Christmas lecture - de vorige edities

2010 - PROF. EM. SVEn kullander (royal swedish academy of sciences, stockholm en uppsala university): "towards a new global energy paradigm"

"Establishing a new energy paradigm is a major challenge for humanity. Over the last 150 years, the World has been increasingly powered by fossil fuels, and this will have to be reversed rapidly. Currently known alternatives (bioenergy, solar energy, wind power, hydropower and nuclear energy) will change the World from being combustion driven to electricity driven. Because of its high energy content, electricity will help to reduce energy consumption. The bioenergy of the future should come from waste and residues, since primary biomass will be needed for food and biomaterials. For Europe, the main power sources may be wind farms in the North Sea and solar power from the Sahara. Public acceptance of nuclear energy may increase if new methods for destroying long lived waste prove successful. New possibilities may emerge from research on solar, fusion, geothermal and ocean energy. Materials research will also be important, as limitations in use and supply of energy are often linked to material properties.

How much will non-fossil energy sources contribute to the global energy supply by 2050? How much can people in OECD countries reduce their energy consumption? How much will people in non-OECD countries increase their share of the energy?"

Herlees het interview met prof. em. Kullander in science@leuven 30

Kon u er niet bij zijn of wenst u graag de presentatie van prof. em. Kullander nog even opnieuw door te nemen?

Dan kan dat hier.

2009 - PROF. EM. MAARTEN CHRISPEELS (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, san diego, division of biology): "Genomics and future crop improvement for a hot and hungry world"

Over the past 10,000 years the improvement of our crops has depended on changes in the genetic makeup of their ancestors. This process was very slow at first, but greatly accelerated into the 19th and 20th centuries. As we face further population increases and global climate change we are aware that crop improvement will have to be accelerated if we are to meet these dual challenges. Genomics is the study of all the genes of an organism and the

race is on to sequence the genomes of our major crops and their pests. The genomes of a few crops have already been sequenced. How will this information help us find useful genes for crop improvement and incorporate them rapidly into established elite cultivars? How could it help us domesticate new crops that have potential for food or biomass production but were never domesticated? Can we do it fast enough to address the needs of the 9 billion people who will be on earth well before the end of this century?
 

Aansluitend na de lezing werden de statuten voor het Science@Leuven Fund ondertekend in aanwezigheid van rector Mark Waer.

Bekijk de fotoreportage (foto's: Rob Stevens)

2008 - prof. willy benz (university of bern, physikalisches institut): "galileo, the eagle, and darwin: planets and life"

Four hundred years ago, Galileo pointed the first telescope to the sky and begun the exploration of the Universe far and close. Forty years ago, The Eagle landed on the Moon and the exploration of the solar system started. In between, two hundred years ago, Darwin was born and mankind was no longer the same. These three remarkable achievements, which we will be celebrating in 2009 during the International Year of Astronomy, marked in their own way the beginning of a new era. Today, they come together and form the framework of the modern detection of planets outside the solar system and the search for life outside the Earth. We have already discovered that giant planets are quite common but still don’t know how unique the solar system and especially the Earth is. Efforts are underway to find out.

Bekijk de fotoreportage (foto's: Rob Stevens)

2007 - prof. marcus du sautoy (oxford university, mathematical institute): "the music of the primes"

Why did Beckham choose the number 23 shirt? How is 17 the key to the evolutionary survival of a strange species of cicada? Prime numbers are the atoms of arithmetic – the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers. Despite their fundamental importance to mathematics, they represent one of the most tantalising enigmas in the pursuit of human knowledge. In 1859, the German mathematician Bernhard Riemann put forward an idea – a hypothesis – that seemed to reveal a magical harmony at work in the numerical landscape. A million dollars now awaits the person who can unravel the mystery of the hidden music that might explain the cacophony of the primes.

Meer informatie over "The Music of the Primes" kunt u terugvinden op http://www.musicoftheprimes.com/
Bekijk de fotoreportage (foto's: Rob Stevens).

2006 - prof. alan rowan (radboud universiteit nijmegen, instituut voor moleculen en materialen): "individuele enzymmoleculen en nanoreactoren"

Alan Rowan behaalde een doctoraat in fysische organische chemie aan de universiteit van Liverpool, een postdoctoraat in Nieuw Zeeland, en werd professor in Nijmegen. Hij heeft een zeer brede interesse op het gebied van macromoleculaire, supramoleculaire chemie en biomimetische chemie en nanotechnologie. Prof. Rowan is zeer actief in het interdisciplinaire gebied van de biochemie en de organische chemie en is bovendien een zeer boeiend spreker. In zijn lezing liet hij de aanwezigen kennismaken met het gedrag van individuele enzymmoleculen, waarvan we heel wat konden opsteken. Het blijft echter niet bij onderzoek alleen: Alan Rowan is ook creatief op zoek naar nieuwe toepassingen. Als kind speelde hij wellicht graag met mecano, want hij is erin geslaagd een aantal beloftevolle nanoreactoren te assembleren. Het interdisciplinaire karakter van zijn onderzoek zorgde ervoor dat er tijdens deze lezing voor elk wat wils te horen was.

Meer informatie kan je terugvinden op: www.orgchem.science.ru.nl/

2005 - Prof. bert van de zwaan: "de hartslag van de aarde"

Bijna 65 jaar geleden schreef een toen nog relatief onbekende Nederlandse geoloog, Umbgrove, het boek “The pulse of the earth”. In deze intrigerende studie beweerde hij dat veel processen op aarde repetitief of zelfs cyclisch veranderen, en daarbij een opvallend onderling verband vertonen. Hij beargumenteerde bijvoorbeeld op suggestieve wijze dat veranderingen in klimaat en evolutie van het leven op aarde, vaak plaats vonden volgend op grote fasen van gebergtevorming. Hij noemde dit de “hartslag” van de aarde, suggererend dat aarde en leven op lange tijdschalen nauw met elkaar verbonden zijn.

De lezing kon gecombineerd worden met een geleid bezoek aan de tentoonstelling ‘Leven in Steen’.

2004 - prof. andrew goudie (university of oxford, st cross college): "the landscape implications of global change"

 

If the world warms up by 2-6 degrees Celsius in coming decades, the implications for landscape will be profound. The whole atmospheric circulation may be transformed, and so rainfall amounts and intensities will change. Some areas will become wetter and others drier. Vegetation belts will shift both latitudinally and altitudinally. Certain environments, ‘geomorphological hotspots’, will be especially prone to change, partly because they are especially sensitive, partly because they may be in locations where predicted levels of change are large, and partly because certain crucial thresholds may be crossed. The talk considered a wide
range of environments: hurricane prone regions; desert dune fields, dust source areas, valley glaciers, ice caps, deltas, coral reefs and coastal wetlands.

2003 - prof. Joseph indekeu (ku leuven): "het schouwtoneel van het ontstaan van de quantumfysica"

 

In dit vrolijke schouwtoneel bracht Joseph Indekeu, gewoon hoogleraar natuurkunde en voormalige voorzitter van de Belgische Natuurkundige Vereniging, de geschiedenis van het ontstaan van quantumideeën over materie en straling tot leven. Indekeu nam de gedaantes aan van Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger en Werner Heisenberg.

Meer informatie over dit schouwtoneel.

2002 - prof. peter atkins (university of oxford): "science, teaching it, enjoying it, and spreading it"