Danica Ramljak, PhD, held her second press conference since assuming the role of Director General at the RBI in May of 2009. Danica Ramljak, PhD, announced plans for this year’s 60th anniversary celebration of the founding of the RBI which will encompass a variety of events throughout the year including a gala event on June 9, 2010 to be held in the Vatroslav Lisinski concert hall in Zagreb.

Magdalena Grce, PhD, received the prestigious 'Pearl of Wisdom' award for her work in the European Cervical Cancer Association (ECCA) on January 26/27 at a meeting of the European Parliament in Brussels marking the 4th European week for the prevention of cervical cancer.

In December of 2009, the book Mathematical Methods and Modeling for Students of Chemistry and Biology edited by Ante Graovac, PhD, Ivan Gutman, PhD, and Damir Vukičević, PhD, was published by Hum Copies Ltd., Zagreb.

On Saturday, 23 Jan 2010, Croatia’s president-elect Professor Ivo Josipović, PhD, was a guest on a popular music show on Radio Sljeme. In the first part of the show Professor Josipović conversed with the show’s host on the subject of music, while in the second part of the show he answered a series of questions posed by prominent public figures from the fields of culture and science, including Danica Ramljak, PhD, Director General of the Ruđer Bošković Institute.

Analytical Chemistry (IF: 5.712), the world's leading journal in the field of analytical chemistry, has accepted for publication paper Blind separation of analytes in nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and mass spectrometry: sparseness-based robust multicomponent analysis by Ivica Kopriva, PhD (DLARD) and Ivanka Jerić, PhD (DOCB). The paper describes a method for blind extraction of analytes from mixtures. The method is exemplified on the examples in NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.

The fourth year in a row Croatia is marking the European Week of Cervical Cancer Prevention in the organization of the European Association against cervical cancer (ECCA), whose member is the Ruđer Bošković Institute as well. The aim of this action, which is being held on 24 - 30 January 2010, is to raise public awareness about cervical cancer and ways of its prevention.

A retired RBI scientist Branimir Miletić, PhD, passed away on 5 January 2010. He arrived at the Ruđer Bošković Institute on the invitation of Academician Ivan Supek in 1957 where he founded the Laboratory of Cellular Radiobiology and started the first molecular genetic research in Croatia. He is considered the founder of molecular biology in Croatia.

One of the world's leading scientific journals in the field of chemistry, Chemical Communications (IF 5.34) has just published a feature article on Chiral bis (amino acid) - and bis (amino alcohol)-oxalamide gelators. Gelation properties, self-assembly motifs and chirality effects by Prof. Mladen Žinić, PhD and Leo Frkanec, PhD. This extensive paper describes internationally recognized results of fifteen years of research in the RBI Laboratory for Supramolecular and Nucleoside Chemistry and its contribution to supra-molecular chemistry of organic gels and specifically identifying stereo chemical impact on processes of self-assembly of molecules into nano-sized organic threads.

RBI Scientists from the Laboratory for the Measurement of Low-Level Radioactivity (LNA) have been granted a three-year European Commission project called SOWAEUMED (Network in Solid Waste and Water Treatment between Europe and Mediterranean Countries) under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7).

RBI scientists Stjepan Lugomer, PhD and Aleksandar Maksimović, PhD from the Laboratory of Molecular Physics of the Division of Material Physics, in cooperation with their Hungarian colleagues from the Research Institute for Technical Physics and Materials science (MFA) at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences published the valuable scientific paper on Nanostructuring of a silicon surface by laser redeposition of Si vapor in the prestigious Journal of Applied Physics. In their paper scientists experimentally and theoretically explained the process of forming silicon nanoparticles with IC laser method of redeposition Si-steam.