Plastic particles smaller than 5 mm, i.e., microplastics, have been detected in a number of environments. The number of studies on microplastics in marine environments, fresh water, wastewater, the atmosphere, and the human body are increasing along with a rise in the amounts of plastic materials introduced into the environment every year, all contributing to a range of health and environmental issues. Although the use of primary microplastics has been gradually reduced by recent legislation in many countries, new knowledge and data on these problems are needed to understand the overall lifecycle of secondary microplastics in particular. The aim of this review is to provide unified information on the pathways of microplastics into the environment, their degradation, and related legislation, with a special focus on the methods of their sampling, determination, and instrumental analysis. To deal with the health and environmental issues associated with the abundance of microplastics in the environment, researchers should focus on agreeing on a uniform methodology to determine the gravity of the problem through obtaining comparable data, thus leading to new and stricter legislation enforcing more sustainable plastic production and recycling, and hopefully contributing to reversing the trend of high amounts of microplastics worldwide.

Application of pyrolysis residue from waste materials in black coal flotation: The paper deals with the verification of the floatability of pyrolytic oils, which were obtained through the pyrolysis of waste, namely mixed plastics, tyres and waste rubber in combination with black coal from Lazy Mine, and classical collector Montanol 551 in black coal flotation. Black coal from ČSA OKD, a.s. coal preparation plant was used for flotation tests. The results imply that it is possible to produce collectors from waste materials which may be applied in the flotation of black coal. Next, the paper focused on the identification of a suitable combination of pyrolytic oils and Montanol 551 in order to reach ash content in the concentrate below 10%.

Doctoral studies in the Czech Republic are highly individualized with little coursework outside the supervisor/supervisee dyad, and the PhD students are mandated to publish prior to the dissertation defense. This mandate is troublesome because writing development has been on the fringes of the Czech education culture. In addition, the publications often must be in English, and many doctoral students struggle with English. In this exploratory study, we examined how this mandate translates into practice, how doctoral students learn to meet the requirements and how university administrators/supervisors perceive doctoral writing development. To answer our questions, we interviewed 7 university administrators/dissertation supervisors and 7 doctoral students from various backgrounds and universities, looking for diverse views on the issue. Our analysis confirmed the formal status of supervisors as the key doctoral writing literacy brokers. While the supervisors acknowledged their role, they also tended to view doctoral writing as a matter of self-study and funding, thus indirectly emphasising the publication outcomes. In contrast, doctoral students called for structured support of their writing processes. We propose a systemic approach to introduce writing pedagogies into the Czech discourse. With this study we hope to contribute to research on doctoral writing for publication of EAL (English as an Additional Language) students in Central Europe.

The paper deals with the issue of nitrates in groundwater, to where they predominantly pass due to the application of nitrogen fertilizers in agricultural areas. Excess concentrations of nitrates in drinking water are undesirable, and may even cause a life - -threatening condition called methemoglobinemia. The permissible concentrations of nitrates in drinking water are determined by legislation and the upper limit is 50 mg/l. Approximately 5% of the Czech population draw water from individual sources. In this study we identified and analysed selected samples from wells located in the Moravian-Silesian Region and in the Olomouc Region. The data and test results in this paper show that the nitrate concentration limit of 50 mg/l was exceeded in a half of the analysed groundwater samples. In some cases, the limit was exceeded in the order of tens of mg/l.

Due to the inherent hydrophobic nature of coal, flotation is very effective in upgrading coal fines of particle size below 0.5 mm. To verify the applicability of flotation on black coal slurry samples from the Upper Silesian Basin, black coal slurries from four mines were selected, namely CSM Mine and CSA Mine in the Czech Republic, and Jankowice Mine and Kleofas Mine in Poland. The article further aims to describe the transfer of different coal macerals into the flotation concentrates and the flotation tailings. For this purpose, Flotalex and Montanol flotation collectors were used. These collectors are generally applied in coal preparation plants both in the Czech Republic and Poland. The flotation and petrological results imply that the floatability of the given coal slurry samples is approximately equal when applying Flotalex or Montanol. It is apparent from the petrological analysis results that 82.3% (applying Flotalex) and 88.8% (applying Montanol) of vitrinite maceral group pass into the flotation concentrate in three minutes.