More news

The condition of the enzyme peroxiredoxin is part of a universal mechanism for the 24-hour rhythm in all forms of life. This is the first time that a day-night rhythm system has been discovered, which is present in practically all organisms. The discovery was made by researcher Maria Olmedo and Professor of Molecular Chronobiology Martha Merrow of the University of Groningen, together with scientists from Great Britain and the United States. The findings are published this week in the journal Nature.

University of Groningen researchers have been awarded five ECHO grants each worth € 260,000 by research funder NWO. Three went to biomedical research and two to research on sustainability & technology.

Adequate protection of migratory birds needs a scientific basis. This will be provided from today by the new chair in migratory bird ecology held by Prof. Theunis Piersma at the University of Groningen. WWF-NL director Johan van de Gronden and Vogelbescherming [Netherlands Society for the Protection of Birds] director Fred Wouters signed a covenant on 14 May 2012 to enable this chair

Plastic zonnecellen kunnen net zo’n hoog rendement halen als ‘klassieke’ zonnecellen van silicium. Aan de hand van theoretische modellen hebben onderzoekers van de FOM-focusgroep aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, samen met een collega van de Universiteit van Denver, laten zien welke wegen naar de ‘Next Generation’ plastic zonnecellen kunnen leiden. Zij publiceerden de resultaten op 9 mei online in het tijdschrift Advanced Energy Materials.

On Wednesday May 9th Eric Mazur (Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University) presented a very inspiring lecture at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.

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.

Chemists of the University of Groningen under the leadership of professor Ben L. Feringa have published new research on the molecular motor in Nature Chemistry. They worked in collaboration with a research group from the University of East Anglia led by Steve Meech. Their goal was to gain a better understanding of the molecule’s ultrafast dynamics during the rotation of the rotor.

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).

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 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.

Mosselen en Japanse oesters zijn belangrijk voor de biodiversiteit in de Waddenzee, als voedselbron, maar ook omdat ze een leefomgeving creëren voor veel andere soorten. In een studie die onlangs online verscheen in het internationale wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Ecosystems laten onderzoekers van het Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut voor Zeeonderzoek (NIOZ) en de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG) zien dat de invloed van droogvallende mossel- en oesterbanken op hun omgeving vele malen groter kan zijn dan hun eigenlijke omvang suggereert.

Prof. Ben Feringa has been awarded the 2012 "Grand Prix scientifique Cino del Duca" for his work in molecular machines and biological nanomachines. The prize consists of EUR 364,000 to fund further research and recruit one or more postdoctoral fellow(s). The awarding foundation provides significant support for scientific research, in particular for biomedical research, including oncology, biochemistry, and molecular genetics.

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.

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).

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.

Sustainable projects are nothing new at the University of Groningen – most notably at the Zernike campus. The Health, Safety and Environment department, however, considered that smart sustainable ideas thought up by the very people working, studying, socializing and exercising at the University of Groningen and the UMCG would of course be the ones that would work well, provide the most satisfaction and garner the most support.

On 2 April, representatives of the knowledge institutions, government and the business world signed the ‘Nederlands Kennis- en Innovatiecontract’ [Dutch knowledge and innovation contract] for the nine ‘top sectors’. NWO chair Jos Engelen and VSNU chair Sijbolt Noorda signed the agreement on behalf of the universities.

Op 4 april 2012 start in Groningen, Friesland en Drenthe het FoliumzuurExtra onderzoek. Deelname staat open voor alle vrouwen in deze regio die zwanger willen worden. Deze vrouwen krijgen via hun apotheek foliumzuurtabletten. Het wetenschappelijk team van FoliumzuurExtra onderzoekt de beschermende effecten van een hogere en langere dosering foliumzuur voor en tijdens de zwangerschap. FoliumzuurExtra is een onderzoek van o.a. EMGO+ Instituut van VUmc en EUROCAT van het UMCG

Dankzij het Rubicon-programma van NWO komen twee buitenlandse  onderzoekers naar de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen en krijgt één Groningse promovendus binnenkort de kans om zijn onderzoek twaalf maanden aan een universiteit over de grens voort te zetten.

According to international students, the University of Groningen is the best university in the Netherlands. This can be concluded from the latest International Student Barometer, a worldwide survey of international student satisfaction from which the University of Groningen emerged as the university in the Netherlands they are most likely to recommend.

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.'

Electron waves can reinforce each other, but they can also cancel each other out. This is known as destructive interference. Earlier analysis of micro structures revealed that this can result in poorer conduction at low temperatures. Now a team including researchers from Leiden University and the University of Groningen have found experimental evidence that this effect can also occur at room temperature. The team took advantage of the fact that very small systems (such as molecules) behave quantum mechanically even at room temperature. The article was published in Nature Nanotechnology on 25 March 2012.

