STA, 13 June 2022 - Ljubljana's Trnovo borough will get a new science centre in 2024, a demonstration facility dedicated to the promotion and popularisation of science, research, technology, and lifelong learning. The EUR 26 million project will be co-funded from the state budget, EU and municipal funds.

The centre will offer experiments and demonstrations of major achievements in science, culture, and economy with a plethora of interactive gadgets.

It will put on display innovative products made in Slovenia and visitors will be able to learn about breakthrough advances in science in a comprehensive and interesting way.

Designed as a collection of pavilions and single-storey buildings, it will cover roughly 11,000 square metres between Barjanska and Riharjeva streets in Ljubljana.

The total value of the project is around EUR 26 million, with EUR 16 million to come from the European Regional Development Fund.

The rest of the funds will be provided by the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, while the municipality of Ljubljana chipping in EUR 924,000 for municipal infrastructure.

Construction works are scheduled to start in February 2023, to be completed by December 2024, says a decree unanimously adopted by the city council on Monday.

The first phase will entail a footpath and maintenance of green areas, and street lighting, followed by measures to reduce traffic along Riharjeva and Barjanska streets, and arranging public transport to and from the area.

The council's also decided to name two new parks in the capital.

Park Gazel, which translated as the park of fast growing companies, will be landscaped near the Technology Park in Brdo borough.

The city centre will get Park of the Erased, in honour of the people who were erased from the register of permanent residents in 1992 after Slovenia declared independence.

STA, 17 May 2022 - Mathematician Franc Forstnerič, a professor at the Ljubljana Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, is one of the three Slovenians who won the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for established researchers this year. Maths is about creating order in the universe, says the recipient of the first ERC project for mathematics in Slovenia.

Forstnerič received the European Research Council (ERC) five-year grant worth nearly EUR 1.5 million for his project titled Holomorphic Partial Differential Relations, which is aimed at coming up with new methods and findings in the area of Oka manifolds and more generally of oriented holomorphic systems.

In 1985, Forstnerič completed his doctoral thesis about holomorphic mappings in several complex variables at the University of Washington in Seattle, US.

During his studies, he was introduced to the Oka-Grauert principle, which deals with the existence and properties of holomorphic mappings from certain classes of complex manifolds. At the time, he lacked the "mathematical maturity" he now has to build on the principle, he told the STA.

After he obtained his PhD, Forstnerič first returned to Ljubljana and then went on several extended research stays abroad. In 1997, he was back in Ljubljana, determined to work intensively on the Oka-Grauert principle.

"In 1989, an important article on the subject was published by the eminent Russian-French mathematician Mikhael Gromov, the recipient of the Abel Prize in 2009. Gromov put the theory on a new footing, introduced new techniques and suggested possible further development, but he did not present detailed proof.

"Gromov is a brilliant mathematician who has contributed key new ideas in a number of mathematical fields, but he often leaves the detailed arguments and further development to others," Forstnerič said.

He involved his PhD student Jasna Prezelj in the research, and together, in a few years, they managed to make a crucial breakthrough in the understanding of Gromov's ideas.

Forstnerič then went on to work on the problem of characterising the class of complex manifolds to which the results of the theory apply. In 2006, he characterised this class by a simple "convex approximation property" and by a number of other properties which were not obviously equivalent to each other.

"This manifold property means that any holomorphic mapping of a convex set in a complex Euclidean space can be approximated by holomorphic mappings of the entire Euclidean space into a given manifold," he explains. This has solved one of the key problems posed by Gromov, and within a few years a complete theory emerged.

Based on this, Forstnerič introduced a new class of complex manifolds into the literature in 2009, which he named Oka manifolds after the theory's originator, the Japanese mathematician Kiyoshi Oka (1901-1978).

Manifolds are geometric objects such as curves and surfaces. "The world we live in is a manifold," notes the Slovenian mathematician, adding: "We live on a sphere; the sphere, galaxies, the universe, these are all manifolds."

Complex manifolds always have an even number of dimensions. "There is an additional structure to them that defines a special class of mappings between these manifolds - holomorphic mappings."

One reason why holomorphic mappings are important is because they occur naturally in physical problems. "For example, if you want to design an aircraft wing, you need to study laminar flow. The wing is situated in a flow of air, this air will bounce off, the wing will change its direction, and this will cause buoyancy.

