Thanks to regular brightness measurements of over a billion stars of our Galaxy, astronomers working at The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) at Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, Poland, have discovered an unknown class of pulsating variable stars. Follow-up observations have shown that these objects are much hotter than our Sun. A very unusual property of the objects is that they significantly change their physical parameters over a period of about half an hour. Such rapid variations have never been observed in any known type of pulsating stars. Theoretical models confirm the observed behaviour, but the origin of the new stars remains a mystery. The discovery of the new class of variable stars has been published in the prestigious Nature Astronomy journal.Pulsating stars are very important objects in modern astrophysics. They are used to measure distances in the Universe and they allow studying the evolution of stars and their interiors.

It seemed that we knew almost all about pulsating stars, that we knew all their types, but not. We have found something completely new and very unusual – says Dr. Paweł Pietrukowicz, the principal investigator and the first author of the published work.

Figure 1. Comparison of sizes of various types of pulsating variable stars. Author: Paweł Pietrukowicz / Warsaw University Astronomical Observatory, Poland

Unlike our Sun, many stars are unstable–they pulsate. The entire star expands and shrinks by a few percent. Both the size and surface temperature change, which is observed as regular brightness variations. Large-amplitude variations are seen in red giants. These are relatively cool stars with extended envelopes. Pulsating red giants such as RR Lyrae type stars and even brighter delta Cephei type stars (the so called classical Cepheids) are common in the Universe. Surface temperature of these stars is similar or slightly higher then the temperature of the Sun (~5800 K). The pulsation periods of giants cover a wide range from a few hours to hundreds of days.

Hot blue stars also pulsate. Its surface temperature is of several tens of thousands degrees. Among hot pulsating stars are beta Cephei type stars and subdwarfs. The former objects are even one thousand times brighter than the latter, owing to their much larger sizes. The pulsation periods of hot stars are short, they range from seconds to hours. The amplitudes are small, since the stars are compact and have less inflated envelopes. By monitoring a billion stars by the OGLE survey, the realm of variable objects have been extended for a new, unusual class of stars.

The OGLE survey is a flagship Polish observational project celebrating its 25 years. Each clear night, practically non-stop since 1992, we monitor the variability of hundreds of millions of Milky Way stars from Las Campanas Observatory, located on the Chilean Atacama Desert. – says Prof. Andrzej Udalski, the head and manager of the project.

Among discovered objects are extrasolar planets, unique events of gravitational microlensing, outbursting novae and supernovae, and many other objects that vary, including periodic objects like pulsating stars. Astronomers from OGLE have found and classified about a million genuine periodic variables, half of which are various types of pulsating stars. This is the largest collection of variable objects in the whole history of astronomy.

The discovery of the new class of pulsating stars has been a great adventure that started in 2013. That year, we surprisingly noted the first such mysterious object – mentions Dr. Pietrukowicz.

What surprised the astronomers was the fact that the first object and another stars found later vary in brightness by several tens percent in about half an hour. Such large changes in such a short timescale had never been observed before. To find the cause of this variability, follow-up observations have been taken with the largest telescopes in the world. The observations showed that the objects have the temperature of 30,000 degrees and the observed changes are due to pulsations. This allowed the investigators to build a model of the star. It turned out that the new objects have a giant-like structure with 96% of the total mass concentrated in a core having merely 20% of the size of the star. The remaining matter forms a light inflated envelope that pulsate rapidly with a large amplitude. Based on the observed properties of the stars, the name of the new class has been proposed: BLAPs, as for Blue Large-Amplitude Pulsators.

The theory describes the structure of BLAPs, but it fails to explain their origin. These stars must have lost a significant fraction of their mass at some point to became as hot as we observe them now.

Certainly, it is impossible to reach such configuration in evolution of a single star. Perhaps, the star passed by closely the supermassive black hole residing in the Galactic Centre. As the result of such an encounter, the star would loose its outer layers – suggests Prof. Wojciech Dziembowski, a theoretician and the second author of the article in Nature Astronomy.

