January 2007
News from the board
RECETO has been evaluated. During the evaluation it has been indicated that the research profile and the name of RECETO does not clearly signal that biology/microbiology is an integrated and important part of RECETO. Revision of the research themes/disciplines and the name of RECETO has been discussed in the RECETO board, and the following new name for the research school is proposed:
Full title: Research School of Environmental Chemistry, Microbiology and Toxicology
Deadline for inputs is 19 February 2007 to RECETO
During the last few months 11 new Ph.D. students has been matriculated and associated to RECETO – all the new students will be presented in the following news letters.
RECETO has received funding for a new 5-year period. In the new financing period new activities and instruments are available including contribution to post docs. Furthermore scholarships to support the best MSc students in environmental chemistry and microbiology will be available.
More info at the homepage will follow soon.
- Forthcoming meetings of the board:
- Tuesday 27 February 9-12 at DTU
- Thursday 31 May 9-12 at KU
- Latest agenda and minutes are online at www.receto.dk/News/Board
Conferences and symposia in the field of RECETO
- Wetland Biogeochemistry - Frontiers in Biogeochemistry" in Annapolis, Maryland d. 1-4 April 2007 link
- SETAC Europe 17th Annual Meeting in Porto link
- ExTech®2007 - Ninth International Symposium on Advances in Extraction Technologies link
- Nordic Natural Products Conference link
- The 19th NASTEC - Nordic Atomic Spectroscopy and Trace Element Conference link
- Please see the RECETO News website for a full list
Upcoming Ph.D. Courses and other relevant courses
- Presentation techniques (in Danish)
- COGCI Course - Ecosystem processes
Date: 5 - 10 June 2007 - The course is aiming at giving a general overview of ecosystem processes for non-specialists and will focus on sensitive processes of interest in a Global change context. This course is planned especially to concentrate on production and emission of greenhouse gases and provide opportunity for conducting small field experiments and establish measurements with different types of instruments.
- Representative sampling of solids. Characterization and analysis
A collaboration between the research schools Residual Resources Research (3R at DTU), RECETO (KU) and ACABS research Group (AAUE).
Sampling is the first, necessary step when performing a chemical and/or a physical analysis for characterization of materials or processes, often followed by data analysis such as statistics or chemometrics. Although sampling may be a source of large variation of characterization results, it is often conducted without sufficient scientific rigor and methodology necessary in order to obtain statistically consistent results. Sampling of solid materials, such as waste, is particularly challenging because of its inherent heterogeneity. It is consequently difficult to mix the materials to obtain consistent homogeneity, leading to potentially unreliable and nonrepeatable results.
- Please see the RECETO News website for a full list
Vacancies
- OPEN PhD and post-doc positions (Non RECETO) - Deadline January 31, 2007
Six ER (post-doc researchers) and twelve ESR (PhD students) covering the specific tasks of research, training and transfer of knowledge of KEYBIOEFFECTS are proposed. Link
New Ph.D. students in RECETO
- Rikke Gleerup Ovesen
Supervisors: Hans Christian Bruun Hansen and John Nielsen (KVL)
Project title: Biopharmaceuticals in the environment: Environmental chemistry of cyclotides
Research areas: Biogeochemical processes; Chemical analysis and quality assessment; Ecotoxicology and risk assessment
Project description: Intensive cultivation of plants producing medicine can cause transferal of bio-active compounds to the environment. The bio-active compounds’ influence on the structure and function of ecosystems require investigation on the same level as investigations of synthetic chemicals. This project will investigate the environmental chemistry of the cyclotides in soil and water. The project includes development of analytical methods of cyclotides in environmental matrices, investigation of the physical-chemical properties of the compounds, their sorption and persistence in the environment and a quantification of the ecotoxicology of the compounds and will contribute to clarify if there is a risk of influencing non-target organisms in the soil environment and ground water by growing cyclotide producing plants.
- Jacob Bælum
Supervisors: Bjarne Westergaard Strobel (KVL) and Carsten Suhr Jacobsen (GEUS)
Project title: Agricultural practice, microbial activity and pesticide leaching
Research areas: Biogeochemical processes; Microbial degradation processes
Project description: The overall aim of the project is to investigate possible effects of agricultural activities on the microbial activities associated with degradation of pesticides in soil. Thereby, it is the goal to archive information on the population dynamics among the potential degraders. Primarily we will use molecular genetic methods such as mRNA extraction by magnetic capture hybridization, and quantitative RT-Real-Time PCR to investigate the activity among the microbial degraders. DGGE and 13C-DGGE will be used to obtain information on population dynamics among the potential degraders and the general microbial populations.
Contribute to this newsletter
Is there news you would like to contribute?
If you have information that you would like to see included in the next RECETO News letter, please send it to: receto@receto.dk.
You can add your events, vacancies and PhD defence yourself via http://kvl.dk/Projects/Receto/News/Submit-to-RECETO.aspx
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Do not hesitate to send this newsletter to your co-workers. Also, when you know someone within RECETO who doesn't have a webpage yet, please direct him or her to www.receto.dk