Press releases

Controlling the chemical structure of matter at the atomic level with light seemed impossible until now. Now, scientists have developed a technique to control photochemical reactions at the level of individual molecules. An international team of researchers, including Tomáš Neuman from the Institute of Physics at CAS, has published a method for controlling molecular dynamics in Nature Nanotechnology. This breakthrough could open a new chapter in photochemistry research.

A breakthrough study, led by Czech scientists, has revealed how biological diversity originated in one of the world’s most significant biodiversity centres. The most extensive genetic study of African small insectivores, shrews, published in the Journal of Biogeography, unveiled secrets related to the origin, spreading patterns, and unusual diversification of mountain mammals in sub-Saharan Africa.

The decline of insect populations has attracted worldwide interest in times of global warming and changing environment, but we have only rudimentary knowledge about the biodiversity and abundance of insects in the high mountains in tropical regions. Even what nutrients limit insects in nature is still not well understood. This knowledge is important because of the increasingly frequent climatic extreme events that change the availability of food resources. An international team of scientists from six countries, led by researchers from the Biological Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS), conducted a unique field experiment on three tropical high mountains, in some of the last virgin forests in the world. In this intercontinental work, scientists offered ants different food in order to find out, which nutrients these important insects prefer most in nature. The results, which among other things led to the discovery of more than a hundred undescribed species of ants, were published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.

How did insect wings originate? This is a question that represents an unsolved mystery of insect evolution. Despite many years of research, it is still not entirely clear from which body structure insect wings actually evolved and what their original function was when they were not yet efficient enough to perform active flight. Scientists from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences were also involved in looking for answers to these questions in newly discovered prehistoric fossils of an ancient group of insects.

Researchers from IOCB Prague and their colleagues from Ghent University in Belgium have been working on improving the properties of gelatin-based materials, thereby expanding the possibilities of their use mainly in medicine. In a paper published in the scientific journal ACS Applied Engineering Materials, they have presented 3D-printable materials that can be easily monitored using an X-ray machine or through computed tomography (CT).

For the first time, an international team of scientists has successfully developed a polyradical nanographene by combining two concepts of pi-magnetism formation in nanographene: strong interaction between electrons and topological frustration, and they detected the magnetic signal using advanced scanning probe microscopy and quantum mechanical calculations. Graphene nanoparticles of certain shapes can exhibit magnetic properties, making them suitable for information storage and processing in quantum computing.

In an article published in Nature, an international team of scientists breaks down the traditional idea of dividing magnetism into two branches – the ferromagnetic one, known for several millennia, and the antiferromagnetic one, discovered about a century ago. Researchers have now succeeded in directly experimentally demonstrating a third altermagnetic branch, theoretically predicted by researchers in Prague and Mainz several years ago.

Up to two-thirds of all cancers are caused by errors that occur during DNA replication. This is the focus of the laboratory of Hana Polášek-Sedláčková from the Institute of Biophysics of the CAS, who has been awarded a prestigious EMBO Installation Grant (€50,000) to research new molecular pathways.

2031 will see the launch of the ESA-led EnVision mission to Venus, its aim to map the surface and atmosphere of the second planet in the Solar System using optical, spectrometric, and radar instruments. Czech researchers from the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry of the CAS, the Institute of Geophysics of the CAS, and the Czech Geological Survey are now involved in the preparation of this probe. The goal is to manufacture and to test the “heart” of the instrument: the central processor, the mechanical control unit, and the data processing system. EnVision will answer the question of how and why Venus and Earth evolved so differently. The Czech scientists will also focus on the processes occurring in Venus’ atmosphere, volcanic activity, and surface morphology.

Mud on Mars, it turns out, behaves very differently to mud on Earth. An international team of researchers led by Petr Brož from the Institute of Geophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences investigated the effect of different environmental conditions when mud is emplaced on the surface of the Red Planet. The low atmospheric pressure (~6 mbar) causes water to become unstable, and mud evolves in a way that resembles sourdough bread during baking. Brož and his collaborators performed experiments in the Mars Chamber at The Open University, UK, exposing mud samples to simulated Martian surface conditions, the results of which have now been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. These findings will help scientists re-interpret geomorphological features on Mars, and could shed light on understanding what is happening on other bodies in the Solar System.