Nieuws

Over tien jaar kunnen plastic zonnecellen, verwerkt in je schoudertas, genoeg stroom produceren om je laptop te laten werken.

9 mei 2012, 3:00 - 4:00 PM. Special guest lecture at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (Bernouilliborg 105) by Eric Mazur, Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University.

Calculating the golden mean is something economists in particular concentrate on. Biological evolutionary research is another area where the search is on for the situation where multiple opposing processes and criteria are in balance. Take, for instance, the optimum build of the panther: muscled for sprinting, but also light and limber enough to climb trees. When considering the evolution of bacteria, the ‘multi-criteria decision-making model’ of the Italian economist Pareto proves useful.

Hoe kan de kleinste motor ter wereld nog sneller draaien? Groningse chemici zochten het uit.

Amino acids are important substances for biological research and interesting building blocks for the production of chemicals and medicines. Researchers from the University of Groningen have adapted the enzyme methylaspartate ammonia-lyase by means of ‘targeted evolution’ in the laboratory. They were thus able to develop biocatalysts for the synthesis of new amino acids – a method that offers important advantages for the environment. The results were published online last weekend in the prominent scientific journal Nature Chemistry.

The presence of nanodiamonds and charcoal in the soil of the Netherlands is not evidence of a meteorite impact towards the end of the last ice age. This has been revealed in research conducted by the Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG, University of Groningen) in collaboration with Utrecht University and Leiden University. The results of this research were published on 1 May in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS).

Het verhaal over de grutto in woord, beeld en muziek. Daarmee openen, in aanwezigheid van Koningin Beatrix, bioloog Theunis Piersma en musicus Sytze Pruiksma het jubileumcongres van het Wereld Natuur Fonds. Dit evenement vindt plaats op dinsdag 8 mei aanstaande op de SS Rotterdam in Rotterdam. ‘Met deze voorstelling hopen we de toeschouwers niet alleen in het hoofd te raken, maar vooral in het hart,’ aldus Piersma.

A genetically modified organism is constructed by Ghufrana Samin for the degradation of a toxic compound and applied successfully in a lab-scale bioreactor to remove 1,2,3-trichlororpropane (TCP)-contaminated groundwater.

The Endocrine Society has selected the paper entitled Urine Steroid Metabolomics as a Biomarker Tool for Detecting Malignancy in Adrenal Tumors for the  International Award for Publishing Excellence in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM) in 2011.

Via the University of Groningen’s Science Support Desk, secondary school students presented their research at the ‘International Conference of Young Scientists’ (ICYS), held in Nijmegen on 16-23 April. They managed to win the silver medal awarded at the conference, in a world championship for profile assignments in which students from 21 countries participated. This year teams from China, Malaysia and South Korea participated for the first time ever.

Wil jij je prestaties verbeteren met behulp van gen-doping? Je slaapritme optimaliseren? Je cellen beter laten functioneren met antioxidanten? ENHANCE dan JElichaam, brein, cellen en techno-omgeving in de Science LinX expositie ENHANCE ME!?

A skin sensor that measures your physiology together with software that knows its way around your music library: together these produce a device that can steer the user’s mood right towards the mood in which he or she wishes to be. This is the result of research by Marjolein van der Zwaag, who will be awarded a PhD for this on 26 April 2012 at the University of Groningen. She developed this ‘affective music player’ on the basis of research into the link between music and mood, for example in car drivers. Such a player could potentially lead to less aggressive driving.

Our working memory can only contain one element at a time. If we have to remember more elements we store these in our long-term memory, with the consequence that the retrieval of this information takes more time and leads to more mistakes. This is what Jelmer Borst concludes in his research on multitasking. Borst will be awarded a PhD on 20 April 2012 by the University of Groningen.

Research on the area of agricultural land needed to produce our food reveals that technological improvements alone will not be sufficient to compensate for increasing population pressure and richer diets. Sanderine Nonhebel, Associate Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Groningen, has charted the global effects of changing dietary habits over the past 46 years. The results of the research were published on 16 April in the leading journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

An article was published in Nature Nanotechnology this week about quantum interference in molecular charge transport. Two of its authors were the Groningen chemists Prof. Kees Hummelen and Dr Hennie Valkenier, who received his PhD with honours, with Hummelen as supervisor. Hummelen is the driving force behind the department of Organic Chemistry, which instigated this research a few years ago. ‘Now things really get interesting, with this article being published’, he says. ‘The idea that we developed – and we’re just chemists – has now found strong experimental and theoretical support from physicists in Leiden and Denmark with whom we are collaborating.'

One possible route towards finding new antibiotics to counter pneumococci may be by developing a substance that effectively hinders the process of cell division. A research team led by Jan-Willem Veening of the Department of Molecular Genetics of the University of Groningen has recently identified a protein named StkP, which plays an important role in this process.

Biology student Joris van Alphen of the University of Groningen has won the Emerging Nature Photographer Award. This prize is awarded by National Geographic as an incentive for prospective nature photographers whose work contributes towards nature conservation and awareness. The award ceremony was held at Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem on 22 March.

