News

The Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS was visited on 25 September 2020 by the President of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) Prof. RNDr. Eva Zazimalova, CSc. The main focus was on the new AMS laboratory.

On behalf of a four-member Czech team from the NPI of the CAS and from the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), our colleague Petr Chudoba, Ph.D. (NPI) handed over the manipulator for PSD detector, in-kind contribution of the Czech project FAIR-CZ for the FAIR infrastructure.

At the Svákov Observatory near Soběslav, the operation of the Talíř 01 radio telescope has been put into operation on a magic date and time 2020-09-09 at 19:19 symbolically with the launch of the rocket. It is an astronomical instrument with the largest reflecting surface in the South Bohemian Region.

On Wednesday, September 16, 2020, a truck with the first eleven boxes full of components of the Milea AMS accelerator for the RAMSES project arrived at the NPI of the CAS area in Řež. The remaining nine boxes then arrived in another truck a day later.

The Cosmos Discovery exhibition in Pavilion E at the Exhibition Grounds in Prague's Holešovice has been extended until October 31st, 2020. Now, it also includes the SPACEDOS dosimeter, developed by the Department of Radiation Dosimetry (DRD) of NPI. It is designed to detect cosmic ray particles and estimate the radiation dose received on board satellites.

The jubilee 20th Conference of Czech and Slovak Physicists will take place on September 7-10, 2020 in Prague. It will be organized by the Czech Physical Society UCMP and the Slovak Physical Society together with the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics (FMP) of the Charles University in the FMP building in Troja Prague´s quarter. One-fifth of the conference papers will be presented by NPI staff, including a significant part of our foreign staff. The languages ​​of the conference will be English, Czech and Slovak.

The official opening of the ICHEP2020 conference will take place on Monday, August 3, 2020 from 3.30 pm (CERN time), followed by a public lecture by Prof. Barry Barish, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017. Both events can be watched on the Youtube web channel.

CREMLINplus is a Horizon 2020 EU project fostering European-Russian scientific and technical collaboration in the field of large research infrastructures and their mutual harmonization.

NPI Department of the Nuclear Reactions participates in the RADNEXT project proposal, coordinated by the CERN. RADNEXT acronyme is abbreviation of the RADiation facility Network for the EXploration of effects for indusTry and Research.

18th year of the Václav Votruba Prize for the best thesis in theoretical physics is announced by the Doppler Institute for Mathematical Physics and Applied Mathematics, co-founded by the Department of Theoretical Physics of the NPI.

Prague´s ICHEP 2020, 40th International Conference on High Energy Physics, will take place from July 28 to August 6, 2020. Due to the coronavirus crisis, conference will only take place online. ICHEP is the largest particle physics conference with expected 1200 participants from all the world.

On March 31, 2020, Dr. Jan Urbanec died. It was almost exactly four months before his 96th birthday, which he would celebrate on July 30. Until the last moment, despite serious eye disease, he was still in relatively good shape.

The cyclic electron accelerator Microtron MT25 can kill germs with ionizing radiation in a few minutes. The process is carried out without elevated temperature, which makes it possible to irradiate objects made of synthetic materials, which are often used in health care. The facility, located in the civil protection shelter under the Vítkov hill in Prague, is offered free of charge by the NPI of the CAS in times of emergency.

Researchers from the Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics (CIIRC), part of the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), and from the Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS developed a pipetting robotic station. The station, developed in the department of Prof. Václav Hlaváč at CIIRC CTU, was transported to the Central Laboratories Pavilion of Prague's Na Bulovce Hospital on Tuesday 31 March afternoon.

Despite the current difficult situation, NPI scientist Dr. Drahoš Vénos managed to supply a new strong source of radioactive ^83mKr gas, created in NPI, to Karlsruhe (Germany). This source is necessary for the third 60-day neutrino mass measurement in the KATRIN experiment, which started a few days ago at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

The Applied Nuclear Physics Conference (ANPC) has issued the second information announcement. ANPC 2020, prepared by the Nuclear Physics Division (NPD) of the European Physical Society (EPS) and organized by NPI as a main organizer, will be held on September 13–18, 2020 in Prague.

On Tuesday, December 3, a short conference with author presentations of seven works and collections of works by our researchers, entered this year's NPI Prize competition, took place in NPI meeting room.