"This is what keeps the aircraft in the air. But when you want to model how that airflow is going to flow around the wing, you draw a shape and then you have to calculate what is going to happen. It is more straightforward to use conformal mapping to map this wing shape onto a circle. Having mapped it onto a circle, you have explicit solutions of laminar flow that avoids the circle. Then you map these solutions back using conformal mapping. This is one simple application of such mappings," Forstnerič said.

His Oka theory received significant recognition in 2020. "Every 10 years, the American Mathematical Society renews the classification of mathematical fields in cooperation with the German journal Zentralblatt fur Mathematik. There was no suitable field for this theory, so we proposed it and it was accepted.

"They introduced a new field called Oka Theory and Oka Manifolds. This is my contribution to the classification. As far as I know, this is the second such case in mathematics in Slovenia," he noted.

His work is also fascinating in that it has helped to bring the theory of this type of complex manifolds back home to Japan after 80 years. "My main contribution was to conceptualise the theory and therefore make it more widely applicable."

The ERC project awarded to Forstnerič will allow him to expand his research into this field and pave the way for the existence of solutions to a number of problems in complex analysis and geometry as well as other areas of mathematics and beyond.

It will also allow him to build an international team that will include another three or four researchers. The project will be carried out at the Ljubljana Faculty of Mathematics and Physics.

Forstnerič's work has inspired Japanese mathematician Yuta Kusakabe, who managed to make some important breakthroughs in this field in his PhD thesis in 2020.

"I have invited him to Slovenia. He has a young family, so he can't come at the moment, but since the project will last five years, I hope that during that time he will be able to get a sabbatical and come here," Forstnerič said, adding he is pleased he will be joined by another established researcher, Rafael Andrist.

In science it is very important to introduce a new concept at the right moment, he said. "Examples may have been discussed before, but once you introduce a relevant concept and show that it has many different characterisations that all lead to the same goal, then it can become the germ of a new theory."

This requires a good knowledge of a specific scientific field, the ability to detect and abstract key features, and a bit of serendipity, he added.

"Mathematics is, in a way, creating order in the universe. It's not just calculations. You have to establish a concept and based on this concept, develop a theory. Once you have the right concept, you can develop it further, but until you get it, it's all a bit foggy," Forstnerič said.

STA, 6 April 2022 - Several hundred scientists gathered in the centre of Ljubljana on Thursday to protest against the transformation of private educational and research institutions into public entities eligible for public funds, a policy they say is driven by political interests rather than expert judgement.

"We cannot consent to the duplication of activities and irrational spending of hard-won funds via alternative routes instead of regular routes applicable to other scientific institutions," said Martina Lukšič Hacin, one of the Scientific Research Centre at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU).

The protest, organised by the Chancellors' Conference and Coordinating Body of Slovenian Research Institutions, comes after the National Assembly passed in mid-March a bill transforming the Pomurje Academic and Science Union, led by an Education Ministry state secretary, into a public institution.

Just a week later, the government endorsed the creation of Rudolfovo, a research hub in Novo Mesto seen as a key step in the creation of a new public university in Novo Mesto run by staff with close ties to the government.

And today the National Assembly was due to vote on the transformation of a Novo Mesto faculty into a public institution, another planned piece of the Novo Mesto university, a step which has been temporarily derailed by a referendum motion lodged by the opposition.

The organisers of the rally demand that autonomy of science be respected, they want the National Research Agency, where there was recently a change of ownership, to have a "politically independent leadership", and they demand transparent distribution of public funds.

Gregor Majdič, the chancellor of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia's largest public university, expressed concern about the formation of new public institutes and regional universities without any analysis or consultations.

"Slovenia still invests the lowest share of public funds in all of EU in science, development, innovation and higher education. We have to ask ourselves whether we are rational and responsible in the distribution of funds that are low as it is."

The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport responded by pointing to an increase in funding for science and research. It said this year they would increase by EUR 44.3 million or 13.7% to EUR 369 million, which was up 21.8% compared to realised funding in 2021.

The funding is to increase by an additional 7.2% in 2023 to EUR 395.6 million.

