Alena Kašpárková

• PhD
• Head of Writing Support Centre at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava

Using waste as an alternative energy source may partially replace fossil fuels. In this paper, energy recovery from waste blends (sewage sludge (SS), polyethylene (LDPE) and polypropylene (PP), paper rejects (PR), and waste tyres) was tested through laboratory-scale co-pyrolysis. For each copyrolysis test, 7 l of waste blend in different ratios wer...

The title of this editorial is adapted froma lineinthebook review published in this issue of the Journal of Academic Writing (JoAW). The review iswritten by Livingstone,whoargues for the importance of texts that push,“those of us in academia, who have become too fixed in our ways, who are afraid of thinking outside-the-box.”This line reflects a cor...

Letter from the Guest-editors

Writing Beyond the University: Preparing Lifelong Learners for Lifewide Writing extends the burgeoning scholarly conversation regarding the role of writing in lifelong and lifewide learning. The collection introduces higher education faculty, staff, and administrators to research on how all members of a campus community can prepare learners to be e...

V tomto Příkladu dobré praxe představujeme výsledky společného projektu dvou českých pracovišť v oblasti podpory vědecké komunikace, akademického psaní a publikační praxe v angličtině. V textu stručně popisuje10 kurzů Publikační praxe, včetně principů, na kterých kurzy stojí. Kurzy se staly páteří PhD Akademie na VŠB-TUO a zapojila se do nich i Úst...

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...

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 cont...

Supporting Academic Writing and Publication Practice: PhD Students in Engineering and their Supervisors This poster documents the bottom-up efforts leading to the establishment of an academic writing support program for doctoral students at an engineering university in the Czech Republic (CR). To defend their dissertation, by law Czech doctoral stu...

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 M...

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...

The article presents findings derived from the benchmarking comparison of four mining companies extracting hard coal in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin located on the boarder of the Czech Republic and Poland: OKD a.s. operating in the Czech Republic and three Polish entities Jastrzębska Spółka Węglowa S. A. (JSW), Katowicki Holding Węglowy S. A., and...

For Czech university students, writing in foreign languages, especially in English, is becoming more and more essential. However, the process of learning how to write in different languages seems to be rather difficult for the students as this particular area is often neglected, underestimated or taken for granted. At the workshop, participants wil...

Gabion walls bring convenient way to realize the retaining walls with high level of global stability and aesthetic value. The design methods are based on the exerted approaches for gravity walls without reflection that gabion blocks have some special characteristics that need to be take into account. The major difference is that the blocks are not...

This article aims to explain and demonstrate the origin and development of a subsidence basin caused by coal mining as well as to point out important aspects of this phenomenon in engineering geology. Engineering geology needs to deal with a number of issues related to the origin and development of subsidence basins in areas affected by deep coal m...

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...

The paper deals with verification of floatability of a classical collector Montanol 551 and pyrolytic oils formed through pyrolysis of primary agricultural residues, such as walnut shells, peach stones, green beans, poppy heads, peanut shells, onion peel, corn leaves and apple tree leaves, to be used in the flotation of black coal. The results impl...