Application for the Advanced Masters Instructural Analysis of Monuments and Historical Construcions

A four-year collaborative project between eight European universities and research institutes began, pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary education and research in materials science and archaeology. The project with a total grant of four million Euros is fully funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action under the EU Research and Innovation funding programme Horizon2020. The project runs from 2021 to 2025.

All interested parties are invited to participate on the first Local Working Table meeting of the STRENCH project (Interreg Central Europe), which will be held on Friday, 26th February 2021 at 15:00 via the Zoom app here: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/96400374538?pwd=a3dmbWtjRmdEcXRxMC91MzV5NWhpdz09. The aim of the meeting is to inform about the newest deveopment in the project, its outputs so far and to provoke a discussion with the stakeholders in the field of protection of natural heritage against natural hazards. The focus will be on the Troja hamlet as one of the project pilot sites.

Newsletter No. 1 of the Interreg Danube Transnational Programme project Living Danube Limes has been published.

Newsletter no. 1 of the Interreg Central Europe project STRENCH (CE1665) has been published. The Newsletter covers the period from April to December 2020.

The Director of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences is pleased to announce the launch of a tender for an additional postdoctoral position for the project "CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/18_053/0016918 Rozvoj lidských zdrojů ÚTAM AV ČR" (Development of Human Resources at ITAM CAS), for the "Dynamics and Wind Engineering" activity.

In the prestigious yearbook Elettra synchrotron Highlights for the years 2019-2020, an article by the author team from the Materials Research Department composed of Radek Ševčík and Dita Machová was included among the best in the past two years. The article fosuses on changing the microstructure of limestone after application of nanocalcium in combination with calcium carbonate polymorphs. Other co-authors were researchers from Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste (Italy) and Jülich Center for Neutron Science JCNS at MLZ (Germany).

The Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Czech Academy of Sciences published its 8th Newsletter, labeled EXTRA, as it is a special issues dedicated to the Stretegy AV21 programme no. 23 "City as a laboratory of change; buildings, cultural heritage and environment for safe and quality life".

Newsletter EXTRA (2/2020) can be read here, this time only in Czech.

Cultural Heritage objects built from calcareous material are often exposed to adverse environmental conditions which may cause significant damage. The so called nano lime has been used to protect and conserve them. The Czech, German and Italian scientists - among them our colleagues from Centre Telč ITAM CAS, Radek Ševčík, Dita Machová and Alberto Viani - studied the efficiency of the material in protecting the cultural heritage objects in Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ). They used only non-invasive methods.

In the second half of 1990s, an increased attention was paid to the safeguarding of the built heritage and its integration into the life of contemporary society. The complexity of problems of cultural heritage called for modern interdisciplinary approach and this was started in a systematic way in 1995 by founding of a new department of the Institute - the Associated Research Centre for Historic Structures and Sites (ARCHISS) - joining together researchers from two institutes of the Academy of Sciences. The process continued, because of success in grant project competitions and now there are scientists involved in the research from other institutes and universities and two operating research units - one in Prague and one in another World Heritage City of Telč.

Patrimonia is a research program for young people, which enables them to participate in a process of preservation of cultural heritage, to try in practise a scientific research in cooperation with experts and to find out interesting facts and links in their neighbourhoods. Another aim of the project is to document and safeguard our minor cultural heritage - i.e. vanishing family heritage (letters, diaries), oral testimonies, old routes etc. Patrimonia puts to use the potential of school and other groups of young people using the modern information technologies in the course of the collection of the data, thus potentially creating a basis for a digital atlas of cultural heritage.

MONDIS (MONument Damage Information System) is a research project run by the Department of Cybernetics in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague and the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the Czech Academy of Sciences. The main project objectives include the integration of existing knowledge and expertise from the field of cultural heritage protection, including the enhancement of cooperation and exchange of experience. The MONDIS project aims to support professionals addressing the structural and technical conditions of heritage buildings and working on designing appropriate measures or structural interventions. This is done using a knowledge base intended for documentation and analysis of the defects and damages in heritage buildings.

Designed as a closed circuit with controlled wind velocity and temperature conditions. It consists of climatic and aerodynamic parts. While the aerodynamic part provides well-fitted conditions to study wind effects on scaled model of prototypes, an equipment of the climatic part is suited for investigation of influences of weather including the wind, temperature, rain and heat radiation. Using the cooling/heating exchanger, cycle temperature changing of the airflow is available in the whole tunnel within the range of -10 to 30 C in relatively short time period. Integral part of the tunnel equipment consists of instruments for airflow diagnostic, data acquisition system, direct pressure surface measurement, precise thermometry and of many other types of handy accessories for instant use. Workshops for manufacturing of testing models are available in the same building.

The website deals with historical production of burnt lime and related lime technologies, traditional craftsmanship of prossesing and utilization of lime in construction. The main objective is a thourough and complex knowledge of the above, a material-based research and a reconstruction of historical procedures. A common goal is to bring attention to the unique historical techniques, which used to be succesfully employed in the past, nowadays, however, are for the main part forgotten. The website is concieved as an open one, striving to gradually add new related information researched by a wide range of experts on archeology, construction materials, history of construction etc.