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Table of Contents
Useful links:
Website ALW
Website NWO
This newsletter is limited to the scope of the NWO area Earth and Life Sciences, NWO-wide news can be found here.
News Earth and Life Sciences
| New ALW board member Ivonne
Rietjens Ivonne Rietjens has been installed in the ALW Divisional Board as successor of ms. Professor C. Mariani. Prof. I. Rietjens has been working as a toxicology professor at Wageningen since 2001. She studied molecular life sciences and earned a Ph.D. in toxicology. |
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| New popular book Experiment.nl part
3 The new NWO popular book Experiment.nl has been published with a collection of the most fascinating NWO research from 2009. Research from the earth and life sciences can mainly be found in Chapter 10, about biodiversity, and further in Chapter 1 (What will we eat tomorrow?), 2 (Long live the town), 3 (Passion to reproduce), 5 (I think therefore I do), 7 (Science in the shop) and 12 (Looking after the earth). The book (in Dutch) is available from booksellers. |
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| NWO strategy memorandum In June, NWO presented its new strategy memorandum 'Growing through knowledge', intended for the period 2011-2014. NWO will continue to invest in talent, will place greater emphasis on knowledge utilisation and has come up with six new societal themes. Relevant themes for ALW are Water and Climate, Healthy Living, Sustainable Energy, and Materials and Scarcity. ALW will shortly publish its own strategy, which will elaborate on the NWO strategy memorandum for the earth and life sciences. |
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| BWM booklet about cattle and biodiversity on
the farm This booklet Variatie in vee [Variation in cattle] describes the history of our domesticated animals. How did the variation in cows, horses and chickens, as well as in dogs develop? Why does it matter if that variation disappears and can we conserve unusual domesticated breeds? Should we do that in the meadow, in a nature reserve or simply in a deep freeze full of sperm? The booklet of the foundation BWM (Life Sciences and Society) provides a clear overview of the current science concerning conservation of rare domesticated breeds. |
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| Information days Innovational Research
Incentives Scheme If you are thinking about submitting a grant application then the information days about the Innovational Research Incentives Scheme might be something for you. Lots of practical issues regarding the Veni, Vidi and Vici grants will be considered. The information days will be held on Friday 17 September and Thursday 7 October. |
| Annual report ALW in Synthese
2009 The annual report of ALW is part of the annual report of NWO. The NWO annual report for the general public is called Synthese. You can read Synthese here (in Dutch). The ALW contribution is on pages 6 to 9, with an introduction by evolutionary biologist Jacintha Ellers of the VU University Amsterdam. |
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| ALW office The following persons have left the ALW office:
New ALW staff:
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Grants awarded
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| Programme news
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Call for research proposals on
biodiversity |
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| BiodivERsA In line with the new Biodiversity Works research programme, ALW has decided to contribute 500,000 to an international research programme within the ERA network called BiodivERsA with 'Biodiversity and ecosystem services' as its theme. This enables Dutch researchers in the field of biodiversity to participate in this European joint programme. It is expected that the ERA-Net will issue a call for proposals in this programme on November 1, 2010. | |
| TOP Grants The ALW Divisional Board has decided that in early October 2010, a new round can open for the TOP grants. In this round 4.5 million was reserved for six projects. TOP grants are a part of the free competition and are intended for researchers with an excellent track record. | |
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ZKO - North sea days |
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Meerwaarde | |
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New collaboration ALW with TTI Green
Genetics | |
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Final symposium Cognition programme | |
Calendar
More calendar items. | |
| Press
releases | |
| Estimation of malaria risks based on
oversimplified temperature data When making malaria predictions you must not look at the average monthly temperature but rather at variations around the average temperature. These have proven to be far more important for the development and survival of malaria parasites and malaria mosquitoes. Rubicon researcher Krijn Paaijmans published this research finding in the journal PNAS. This new insight is important for determining the risk of malaria during climate change, but also for the control of the malaria mosquitoes with fungi, for example. |
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Forest provides cooling during heatwave Trees evaporate less moisture when heat strikes, which initially increases the temperature around forests. But during extreme prolonged heat periods, forests are able to continue evaporating for much longer periods, thereby causing a net cooling effect. Initially, grass has a cooling effect, but this effect disappears during long hot periods. These conclusions are the result of research by Rubicon Grant Winner Ryan Teulings, as published in Nature Geoscience. | |
Smart fungus switches off defence mechanism in plants, animals and people Just like a stealth aeroplane is invisible to radar, fungi can disguise themselves against the immune mechanisms of plants, animals and people. Vidi researcher Bart Thomma discovered this mechanism in a tomato plant. He saw how the fungus excreted a protein that rendered the randomly positioned building blocks of its own cell walls invisible for the plant's immune system. |
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