Science

MAASTRICHT. The idea originated in London a few years ago: put some scientists in a pub, let them talk about a certain topic and thus provide the broader public with an easy way of becoming acquainted with scientific research. That is what Pint of Science is: a three-day worldwide festival held in May. This year, for the first time, it will also be...

A researcher selling his soul to industry. That’s how Rob Markus, who holds an endowed chair at Maastricht University, was portrayed – unsuccessfully blurred out – in a broadcast of the Dutch television programme Rambam on Thursday, 24 January. He was quite willing to discuss the possibility of ‘guiding’ research ...

Pretending that you suffer from an illness or disorder, for example in order to pocket compensation for damages. It happens more often than you would think. How do you separate the con artists from the patients? But also, how widespread is it? A Maastricht experiment showed that 94 per cent of the students would be inclined to do it.

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Professor Bernadette Jansma would like to know what happens in the brain when people understand each other. Are they literally on the same (brain) wavelength?

Hortense Jongen hopped on an airplane in Gothenburg last Thursday to pay an ultra-short visit to her hometown Maastricht. And with good reason: to accept the dissertation prize during the university’s founding day ceremony. Jongen researched how one could combat corruption on an international level using ‘soft governance’. The top...

The one is devoted to freedom and democracy, the other seeks a genuine climate policy. This characterises the two laureates who will receive honorary doctorates during the university’s foundation day ceremony. Michael Ignatieff has been active in particular as rector of the Central European University (CEU) in the last few years, while writer...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Stephan Smeekes, data scientist at the School of Business and Economics, would like to investigate why computer programmes often find ‘nonsensical connections’ in big data. This wouldn't require large investments; it would ...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Molecular biologist Manon van Engeland would like to set up a study to collect all biomarker cancer research projects in a database. Why? To enable patients to benefit as quickly as possible from the detection of the early signs of cancer....

First: Do we still want to keep the European Union? And second: What will it take? These are two very important questions for the upcoming years, says Mathieu Segers, professor of Contemporary European History and European Integration. He gave his inaugural lecture in the St. Janskerk last week.

MAASTRICHT. Quality above quantity, a clear path for teaching careers, and last but not least, team science instead of the age-old hierarchical structure. If it is up to rector Rianne Letschert, there is about to be a revolution within the world of academia. The assessment of researchers is about to be changed. The toughest hurdle is convincing Eur...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Political scientist Arjan Schakel would like to prove that many social researchers take the wrong approach in their research into voting behaviour. To do so, he needs tens of millions. 

MAASTRICHT. Impact factors, h-indexes, individual subsidies. If it’s up to the universities and research financers in the Netherlands, these aspects will become less important. The assessment and funding systems for researchers must change fundamentally. Maastricht rector Rianne Letschert may be seen as the force behind this. She plead for a ...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Professor Blanche Schroen wants to get a better understanding of the risk factors of heart failure in order to develop more effective medication.

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Professor Maria Jansen dreams of having ten million euro to carry out a study into the poor state of health in South Limburg. She would focus on the hereditary nature of unhealthiness, passing from one generation to the next. 

MAASTRICHT. The Chinese Yiyun Chen doesn't go outside anymore and has no direct contact with people. She lives in a special bedroom in Eindhoven and does everything from her bed. It sounds like a terminally ill patient, but Chen is an artist. She has chosen this temporary, ascetic life, to find out what it does to a person to spend so long in b...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Professor Stef Kremers would set up a large-scale experiment at the UM in an attempt to promote the health of students and employees.

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Cultural scientist Vivian van Saaze would look into how digitisation of art would influence our appreciation of the authentic object.

Employees doing training at work to quit smoking are more likely to stay the course if they are given a reward, showed a study by the Maastricht institute Caphri. The results were published in The Lancet Public Health. Employees who participated in the study, funded by the Dutch Cancer Society, (KWF Kankerbestrijding), could earn a total of...

A former left-wing sociologist, who, in his latest book, defends populism in Hungary and Poland. The auditorium at the Minderbroedersberg was packed on Tuesday evening when Frank Furedi (1947, Hungary) gave his lecture 'Taking democracy seriously: a defence of populism', organised by Studium Generale.

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Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Thomas van Sloten would like to test a pill that would improve the tiniest veins in the brains of older patients. There is just one problem: that pill doesn't exist yet.

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Elsje Fourie, researcher at Fasos, would like to do fieldwork in one of the many Ethiopian businesses that are currently so taken in by the Japanese business philosophy of Kaizen. What does that entail?

When he is at a birthday party and he tells people that he carries out research into thermoregulation - or to be more precise, the regulation of the body's temperature - he is told story after story. About how women always feel colder than men, about older people who constantly have the heating on 25 degrees, in short, about the indoor climate....

Dual inaugural lectures have happened before in Maastricht, but this is the first time that a ‘husband and wife’ present theirs in the same ceremony. The honour goes to German researchers Lisa and Alexander Brüggen, each of whom will accept a chair at the School of Business and Economics (SBE) tomorrow. “Some employees, who have w...

MAASTRICHT. Riding a bus, using a tablet, accessing a public building; most people perform these activities without even thinking about it. For people with disabilities, though, they may be obstacles that are impossible to overcome.  As of 2008, United Nations law establishes the right to accessibility. But what does this mean in practice? Wha...

Suppose you’re a scientist and you get a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Pim Martens, professor of Sustainability, would like to put dogs in an MRI scanner.