Such a possibility is rather unlikely. A more realistic explanation is that BLAPs are the result of a merger of two low-mass stars. Future observations should help solving this mystery – adds Dr. Paweł Pietrukowicz.

The article announcing the discovery of the new class of pulsating variable stars, BLAPs, has been published in the monthly journal Nature Astronomy: “Blue large-amplitude pulsators as a new class of variable stars”, Paweł Pietrukowicz, Wojciech A. Dziembowski, Marilyn Latour, Rodolfo Angeloni, Radosław Poleski, Francesco di Mille, Igor Soszyński, Andrzej Udalski, Michał K. Szymański, Łukasz Wyrzykowski, Szymon Kozłowski, Jan Skowron, Dorota Skowron, Przemek Mróz, Michał Pawlak & Krzysztof Ulaczyk 2017, Nature Astronomy, 1, 0166 (doi: 10.1038/s41550-017-0166)

The OGLE project has received funding from the National Science Center (grants MAESTRO, OPUS, HARMONIA, SYMFONIA).

Project Consortia invited to the second stage of the QuantERA Call 2017 can now submit their full proposals through the Electronic Submission System. Guidelines and further information can be found under the following link: Electronic Submission System (ESS) - guidelines (stage two).

Polish applicants must register their applications in the OSF submission system (UNISONO application) until July 11^th, 2017.

Contact:

• In case of any further questions please contact: Mr. Mathieu Girerd, +33 1 7354 8213
• Contact at National Science Centre: Sylwia Kostka, tel. + 48 12 341 9018, Marlena Wosiak, tel. +48 12 341 9093, Dr inż. Ewelina Szymańska-Skolimowska, tel. + 48 12 341 9155

We would like to invite all researchers to participate in new international funding opportunities in Humanities and Social Sciences. Proposals submitted under the calls will be assessed by international experts.

HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) – call for research proposals in Humanities

HERA is a network of European research funding organisations who support research in Humanities. Up to date, with co-funding from the European Commission,  the network has announced 3 calls for international research projects. 

In August 2017, HERA plans to open a new funding opportunity. Its working title is: Public spaces: culture and integration in Europe. Application in English may be submitted by research consortia composed of at least 4 research teams from a minimum of 4 countries participating in the call. The deadline for submission of proposals is scheduled for the second half of October 2017.

Countries participating in the call:

Austria, Belgium (Wallonia), The Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and The United Kingdom

Contact:

Wojciech Sowa, Wojciech.sowa@ncn.gov.pl, tel: 0048 12 341 9171

Malwina Gębalska, malwina.gebalska@ncn.gov.pl, tel: 0048 12 341 9017

EqUIP (EU-India Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities) – call for research projects in Humanities and Social Sciences

The call for proposals titled Sustainability, equity, wellbeing and cultural connections has been launched by the NCN together with EqUIP, whose aim is to support research in Humanities and Social Sciences carried out by researchers from India and Europe. Applications in English should focus on societal challenges facing both India and respective European countries; suggested themes include, but are not limited to, sustainability, equity, wellbeing and cultural connections. Funders strongly encourage interdisciplinary approaches across the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to address the themes of this call. Other disciplines can also be involved in proposals as long as the overarching focus remains rooted in SSH.

Each proposal under this call will require the building of consortia of three or more research groups based in three or more different countries participating in the call and will be eligible for funding from their national funding agencies. Every proposal must involve representation from India eligible for funding by the Indian Council of Social Science Research or the Indian Council of Philosophical Research.

Applicants are invited to use the EqUIP partner search tool, which facilitates matches between potential partners with similar ideas. It provides the opportunity to express interest either in joining a research proposal or to search for partner(s) for an existing proposal.

