29. February 2020

February News in Brief

A new study from MIB explains our ability to reproduce music and language; a new book by Professor MSO Søren M. Sindbæk from UrbNet examines craftsmanship from the past; Anja Boisen and Jørgens Kjems are interviewed on Danish radio; Olav Andersen from PROMEMO receives 9.5 million DKK to study Alzheimer’s; CEBI researchers receive a Sapere Aude grant and the Richard Musgrave Visiting Professorship 2020 and young researchers defended their Ph.D.s. All this in the DNRF Other February News in Brief.

A new study from MIB explains our ability to reproduce music and language

Until now, the fact that music and the spoken language change over time has been attributed to cultural development by researchers. In a new study from the DNRF’s Center for Music in the Brain (MIB) at Aarhus University, a research team, including Massimo Lumaca, Boris Kleber, Elvira Brattico, Peter Vuust, and Giouse Baggio, found that the changes are also connected to the way our brains are organized. In the study, 52 test subjects had their brains scanned while listening to music unknown to them. Afterward, they were asked to reproduce the music. The results show that the test subjects reproduced the music differently according to how their brains were organized – some changed the music significantly while others made only a few changes. The researchers from MIB compared the results with spoken language when young children learn to speak or when one learns a new language. The study was recently published in the scientific journal eLife.

Read the scientific article from MIB here

UrbNet: New book by Professor MSO Søren M. Sindbæk

Professor MSO Søren M. Sindbæk from the DNRF center UrbNet and Dr. Steven P. Ashby from the University of York are the editors of a new book called “Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns”recently published by Oxbow Books. The book offers the first panoramic study of the craftsmanship of the past and examines how archeological evidence excavated from early Northern European towns such as Ribe or York reflect the development and exchange of technology during the Vikings’ naval expansion in early urban societies.

Anja Boisen and Jørgens Kjems on Danish radio

Doctor and researcher Maja Thiele invited Anja Boisen, head of center at the Center of Excellence IDUN, and Jørgen Kjems, head of center at the DNRF’s center CellPat, into the studio of Danish radio P1 to talk about nanomedicine.

You can hear the broadcast “Kan nanomaskiner helbrede os indefra?” (in Danish) here

Olav Andersen from PROMEMO receives 9.5 million DKK to study Alzheimer’s

Associate Professor Olav Andersen from the DNRF Center of Excellence PROMEMO at Aarhus University and research colleagues from abroad received 9.5 million DKK from an EU program. The grant will be used to study the so-called SORL1-gene, which is considered one of Alzheimer’s most important risk factors and where some variants are considered to be the cause of the illness.

CEBI researchers receive a Sapere Aude grant and the Richard Musgrave Visiting Professorship 2020

Lecturer Torben Heien Nielsen from the DNRF’s Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI) at the University of Copenhagen received a Sapere Aude grant from the Danish Independent Research Council for the research project “Skill Formation in the Labor Market for Physicians.” The research project investigates how physicians’ careers and practice styles are shaped and whether this is formed by the physicians’ professional skills and behavior or by external circumstances such as the prestige of the physician’s colleagues or workplace. The project will contribute to our understanding of what motivates highly specialized workers’ labor market choices as well as how to create more equality in health care.

Find more information about Torben Heien Nielsen’s research project in a press release from the University of Copenhagen here

The Richard Musgrave Visiting Professorship 2020 has been awarded to head of center at CEBI, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, by CESifo and the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF). The highlight of the Musgrave Professorship is the Richard Musgrave Lecture, which will be held on March 19, 2020, in which Professor Kreiner will delve into the topic of Behavioral Heterogeneity, Inequality, and Public Policy. The lecture will take place in the “Sitzungssaal 1” of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Read about some of the latest Ph.D. defenses from the DNRF’s Centers of Excellence

Here you can find information about some of the Ph.D. projects that were recently defended in some of the DNRF’s Centers of Excellence:

Jakob Rørsted Lysgaard, post-doc at the Stellar Astrophysics Centre (SAC) at Aarhus University

Lingbo Sun, Copenhagen Center for Glycomics (CCG), at the University of Copenhagen

Anders Kringhøj, post-doc, Center for Quantum Devices (QDev), the Niels Bohr Institute, the University of Copenhagen

Dino Solar Nikolic, post-doc, Center for Macroscopic Quantum States (bigQ), at the Technical University of Denmark