Starting from October 1, 2010, the German Research Foundation (DFG) funds a new Research Training Group entitled "Scaling Problems in Statistics" (http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/156579.html). The animal breeding and genetics group participates in several interdisciplinary projects, focusing on scale effects in genomic prediction, effects of selection in farm animals, and modelling diversity of fragmented populations. For the first 4.5 years an overall funding of 4.5 million Euros is granted. Application for PhD scholarships within the Research Training group are now possible at https://lotus1.gwdg.de/uni/umst/rtg_2010_06.nsf