Astronomers at the Kapteyn Institute of the University of Groningen will conduct research in the coming years into the evolution of galaxies in the thinly populated parts of the universe. To this end, they will use images of the Hercules cluster made by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) of the ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

The brains of hibernating animals undergo wide temperature variations and periods of energy deficiency. Neurobiologist Ate Boerema has shown that changes occurring in the brains of hibernating Syrian hamsters as a result of energy deficiency are very similar to the brain damage in Alzheimer’s sufferers. The Syrian hamster is therefore a reliable model for studying brain changes relating to Alzheimer’s disease. Boerema will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 16 March 2012.

The fact that scrub jays continually move their food from one hiding place to another (known as recaching) does not necessarily imply subtle social intelligence on their part – it could simply be due to stress. PhD student Elske van der Vaart discovered this, together with her supervisors Charlotte Hemelrijk and Rineke Verbrugge, with the aid of a computer model. Their study was published on 1 March 2012 in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. Science journalist Michael Balter also writes about their research in the 1 March 2012 issue of Science.

Whether or not a Parkinson’s patient will develop crippling side effects from using the drug levodopa is predicted by a certain variant of a nerve cell receptor. Groningen and Russian pharmacologists made this discovery and will publish their results in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

This week, scientists from the universities of Groningen (the Netherlands), Cambridge (UK) and Mons (Belgium) published an article in an online Science publication on the physics behind functionality of plastic solar cells.  They have discovered a crucial step in the charge transfer process that explains why this transfer is only partially efficient. This new knowledge paves the way to higher electricity yields of this sustainable source of energy.

Onderzoekers van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, de Stichting FOM en het Europese samenwerkingsverband ConceptGraphene hebben ontdekt dat de groei van grafeen op siliciumcarbide een veel langere opslagtijd van magnetische informatie oplevert. Zij ontdekten dit tijdens hun onderzoek naar het transport van magnetische informatie in grafeen, het koolstof kristalrooster van één atoom dik, met als doel een materiaal te vinden waarmee op grotere schaal magnetische informatie kan worden verwerkt. Dit is nodig voor gebruik in toepassingen zoals bijvoorbeeld de kwantumcomputer. Zij publiceerden hun resultaten op 20 februari in Nanoletters.

Zomertijd is ongeveer een van dwaaste dingen die we kunnen doen,’ zegt de Groningse chronobiologe prof. dr . Martha Merrow in een aflevering over de biologische klok die het wetenschapsprogramma Labyrint woensdagavond uitzendt. ‘Als gevolg ervan lijdt tachtig procent van de mensen aan een soort sociale jetlag.’

Researchers from the University of Groningen and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) have developed a technique to simply measure the magnetic moment of electrons (the spin) using non-magnetic contacts. They demonstrated the technique in graphene, a layer of carbon one atom thick. The use of non-magnetic contacts could yield simpler designs for nano-devices that use spin current. Such equipment is currently used in hard discs to make these faster and more efficient. The researchers published their results on 12 February 2012 online in the renowned journal Nature Physics.

Irene Tieleman and her group focus on the relationship between birds’ physiological characteristics (such as energy consumption, immune system and stress hormones), their behaviour and life history (clutch size and lifespan) and the way these factors interact with their surroundings (e.g. risk of disease in certain areas). Field research is conducted in Arctic and temperate areas, as well as in the tropics and the desert. Tieleman acquired substantial funding for her research and is a Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen.

Van 20 t/m 24 februari beantwoordt TBK-studieadviseur Mirjam Nederveen vragen via onze facebook, www.facebook.com/betastudies.
Heb je na aanleiding van de open dag nog vragen, stel ze dan via onze Facebookpagina!

On Friday 17 February, over 5000 secondary school students will visit the Open Day on Location at the University of Groningen, where they will be offered a thorough introduction to up to four degree programmes. To participate in the Open Day, registration via www.rug.nl/studiekiezers is required.

Researchers from the University of Groningen have developed a nanoscale cooling element that can be switched on and off magnetically. The functioning of the elements is based on the magnetic moment of the electrons (the spin). These easily controllable nanoscale cooling elements could provide a solution for the growing problem of heat production in increasingly smaller electronic components.

Three top researchers from Groningen are to be given EUR 1.5 million each to carry out research over the next five years. They have been awarded a Vici grant under the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Vici is one of the largest personal scientific grants in the Netherlands.

Tijdens de Eén Dag Student kruip je een dag in de huid van een student. Bij de opleiding van je keuze volg je een minicollege, doe je een practicum of werkcollege, en spreek je de studenten en docenten. Het programma is op de locatie van de opleiding dus je kunt gelijk de sfeer proeven en zien hoe je toekomstige studie-wereld eruitziet. Vaak wordt de dag afgesloten met een informele borrel of diner. 

Researchers from the Johann Bernoulli Institute, University of Groningen,  and from the Centre for Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Birmingham/UK, have developed a novel urine test for the diagnosis of adrenal cancer. This breakthrough is reported in the December issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Astronomers at the University of Groningen Kapteyn Institute have succeeded for the first time in calculating the weight distribution of dark matter on an extremely small scale, based on observations. In an article in Nature this week they describe how a depiction of a galaxy was analysed using a gravitational lens. ‘This analysis provides a unique way to test theories on dark matter’, says research leader Prof. Léon Koopmans.

