitants from six case study localities, where local schools were closed, during the observed period. The article introduces a classification of forms of disadvantage, affecting regions and localities and resulting from spatial inequalities in the distribution of elementary schools.

The objective of this article is the regional differentiation of rural space in Czechia, which is defined as the territory of rural municipalities of up to 3,000 inhabitants. The ultimate determination of particular types of rural space is realized at the level of authorized municipal authorities. Current socioeconomic characteristics of rural municipalities in Czechia are compiled and used for analysis. These characteristics were selected on the basis of their potential to represent important socioeconomic phenomena, processes and factors that are typical for the Czech countryside and that influence the development of rural municipalities. Four statistically significant components are identified through the statistical analysis of the indicated data at the level of authorized municipal authorities, namely:size,growth,human potentialandhousing. Different combinations of these components enable us to define eight main types of rural space, in terms of potential for development. This provides evidence to confirm our affirmation that rural space in Czechia is not homogenous. The results of the statistical analyses conducted also show that the basic differentiation of the Czech countryside is determined by the geographical location of particular areas.

Settlement and municipality are fundamental terms in geography of settlements, which are often identified or interchanged. Their meaning and relationship are analysed in the article with using different sources. A settlement is an inseparable part of cultural landscape and a landscape unit with certain physiognomy in particular. A municipality is an abstract societal unit. Settlement organization within the system of settlements is the image and product of human activity in certain landscape, whereas character and number of municipalities are the image and product of spatial organization of society.

Equality in access to education is a basic right of every citizen of the Czech Republic. However, this principle exhibits not only a social aspect but also a spatial, geographical dimension. The absence or closure of elementary school can be a spatial expression of unequal access to elementary education and a part of the process of peripherization of certain area. The consequences of such development are often most intensive in less densely populated rural areas. Thus in the article the changes in spatial distribution of elementary schools in Czechia between 1961 and 2004 are analyzed with special focus on rural areas. These changes are not only characterized but their possible outcomes and impacts on the functioning on local communities in rural space are being discussed as well.

The paper shows how to choose the most convenient type of farm by means of methods for multi criteria evaluation of alternatives. Because of multifunctional character of agriculture, type of farm must be valuated from different views, according to different criteria. The multi criteria decision making among various types of farm is illustrated by a model farm in a mountainous area. The task has been solved from an economic and an ecologic view. A different significance of the chosen criteria reflected these two different approaches to the choice of the most convenient type of farm.

The optimum conditions were found for the determination of 2-mercaptobenzthiazole (MBT) by coulometric titration with the generated iodine using biamperometric indication of the titration end point. Use is made of the oxidation to the disulphide (n = 1) and to benzothiazole-2-sulphinate (n = 4) in the regions pH 4.5-8.5 and 10-12, respectively. Eight repeated titrations to the disulphide gave the relative standard deviations 0.27% and 1.23% in the determination of 1 675 and 33.5 μg MBT, respectively, seven repeated titrations of 419 μg MBT to benzothiazole-2-sulphinate afforded results with the relative standard deviation 0.34%.