Dutch migration laws in the nineteen-eighties included a rule that family members should not be separated for longer than two years. After such a period, the family connection was broken and migrants lost the right to family reunification. “This undoubtedly played a role in the reduction of the number of residence permits in those days,&rdquo...

You take something from me without my consent, so logically I want it back. Whether it is a piece of jewellery, a bicycle, a car or a pen. It is the same with art. Even if it was stolen eighty years ago or maybe even longer and I can prove that the object is mine. In reality, it appears not to be so black-and-white, says Lars van Vliet, Assistant ...

A picture of a fat baby, accompanied by the text ‘When you realize it’s almost summer, and your winter body has gotten out of control’. This is the introduction to one of the latest UM Sports newsletters, urging readers to get “beach body ready”. Nothing wrong with this message. Or is there? “I was disappointed ...

Things are getting tense: will business magnate George Soros’s Central European University weather the storm in Budapest, or be chased off by the right-wing, nationalist government of Viktor Orbán? The university’s rector Michael Ignatieff may be able to shed some light on the matter: in early May, at the invitation of Studium Generale,...

How sloppy is our science? Ninety per cent of the almost six hundred researchers in a survey admits to having crossed the line at least once. Mistake number one: mentioning an author who in practice hardly contributed to your research at all. This was one of the outcomes of a recent study by Erik Driessen, professor in Medical Education at Maastric...

Academics have an ethical obligation to write articles for a broad audience, partly to counter others who are less than expert in the material or who wish to manipulate us. This is the standpoint of the Melbourne-based guest lecturer Simon Clews, who is giving writing workshops all week at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

MAASTRICHT. When it comes to Open Access, most people’s minds go directly to the availability of research articles for everybody. But there’s more to it, for instance the software that researchers use to analyse their data. The Scientific Computing and Research @ UM Club (SCRUM Club) feels that using a licensed programme like SPSS alway...

Making sure employees switch off the lights before they leave the office, convincing all youngsters to only have safe sex, and making people choose the healthiest products. Organisations and governments regularly feel that they should change the behaviour of a group. “They often approach this rather optimistically,” says Phil Brüll, app...

MAASTRICHT. Throughout the centuries, atlases have been more than just navigation tools. They can also be works of art, tell a story about how the world was depicted at that time, and hint at the opinions of the cartographer. Jonathan Stockhorst, master’s student of Art, Literature and Society, spent the last few months researching the 9...

MAASTRICHT. Researcher Vera Schrauwen-Hinderling received two first prizes last year: a Vidi grant from NWO and an ERC grant from Brussels. She did so with similar research proposals. ERC and NWO do not agree with this. An attempt to give the Vidi project a different angle, did not work.

Professor Jos Lemmink thinks that the School of Business and Economics should appoint fifteen data scientists in the next two years. It is high time to make way for smart technology in the curriculum. He will give a presentation to the Faculty Board next week.

Customers are more likely to behave unseemly towards employees of low-budget companies than towards employees of reputable companies. This discovery was made by Alexander Henkel, researcher at the BISS institute in Heerlen.

MAASTRICHT. A wonderful example of consensus decision-making in science. That is how professor Sally Wyatt describes the success of national research school WTMC (Wetenschap, Techniek & Moderne Cultuur (Science, Technology and Modern Culture)) of which, until recently, Maastricht ran the secretaryship. “The willingness of the ten Dutch un...

MAASTRICHT. His enthusiastic co-operation with researchers, the quality of his thesis, and his contribution towards better treatments for cancer patients, were three reasons why the Dissertation Prize 2017 went to Dr Mark Podesta, postdoc at MAASTRO clinic, last Friday. The faculty deans nominated a total of five theses, but Time dependen...

“Let me emphasise,” says Vigjilenca Abazi, assistant professor of European law. “Transparency is an important precondition for a good democratic society, for being able to hold people and institutions accountable, for public debates and for the free press to do its work. But that doesn’t mean it’s the sole fixer for ev...

MAASTRICHT. Thirteen cities, four countries and 900 alumni. In order to maintain the relationship with former students, Maastricht University (UM) will organize the fourth annual UM Star Lectures on 1 February.

Two honorary doctorates are being awarded during the university's anniversary celebration. They are going to two women who won their spurs in the field of digital technology. American anthropologist Lucy Suchman works with robots in warzones and nursing homes. British computer scientist Carole Goble creates software that allows scientists to wo...

The importance of your mentor, choosing a good lab, and ageing. Three of the topics in the career interview with TEFAF professor Jan Hoeijmakers, organised by research school GROW. One thing is clear: Hoeijmakers is no fan of the US.

It's 1916. Albert Einstein has just published the general theory of relativity, which describes the curvature of light influenced by mass. “Which means,” says theoretic physicist Gideon Koekoek, “that the light from a star is curved by the sun, and looking from earth is in a different place than you would think.” Even...

MAASTRICHT. A year ago, 19.3 per cent of all professors in the Netherlands was female. A rise of 1.2 per cent compared to 2015, according to the Female Professors Monitor that was presented last Tuesday. Conclusion: if developments continue at this pace, a balanced division between male and female professors will not be reached until 2051.

“It's time for more flexibility in PhD and career tracks, taking into account that people have or want to start a family.” Only then can you achieve diversity at the university. This statement comes from Harvard professor Michèle Lamont, who carries out research into diversity in areas such as science. The King presented the Erasmus...