Countries participating in the EqUIP call:

Finland, France, India, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, The United Kingdom

Call timetable:

• Launch of the call: end of August 2017
• Deadline for submitting applications: end of November 2017
• Call results: July 2017                                                 
• Awards commence: January 2019

For more information please see:

http://equipproject.eu/equip-call-for-collaborative-research-on-sustainability-equity-wellbeing-and-cultural-connections/

Contact:

Kinga Sekerdej, kinga.sekerdej@ncn.gov.pl, tel: 0048 12 341 9172

Malwina Gębalska, malwina.gebalska@ncn.gov.pl, tel: 0048 12 341 9017

The NCN has made available funding worth nearly € 65 million to researchers  with a doctorate and scientists with particularly long-standing experience, who wish to conduct research projects, establish research teams, or engage in international collaboration. On 14^th June, the Centre announced its new calls: SONATA 13, SONATA BIS 7, MAESTRO 9 and HARMONIA 9.A new feature to the calls announced today is the interview with projects’ principal investigators in SONATA, SONATA BIS and MAESTRO. It may be held in English, which also makes the grants available to international researchers, a group in short supply in many Polish research centres. We are also making it a rule for the Expert Team in MAESTRO, the most prestigious among our call types, to be composed entirely of scholars based outside Poland. We hope that this will additionally improve the call's level, said professor Zbigniew Błocki, Director of the NCN.

It is the 13^th time that proposals have been accepted under the SONATA funding scheme, welcoming applications from holders of a doctorate degree awarded within 2 to 7 years of applying. The call’s budget has been set at nearly € 17 million. The call’s objective is to support innovative research using state-of-the-art equipment and original methodologies. In the current edition of the call, the project’s principal investigator is required to have published (or have had accepted for publication) between one and ten papers, of which one should be attached to the project proposal.

This is already SONATA’s third consecutive edition where the principal investigator may apply to the NCN for a reduction of obligatory teaching hours by 50%. The research centre where the investigator is employed will receive funds from the NCN that will allow it to hire a substitute, allowing the principal investigator to be able to devote more time to the project itself.

SONATA BIS is a call announced to establish new research teams by researchers who have been awarded a doctorate within 5 to 12 years before the year of grant application. In this call there is also the possibility of applying for a reduction of obligatory teaching hours. The budget of the call’s 7^th edition will amount to nearly € 29 million.

As in SONATA, here the project’s principal investigator is required to have published (or have had accepted for publication) academic papers. In this instance, the numbers are between three and seven. Three most important papers should be attached to the proposal.

MAESTRO is the most prestigious of NCN's calls, seeking participation from advanced researchers willing to carry out ground-breaking projects, surpassing the current boundaries of knowledge. More than € 9.5 million will be distributed among the awardees of the call’s 9^th edition.

A prospective principal investigator in a MAESTRO project is a researcher with at least five papers published in quality scientific journals over the past 10 years (three of the most important papers should be attached to the proposal), has served as principal investigator to at least two projects under national or international funding opportunities, and who has otherwise been academically active.

Some of the call’s evaluation criteria have been made more specific. For a principal investigator to receive the highest possible score, it is required from them to document, among others, their participation in expert panels on international calls, a high citation rate, and an award or at least an admission of their research proposal in the second stage of an ERC funding opportunity.

This time researchers applying for this grant of excellence will face an international panel of experts even in the first stage of the merit-based evaluation. It is therefore required that, unlike in the call’s previous editions, the project’s short description be written in English.

HARMONIA, announced for the 9^th time, is a call for research projects carried out as international collaboration, non-co-financed from international resources. This year, its budget will exceed € 9.5 million.

Apart from projects carried out in direct collaboration with a partner from abroad, the funding may be also given to research conducted under international programmes for bi- or multilateral collaboration, and also to Polish research teams using large-scale international research infrastructure.

Both the Polish principal investigator and the leading partner are required to back their application with 3 to 7 published (or accepted for publication) papers, of which three should be attached to the proposal. The project’s short description should be written in Polish.

The call closes on 15^th September 2017, and the publication of results is scheduled for 15^th March 2018. For detailed information see the National Science Centre’s webpage.