November Open Day, as a year ago, was organized by the NPI of the CAS, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry (IIC) of the CAS, ÚJV Řež and Research Centre Řež. It was a part of the Science and Technology Week of the CAS.

The Neuron Science Foundation Endowment Award for Young and Promising Scientists in 2019 in Mathematics was awarded to Dr. Vladimir Lotoreichik from the Department of Theoretical Physics of the NPI for his research in spectral theory and shape optimization.

The prize of the President of the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic 2019 was awarded to a project in which scientists from the Laboratory of Tandetron (LT), part of the CANAM infrastructure, participated in 2016-2018. The main investigator of the project Using ion beams for the modification of graphene-based structures was doc. Ing. Zdeněk Sofer, Ph.D. (University of Chemistry and Technology Prague - Faculty of Chemical Technology). The co-investigator of the project was doc. RNDr. Anna Macková, Ph.D. (NPI), head of LT. 

In the sixth edition of the CAS competition Photogenic Science, three photos by two NPI employees were awarded. Michal Dobeš won first place in the Academic Council Awards category for the photo named Inflated frog and shared second place (alongside A. Braunová from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the CAS) in the Scientists and Their Hobby category for the photo named Fear. Shared third place in this category (alongside P. Palečková from the Institute of Photonics and Electronics of the CAS) was won by Roman Garba for his photo Like from another planet.

A traditional part of the CAS event Week of Science and Technology, which will run from November 11 to 17, 2019, will also be the Open Day in the Řež scientific area. This event will be organized jointly by NPI, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the CAS, ÚJV Řež and Research Center Řež, from November 15 to 16.

The Nuclear Physics Division (NPD) of the European Physical Society (EPS) introduces a new EPS-NPD divisional conference. The Applied Nuclear Physics Conference (ANP) has a particular emphasis on energy, health, space, security, environment, material science, preservation and study of cultural heritage.

On Thursday, September 19, 2019, the president of the Czech Academy of Sciences Eva Zažímalová has given titles of Doctor of Science (DSc.) to ten outstanding scientists at the Library of the CAS in Prague. Nina V. Shevchenko, Ph.D., an employee of the NPI, was among them.

Neutrinos are important elementary particles, e.g. the thermonuclear reaction in the Sun ‒ one of the conditions for living on our Earth ‒ could not proceed without neutrinos. Scientists already succeeded in clarifying various neutrino properties but, regardless many decades effort, they determined only crude limits for the neutrino mass. The international project KATRIN  (Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment) aims to increase the sensitivity of “the neutrino weight” by a factor of ten. The scientists in the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences at Řež, who belong among founders of this unique experiment, have developed for KATRIN precise sources of monoenergetic electrons.

Nature Physics magazine, the most important periodical publication in physics with 5-year impact factor 21.8, has published an article Probing dense baryon-rich matter with virtual photons, in its July issue. The article is a collective work of scientists from the HADES Collaboration, part of the FAIR project. Among the co-authors, there are also several NPI workers, working on the FAIR-CZ project: A. Kugler, P. Tlustý, O. Svoboda, V. Wagner, L. Chlad, P. Rodriguez-Ramos and Yu. G. Sobolev.

The research on age determination of inscriptions and drawings found in the Katerinska Cave in the northern part of the Moravian Karst has been carried out since 2017 in cooperation with the Cave Administration of the Czech Republic, Palacký University in Olomouc and the CRL laboratory jointly operated by the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Institute of Archeology of the CAS, Prague.

Construction work of NPI building No. 231 for the new AMS laboratory has started in the spring of this year within the framework of the RAMSES project (“Ultra-trace isotope research in social and environmental studies using accelerator mass spectrometry”, i.e. AMS), funded by European Structural and Investment Funds, Operational Programme Research, Development and Education.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš visited the premises of research institutes at Řež on Friday, April 5, 2019. At the Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS (NPI), he looked at a new laboratory of the cyclotron TR-24. He has been acquainted with TR-24 use in energy research and investigation of new prospective radiopharmaceuticals.

