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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• students
• events
• outreach
• particle physics
• physics

• Jitka Jiřičková
• Czech Physical Society, Shutterstock

Particle Prague 2022 is a five-day event offering high school students a week in the world of particle physics, co-organised by the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. The event will be held in September but the deadline for registration is 30 April.

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Written by: Pavla Hubálková

Category: Science

• research
• ERC
• Tim Verhagen

• Martin Pinkas

The physicist Tim Verhagen comes from the Netherlands but has been working in the Czech Republic for eight years, currently at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. He has just received a prestigious ERC Starting Grant for his research into new materials – “2D-sandwiches”.

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Written by: Pavla Hubálková

Category: Science

• research
• ERC
• Martin Kozák
• lasers
• microscopes

• Hynek Glos

Martin Kozák from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics has been awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. It will go towards research of new electron microscopy techniques that will allow capturing the motion of electrons in matter.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• history
• women of CU
• Belarus
• Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya
• Alena Marková

• Helena Zdráhalová
• Martin Pinkas, Vladimír Šigut, Shutterstock

“It has to be talked about, even though personally it hurts a lot...” Belarusian-born historian Alena Marková from the Faculty of Humanities warns that the ‘normalisation’ now in Belarus is similar to Czechoslovakia after 1968.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• politics
• European Union
• Tomáš Weiss
• security
• NATO

• Pavla Hubálková
• Tomáš Weiss's personal archive, Shutterstock

Tomáš Weiss from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University is the editor of a new book on the influence of small states in international security. “It may be interesting for Czech readers that the book devotes several chapters to the Czech Republic,” he says.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• research
• climate change
• vegetation change
• Australia
• paleoecology

• Marcela Uhlíková
• Petr Kuneš, Shutterstock

“We really had no idea how big a role the Aborigines played,” say Petr Kuneš. An associate professor at CU, Dr. Kuneš was a member an international team that examined how colonisation changed vegetation management in Australia.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• research
• anniversary
• women of CU
• conference
• equal opportunities

• Pavla Hubálková
• Vladimír Šigut, Hynek Glos, CU archive

Friday, 11 February, marks the seventh International Day of Women and Girls in Science, celebrating the role of women in the scientific world and promoting gender equality. What do women scientists at Charles University enjoy the most about their work and what kind of challenges did they face?

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• research
• mathematics
• ERC
• linguistics
• neural networks

• Pavla Hubálková
• Tomáš Rubín, Vladimír Šigut

“Our goal is to create a universal natural language generator that will be able to learn from only a few examples and will not make mistakes,” says Ondřej Dušek from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. His work landed him a prestigious ERC grant.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• herbarium
• plants
• vegetation
• botanic gardens
• collections

• Marcela Uhlíková
• Michal Novotný, Petr Jan Juračka

At present, the Faculty of Science of Charles University boasts a herbarium containing almost 2.5 million items. “Such herbaria (or collections of pressed and dried plant or flower samples) are living archives of plant biodiversity,” says botanist Patrik Mráz.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• Science
• research
• Carolinum
• Charles University
• achievement

• Pavla Hubálková, Martin Rychlík
• Forum, CU archives, NASA

The year 2021 saw no end to the pandemic, which brought numerous complications, including for scientists. Nevertheless, scientific research continued with positive results. We offer a look back at science at Charles University over the course of the year.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• immunology
• vaccination
• Karel Raška
• WHO
• smallpox

• Ivan Raška, Marcela Uhlíková
• Raška family archives

The founder of modern Czechoslovak epidemiology, Karel Raška, who contributed to the worldwide eradication of smallpox, is to receive the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, First Class, in memoriam. His son, Professor Ivan Raška, writes about his father's contributions and career.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• Videos
• religion
• history
• archaeology
• Israel

• Helena Zdráhalová
• David Moulis, Vladimír Šigut, Shutterstock

It seems there were two, though many believe there was only one: the great temple in Jerusalem built by the Biblical King Solomon. The first temple stood on the Temple Mount but no material evidence of its existence has ever been found. However, in 2012, Israeli archaeologists unexpectedly discovered another site in some ways similar.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• coronavirus threat
• Audio
• economics
• Talking Economics Podcast
• Daniel Münich

• Katarína Stehlíková
• CERGEI-EI, Shutterstock, Forum

“Have we learned anything new about the education system during the pandemic? And why is the economics of education becoming more important these days?” are questions host Katarína Stehlíková put to CERGE-EI’s Daniel Münich in the latest Talking Economics.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• CERGEEI
• IDEA
• podcast
• Audio
• Filip Pertold

• Katarína Stehlíková
• CERGE-EI, Shutterstock

The Talking Economics Podcast is back, and now, for the first time, is featured at Forum. In this edition, Katarína Stehlíková talks with CERGE-EI's Filip Pertold about the Covid-hit economy and data and policies to help. “We’ve learned from the Covid-19 pandemic that data is the key,” Filip Pertold says.

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Written by: Jan Velinger

Category: Science

• elections
• predictive modeling
• statistics
• democracy
• public broadcasting

• Jitka Jiřičková
• Shutterstock, Ondřej Týbl, iRozhlas.cz

Czechs last week who followed the outcome of the election at iRozhlas.cz as the results came in, benefitted from a predictive model designed by Associate Professor Marek Omelka and Ondřej Týbl from Charles University. The system they developed helped the scientists determine failry early on who had gained a majority in the lower house.