Monday 5 September the eighth edition of the interdisciplinary Minor Sustainable Development started. With 65 students coming from more than 20 different disciplines we've a record number of students and backgrounds.

Visualization of biomolecules in living cells by tagging with gold nanoparticles.

Our childhood years largely determine how we will fare later in life. In the first two decades of our life, our brain is still developing, which is clearly reflected in our behaviour. By studying how the young brain develops and how children behave, researchers can learn important information about…

All the world leaders have had to choose an approach during the global Covid-19 crisis. But which approach is the most effective? André Gerrits, Professor of International Studies & Global Politics, who lectures in the BA International Studies, is observing some interesting developments. ‘Democracies…

Conference

Exploiting metabolic vulnerabilities to identify anticancer compounds in zebrafish synthetic lethality screens.

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Unraveling the immune-suppressive actions of drugs like prednisone.

The Sustainable Development minor now has its own Facebook page. Do you want to stay up to date on all activities pertaining to the minor? If so, sign up as a fan by clicking the

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death across the world. Professor Johan Kuiper of Leiden University carries out research to develop a vaccine for arteriosclerosis, which is the main cause of cardiovascular diseases. With the aid of a European research grant of six million euros he is…

How does the endocannabinoid system in the zebrafish function at the molecular and phenotypic levels and how is it linked to the stress axis?

It sounds futuristic, but it is possible: the creation of miniature organs of patients in order to study them and see how diseases develop and can be treated. This is what researchers from the LUMC, Twente University (UT), UMCG, TU Delft and the Hubrecht Institute hope to achieve in the next ten years…

As humans we have a tendency to judge certain actions as either right or wrong. Where does our moral sense come from? We found evidence that infants who are only one year old prefer those who comfort as opposed to ignore another who is sad.

We aim to unravel the complex and intertwining regulatory systems that control development and antibiotic production in streptomycetes.

There is concern about the threat that nanoplastics (NPs) may pose to both wildlife and humans. This thesis explores the mechanisms of toxicity of polystyrene nanoparticles (PS-NPs) in chicken embryo.

The literature indicates that teacher professional development and learning may be improved by using formative assessment procedures. This thesis focuses on a specific form of formative assessment, negotiated assessment, which is characterised by the exchange of views between assessor and assessee and…

This paper provides an initial answer to the question regarding eco-labels: ‘How can we make the development of eco-labels more structured and transparent?’

Does the university value teaching less than research? Can you advance in science without academic awards? Which scholars inspire you? Does the university pay enough attention to both your academic achievements and your personal well-being?

How can ‘Big Data’ be used in development and humanitarian aid, and what are the risks? Leiden University and the United Nation’s Global Pulse are organising an international expert meeting in The Hague on 23 October.

Leiden biologists have found a mutation in flour beetles that allows them to speed up their development. The study has been published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Shah recently wrote an op-ed for the Commentaries series of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, which has been published online. The piece is on India’s performance and priorities regarding the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) and collaboration with the EU.

The overall aim of the project is to investigate interests and their development over time in a daily life context, with particular attention for the transition from late secondary to post secondary education, and from late post secondary education to early career.

Work placement as a professional development programme for vocational teachers has been widely implemented. This dissertation provides insight into vocational teachers’ learning process in this programme within Chinese vocational education.

Archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers participated in the development of the boardgame Epoch: Early Inventors. “This game is inspired by the major innovation that happened in prehistoric times. A topic that has my interest and that I teach here in Leiden.

During this last year, most of our efforts and involvement in terms of recruitment activities and events as well as connecting with prospective students, parents and schools has all been moved online. Not a big surprise – this has been the shift for the entire world.

A new regional atlas, with information about the presence of pesticides in surface waters, has been developed by the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) in collaboration with Royal Haskoning DHV. The aim of the regional pesticide atlas is to support decision making at local and regional levels,…

Including modelling as part of software development appears to have various benefits.

What effect did the lockdown have on young people? Leiden researchers started a study of this in the first year of the covid pandemic. They discovered an impact on the development of the brain areas involved in social behaviour. The researchers published their discovery in Scientific Reports at Nat…

How to improve the method in quantifying the combined effects of metal-based chemicals?

Een samenwerking tussen het Leids Universitair Medische Centrum (LUMC), de Universiteit Leiden en Philips ontvangt financiering van wetenschapsfinancier NWO om MRI-scans te versnellen. Deze drie partijen vormen samen een van de 17 AI-labs die onder de naam ROBUST voor een periode van 10 jaar NWO-steun…

If you've ever wondered why people behave the way they do or how societies work, studying cultural anthropology and development sociology could be for you. Although these two disciplines once followed separate paths, they are now closely intertwined. This article explores what each involves, where they…

Can thrips resistance in strawberry be explained based on secondary metabolite profiles and plant morphological traits?

The overall objective of ECS is to widen and strengthen the European Citizen Science community through capacity building and awareness raising activities such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors.

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Leiden University has designed a new Urban Development Plan for the Humanities Campus. This plan incorporates participation from the immediate environment (neighbours and nearby residents). The plan will be available for viewing at the Leiden city council offices from 22 December for six weeks.

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

Staff and student mobility, a cooperative education programme and the possibility of a joint research center in artificial intelligence and data science. A delegation from Chinese partner XJTU paid a fruitful visit to the Faculty of Science in the last week of October.

Children’s brains react in the same way to social feedback as adults’ brains. But handling frustration or aggression after being rejected is a different matter, developmental psychologist Michelle Achterberg has discovered. Using fMRI techniques, the development of the child brain has now been studied…

Foster children’s behaviour is more problematic than that of their peers in ‘normal’ family situations. However, it is difficult to determine the exact cause of behavioural problems. Anouk Goemans, a researcher in clinical child and adolescent studies, calls for more screening and monitoring. PhD defence…

Eveline Crone wrote a new edition of

How can formative assessment be used to promote teacher professional learning? This book contains various studies into professionalization approaches and courses in which formative assessment is used with a view to teacher learning.

At the end of October, the Steering Committee, headed by Dean Mark Rutgers, gave the green light for the development of the new Faculty Strategic Plan for 2021-2026. How does this process go?

Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, in particular pulmonary surgery, Jerry Braun will give his inaugural lecture on Friday 23 September entitled ‘Out of countless millions’. Braun has been a professor and acting head of the LUMC’s Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery since January 2020. Covid meant…

Physicists, including Leiden researcher, Sanli Faes, have devised a new technique for studying processes at microscale rapidly and extremely precisely. This new method will make it easier to develop antiviral medication. And it doesn’t stop there. Publication in ACS Nano.

The research programme Industrial Ecology aims to support the ecological transformation of society and environment towards sustainability. The research subject is Industrial Ecology in its broadest definition, covering environmental systems analysis, and incorporating the social and economic aspects…

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should have ended poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030. In a special campaign, the Dutch universities are showing how they are helping to achieve these goals.

What do Master Card, the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and Leiden University have in common? They all work on new sets of guidelines for responsible data use.

A theoretical project on the insights gained by human (including infant), nonhuman animal and computational studies on artificial grammar learning; identifying the critical questions for future research by developing novel experimental and computational approaches to address these issues.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy is a non-destructive analytical technique that is used to study the nature and characteristics of molecules with an atomic level precision. It has a wide range of applications especially in synthetic chemistry, biological and biochemical research groups…