Structure Polish Academy of Sciences

The Polish Court and the Foreign Relations under the Vasa Dynasty. Vienna 8th- 9th march 2019.

As a result of a competition procedure, Dr. Hanna Nieznańska has become the new head of the Laboratory of Electron Microscopy. Dr Nieznańska graduated in pharmacy from the Medical University of Warsaw.

Together with the participants of the "Safeguarding Our Climate, Advancing Our Society" symposium held during the COP24 climate summit in Katowice in December 2018, we have prepared a special issue of Academia: The Magazine of the Polish Academy of Sciences dealing with global climate change and the challenges it poses. We are sure you will find the numerous contributions from top-notch scholars and experts well-focused and highly illuminating.

People with tendency to procrastinate - those who tend to postpone important matters "until tomorrow" - process their mistakes differently than people who do not delay. This was demonstrated in brain studies conducted by Dr. Marek Wypych from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology.

Professor Maciej Wojtkowski from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Professor Krzysztof Palczewski from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine has received financing to the tune of nearly PLN 35 million from the Foundation of Polish Science for the International Research Agendas Program. Researchers will create an International Center for Translational Eye Research (ICTER), which will deal with the dynamics and plasticity of the human eye.

Scientists estimate that approximately 631 million mammals and almost 144 million birds in Poland fall victim to cats every year. They emphasize that cats’ activity has a negative impact on biodiversity and on endangered species of birds.

Are you looking for a research grant opportunities in Poland? Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) is pleased to announce new programme for incoming researchers: The Ulam Programme.

II Division of Biological and Agricultural Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, awarded the team from the Nencki Institute, led by Prof. Katarzyna Kwiatkowska (Laboratory of Molecular Membrane Biology), for outstanding scientific achievements.

The U.S. Patent Office has granted the USA patent, numbered US 15/553,575, for the invention entitled ‘A METHOD FOR THE EARLY DIAGNOSIS OF A PRE-DIABETIC STATE AND TYPE 2 DIABETES’. The patent is owned by researchers from the Nencki Institute, which holds full exclusivity to this invention: Prof. Agnieszka Dobrzyn and Dr. Kamil Kozinski from the Laboratory of Cell Signaling and Metabolic Disorders, and Prof. Pawel Dobrzyn and Dr. Tomasz Bednarski from the Laboratory of Molecular Medical Biochemistry.

“From the perspective of African swine fever, however, reducing the wild boar population should be merely one of the measures aimed at preventing the disease from spreading. Only around 5% of culled wild boards have had contact with the ASF virus. The infection rate is much higher among fallen wild boars (80%)…” – write representatives of the Polish Academy of Sciences in their position statement regarding the large-scale culling of wild boars.

Certain species of fish, crayfish or squirrels, non-native in Europe, are among the most dangerous invasive alien species that can be detrimental to the EU’s environment. Most of them come from the tropical zone and have little chance of survival in Poland – says Dr. Wojciech Solarz from the Institute of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków.

The Industrial Development Agency granted a loan for the amount of PLN 14.72 million to the Institute of High Pressure Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IWC PAN). The above funds will be used by IWC PAN for acquiring Ammono S.A. Consequently, the Institute will acquire the technology of producing substrate crystals from gallium nitride (GaN) and infrastructure making this production possible.

The level of support for democracy depends on the person`s self-esteem; narcissistic persons are less inclined to support this system, according to a study conducted with the participation of psychologists from the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw.

Valérie Masson-Delmotte is a French climate specialist and research director at the French Alternative Energy and Atomic Energy Commission. In December 2018, she was a lecturer at the symposium "Safeguarding Our Climate, Advancing Our Society" organized by the Polish Academy of Sciences.

The last missing particle of the Standard Model, the Higgs boson, was discovered in 2012 in the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. Since then, searching for new, related particles has been underway. Predicted by various theories that go beyond known physics, Higgs bosons with positive or negative electric charge are among the favorites to be observed. But do these particles really exist?

Liquid crystal layers a single molecule thick can form extremely complicated structures. The complex construction of these monolayers makes it difficult to visualize them using standard scanning microscopy. Despite this, images from an STM, obtained at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, reveal, for the first time, structural details of monolayers of liquid crystal dimers, also indicating the mechanisms responsible for the birth of chirality.

Professor Jerzy Duszyński, President of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), received a delegation of prominent scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences on December 14, 2018.

One transistor, just a pair of inductors and capacitors. Even such a simple electronic circuit can become an oscillator with a surprising richness of behaviour – prove scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakow together with their foreign collaborators from the University of Catania and University of Trento.