University of Göttingen Professors – Lutz Ackermann, Timo Betz and Jörg Enderlein – have each been awarded Proof of Concept (PoC) grants by the European Research Council (ERC). These grants provide top-up funding of €150,000 over 18 months to outstanding researchers, who have already received ERC funding, so that they can build on the innovation potential of their findings. This enables Europe’s top scientists to develop initiatives that boost…

The widespread assumption that males always take on the dominant role in primates has been refuted by new research findings. Scientists from the German Primate Center in Göttingen, the University of Montpellier and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig have investigated the power relations between males and females in 121 primate species in a large study. Their results show that clear dominance of one sex over the…

The European exoplanet mission PLATO, which will be launched into space at the end of next year, has reached an important milestone. The optical bench with its 26 cameras has now been assembled in the clean rooms of the aerospace company OHB System AG in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany). The cameras are the eyes of the mission. They will enable PLATO to peer at a total of a quarter of a million stars in the Milky Way and detect exoplanets in the stars’…

Like all complex organisms, every human originates from a single cell that multiplies through countless cell divisions. Thousands of cells coordinate, move and exert mechanical forces on each other as an embryo takes shape. Researchers at the Göttingen Campus Institute for Dynamics of Biological Networks (CIDBN), the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation, and the University of Marburg have now discovered a new way that embryonic…

Stochastic dynamics in small systemsAtoms and molecules are continuously in thermal motion in their microscopic world. As a result, small biophysical systems, such as molecular machines, are subject to random dynamics. In his doctoral thesis, Cai Dieball investigated the properties of these random dynamics along individual motion paths, known as trajectories, from the perspective of mathematical physics. He focused on the mathematical concept of…

A new study by neuroscientists at the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen shows that our brain deals with different forms of visual uncertainty during movements in distinct ways. Depending on the type of uncertainty, planning and execution of movements in the brain are affected differently. These findings could help to optimize brain-computer interfaces that, for example, help people with paralysis to…

The marine worm Ramisyllis multicaudata, which lives within the internal canals of a sponge, is one of only two such species possessing a branching body, with one head and multiple posterior ends. An international research team led by the Universities of Göttingen and Madrid is the first to describe the internal anatomy of this intriguing animal. The researchers discovered that the complex body of this worm spreads extensively in the canals of…

The interaction between growth and the active migration of cells plays a crucial role in the spatial mixing of growing cell colonies. This connection was discovered by scientists from the Department of Living Matter Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS). Their results provide new approaches to understanding the dynamics of bacterial colonies and tumors. The ability to actively migrate is a fundamental…

he world's largest solar telescope, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, has reached an important milestone. After almost 15 years of preparation, the German instrument for the Inouye Solar Telescope, the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF), has now taken its first images. The imaging spectro-polarimeter was developed and built at the Institute for Solar Physics (KIS) in Freiburg (Germany). The Max…

How can the loss of species and habitats in agricultural landscapes be stopped? Up to now, measures have mostly been implemented by individual farms. In contrast, agri-environmental measures that are planned across farms at landscape level offer greater potential for creating suitable habitats for different species as a mosaic in the landscape. However, successful landscape level approaches also require cooperation between farms and other…