As part of the "Forum Wissen", Director Ramin Golestanian guided a group of 20 interested guests through the historic city cemetery in Göttingen. His theme: "Göttingen giants on whose shoulders we stand" - mathematicians and physicists whose science continues to influence research and teaching to this day. The tour begins with two real giants, Wilhelm Weber, one of the Göttingen Seven, and together with Carl-Friedrich Gauss the developers of one…

Animal health is essential for scientific research with nonhuman primates. Viral infections can threaten the health of these animals. In addition, some viruses that infect nonhuman primates also pose a threat to humans who come into contact with these animals. Similarly, some viruses that circulate in humans may also cause disease in nonhuman primates. In order to prevent viruses from spreading in the monkey colonies at DPZ, it is essential to…

Graphene is celebrated as an extraordinary material. It consists of pure carbon, only a single atomic layer thick. Nevertheless, it is extremely stable, strong, and even conductive. For electronics, however, graphene still has crucial disadvantages. It cannot be used as a semiconductor, since it has no bandgap. By sticking hydrogen atoms to graphene such a bandgap can be formed. Now researchers from Göttingen and Pasadena (USA) have produced an…

In a recently published study, scientists led by Prof. Tobias Moser, head of the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the Auditory Neuroscience and Optogenetics research group at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ), have characterized the spectral resolution of natural and artificial hearing. In Mongolian gerbils, they compared optogenetic excitation of the…

The European Physical Society has awarded Dr. Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) with this year's Early Career Researcher Prize of the European Solar Physics Division (ESPD). The ESPD honors Chitta's new view of processes enabling the exchange of energy and mass between the visible surface of the Sun and its atmosphere. His research results could help to explain the huge temperature difference…

The seismometer SEIS on board NASA's InSight lander may have recorded the first “marsquake”. The event occurred about two and a half weeks ago on 6 April and was significantly weaker than typical earthquakes. Insight landed on our neighboring planet on 26 November last year. The main objective of the SEIS team, which includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen (Germany), is to deduce the planet’s…

Der Bruker Prize der Elektronenspinresonanz (ESR)-Spektroskopie-Gruppe der britischen Royal Society of Chemistry geht in diesem Jahr an Marina Bennati vom Max-Planck-Institut (MPI) für biophysikalische Chemie in Göttingen. Die Fachgruppe ehrt die Physiko-Chemikerin damit für ihre herausragende Arbeit in der ESR-Spektroskopie. Bennati, Forschungsgruppenleiterin am Göttinger MPI und Professorin an der Universität Göttingen, nahm den Preis am 10.…

Between 2014 and 2016, the scientific camera system OSIRIS onboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft captured almost 70000 images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. They not only document the most extensive and demanding comet mission to date, but also show the duck-shaped body in all its facets. In a joint project with the Department of Information and Communication at Flensburg University of Applied Sciences, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System…

Rink investigates how flatworms manage to completely regenerate their tissue following injury, and why this ability is an exception rather than the rule in the animal kingdom. Rink moves with his research group from the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden to the Göttingen institute, where he will be heading his own department. “Jochen Rink is a prime example for a highly interdisciplinary scientist. In…

The more plant species live in grasslands and forests, the more insect species find a habitat there. However, the presence of more plant species does not only increase insect species richness, ie the number of species, but also insect abundance, ie the number of individuals. Simultaneously, animal diversity is not only determined by plant diversity, but also by the physical structure of the plant communities. These are the results of an…