On behalf of the Research Council of Lithuania we would like to inform you about the call for proposals for Post-Doctoral Fellowships. The Research Council of Lithuania, the main RTD project funding body in the country, on April 14^th, 2017, launched the first call for proposals for project funding under the measure No 09.3.3-LMT-K-712 “Strengthening the Skills and Capacities of Public Sector Researchers for Engaging in High Level R&D Activities,” activity “Promotion of Post-Doctoral Fellowships” of the Operational Programme for European Union fund investments in 2014–2020.The purpose of the measure is to support post-doctoral fellowship studies, to enhance the scientific skills of young researchers through practical activities and the exchange of scientific ideas, as well as promoting the setting-up and development of scientific communication and networking.

The budget of the call is up to € 4.35 million.

Eligible applicants are  universities, Lithuanian state research institutes holding the right to carry out doctoral programmes in arts or science, and (or) state research institutes for researcher training alongside universities included in the open vocational information, counselling, and guidance AIKOS system. Postdoctoral research fellows may apply from all over the world and are expected to hold a doctoral degree awarded by a research and study institution, provided no more than five years have lapsed from the doctoral degree award date to the deadline for submission of applications indicated in the call for proposals (the period does not include maternity leave, paternity leave or child raising leave until the child is three years of age); they must be engaged in the research activity provided in the project.

The maximum amount of the project budget is up to € 72,450. The amount of eligible costs is determined for each project individually, and will be reimbursed according to unit costs and flat rates. The maximum funding intensity may exceed up to 100 % of all eligible costs.

The duration of a project shall be 24 months. In the course of the project implementation, the postdoctoral research fellow must be enrolled and attend a fellowship programme at a foreign research and study institution, a research centre, a laboratory, an enterprise, an institution, a library, an archive, an expedition, etc. at least for one month (this may be divided into two parts at least for 15 days).

The call closes at 17:00 (local time) on July 5th, 2017.

The procedure for application submission, information for applicants and call documents can be found at http://www.lmt.lt/en/news/call-for-proposals-gw2j.html

QuantERA Consortium selected 92 pre-proposals, requesting funding of almost € 109 M, that are invited to prepare and submit a full application to the QuantERA Call 2017. The deadline for full proposals submission has been extended to July 11^th, 2017. The Electronic Submission System will be open in mid-June. 

221 pre-proposals were submitted in response to the QuantERA Call 2017. Each pre-proposal was reviewed, evaluated and ranked by the scientific Evaluation Panel, following the criteria recommended by the European Commission: Excellence, Impact and Quality and Efficiency of Implementation. Out of all received pre-proposals, 165 were evaluated above the quality threshold, and among these 92 are invited by the QuantERA Steering Committee to the 2^nd stage of the evaluation process.

Updated Call Announcement can be found here.

Contact:

• In case of any further questions please contact Mr. Mathieu Girerd, +33 1 7354 8213
• Contact at National Science Centre: Sylwia Kostka (tel. +48 12 341 9018); Marlena Wosiak (tel. +48 12 341 9093)

The National Science Centre is pleased to present list of projects qualified for funding in NCN POLONEZ 1 call for proposals.

The National Science Centre has published the results of the twelfth edition of the OPUS, PRELUDIUM and SONATA programmes, and – for the third time – the list of awardees of the POLONEZ funding opportunity. Researchers conducting basic research under the four schemes have been granted nearly € 111 million.

OPUS, PRELUDIUM and SONATA are the most popular funding opportunities operated by the National Science Centre (NCN), a Krakow-based governmental agency for funding basic research. This May has seen the conclusion of their 12^th edition, with ca € 104 million in financing. The results of the POLONEZ 3 opportunity have also been announced, with funding granted to incoming researchers. In the current edition, authors of the winning projects will receive over € 6.7 million.

A total of 4,219 research projects were submitted under the four schemes, of which, 1,042 have been approved for funding.  In the OPUS, PRELUDIUM and SONATA programmes, the success rate has been 27 per cent. It was far more difficult to win funding under the POLONEZ scheme, with only 10 per cent of the competing entrants receiving funding for their projects.

The success rate in our three most popular funding opportunities has increased by 3 per cent in comparison to that of the results published only one year ago, in the 10^th edition, said professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the NCN. At the moment, the success rate in most funding schemes is around 30 per cent. This is something of a welcome proportion, which allows us to recognise the merit of a fair number of projects, while making sure the system remains competitive.

