Jana Pokorná

Capsaicin Effects on Human Facial and Neck Temperature

Capsaicin is an alkyl-amide that can be found in chilli peppers as its main irritant component with some analgesic properties. It has also many other properties, so it may help to control peripheral nerve pain as well as can be helpful during chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Capsaicin, as an irritant compound, affects body temperature. This study was aimed to specify what is its effect to facial and neck temperature. To obtain temperature distribution images the Workswell WIC 640 infrared camera was used in order to measure and visualize temperature. Facial and neck temperatures were measured before and after ingestion of about teaspoonful of Jalapeno chilli pepper extract of 6.000–8.000 SHU. Finally, surface body temperature was affected by ingestion of chilli pepper extract. Using the appropriate amount of capsaicin can be helpful in medicine but the individual variability of physiological reactions to this irritant substance must be considered.

The Expansion of Activity-Based Costing/Management in the Czech Republic

This paper aims to investigate the expansion of an advanced management tool - Activity-based costing/management (ABC/M) among Czech companies and to map the level of its utilization. The empirical survey was carried out among 548 Czech medium-sized and large companies from various economic sectors. The expansion of ABC/M has grown to 22% in 2013 which is comparable to neighbouring countries, but companies still use a relatively simple ABC/M model. They use only a limited extent of ABC/M and do not exploit all its possibilities.

Identifying Corporate Performance Factors Based on FeatureSelection in Statistical Pattern Recognition: METHODS,APPLICATION, INTERPRETATION

This publication summarizes and extends methodology of feature selection (FS) and pattern recognition in search for competitiveness factors and methodology of corporate financial performance (CFP) measurement. Several methods were evaluated and Dependency-Aware Feature Ranking combined with non-linear regression model were applied. Also, this publication suggests and verifies methodology of interpretation results of the FS methods. For start was employed multidimensional linear regression, succeeded by clustering companies according to the factors identified by FS into homogenous groups, dividing them into quartiles based on their CFP and identifying similar values of the factors. This way was captured the non-linearity in the data.