At 1 p.m. on January 28, as part of the lecture series Distinguished speakers at the RBI, the world-renowned scientist Prof. Zlatko Bačić of New York University will deliver a lecture in the Auditorium in Wing III of the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) entitled Squeezing hydrogen molecules in tight places: energetics, quantum dynamics, Raman, and inelastic neutron scattering spectroscopy. 

We announce with sorrow that Academician Velimir Pravdić, an eminent scientist at the Ruđer Bošković Institute for many years, the founder and head of the Electrochemistry and Surface Chemistry Laboratory, and a distinguished chemist and expert on environmental protection, died in Zagreb at the age of 79 on January 15, 2011. Besides being an outstanding scientist, Academician Pravdić was a moral pillar of our scientific system. His passing is a great loss to Croatian science and society, especially for our Institute.

Today at 2, 3 and 4 p.m. in the Auditorium of Wing III of the Ruđer Bošković Institute, there will be the first showing of a feature film entitled SCI CSI. The film was produced by experimental physicists at the RBI. The plot turns around an investigation by an inspector and his associate of a murder that occurred at the RBI. After the experimental physicists offer their assistance and laboratories in the investigation, everything goes downhill. Approximately twenty RBI scientists have parts in the film, which was directed by the research fellow Deša Jelavić Malenica, who also wrote the script.

SCI CSI is intended for the general public. After showing the film at the Institute, the scientists would like to present it at several amateur film revues and the Trash Film Festival. This is a truly refreshing event in the Croatian scientific world.

The year 2011 marks the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Josip Ruđer Bošković, one of the most distinguished scientists of the eighteenth century. In honor of this scientist, after whom the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) is named, this year a series of scientific and scientific-popular activities will be organized in commemoration of this great jubilee.

In today's edition of the daily paper Jutarnji List, in an article entitled "People and events which Zagreb's citizens will remember 2010", RBI Director-general Dr. Danica Ramljak was named person of the year.

In the auditorium of wing III at RBI a celebratory event was held today entitled "The importance of cooperation and interdisciplinary approaches to solving the problem of urolothiasis, yesterday, today and tomorrow". This event marked the 80th birthday of Dr. Helga Furedi-Milhofer, emeritus professor and retired RBI research adviser and staff member of the Institute for Applied Chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Yesterday at a celebratory event held at RBI, the annual Director's Prize was awarded to some of RBI's most successful scientists. Almost 50 RBI scientists received the awards which were given for publication in high impact journals, successful grant applications (grants greater than 500,000 kn), projects of special importance to RBI, successful international patent applications as well as for scientific work honored with state awards for science.

Ideas that development of embryos mirrors evolutionary history are well known even outside biological circles. However, due to the lack of tools that would allow explicit quantitative testing, the scientific status of this elusive concept has been unclear. Evolutionary geneticists, Tomislav Domazet-Lošo and Diethard Tautz, from Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb (Croatia) and Max Planck Institute for the Evolutionary Biology in Plön (Germany) devised a new approach that measures phylogenetic age of the expressed genes across ontogeny and showed that phylogeny-ontogeny correlation is real. The results are published in the 9th December issue of Nature as a cover story.

Dr. Jadranka Barešić from the Laboratory for Measurement of Low Activities in the Department of Experimental Physics and Dr. Branka Jeličić from the Laboratory for Molecular and Cellular Biology, Department of Molecular Biology have, together with 6 other European scientists, been awarded the Group of Eight European Fellowships for 2011. Each of the eight awardees will receive a stipend in the amount of 20,000 dollars to cover travel and experimental work in one of the prestigious Group of Eight Australian universities for up to six months.

As part of the series of Distinguished speakers at the RBI, internationally acclaimed academician Miroslav Radman will give a lecture on Wednesday, December 8th at 13:00 in the auditorium of Wing III at RBI. The title of his lecture is Resilient Microbes Reveal the Chemistry of Cell Death and Open New Visions for Public Health.