Science LinX news

When going in circles helps you stay put: how spin-orbit coupling leads to stable spins in color centers in materials

Bacteria in the small intestine can deaminate levodopa, the main drug that is used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Bacterial processing of the unabsorbed fractions of the drug results in a metabolite that reduces gut motility.

Biological clocks have sizeable effects on the performance of elite athletes. This conclusion was drawn by chronobiologists from the University of Groningen after studying the times achieved by swimmers in four different Olympic Games. Shifting the clock to reach peak performance at the right time could make the difference between winning and losing. The results were published on 8 October in the journal Scientific Reports

Science LinX newsletter for October 2020

Science LinX gaat met scholieren en andere geïnteresseerden onderzoeken hoe spinnen zich aanpassen aan het leven in de stad.

Op 26 en 27 september was er in het Klokgebouw in Eindhoven weer een Maker Faire. Ook Science LinX was van de partij, met de bouw-opstelling GEN.ERATE.

A team of physicists and biophysicists from the University of Groningen discovered that individual light-harvesting nanotubes with disordered molecular structures still transport light energy in the same way. By combining spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulations and theoretical physics, they discovered how disorder at the molecular level is effectively averaged out at the microscopic scale.

In China, approximately 10 billion online food orders were served to over 400 million customers in 2018. Together with colleagues from China and the UK, Yuli Shan, an environmental scientist at the University of Groningen, found that reusable tableware can substantially reduce packaging waste and life cycle environmental emissions.

During the summer, scientific journals continued to publish papers. In this overview we highlight a number of summer papers from FSE staff.

Ecologist Britas Klemens Eriksson from the University of Groningen and his colleagues from Stockholm University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden have now shown that stickleback domination moves like a wave through the island archipelagos, changing the ecosystem from predator-dominated to algae-dominated.

Hoe zou je wereld eruitzien als jij een pissebed bent, of een vlinder? Dat hebben nieuwsgierige kinderen woensdag 12 augustus ontdekt tijdens de OntdekDag op het Suikerterrein.

A group of theoretical physicists, including two physicists from the University of Groningen, have proposed a ‘table-top’ device that could measure gravity waves. Their design could also answer one of the biggest questions in physics: is gravity a quantum phenomenon?

Conducting protein-based material could be used in fuel cells, batteries or act as sensor.

During the lockdown scientists cannot visit the university. How do they manage to keep on working? PhD student Chris van Ewijk shares his experiences.

Chemists from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, together with colleagues at the University of Milan (Italy) have created a soft porous aromatic framework containing light-sensitive molecular switches.

Dit voorjaar zijn 3 en 4 vwo leerlingen van het Leeuwarder Lyceum en De Lindenborg aan de slag geweest met de lesmodule “voedselweb structuren in een agrarisch landschap”. Wegens de Coro-na maatregelen, hebben ze een online variant van de lesmodule gevolgd.

On 21 June, the longest day of the year, the online kick-off of the ‘De Donkerte van het Waddengebied’ (the darkness of the Wadden area) programme took place. The programme aims to allow residents, recreational users and tourists to experience the darkness of the Wadden area.

A summer internship in Bilbao, Spain, has led to a paper in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters for Jack Mayo, a Master’s student in Nanoscience at the University of Groningen. He has helped to create a universal model that can predict the number distribution of topological defects in non-equilibrium systems.

Scientists from the University of Groningen, together with colleagues from the IIMCB in Warsaw (Poland) and the Leiden UMC (also in the Netherlands), have identified putative drug targets in the RNA of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that is causing the current pandemic. Their results, which still have to undergo peer review, show which portions of the genetic material would be promising drug targets. This information can guide the search for a drug that will combat the coronavirus.

During the lockdown scientists cannot visit the university. How do they manage to keep on working? Melanie König (29) shares her experiences with us.

We know how important bacteria and fungi are for the health of plants. In marine environments and in our own gut, bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria) are important in regulating the microbiome. Yet, their effect on bacteria living around the roots of plants has hardly been studied

Some metal oxides, such as nickelates, have a tuneable resistivity, which makes them an interesting material for adaptable electronics and cognitive computing. Scientists from the University of Groningen have studied how these materials can change their nature from metallic to insulating.

Dating archaeological objects precisely is difficult, even when using techniques such as radiocarbon dating. Using a recently developed method, based on the presence of sudden spikes in carbon-14 concentration, scientists at the University of Groningen, together with Russian colleagues, have pinned the date for the construction of an eighth-century complex in southern Siberia to a specific year. This allows archaeologists to finally understand the purpose for building the complex – and why it was never used. The results were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on 8 June.

During the lockdown scientists cannot visit the university. How do they manage to keep on working? Aditya Iyer (33) shares his story with us.

Proefjes uit de Zpannend Zernike brochure.

Dit voorjaar testen leerlingen van 3 en 4 vwo van het Leeuwarder Lyceum en de Lindenborg de lesmodule Voedselweb structuren in een agrarisch landschap die ontwikkeld is vanuit het Europese project over duurzame landschappen SUSTAIN.

Jouw huis eens van de chemische kant bekijken? Ga aan de slag met de Molecula moleculenspeurtocht! Kom erachter waar in huis je welke moleculen tegenkomt en hoe deze er in 3D uitzien.

Chemical & Engineering News (a publication of the American Chemical Society) recently published two articles on papers by Ben Feringa: one about a muscle that is flexed by molecular motors and the other about a new environmentally friendly process that makes useful building blocks for plastic and pills.

Secretary Tineke Kalter was the first UG staff member to hear that Ben Feringa had been awarded the Nobel Prize. The effects are still noticeable a year later. ‘We still receive dozens of requests every day.’

Egbert Boekema has spent almost his entire academic career working on a single problem: elucidating the structure of the proteins responsible for photosynthesis. His official farewell was on 27 September.

The Origins Centre will tackle questions submitted to the National Science Agenda about the origin of life on Earth and in the Universe. A number of scientists from the University of Groningen have a leading role in this Centre. Part 1 of a series: the background to the Origins Centre.

Ben Feringa is awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry

Science LinX presents three graphene videos.

A short film on a research project by Sijbren Otto, who wants to create life in the lab via chemical evolution.