news 2022

Labor migrants especially in the lowest income groups have more frequent labor disputes than the Dutch working population, but do not dare to file formal cases about them for fear of being fired. Those are the main conclusions in the recently published report "De aanpak van arbeidsrechtelijke problemen onder arbeidsmigranten," which Tilburg researchers Anna Sobczyk-Turek and Jan Cremers collaborated on for the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment.

Many surfaces get slippery when wet. Some surfaces have the opposite behaviour: they get less slippery. UvA researchers have now shed light on why this is the case. Hydrogen bonds between the surface and the water turn out to play an important role. The research, carried out by PhD candidate Liang Peng in collaboration with five physicists and chemists from UvA, ARCNL and the German Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, was published in Physical Review Letters this week.

Reusing asphalt or making a movable bridge deck out of biocomposite material are just two examples of innovation in the world of civil construction. Municipalities, provinces and other major infrastructure clients are in a position to push for such innovations in their tenders. But new techniques can come with construction risks that companies are not always willing to take.

Interview with Melisa Yildiz, Ph.D. Candidate at Hasselt University, BE and Maastricht University, NL, and Felix van den Horst, CEO of Clairify B.V. That is precisely what Melisa Yildiz is researching at the moment. She presented the results she's gotten at the HealthBuild conference, and they look very promising.

Researchers at the University of Twente have developed a revolutionary programmable integrated microwave photonic filter with a record-breaking dynamic range. This represents a major breakthrough in the integration of functionality and performance in radio frequency photonic signal processors. David Marpaung, one of the authors of the study says: "Our work breaks the conventional and fragmented approach of integration, functionality and performance that currently prevents the adoption of these photonic systems in real applications.

In recent years, additional financial resources haven allowed launching various local, regional and national projects to tackle and frustrate drug related organised crime. As a result, more awareness has arisen in the Netherlands about the seriousness of this problem and the need to tackle it together.

Every human body starts out as one single cell: a fertilized egg. This cell develops into all kinds of cell types: skin cells, liver cells, blood cells. Although these cell types look and function differently, they all contain exactly the same DNA. Tuncay Baubec and his research group try to understand how the same genetic code is used to build the more than 200 different cell types in our body.

New research by a team of UT researchers could provide a promising approach in the battle against malaria. In the research published in the scientific journal ACS Infectious Diseases , the researchers combat the malaria parasite in mosquitoes in a specific phase of their life. "It's a unique approach: previous research focused predominantly on treatment in humans." Malaria is a major health problem all over the world.

Agriculture is one of the leading causes of human induced land-use change globally. Our food consumption and production, especially in industrialised countries, is thereby damaging the planet.

This week, the biodiversity conference takes place in Montreal, after it was postponed by Covid-19 in the Chinese city of Kunming last May. That postponement was worrying, says Professor of Land Use and Biodiversity Merel Soons , because time is running out for nature conservation. The reason our biodiversity is declining so much is well known.

A team of UT researchers from the Faculties of ITC, BMS and ET has recently published a new study published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation that found using digital twins can improve planning and coordination in cities. Digital twins are digital representations of physical objects or systems, and have been widely used in manufacturing, construction, and maintenance to improve planning and coordination.

TU Delft Dream Team Epoch has achieved ninth place in their first competition of the year, the CityLearn Challenge. Engaged in a battle with 110 other teams from around the world, including Microsoft, the TU Delft students developed a new AI algorithm that contributes to better and smarter energy systems.

A new research project from Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam (UvA) launches a 4-year project entitled 'A Safe Bet: design and evaluation of a player-tailored online responsible gambling promotion framework'. The researchers will develop and evaluate new tools for online Responsible Gambling (RG).

Researchers of the University of Amsterdam, together with colleagues at the University of Queensland and the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, have developed a strategy for assessing the toxicity of chemicals using machine learning. They present their approach in an article in Environmental Science & Technology for the special issue "Data Science for Advancing Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology".

When tectonic plates collide and thrust over each other and cause an earthquake, a tsunami can occur. That should not happen in an earthquake where the plates slide past each other. And yet that was exactly what happened on 28 September 2018 near Palu Bay (Sulawesi, Indonesia), mere minutes after an earthquake of that second category.

Using smart algorithms, PhD researcher Lars Moormann has made the design of tunnel control systems much more efficient. It is hard to imagine modern traffic networks without tunnels. They help us bypass rivers and mountains, and make sure traffic doesn't interfere too much with our daily lives in urban areas.

Today is International Mountain Day. Mountains are of immeasurable value in our daily existence. Not only does 15% of the world's population live in mountainous areas, mountains also contain some 50% of biodiversity hotspots and provide half of humanity with fresh water. At Utrecht University, we do a lot of research on water management in these important mountain areas.

Unique genetic research shows that the Ashkenazi Jewish community has been a virtually closed group since the 14th century. The international and interdisciplinary Genetic Legacies project examined DNA from the teeth of dozens of medieval and contemporary members of the community from the German city of Erfurt.

Since the corona crisis, school ventilation has been in the spotlight, especially to prevent the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Research published today by Maastricht University (UM) shows that poor ventilation also affects the test scores of elementary school students and thus the core task of schools, good education.

Joint press release by Utrecht University and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) A circular bioeconomy can dramatically rein in the fast-growing plastic sector's climate, pollution, and resource consumption impacts.