Team:TU-Munich/Team/Activities

first transformation: Volker, Ingmar, Jeff, Leonie, (Anja, Omar, ten hours trafo, meeting Freiburg team, pizza mobil, sightseeing tour at night) plating: Johanna, Andi second transformation: Ingmar, Flo, Jeff, Leonie, (Timo, twelve hours of trafo, fighting w/ busdriver)

At the end of May we joined the "Drugs in the environment" conference that was organized by the [http://www.rcds.de/ RCDS] (which is the youth organisation of the actually governing political party in Germany) and the [http://www.vfa.de/ German Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies].
During this discussion meeting we had the possibility to meet and discuss with several experts in the field such as xxx and xx as well as with representatives of leading German pharmacy companies such as Bayer and Novartis.

The goal of the participation on the 4 th Water Research Horizon Conference “Water Scarcity and Global change” in Berlin on the 25th of june 2013 was to altercate with worldwide water scarcity and global change to get new aspects in case of outreach and human practice concerning to our project and information about worldwide practical realization of minimization of “the water problem” in different countries in diverse ways of use and transformation. In addition to the main speeches of ambassadors from different communities and companies we participated on a session with speeches and discussion called “water and soils for food and energy-a question of technological development?”. The topic of the session implied a question. Basically it turned out to be difficult to answer the question in one direction. On the one side J. Bouma (formerly Wageningen University, The Netherlands) answered it with “No, not alone, but start with existing technology and go from there” and on the other side R. Ardakanian( United Nations University, Dresden) just said “yes” after his speech. But not only the answers to the topic question were different also the point of view concerning to the worldwide water problem, scarcity or the definition of water differed by the speakers. Water in connection with waste was the main intention of the speech of R. Ardakanian, who said that waste is a resource for production of food and energy and must cooperate as recycled waste in technology. The goal for the next generation was for E. Adar (Ben Gurion University, Negev, Israel) the challenge to minimization of water costs and use. Also it was clearly that in his view water is a synonym for food and a commodity not a resource like gold. Ways about Climate Change and Energy-Water Nexus in the Mediterranean present us M. Lange (The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia). A. Porporato (Duke University, NC, USA) gave a lecture on the role of ecohydrologic variability on the Productivity and sustainability of ecosystems. General speeches about the water scarcity and climate change informed also about different present projects to reduce the water scarcity. G. Teutsch (UFZ Leipzig) who opened the conference talked about a “quick start” concerning to reduce the water scarcity which sticks together with the rise of climate change. The main statement of speech from the second speaker P. Krebs (TU Dresden) was that not visions, only excellent concepts, developed new topic projects and community action bring profit. That the water topic has also an important role in politic was approached from F. Holzwarth (BMU Bonn) who also had the goal of forming a “water alliance with new individual faces”. In his view in contrast to the climate change the water scarcity isn’t a major topic in politic based on the fact “disasters drive politic”. The main points of the speech from U. Weber (DFG Bonn) in case of the water scarcity and climate change were science (project, implementation and ideas) and society (public, politic). Switching between drought and floods, the cost of doughty, the multiple human pressures like the demography and the variability of fresh water resources in different regions are the themes which J. Sheffield(Princeton University, USA) talked about. The virtual water aspect and the ways about keeping natural balance for water quality in a mathematical model were presented by G. Bidoglio(EC-JRC IES Ispra, Italy). Realized Projects are the Joint Research Project SMART (integrated Water Resource Management in the Lower Jordan Valley) and the Guanting Project (sustainable water and Agricultural Land use in the Guanting watershed under limited water resources). In summary the visit of the conference was productive in context about the main problem of water scarcity and the climate change which opened us new ways of thinking and point of views.

[http://www.ufz.de/water-research-horizon Water Research Horizon Conference]

For the third year in series the German Ministery of Research and Education invited all German iGEM Teams to join the [http://www.biotechnologie2020plus.de "Biotechnology 2020 conference"] in Berlin at June 27th.

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