In the world of Darwinian rivalry, where the fittest individuals take advantage of others, explaining acts of altruism poses one of the most fundamental problems in evolutionary biology. In a previous issue of Academia magazine (4/2015), Dr. Kinga Wysieńska-Di Carlo and Dr. Zbigniew Karpiński explored this issue from the perspective of sociologists; here it is viewed through the prism of mathemati

Honesty and transparency in vaccination safety – monitoring adverse reactions to vaccines

We talk to Dr. Bogdan Jaroszewicz, head of the Białowieża Geobotanical Station of the University of Warsaw, about how planned logging in the Białowieża Forest will damage not only the forest itself but also Poland’s image around the globe.

“We can see that all the recent predictions of a better future for the world are largely misguided. It is no longer certain even that the Cold War is definitively a thing of the past,” says Jerzy Szacki, a historian of ideas and sociologist, a professor emeritus of the University of Warsaw, and an ordinary member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

What would today’s world be like without telephones, MP3 players, GPS navigation, television, digital cameras, microwaves, washing machines, fridges, television decoders, game consoles, and credit cards? Fortunately we do not even have to imagine it, thanks to Jan Czochralski and his pioneering method of growing single crystals

Are cancer cells in conflict with healthy cells? Is cancer inherited? What new therapies are currently being developed? We talk to Prof. Janusz A. Siedlecki, who has been studying the mechanisms of carcinogenesis for over 40 years, and has focused on molecular diagnostics for the last two decades

The global demand for energy continues to grow while non-renewable energy resources are rapidly running out and their exploitation is damaging the environment and Earth’s climate. As such, there has been growing interest in scientific circles and among the public in reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and gradually replacing them with renewable sources such as biofuels

Are videogames more effective at improving brain function than dedicated cognitive training?

What’s even more important than our scientific achievements is that the applications of our research and the experiences gained by the companies Ammono and TopGaN are increasingly likely to be widely implemented in the Polish economy – says Prof. Sylwester Porowski

Agnieszka Pollo  

Devotees of every craft have their own particular type of passion. Ardent scholars of history and literature share a deep-burning desire to uncover the true meaning of various phenomena and concepts

Termites, wasps, bees, certain aphids, thrips, beetles… and of course ants. Some species of the rich and diverse world of insects, rather than living alone, have instead developed communities of various kinds. But should a group of such eusocial insects, ranging in size from a few hundreds to many millions of individuals, still be considered a set of distinct individuals, or rather a kind of super

I’m convinced that Mrożek had serious trouble coming to terms with his own identity, and I think that these two traits are the flip sides of his own personality – says Prof. Jerzy Jarzębski

Stanisław August achieved notoriety as the monarch responsible for Poland’s demise in the 18th century. Could his memoirs change this unfavorable picture?

Wherein lies the essence of the two-year dispute over the management and protection of the commercial forest stands in the Białowieża Primeval Forest?