The European large research infrastructure FAIR GmbH and the Nuclear Physics Institute (NPI) of the Czech Academy of Sciences signed the Agreement about Aspirant Partnership of the Czech Republic in the FAIR.  The signing ceremony was held at the GSI and FAIR campus in Darmstadt. The NPI has been delegated by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to represent the Czech Republic in FAIR and to coordinate the work of the Czech scientific community contributing to FAIR.

On October 31, 2018, the Industrial Property Office of the Czech Republic granted a patent to application entitled A method to determine the type of ionising radiation and a circuit for carrying out this method. The invention was published on December 12, 2018 in patent publication Věstník No. 50/2018.

The Radiocarbon Laboratory started the analysis of base fabric of the so-called "Liberec Codex".

Memorial plaque of a prominent scientist, arctic explorer and writer Dr. František Běhounek was revealed on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of his birth on the building of DRD (department of radiation dosimetry) NPI at the Bulovka Hospital complex on Tuesday, November 13, 2018.

On the occasion of this year´s 50th anniversary of the magazine's first publication, editorial staff of the Journal of Radiodiagnostic and Nuclear Chemistry has asked selected contributors, including our staff member Jan Kučera, for a paper to the special issue. He wrote an article "Activation analysis in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic: more than 50 years of activities", which is already available online (see: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-018-6257-7 ).

Plaque commemorating Frantisek Behounek will be unveiled in Department of Radiation Dosimetry at 4 pm, Tuesday 13^th November 2018.

Once again, within the Week of Science and Technology, the traditional Openhouse will take place on November 9-10, 2018, in the scientific area placed in Řež. Besides the NPI CAS, it is organized by ÚJV Řež, the Research Center Řež and the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry CAS too.

Until 11 October you can see a exhibition of photos by Michal Dobeš, Head of the Safety and Radiation Protection Unit of NPI, in the Exhibition Hall of Ladislav Čepelák at the Veltrusy Municipal Office in Palacký Street.

Our stand – the tent on a grassy area, more precisely – could be seen on September 5th during all the day at this year's 6th edition of the open-air Science Festival. The event with the subtitle „Fun (not only) Scientific and Technical Laboratory at Kulaťák“ was organized by the Czech Technical University (CTU), the Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), the National Technical Library and the House of Children and Youth of Prague, at Vítězné Square in Prague´s quarter Dejvice near to CTU buildings.

NPI was presented for the first time from 18th to 21st July within the Science Garden at this year's edition of the biggest Czech open-air music festival Colours of Ostrava 2018. This happened under the activities of the physics popularization group IPPOG CR, which includes employees and students of Charles University (FMP CU), the Czech Technical University in Prague (FNSPE CTU), the Silesian University in Opava (FPS SU) and Palacký University in Olomouc (JLO PU).

Ing. Martina Klímová won award and financial prize for the best diploma thesis within the whole Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. ...

In the week of June 12-15, 2018, the traditional conference “RHIC/AGS Annual Users' Meeting” was held at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA. At this year's meeting the newest results from the scientific program at BNL's accelerators RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider) and AGS (Alternating Gradient Synchrotron) were highlighted including studies of production of heavy quarks and quarkonia, results from the study of the phase diagram of nuclear matter, small collision systems, jets and proton spin.

For the third time, we took part in the Science Fair, a popularization event organized by the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) within the Open Science project. It took place in two halls of the exhibition area PVA EXPO in Letňany part of Prague, from Thursday 7th to Saturday 9th June. Vladimír Semián and Miroslav Dočkal prepared the stand from Wednesday afternoon, with help of Martina Lužová – she arrived to the Fair directly from his stage placement in Dubna institute (Russia) – and thanks to Jaroslav Laufka, which provided us with material and transport. Our stand was relatively small again, but the number of people interested in it was even bigger. Because it was not the first time, the organizers gave free space before the stand enough, which had been proved to be very prudent.

At the German Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe (KIT), the KATRIN spectrometer (KARrsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment) is officially launched on Monday, June 11, 2018.

NPI of the CAS invites you cordially to the lecture of Prof. John Womersley, ESS ERIC Director General.

A visit of the CAS president Eva Zažímalová at NPI took place at the sunny spring mood. Accompanied by Jan Řídký, vicepresident of the CAS, and other members of the Academic Council, the president has been acquainted with the development and successes of our institute in recent years.

