Cooperation for an effect-based investigation of municipal waste waters

Its not happening often that ecotoxicologists are asked by a municipality to investigate their sewage waters. The City of Stolberg together with Wasserverband Eifel-Rur (WVER) did, and we agreed to give 10 samples from their sewage water system a thorough ecotoxicological look, including influents and effluents from the waste water treatment plant Stolberg-Steinfurt.

This small but very interesting project will be covered by the master's thesis of candidate Sarah Johann. We will apply a range of different bioassays to reveal any possible hazardous potential.
Stolberg is a city near Aachen and an industrial hotspot of the region. While they have extensive data on heavy metal concentrations from continuous monitoring, so far no in-depth investigation of organic contamination has been done. Our bioassays are very well suited and sensitive enough to detect such substances through their biological activity.

Any positive results we will gain do not necessarily indicate a problem at all. Concentrations traceable using bioassays are often well below any environmentally or even toxicologically relevant level. Also, we do not expect any severe findings. This is a completely unbiased study, driven by scientific curiosity.

The City of Stolberg and the WVER are just very strict regarding environmental and human safety. They do so much for quality assurance when it comes to their waste waters, they now also want to cover this aspect. For us the project is a fantastic opportunity to get access to well-defined, specific waste water samples from different, very interesting spots, to better understand distribution of contaminants along the sewage water flow, and to prove bioassays as valuable tools for waste water monitoring.

Water to the power of 3 - Quality, Security and Management

The W3-Hydro project ("Water Quality Event Detection for Urban Water Security and Urban Water Management Based on Hydrotoxicological Investigations") is a BMBF-funded collaboration between RWTH Aachen University and the Technion in Haifa, Israel, within the Joint German-Israeli Water Technology Research Program. The project is coordinated by the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management (IWW) under the lead of Prof. Holger Schüttrumpf.

We aim at an early event detection, identification and management of unforeseen, negative and sudden events for drinking water supply using hydrological in combination with ecotoxicological experimental investigations, together with water management and modelling.

Our part is (a) to develop an early warning system that automatically triggers sampling and further testing based on biotest systems, and (b) to investigate contaminant behaviour in the water-sediment-system for better understanding of substance transport and distribution.

We already built a custom-made low-cost pipetting robot for the automatic sampling, and started with the development of a flow-through device for behaviour monitoring of zebrafish larvae.

Futher info on the project can be found at http://w3hydro.org/

And again, I could enjoy designing a logo.

PAHs from coals are ecotoxicologically active

In continuation of the PAHs-from-coals-story, Wiebke Meyer published additional data and findings on the toxic potential of PAHs deriving from different coal types in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

The article titled "Polar polycyclic aromatic compounds from different coal types show varying mutagenic potential, EROD induction and bioavailability depending on coal rank" reports on mutagenicity and dioxin-like activity of coal-derived PAHs. Wiebke found that the toxic properties differ between coal types, and also some are better available to organisms than others, thus might more likely cause adverse effects.

Constant dosing: reliable exposure concepts to reduce "animal" use

Passive dosing is an approach were the partitioning equilibrium of a substance between a solid and a liquid phase is utilised to maintain exposure concentrations in biotesting. This means that test organisms are exposed at defined and constant concentrations, thus reducing experimental variability and uncertainty, which leads to more robust results.

Together with Philipp Mayer and Kilian E.C. Smith, both formerly of NERI in Roskilde, Denmark, and now with Technical University of Denmark and KIST Europe, respectively, we put out a paper "PAH toxicity at aqueous solubility in the fish embryo test with Danio rerio using passive dosing" in Chemosphere reporting on the usage of PDMS cast into glass vials for passive dosing of non-hatched zebrafish embryos (FET biotest). We show for 10 PAHs constant delivery from the PDMS reservoir to the water phase based on equilibrium partitioning, and prove passive dosing applicable in FET. This test design could in future lead to better data and hence reduced use of zebrafish embryos, albeit legally fish larvae up to 120 hours post fertilization are not considered animals. But we are biologists, we care about any organism.

