25 years ago, the space probe SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), a joint project of ESA and NASA, was launched. Since then, it has been orbiting around our star synchronously with Earth and, thanks to its uniquely unobstructed and multifold view, has shaped our current understanding of the Sun. Despite the increasing competition from more modern space observatories and despite a few technical aches and pains, SOHO's continuous data stream…

The German Research Foundation (DFG) will be funding a new Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) at the University of Göttingen to start 1 January 2021: ‘Mathematics of Experiment: the challenge of indirect measurements in the natural sciences’. CRC 1456 comprises 16 scientific projects in which researchers from mathematics and natural sciences work together to analyse specific experimental data. The total funding amounts to around nine million…

The sensor JEI (Jovian Electron and Ion Sensor), which scientists and engineers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) developed and built for ESA's JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) mission to Jupiter, has reached a further milestone on its way into space. Together with other sensors of the PEP (Particle Environment Package) instrument package, JEI has now arrived safely at Airbus Defence and Space GmbH in Friedrichshafen.…

Researchers from Bochum, Göttingen, Duisburg and Cologne have developed a new method for detecting bacteria and infections. They use fluorescent nanosensors to track down pathogens faster and more easily than with established methods. A team headed by Professor Sebastian Kruß, formerly at Universität Göttingen, now at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), describes the results in the journal Nature Communications, published online on 25 November 2020. …

Despite their reputation, rats are surprisingly sociable and actually regularly help each other out with tasks. Researchers at the Universities of Göttingen, Bern and St Andrews have now shown that a rat just has to smell the scent of another rat that is engaged in helpful behaviour to increase his or her own helpfulness. This is the first study to show that just the smell of a cooperating individual rat is enough to trigger an altruistic and…

"It is an extraordinary pleasure and great honor to be elected as a new member of this time-honored society, the AAAS," said Eberhard Bodenschatz. In the laudatory speech, Bodenschatz is honored for his "outstanding research contributions to nonlinear phenomena including fluid turbulence, cardiac dynamics, cloud physics, thermal convection, chemotaxis and Lagrangian dynamics". Fellows have been elected to the AAAS since 1874. The certificate and…

Since methods for genetic paternity analyses were introduced it became clear that many pair-living animal species, including humans, do not take partnership fidelity that seriously. In most species there is some proportion of offspring that is not sired by their social father. Coppery titi monkeys living in the Amazon lowland rainforest seem to be an exception. Scientists from the German Primate Center (DPZ) – Leibniz Institute for Primate…

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is indispensable in medical diagnostics. However, MRI units are large and expensive to acquire and operate. With smaller and cost-efficient systems, MRI would be more flexible and more people could benefit from the technique. Such miniature MRI units generate a much weaker signal that is difficult to analyze, though. Researchers at the Göttingen Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and the Center…

Tobias Moser, Director of the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and professor at the University of Göttingen with a joint appointment at the German Primate Center, has been awarded the "Scientific Grand Prize 2020" of the French Fondation Pour l'Audition (FPA) for his revolutionary contributions to hearing research. With this award, the FPA honors his pioneering work in the development of the…

From stirring sugar in coffee to global weather patterns – turbulent currents constantly shape the life around us. Mathematically, they are described by the Navier-Stokes equations, as now known for almost two centuries. Despite the widespread use of these equations to describe turbulent flows in the natural and engineering sciences, it remains unclear whether they represent a well-posed problem, i.e. whether the solutions of the Navier-Stokes…