The OPUS 12 call was open to all researchers, notwithstanding their years of experience and degrees earned. It is, therefore, no wonder that it has seen the largest number of entries, totalling 1,786. Of those, 409 have been approved for funding, with almost € 73 million to be distributed among their authors.

One of the awardees is dr hab. Przemysław Bąbel, affiliated at Jagiellonian University. Dr Bąbel will continue his research on pain in the project titled “Social Context of Pain. The Effect of Social Information concerning the Pain on Pain Experience and Pain Memory,” worth over € 211,700.    

The PRELUDIUM 12 call  has been dedicated to persons at the early stages of their research pursuits, who hold no doctorate. This time, beginner researchers have submitted 1,171 proposals, of which 372 have been approved as research projects to be carried out with the help of € 9.34 million in funding.

Under the PRELUDIUM scheme, Aleksandra Hernik of Poznan University of Medical Sciences, will perform research on the causes and course of hematological disorders that accompany conditions of the thyroid gland. Her project has been granted funding in excess of € 35,600.

SONATA is a call for projects carried out by researchers with a doctorate degree held for up to 7 years at the time of application. The programme is intended to support researchers at the beginning of their career with the opportunity to carry out innovative research, using state-of-the-art technology or an original methodology. There were 882 entries in the current call, of which 224 have been selected for funding. The call’s budget has been set at nearly € 21.8 million.

Among the grantees is dr Andrzej Siódmok of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences. In his project titled “Colourful Precision for the Large Hadron Collider”, he will work on improving measuring methods by developing Monte Carlo event generators, which are “virtual hadron colliders” of sorts. Dr Siódmok will be granted ca. € 32,600 in funding.

POLONEZ 3 is among those NCN calls that are geared towards bolstering internationalisation of research in Poland. The programme enables incoming researchers to move to Poland for fellowships in Polish host institutions. Of the 380 proposals submitted, 37 have been approved for funding, totalling over € 6.7 million.

Incoming researchers who have received the grant in POLONEZ include dr Asiya Bulatova, who has been accepted as a fellow to the University of Warsaw. Her project titled “Science of the Self: Human Agency in Formalist Theories of Literature and Biomedical Research, 1917–1925” has been granted € 141,300.

Ranking lists

Why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe? The reason might be hidden in the neutrino nature: one of the preferred theoretical models assumes, that these elementary particles were identical with their own anti-particles. This in turn would lead to an extremely rare nuclear decay process, the neutrinoless double-beta decay. The experiment GERDA now has reached a most important improvement in the search for double-beta decay by reducing the disturbances (background) to an unprecedented low level making it the first “background-free” experiment in the field. This achievement is reported in the recent NATURE article appearing April 6^th, 2017.

Neutrinos are ghostly particles which are extremely hard to detect. They play a central role in how the sun burns, how supernovae explode and how elements are formed during the big bang. Determining their properties has advanced our understanding of elementary particles considerably, best documented by the fact that so far four Nobel prizes have been awarded to neutrino related research. One fundamental property is still unknown: are neutrinos Majorana particles, i.e. identical to their own anti-particles? In that case double-beta decay will exist. Strong theoretical arguments favor this possibility and the above mentioned absence of anti-matter in our universe is likely connected to the Majorana character of neutrinos.

GERDA uses high-purity germanium detectors enriched in the isotope ⁷⁶Ge.  Since the germanium is source and detector at the same time, a compact setup with minimum additional materials can be realized leading to low backgrounds and high detection efficiency. The excellent energy resolution of germanium detectors and the novel experimental techniques developed by the GERDA collaboration provide unprecedented suppression of disturbing events from other radioactive decays (background events). Since double-beta decay has a half-live many orders of magnitude longer than the age of the universe, the reduction of background events is most crucial for the sensitivity.

The novel techniques employed by GERDA reduced the number of background events in such a way, that now it is the first “background-free” experiment in the field. No double-beta decays have been observed during the first five months of data taking and a lower half-life limit of 5x10²⁵ yr was derived. Until the end of data taking in 2019 no background event should be left in the energy region where the double-beta signal is expected and a sensitivity of 10²⁶ yr will be reached. This makes GERDA best suited to discover a signal, which would manifest itself by a small number of events at the signal energy.

