LABELS: Laboratoř behaviorálních a lingvistických studií

The Laboratory of Behavioural and Linguistic Studies is a joint project of the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. Currently, our laboratory is mainly concerned with vision science, language and speech acquisition in children, language processing in adults and cognition in children and adults in general, but it is also open to to other types of projects.

Gorazd: An Old Church Slavonic Digital Hub and the Romanian Slavonic studies

The aim of this paper is to present the utility of the Gorazd: An Old Church Digital Hub for scholars working with Old Romanian and Slavonic texts written on the territory of today’ s Romania. The Gorazd Project was realized during the years 2016–2020 and it includes an Old Church Slavonic Card Index and three Old Church Slavonic lexical databases, among which the largest one is represented by the digitized and updated version of the monumental Lexicon linguæ palæoslovenicæ (vol. I–IV, 1958–1997) composed by the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences. As the Gorazd Project uses English as meta-language, its application is not limited to narrowly specialized Slavic philologists, but it is also open for scholars of neighbouring fields. The dictionaries within the Gorazd Digital Hub can serve as a reference tool not just for the oldest attested Slavonic vocabulary and its semantics, but also for the biblical concordance of the Slavonic oldest Bible redaction and the oldest attested Old Church Slavonic morphological forms.

2021 Gypsy Lore Society Annual Meeting and Conference on Romani Studies – Book of Abstracts

Text of panels and abstracts accepted for the international conference of the Gypsy Lore Society held in Prague in 2021 (GLS Annual Meeting and Conference on Romani Studies 2021, 8.-10. 9. 2021 - https://gls2021.ff.cuni.cz/). Introducing the context of the organization of the conference in 2021 and Romani studies structures in the Czech Republic, the book features three studies presenting: currently documented effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on Romani communities worldwide (Tatiana Zachar Podolinská); the historical context of the establishment of the Seminar of Romani Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in 1991 and its developments until today (Helena Sadílková, Pavel Kubaník); a summary of Romani studies research, publications and theses focused on the Roma at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Sociological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (Zdeněk Uherek). The book includes an index of names of all contributors of the conference – authors of individual papers and panel convenors.

The Development of Photoactive Admixtures for Concrete and Cement-Based Plaster Finishes, to Create Self-Cleaning Surfaces

This article presents research and development on innovative photoactive admixtures for concrete and cement-based plasters for the finishing of concrete surfaces finished this year. The goal of the development was to provide the resulting surfaces of these newly developed materials with a self-cleaning ability stemming from photocatalytic reaction during exposure to UV radiation. The specific function of all these products is based on the photocatalytic oxidative mineralization of all organic structures present on the surface, i.e., their gradual transformation into the final simple inorganic compounds, which are carbon dioxide, water and the corresponding mineral acids. This research and development was carried out as part of a project supported by the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, in the TRIO programme; and in cooperation of BETOSAN s.r.o., the Technical University of Liberec, the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The first type of developed material is a photocatalytically active admixture in powder form, allowing the preparation of concrete surfaces with photocatalytic properties. The second type of developed material is a photocatalytically active cement-based plaster, intended primarily for application to a concrete substrate. Two final versions of both materials were developed. In the case of the plaster this means preparation of two colour variants, specifically white and grey. For the powder concrete admixture two types with different application procedures were developed. This means one version of admixture mixed throughout the entire volume of the concrete and second variant applied only in the surface layer of the concrete. We anticipate mainly exterior applications on the self-cleaning outer shell of buildings, as well as treatment of the surface layer of various structures such as bridges, noise barriers, traffic barriers and tunnels. The developed materials can also be used in interiors under specific conditions, with anticipated uses in the health care and food processing industries.

Cell scientists to watch – Zdeněk Lánský and Marcus Braun

ABSTRACT Zdeněk Lánský received his PhD in physics from the Charles University in Prague in 2006. He then moved to The Netherlands for his postdoc, where he studied the biophysics of molecular motors – first at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam with Erwin Peterman, and then at Wageningen University with Marcel Janson. In 2011 he joined the lab of Stefan Diez at the B CUBE Center for Molecular Bioengineering in Dresden, where his research focused on crosslinker-mediated force generation in the cytoskeleton. Zdeněk set up his lab at the Institute of Biotechnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, BIOCEV in 2015, which he has run together with Marcus Braun since 2017. Marcus Braun received his PhD in biochemistry from King's College London in 2009 for his work on microtubule-based molecular motors in the labs of Andrew McAinsh and Rob Cross. He then moved to Dresden for his postdoc to study cytoskeletal transport, with a particular focus on microtubule crosslinkers, in Stefan Diez's lab – first at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, then later at B CUBE. In 2017, he joined Zdeněk Lánský at the Institute of Biotechnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, BIOCEV, as a principal investigator. The Lánský and Braun lab investigates ensemble dynamics of cytoskeletal proteins.

On the Ethics of Truthfulness: An Interview with Professor Thomas Osborne

Professor Thomas Osborne (SPAIS, University of Bristol, author of Aspects of Enlightenment: Social Theory and The Ethics of Truth (1998) and The Structure of Modern Cultural Theory (2008) visited Prague in mid-2018 and presented a paper On Montesquieu, Markets and the Liberalism of Fear. The interview was conducted online by Dr. Filip Vostal (CSTSS, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences) in autumn 2020.

From the History of Scientific Communications of the Russian Emigration: Egyptologist Gregory Lukyanov and the Kondakov Archaeological Institute in Prague

The article deals with the history of relations between Gregory Lukyanov, Russian Egyptologist and antiquarian, and his colleagues from the Kondakov Archaeological Institute in Prague in the 1930s. The article is based on materials from Czech archives (Archives of the Art History Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the collection of manuscripts of the Slavonic Library in Prague). The author of this work reveals the unknown page of the history of scientific communications in the midst of the Russian emigration, shows the existence of intellectual contacts between the «Russian Czechoslovakia» and «Russian Egypt». The article is devoted to the analysis of the internal contacts of Gregory Lukyanov, the motives of his professional activity abroad, the basic directions of his cooperation with colleagues from Prague and attempts to create there a collection of Coptic textiles and to publish its catalogue, which unfortunately failed. For the first time, the history of translation of «The Poem of Pentawer» by Lukyanov and attempts of publication of its Russian translation have been described. The author reveals the various contradictions between Gregory Lukyanov and his Prague colleagues that arose in the process of scientific communication.

New metal and glass finds from the Late Iron Age in South Moravia (CZ). The contribution of citizen science to knowledge of the La Tene settlement structure in the Břeclav Region

The ‘Celts Beneath the Pálava Hills’ exhibition was installed at the end of the summer of 2020 at the Regional Museum in Mikulov. The museum prepared the exhibition in cooperation with the Moravian Museum and the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno. Along with other unique exhibits, an assemblage of 70 metal artefacts stored in Dolní Dunajovice in the study collection of the Research Centre for the Roman and Great Migration periods of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, was chosen to be displayed for this event. The article presents 47 small artefacts made of copper alloys, 18 coins and five glass artefacts from 17 cadastral units, which enriched the exhibition with a variety of characteristic LT C and D1 finds. They do not form a complete collection, as their common denominator is that they were found in 2011–2017 solely by metal detectorists working together with the archaeologists from the workplace where the finds are stored. These never-before-published artefacts and the qualities of each deserve to be presented both to the public and the professional community. These artefacts include finds which, in the context of the Late Iron Age of south Moravia, are unique objects (including two bronze figurines) that are significant contributions to the clarification and differentiation of the topography of the La Tene settlement structure in the studied region.