Working with engineers and architects on grown near net shape components

TEPHA is the acronym for "Technical Product Harvesting", a boost funds project on the idea of plant-derived near net shape components as an ecological and bioeconomical alternative to the conventional design and production of construction parts. It is a very interesting and highly challenging endeavour together with the engineering design, architects and plant scientists of RWTH Aachen University. Boost Funds means high risk research. It is money for starting rather crazy or at least risky research ideas. The funding is granted by RWTH Aachen University through the German Excellence Initiative.

Our part in the project is to conduct an LCA study for comparing environmental impact of the conventional production process of a simple chair with our TEPHA approach to grow the chair parts. The challenging bit is that we aim to develop a concept to integrate ecotoxicological data into LCA. Being die hard ecotoxicologists we will of course also conduct bioanalytical investigations on fertilisers, pesticides, and other additives required to grow near net shape plants. From all this will result a comprehensive database of plants with their different properties and characteristics. It will relate those parameters with the possible different functions of near net shape components and deliver the best suited plant candidates for a given purpose.

So far we succeeded to let bamboo shoots grow in a 90° angle and then more or less turn back to normal, thus forming another 90°. If you imagine the side parts of a simple chair, that's already quite close to what we seek for.

This also shows clearly that a boost fund project does not have to conduct rocket science in the beginning. We are allowed to first explore ideas, concepts and possibilities. Later on we are requested to apply for follow-up funding from other institutions.

The project logo was designed in a competition with me by Anna-Lena Beger, who is quite skilled with Photoshop.

For further information see the project page on our institute website.
Also available are the following conference papers:

• http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212827115005272
• https://www.designsociety.org/publication/36696/substituting_conventional_materials_and_manufacturing_for_sustainable_near_net_shape_grown_components

Passive samplers and bioassays combined for investigation of dissolved organic contaminants

Already some time ago we put out a paper on the investigation of dissolved organic contaminants using extracts of silicone rubber passive samplers in bioassays in Environmental Science and Pollution Research. This study shows the suitability of such an approach for determination of the bioavailable fraction of organic contaminants in the water phase. The study site was the Ythan catchment in Scotland, UK, and we used zebrafish and marine phytoplancton as test organims.

See all details of  "Evaluations of combined zebrafish (Danio rerio ) embryo and marine phytoplankton (Diacronema lutheri ) toxicity of dissolved organic contaminants in the Ythan catchment, Scotland, UK"

Session track at Nantes meeting

One far goal of our activities to strengthen the role of communication within environmental sciences was an own session track at SETAC conferences.

I am really thrilled that we already reached this, maybe indicating how popular this topic is about to become. The call for sessions for the SETAC Europe annual meeting 2016 in Nantes, France, includes a track "Communication on and public perception of environmental risks". I had the opportunity to contribute a good share of the description:

This track is seeking to bring together knowledge and experience on how to communicate properly on environmental risks and the research done for detection, evaluation and mitigation of pollutant effects, to different target groups including decision/policy makers and the general public. Sessions within this track are expected to deal with strategies that can be implemented to organise data in support of communication tools development (e.g. databases and user friendly derived tools), to identify relevant information, to increase and evaluate public perception, to raise awareness on environmental issues and to use public impact for SETAC’s aim of environmental quality.

We from the SCIRIC AG have the role to take care of this track, organise session proposals and contribute our own ideas. As it looks right now it could become a set of very interesting and challenging discussions at the conference.

SCIRIC - a major source for advice on communication

It is done! As of May 3rd, 2015, SETAC Europe, the European professional organisation for environmental toxicology and chemistry, has a group of experts officially formed to advise on proper environmental science and risk communication. This so called „Advisory Group on Science and Risk Communication (SCIRIC)“ will in future work on strengthening communication from within the SETAC community to all different target groups including the general public.
As the leading author of the proposal that restulted in the establishment of this group I am now chairing an initial steering committee to bring the group to live. This committee consists of several colleagues with strong interest for and expertise in science and risk communication, who are all very eager to develop this topic as an integral part of environmental research within SETAC.

In a nutshell, SCIRIC aims to become one of the major sources for advice on science and risk communication for SETAC members and maybe even beyond.

The working programme of the group is ambitious and challenging, but also very promising as a huge step forward into a future of better science and risk communication of environmental issues as a pre-requisite for a stronger public awareness of our research, findings and goals. We will basically base our activities on two pillars: the people and the topic.

For the „people part“ we aim at forming an interdisciplinary and international network of SETAC members with experience and/or expertise in communicating research. This measure already started back in 2012 with the first session at the Berlin conference and is ongoing until today with the sessions in Glasgow, Basel and latest Barcelona. In parallel we are increasing the number of submissions to the focused article series in ESEU. As a first outcome we seek to provide to the SETAC members a list of experts to consult in terms of questions regarding any kind of science and risk communication.

The „topic part“ has as a goal to fully understand environmental research as a topic for science and risk communication, through strictly analysing the properties, characteristics, and particularities of this topic with respect to communicating research findings. This analysis includes a complete list of target groups with a similar characterisation; a record of the connection between these target groups and environmental sciences, be it professional views, rational considerations, or rather emotional expectations, fears and desires; a full summary of the possible or imagniable findings, results and opinions to communicate; a list of the goals and desired impact of environmental scientists when communication their research.

Upon knowing the people and understanding the topic we will be able to develop taylor-made tools and strategies for proper science and risk communication of environmental research, set up trainings, workshops, and conferences, further advance the knowledge, and by that reach a high level of communication from within SETAC as well as maintain this quality.

This will tremendously increase societal and (by that) political impact of SETAC, thus leading to higher environmental quality and better human health.


As a nice side effect I designed another logo.

SOLUTIONS post on the freshwaterblog

The SOLUTIONS project held its annual general assembly from 13 to 16 October in Delft, The Netherlands. It was a very valuable event with the cosy atmosphere of a family meeting.

We tried to capture this feeling in a blog post for the freshwaterblog, which is run by one of our partner projects - called MARS.

I enjoyed being responsible for the first draft, and hence the overall structure of the text. It is based on a personal-general scheme, for which I collected quotations from project members. This was fun, especially because I chose a slightly cybernetical approach asking my interview partners about their role in and expectations for SOLUTIONS - sometimes quite a challenge for scientists in times when the main reason for projects seems to be fundraising.

Appears to have been a good excercise for everyone. The blog post can be accessed here.

What we propose from what we learned

We were invited by Peter Chapman to write a so called Learned Discourse (LD) for the SETAC journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM). LDs are described as "timely scientific opinions" and give authors the opportunity to communicate their thoughts on a specific topic. Peter is editor for LDs in IEAM. He asked us to write an LD about the Basel session, but we extended the theme to an overall review of our science communication activities. From that we derived "Three propositions for improved science communication from environmental research".

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.