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…

Nerve cells in the brain possess small protrusions, so called dendritic spines, to communicate with other nerve cells by forming a synapse. These contact sites can be both, short- or long-lived thereby existing for even up to an entire lifetime. Short-lived contact sites reflect an ever- adapting brain, which is necessary to process novel experiences. Long-lived, stable contact sites, on the other hand, form the basis of our memory. But even…

Everyone is familiar with tiny gas bubbles gently rising up in sparkling water. But the bubbles that were created by intense focused lasers in this experiment were ten times smaller and contained water vapour at a pressure around a hundred thousand times higher. Under these conditions, the bubble expands at supersonic speed and pushes a shockwave, consisting of a spherical shell of highly compressed water, ahead of itself. Now the research team…

Biomolecules regulate the biological functions inside every living cell. If scientists can understand the molecular mechanisms of such functions, then it is possible to detect severe dysfunction which can lead to illness. At a molecular level, this can be achieved with fluorescent markers that are specifically incorporated into the respective biomolecules. In the past, this has been achieved by incorporating a marker in the biomolecule by…

Responsible animal experimentation is a small but essential component of basic biomedical research. At the German Primate Center, non-human primates are used for experiments in neuroscience and infection research. They have a special role to play due to their good transferability to humans on the one hand and the great ethical demands involved in using species with a highly developed sensory physiology on the other. The DPZ sees its duty to…

For decades, there has been controversy about the water temperatures of the first oceans on Earth. At that time, radiation from the Sun was much weaker and the oceans could have been very cold, perhaps even frozen. On the other hand, the very dense carbon dioxide (CO2) atmosphere could have caused an extreme greenhouse effect, which might have led to ocean temperatures of around 70 degrees Celsius. Three scientists from the Universities of…