news 2016

Bridges, tunnels and roads: Concrete is the main component of our infrastructure. And when the structural elements need to be repaired, it often leads to long traffic jams. At the Annual Meeting of the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) in Washington, D.C. Prof. Christian Grosse from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and other experts talked about smart materials for sustainable infrastructure.

Whether an animal or plant community remains stable despite external impacts does not depend on biological diversity alone: asynchrony across the species is also a crucial factor. The more the species in an ecosystem fluctuate in their evolution over time, the less they are likely to falter. As a result, diversity takes second place in terms of the factors to be considered in the context of ecosystem stability.

Without oxygen, cells cannot survive. If the oxygen supply drops, for example due to a heart attack, long-term damage may result. However, just how serious such damage really is can only be assessed hours or even days later. For the first time now, and using light microscopy, scientists in Münster have observed reduced oxygen supply directly in individual cells.

International Team of Scientists Unravels Genome of the Bed Bug and Publishes Results in Journal 'Nature ' An international team of scientists has managed to sequence the genome of the bedbug. Among them are neurogeneticists from the University of Würzburg's Biocenter. They studied genes that control the circadian clock, secretion, and moulting processes. The work was coordinated by researchers at the University of Cincinnati, and the sequencing was carried out at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

An international research team has discovered nonclassical superconductivity at extremely low temperatures in a compound of ytterbium, rhodium, and silicon. The project was a collaboration among physicists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the Walther Meissner Institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Garching, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Dresden, Rice University (Houston, USA), and Renmin University (Beijing, China).

Midlife crisis in the insect world: In a new study, LMU researchers have detected age-dependent alterations in metabolism and gene regulation in middle-aged fruitflies, and show that these effects are linked to a reduction in lifespan. The aging process is accompanied by characteristic changes in physiology whose overall effect is to decrease the capacity for tissue repair and increase susceptibility to metabolic disease.

Local modifications in histone proteins alter DNA packing density in the cell nucleus to regulate gene activity. They also form the basis of a code in which the significance of a given pattern or motif depends on its broader context. Virtually all the cells in any given multicellular organism contain the same complement of genes.

Crystal formation plays a defining role in the pathogenesis of a range of common diseases, such as gout and atherosclerosis. LMU researchers led by Hans-Joachim Anders have now elucidated how the insoluble deposits induce cell death. The formation of crystalline deposits in the extracellular medium is a defining feature of several widespread illnesses.

In the production of margarine millions of tons of unsaturated fatty acids are converted from vegetable oils using hydrogen. While searching for improved catalysts for these so-called hydrogenation reactions, a German-American research team made a discovery that puts a 50-year old rule in question: In catalytic particles comprising only a few atoms, shape and size influence reactivity much more strongly then previously thought.

In a laboratory experiment, physicists at the Center for Quantum Dynamics of Heidelberg University have succeeded in determining the equation of state for an atomic gas, which can be used to precisely describe the thermodynamic properties of this physical system. According to Associate Tilman Enss and Selim Jochim, the equation lays the foundation for further experiments using ultracold atoms to better understand the mechanisms of superconductivity, i.e., the lossless conduction of electricity.

Fresh, unprocessed cow's milk has a higher content of omega-3 fatty acids than does pasteurized, homogenized or low-fat milk. This factor partly explains why children who consume the unprocessed product are less likely to develop asthma. Children who regularly drink fresh farm milk are less likely to develop asthma than kids who consume the industrially processed product.

Every day, we constantly absorb information through our sensory organs, which the brain then needs to process correctly. The information initially reaches the main relay center, the thalamus, and then travels to the cerebral cortex. The neurons in the so-called higher-order thalamus form the connecting lines between both areas of the brain.

Dr. Mario Schelhaas from Münster University has seen off the competition to receive a grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The grant, worth up to two million euros, is particularly prestigious. Mario Schelhaas is a virologist and biochemist at the Institute of Molecular Virology and the Institute of Medical Biochemistry.

In experiments and computer simulations, researchers repeatedly deformed red blood cells, let them "wriggle" and then analysed their behaviour. Three tiny spheres hold the cells in place during the process, while the movements of the cell membrane are measured with the help of a fourth sphere. The "wrapper" of the blood cell consists of a lipid double layer and a cytoskeleton; active forces, produced for example by an ion pump, move the membrane (red arrows) and fluids (green arrows) locally in opposite directions.

In experiments on the fruit fly model organism Drosophila melanogaster, Heidelberg University biologists gained new insight into how feeding behaviour is encoded and controlled. The research team led by Ingrid Lohmann of the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS) studied the function of a special developmental gene of the Hox gene family.

Plastic solar cells are light, easy to install, and readily produced using a printer. Nevertheless, the processes that take place on the molecular scale during the production of organic solar cells are not yet entirely clear. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now managed to observe these processes in real time.

Findings Published in Prestigious Journal Science / Earth Scientist Reinhold Leinfelder from Freie Universität Berlin Is Contributing Author An international group of Earth scientists as well as scientists from other disciplines has determined that the impact of human activities on the Earth marks a new geological era: the Anthropocene.