The First Anniversary of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and a Mission to the Study of the Cosmological Evolution of the People’s Republic
This week marks the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the last year, science has performed well inUkraine, and international collaboration are shaping the future of research in the country.
My colleagues and I publicly expressed our pro-Ukrainian stance and refused to become an institution of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic. We moved to Mariupol, 100 or so kilometres south in unoccupied Ukraine, and restarted work.
In March 2022, soon after the full Russian invasion, our new home was completely destroyed, as was the building in which my colleagues and I rented apartments. We managed to escape the city in a few days. Others, in particular those unable to leave elderly parents who had moved with them, stayed back in their basements waiting for help. They faced weeks of uncertainty as to their fate.
We survived all the challenges once again. Our experience wasn’t captured even after our centre went. Some colleagues with children moved abroad, and others settled in friendly institutions in western Ukraine and continue to collaborate remotely. Our centre now operates in Kyiv, conducting prenatal screening and other types of genetic testing.
Is the Ministry of Education and Science really complacent? The scientific research and development of Ukraine during the pre-eclampsia crisis
When the full-scale war began, I regretted that I couldn’t join the army to fight for freedom and independence, a fact most readers of this journal take for granted. My close friend physicist Anton Senenko was one of the people I donated my car to.
The international scientific community’s support of Ukrainian scientists has been strong. The current programmes are geared at researchers who fled, but there should be more focused on those who stayed. There are some signs of hope. In February, the European Commission announced that it would open an office in Kyiv for Horizon Europe, the EU’s key research-funding programme. The National Research Foundation of Ukraine, launched in 2018, has administered seven calls for research and development proposals, two of them during wartime, and has partnerships with the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Dutch Research Council and the University of Cambridge, UK. More opportunities for scientists to stay in Ukraine should be supported by other universities and institutions, as well as the recruitment of those who are overseas to return to their home country. Слава Україні!
The courage the Ukrainian people are demonstrating is beyond words, and not only on the battlefields. The Ukrainian people are suffering with severe deprivation due to grief, lack of food and water, and living in the dark without light and heat.
Ukrainian scientists are integrated as far as possible into the global scientific community. Some of us have received foreign research grants. I was able to continue my work on pre-eclampsia because I received the Researchers at Risk fellowship, which was established by the British Academy and the Royal Society. I hope that the results will help my country.
The war’s consequences are superimposed on problems that already exist. The Ministry of Education and Science, which is responsible for assessing the quality and integrity of Ukrainian scientific research, is not fit to perform those tasks. The Ukrainian National Agency for Quality Assurance of Higher Education upheld an allegation that the minister of education and science had plagiarized from another source, but the matter has now been heard by the courts and decided on a technicality. There must be zero tolerance of any corruption that could hinder the development of the country, especially against the background of Ukraine’s candidacy for European Union membership.
The Nature Briefing: a microlensing tool for finding the magic angles of materials by using a microscope to rotate, polarise and search for magic angles
A team has designed a microscope to better show how electrons move in materials. The instrument gives useful information about the properties of the two layers of atoms that are put into close contact. The microscope can also rotate one of the layers, helping researchers look for so-called ‘magic angles’, where 2D materials like graphene can exhibit extraordinary properties.
How an extinct insect larvae’s prodigiously long ‘neck’ may have helped it hunt, and surveying the levels at which coastal cities are converting water into land.
We discussed some of the highlights from the Nature Briefing. The US Food and Drug Administration has requirements for increasing diversity in clinical trials and has research that suggests snakes are better at listening than previously thought.
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