Luxembourg (Europe)

The Science Festival Luxembourg will be returning with its 11th edition from 9 to 12 November 2017, offering over 50 workshops for science lovers.

Organised by the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) and the National Research Fund (FNR), the purpose of the annual Science Festival is to present and promote science and research in Luxembourg and to encourage young people and the public to become interested in, experiment with and discuss science and technology.

This year’s Science Festival will offer even more activities and shows than previous years with a total of 56 workshops, 8 interactive shows and 2 exhibitions held at Neumünster Abbey and the 'natur museum'.

For four days, scientists, researchers, mediators and visitors are called to discover, communicate, interact and have fun together. During the first two days, Thursday and Friday, primary and secondary school classes can participate, after registration, in the numerous workshops and shows. Saturday and Sunday the Science Festival is open to the general public.

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https://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=Science

The 11th edition of the Science Festival in Luxembourg will take place from the 9-12 of November 2017. It is organized by the National Museum of Natural History (Mnhn) and the National Research Fund (FNR).

The purpose of the event is to present and promote science and research in Luxembourg and to encourage young people and the general public to become interested in and curious about science and technology. The Science Festival is attracting more and more visitors with every new edition and it has now become an annual event not to be missed.

During the first two days, Thursday and Friday, primary and secondary school classes can participate, after registration, in the numerous workshops and shows, which are presented to them by research institutes, associations as well as volunteers. Saturday and Sunday the Science Festival is open to the general public.

The program, workshops and shows, of the festival are available in FR and DE.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=Science

The role of materials and hygiene in the transmission of bacteria in public places, a research project on the prevention of bacterial contamination that European School student Camilla Hurst has performed over the last three years in collaboration with both her school and the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST).

This project won a special prize from the Swiss nutritional products firm DSM, who have invited Camilla to visit one of their research centres in Switzerland.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=STEM

THE Competition itself 2017 FIRST  GLOBAL CHALLENGE – GAME DESIGN INTRODUCTION. Welcome to the official game of the 2017 FIRST Global Challenge,  H2O FLOW! In H2O FLOW, teams learn
 about real-world water
 scarcity and 
contamination issues. In 
the game, two villages
 exist on either side of a 
contaminated river. The
 villagers compete to
 create and store purified 
water…

Learn more / En savoir plus / Mehr erfahren:

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/luxembourg-education-interviews-1-the-luxembourg-edu-system/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/luxembourg-education-interviews-5-creativity-and-maker-spaces-beecreative/

https://gustmees.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/luxembourg-education-interviews-creativity-and-maker-spaces-maach3-ltettelbruck/

http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?tag=Digital+L%C3%ABtzebuerg

http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=Digital+4+EDUcation

Zum ersten Mal nimmt ein luxemburgisches Team an der First Global Challenge teil, einem internationalen Robotik-Wettbewerb, der in Washington DC stattfindet. Insgesamt nehmen Teams aus 164 Ländern teil. Das Thema des diesjährigen Events ist sauberes Wasser und es gilt für alle Teams, einen Roboter zu entwerfen, der Wassermoleküle und Schmutzpartikel, im Wettbewerb durch farbige Bälle dargestellt, trennen kann. Dies geschieht in Kooperation mit jeweils zwei anderen Teams.


Das luxemburgische Team wird durch Lehrerinnen und Lehrer des Code Club aus dem Lycée des Arts et Métiers betreut. Die Schülerinnen und Schüler treffen sich zweimal pro Woche im Code Club, um an dem Roboter zu arbeiten. Zum Bau des Roboters darf jedes Team nur die vorgegebenen Teile verwenden. Die Herausforderung besteht also darin, einen möglichst effizienten Roboter zu konstruieren und zu programmieren, um die Aufgabe zu bewältigen.

Das ganze Team hatte sogar die Ehre, den Premierminister Xavier Bettel bei sich begrüßen zu dürfen und ihm das Projekt vorzustellen. Wie gut sich das luxemburgische Team mit ihrem Roboter durchsetzen kann, wird sich vom 14. – 19. Juli in Washington DC zeigen.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=STEM

http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=Coding

http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=Digital+4+EDUcation

The Luxembourg Science Week aims to promote Science, scientific activities and the pursuit of scientific studies to the public, with a special emphasis on developing the interest in science of the younger generations.