At parties, people often ask professor Jean-Jacques Herings for investment advice. One tip that Herings will not give them is: you have to buy cheaply and sell expensively. In theory, this is the best strategy, but in practice it is impossible to execute, he says. “It is an illusion to think that you can predict share prices. It is worthless ...

This weekend, thousands of neo-fascists demonstrated in Rome to “take back the streets from the intruders”. Right hands were raised and slogans like “Italy for Italians; stop immigration, stop illegals, throw out all intruders” were shouted. Still, many people think that the fascist ideology ceased to exist after World War I...

How to decide which treatment, prevention programme or health policy to choose? For many doctors and policymakers the answer seems simple. You look at high-quality scientific studies and take the intervention that has proven to be the most effective. “This has its origins in medicine”, says Tamara Schloemer, researcher at the Department...

Marihuana, LSD, heroin. Ex-junkie Marc Lewis devoured it all, preferably in high doses. He stole medicine from medical practices, was arrested on several occasions, and received a suspended prison sentence. Later on, Lewis - by now a professor of Neurosciences - wrote a book about his former life as an addict. He will give a lecture, organised by S...

Over a thousand deaths to regret and more than two thousand people injured. These were the sad consequences of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh on 24 April 2013. The day before, cracks were discovered in the walls of the eight-story building. Although the shops and bank at the lower floors were immediately closed, the garment workers in the va...

SBE dean Philip Vergauwen himself agrees that he is leaving prematurely. The strategic overhaul of his faculty is still in full swing. But the offer from the Solvay business school in Brussels was, he says, simply too good to turn down. Observant talks with him about his toughest moments as dean, SBE as an outsider, and the ‘selling...

“I don't want to scare you,” says Hugo ten Cate, professor of Clinical Thrombosis and Haemostasis, every time he gives a lecture on the relation between the contraceptive pill and thrombosis to third-year medical students. “About 70 per cent of our students are female, the majority of whom are on the pill. It is not just ...

“When interest rates have been low for some time, people are likely to think that they can rise at any moment,” says Dennis Bams, professor of Risk Management at the School of Business and Economics. “That is of course not so strange; over the past hundred years, this has happened all the time. It is what all scientists have alway...

MAASTRICHT. Nobel Prize winner Ben Feringa can still be nervous before an interview, especially in front of young people. “They sometimes ask these bright questions.” Last Tuesday, Brightlands Chemelot Campus organised a College Tour with Feringa, named after a popular TV series in which students ask questions. But why does it take plac...

Crime suspects can bank on being invited by letter to come in for a chat at the local police station. In serious cases, suspects can even be picked up at any hour of the day or night. Fortunately, suspects are not on their own. Since 1 March 2016, lawyers are allowed to be present in the interrogation room. Or does their presence make no difference...

MAASTRICHT. Vera Schrauwen-Hinderling has received a so-called ‘starting grant’ from the European Research Council. The amount could be up to 1.5 million euro.  She intends to use the money to develop a method to measure the promising compound NAD+, which is formed during exercising.

A predictive machine is what you might call the brain, because it is constantly trying to predict what will happen. In a conversation, for example, it tries to ‘guess’ which word will follow and when. Cognitive neuroscientist Sanne ten Oever wants to unravel exactly how the brain does this. She won the Edmond Hustinx Prize, but unfortun...

In 2012, the Dutch providers Ziggo and XS4All blocked The Pirate Bay, the website that epitomizes the download culture. The block lasted two years, but had very little effect: 70 per cent of the downloaders appeared to have found alternative routes to illegally obtain The Lego Movie or Taylor Swift's latest album. The Netherlands is in the t...

Available online at amazon.com: A Baby Einstein playpen with music by Mozart and Bach, a ‘self-discovery mobile’ to hang above the crib, with classical melodies and Baby 2 Be, a CD especially for unborn children, to listen to from the womb. The idea behind this merchandise is that children become smarter if they listen to classical musi...

Brexit was inevitable; the British had been in “sabotage mode” for years, says Caroline de Gruyter, Europe correspondent for NRC Handelsblad in Vienna. Their constant hacking away at Europe was disruptive and fuelled Euroscepticism in other countries. The tide now seems to be turning. De Gruyter is the keynote speaker next Saturday duri...

MAASTRICHT. UM neuroscientist Michelle Moerel, researcher at the Centre for Systems Biology MaCSBio, has been nominated for the Wetenschapstalent 2017 competition. Moerel, who carries out research on the human hearing, is one of the 25 young scientists from the Netherlands and Belgium who were selected by the non-specialist journal New Scientist. ...

Rope-skipping, practising motor skills, ‘reading’ plastic letters with your fingers, or ‘flashing’ letters and words in the left or right visual field. These are all methods of treatment that are regularly offered to children suffering from dyslexia. But they don't help. “The idea behind them is that the left and r...

Are things getting better again with Europe? After his victory, Emmanuel Macron is accompanied by the tones of what we in Europe have come to refer to as the European hymn – Beethoven’s Ode an die Freude; Alle Menschen werden Brüder – when he walks towards his supporters. Better? That remains to be seen, because recent European hi...

MAASTRICHT. It is the first time that an editor-in-chief of a top scientific journal is appointed as a professor at the UM. Fiona Godlee, from BMJ (British Medical Journal), will give her inaugural speech ‘Better evidence for better health’, next week.

THE NETHERLANDS/MAASTRICHT. Dutch scientists are soon to lose access to Oxford University Press journals, now that the negotiations with the association of universities VSNU on open access have failed.

