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Season greetings from the Chair of the COST Action.

Applications are invited for a PhD student position at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Geneva to start as soon as possible.

The successful candidate will be member of the research group led by Dr. Marc Audard in the field of star and planet formation. The PhD student will work on a project to study the episodic accretion phenomenon in star and planet formation using observational data (proprietary and archival), by modelling them using thermochemical codes, and by comparing with theoretical models developped at the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna, Austria (Dr. Eduard Vorobyov and Prof. Manuel Guedel).

EANA is opening a competition for its new logo. Everyone is allowed to participate.

The winner is invited to come to the EANA 2016 conference and obtains a travel grant.

Please send your logo idea by e-mail to eana-web@eana-net.eu. The deadline is 31 December 2015.

An 18-months postdoctoral position is offered at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie – Sorbonne of Paris, under the supervision of Profs. A. Marco Saitta and Fabio Pietrucci.

The project, focused on advanced ab initio free-energy methods (metadynamics and beyond) to model the synthesis of fundamental biochemical bricks under realistic prebiotic conditions, will develop within a larger research consortium. This includes the experimental groups of Profs. M.-C. Maurel (Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle), J.-F. Lambert and T. Georgelin (Chemistry Department of UPMC), and F. Guyot (Institut de Minéralogie, de Physique des Matériaux et de Cosmochimie), all in Paris. The fellowship, funded by the Sorbonne Excellence Cluster "MATISSE" (MATerials, InterfaceS, Surfaces, Environment), should start in 2016, at the earliest convenience.

The RIVER of TIME is an exhibition that retraces the major stages of the history of our planet since the formation of the Solar System---4.57 billion of years ago---until the emergence of Homo sapiens---200,000 years ago---through the development and diversification of life on Earth.

Artificial protocellular compartments and lipid vesicles have been used as model systems to understand the origins and requirements for early cells, as well as to design encapsulated reactors for biotechnology. One prominent feature of vesicles is the semi-permeable nature of their membranes, able to support passive diffusion of individual solute species into/out of the compartment, in addition to an osmotic water flow in the opposite direction to the net solute concentration gradient. Crucially, this water flow affects the internal aqueous volume of the vesicle in response to osmotic imbalances, i

We explore the possibility that the stellar relative abundances of different species can be used to constrain the bulk abundances of known transiting rocky planets. We use high resolution spectra to derive stellar parameters and chemical abundances for Fe, Si, Mg, O, and C in three stars hosting low mass, rocky planets: CoRoT-7, Kepler-10, and Kepler-93. These planets follow the same line along the mass-radius diagram, pointing toward a similar composition. The derived abundance ratios are compared with the solar values.

Opaline silica deposits on Mars may be good target sites where organic biosignatures could be preserved. Potential analogues on Earth are provided by ancient cherts containing carbonaceous material (CM) permineralized by silica. In this study, we investigated the ultrastructure and chemical characteristics of CM in the Rhynie chert (c. 410 Ma, UK), Bitter Springs Formation (c. 820 Ma, Australia), and Wumishan Formation (c. 1485 Ma, China). Raman spectroscopy indicates that the CM has experienced advanced diagenesis or low-grade metamorphism at peak metamorphic temperatures of 150–350°C. Raman mapping and micro-Fourier transform infrared (micro-FTIR) spectroscopy were used to document subcellular-scale variation in the CM of fossilized plants, fungi, prokaryotes, and carbonaceous stromatolites.

Bridging between the phenomenologically distinct biological and physical worlds has been a major scientific challenge since Boltzmann's probabilistic formulation of the second law of thermodynamics. In this review we summarize our recent theoretical attempts to bridge that divide through analysis of the thermodynamic-kinetic interplay in chemical processes and the manner in which that interplay impacts on material stability. Key findings are that the term ‘stability’ manifests two facets – time and energy – and that stability's time facet, expressed as persistence, is more general than its energy facet.

What is astrobiology? Which fields does it comprise and what makes an astrobiologist? Ask five scientists and you may end up with six different definitions. This issue was raised at the first symposium of the European network of Astrobiology Graduates (AbGradE), held last year in Edinburgh, when discussing whether the attendees' fields of study were represented in the astrobiology community.