Op 8 december organiseren het Nationaal Platform Rio+20 en het Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL) een discussiebijeenkomst over institutionele kaders voor duurzame ontwikkeling op internationaal niveau. De komst van professor Johan Rockström (directeur Stockholm Environment Institute en Stockholm Resilience Center) maakt het tot een bijzondere aangelegenheid. Andere sprekers zijn professor Maarten Hajer (directeur Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving) en professor Frank Biermann. Voorzitter van deze middag is Kitty van der Heijden, directeur, Directie Milieu, Klimaat, Energie en Water bij het Ministerie van Buitenlandse zaken, ambassadeur Duurzame Ontwikkeling en voorzitter Taskforce Rio+20.

We announce here the second edition of the annual workshops on 'Detection, fate and risks of Engineered nanomaterials', which will take place on October 27, 2011, at VU University, Amsterdam (time: 10.00-17.00h). Aim is to (a) stimulate communication and crosslinks among SENSE PhD students and other researchers actively working in this field, and (b) contribute to (inter)national activities in this domain of research.

From 31 October - 4 November 2011, a writing week for PhD's will be organized as a result of the SENSE A1 Course in March this year.

Are you a young water professional or PhD student working in the area of urban water management or urban planning? Then the Young Scientist Workshop 'Water Challenges of Urbanisation' during the International Water Week Amsterdam 2011 should be of interest to you!

Week 25 of 2011 will be the week the department of Toxicology at Wageningen University will be almost empty... as the PhD-students will be out on a trip! Merel van der Ploeg is one of the organising PhD students: "We are planning to leave the Netherlands for a week to visit different research institutes in Switzerland and Italy. The institutes we will be visiting are Nestle, EAWAG, EFSA, Givaudan and ECVAM. There we will become familiar with the toxicology departments and their employees, and research of the institutes and the PhD students will be discussed during symposia. But first things first; we need to get sponsoring for the trip and that is not easy to arrange in these turbulent economic times." To be continued... During the coming months we will follow the PhD students of toxicology in their preparations of this study trip. Visit this page regularly to read about their experiences and their progress in finding sponsoring and getting everything organised.

Would you like to catch up with SENSE PhD students you met during a course or symposium? Curious about how their research is going? Need some listening ears for your struggle in statistics? Need to share your enthusiasm about that new idea you got last week? Need to talk about anything else than work?

 

Friday 28th the 1st SENSE Social Event for PhD students will take place. We will go for drinks at bar De Vlaamsche Reus in Wageningen. The first two drinks are for free.

 

A group of people will be biking from the bridge near the Forum building at the WUR, leaving at 16.45. People from outside Wageningen can take bus 88 to Wageningen bus station. Send an email to santiago.alvarezfernandez@wur.nl and we arrange to pick you up at 17.00 from the bus station, it's only 5 a minute walk from there.

 

We hope to see you on Friday 28 January!

 

Best wishes,

Santi, Ake, Akalu, Merel, Bruno, Mazhar & Rozelin

To improve the communication and easy contact between SENSE members, we have created a special SENSE group on the professional network website LinkedIn. Within this group it is possible to share interesting information and to discuss with each other on occuring topics. If you are a member of this group, it will be even easier for other participants in SENSE to get to know more about you and your work, and to contact you.

19th-23rd September 2010, RAI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

For details, see: http://www.ghgt.info/

 

The organising committee (OC) of the 10th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies invites you to Amsterdam. In September 2010 GHGT-10 is intended to provide a platform for fruitful discussions on ways to overcome the barriers to - and to find opportunities for – implementing greenhouse gas mitigation technologies. Discussions about technological and other policy-related developments will play a prominent role in the conference.

 

The Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT) conference series was formed in 1997 following the merger of the earlier series of International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Removal (ICCDR) and the Greenhouse Gas Mitigation options conference. IEA Greenhouse Gas R&D Programme (IEA GHG) are the guardians of the GHGT conferences which are held every two years. The conference series rotates between, North America, Europe and Asia.

SENSE Researcher Lars Hein (Environmental Systems Analysis group, Wageningen University) has been awarded with a prestigious research grant from the European Research Council (ERS).

The ERC grants are the European equivalent of the Veni, Vidi and Vici grants of the Dutch NWO. They are given to promising top researchers with an outstanding CV and research proposal.

Lars Hein receives the grant for his proposal 'EcoSpace: Spatial-Dynamic Modelling of Adaptation Options to Climate Change at the Ecosystem Scale'.

