Czech Science | All stories

Many generations of Czech children have dreamt of finding this item underneath their Christmas tree. It was true for decades that when you said the word Merkur to a child in this country the first thing they thought of was not the planet Mercury, nor the Roman god, but a metal construction set, similar to the British Meccano or the American Erector Set.

Fifteen-year old Anna Jicinska, a high school student from the city of Brno, was the first girl in the Czech Republic to be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus - the primary cause of cervical cancer which kills around 500 women every year in this country.

The Academy of Sciences has announced that two of its institutes, the Institute of Experimental Medicine and the Institute of Molecular Genetics, are planning to open a joint biotechnology research centre just outside Prague in a village called Vestec. The ambitious project is to combine their research in order to improve the diagnosis and treatment of serious diseases. The 71-million-euro campus will be equipped with state of the art labs and employ 400 first-rate specialists.

Cats are known to have lived with humans for a few thousand years. People keep and love cats for many reasons but the relationship is not without dangers. Cats can carry a parasite called Toxoplasma which can be easily transmitted to humans. According to recent studies by Czech scientists, the parasite can cause significant changes to our personalities and believe it or not, even influence whether infected women give birth to baby boys or girls.

In today's Czech Science we take you back to Prehistory. Right from the hustle and bustle of contemporary Prague we step into a prehistoric settlement from some 25,000 years ago, complete with the sounds and authentic smells.

Turn down. Switch off. Recycle. Walk. Change. Those are five simple recommendations the European Commission is calling on people to follow in an effort to raise awareness of climate change and possible ways to reduce its speed.

In the high summer months, many water bodies are plagued by surface water bloom, a layer of organisms called cyanobacteria or blue-green algae, which thrive in water rich on phosphorus. Not only is water bloom unsightly but it can be potentially dangerous to people as the bacteria produce various toxins. Hydrobiologists from the city of Plzen are now trying to cut the bacteria off from their phosphorus supply and turn the largest fish breeding pond in Plzen into a crystal clear lake rife with predator fish and rich vegetation.

Czech science - and one scientist in particular - received a great honour last week, when the United States pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences announced a donation to the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences for the establishment of a special research centre bearing the company's name. The California-based biopharmaceutical company will donate 1.1 million dollars a year to the institute for an initial five-year term to fund the centre's operations and ongoing research activities. A part of the amount

On Saturday, June 17th, some forty museums and galleries around Prague opened their doors to the public for the third "Museum Night". Among other things, this publicity event enables visitors to see collections which are normally not easily accessible - such as The Hrdlicka Museum of Man in Prague 2 which we visited for this edition of Czech Science.

In less than a month's time, a team of Czech scientists will leave for the Mongolian desert of Gobi to spend a month at a rich fossil location looking for the remains of dinosaurs. The team of Expedition Gobi 2006 are now making the final preparations and also bracing themselves for the rough weather conditions of the Mongolian desert. By the end of the project in 2009, they are hoping to excavate and bring back to the Czech Republic a complete dinosaur skeleton to be displayed in Prague.