ZAGREB, March 28, 2018 - Davor Solter is the first Croatian scientist to win the Canadian Gairdner Award for biochemical research for the discovery of mammalian genomic imprinting that causes parent-of-origin specific gene expression and its consequences for development and disease, the Canadian Embassy in Croatia said on Wednesday.

An international group of scientists, led by Croatian experts from from St. Catherine's Hospital and Genos published a very important scientific finding: glycans can predict rheumatoid arthritis 10 years before onset of symptoms!

ZAGREB, March 17, 2018 - As part of his visit to Croatia, the President of the European Research Council (ERC) Jean-Pierre Bourguignon visited Zagreb's Ruđer Bošković Institute (IRB) where he was informed in detail about two ERC projects being conducted by IRB researchers Iva Tolić and Ana Sunčana Smith as project leaders.

ZAGREB, March 1, 2018 - The University of Augsburg has confirmed that former Croatian Science and Education Minister Pavo Barišić's doctoral thesis from 1989 is not self-plagiarism.

ZAGREB, February 22, 2018 - A new unique multi-disciplinary centre for marine bioprospecting in the Adriatic Sea, called BioProCro, was officially opened on Thursday at the Ruđer Bošković Institute (IRB) and this will be the venue for research by internationally recognised research groups in the fields of chemical and biological diversity, microbiology and ecology.

ZAGREB, February 8, 2018 - Split University has established cooperation with a new strategic partner, the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, a world renowned institution and Israel's most prestigious technology institute that has produced four Nobel Prize winners and that cooperates with the world's leading technology companies.

ZAGREB, January 28, 2018 - What is Mediterranean identity and whether it exists, what can be done to prevent wildfires in Mediterranean countries which, in the period from 2001 and 2014, were hit by 37,000 fires, and what is the globally known phenomenon of Mediterranean cuisine – these are some of the topics dealt with by the international science monograph "Mediterranean Identities – Environment, Society, Culture", edited by Croatian geographer Borna Fuerst-Bjeliš.

The project will be implemented by the Ruđer Bošković Institute.

It is important to have the right priorities.

Scientists from the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb have issued a research paper in which they describe the artificial intelligence technology which can independently “read” scientific texts in the field of microbiology, reports Novi List on February 1, 2017.

The scientific paper authored by Marija Brbić, Fran Supek and their colleagues from the Department of Electronics was published in the prestigious journal Nucleic Acids Research, which deals with latest advances in molecular biology and which is one of the six percent of the top magazines in the scientific category.

“Our team has created algorithms which learn how to recognize characteristics of different types of bacteria through a text analysis of articles on Wikipedia, student papers and professional research papers”, explained Fran Supek, adding that such algorithms were very important since the volume of scientific literature and overall content on the internet is large and increasing, and therefore researchers can hardly keep track of all the new information and data which appear.

The research enabled the scientists to perfect computer statistical techniques that, in just a few minutes, can “read” and “understand” thousands of texts well-enough to recognize features of living organisms, which would otherwise take years for researchers to read themselves.

The research paper also demonstrated that the order of genes on chromosomes, which is significantly different between living organisms, very well reflects many of their features. For example, microbes that produce spores and thus survive in harsh conditions for hundreds of years demonstrate characteristic “gene neighbourhoods” that are not present in microbes which cannot produce spores.

Artificial intelligence has examined more than a million combinations of various characteristics and bacterial species. To check all of them, a human researcher would have to spend years reading scientific literature. Our algorithms will easily process texts which will appear in the future and they will automatically link them to the genetic code of organisms, said Supek.

The research paper was created within the framework of the European Union project called MAESTRA, and included collaboration with the group led by Anita Kriško from the Mediterranean Institute for Life Sciences in Split.