News and announcements

In september 2006 five PhD shortcourses are offered by partners of the EU-FP6 integrated project NoMiracle. The courses will take place at the University of Antwerp, 11-12 September 2006 and addressess young scientists (PhD students and young post-docs). The different topics adressed are: framing risk assessment, fate and exposure modelling, separation of uncertainty and variability in spreadsheet models, toxicogenomics and mixture toxicity (response characterisation, experimental design and data analysis). If interested, feel free to have a look at the NoMiracle Newsletter No.4 on the NoMiracle website: http://nomiracle.jrc.it/default.aspx.

Google is always full of good ideas. Recently, Google's technology playground, called Google Labs, introduced yet another interesting tool. It has been named Google Trends, and is being described as See what the world is searching for. In my opinion, this is one of the most valuable tools currently available in the extensive Google toolset. Google Trends allows you to compare the search volume of up to five search phrases simultaneously, starting from January 2004 until the current date. Finally we can get an idea of what people are looking for on the internet! Furthermore, it gives you graphs of who (which countries) is mostly searching for these keywords. As a simple test-case, I used Google Trends to compare the search volume evolution of five keywords which are related to our research field: genomics, proteomics, gene expression, microarray and real time pcr. The results are quite interesting...

link: http://www.dioxin2006.org/

Some of our lab members will be attending the Dioxin 2006 meeting in Norway. The symposium will be held at the SAS Radisson Scandinavia Hotel which is located in the heart of Oslo.

link: http://www.ecotox.be/escpb link: http://www.escpb.org From 17-21 September 2006, our research group will host the ESCPB 2006 - 24th Annual Meeting: Integrating hierachical levels of biological organisation towards understanding species responses to stressful conditions. Deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended until June 30. You can use our ESCPB 2006 contact page for all information requests.

New: one-day registrations now possible

link: http://www.setaceumeeting.org/thehague

Several members of our lab will be presenting their research at the SETAC Europe 16th Annual Meeting, which will take place from 7-11 May 2006 at the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague, The Netherlands. The meeting will focus on Controversies and Solutions in Environmental Sciences, in an attempt to bridge the gaps between laboratory and field, as well as between science and policy.

Please feel free to contact us in advance if you want to meet any of our scientists for a nice discussion.