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.

Although spring is in the air, the blue tit keeps a cool head when it comes to choosing a mate and courtship. Elske Schut has discovered that for the female blue tit the number of immune system genes (known as MHC1 genes) her chosen mate possesses is very important. Schut has also demonstrated that blue tits continue to copulate during the laying season, which is uncommon in songbirds. This urge to mate does not seem to be a case of blind passion either. Schut will be awarded a PhD by the University of Groningen on 23 March 2012.

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.

De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) heeft in het programma Investeringen NWO-middelgroot landelijk 28 subsidies toegekend voor de aanschaf van apparatuur en het opzetten van dataverzamelingen. De totale investering bedraagt 9,9 miljoen euro. Van de 28 subsidies gaan er zes naar de RUG en het UMCG.

A number of years ago, Groningen physicists from the Centre for Isotope Research sprayed a snow layer in Greenland that has gradually come to lie deeper in subsequent years. Research on the diffusion of oxygen and hydrogen isotopes to neighbouring layers appears to open up new opportunities for climate research.

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.

VST captures collisions in young galaxy cluster

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.’

Some 50 feral cats are running around the Schiermonnikoog National Park, a recent study by the University of Groningen shows. These feral cats mainly live on field mice, rabbits, hares and birds. The cat population does not appear to have increased very much since the cull in the early 1990s ended.
Feral cats are not dependent on humans. They live ‘in the wild’, where they scavenge for their food and rear their litters of young.

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.

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.

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.

A good night’s sleep is hard to come by in our current 24-hour society. However, a lack of sleep can have a very damaging effect on the brain. The Groningen neurobiologist Peter Meerlo and his colleague Arianna Novati have shown that the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in learning, memory and emotions, even shrinks in rats with chronic sleep deprivation.

Animals have smart strategies to defend themselves against predators. Poison frogs are good examples: with bright colours they warn predators that they are distasteful. But why are some poison frogs blue, and others red or yellow?  Research by Martine Maan (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) and Molly Cummings (University of Texas at Austin, USA) provides an answer to this question: colours can predict very accurately how toxic a poison frog is.

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.

Met de benoeming van drie internationale toponderzoekers op het gebied van veroudering heeft het European Research Institute on the Biology of Ageing (ERIBA) van het Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen en de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen zijn selectie van topwetenschappers bijna rond. Ook werd in de afgelopen maanden door ERIBA-onderzoekers in totaal €5 miljoen aan subsidie verworven. Hiermee gaan zij fundamenteel onderzoek doen naar verouderingsprocessen en de ziekten die daarmee gepaard gaan.

Sara Schaafsma studied Papuans to discover why after years of evolution left-handedness can still occur despite being related to certain health problems. She concludes that the prevailing hypothesis that left-handedness continues to exist because it is advantageous in a fight is incorrect. Good health care seems to be a more likely reason for its continued existence. Schaafsma will defend her thesis on 6 January 2012 at the University of Groningen.

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.

The American Physical Society (APS) has appointed Prof. Beatriz Noheda ‘Fellow of the American Physical Society’.

The University of Groningen researchers who were awarded an ERC grant this year were made the centre of attention last week. They were festively welcomed to the Academy Building and officially made members of the University of Groningen ERC Club. No fewer than nine researchers were invited because they had won a prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC); two others were invited because they were awarded an ERC Advanced Grant.

Prof. Lambert Schomaker and Prof. Rien Herber each received an IBM Faculty Award on 29 November. These awards are presented annually by IBM for extraordinary activities in the field of IT research and innovation. Herber and Schomaker are the only Dutch researchers to receive a Faculty Award this year.

The December 2011 issue of the international journal Communicating Astronomy with the Public will feature an article by Dutch astronomy professor Peter Barthel, analysing illustrations of the moon on gift wrap and in children’s books, in the Netherlands and the USA. On the basis of research conducted during the winter of 2010-2011, Barthel concluded that the crescent moon and half-moon are often drawn incorrectly on gift wrap and in books dealing with Santa Claus and his Dutch peer Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas.

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.

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.

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.

Three out of six TOP grants from the Dutch national ALW programme have been awarded to researchers in the earth and life sciences at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

In addition to the TOP grants, NWO has also awarded three Open Programme grants within the framework of its ALW programme to Groningen researchers, all of whom work at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Groningen. A total of 49 researchers in the Netherlands applied for an Open Programme grant, of whom only 12 were awarded one.