Self-driving cars, drones used in war zones, robots used to carry out surgical operations. Examples of computers playing a major role, but what happens if something goes wrong? What if a self-driving car doesn't stop at a zebra crossing? Who is responsible? According to Merel Noorman, technology philosopher and postdoc at the Faculty of Arts a...

MAASTRICHT. No science no evidence, no truth, no democracy. That is the idea behind the March for Science, an initiative that has been embraced around the world. On Saturday 22 April, a march will be organised in about 430 cities, including Maastricht. “We want to celebrate science that day. Researchers will come down from their ivory to...

When prof. Harald Schmidt was a student, many lecturers and students raved about the holistic approach in medicine. Schmidt did not want to have anything to do with that “woolly babble”. He felt that if someone had a heart problem, you should look at his or her heart, and not at the person as a whole. In the meantime, he has change...

International organisations such as NATO and the United Nations were founded after the Second World War, just like the predecessor to the European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community. Some people feel that they are too powerful and that too much money is spent on them. But is that in fact the case? Yes, international organisations have be...

“Many ME-patients suffer from tremendous exhaustion for days after exercise, the so-called post-exertional malaise, or PEM. There were doubts as to whether the large British PACE trial was correct,” said professor of Internal Medicine and Immunology Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert, a couple of weeks ago in the Myth Busters- series of Observan...

To what extent is the behaviour of managers influenced by culture? Former UM professor Geert Hofstede was the first to ask that question and in doing so became world-famous. His book Culture’s Consequences (1980) has been quoted more than 80 thousand times. American research is doubtful about his conclusions, claiming that it is in particular...

Patients are not just a little bit tired, but are permanently exhausted. Sleeping doesn't help much - if they can sleep properly at all - and they usually pay a high price for any physical exertion: remaining even more tired than they were, for days on end. According to the present medical state of affairs, patients suffering from the chroni...

MAASTRICHT. The Rotterdam geneticist Jan Hoeijmakers, in broader circles known as the “ageing professor”, will hold the Tefaf chair for 2017. This annually alternating chair for cancer research, sponsored by art fair Tefaf, comes under research institute GROW.

MAASTRICHT. How Israelis and Palestinians make maps – it’s not the most obvious of research topics. Surprising, too, is the proposition that your physical place in the world, with all its historical and political baggage, largely determines what you see and thus also how you are likely to draw a map. Yet this is the core of the PhD rese...

You can't expect too much from older employees. Young ones are faster, more creative, and more intelligent. At least, that is the widespread idea. And with an ageing population and a retirement age that is constantly being pushed back, employers are the ones who will be left with the mess. “It is ridiculous to think that older people are...

“An incurable disease? We are inclined to think that it leads to death.” Nothing could be farther from the truth in the case of the lung disease COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), says Annemie Schols, professor of Nutrition and Metabolism in Chronic Diseases and director of research school Nutrim. Many COPD patients - whose l...

“Many people think that sex has to be spontaneous, that it is artificial if you agree on a time in your schedule. Nonsense,” says Marieke Dewitte, psychologist and sexologist at Maastricht University. In her own practice, she sees couples who have been having problems for years and who have doubts about their relationship and sex life. ...

MAASTRICHT. That Maastricht has a university at all, let alone one with a fairly solid reputation, is often said to be a miracle. For much of its history the Rijksuniversiteit Limburg (RL) (later Maastricht University, UM) was fighting an uphill battle, as the anniversary book given to all employees this week testifies once again.

In a few years’ time you might find yourself sleeping under a blanket of sustainable plastic; plastic so refined and ‘natural’ it can be used to make textiles. Or perhaps your smartphone cover will be plastic made from sugar beets. At the Aachen-Maastricht Institute for Biobased Materials (AMIBM), research is underway on the devel...

Nousjka Vranken (25), first-year physician and clinical researcher, can’t really say there was a special moment when she thought: ‘I want to be a researcher,’ but by now everything is pointing in that direction. For four years, she has worked part-time as a research assistant at MUMC+’s department of Heart Surgery, two years...

MAASTRICHT. Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of the top medical journal BMJ (British Medical Journal), will become a professor at Maastricht University. The chair was set up by the national research school CaRe, of which the Maastricht institute Caphri is a part. “I think our PhD candidates now have a greater chance of writing a top publication....

MAASTRICHT. The Maastricht European Centre on Privacy and Cybersecurity (ECPC) is a new research institute at the Faculty of Law.

The presence of Maastricht University can be felt not just in the inner city and Randwyck. A whole range of activities are underway in different places around the province, such as on the Chemelot campus near Geleen. But what exactly? Observant paid a visit to Center Court, which came into operation in August.

MAASTRICHT. The Catharina Pijls Encouragement Award 2016 goes to former student Michelle Vellinga. Her prize-winning master thesis examines how teachers can encourage kindergarten pupils to eat more vegetables. The prize is awarded annually to a recent UM graduate in the health sciences and is accompanied by a €2,000 cheque.  

MAASTRICHT. UM has appointed a fourth university professor in the field of Data Science. Canadian Michel Dumontier (1975) is senior lecturer at Stanford University and will also lead a new Maastricht institute for Data Sciences.

‘Healing thoughts’, the idea that the mind influences the body – is it all just pseudoscience? Miracles we shouldn’t believe in? In her book Cure, British science journalist Jo Marchant provides a critical exploration of this new area. She interviewed scientists who are investigating or have found evidence that our thou...

