COVID-19 PreMatOut (COVID-19 Pregnancy & Maternal Outcome) initiative was established in Slovakia after the declaration of the global pandemic. Research part of the project consists of data collection and subsequent analyses of various subcategories. Nationwide study cohort contains women who tested positive for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 at any time during pregnancy.

Humankind, the biological species Homo sapiens, lives today in a very different world from the one for which it was evolutionarily selected in the geological epoch Pleistocene (2.6 million to twelve thousand years BC). The Anthropocene, as the epoch we live now has been called, is characterized by increasing tension between human nature and technological civilization, and humans live in an atmosphere of uncertainty, insecurity, and threat. By “naturalizing” the human condition, cognitive biology offers the only painless alternative to the many scenarios that depict the extinction of Homo sapiens as a consequence of violent conflicts and unimaginable suffering.

Severe acute maternal morbidity SAMM is characterised by a condition of the woman during pregnancy, labour or within 42 days after the termination of the pregnancy, when she sustained critical, life-threatening complications but survived. The criteria of SAMM differ, usually there are obstetric emergencies or their combinations postpartum haemorrhage, eclampsia, HELLP syndrome, cardiac arrest, sepsis or amniotic fluid embolism. Most of them are rare situations. The Methodology of data acquisition is crucial to get the most relevant information.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the global challenge of inadequate data on SARS-CoV-2’s effects on pregnant women and their infants. In response, Slovakia, along with other countries, launched a nationwide study to assess the incidence, characteristics, and outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy. Methods: We conducted a national observational descriptive study of SARS-CoV-2 positive cases among pregnant women from the pandemic’s onset to its conclusion. In collaboration with the Public Health Office of the Slovak Republic, we identified 1184 pregnant women who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 and contacted them for participation. Results: Among the 240 participating SARS-CoV-2-positive pregnant women, 13 required hospitalizations, with an increased need for intensive care and respiratory support. However, the absolute risk of poor outcomes remained low. Higher maternal age and infection during the third trimester emerged as key risk factors for hospitalization. A symptomatic course was dominant, with fatigue (70%), headache (58%), and fever (56%) as the leading symptoms. While maternal and neonatal outcomes were generally favourable, a slight increase in caesarean sections and preterm births suggests an indirect impact on maternity care. Vaccination during pregnancy correlated with reduced symptoms and no hospitalizations. Elevated CRP levels were common among infected women, while ultrasound findings remained normal. Conclusions: This study offers a multi-dimensional view of pregnancy during the pandemic, capturing both the mother’s personal concerns and the objective insights from prenatal and labour care settings. The findings suggest that most pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 experience mild to moderate illness, offering reassurance to clinicians about generally favourable maternal and neonatal outcomes while underscoring the need for vigilance in rare severe cases.

The evolution of life, cognition and eventually human culture is not improbable but an inevitable result of the increasing entropy of the universe.

The evolution of life, cognition and eventually human culture is not improbable but an inevitable result of the increasing entropy of the universe.

Homo sapiens' cultural evolution has far outpaced its biological evolution and led us into an impasse.

Homo sapiens' cultural evolution has far outpaced its biological evolution and led us into an impasse.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the continuation of Soviet communism's aggressive expansion. But as under communism, freedom of thought will prevail.

The EU's research policies have always been more about political goals than science. The EU Green Deal may again fail to address the real problems.

Modern science follows Bayes’ formula: reassess knowledge in light of new data to gain new knowledge. A new science of hermeneutics could systematically reevaluate old theories for new insights.

The current crisis of liberal, secular democracies may have a biological cause: the dichotomy between humans' biological and cultural evolution.

Evolution had been puzzled scholars for centuries until Lamarck and Darwin proposed their general theories of evolution. While Lamarck was shown to be wrong, Darwin's insights revolutionized biology.

For centuries people have been asking, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Science has not been able to give us an answer so far. We still have to live with the basic statement that “Everything that is is, and it is as long as it keeps its identity, that is, its onticity”, which we may call the “Strong Ontic Principle”. Nonetheless, science can answer another ontological question, namely “Why does something happen; why there are events in the universe?” The answer is the second law of thermodynamics, which we may call the “Weak Ontic Principle”. It was discovered by Rudolf Clausius in 1865, and it has been applied successfully in technological practice. However, at the conceptual level, the law has been subject to an amazing misinterpretation for almost a century. Its recent reformulation may become one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of science. Energy is distributed unevenly in the universe, and it is those differences in energy densities—energy gradients—that drive all events. The universe has a “time arrow”: it is moving in one direction while a quantity called entropy always increases. Entropy has been interpreted incorrectly as being equal to disorder. However, the increase of entropy is in fact a measure of diminishing energy gradients, of energy dissipation and “homogenization”. Without energy gradients, the universe would be in thermodynamic equilibrium, and events would no longer be possible. The original version of the second law by Clausius—that entropy always increases—therefore defines the direction of the movement of the universe. During the second half of the 20th century, several scientists pondered over the rate of the movement and their reasoning culminated in a principle now called the “Maximum Entropy Production Principle” (MEPP): entropy not only tends to increase, but it tends to increase at the fasted rate …

The evolutionary success of the human species, made possible by the evolution of artifacts, has been the source of a creed in human endless perfectability, which is, in the present times, promulgated by various brands of neo-Enlighteners and technooptimists. However, the lifespan and eventual extinction of any biological species is limited and determined by specific constraints, which have been metaphorically dubbed as the “piles of Rialto” (in analogy with the “spandrels of San Marco”). On the constant and unmovable “piles of Rialto” of human nature, with a restricted carrying capacity, the Rialto bridge of human action had been laid down. Artifaction and hedonotaxis have consecutively erected a huge superstructure that weighs heavily upon the piles and may have reached its maximum indicating that humankind has entered its ultimate, pre-extinction age. Evolution of artifacts has no ceiling, no limits, and humans apparently have no means of how to curb it. “Makeability,” which may be boundless, does not equal “manageability.” There is no longer the self-preservation, maintaining the permanence of the species, but the hunt for pleasure that seems to determine the evolutionary dynamics of the human species. Artificial pleasures, provided by living in virtual world, and ending in virtual bliss appear to be options the mildest of all; far from the apocalypse of a global nuclear war, of a technological disaster caused by breaking down critical hubs in global networks, of destructions of littoral megacities by rising oceans and worldwide hunger owing to dramatic climate changes, of a violent crushing of civilization by invading the developed countries by mass immigrants from underdeveloped countries, of establishing a world dictatorship, of enslaving humans and eliminating them by intelligent robots. Intellectuals, scientists at a par with artists, should participate in creating “music for the fireworks” in order to make the closing phase of human evolution sublime and passable with minimum political and social tensions. Some fundamental tenets of the Western thought should be reconsidered. Species extinction should be taken as the fact of evolution and faith in the unlimited power of human reason and illusions about eternity and immortality abandoned. It is temporariness, which bestows upon human life its value and meaning, that should become the foundation stone of a new supreme and optimistic humanism.

The evolution of our ability to manipulate objects with our hands triggered the expansion of the human brain, human culture and the creation of ever more complex artefacts. Is there a risk now that humans have now become dependent on and addicted to their artefacts?

Christian De Duve's decision to voluntarily pass away gives us a pause to consider the value and meaning of death. Biologists have much to contribute to the discussion of dying with dignity.