GERDA, one of the leading experiments in the field, is an international European collaboration of more than 100 physicists from Germany, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Poland and Belgium (http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/gerda/). It is located in the underground Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso of the Italian research organization INFN. From Poland, scientists from the Institute of Physics of the Jagiellonian University (IP UJ) in Krakow participate in the project since its beginning (2004). The present members of the group led by prof. Marcin Wojcik are mgr Nikodem Frodyma, dr Marcin Misiaszek, dr Krzysztof Panas, dr Krzysztof Pelczar and dr Grzegorz Zuzel. They are working on the most relevant background and data analysis problems. Development of several experimental techniques leading to background minimization (purification of gases, removal of radio-isotopes form active surfaces, development of LAr veto), development of original data analysis procedures (pulse shape discrimination) and construction of novel hardware (ultra-fast PMT scalers, patented resistor-less charge sensitive amplifier) are they main achievements.

Research carried out within GERDA by the group from the Jagiellonian University is financed by the National Science Centre in the frame of the HARMONIA, SONATA BIS and OPUS progremmes. More information (in Polish) about the project can be found under the following address: http://zdfk.if.uj.edu.pl/.

A new study finds that bears communicate through their feet while walking. By twisting their feet into the ground, bears leave their scent. This scent is produced by foot glands and contains 26 specific compounds that inform other bears, for example about the sex of the animal. This ritual is repeated by other individuals, mostly males, which step exactly in the same places, leaving a trail of smelly holes in the ground. This reveals as an important way for animals with large home ranges to exchange information with their neighbours. The results of the research of international team led by scientists from the Institute of Nature Conservation of PAS was already published in “Scientific Reports”.

Picture 1. Bear feet (photo credit: Djuro Huber, none usage restrictions)

A specific type of walk in bears, called “bear dance” or “cowboy walking”, has been observed long before America was discovered, as proved by the mimicking dance of the native-American Ute people as a part of their spring ceremonies. A study published today in “Scientific Reports” clarifies why bears walk in a mysterious way. Everything started when the researchers observed in the field that different bears repeatedly walk in the same trail stepping exactly in the same holes in the ground. “In a perfectly established ritual, one after another, bears vigorously twist their paws into the ground following a marked trail, while sniffing the tracks left by other bears using the trail before. We found that mostly males are doing that. These observations encouraged us to go deeper into the meaning of this behaviour”, says Javier Naves, a member of the research team from Estación Biológica de Doñana CSIC in Seville.

“The world of smells is a huge one, and yet mostly unknown. An arising issue was how to collect brown bear scents’”, says Agnieszka Sergiel, the leader of the study from the Institute of Nature Conservation in Kraków. After several trials, the researchers succeed in collecting scent samples from the paws of wild bears using sterile wooden sticks and cotton, and analysed them with a gas chromatograph. They identified 26 volatile compounds, of which six were exclusive of males. One of these male compounds is a cembrenoid that is also a trail and recognition pheromone in some termite and ant species. “We found prominent glands in bear feet which produce and can release secretion when pressed. This explains why bears walk in such a way” - adds Sergiel.

Picture 2. Holes left in the ground by brown bears marking with their feet while walking (photo credit: Javier Naves, none usage restrictions)

Many species of mammals rely upon scent to communicate. Most bear species have large home ranges, are non-territorial and spend most of their time alone. “In such scent trails, bears can exchange information and get to know who is around, who they have to avoid and who they would love to meet. Our study contributes to understanding of the evolution and ecology of communication in mammals” – explains Nuria Selva, a member of the research team from the Institute of Nature Conservation.

The study was conducted by an international team of scientists and led by researchers from the Institute of Nature Conservation of Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, and Estación Biológica de Doñana CSIC in Seville. Research was funded among others by the National Science Center in Poland, in the coordinated by Dr Nuria Selva Fernandez (HARMONIA 4 call).