Ritalin, Adderall, Modafinil. Are SBE students taking ‘study drugs’ more often? Research by honours students shows that one in seven students from SBE has on occasion taken a ‘cognitive enhancer’. But also that the stress and the competitiveness at the faculty promote their use. Board member Huub Meijers: "I know that s...

THE NETHERLANDS. Sparks of delight flew as Dutch scientist Ben Feringa jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for his work in creating miniscule motors.

By the end of her study programme Anne Marsman had reached the end of her rope. She was having trouble remembering things and vomiting more and more often. What was going on? Back then she was as closed as an oyster, but now the Maastricht PhD candidate talks frankly about her ordeal, keen to dispel the common prejudices about eating disorders and ...

MAASTRICHT. Mandela, Einstein, cycling, nature, the physicist Robert Dijkgraaf and finally a shot from space. The intended effect of the promotional film that kicked off the opening programme of the Smart Services Campus in Heerlen may not be immediately obvious, but the link with smart services should become clear soon enough.

The exclamation ‘Eureka’ would be appropriate, having invented a small, portable tester that can be used to prevent bacterial outbreaks in hospitals. But physicist and assistant professor Bart van Grinsven is more like ‘mmm that’s funny’, as he quotes American writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov. Van Grinsven received t...

Reconciliation and empathy – these were the driving forces behind the unification of Europe. And these are precisely the values that can pull Europe out of  its crisis today, said Professor Mathieu Segers in his speech during the official opening of the academic year.

Scientific articles should first and foremost be made available in a database that is freely accessible to everyone and only after that be published in journals. Surprisingly, this statement comes from the editor-in-chief of the renowned British Medical Journal (BMJ). An interview with Fiona Godlee.

MAASTRICHT. There are doubts about the scientific reliability of three articles by James Hunton, a former American professor of Accountancy who was also a professor at Maastricht University during the first decade of this century. This was announced by the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU) last Tuesday after an investigation by a Scientific ...

MAASTRICHT. When Irina Burlacu from Moldova finished her Ph.D. at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, she realized something. “Only a few people will ever read my thesis. It’s technical and there are so many Ph.D. theses; who has time to read them all. I didn’t want that to happen. It was the outcome of years of work.&rd...

Germany – but where is it located? These words by the poet Friedrich Schiller were used by Irish historian Brendan Simms as a point of departure for his Schuman lecture, organised by Studium Generale.

“Noooo! That was a super plant, so cool.” “Whoops”, says the other student, removing his foot from the “cool” plant. The pair continue their search through the fields. Last Tuesday morning, the students of the Maastricht Science Programme joined their lecturer and researcher Roy Erkens at the Lage Fronten as part...

MAASTRICHT. Where does all the money that is being pumped into the art market actually come from? “There is too little discussion about this question. It is about a lot of money, sometimes with dubious origins.” Olav Velthuis, associate professor at the University of Amsterdam and specialized in Economic and Cultural Sociology, delivers...

MAASTRICHT. “I’m an undisciplined TEFAF visitor and will simply enjoy a luxurious wander through the extraordinary variety of objects on view”, says Pip Laurenson. “But I’ll be sure to see the Joseph Beuys show Show Your Wound being curated by Mark Kremer as part of this year’s fair.” Laurenson (1965) is pr...

MAASTRICHT. She is the first professor of Arts and Finance in the world. “The culture of finance is in need of change, and art can help to make it fairer, freer and more ethical”, says Prof. Rachel Pownall. In addition to her chair at UM, she is also a professor at Tilburg University and collaborates with the Van Gogh Museum and other i...

It’s a world first: the combination of three different techniques for brain research. Alexander Sack, professor of Functional Brain Stimulation and Neurocognitive Psychology, aims to develop new brain stimulation methods to treat people with attention and memory problems following a stroke. Two weeks ago he was awarded a Vici grant for this r...

MAASTRICHT. Alexander Sack, professor of Functional Brain Stimulation and Neurocognitive Psychology, has received a Vici grant worth €1.5 million for his research on brain stimulation. Sack focuses on brain-stimulation techniques for treating memory and attention problems after a stroke or depression. Of the 215 academics who submitted a Vi...

MAASTRICHT. Professors Han Brunner and Joris Veltman have won the King Faisal Prize in the category of Medicine, referred to by some as the ‘Arab Nobel Prize’. The researchers, who play a leading role in clinical genetics, will travel to Saudi Arabia to receive the prize from the king in March.

MAASTRICHT. Holocene, Pleistocene, Palaeocene. All well known, but have you ever heard of Anthropocene? According to Christian Schwägerl, we are in the middle of that right now. The German biologist and journalist claims that there is actually no single place on earth that has not been ‘ruined’ by man. Schwägerl will give a Studium Gene...

THE NETHERLANDS. The Association of Universities (VSNU) and publisher Reed Elsevier have reached an agreement in principle. At the very last minute. Because if no agreement had been reached by 31 December on the renewal of subscriptions and open access – free access to articles written on the basis of research financed by public funding ...

MAASTRICHT. It is about time that everyone has access to the right medicines, whether you live in America, Europe or Africa. At the moment the pharmaceutical industry has so much power that they can keep prices high. The UM wants to do something about this and signed the Socially Responsible Research and Licensing Policy this week. Ellen ...

MAASTRICHT. On the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, the UM is awarding three honorary doctorates during the foundation day celebrations. One goes to German pharmacologist Detlev Ganten, who has lectured his critics on more than one occasion. Another to American legal and political scientist Susan Rose-Ackerman, who is so versatile that almost ...

