News from the Göttingen Campus

Swing feel in the lab

The role of temporal fluctuations for the swing feel in jazz music
In 1931, Duke Ellington and Irving Mills even dedicated a song to the phenomenon of swing which they called "It Don't Mean a Thing, If It Ain't Got That Swing". Yet, to this day, the question of what exactly makes a jazz performance swing has not really been clarified. A team drawn from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen and the University of Göttingen recently carried out an empirical study into the role…

MPI ds

It’s closeness that counts: how proximity affects the resistance of graphene

Research team led by the University of Göttingen observes greater variation than expected
Graphene is often seen as the wonder material of the future. Scientists can now grow perfect graphene layers on square centimetre-sized crystals. A research team from the University of Göttingen, together with the Chemnitz University of Technology and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig, has investigated the influence of the underlying crystal on the electrical resistance of graphene. Contrary to previous assumptions, the new…

Uni

Asylum law in Germany: fragmented, confusing and full of holes

Research report paints gloomy picture of the protection of asylum seekers in Germany
The research report “Refugee Protection in Germany” by the EU project “Multilevel Governance of Migration (RESPOND)” paints a gloomy picture of the human rights protection for asylum seekers in Germany. Among other things, the authors speak of a “differential exclusion” of ever larger groups from German asylum law on the basis of more or less arbitrary criteria. Although the basic right to asylum in Germany is officially unaffected, the authors…

Uni

Dance of the honey bee reveals fondness for strawberries

Research team led by the University of Göttingen investigates foraging behaviour in agricultural landscapes
Bees are pollinators of many wild and crop plants, but in many places their diversity and density is declining. A research team from the Universities of Göttingen, Sussex and Würzburg has now investigated the foraging behaviour of bees in agricultural landscapes. To do this, the scientists analysed the bees’ dances, which are called the “waggle dance”. They found out that honey bees prefer strawberry fields, even if they flowered directly next to…

Uni

Sustainability claims about rubber don’t stick

Research led by the University of Göttingen calls into question sustainability claims by large corporation
Many companies work hard to present an environmentally responsible public image. But how well do these claims stack up? In a new study led by the University of Göttingen, researchers investigated the claims regarding sustainability, including conservation and fair-pay, as presented by the French Michelin Group. The researchers then compared these claims with the effects described by local people in the village of Muara Sekalo in Indonesia. The…

Uni

Clouds from every angle

The EUREC4A field study is aimed at solving one of the great mysteries in relation to climate change
When it comes to predicting the extent of global warming by the end of the century, clouds are one of the greatest uncertainty factors. Cumulus clouds in lower layers of the atmosphere, reflect sunlight, thereby cooling the surface of the Earth. An international team will be starting the almost six-week-long EUREC4A (Elucidating the role of clouds-circulation coupling in climate) field study on the 20th of January 2020 to gain a better…

DLR

Travellers for the city: Göttingen's messengers and envoys in the Middle Ages

Historian from the University of Göttingen presents monograph on city communication between 1400 and 1450
They maintained contact with the rest of the world, were constantly in danger, had to have an iron constitution and were paid by the mile: the Göttingen city messengers in the Middle Ages. Dr Dieter Neitzert from the Institute for Regional Historical Research at the University of Göttingen has studied them. In his recently published book "Göttinger Boten und Gesandte. Reichweite und Intensität städtischer Kommunikation zwischen 1400 und 1450" (Gö…

Uni

Climate factor clouds — MPIDS joins “EUREC4A”

The field campaign "EUREC4A" in the Caribean intends to answer one of climate sciences great mysteries
On 20 January 2020, the almost six-week field study EUREC4A (Elucidating the role of clouds-circulation coupling in climate) will start. It aims at validating theories on the role of clouds and convection for climate change through extensive measurements in the atmosphere and ocean. In addition, EUREC4A will study how fine-scale features in the ocean – eddies and fronts – interact with the atmosphere. The scale and coverage of the measurements…

DLR

What keeps couples together

She pampers him, he takes care of the offspring and drives away attackers
In mammals, pair bonds are very rare, one of the few exceptions being the red titi monkeys of South America. These relatively small tree dwellers live in pairs or small family groups and are characterized by the fact that the males take intensive care of their offspring. A team of researchers from the German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research has now investigated how pair relationships work in titi monkeys. Their results…

DPZ

MINFLUX visualizes cells in molecular sharpness

Three years ago, Göttingen Nobel Laureate Stefan Hell and his team introduced MINFLUX nanoscopy. With this technique it was possible for the first time to separate fluorescing molecules with light that were only a few nanometers apart - this is as sharp as it can get. Now, the Max Planck researchers present the technique's latest development: MINFLUX now reaches this resolution in cells, with multicolor imaging and in 3D. Thus, MINFLUX nanoscopy can now be boradly applied in biological research. (in German)

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