For those who are stuck in their research or who just would like to have a different view on life as a PhD student, we can recommend the website www.phdcomics.com. The website offers an interesting view on the academic world, in a new comic every day. The comics are made by Jorge Cham, who also went through the PhD experience himself. Enjoy!

After the crises of 2009 and early 2010, the role of the IPCC is being challenged. What is its role at the interface of climate change science and climate policy? Are the crises emblematic of the strenuous relationship between science and policy, or were there simply mistakes? And what are the challenges of the science-policy interface at the global level?

 

The Research cluster D-bate on Science, Technology and Environmental Governance is proud to present its first debate: On Wednesday 8 September Prof. Frans Berkhout (IVM) and Prof. Arthur Petersen (PBL) will discuss about the present and future of IPCC in the global climate policy (moderated by Laurens Bouwer).

Het omgaan met onzekerheden in de postnormale wetenschap leidt regelmatig tot heftige debatten. Dit speelt zich meer en meer af in de media tussen zowel wetenschappers als burgers, bestuurders en vertegenwoordigers van maatschappelijke instellingen. Gevolg is dat bij het zoeken naar zekerheid en draagvlak om beslissingen te nemen de gezagswaarde van de wetenschap ter discussie staat en het vertrouwen erin afneemt. Vers op het netvlies liggen de perikelen rondom het IPCC-klimaatrapport.

Reden voor de VVM om een ‘high-level’ debat te organiseren over de gezagswaarde van de (milieu)wetenschap, de kennisdemocratie, de sociaal-maatschappelijke ontwikkelingen en de rol van burgers en media in deze ‘post-trust society’. Gezocht zal worden naar wegen die bij complexe (milieu)vraagstukken leiden naar betere relaties tussen wetenschap, politiek en maatschappij.

On May the 28th the members of SENSE Research Cluster XIII (Land Use, Spatial Analysis and Modelling / Ecosystem and Landscape Services) had a 'meet & greet' to get to know each other and to think about possibilities to get more out of their research cluster. This activity was a follow-up of the meeting on research cluster developments that was organised by SENSE in December 2009. The group of researchers that attended this meeting was in theory already connected for quite some time (through the internet). However, now it was time to actually meet the people behind this crosscutting research cluster. With interactive discussions and “speed-dates”, great weather and location, and, most importantly, a clear mandate and list of upcoming activities, the afternoon could only be described as the right step forward for “lucky Research Cluster XIII”!

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and is estimated to be responsible for approximately one-fifth of manmade global warming. Per kilogram, it is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time horizon -- and global warming is likely to enhance methane release from a number of sources. Current natural and man-made sources include many where methane-producing micro-organisms can thrive in anaerobic conditions, particularly ruminant livestock, rice cultivation, landfill, wastewater, wetlands and marine sediments.

This timely and authoritative book, edited by Dave Reay, Pete Smith and André van Amstel, provides the only comprehensive and balanced overview of our current knowledge of sources of methane and how these might be controlled to limit future climate change. It describes how methane is derived from the anaerobic metabolism of micro-organisms, whether in wetlands or rice fields, manure, landfill or wastewater, or the digestive systems of cattle and other ruminant animals. It highlights how sources of methane might themselves be affected by climate change. It is shown how numerous point sources of methane have the potential to be more easily addressed than sources of carbon dioxide and therefore contribute significantly to climate change mitigation in the 21st century.

Op vrijdag 4 juni heeft prof.dr. Carolien Kroeze haar oratie gehouden, horende bij haar benoeming tot hoogleraar Milieutoekomstverkenningen bij de factulteit Natuurwetenschappen aan de Open Universiteit.

De inaugurele rede had als titel: Een toekomst vol verrassingen.

Op vrijdag 4 juni zal prof.dr. Carolien Kroeze haar oratie houden, horende bij haar benoeming tot hoogleraar Milieutoekomstverkenningen bij de factulteit Natuurwetenschappen aan de Open Universiteit.

 

De inaugurele rede heeft als titel:

Een toekomst vol verrassingen.

Playing it Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the Super Wicked Problem of Global Climate Change.

To participate in this event, please contact:  Dr. Eleftheria Vasileiadou

The SENSE Research School aims to foster scientific exchange and to inspire new generations of junior and senior researchers.

 

Therefore we are pleased to hereby cordially invite you to a ‘meeting of minds’ – which is likely to make you think (again):