MAASTRICHT. Three students from the Maastricht Science Programme won the NWO Top Sector Chemistry Student Competition last week. Onno Akkermans, Mitch Spronck and Pegah Keshaniyan went home with one thousand euro each. They created a bit with a built-in miniature sensor that detects awake bruxism. In layman’s terms: teeth gnashing during wake...

Twenty-eight days to go. Will the Dutch universities manage by 31 December to reach an agreement with the publisher Reed Elsevier? The arduous negotiations have been going on for months. Universities are only prepared to keep their wagons hitched to the publisher if it takes steps towards open access, making academic articles freely accessible. &ld...

Do chimpanzees have free will? What can we learn from apes? Last Tuesday, psychology students gathered for a masterclass by the world-renowned primatologist Frans de Waal. As it turns out, not everyone is a fan of De Waal – there are chimpanzees that throw rocks at him.

THE NETHERLANDS. The Dutch government wants to set up a new investment fund which will put money into developing animal-free research.

More often than not, a lab consists of isolated ‘corners’ where research groups work with their own equipment. This kind of fragmentation is a thing of the past in the new lab run by the department of surgery and the M4I institute, respectively by Prof. Steven Olde Damink and Prof. Ron Heeren. Here, on the fifth floor of UNS 50, wh...

MAASTRICHT. Brains are important, but we shouldn’t ignore the influence of emotions such as hopelessness or enjoyment on students’ learning process, says Alexandra Niculescu, a Romanian psychologist who will defend her PhD thesis tomorrow, Friday 16 October, at Maastricht University. “We need to invest in how students feel, but no...

MAASTRICHT. Four Maastricht scientists have been nominated for the Dutch VIVA400 award. Last year, the honour fell upon UM postdoc Anne Leferink, in the ‘Knappe Koppen’ (Whizz Kid) category.

The Dutch Institute for Psychologists (NIP), which recently reprimanded Prof. Corine de Ruiter, wants to speak about this with UM psychologists. The Executive Board states that they have “complete faith” in De Ruiter. The Faculty of Psychology and Neurosciences has created a committee of “eminent persons” to investigate the ...

“Since the seventies the Iraqi Kurds have been constantly exposed to violence and threats”, says Hanife Masoomifar, a Canadian master’s student from the School of Governance who did his fieldwork in the capital of Erbil in July. “There was the war between Iraq and Iran, the aggression of Saddam Hussein, including chemical we...

MAASTRICHT. It hardly ever happens: bachelor’s students obtaining a NWO grant. Nevertheless, this is exactly what three students from the Maastricht Science Program managed to do. Before the summer, they received 27 thousand euro, for a subject that doesn’t immediately make you think ‘science’: bruxism. Otherwise known as to...

MAASTRICHT. How many calories did you eat this morning? And how many steps have you taken since breakfast? No doubt some people will be able to get out their mobile phone, click on an app and find the exact answer to these questions. Personalised healthcare technology like this is what philosopher Tamar Sharon’s research is about. She was awa...

MAASTRICHT. Dutch scientists studying the consequences of drinking too much have concluded that eating food and drinking water make no difference to a hangover, despite the popular belief that they do.

MAASTRICHT. Among the names of the 25 young Dutch and Belgian researchers competing for a new research prize, the New Scientist Wetenschapstalent 2015, there are two from Maastricht: neurosurgeon Yasin Temel (38) and philosopher Tamar Sharon (40).

MAASTRICHT. There was a time when there were great plans: Maastricht University was going to conquer India. Those plans have been readjusted in the meantime and it appears that only the Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences has made a success of its co-operation with India. It is a matter of great patience, investing a lot of time, and focus...

MAASTRICHT. It wouldn’t surprise him if the conflict in Ukraine rekindled. In the latest Minsk Treaty, the aggressors (the separatists) came out best, which implies: aggression pays off. This is the opinion of Arkady Moshes, an expert on the relations between the EU and Russia. Next week, he will give the Schuman lecture, organised by Studium...

MAASTRICHT. In many countries, the Armenian genocide of 1915 will be commemorated on 24 April. However, the facts and especially the use of the term, are still extremely controversial. Professor of Turkish Studies Erik-Jan Zürcher, from Leiden, argues that more attention should be given to the matter.

A mess, or less slightingly, a cookery book: physics is a collection of recipes from a variety of cuisines. This is the view of physicist Ronald Westra, who organised the two-day masterclass New physics, beyond the standard model, together with the Science Programme, and brought a number of big shots to the UM. Is there or is there not go...

NETHERLANDS/MAASTRICHT. The government announced last week that universities will be given a period of eight years to experiment with PhD programmes in which candidates receive a grant instead of a salary. The Netherlands PhD Network (Promovendi Netwerk Nederland) rejects the plans. Maastricht rector Luc Soete is cautious.

MAASTRICHT. Tuesday morning, just before 9 o’clock, the truck from Amsterdam arrives at the grounds of UNS 50. It has a 9.4 Tesla magnet on board, the showpiece in professor Ron Heeren’s lab. The magnet, which cost a million euro, was transported ‘cold’, says Heeren, an expert in molecular imaging. “It is in a kind of...

MAASTRICHT. A sinister radio silence is all that is left, after negotiations between Dutch universities and Reed Elsevier publishers have failed. Licences are due to run out on 1 January and researchers will no longer be able to read the latest editions of many journals, including The Lancet.

