The first year of the Science Challenge educational competition for teams of gifted high school students took place in the ELI Beamlines and HiLASE laser centres on February 18-19. During the 24-hour scientific marathon, the first place in the challenging competition was awarded to the Nafta - Anime team.
On Wednesday, February 23, the Cherenkov telescope SST-1M recorded its first events initiated by high-energy particles (of hadronic origin or originating from gamma-rays). Two telescopes are gradually being built at the Ondřejov Observatory since 2021. Among the key institutions involved in those activities are Université de Genève, Instytut Fizyki Jądrowej PAN, Krakow and the Czech Academy of Sciences.
The FZU joins the Czech Academy of Sciences, which has supported the declaration of the Czech Prime Minister on the development of the situation in Ukraine.
One of the founders of the Department of Dielectrics, outstanding scientist, editor and teacher, enthusiastic promoter of symmetry approaches to ferroic phase transitions and domain boundaries, Prof. Václav Janovec has passed away on February 16, 2022, at the age of his almost complete 92.
Scientists from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in collaboration with their Korean colleagues successfully demonstrated an experiment to create and destroy solitons with non-integer charge. They achieved this by using electrical pulses from the tip of a scanning microscope. The new procedure is an important step in the development of quantum computers based on solitons. The result was published in the Nature Nanotechnology journal.
The HiLASE Centre in Dolní Břežany is celebrating another success; another world record. At the end of January, the High Energy Slab Lasers scientific team managed to break their own world record on the BIVOJ laser system by 40%. Converting to the second harmonic frequency, they demonstrated 515 nm, second harmonic pulses with an energy of 95 J at a repetition rate of 10 Hz.
The best photo of the FZU Photo Competition 2021 was taken by Denyse Musiienko, Ladislav Straka and Ross Colman using interference microscopy to capture a martensitic structure. In an absolute ranking of 126 submissions, second place was won by Alexej Bubonov, who also came second in 2020. The winners of this year’s contest have won third place too.
Researchers from the Czech Academy of Sciences have patented an invention that might fix the problem with batteries catching on fire. The experimental high-voltage aqueous battery is based on dual-ion electrochemical reactions. The new battery provides a life-cycle of 500 discharge/charge cycles, and its capacity is comparable to that of the commercially available nickel-metal hydride batteries. But unlike them, the aqueous battery is made of extremely cheap materials.
A combination of theoretical study, purposeful work, and valuable practical experience – this is what the Radius Development Centre provides to university students. The centre was conceived by three Institutes of the Academy of Sciences together with two universities – Palacký University in Olomouc and University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice.