It said the goal was to earmark 1% of GDP in public funds for science and research with an annual growth rate of 0.08% of GDP. It added that budged funds for science wound double by 2025.

So far there have been 16 science and research institutes in Slovenia, of which 15 in Ljubljana and one in Koper, the ministry said, adding that only decentralisation in the field could activate as much potential as possible and create conditions conducive to applied research.

"The fear of the scientific research community that the creation of a new public research institution would jeopardise its current or future material situation is thus completely unnecessary, all the more so as funding for science will only increase in the years to come," the ministry's release reads.

STA, 30 March 2022 - A public research institution will be founded in Novo Mesto in April to unite the scientific, technological and development potential of south-eastern Slovenia and wider. The Rudolfovo Institute - Science and Technology Centre Novo Mesto (Rudolfovo - Znanstveno in tehnološko središče Novo mesto, JRZ Rudolfovo) is to start work this summer. Initially, it is to employ 30 people.

The institute will be an upgrade of efforts that started in 2016 with the foundation of the Development, Research and Innovation Centre by four municipalities from the region, and the Laboratory for Factories of the Future, said the head of the Novo Mesto Development Centre, Franci Bratkovič.

The project, in which over a million euro in regional funds has been invested so far, will unite the scientific, technological and development potential in the region and wider, enable applicative research in cooperation with businesses and promote innovation.

The new hub will be created in line with a government decision adopted on 24 March. "We have a team of competent experts and equipment, we are cooperating with businesses and education institutions. And we have purchased land where the new institute is to be based," Bratkovič said.

Staff will be hired gradually, and Borut Rončević was appointed interim head yesterday. In the first phase, 30 people will be employed.

Initially, the hub will use the facilities of the Development Centre and later move to a new building with a technological campus.

In the next 15 years, it plans to help set up 15 companies that will employ 1,500 people, said Bratkovič.

Rudolfovo will be the first public research institution in SE Slovenia and regional mayors agreed today that it would open development opportunities, contribute to decentralisation of the country, enable access to technology, boost regional cooperation and promote innovation.

The newspaper Večer has reported the government will secure EUR 5.2 million in funding for the hub in two years, of which EUR 2.6 million the first year, more than initially planned, probably due to the upcoming election.

According to the paper, the hub is the brainchild of Borut Rončević, the head of the RTV Slovenija supervisory board who served as the director of the Education Ministry's Higher Education Directorate during the second Janez Janša government.

STA, 30 March 2022 - A team of researchers at Slovenia's National Institute of Biology (NiB) has presented StressKnowledgeMap, an app that will help potato breeders develop more weather stress-resistant potato varieties.

The app brings together the world's knowledge of the molecular mechanisms of plant stress responses and organises it into complex functional networks, the NiB said.

Information on genes involved in the stress response has been integrated into the app alongside mRNAs and the translation of mRNAs into proteins that have a function in the plant response.

The researchers, led by Kristina Gruden, have also described the links between these elements and other regulatory mechanisms, thus combining the dispersed knowledge from countless experiments into digital tools that allows computer modelling of plant stress responses.

At https://skm.nib.si, users can review, research and analyse data or add new data as well as export it for the purposes of modelling and visualisation.

This enables scientists to jointly improve the treasure trove of knowledge gathered in the StressKnowledgeMap app, the NiB said in a press release.

The app has been developed as part of the Accelerated Development of multiple-stress tolerAnt PoTato (ADAPT) project funded by the EU-Horizon 2020 programme.

The project aims at making potato varieties more resilient to adverse weather conditions to contribute to new strategies of adapting this plant to future climate changes.

STA, 21 March 2022 - Slovenia is launching Slovenian Genome, a project of Slovenian population's genetic variability data that could simplify genetic diagnostics and thus help people with rare diseases, which affect one in 2,000 Slovenians. To have fast genomic diagnostics, normal variations of the human genome in Slovenia need to be defined.

It usually takes more than eight years from first symptoms to the right diagnosis, while this period could be significantly shortened with the Slovenian Genome, Health Minister Janez Poklukar told the press on Monday.

Tadej Battelino from UKC Ljubljana's Paediatric Clinic invited all healthy Slovenian residents who have no rare disease to donate their genomic information to help make a diagnose for those who have inherited one of the rare diseases.