MAASTRICHT. Four honorary doctorates will be awarded at the coming celebration of the university’s founding day. Remarkably, half of them are for social rather than academic merits: Frans Timmermans and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Another novelty is the fact that students nominated the latter.

MAASTRICHT. Who is to blame? That is the question that professor Christopher Clark raises in his latest book The sleepwalkers: how Europe went to war in 1914. According to the Australian historian, an unequivocal answer cannot be given. His Maastricht colleague Georgi Verbeeck does not quite agree. Clark is scheduled to give the Tans lecture, ...

NETHERLANDS. Negotiations between the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) and publishing company Elsevier about subscription fees have failed. If the conflict remains unresolved, students and researchers can no longer view new articles as of next year.

Doing research? How does that work? All newcomers at University College Maastricht are given compulsory lessons on this subject at the moment. At the end of their first year, they combine their knowledge in a research project. They are free in their choice of subject, provided it can be done within four weeks. Observant interviewed five g...

THE NETHERLANDS. Never before has a Dutch university been among the fifty best universities in the world in an international ranking. The University of Amsterdam managed it in the latest QS ranking. Maastricht is in 118th place. Just like in other worldwide rankings, Dutch universities do well in the new comparison by the research bureau QS. Six a...

THE NETHERLANDS. Universities and schools of higher education are to receive hardly any extra money for their education programmes next year. This became clear from the National budget for 2015, which was presented on Tuesday on the day of the King’s speech. The cabinet will only delve into its purse for research and innovation.

MAASTRICHT. Researchers do not read each other’s articles, they only keep tally. And anyway, who wants to do research anymore, knowing that it takes years before you are even given a permanent contract? A group of students and staff members critically voiced their opinions on higher education in 2014 in Landbouwbelang on Monday evening, 1 Sep...

MAASTRICHT. The procession is different this time. The opening of the academic year is always marked by a procession of professors from the Minderbroedersberg to the Vrijthof Theatre. A procession of important men and an occasional woman, because that’s the way it is in the world of academia.

MAASTRICHT. Successful women are not superhuman. They fight to get where they are, fall along the way and battle insecurity like the rest of us. This is a message that Dr Jennifer Barnes would like women to hear. The Pro-Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy at the University of Cambridge will deliver the keynote speech at the Theater aan...

MAASTRICHT. UM has suspended its cardiology research using 39 Labradors after protests from the Anti Dierproeven Coalitie (anti-animal testing coalition, or ADC). By Tuesday morning, more than 100 thousand people had signed the ‘Free the Labradors’ petition.

MAASTRICHT. Pancakes, pasta, and performances with chocolate and sugar. ‘Printing’ food is not exactly common. Nevertheless, the UM is thinking of setting up an expertise centre. SBE students have already carried out a study on the matter.

MAASTRICHT. The Maastricht Science Programme will award its first bachelor’s diplomas in three weeks’ time. Where will the students end up? To which master’s will they be admitted? “Some of them already know,” says dean Thomas Cleij. “But in September, we will know exactly where everyone has ended up. That will b...

MAASTRICHT. Students of today will live to be a 100 years, on average. What does one do with all that time? Rudi Westendorp, professor in geriatrics medicine at Leiden University and director of the Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing, advises them to start thinking about it now. “Don’t assume that you will retire and buy a boat when ...

MAASTRICHT. Chinese human hair in bread, the nonsense concerning E-numbers, horsemeat being sold as beef, the hype around the goji berry. Nutrition is hot. Observant spoke to two professionals from Maastricht, a philosopher and a nutrition scientist. The discussion is often about food safety, while it should be about much more than that, says philo...

MAASTRICHT. How has the relationship between students and city changed over the past forty years? Which subjects dominated the debate? Dirk van de Leemput, alumnus from Arts and Social Sciences, delved into a stack of more than thirty years of issues of Observant and Maffius (Observant’s predecessor) in order to find out.

MAASTRICHT. How do our brains age? What is the underlying mechanism? Which factors determine the speed of the process? These types of questions constituted the basis of Roy Lardenoije’s research; he did the research master of Fundamental Neuroscience last year. In his master’s thesis – for which he won one of the 2013 Student Priz...

MAASTRICHT. Safeguarding existing catalogues of human rights and fundamental freedoms, that is what article 53 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is about. In short: member states may always provide their inhabitants with more protection in their own constitution than in the EU Charter, but never less. But does the fact that...

MAASTRICHT. Can you trust journalists? A researcher who is not used to dealing with the media, can become quite nervous about a newspaper, radio, or TV interview. The fear that the research project will not be presented well or is even distorted, is often huge, say the writers of Prepare for 15 seconds of fame. Media contacts for researchers.

MAASTRICHT. Few people will have heard about the Kleefstra syndrome. It is a combination of a mental disability and autism. The illness was discovered in Nijmegen, at the Radboud University a few of years ago. The Maastricht molecular life sciences alumna Marise van de Molengraft was allowed to take part in the research project during her final tra...

MAASTRICHT. The mensa at the Tongersestraat was overflowing last Tuesday evening for the debate on Science in Transition (SiT). Those expecting fireworks came away disappointed. There were no emotional exchanges, no confrontational altercations; the evening was civilised and at times even a bit dull. The discussion steered clear of typical SiT...

