The American astronaut, Andrew Feustel, who took "Krtek" (the Little Mole), the cartoon character created by the Czech animator Zdeněk Miler, into space with him aboard the Endeavour space shuttle last May, completed a visit to the Czech Republic during which he promoted science and technology among young Czechs. The Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, which invited Feustel to Prague, awarded him the Honorary Medal "De Scientia Et Humanitate Optime Meritis" for propagating science and research. He is the third American astronatu, after John Blaha and Eugene Cernan, to have a Czech connection, his wife Indira's mother, having been born in Znojmo. This was the second time Feustel took something "Czech" with him into space. On his first mission in May 2009, he brought along a book of poems entitled Cosmic Songs by the Czech writer Jan Neruda. and Luděk Svoboda.
Brněnští archeologové společně s velkým mezinárodním kolektivem analyzují na molekulární úrovni paleogenetický záznam z věstnonických a pavlovských lidských fosilií, jejichž stáří se odhaduje kolem 30 000 let. Zařazují je do kontextu dalších paleolitických nálezů z širšího období mezi 45-14 000 lety, a pokoušejí se tak načrtnout nové dějiny evropského paleolitu. Prakticky současně s články v prestižních časopisech Nature (Fu a kol. 2016) a Current Biology (Posth a kol. 2016) vydalo Nakladatelství Academia knihu Dolní Věstonice-Pavlov. Následující příspěvek je ukázkou z této publikace., Dolní Věstonice and Pavlov represent a complex of large hunters´ settlements of Upper Paleolithic age (about 30 000 years ago) with rich evidence of mammoth hunting, symbolic activities, and burials of early Homo sapiens. Actually, the Academia publishers edited a comprehensive book entitled Dolní Věstonice-Pavlov and published it almost simultaneously with two paleogenetic papers in Nature (Fu et al. 2016) and Current Biology (Posth et al. 2016) journals on paleogenetics of these human fossils., and Jiří Svoboda.