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Research School for Socio-Economic and
Natural Sciences of the Environment |
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Newsletter December 2017
30 November 2017 |
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Complexity and Community ›› |
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Dutch Innovation Award for Plant-e ›› |
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Bregtje van der Bolt (WU): Can we predict a tipping point? ›› |
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Overview of PhD graduations upcoming period ›› |
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Masterclass Git, GitHub and Markdown in a R-environment, 26 January 2018 ›› |
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Overview of PhD / postdoc courses December 2017 - February 2018 ›› |
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Overview of recently announced PhD / postdoc courses ›› |
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R Users Discussion Group Meeting, 5 December ›› |
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B-Wise: Bioinformatics@Wageningen Seminar Series, 5 December ›› |
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Wageningen Evolution and Ecology Seminars (WEES), 14 December ›› |
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Workshop Migration in the context of Water Scarcity, 6 December 2017 ›› |
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Overview of upcoming events ›› |
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Call for Volunteer Chapter Scientists – IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, deadline 17 December 2017 ›› |
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Vacancies at SENSE Partners ›› |
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Other vacancies in the SENSE field ›› |
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| Editorial |
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| Complexity and Community |
YOU ARE INVITED! As we all know, the complexity of sustainability science requires a strong sense of community – without it, we can hardly communicate sufficiently across borders of disciplines and perspectives. Thus, you are invited to consider SENSE as your own community for understanding complexity together. A bonus for us all is that such involvement comes with the pleasure of working together and sharing ideas.
A ‘nice’ example of how complex things can get, may be found in the theme of an upcoming SENSE workshop: next week on 6 December, a group of PhD candidates from the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, are hosting a SENSE workshop on ‘Migration in the Context of Water Scarcity’. If you would like to be part of this event, then please send your message ASAP to: sensewaterworkshop@gmail.com.
The subject of ‘water scarcity’ is already complex enough in itself – also including its relevance for ‘migration’ can only be done seriously with the involvement of an interdisciplinary research community. Therefore we highly appreciate the efforts by the team of IVM PhD candidates who have prepared this meeting – if you want to meet them, then join us on 6 December! (if it will be difficult for you to join, then it wil also be possible to follow this event by ‘live stream’ – see event announcement for streaming link).
Another example of how ‘complexity and community’ can be productive is the Masterclass that has been prepared by SENSE PhD candidates Marieke Dirksen and Antonello Squintu on: ‘Masterclass Git, GitHub and Markdown in a R-environment’. If you would like to be involved in this Masterclass, then pls contact Marieke and Antonello (see contact details in announcement): this could be a good possibility for you to benefit from the SENSE community too.
Both examples may also inspire you to develop your own initiative – SENSE strives to be your own context for sharing ‘complexity and community’. Let’s make SENSE together.
Ad van Dommelen |
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| SENSE News |
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| Dutch Innovation Award for Plant-e |
  On October 31st, spin-off company Plant-e of SENSE graduate Marjolein Helder (WU) won the prestigious Dutch Innovation Award in the category Social Impact. The prize is an initiative of the Dutch broadcasting company AVROTROS and the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The jury appreciated the company’s innovative solution to the energy problem, its social vision and the intention to supply underdeveloped areas with truly green electricity.
With the company Pycno, Plant-e recently started a crowdfund to develop a CO2-negative crop-intelligence system. As a reward for your contribution you may get a christmas tree that generates its own light.
We wish you a sparkling holiday season and a very bright New Year!
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| SENSE in society |
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| Bregtje van der Bolt (WU): Can we predict a tipping point? |
| A small change in climate, causing an abrupt and irreversible change: a tipping point. There are lots of tipping points imaginable: ice on the Arctic that can suddenly vanish, ocean streams that change all of a sudden, natural fires that arise more easily. But is it possible to predict a tipping point in advance? Can you predict when we are approaching a tipping point? These are questions Bregje van der Bolt, researcher at Wageningen University, deals with on a daily basis. |
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| Upcoming PhD Graduations |
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| Overview of PhD graduations upcoming period |
- Torsten Starkloff
Winter hydrology and soil erosion processes in an agricultural catchment in Norway
5 December 2017, Wageningen University, Soil Physics and Land Management
- Wouter Schakel
Understanding environmental trade-offs of carbon capture, utilization and storage
6 December 2017, Utrecht University, Energy and Resources
- Mijndert van der Spek
Methodological improvements to ex-ante techno-economic modelling and uncertainty analysis of emerging CO2 capture technologies
6 December 2017, Utrecht University, Energy and Resources
- Chunqing Wang
Numerical modelling of ice floods in the Ning-Meng reach of the Yellow River basin
8 December 2017, UNESCO-IHE, River Basin Development
- Mark Zandvoort
Planning amid uncertainty: adaptiveness for spatial interventions in delta areas
8 December 2017, Wageningen University, Landscape Architecture
- Marinka van Puijenbroek
Dunes, above and beyond: The interactions between ecological and geomorphological processes during early dune development
8 December 2017, Wageningen University, Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology
- Bob Laarhoven
Valorisation of waste streams, "From by-product to worm biomass"
15 December 2017, Wageningen University, Environmental Technology
- Ted Veldkamp
Water scarcity at the global and regional scale: unravelling its dominant drivers in historical and future time-periods
18 December 2017, VU University Amsterdam, Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Spatial Analysis and Decision Support
- Norhakim bin Yusof
Exploring wind dynamics in space and time: Mining frequent patterns and modelling power potential
20 December 2017, University of Twente, Department of Geo-information Processing
- Mingtian Yao
Water use in a Heavily Urbanized Delta. Scenarios and Adaptation Options for Sectorial Water Use in The Pearl River Basin, China
20 December 2017, Wageningen University, Earth System Science
- Dan Yan
Water allocation under future climate change and socio-economic development. The case of Pearl River Basin
21 December 2017, Wageningen University, Earth System Science
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| Upcoming Courses |
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| Masterclass Git, GitHub and Markdown in a R-environment, 26 January 2018 |
Do you also save your scripts as “v1”, “v2” and “final”?
