News overview 2022

Science LinX newsletter May

Many animal species bury their eggs, for a number of different reasons. While it is firmly established that Eurasian penduline tits bury them because of sexual conflict, their Chinese counterparts seem to have an entirely different reason. Experimental manipulations show that for these birds burial prevents the eggs from falling out of the nest in strong winds.

Mercury harbors water ice in the shadows of the steepest craters around its poles. But it is unclear how those water molecules ended up on Mercury. Now a new simulation by scientists from the University of Groningen and SRON Netherlands Institute for Sp ace Research shows that incoming minor bodies such as asteroids, comets and dust particles carry enough water to account for all the ice sheets present.

Mathematicians at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, in collaboration with scientists from Chile and Germany, have developed a mathematical theory and algorithm that overcome some of the key challenges associated with a technique to measure stiffness in tissues in an MRI scanner.

Een team van sterrenkundigen van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen heeft vastgesteld dat drie planetoïden, waarvan werd gedacht dat ze een gevaar vormen voor de aarde, de komende honderd jaar zeker niet zullen inslaan. Ze kwamen tot hun resultaten na spitwerk in telescooparchieven met behulp van geavanceerde datascience-technieken.

In the first few billion years after the Big Bang, the universe contained far more so-called starburst galaxies than models predict. As many as 60 to 90 percent of the stars in the early universe appear to have been produced by galaxies undergoing a growth spurt. This is what an analysis of more than 20,000 distant galaxies show. The team, led by astronomers from University of Groningen (the Netherlands) will soon publish its findings in The Astrophysical Journal.

On 4 April, the third working group report of the sixth IPCC assessment cycle was published. One of the Lead Authors for this part of the sixth IPCC climate report is Klaus Hubacek, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen, at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen.

De Nederlandse Sterrenkunde Olympiade wordt dit jaar georganiseerd door de astronomen van het Kapteyn Instituut van de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Science LinX newsletter April

Wil je met jouw leerlingen onderzoeksvaardigheden oefenen in de praktijk en tegelijk bijdragen aan wetenschappelijk onderzoek? Hebben jouw leerlingen meetinstrumenten nodig voor hun PWS? Of ben je zelf op zoek naar meetinstrumenten voor in jouw les? Het CurioUs?-project biedt uitkomst.

Bacteria and yeast need to prevent leakage of numerous small molecules through their cell membrane. Biochemists at the University of Groningen have studied how the composition of the membrane affects passive diffusion and the robustness of this membrane. Their results could help the biotech industry to optimize microbial production of useful molecules and help in drug design.

The intermittent supply of green electricity requires large-scale storage to keep our power grids stable. Since normal batteries do not scale very well, the idea of using flow batteries, which store electricity in a fluid is attractive. Scientists at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, have designed a flow battery electrolyte that is cheaper and is based on an organic compound, rather than a metal.

If you want to treat a tumour, the chemotherapeutic drug has to travel through the patient’s entire body, potentially causing many side effects in healthy tissues. Scientists at the University of Groningen and the University Medical Center Groningen have produced a light-controlled ‘cage’ that ‘opens’ to deliver the drug to where it is needed.

Johannes Miocic, Assistant Professor of Geo Energy, is studying the rocks from the Groningen gas field. This should provide more information on what to expect – and how to make better use of those rocks.

A black hole gets a large corona first, and only after that it emits jets. This is revealed, among other things, by the heart beat graph that an international team of astronomers, led by Mariano Méndez from the University of Groningen, has made of a black hole and a star orbiting around each other.

All life evolves: microorganisms can become resistant to drugs, viruses evade our vaccines, and species may adapt to climate change. Even the ability to evolve can evolve. If we were to understand how this happens and which mechanisms play a role, it may be possible to predict evolution to some extent.

Sex roles in birds describe sex differences in courtship, mate competition, social pair-bonds, and parental care. Different explanations have been put forward to explain these differences but none are based on a comprehensive study. Therefore, an international team of experts set out to analyse data on 1,800 of the approximately 9,000 different species of birds as their study organisms.

Science LinX newsletter March

Scientists at the University of Groningen have shown that synthetic data can be used to train a convolutional neural network in the detection of yeast cells in a matter of days, rather than months. The new system performs as well as the best available neural networks trained with real annotated data.

If the UN Sustainable Development Goal to lift over one billion people out of poverty were to be reached in 2030, the impact on global carbon emissions would be minimal. That sounds good; however, the main reason for this is the huge inequality in the carbon footprint of rich and poor nations. This conclusion was drawn by scientists from the Energy and Sustainability Research Institute of the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), together with colleagues from China and the US.

An international team of astronomers led by Dutch scientists has discovered that even a weak jet stream from a low-active black hole can be a kind of leaf blower to clean parts of a galaxy. This probably stops the formation of stars.

Even at high concentrations, antibiotics won’t kill all bacteria. There are always a few survivors, even in a bacterial population that is genetically identical. Scientists at the KU Leuven (Belgium) and the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) discovered that these survivors share a common feature: they accumulate acid in their cells.

AI systems are usually trained in image recognition by using annotated trainingsets with images. Computer scientist Estefanía Talavera Martínez added a new data modality, audio/sound, to the teaching material that the AI system looks at. This resulted in a high success rate in recognizing indoor spaces.

Science LinX newsletter January-February

Zondag 16 januari is Marien bioloog Sancia van der Meij van de RUG te gast in het BNNVARA programma Vroege Vogels op NPO Radio1.

An international team of researchers including Else Starkenburg from the University of Groningen discovered the remnants of a star cluster whose stars share a uniquely low fraction of heavy elements.