The Science Week promotes and creates awareness of the broad offer of scientific industries, careers, activities, resource centers and coordination entities that are already available in Luxembourg to date. By highlighting the activities that already occur on a regular basis, and by complementing these by an offer of industry activities the Science Week increases visibility of the existing offer, while reconfirming the country-wide commitment to developing Luxembourg as a hotspot for international as well as homegrown talent in the scientific fields.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=Science

Multiresistente Keime sind heutzutage eine der großen Herausforderungen der Medizin und der öffentlichen Gesundheit. Antworten auf diese Herausforderung sucht Camilla Hurst mit ihrer Forschung. Den Schwerpunkt legt die Forscherin auf die Prävention. Das berichtet die "Fondation jeunes scientifiques Luxembourg" in einer Pressemitteilung.

2015 bereits hatte Hurst eine neue Bakterie entdeckt. Ein Jahr später hatte sie bislang unbekannte antibakterielle Eigenschaften der Kiefer aufgezeigt. Im letzten Jahr dann legte sie nach und isolierte das Molekül, das für diese Eigenschaften verantwortlich ist.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=STEM

Stem cells are unspecialised cells that can develop into any type of cell in the human body. So far, however, scientists only partially understand how the body controls the fate of these all-rounders, and what factors decide whether a stem cell will differentiate, for example, into a blood, liver or nerve cell.

Researchers from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg and an international team have now identified an ingenious mechanism by which the body orchestrates the regeneration of red and white blood cells from progenitor cells. “This finding can help us to improve stem cell therapy in future,” says Dr. Alexander Skupin, head of the Integrative Cell Signalling group of LCSB. The LCSB team has published its results in the scientific journal PLOS Biology.

Although all cells in an organism carry the same genetic blueprints – the same DNA – some of them act as blood or bone cells, for example, while others function as nerve or skin cells. Researchers already understand quite well how individual cells work. But how an organism is able to create such a diversity of cells from the same genetic template and how it manages to relocate them to wherever they are needed in the body is still largely unknown.

In order to learn more about this process, Alexander Skupin and his team treated blood stem cells from mice with growth hormones and then watched closely how these progenitor cells behaved during their differentiation into white or red blood cells.

The researchers observed that the cells’ transformation does not occur in linear, targeted fashion, but rather more opportunistically. Each progenitor cell adapts to the needs of its environment and integrates itself into the body where new cells are needed. “So, it is not as though the cell takes a ticket at the beginning of its differentiation and then travels straight to its destination. Rather, it gets off frequently to look around and see which line is best to take,” Alexander Skupin explains.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=University+Luxembourg

The Fondation Jeunes Scientifiques Luxembourg has announced that three young Luxembourg scietists - Maverick Schmit, Alex Muller and Valentin Ringlet - have won a prize for their 3-D printing project that prints concrete.

From 23 to 29 October 2017, the international pre-university scientific competition MOSTRATEC was held in Novo Hamburgo, in the south of Brazil. Luxembourg was one of the 20 countries represented, with two teams, one of which won a special mention from the jury.

The project "A Modular Concrete 3D Printer" was y three pupils from the Aline Mayrisch Lycée, who designed and created a special 3D printer that prints concrete objects, instead of plastic, the material used by traditional 3D printers. Their goal is to revolutionise the construction industry, by printing entire buildings made of concrete. Their multi-disciplinary project, combining mechanical engineering, electronics, computer science and materials science, has been supported by the University of Luxembourg and Paul Wurth SA, and qualified for MOSTRATEC at the 2017 Jonk Fuerscher National Competition. In the Brazilian contest, it made a strong impression on the public and the jury, which rewarded it with an honourable mention "for outstanding project".

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https://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=STEM

L’exposition du Muerbelsmillen s’adresse à un large public, tout en intéressant particulièrement les jeunes visiteurs par le choix des thèmes : la meunerie, l’alimentation, l’artisanat et l’énergie de l’eau. Le moulin peut se visiter individuellement et en groupe avec un médiateur.

Le parcours se compose d’espaces de découverte, d’approfondissement, de documentation et de médiation. La grande roue à eau tournant dans le canal constitue l’expérience de départ. Un panneau explicatif donne des informations succinctes sur l’histoire du lieu. La salle du premier étage où s’effectuait autrefois la mouture conserve les anciennes meules et les engrenages, parfaitement restaurés.

Une projection d’extraits d’archives filmiques montre le fonctionnement du moulin. Le visiteur entre ensuite dans un espace qui lui offre la possibilité d’approfondir ce qu’il a vue dans les salles précédentes à l’aide de panneaux graphiques et de modèles. La salle qui servait autrefois au conditionnement de la moutarde est désormais utilisé pour exposer un certain nombre des pièces originales pour documenter la production et les usages de la moutarde : publicité, emballages, factures etc.