The Microtron MT-25 accelerator at a detached NPI workplace in the Karlín Tunnel in Prague helped the Museum Karlovy Vary to answer the question whether a bracelet from the late Bronze Age was found is from a tree bark or from leather.

The Department of Radiation Dosimetry of the NPI carried out on 29 November 2017 an international experiment considering on the influence of cosmic radiation in air transport.

NPI CAS participates in the international project SINE 2020 (Science Innovation with Neutrons in Europe in 2020), which belongs to the framework program HORIZON 2020. The joint event of SINE2020 and other institutions – GEMS, Accelerate, Baltic Tram, Calipso plus, NFFA and Enterprise Network – will be the SYNERGI2018 (Synchrotron and Neutron Radiation Go Industrial) forum, subtitled New Analytical Tools for Engineering Material Science, which will be held from 8 to 9 March 2018 at the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam.

Department of Radiation Dosimetry of the NPI CAS invites you to a seminar on cosmic radiation and radiation protection of crew during space missions, which will take place on Monday, December 18, 2017 at 9.00 am in the Conference Hall of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS, Národní 3, Prague).

The 70 m long complex apparatus of the KATRIN project, intended to measure the mass of the most abundant particle of the Universe - the neutrino, is almost completed in the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Its first tests were covered also in the NPI News on 27. 10. 2016. Complex tests of the KATRIN set-up with monoenergetic electrons from the sources developed in NPI were carried out in July 2017.

Řež, June 16, 2017: Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences (NPI), v. v. i. hosted the very prestigious action. The 73nd board  meeting of the Nuclear Physics Division (NPD) of the European Physical Society (EPS) was held on June 13-14, 2017 in NPI (Řež) and in Villa Lanna in Prague.

Řež, June 14^th, 2017: The project Brookhaven National Laboratory - the participation of the Czech Republic has been launched on June 1^st, 2017 and supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Czech Republic and by the European Union (European Structural and Investment Funds).

A new European structural funds research project on high-energy physics in atmosphere started in Czech Republic.

Prague, 19 January, 2017: The second meeting of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of the large research infrastructure FAIR-CZ was held in Vila Lanna on January 19th.

FAIR-CZ is the Czech contribution to a fascinating international endeavor, the construction of a new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) built within GSI (Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research) near Darmstadt, Germany. SAC members, prominent internationally renowned scientists Paolo Giubellino, James Rittman and Joachim Stroth, provided advice to the management and scientists of the Czech team realizing FAIR-CZ.

NPI scientists participated on the preparation of the topical paper titled "Nuclear Physics for Cultural Heritage", which was realized by the Nuclear Physics Board of the European Physical Society.

Although neutrinos along with photons are probably the most numerous elementary particles in the universe, their rest mass remains unknown. Theorists have hypothesized for years that the rest mass of the neutrino is zero and measurements did not contradict this assumption. Later, however, experimentalist reliably demonstrated that neutrinos of different types transform among themselves. This discovery of neutrino oscillations, awarded by the Nobel Prize for physics in 2015, means that the mass of some neutrino states must differ from zero.

The European Spallation Source marked an important milestone in its history. Now the organisation is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), a type of legal entity created by the European Commission for governing international research facilities. The European Commission's Director-General for Research and Innovation, Robert-Jan Smits handed over the official ‘plates’ of the ERIC from the Commission to ESS. He was joined by the Swedish Research Minister Helene Hellmark Knutsson, and her Danish counterpart Esben Lunde Larsen, as well as representatives from the partner countries.

Physical simulations of processes in engineering materials with in-situ neutron diffraction/imaging.

November 15–16, 2012, Prague, Czech Republic

On July 1, 2012 a new grant project “Long-term support for high quality research in the field of extreme states of nuclear matter” has started at NPI CAS. This three-year project is funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) in the Czech Republic and is a part of the ESF programme “Education for Competitiveness Operational Programme” (ECOP). The main aim of this grant project is a long-term support of high quality scientific research in the field of extreme states of nuclear matter at NPI.

In co-operation with Aarhus University, Denmark and Lund University, Sweden, neutron activation analysis and micro-PIXE are being used for analysis of hair, beard and bone samples of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe since the beginning of 2011. The aim of these analyses is to elucidate the reason of the Tycho Brahe´s death in 1601. Results and conclusions will be published in November 2011.