Battelino said that if we wanted to shorten the path to diagnosis, we needed the genome of healthy people, adding that "every genomic information is strictly anonymous".

He said "this is a kind of a humanitarian trait of this project. Those more lucky can help those less lucky by giving at the disposal our genomic data anonymously."

Poklukar said that rare disease patients often got a misdiagnosis and consequently wrong treatment, which further affected the quality of their living. The plan to treat rare diseases thus involves "prompt diagnostics with personalised medicine".

"Slovenian Gemone will make genomic diagnostics in Slovenia much easier, because it will bring to the common European database all genomic variability data of a representative sample of healthy Slovenian residents," Poklukar said.

"In a few year's time many diseases which are now incurable could be cured. So I think it is very good to have the data about the normal genome," said Marko Pokorn, medical director of the Paediatric Clinic, who has already contributed his blood sample for sequencing.

Every person differs genetically from another person with whom they are not related by three million bases in genes, said Damjana Rozman from the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics.

"Within the three million bases there are probably some changes which are more frequent in the Slovenian population but are perfectly normal. If we know that, then it will be easier to see which changes actually make us predisposed to some rare disease."

STA, 10 January 2022 - The European Research Council (ERC) has granted EUR 2.2 million in funding to the project PHAGECONTROL - Development of Host Manipulation by Bacteriophage, led by Anna Dragoš from the Biotechnical Faculty at the University of Ljubljana, a prominent researcher in the field of virus-bacteria interaction.

Out of the total funding awarded, around EUR 700,000 will be allocated for a precision microscope, which will be used to study viruses that enter bacteria and change their properties by inserting viral DNA into bacterial DNA.

Some of the altered properties of bacteria may be beneficial for humans, while others may change from harmless bacteria to pathogens. The project will establish new methods and create new molecular tools to study virus transmission, which could also improve predictions of the spread of epidemics in the future.

"We will study how viruses can change the behaviour of bacteria in the first phase, the second phase will cover the molecular mechanisms responsible for these changes, and in the third phase, we will test whether viruses change the behaviour of bacteria because they are cooperating or because they are manipulators," Dragoš explained.

"There is great potential in this project to discover a significant part of the genetic 'black box' of viruses, as well as new antimicrobial compounds carried by viruses. These could eventually find medical applications, for example as alternatives to antibiotics," she added.

Dragoš is the third University of Ljubljana researcher that managed to secure an ERC grant for her project. The first one was awarded in 2011 to Nedjeljka Žagar, a researcher in the field of meteorology, and the second one went to Marta Verginella from the Faculty of Arts in 2016.

STA, 5 January 2022 - A group of physicists at the Jožef Stefan Institute confirmed the spin liquid state even at absolute zero temperatures, as first predicted by Swiss physicist G.H. Wannier in 1950, but his wish for experimental confirmation has remained unfulfilled until now. The achievement was published in the Nature Materials journal.

Spin liquids are a special magnetic state of matter. They are the magnetic analogue of the liquid state of matter, in that the magnetic moments (spins) are disordered, but at the same time already strongly correlated.

Swiss physicist Gregory Hugh Wannier first predicted in 1950 that the spin liquid state can be present even at absolute zero temperature. This has now been confirmed by Slovenian scientists.

The project involved physicists from the Jožef Stefan Institute - Tina Arh, Matej Pregelj and Andrej Zorko, together with colleagues from the Institute of Mathematics, Physics and Mechanics and other research institutions in India, the UK, France and the USA.

The key to their breakthrough was the study of a magnetically unexplored compound, using a wide range of complementary experimental techniques, the Jožef Stefan Institute said.

Andrej Zorko explained for the STA that the team was studying the magnetic properties of a certain crystal, neodymium heptatantalate, and added that from a magnetic point of view, it is possible to draw analogies with states of matter.

The magnetic moments (spins) at sufficiently low temperatures can typically arrange like building blocks in the solid state of matter, while at high temperatures, they will each point in their own direction, like in the gaseous state of matter.

Spin liquids are somewhere in between, they are the magnetic analogue of the liquid state of matter, Zorko said. "That the spins in a spin liquid do not arrange themselves in the same direction, even at absolute zero, is like water never turning into a crystal or solid matter when cooled."