SOLUTIONS - a project with a consortium that solves any problem

Since one year already we are part of the EU-funded collaborative research project "Solutions for present and future emerging pollutants in land and water resources management" (SOLUTIONS). It is one of the largest environmental research projects within the EU and promises nothing less than to find a solution for all substances and mixtures in European water bodies and suggest to the EU commission how future water quality assessment should look like.

Our part in this is to better predict the influence of already existing and "emerging" pollutants through an improved understanding of the effects of environmental burdens on cells and organisms.
For further info on the project in general and the work of our group go to:

http://www.solutions-project.eu/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/SOLUTIONS/442137955889022
https://twitter.com/SOLUTIONS_UFZ
http://www.rwth-aachen.de/go/id/gufw/?lidx=1#aaaaaaaaaaagufx
http://www.aachener-zeitung.de/lokales/region/der-gesundheit-unserer-seen-auf-den-grund-gehen-1.935379 (German)

What is truely unique to the project is the composition of the consortium. The partners are coming not only from all different countries and institutions - what is common to such large endeavours - but they all feature some specific expertise that might come in handy for someone else from the project. There is much less overlap of research fields than in other joint projects, providing a vast selection of different knowledge, tools, methods, equipment, skills, capabilities and the like. Literally we can say that the solution for any problem we encounter within the project lies in the consortium and just has to be asked for. What a good condition for our water bodies.

More of Basel - a communication session focused on projects

Barcelona will host the 25th SETAC Europe annual meeting in 2015. We could celebrate there the forth science communication session in a row at SETAC Europe AMs since Berlin 2012. Quite a run!

As promised earlier, the session "Science communication - Concepts and activities from past and current research projects" will focus on reports on science communication from research projects. This turned out to be very valuable during the Basel session, and we want to hear more of such theoretical brackground translated into practical experience.

As always, the session is open for abstracts until 26 November 2014, 23.59 Brussels time. Abstracts can be submitted via the online submission system. All details on abstract submission can be found here.

I am looking forward to your contribution as an important step forward towards quality science communication of environmental research.

So how about communication now?

The Basel session raised again strong interest. We chaired a lively session with fantastic talks in front of a full-seated room, once more showing how important this topic is for a large number of colleagues. The authors gave practical tips on blogging and social media usage, they dived into the current situation of science communication of environmental research, and they presented approaches on how to properly disseminate activities and results from running research project. This last aspect seemed to us be of wider importance, why we decided to focus our session proposal for the upcoming SETAC Europe annual meeting in Barcelona, Spain, on more of such background and experience.

The session also helped us to further shape a proposal for a SETAC Europe advisory group an science and risk communication, that is currently being prepared and planned to submit this year.

Find a more detailed description of the session and it outcomes in our session brief as a contribution to the June issue of SETAC Globe.

Irony of ivory

Let's say, polls are in, and we didn't make it into government.
There was a deadline when registrations for short courses at the SETAC Basel 2014 conference were counted, and afterwards decisions had to be made for each course whether its worth it to run.
Three courses were offered on communication topics. I really liked reading that. But as large the choices as little was the interest. Our course drew 4 registrations...the others drew one each. As a consequence, all three courses were cancelled.
What a pity! I liked our proposal, for sure, but I would also have loved to attend the other two courses. Simon Pardoe of PublicSpace UK offered "Disseminating publicly-funded science and technology research: challenges, issues and strategies". Most environmental scientists should have been interested. From what I experienced being active for science communication the last years I doubt that many colleagues have sufficient knowledge about this - if any. The SETAC Europe Student Advisory Council (SAC) in person of current acting chair Dragan Jevtic wanted to contribute "Social and Professional Networking Tools for Science Communication". A similar course as a noon time seminar at the SETAC North America 2013 conference in Nashville was a huge success.
So what went wrong? As a "nice piece of irony", to quote Roel Evens of SETAC Europe, we seem to have failed to communicate: the importance of proper communication of scientific findings, the necessity to leave the comfort of our ivory tower, and the fact of 3 courses on science communication available at SETAC Basel. This was for us to learn. We will do better next time.

