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.
We present an interview with Robert lzzard whose doctorate is from Cambridge University and who has been awarded an Intra-European Fellowship for Career Development which is a part of Marie Curie Actions. His research at l'Universite Libre de Bruxelles is focused on the evolution of binary stars. and Andrea Khudhurová.
We feature an interview with Professor Eva Za2imalova, a member of the Academy Council and the head of the Laboratory of Hormonal Regulation in Plants at the Institute of Experimental Botany of the ASCR. From 2007 to 2012 she was director of this institute. Her research is in the fields of auxin and cytokinins (mode of action of auxin. auxin binding site(s), regulation of levels of auxins and cytokinins in relation to cell division and elongation and themechanism of polar transport of auxin). and Marina Hužvárová.
The European Union has allocated 31 million crowns for the professional enhancement of Czech scientists and international activities of research teams at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the ASCR and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication of the University of Technology in Brno. The EU subsidy encompasses three years. Thanks to this financial support, Vladislav Krzyžánek, a leading Czech expert in electron microscopy, has returned to Brno after 12 years in Muenster, Germany. The EU subsidy will additionally fund training workshops, guest stays of foreign scientists, support for researchers’ mobility and the establishment of cooperation between universities and the industrial sector. and Luděk Svoboda.
V nakladatelství Oxford university Press vyšlo letos - snad vůbec poprvé - dílo českých badatelů v historických vědách, a to konkrétně v oblasti orální historie. Nabídku od nakladatelství ke knižnímu zpracování náhledu na naši současnost po roce 1968 dostal Miroslav Vaněk v roce 2011 na konferenci v Denveru a jak, říká, kdyby tušil, co ho čeká, nekývl by. Naštěstí přizval kolegu Pavla Mückeho, aby spolu podnikli martyrium přípravy anglickojazyčné publikace pro zámořského nakladatele. Když anglicky psaná kniha Velvet Revolutions: An Oral History of Czech Society vyšla, dostala se ke čtenářům nejprve v elektronické verzi na Novém Zélandu., The Velvet Revolution in November 1989 brought about the collapse of the authoritarian communist regime in what was then Czechoslovakia. It also marks the beginning of the country's journey towards democracy. This book examines what the values in so-called real socialism were, as well as how citizens’ values changed after the 1989 collapse. In Velvet Revolutions (published in Oxford Oral History Series, Oxford University Press, 2016), Miroslav Vanek and Pavel Mücke of the Institute for Contemporary History of the CAS analyse and interpret 300 interviews on citizens’ experience of freedom and its absence, the value of work, family and friends, education, relations to public sphere and politics, the experience of free time, and the perception of foreigners and foreign countries. The interviewees are drawn from a wide range of professions, including manual workers, service workers, farmers, members of the armed forces, managers, and marketing personnel. All of the interviewees were at working age during the last twenty years of the communist regime and during the post-revolutionary transformation. From this rich foundation, the book builds a multi-layered view of the Czech history before 1989 and during the subsequent period of democratic transformation., and Marina Hužvárová.