Beyond the scientific aspect, this discovery could be potentially important in the light of modern quantum technologies, as spin liquids are considered to be one of the most promising platforms for storing information in quantum computing, Zorko concluded.

You can find the paper here

STA, 16 December 2021 - Slovenia is already a European power in the field of artificial intelligence, said the Minister for Digital Transformation, Mark Boris Andrijanič. As he pointed out on Thursday at the European AI Forum in Ljubljana, Slovenia has the highest number of AI researchers per capita in Europe.

Slovenia hosts the UNESCO Centre for Artificial Intelligence and has an extremely vibrant AI community, minister Andrijanič pointed out in his address.

"We draw our strength from more than four decades of artificial intelligence research at the world-renowned Jožef Stefan Institute," he added.

Andrijanič also touched upon the importance of linking cutting-edge research with industry and the public sector, and highlighted Slovenia's decision to make digital transformation and AI one of its top priorities during its EU presidency.

"During Slovenia's presidency, EU ministers endorsed the general approach on the digital services act, the digital markets act, the data governance act and the network and information systems security directive, which together form the backbone of new digital legislation in the EU," he said.

According to Andrijanič, the first compromise text for the artificial intelligence act was already prepared during the Slovenian presidency. This will be the first comprehensive legislative framework for AI in the world, he pointed out.

"Artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies know no national borders or other limits of this kind. It is therefore crucial that we all work together to harness their unlimited potential," Andrijanič added.

Andrijanič spoke at the European AI Forum, a pan-European non-profit initiative addressing the field of artificial intelligence.

This year's conference addressed the key challenges of AI deployment and the legislation dealing with issues of data in AI. It was organised by the AI4SI initiative and the Association for Informatics and Telecommunications at the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

STA, 5 August 2021 - The first ever public demonstration of fully encrypted quantum communication between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia took place during the meeting of G20 digital economy ministers in Trieste on Thursday.

It was the first time in history that fully quantum encrypted communication was made possible by means of optical fibres connecting three nodes, in Trieste, Ljubljana and Rijeka.

In Ljubljana, the event was held at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics (FMF), whose dean Anton Ramšak noted that quantum communication would allow what have so far been unattainable levels of communication security.

"Comparing the security of encryption methods established so far and quantum communication is like comparing bows and arrows with guns," Ramšak illustrated.

The technology uses quantum keys, sequences of random numbers established remotely through exchange of individual photons of light.

5. 8. je potekala prva javna demonstracija medvladne kvantne komunikacije. Prvič v zgodovini je bil omogočen povsem kvantno šifrirani prenos med vozlišči 3 držav (Trst, Ljubljana in Reka). Sodelovali so tudi fiziki @FMF_UL, prof. dr. Rainer Kaltenbaek in prof. dr. Anton Ramšak. pic.twitter.com/3eNTiSSLq7

— FMF UL (@FMF_UL) August 6, 2021

The exchange protocol is based on quantum mechanics and if anyone tried to intercept the key, they would leave behind a trace that would alert those involved in communication and allow them to respond immediately.

In all other established technologies of information transfer, a copy of the key may be intercepted and copied without leaving a trace.

The quantum communication was tested by FMF physicists Rainer Kaltenbaek and Anton Ramšak in cooperation with their colleagues at the University of Trieste's Department of Physics and the National Research Council of Italy and Croatian physicists from the Ruđer Bošković Institute.

In his address, Kaltenbaek noted that Europe pioneered the field as early as 2012, but since the relevant institutions had not been willing to provide sufficient financial support, it was larger countries, mainly China which later took the initiative in implementing the technology.

Today's demonstration was also important in the context of the future European quantum communication infrastructure (EuroQCI), which is being promoted by the 27 EU member countries and the European Commission with the support of the European Space Agency.

The event depended on technical support of the link between Trieste and the FMF in Ljubljana via Postojna that was made possible by the telecommunications provider Telekom Slovenije through its modern network of optical links by means of dark fibres.

The test was the first ever application of quantum laws of nature outside science labs with the purpose of establishing fully secure communication.

After addresses by keynote speakers, a short concert was performed by musicians from the Giuseppe Tartini State Conservatory of Trieste and the academies of music in Ljubljana and Zagreb using the breakthrough quantum communication technology.