Press releases

Horses were first domesticated in the Pontic-Caspian steppes, northern Caucasus, before conquering the rest of Eurasia within a few centuries. These are the results of a study led by paleogeneticist Ludovic Orlando, CNRS, who headed an international team including a scientist from the Institute of Archaeology of the CAS. Answering a decades-old enigma, the study is published in Nature on 20 October 2021.

A study reporting on the inclusion and participation of women in over 120 science organizations that are coordinated at a global level finds that women are still under-represented. It calls for a coalition for gender equality in global science to ensure a transformative action agenda.

This year, twenty-four outstanding young scientific talents will receive the prestigious award of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic: the Otto Wichterle Prize for 2021. The ceremony will take place at the Lanna Villa in Prague on Tuesday, 29th June 2021, and the prizes will be presented to the laureates by the Chairwoman of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Eva Zažímalová.

Ten years, four world records, one visionary. HiLASE Laser Centre celebrates its first decade. It successfully links the fields of development, research, and high-tech industry to fulfil its mission of Superlasers for the Real World.  Behind the ground-breaking results of research activities and projects stand the scientists, experts and professionals of the centre, the so-called HiLASIANS. 

A novel antibacterial material combining nonwoven nanotextile and unique compounds with antibacterial properties was developed. Called NANO-LPPO, the new material can fulfil a wide range of applications. For example, as a dressing for wounds, such as burn injuries, by preventing infection and thus facilitating treatment and healing.

Researchers from IOCB Prague have discovered a new type of substance capable of safely transporting various types of nucleic acids used for therapeutic purposes into cells, from basic building blocks to long chains of RNA or DNA. The universal nature of their system sets it apart from existing solutions and opens the door to a wide variety of applications in the treatment of genetic diseases as well as in mRNA vaccines, which have become popular in recent times. The results of their research were published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Elephant-shrews also called jumping shrews or sengis, are little-known African mammals that resemble shrews or rodents in appearance but are evolutionarily closer to elephants or sea sirens. An international team of zoologists, led by Josef Bryja from the Institute of Vertebrate Biology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, has now uncovered evolutionary relationships between individual groups of elephant-shrews using the largest available genetic dataset. The results prove how little we know about such important groups of organisms like mammals.

The new record in multibeam laser nanostructuring, with respect to the number of laser beams simultaneously modifying the material surface, was reached due to the active scientific cooperation of HiLASE Centre of the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences with the Israeli company HOLO/OR Ltd.

The Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry (IOCB Prague), both part of the Czech Academy of Sciences, have signed a licensing agreement with the company Immunotech, a subsidiary of Beckman Coulter, for the manufacture and distribution of a newly developed coronavirus antibody IVD test.

Recently, large-scale testing of Prague‘s public transportation system for signs of Covid-19 transmissibility was initiated by the Prague Public Transit Company (DPP). The extensive testing of the system, which was carried out in April 2021 by researchers from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), found no evidence of the infectious presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.