The 68th Plenary Meeting of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) took place in the Baroque Chateau in the town of Liblice in Central Bohemia. The main discussion topics included the preparation of the update of ESFRI Roadmap 2021, or the operational plan for the coming years.

Optical fiber: originally an underestimated invention which later completely changed the world of telecommunications technologies. In former Czechoslovakia, its research started in 1979 in laboratories of the Academy of Sciences. Today, the Institute of Photonics and electronics of the CAS is among the top laboratories capable of preparing special optical fibers for high-power fiber lasers. This is one of the reasons why scientists will meet this April in Prague at the SPIE Optics + Optoelectronics symposium.

Even though the European Union’s climate policies are some of the most aggressive around the globe, EASAC’s latest report finds they are unlikely to deliver emission reductions quickly enough to limit climate warming and meet Paris Agreement targets.

A research by an international team with participation of a scientist from the Institute of Experimental Medicine of the CAS, dealing with restoration of stem cells in “growth zones” of bones, has been published in the prestigious Nature journal. In the future, this discovery might help with reducing growth disorders in children or with improvements in medicinal procedures in general.

On Thursday, March 14, the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) issued a statement which welcomes the EU’s proposed 9^th framework programme for research and innovation Horizon Europe. The CAS praised the concepts aiming at support of European research projects, reduction of bureaucratic burden, as well as the vision of open science, inclusiveness, and gender balance; on the other hand, it also stressed the importance of a higher-than-proposed increase of the budget and warned against reduction of the share of financial means going into research infrastructure.

At the invitation of the Czech Academy of Sciences, American astronaut Andrew Feustel and his wife Indira Feustel are going to visit the Czech Republic. From April 4 to April 15, 2019, Feustel will participate in several events organised especially for students and general public.

More than year-long expert cooperation between the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Finance of the Czech Republic, significantly strengthened by the signing of Memorandum of Understanding at the end of 2018, is starting to bear fruit. At a mutual workshop in the last week of February, a team from the Institute of Computer Science of the CAS presented first results of data analysis based on selected accounting ratios provided by the Ministry.

On Monday, March 4 in Prague, representatives of thirteen top research institutions from eleven countries of the EU are launching operation of a new association with an ambitious goal: to remove industry’s reliance on fossil fuels. The scientists will focus on research and implementation of catalytic technologies.

The internationally respected Journal of the American Chemical Society has published a significant discovery by fifteen Czech scientists who have been studying enzymes or, more specifically, the mechanisms which can significantly improve their efficiency. Experts from the Loschmidt Laboratories at the Masaryk University together with scientists from J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry of the CAS have been working on this research for more than six years. They expect their results will find a good use in biotechnological or pharmaceutical industry.

Taťána Petrasová, a Czech art historian, has been awarded a prestigious decoration for her achievements in the fields of education, science, and culture – the Order of Academic Palms. She received this honour during a ceremony at the French Embassy in Prague.