The University of Göttingen is still in a phase of limited attendance onsite and events attended in person are only permitted in exceptional cases. In order to ensure their safety, students and employees can regularly and voluntarily be tested for SARS-CoV-2 in the Mensa Italia and at the North Campus using a PCR test. Since the Campus Covid Screen (CCS) project started its pilot and then moved into regular operation in November 2020, a total of…

The very first moments of the Universe can be reconstructed mathematically even though they cannot be observed directly. Physicists from the Universities of Göttingen and Auckland (New Zealand) have greatly improved the ability of complex computer simulations to describe this early epoch. They discovered that a complex network of structures can form in the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. The behaviour of these objects mimics the…

A unique study of hundreds of babies across four continents shows that all babies respond more to infant-directed speech – baby talk – than they do to the type of speech directed at an adult. In fact, babies prefer baby talk in any language, but particularly when it’s in a language they’re hearing at home. An international research team including the University of Göttingen – the “ManyBabies” – also revealed that babies as young as six months can…

Violent storms rage in the middle atmosphere above Jupiter's poles: With wind speeds of up to 1450 kilometers per hour, they exceed even the strongest terrestrial tornadoes by a factor of three. This is the result of observations performed by an international team of scientists, including three researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. The winds could indicate giant vortices over Jupiter's poles. To…

A spring without birdsong, a summer without humming insects – this ecological horror scenario could become reality if species loss continues at its current pace. In Germany, the bird population has collapsed by 65 percent since 1965, that of insects by 80 percent since 1980. According to the United Nations Diversity Report 2019, around one million species are at the verge of extinction worldwide. “We want to help counteract this dramatic…

The Universe is criss-crossed by a cosmic web consisting of large filamentary gas structures in which galaxies should form. The existence of this network confirms the most important predictions about how the structure of the Universe changes. An international research team, led by the University of Lyon, have now for the first time produced images of the network of filaments and corresponding maps of the young Universe. The University of…

“A good 20 years ago, we fundamentally broke the diffraction resolution limit of fluorescence microscopy with STED. Until then, that was considered impossible,” says Hell. “Back then we dreamed: With STED we want to become so good that one day we will be able to separate individual molecules that are only a few nanometers apart. Now we've succeeded.” At that time, the STED principle amounted to a revolution in light microscopy. For this…

Synapses, the communication sites between nerve cells, are key to the function of the neural system and have been extensively studied over the last decades. Especially synaptic vesicles, which store, transport and release messenger substances (neurotransmitters) and are thus crucial to synaptic transmission, have been described in great detail. During information transmission between nerve cells, synaptic vesicles release neurotransmitter by…

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…

Corporate strategies should be as unique as possible, in fact highly specific to each individual company. This enables companies to compete successfully in the long term. However, the capital market and others, including analysts, often react negatively to the idea of unique strategies. The reason is that deviating from typical industry standards makes them more complex to evaluate. This regularly discourages companies from focusing on unique…