EEA report on water quality
The European Environment Agency  (EEA) published the water quality report. Key issues addressed: Improvment of bathing water quality; Data sources Justification for indicator selection. Generic metadata on countries included in the survey are available at the EEA webpage.
Data are published in accordance with the New European legislation on bathing water adopted in 2006. The ‘New Bathing Water Directive’ updates the measures of the 1975 legislation (Bathing Water Directive) and simplifies its management and surveillance methods. The new directive requires that EU Member States comply with even stricter requirements and implement effective management of bathing water, public participation and better information dissemination.
 

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ECI and IRPE Prize Winners
 Since 1986 the International Ecology Institute in Oldendorf/Luhe (Germany) selects each year two top performers in the field of ecology:the winner of the Ecology Institute Prize (which carries an endowment of €6000) and the winner of the IRPE Prize (which carries an endowment of €3000).  ECI prize winners, their major achievements and their EE book titles are listed under ECI Prize Winners. IRPE prize winners and their major achievements are listed under IRPE Prize.
Call for nominations 2012 in Limnetic Ecology: Nominations are invited from research ecologists worldwide. They must be accompanied by the candidate's CV, publication list and a brief statement why, in the opinion of the nominator, the nominee qualifies for the prize. Nominations should be addressed to the Jury's Chair, Prof. Brian Moss ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

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EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF 2012) 

This year the ESOF 2012 (Euroscience Open Forum) will take place in Dublin from 11-15 July, 2012. Early bird registration closing on 28th March. Open calls: European Young Researchers' Award 2012 and Early-Stage Researcher (ESR) travel grants.
More info: www.euroscience.org & www.dublinscience2012.ie

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VIII Incontro Dottorandi in ECOLOGIA e SCIENZE dei SISTEMI ACQUATICI
 Con piacere comunichiamo che dal 27 Febbraio al 1 Marzo 2012 si terrà l'VIII incontro dei Dottorandi in Ecologia e Scienze dei Sistemi Acquatici, presso la sede centrale del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (www.cnr.it), grazie all'organizzazione dell'AIOL- Associazione Italiana di Oceanografia e Limnologia (www.aiol.info/). Il resoconto sulla prossima Newsletter?!

From 27th February to March 1st 2012, the Meeting of Italian PhD Students in Ecological and Aquatic Systems will take place at the CNR-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (www.cnr.it)  and the AIOL- Italian Association of Oceanografy and Limnology (www.aiol.info). A detailed description on the contents and activities will be published on our next SItEMicro Newsletter!?

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2012 ASLO Aquatic Science Meeting
Next March 1st-2012, the deadline for the abstract submission to participate to the 2012- ASLO meeting that will take place from 8-13 July 2012, Lake Biwa, Otsu, Shiga, Japan. There are several sessions focusing on Microbial Ecology  and biogeochemical cycles. More information at the conference wensite: aslo.org/meetings/japan2012/
Important:  ILEC (international Lake Environment Committee) has officially became a supporter of Aquatic Sciences Meeting of ASLO meeting in Japan thanks to the World Water and Climate Network (WWCN). The Committee is seeking ten distinguished students who study any of the fresh water sciences and will cover all necessary expenses for the students to attend it. More information on the official call

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Trends in Microbiology: on line collection!
The Journal Trends in Microbiology give free access to  an on line collection on interesting articles and reviews on different hot-topic in the field of microbiology and microbial ecology: microbial system biology, Gene ontology, Evolutionary microbiology. By clicking on the covers you will be redirect to the on line collection.
    

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EURODOC report of the pan-survey on doctoral candidates: on line!

EURODOC is the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers and it is the only European organisation to have successfully realised a large scale, pan-European survey on the situation of doctoral candidates and young researchers, in cooperation with the centre for Higher Education of Kassel. The questionnaire was launched on 9 December 2008, and stayed online until 30 April 2009. The data analysis and evaluation were done between August and October 2009, and the survey publication was supported by Körber-Stiftung, EMBO and doktorat.at – ÖH Doktorat.  The final report analyses the current situation of more than 7500 doctoral candidates in twelve countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden) and we are sorry to know that Italy was not includeed, but we imagined it depends on the lower consideration that in our opinion the Italian Society and the Italian government give to Science and Education. To read and dowload the report to go the Eurodoc webpage.

September 2011: SItEMicro session at the XXI Congress of the Società Italiana di Ecologia
This year 2011 the city of Palermo hosted the congress of the Società Italiana di Ecologia with the Sitemicro session. Despite the reduced number of participants, it was always nice to present the research by the Italian groups involved in Microbial Ecology that  cover investigation in different aquatic environments from the Pole to the Tropic as well as agriculture lands. more on the congress webpage. 

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12th Symposium on Aquatic Microbial Ecology
From Sunday 28th August to Friday 2nd September, the 12th Symposium on Aquatic Microbial Ecology took place with the opening lecture and the ice-breaking moment at the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research (IOW), at Warnemunde! The symposium lasted during the whole week with several plenary lectures, talks and poster presentations. You can still dowlonad the abstract book on line at the symposium website: www.io-warnemuende.de/same12.html

As always the SAME was the right place for fruitful discussions, interesting comments on new topics, and of course, nice evenings facing an unlimited amount of good beers!? To choose which lectures were the most stimulating is almost impossible as the general level of each presentation was remarkably high, and selecting a few names would be unfair towards the researchers not mentioned. More detailed information on our newsletter!?

XXI Congress Italian Society of Ecology

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Several occasions must be used to remember the milestone of Charles Darwin "On the origin of species"."it is a standard for biologists and even historians to say that Darwin had nothing to say about microbes". However, he did. What did Darwin say about microbes and how did microbiology respond? To read the rest of the story go the article by M.A.O'Malley published in Trends in Microbiology (2009).
 

 Biodiversity 2010: the tip of the iceberg

The 2010 Lecture in Environmental MIcrobiology has been given by Prof. Willy Vestraete from the University of Ghent. Click on the right banner to hear the complete lecture about "Microbial Resource Management (MRM): the way forward for environmental biotech" and enjoy!