No 12 – 11 February 2016
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HelixChurch Growing pains Solving the problem cost Catholic urban planning Will you soon have to fi ght 2.4 million | p.7 | to curb sin | p.10 | for a thesis place? | p.18 | RESOURCE For students and employees of Wageningen UR no 12 – 11 February 2016 – 10th Volume Chinese love market Wageningen PhD candidates tell their stories | p.12 2 >> labour of love >> JOHAN + COLLECTING Johan Derksen, senior biotechnician at Unifarm ‘You can always throw it out later’ Johan Derksen never throws anything away. He collects all sorts of things. You name it, he’ll produce it from a box or a cupboard in his house, former WUR experimental farm De Santacker in Elst. Odd bits of equipment, piles of yellowing panoramas, state portraits of the royal family, dinky toys, a roll of old tickets for Wageningen Football Club… ‘An inter- est in history,’ is his own explanation. Tinged with nostal- gia, a feast of memories. And another plus: ‘I am never bored.’ RK / photo: Guy Ackermans RESOURCE — 11 February 2016 PHOTO COVER: HOLLANDSE HOOGTE >>CONTENTS no 12 – 10th volume >> 6 >> 20 >> 24 DISASTER STUDIES CITIZEN SCIENCE VIOLIN ‘Wageningen invisible Riding on the African Ruben plays in Netherlands because it has no professor’ communication revolution Student Orchestra ‘YOU HAVE TWO NEW MESSAGES’ I’m a phone man. Not an app man or a text message man, or an email man either really. I’m basically a phone man. That’s what journalists do. Talk, chat, ask questions, pass the message on. I’m one of the dying breed who still leaves voicemails, though I may sometimes send an ‘app’ afterwards as well. But since AND MORE... working here, I’ve had to deal every day with a phone system that has clearly 4 ESG in the red been designed by someone who never actually makes phone calls. An IT guy 5 To Surinam for zika keen on effi ciency, I suspect. A fan of email. If someone leaves me a voicemail, 8 Fish protects against I get an email. Which I can’t listen to without others listening in. But a text mes- dementia sage gets converted into an excessively enunciated voicemail that a computer- 10 Spying on white sharks generated voice barks down my ear. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can explain 16 Finding the way around to me why this is. I decided years ago that I mustn’t rage against these systems campus like a latter-day Don Quixote. Don’t accept defeat, just bide your time. Until a 22 Reward top scientists moment like this. Wonderful. My thoughts frequently turned to the new Wagenin- better? gen UR phone system last weekend. Just two months to go and then my verbal 26 Winter AID participants mailbox will be open to you all. 29 Meanwhile in Latin America Edwin van Laar >> Scientist digitally hounded by E number haters | p.7 11 February 2016 — RESOURCE 4 >> news CHANGE AT THE HELM AT ESG AFTER BIG LOSSES natural staff turnover, early re- • Losses of over 4 million euros tirements and helping staff to • New director of operations fi nd other jobs. and head of fi nances The ESG’s big losses have put the science unit’s employee council on alert too. ‘Now we’ve The Environment Sciences Group got to prove our value as an em- (ESG) suffered surprisingly big ployees’ council,’ says chair Paul losses last year. As a result the di- Hinssen. ‘It is all hands on deck; rector of operations and head of what’s at stake is saving the or- fi nances are being replaced. ganization.’ Research institute Alterra Wa- According to Hinssen there geningen UR incurred a loss of have been big improvements in over 3 million euros in 2015. The the relationship between the ESG chair group incurred a loss of management and the employees’ over 1 million. These losses are council of the science unit in the ‘surprisingly big’, stated the ESG past year. ‘Just like the manage- management on the intranet in 3 ment, we want a healthy organi- February. zation that books healthy re- As a result of the poor fi nancial sults,’ says Hinssen. ‘We can see results, ESG’s director of opera- who made the appointment in con- troller for the SSG for the last two that the management is open and tions Auke de Bruin resigned with sultation with De Vos, wanted to ar- and a half years. She was previously transparent, and is open to our immediate effect on 8 February. range the succession quickly to en- brought in as an external consult- ideas on improving the organiza- This followed ‘intensive consulta- sure ‘continuity in the operations ant to analyse the fi nances at the tion. That openness is encourag- tions about the worrying fi nancial at ESG so that the management is ESG, and will now be acting man- ing.’ The council chair thinks ESG situation with general director in a strong position to solve the ager there. Before De Vos can plan staff will need to take more initia- Bram de Vos and the executive problems.’ cutbacks he wants to have a sharp tive themselves to improve the in- board.’ Marja Baljé, head of Finance & analysis of the reasons for the stitute’s research position. ‘There De Bruin will be succeeded by Control at ESG, resigned last Tues- shortfalls. are 800 of us, we’ve got a lot of ide- Inge Grimm, now still director of day too. Baljé has been succeeded ESG ended last year in the red as about what can be improved, operations in the Social Sciences by Tjittra Basdew, who has worked for the third year in a row. De Vos and it is important that these ide- Group (SSG). She will start at ESG for Wageningen UR in various act- wants to avoid a reorganization as come to the surface. The man- on 1 March. The executive council, ing roles since 2009 and as a con- and achieve cutbacks through agement is open to that.’ AS LUYENDIJK IN THE SPOT Joris Luyendijk had a full house on Wednesday 3 February in The Spot in Orion for his evening talk about corporate culture in the banking sector. The eloquent journalist had been invited by the General Studies organization to talk about his book Swimming with Sharks. He vividly de- scribed how bankers in the City in London live in continual fear, at the mercy of managers who frequently sack employees on the spot. He also gave an impression of the balance of power between the well-behaved bankers and the ‘big swinging dicks’ trading in dubious fi nancial prod- ucts, with their coke and their pros- titutes. KG DE GLIND VAN AART-JAN PHOTO: RESOURCE — 11 February 2016 news << 5 TO SURINAM FOR ZIKA VIRUS OLUMN|KEES against zika. In collaboration where people have been infect- © • Entomologist Sander Koen- with the Bureau for Public ed by the virus. Koenraadt was raadt has joined mission Health in Paramaribo, the one of the architects of Mug- • Scientists to assess spread Dutch team is assessing the genradar.nl, a network Moral questionss of disease spread of the disease. The sci- through which members of the The Spot was jam-packed entists also want to do re- public are invited to send mos- when Joris Luyendijk gave search with their Surinamese quitoes in to Wageningen. The his talk about banking. He A Dutch research team is in Su- counterparts on the virus’s entomologist warned last year had a convincing message, rinam this week to assess the characteristics and their ef- that a new insect-borne virus explaining that the fi nan- way the zika virus is spreading. fects on the human nervous would appear in the Nether- cial crisis was primarily Wageningen entomologist system. Koenraadt is focusing lands sooner or later. He stud- due to the amoral conduct Sander Koenraadt is on the on the scope for biological pest ies viral diseases such as Den- of senior bankers. And mission. He and virologists control of the mosquito that gue fever which are transmit- there was apparently noth- from Erasmus University in carries the virus. The main ted by mosquitoes. He had al- ing wrong with that be- Rotterdam are looking at how method used at the moment is ready been in touch with his cause: ‘Everything we do is they can support the battle to spray insecticide in places Surinamese colleagues. AS within the law so what are you worried about?’ Joris has been travelling around with this mes- sage for a year now and he says that his mail- in brief box is full of stories from employees of listed multinationals, pharmaceutical companies, insurers and public broadcasters who say, ‘It’s >>TELEPHONY just the same here too! Nobody is interested in Landline phones to go whether our work can help solve modern-day As of April, Wageningen UR will have a new problems; it’s all about bonuses, share prices, telephone exchange and provider. That will vir- profi ts and viewing fi gures.’ tually mean an end to landline phones. Employ- I feel concerned and wonder: is my WUR ees will get a SIM card in March from the new amoral too? Everything we do is within the provider, T-Mobile, and the switch will take law, apart from the occasional fraud and a bot- place on 7 April. Everyone will keep their old tle deposit study that went wrong. In fact, we numbers. Two weeks later, anyone still using a use science to help companies make the right landline or old-fashioned mobile phone will get choices, politicians draw up sound laws and a smartphone.