Zorgverleners kunnen bijwerkingen van medicijnen rapporteren aan het Nederlands Bijwerkingen Centrum Lareb. Sinds april 2003 kunnen patiënten daar ook zelf bijwerkingen melden. Volgens Florence van Hunsel leveren de bijdragen van patiënten een nuttig inzicht in het effect van bijwerkingen op de kwaliteit van leven en helpen ze nog onbekende bijwerkingen op te sporen. Lareb is een campagne gestart om het publiek meer te attenderen op de meldingsmogelijkheid. Van Hunsel promoveert op 18 november 2011 aan 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.

The Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) has awarded the Minerva Prize 2011 to Prof. Maria Loi of the University of Groningen. She will receive the award for her article on a new discovery on the use of carbon nanotubes in optoelectronic nanodevices.

Evidence in court cases based on statistics can easily lead to mistakes. The case of Lucia de Berk, a Dutch nurse who in 2003 was sentenced to life imprisonment for a series of crimes which, as it turned out last year, she did not commit, is a well-known example of this. In order to prevent such mistakes from happening in future, Dr Bart Verheij (Artificial Intelligence, University of Groningen) has set up a research project aiming to improve the dovetailing between statistical techniques and legal practice. Last week the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded him a Forensic Science Grant of almost half a million euros for this project.

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded Veni grants to eight talented young researchers at the University of Groningen and at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) who have recently gained their PhDs. Four of them are researcher at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. They will each receive EUR 250,000 which is intended to fund their research for three years.

Thijs van der Hulst, professor of extragalactic radio astronomy at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute of the University of Groningen, has been awarded a prestigious Advanced Investigator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC Advanced Grant programme supports excellent established researchers with pioneering research projects. Van der Hulst has won a grant of EUR 2.5 million for the five-year project ‘The HI Story of Galaxy Evolution in the Nearby Universe’.

 

Each antennae of ALMA has an instrument developed by the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute of the University of Groningen. This instrument makes it possible to observe the millimetre range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Using these longer wavelengths allows astronomers to study extremely cold objects in space — such as the dense clouds of cosmic dust and gas from which stars and planets form — as well as very distant objects in the early universe.

Euclid will visualize the invisible universe - The Netherlands builds the network to retrieve and process data

The accurate measurement of the ratios of oxygen isotopes in atmospheric carbon dioxide for well over three decades has led to unexpected new information being uncovered about the global Gross Primary Production (GPP) of plants. The GPP has always been difficult to determine, although it is of great importance to research into how climate change is developing. An international group of scientists, including Prof. Harro Meijer of the Center for Isotope Research at the University of Groningen, published these findings in the journal Nature today.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Starting Grant to Dr Wesley R. Browne of the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry and an associate member of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials. Dr Browne will receive EUR 1.5 million over the course of five years.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded two ERC Starting Grants of EUR 1.5 million each to Prof. D.J. Slotboom ( Groningen Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology Institute) and Prof. A.M. van Oijen (Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials) at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, has awarded four ECHO project grants each worth EUR 240,000 to researchers at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Groningen. The grants offer the opportunity to carry out a high quality science driven research project.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Starting Grant to Dr Sijbren Otto of the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry. The ERC Starting Grant is a prestigious personal grant supporting researchers in setting up a research team or programme. Otto will receive EUR 1.5 million over five years. His research, ‘Self Replication in Dynamic Molecular Networks’, is in the field of systems chemistry and combines organic chemistry with molecular self-assemblage and self-replication.

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an ERC Starting Grant of EUR 1,5 million to three researchers at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences:

Prof. ir. Caspar van der Wal has received the Starting Researcher Award of the European Research Council (ERC). This is the most prestigious prize for young scientists in Europe. Van der Wal is awarded EUR 1,5 million over a period of five years. Caspar van der Wal will use the ERC grant for a research project that studies quantum optics with spins in semiconductor devices.

Fields of research: Quantum information science, Quantum devices, Quantum optics, Semiconductor spins, Solid state quantum information processing, Quantum communication

On Friday morning 29 April 2011 two University of Groningen nominees received a Royal Decoration. Prof. J.M. van der Hulst and Prof. P.G.M. Luiten have been appointed Knights in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. Van der Hulst has a major reputation as an astronomy researcher. As chair of the board of the NWO Foundation ASTRON he was responsible for the expansion of the radio observatories at Dutch Dwingeloo and Westerbork, particularly when the advanced radio telescope LOFAR was conceived.

Three scientists at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Groningen, will each receive EUR 1.5 million to do research in the coming five years. They have been awarded Vici grants as part of NWO’s Innovational Research Incentives Scheme (‘Vernieuwingsimpuls’). NWO, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, has awarded 32 grants, fifteen procent of the total number of applicants. A Vici grant is intended for groundbreaking researchers and one of the largest personal academic grants awarded in the Netherlands.