The cells that make up our bodies are constantly exposed to a wide variety of mechanical stresses. For example, the heart and lungs have to withstand lifelong expansion and contraction, our skin has to be as resistant to tearing as possible whilst retaining its elasticity, and immune cells are very squashy so that they can move through the body. Special protein structures, known as “intermediate filaments”, play an important role in these…

Mass-flowering crops such as oilseed rape or faba bean (also known as broad bean) provide valuable sources of food for bees, which, in turn, contribute to the pollination of both the crops and nearby wild plants when they visit. But not every arable crop that produces flowers is visited by the same bees. A team from the University of Göttingen and the Julius Kühn Institute (JKI) in Braunschweig has investigated how the habitat diversity of the…

Knowing the weight of a commodity provides an objective way to value goods in the marketplace. But did a self-regulating market even exist in the Bronze Age? And what can weight systems tell us about this? A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen researched this by investigating the dissemination of weight systems throughout Western Eurasia. Their new simulation indicates that the interaction of merchants, even without substantial…

The Max Planck Institutes (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and for Experimental Medicine will merge. The decision-making bodies of the Max Planck Society (MPS) approved the plan submitted by the two institutes on March 12. Formally, both institutions will be closed and a new MPI will be founded, keeping the existing Göttingen sites in Hermann-Rein-Straße and at Faßberg. The future institute will bring together natural science and basic medical…

The initial spread of the coronavirus in India led to the introduction of a national lockdown in March 2020. After the first wave of the pandemic had subsided and a nationwide vaccination campaign had begun, a mutation of the virus in the spring of 2021 caused infection and mortality rates to rise steeply again. The previous stages of the pandemic had led to severe social upheaval, the most visible sign of which was the return of hundreds of…

Microscopy is an essential tool in many fields of science and medicine. However, many groups have limited access to this technology due to its cost and fragility. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster have succeeded in building a high-resolution microscope using nothing more than children’s plastic building bricks and affordable parts from a mobile phone. They then went on to show that children aged 9-13 had…

Aircraft are particularly loud during take-off and landing. The noise is generated not only by the engines, but also by airflow over the wings. One reason for this is the shape of the wings and the position of the high-lift devices, which vary according to the flight situation. To find out exactly where the greatest sources of noise are, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has tested a model from aircraft…

Transporting people more efficiently and in a more environmentally friendly way – this is the goal of EcoBus GmbH. The newly founded company wants to achieve this goal by cleverly bundling journey requests from individual passengers. The basis for this is provided by software that combines small shuttle buses with existing regular bus services to form an overall system – and offers passengers a door-to-door service for the cost of a local public…

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Christensen, director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, has been elected an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The association thus recognizes Christensen's significant contributions to the understanding of dynamical processes inside the Earth and other planets. Membership in the NAS is considered one of the highest honors for scientists. From 2002…

The fairy circles of the Namib are one of nature’s greatest mysteries. Millions of these circular barren patches extend over vast areas along the margins of the desert in Namibia. In 1979, G.K. Theron published the first research about their origin. His hypothesis was that poisonous substances from Euphorbia damarana leaves induced fairy circles. As part of a new study, scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Gobabeb Namib Research…