Science is Beautiful starts Year 6

The best entries of Round 3 of the Science is Beautiful competition (2012) drew massive attention also outside the Czech Republic: the prestigious US-based magazine Scientific American published altogether 18 of them.

After the enormous success of the competition in the first two years the organisers (led by RNDr. Martin Černý, CSc., Department of Ecology) felt that it would be rather selfish to keep all the beauties for themselves and decided to expand the event scope: in Round 3 (2011) they opened the competition to candidates from across the whole Charles University and in Round 4 (2012) also to natural scientists registered on  Prirodovědci.cz, our science-popularisation website. Acting as a "lay jury", the general public got involved in the same year. In last year's Round 5 the organisers decided to keep all the positives of the previous years in place and, as an innovation, add a video, animation & time-lapse category.

Tas-mania: the segmented body of the strobila (tapeworm) is usually attached to the lumen of the host's intestine with the tapeworm's head (scolex). By Jana Bulantová, SEM; coloured. Note: The word tas-mania is a play on words: the Czech word for tapeworm is tasemnice

Just like in the previous years, the competition is open to all Faculty employees and students - their photographs and illustrations will be assessed by an expert jury in five categories. One of the innovations is the Instagram category in which the jury will select winners from among all eligible entries received from the general public, as well as from Charles University employees and students. To take part in the Instagram category, each entrant has to create their personal account in a special application. No registration is required for the other parts of the competition: each photograph has to be identified with a hashtag  - #vjk2014. Compared with last year, the composition of the expert jury has been changed, too. 

Website visitors can vote across all entries and categories to select the winner of the spectator category. All important information regarding the competition is available on the competition website.  

Shorebirds: shorebirds are interesting and, at least in my opinion, very elegant birds. By Martina Nacházelová; made in Adobe Photoshop using a graphic tablet.

Registration (except for the Instagram category): complete and send the registration form, wait for your e-mail address to be checked (confirmation e-mail to contain a verification link - has to be clicked on). We also recommend getting familiar with the competition rules that are binding upon all competitors.

A log-in by a registered participant opens the site intended for entering and administering competition entries; at the same time, a new item with the name of such registered participant appears in the upper menu.

Lidové noviny is the media partner of the competition.