The aim of the EU Nitrates Directive is to reduce nitrates leaking into the environment in order to prevent pollution of water supplies. The widely accepted view is that this will also help protect threatened plant species which can be damaged by high levels of nutrients like nitrates in the soil and water. However, an international team of researchers including the Universities of Göttingen, Utrecht and Zurich, has discovered that many…

Die Zahl der Todesfälle durch Covid-19 könnte sich in den ersten beiden Novemberwochen jeweils verdoppeln. Zu dem Ergebnis kommt ein Team um Viola Priesemann, Leiterin einer Forschungsgruppe am Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, in einer modellbasierten Analyse. Demnach sind die immer noch relativ niedrigen Zahlen von Todesfällen darauf zurückzuführen, dass sich das Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 bis Ende September vor allem bei…

At first glance, a pack of wolves has little to do with a vinaigrette. However, a team led by Ramin Golestanian, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, has developed a model that establishes a link between the movement of predators and prey and the segregation of vinegar and oil. They expanded a theoretical framework that until now was only valid for inanimate matter. In addition to predators and prey, other…

In the human brain, hundreds of billions of nerve cells are interconnected in the most complicated way, and only when these interconnections are correctly made, can the brain function properly. This is no different for insects, even though their brains consist of ‘only’ one hundred thousand to one million nerve cells. Nevertheless, fascinating and unexpectedly complicated behaviour can be observed in insects, for example when rearing offspring in…

Alltagsmasken stellen eine wichtige Komponente in der Bekämpfung der Corona-Pandemie dar. Neueste Erkenntnisse zeigen, wie beim Tragen einer Maske die Atemluft umgelenkt wird und wohin sich die darin befindlichen Aerosole verteilen. In einem interdisziplinären Gemeinschaftsprojekt haben mehrere Institute des Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) die Funktionsweise und Wirksamkeit von Alltagsmasken aus Stoff untersucht. Die Experimente…

Which parts of an aircraft cause noise and what sort of noise is it? For the first time, scientists from the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and GE Aviation in Munich have succeeded in measuring the noise emitted by a turboprop aircraft synchronously on the ground and on the aircraft. With the knowledge gained, future aeroplanes can become quieter. The aviation industry is working hard to reduce its…

The state of Lower Saxony is supporting the establishment of the COVID-19 Research Network Lower Saxony (COFONI) with 8.4 million euros, in which the competencies for corona research are to be bundled and strategies for dealing with the pandemic are to be developed. The University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) coordinates the network, which includes the German Primate Center and the University in Göttingen, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection…

The cultivation of vanilla in Madagascar provides a good income for small-holder farmers, but without trees and bushes the plantations can lack biodiversity. Agricultural ecologists from the University of Göttingen, in cooperation with colleagues from the University in Antananarivo (Madagascar), have investigated the interaction between prey and their predators in these cultivated areas. To do this, they experimentally released dummy prey in…

A crucial resolution barrier in cryo-electron microscopy has been broken. Holger Stark and his team at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry have observed single atoms in a protein structure for the first time and taken the sharpest images ever with this method. Such unprecedented details are essential to understand how proteins perform their work in the living cell or cause diseases. The technique can in future also be used to…

Die Erkennung und Diagnostik des Coronavirus ist eine der wichtigsten Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung der Pandemie. Allerdings ist die bisher genutzte Technologie bei Weitem noch nicht so schnell, präzise und verfügbar wie es wünschenswert wäre. Die VolkswagenStiftung fördert nun im Rahmen ihrer Anti-Corona-Initiative ein Projekt an der Universität und Universitätsmedizin Göttingen (UMG), in dem Nanosensoren zur schnellen optischen Erkennung des Virus…