La visite peut ensuite être prolongée par une projection de film ou un atelier pédagogique dans la salle de médiation.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=mus%C3%A9es

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Did you know that the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine at the University of Luxembourg is now member of the European ELIXIR network? This initiative makes research from all of its members available to the other members, thereby fostering scientific exchange. http://ow.ly/DAvg30fDtTh

On 7 September 2017, Luxembourg joined 20 other European countries in the ELIXIR (European Life Sciences Infrastructure for Biological Information) network, a network in which life science research data are shared and made available on the Internet in the long term.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=ELIXIR

Starting Monday, a team of high school students from Luxembourg will compete for the first time in the First Global international robotics challenge in Washington.

The Olympics-style challenge is designed to motivate teams of young people from every nation to learn and demonstrate skills in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This year’s challenge is about providing access to clean drinking water now and in future. While over one billion people do not have reliable access to clean water right now, by 2040 projections suggest that there will be global water shortages.

“These students are doing much more than competing in a robotics game--they are learning that these challenges will only be overcome when people realise we are all on the same team, and that with technology, we can accomplish things we can only imagine by communicating, cooperating, and working together to apply technology as a tool for positive change in the world,” First Global said on its website.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=First+Global+Challenge+2017

MICSE [miks] is a group for people interested in Professional Development in the STEM-related fields, New Technologies, Information Security, Education. All skills levels are welcome. We started this group to meet other New Technology enthusiasts, to exchange ideas for professional development in this direction and to inspire. Looking forward to exploring those exciting opportunities with everybody. You can also join us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/micselu or follow us on twitter at MicseLu to keep up to date with interesting news, articles and other events.

At the International Science and Engineer Fair (ISEF) in Los Angeles last week, Camilla Hurst’s project of a self-cleaning door handle took away fourth prize from among 2,000 participants aged 15 to 18 from 78 countries in a major first for Luxembourg. 

Just 16 years old, Camilla already has a string of impressive scientific achievements under her belt with three national competition wins and several international awards, and now adds this prize at the largest international science fair for young students in the world. 

Her project concerned the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, which is becoming a major public health problem. The variety of treatments but especially the prevention of the transmission of pathogenic bacteria are the solutions advocated by the public health authorities. This is the heart of Camilla Hurst's project: after discovering a new bacterium in 2015, and then demonstrating anti-bacterial properties still unknown to untreated pine in 2016, the young researcher sought to identify and then isolate the molecule responsible for these anti-bacterial properties in 2017. In order to limit the particularly high risk of contamination in public places, she designed and built a prototype for a self-cleaning door handle which also disinfects the user's hands whenever the mechanism is engaged.

Camilla's multidisciplinary approach demonstrated to the American judges a global understanding of the problem and has emphasised the scope of her work in microbiology, biochemistry and engineering to help find concrete solutions to the problem. An issue as vast and comprehensive as epidemics, even pandemics.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe/?&tag=STEM

Enthousiasmer les jeunes pour les sciences

Le Luxembourg, comme tous les pays de l'OCDE, manque aujourd'hui de jeunes qui se lancent dans les sciences, l'ingénierie, les technologies. C'est l'objectif affiché du Luxembourg Science Center: éveiller l'intérêt des enfants -dès 5 ans- aux sciences et les rendre plus attrayantes aux yeux des jeunes; mais aussi «amuser l'opinion publique, les intéresser, leur permettre de s'épanouir, s'enthousiasmer pour les sciences et les technologies», comme l'explique son initiateur, Nicolas Didier.

Ouvert au grand public le 4 octobre

Les différentes stations permettent aux jeunes visiteurs d'expérimenter les bases de la physique (électricité, électromagnétisme, électronique, thermodynamique), de la mécanique (statique, gravitation, fluides, constructions), de la robotique et de la chimie. Les mathématiques, la biologie, et d'autres branches de l'ingénierie suivront.

Papillonner librement d'une station expérimentale à une autre -toutes sont 100% made in Luxembourg- n'est pas la seule façon de partir à la découverte des sciences. Deux autres formats seront proposés aux visiteurs.

A heure régulière, «des médiateurs scientifiques feront des démonstrations étonnantes dans nos laboratoires qui porteront sur l'électricité spectaculaire (avec le grand générateur de haute tension ou l'électro-aimant avec grande intensité), la résistance des matériaux, la carboglace ou la technologie du vide! Le public pourra y participer en tant que volontaire», explique le directeur scientifique du centre.

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http://www.scoop.it/t/luxembourg-europe