Two science institutes among Europe's best

An independent international audit has ranked two institutes of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) among Europe's cream of the crop. Thirty of the Academy's institutes have been assessed by a panel of experts led by Finnish professor Marja Makarow in what was the first such review conducted in Slovakia. The two institutes judged to be doing a sterling job are the Polymer Institute and the Institute of Ethnology. An additional nine institutes have been found to produce work above the European average, the rest hovers around the average or slightly below it. "International experts see a lot of positives in science here, and the most obvious of them is the fact that we have a great many young and motivated scientists, which bodes well for the Academy's future," said the Academy's chairman Pavol Šajgalík. Institutes that did not quite pass muster have been tasked with producing action plans to propel them towards higher standards and put them in the same league as their European peers with similar specializations.