3 March 2010 - Director
General Henrik Sandbech, National Environmental
Research Institute (NERI) at Aarhus University,
has taken over the task as chairman of the
Partnership for European Environmental Research
(PEER).
The PEER partnership
unites seven of the largest European environmental
centres. With its staff of 4,700 and an
annual budget of DKK 2.7 billion PEER contributes
significantly to obtain integrated solutions
that comply with the need for sustainable
development. One of the main activities
of PEER is to create the basis for strong
cross-scientific environmental monitoring
and research. The PEER organisations cover
all disciplines of environmental research
and all PEER research is based on extensive
cooperation, both within and outside the
EU-area. NERI was one of the founders of
PEER in 2001.
An essential focal point
of the PEER partnership is joint projects
financed via EU research programmes, primarily
research projects, but also a series of
PhD courses within the framework of the
Marie Curie programme. To promote internationalisation
of the research environments PEER plans
to increase exchange of staff between the
seven partners in the years to come.
+ More
Ground-breaking Danish
research in Nature: bacteria collaborate
across long distances via electrical networks
25 February 2010 - To
their great surprise, scientists have discovered
that bacteria have electrical connections
with each other spanning distances that
can be more than 20,000 times their own
length. By using a common electrical network,
bacteria derive energy by getting substances
a long way apart to react with each other.
“The prevailing view
has otherwise been that two substances have
to be in direct contact with each other
to be able to react,” explains Associate
Professor Lars Peter Nielsen, Department
of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University,
head of the team of researchers responsible
for this sensational discovery.
Two of the four
scientists behind the discovery, Henrik
Fossing and Peter Bondo Christensen, are
with the National Environmental Research
Institute, Aarhus University.