Do you have a hard time figuring out what the differences between these versions are?
Maybe you are lucky, and you find your own “documentation” in the code.
Maybe not, then this course is for you!
The goal of this masterclass is to enable you to make your research fully reproducible.
Bring your own R-code! During our lectures and hands-on you will be able to start using all these tools. |
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| Overview of PhD / postdoc courses December 2017 - February 2018 |
- Statistical Uncertainty Analysis of Dynamic Models
11-15 December 2017, Wageningen
- Basic Statistics
11, 12, 13, 18, 19 December 2017, Wageningen
- Design of Experiments
20-22 December 2017, Wageningen
- Practical Bioinformatics for Biologists
8 January - 3 February 2018, Groningen
- Advanced Qualitative Research Design and Data Collection
8 January - 16 February 2018, Wageningen
- Structural Equation Modelling
22-26 January 2018, Wageningen
- World Food System Summer School 2018: Food Systems in Transition
27 January - 10 February 2018
- Introduction to Zero Inflated Models with R - Frequentist and Bayesian approaches
29 January - 2 February 2018, Wageningen
- Geostatistics
5-9 February 2018, Wageningen (every two years)
- Biotechnology of Conversion: Fundamentals of (Bio)Electrochemistry (NEW)
8 February 2018, UFZ Leipzig, Germany
- Academic Publication and Presentation in the Social Sciences
19 February - 16 March 2018, Wageningen
- Institutions and Societal Transformation
20 February - 13 March 2018, Wageningen
- Survival Analysis
22-23 February 2018, Wageningen
- Social orders, Institutions and Long-Term Economic Development
23 February - 16 March 2018, Wageningen
- Practical Modelling for Marine Biologists
26 February - 17 March 2018, Groningen
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| Overview of recently announced PhD / postdoc courses |
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In case you are interested in either participating or teaching a course that is currently not in the programme, please do not hesitate and contact us with your suggestions. |
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| Discussion Groups |
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| R Users Discussion Group Meeting, 5 December |
| The R Users Meeting is a monthly meeting for people working with R. PhD and MSc students, as well as staff members, both beginners as well as advanced R users are welcome. The meeting offers an opportunity to help each other with specific questions and exchange ideas. In each meeting a specific topic is discussed by demonstrating and discussing examples of R functions and example data. The second part of each meeting is reserved for short questions on R codes and offers opportunity to get advice on your R code and how to fix or improve it. |
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| B-Wise: Bioinformatics@Wageningen Seminar Series, 5 December |
| In Wageningen, a large number of researchers routinely apply state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools or develop novel algorithms to analyze their data. Through B-Wise, the Bioinformatics@Wageningen Seminar Series, we aim to bring people together on a regular basis to exchange ideas, discuss problems, present our research and learn from each other. |
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| Wageningen Evolution and Ecology Seminars (WEES), 14 December |
WEES is an initiative from PhD students and postdocs at Wageningen University to organize a continuing series of stimulating seminars on contemporary topics in evolution and ecology. We aim to bring together different groups at Wageningen University using a variety of systems, but with a common interest in evolutionary and ecological questions. For this series we invite researchers from all over the world that have leading roles in their field. After the talk there will be drinks for an informal discussion and a dinner in town with the speaker.
This month's seminar: Dr. Anne-Nathalie Volkoff - Research Director, “Diversity, Genomes, and Insects-Microorganisms Interactions” (DGIMI), UMR INRA – Université Montpellier (FRA) - Endogenous viruses used by parasitic wasps to deliver virulence molecules to their hosts” |
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| Upcoming Events |
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| Workshop Migration in the context of Water Scarcity, 6 December 2017 |
| - - - LIVE STREAM WILL BE AVAILABLE - - - With David Zetland, Water policy expert as well as author of popular and academic writing on the political economy of water, Karen Meijer, specialist in global environmental governance and multi-actor policy implementations, Andreas Sterl, senior scientist in weather and climate modeling, and Louise van Schaik, head Clingendael International Sustainability Centre and senior research fellow in scarcity of natural resources. |
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| Overview of upcoming events |
| Recently announced: |
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| Full list of interesting upcoming events: |
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| Call for Volunteer Chapter Scientists – IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land, deadline 17 December 2017 |
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is in the process of developing a Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL), which is scheduled for completion in August 2019.
IPCC Working Group III (Mitigation), which is managing the production of the report, is seeking highly motivated individuals to act as volunteer chapter scientists to support author teams with technical aspects of chapter development. This may include fact checking, reference checking, confirming the completeness of responses to reviewer comments, and assisting with figures and tables. The positions will provide volunteers with the opportunity to get involved in the IPCC process and to help ensure the quality and robustness of an important IPCC product.
Chapter scientists will participate on a voluntary basis and will not be employees of the IPCC, or IPCC Working Group III, and will be expected to work from their home institutions. |
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| Job vacancies |
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| Vacancies at SENSE Partners |
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| Other vacancies in the SENSE field |
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| More vacancies |
| During the month new vacancies are regularly posted on the SENSE vacancy page. |
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