We present 2.2 micron maps of selected areas of the Galactic Plane, taken with the 1.5 m. Sánchez-Magro telescope on the island of Tenerife. A model of the galactic stellar distribution has been developed and the derived stellar surface densities are compared with the observations. The results are in good agreement with the experimental data and suggest remarkable differences between
the luminosity functions for the disk and the spheroid components. The extinction toward the galactic centre shows an abrupt increase when compared with other galactic directions. We note also that a
better fit is obtained when the 5 Kpc ring is included in the model, but cannot infer from our data the existence of a thick disk.
The UN General Assembly has declared 2015 the International Year of Soils to raise awareness of the vital importance of soil, which is essential not only for food security and for cultivating plants for feed, fibre, fuel and medicinal products, but also for maintaining biodiversity as it hosts countless organisms. It plays a key role in storing and filtering water, in carbon and other nutrients cycling and performs other irreplaceable ecosystem functions. The Institute of Soil Biology of the CAS Biology Centre carries out biological research into many of those functions of soil in both natural and human–affected environments, including studies of the soil microstructure, soil organism communities and their dynamics and interactions and so on. Researchers at the Institute of Soil Biology focus, among other things, on the contribution of soil fungi to nitrous oxide emissions and on the production of methane. The latter is a potent greenhouse gas and a substantial part of atmospheric methane is produced by anaerobic microorganisms called Archaea found in the soil and in animal digestive tracts, while soil is also a significant methane sink. Research is also being concentrated on the characterization and risk assessment of antibiotic resistance-reservoirs in soil, which is connected with the massive use of antibiotics in the past five decades. Scientists examine ways of preventing the antibiotic resistance spreading in the environment through food chains as well as and on the role played by the soil microflora in those processes, as Doctor Dana Elhottová explains in the corresponding article. and Jana Olivová.
The third and final season of excavation on Pod Hradem Cave (Moravian Karst) reached bedrock at a maximum depth of 3.5 metres, although the bedrock in this part of the cave represents a very steeply sloping wall rather than the cave floor. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the basal layers in this part of the cave were deposited during the late Middle Palaeolithic period. The finding of amber and shell in layer 11 represents a curious discovery, but there is a possibility that these objects represent an intrusion from a different archaeological context., Ladislav Nejman, Lukáš Kučera, Petr Škrdla, Lenka Lisá, Šárka Hladilová, Miroslav Králík, Rachel Wood, Miriam Nývltová Fišáková, Duncan Wright, Marjorie E. Sullivan, Philip Hughes., and Obsahuje seznam literatury