Here's to identification!

It took me quite a long time to come up with a satisfying logo for the research group."Effect-related Ecotoxicology" doesn't work well as an acronym. Adding "work group" or "reasearch group" or even "team" as initials also just sounded silly. Well, so the best way out is to avoid using an acronym for the logo. The disadvantage of this strategy is that a catchy group acronym aids in identfication of the members with their research ("Hi, I'm Thomas of the REFEC team!"). But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. So here's what I have in hand now. Maybe I find something better in the bushes later on.

1st Biological AdVent in-house exhibiton

On 12 December 2013 we opened doors for the 1st Biological Advent in-house exhibition in the framework of the academia-industry cooperation Students Lab "Fascinating Environment".

This event allowed all of our industry partners to present not only their contributions to the lab's equipment but also other products from their portfolio. The audience consisted of colleagues from other biological institutes as well as many interested students.

We could welcome nearly all of our partners: Nikon Instruments, Tecan, Hettich, Büchi, Memmert, Prior Scientific, Integra Biosciences, Promega, BFI Optilas, Mettler Toledo. All representants were pleased with how the exhibition went and showed interest to repeat it.

In the past we had already one "Industry Day 2010", but the following years we found no capacities to organise a second event. With the date fixed to the time before Christmas we want to make this exhibition an annual activity. Next round will also have useful lectures by our partners, e.g., on the very basics of microscopy, weighing practice, functioning of a monochromator and the like.

As a sideeffect, I had another opportunity to create a logo.

On the proper dissemination of findings

I seem to have gained already bit of a reputation as someone who cares about science communication, and also sports sort of expertise or at least can bring in a network that helps. At least, SETAC Europe's education committee learned enough about my activities to ask me to organise "a short course on communication tools" at SETAC Europe's annual meeting in Basel.

Needless to say that I agreed after shortly checking back with some colleagues who could give valuable input as instructors. We submitted a proposal "From quality platform and poster presentations to proper dissemination of findings - learn tools, get practice, gain experience" and promised to "help the participants to improve the quality of their platform and poster presentations and train them to adapt their communication of scientific results".

Together with Ulrike Kammann of Thünen Institute Hamburg, I will try to win the particpants for presentation design based on the presentationzen ideas of Garr Reynolds, but adapted to the needs of environmental sciences. Agnieszka Hunka of University of Twente will then teach the course proper poster design, and Katharina Tarnacki of the Institute for Management Cybernetics at RWTH Aachen University will help shaping written texts to catch the different target groups we have. Knowing a whole lot about successful design and writing the participants will then have the opportunity to train their skills with the production of some draft promotional material - aiming at a self-choosen audience.

The course will take place - given at least 10 people register for it - on Sunday 11 May from 8.00 to 17.30.

All along the Ivory Tower

We got our session! At the SETAC Europe Annual meeting 2014 in Basel, Switzerland, we will try to define a good way to leave the Ivory Tower and make environmental science matter to a broader public. The session will run on Wednesday, 14 May 2014, from 10.45 to 12.50.

Though the session became smaller and shorter than hoped and expected, we will hear 6 interesting and challenging talks about tools for science communication, the current state, and experiences already made within research projects - to pinpoint the best practice for a successful dissemination of scientific results.

Beside the platform presentations the session will provide another 6 authors opportunities for presenting and discussing their specific views to the audience in a short talk within the poster corner session during poster social that same day.

Hence, in total we will have 12 different perspectives to listen to, discuss about and learn from. That's a good step forward towards our goal of a comprehensive communication strategy for environmental sciences.