The Institute of Astrophysics-FORTH joins Europe’s largest astronomy networkUntil now, Europe has had two major collaborative networks for ground-based astronomy, one in the optical domain (OPTICON) and the other in the radio-wave domain (RadioNet). These two networks, having successfully served their respective communities over the past twenty years, now come together to form Europe’s largest ground-based astronomy collaborative network. In Greece the network includes the Institute of Astrophysics FORTH and the National Observatory of Athens. During the ORP kick-off meeting on Tuesday 23 March 2021, the Director of the Institute of Astrophysics, Prof. Vassilis Charmandaris, was unanimously elected as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the network, having served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the OPTICON network for the past 2 years. The project is coordinated by CNRS (France), together with the University of Cambridge (UK) and the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) (Germany) and it involves astronomers from 15 European countries, Australia and South Africa, amounting to 37 institutions.

An evolutionary rare strategy for circumventing pesticide resistance in the major bee parasiteHoney bees pollinate the majority of crops, but their survival is under threat and the parasitic mite Varroa destructor may be a major cause of honey bee decline. Beekeepers use selective chemical acaricides with low bee toxicity to control Varroa infestation, a powerful “pro-drug” approach relying on species-specific bioactivation, to attain this selective toxicity and protect bees.

Advent at the NASDAQ stock exchangeAdvent Technologies (https://www.advent.energy/), an innovative company in the sectors of fuel cells and hydrogen technology, announces its entry into the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in New York on February 5, 2021, following merger with AMCI Acquisition Corp.

Shedding light on the dark side of biomass burning pollutionResearch by the teams of Prof. Athanasios Nenes and Spyros Pandis of the Center for Studies on Air Quality and Climate Change (C-STACC; http://cstacc.iceht.forth.gr) of the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences at the Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (ICE-HT/FORTH; http://www.iceht.forth.gr) led to the discovery of a chemical mechanism that rapidly produces air pollution from biomass burning, during the night.