MAASTRICHT. Small numbers belong on the left, large numbers on the right. Most Western people, who are used to writing from left to right, will instinctively agree with this. This is referred to as the natural number line, the way in which you arrange numbers in your head. Does one’s attention automatically go to the left when one thinks of a...

MAASTRICHT. When Maastricht was still in the running for European Capital of Culture 2018, there was a great deal of talk about Euregional co-operation. But how much cultural interaction is there in fact between Liège and Maastricht? European Studies alumna Célia Hanssen did research on this topic for her thesis.

MAASTRICHT. How effective and efficient are examinations of witnesses in court? This was the question to which law students Hannah Jans, Rianne Mertens, Frank Hoogers and Vera Poels tried to find an answer. They attended more than a hundred examinations. 

MAASTRICHT. Informal (also known as under-the-table) payments in Central and Eastern Europe are higher and more frequent for maternity care than for any other type of medical care. This is one of the conclusions of a broader research project on out-of-pocket payments (both formal and informal) across Europe. Wim Groot, Tetiana Stepurko, Jelena...

MAASTRICHT. How transparent are national and local governments really? That is what the students participating in the Marble project ‘Transparency’ wondered last year. Each of them focused on a subject from their own perspective. 

MAASTRICHT. What economic order will arise from the ruins of the 2008 financial crisis? This remains unclear, but in any event, the key is to prevent business leaders from striving for disastrous business goals. So argued professor emeritus Geert Hofstede in his lecture ‘Beyond growth, greed and quarterly results’, organised last Tuesda...

MAASTRICHT. How to ensure that a tutorial group is as diverse as possible? Florentijn Hogerwerf, now a master’s student at Econometrics and Operations Research, developed an algorithm and wrote a bachelor’s thesis on the subject.

MAASTRICHT. Another German politician is suspected of plagiarism. This time it concerns the chairman of the social democrat party SPD, whose thesis allegedly contains 500 dubious references. What is the matter with the dissertations of German politicians? Observant asked German scientists and managers at the UM.

MAASTRICHT. Imagine that you have been voting for the Liberals for years. This time, however, you fear that – if they become the largest party in the elections – they will form a coalition with a party you don’t like. To prevent this you vote for the Democrats, even though you agree more with the Liberals’ programme. Voting ...

MAASTRICHT. How to describe someone you only know from a photograph? Friendly? Authoritarian? Reliable? Competent? That was the key question in the Marble research by Roderick Bronzwaer, who completed his bachelor’s in Psychology in July. For the tests, he went to Hong Kong, where he showed test subjects photographs of politicians from the Ne...

MAASTRICHT. It’s not his first prize. Olivier Marie has already been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship that gives researchers the opportunity to gain experience abroad, and in 2012 he received the Veni grant from the Dutch research organisation NWO. Last Monday a jury unanimously awarded the Edmond Hustinx prize to the assistant professor at t...

MAASTRICHT. Imagine: you are completely conscious, you understand everything that is going on around you, but you cannot move or communicate. This is what patients suffering from locked-in syndrome experience. Would it not be great if a small device that measures brain activity enabled you to ‘speak’ to the people around you? It is sti...

MAASTRICHT. Two thirds of the Dutch people support the cultivation of meat, according to a survey carried out by Flycatcher research agency among 1,200 Dutch respondents. The reason for the study was the presentation of a hamburger cultivated by Mark Post, UM professor of vascular physiology, on 5 August in London. Half of the respondents would li...

A Susan Boyle Fan community, Game of Thrones fan site, Sherlock Holmes Fan Club site. These are just a few examples in a vast jungle. Fans of television series, films, games, or music express themselves in all manner of ways. Virtually on blog sites or forums, but also in real life at meetings. There will be a conference about fan cultures, called ...

MAASTRICHT. Four Maastricht researchers are going to study the ‘phenomenon’ of André Rieu. They want to find out what the secret is behind this Maastricht violinist and orchestra conductor. Why does his music appeal to such a broad public? How does he manage to remove the divide between classical and popular music? And why does music fr...

Visits to the gym, cycling from home to university, anything from football to squash, slack lining or yoga sessions – sports are part of most students’ lives. What is the effect of regular exercise? Why exactly are sports beneficial? This is the fourth instalment in the series ‘Science of student life’.

It started with a tweet by a neuroscientist called Leigh, on January 7th, and since then the genie has been out of the bottle. Leigh twittered: “We did experiment 2 because we didn’t know what the fuck to make of experiment 1.” After that, thousands of scientists confessed their small white lies under hashtag ‘overlyhonestme...

A beer to socialise, wine with the dinner, large amounts of alcohol at the numerous parties – students obviously drink a lot. But what are the implications of our drinking behaviour for our health? This is the third instalment in the series ‘Science of Student Life’.

History would have taken a different course if it hadn’t been for Adolf Hitler. Who was this man with his slick hair and peculiar moustache? What made so many people willing to follow him? British historian Laurence Rees will speak about this in next week's Tans Lecture .

Last Friday, the staff of the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience moved from Universiteitssingel 40 to Oxfordlaan 55, just a few metres away. Boxes, plants and other office gear were all brought to the new Psychology building, where the Maastricht Brain Imaging Centre houses a high and an ultra-high field MRI scanner of 3 and 7 Tesla. In a few mon...

Work hard now, to be able to work harder in your later life! This was the advice of the Nobel Prize winner Harald zur Hausen (1936) to medical students yesterday at the Maastricht School of Management. The German virologist gave insight into the do’s and don’ts of a successful academic career, building a network and landing grants. Zur ...