On December 9 2011, the Wim Nieuwpoort Award 2011 was granted to Prof. Hans De Raedt (Computational Physics — Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials) for the proposal ‘Massively Parallel Quantum Dynamics Simulator’. The Wim Nieuwpoort award is meant for Dutch research teams that have demonstrated to be able to efficiently run scientific applications on a significant part of a large Dutch national HPC system.

For the first time researchers of the University of Groningen could fully determine the optical properties of the photonic crystal of the Diamond Weevil (Entimus imperialis), by using a novel imaging technique, which allows rapid characterization of all types of photonic structures.

The Team Admire-LVQ headed by Prof. Michael Biehl (Computer Science) has achieved best performance in the DREAM6/FlowCAP challenge 2011.

Prof. Ben Feringa has been awarded the Van ’t Hoff medal 2011. The medal is awarded once every ten years by the University of Amsterdam for work in the field of chemistry.

Correct handwriting identification can be very important in a court case to determine who is the writer of, for example, a handwritten threatening letter or a possibly forged suicide note. Handwriting biometrics is the technology where computers analyse handwriting. Axel Brink has developed a new computer technology (Quill) to verify and identify handwriting. He will be awarded a PhD for his research by the University of Groningen on 2 December 2011.

Dr G.J.W. Euverink has been appointed Professor of Products and Processes for Biotechnology in the Biobased Economy at the Institute for Technology and Management (ITM) of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

De Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Haarlem beloont vijf studenten van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen met een aanmoedigingsprijs van 500 euro.

Groningen krijgt een uniek instituut voor onderwijs, onderzoek en innovatie rond het thema energie. Initiatiefnemers van de Energy Academy Europe (EAE) zijn de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen en de Hanzehogeschool Groningen.

In het VPRO-wetenschapsprogramma Labirint wordt deze week de Amerikaanse bioloog Craig Venter geïnterviewd. Commentaar en uitleg komt van prof. dr. Bert Poolman, directeur van het Instituut voor Synthetische Biologie van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

The cover of scientific journal Nature this week reads Nanomotoring, test-driving a molecular four-wheeler, drawing attention to an article by Groningen chemist Ben Feringa and his research group.

Vanaf vrijdagavond 18 uur (MDT) nemen drie bachelorstudenten Natuurkunde en Technische Natuurkunde het 48 uur lang op tegen andere studententeams in de wereld in de University Physics Competition 2011. RUG-teamleden Arjan Boerma, Job Feldbrugge en Remko Klein moeten binnen 48 uur een natuurkundig probleem oplossen.  

Heb jij interesse om in de huid van een student te kruipen zodat jij een goed beeld krijgt van de studie van jouw keuze? Meld je dan aan voor het evenement Ee'n Dag Student.

A PhD student team, representing the University of Groningen, won second place in the IFUR (International Federation of Underwater Robots) robotic fish water-polo competition in Chengdu, China, 20-22 May. The team members, Chen Wang and Ewoud Vos are both PhD students in the Discrete Technology and Production Automation (DTPA) group of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Both their research projects are closely related to robotic fish.

De lipdubfilm Mr Blue Sky, die zondag 12 juni 2011 werd opgenomen in en om de Universiteitsbibliotheek.

Op dinsdag 12 april 2011 gaat de College Carrousel van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen van start. Zes dagen lang, op 4 locaties in Groningen, 24 hoorcolleges, 183 werkgroepen. 41 scholen brengen een bezoek aan de universiteit, met in totaal ruim 3000 leerlingen.

Het Groningen Green Team van studenten van de studierichtingen Energy and Enviromental Sciences en Energy Law staat op 15 maart in Londen in de internationale finale van de RWE Energy Challenge. Het team werd eerder deze maand eerste in de voorronde in Nederland. Ook het team van de TU Delft dat tweede werd, gaat naar de finale.

Politie Groningen en Rijksuniversiteit Groningen hebben een onderzoek laten uitvoeren naar grensoverschrijdend gedrag onder Groningse studenten. Daaruit blijkt dat de gemiddelde student in deze stad zich vrij gematigd en zelfs keurig gedraagt. Niveaus van agressie, criminaliteit en harddrugsgebruik zijn geruststellend laag. En ook al drinken studenten meer dan leeftijdsgenoten, toch blijft ook het drankgebruik van de overgrote meerderheid binnen de perken.

Informatie over het magazine ‘Straks student’ van de RUG.

Ruim 5000 middelbare scholieren bezoeken vrijdag 4 maart de Open dag op locatie van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG). Ze maken er uitgebreid kennis met een of twee opleidingen.

‘Een dag student’ is bedoeld voor ‘gevorderde’ kiezers die ook na een bezoek aan voorlichtingsevenementen als de Voorlichtingsdag en de Open dag op locatie nog niet helemaal zeker zijn van hun studiekeuze. Herken jij je hierin? Meld je dan aan voor Eén Dag Student!