news 2010

International Team Discovers New Metabolic Pathway Freiburg, 14. Phenylketonuria is the most common metabolic disease in humans. It occurs when the so-called PAH gene is defective, thus preventing the amino acid phenylalanine from being metabolized to the amino acid tyrosine. This leads to an accumulation of phenylalanine and to severe developmental disorders.

Delayed inhibition between neurons identified as possible basis for decision making Freiburg, 25. The timing of exciting (red curve) and inhibiting (blue curve) signals could be a way to control the 'traffic flow' of activity in the brain. (Illustration: Bernstein Center Freiburg) In every waking minute, we have to make decisions - sometimes within a split second.

Self-reconstructing Laser Beams - published in 'Nature Photonics' Researchers at the University of Freiburg are developing a microscope with illuminating beams that actively refocus in a light-scattering medium. Freiburg, 12. It's a familiar situation for all car drivers. In the autumn, when the roads are foggy, visibility drops below 50 metres.

Life is made possible by the abundant presence of water on our planet. But what is special about water compared to other liquids? Atomic studies show that this liquid is composed of a large number of co-existing structures, including crystal-like structures as in ice even at room temperature. This scenario is radically different with respect to other liquids that look homogeneous at all scales.

Over 80% of all products manufactured today in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries require the use of catalysts. Catalysts are materials which themselves are not consumed within chemical reactions, but which serve to accelerate those reactions and set them on course to create the desired products.

IMTEK coordinates European project PASCA Freiburg, 21. The Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK), University of Freiburg , is the principal technology partner and project coordinator of the EU Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Development research project PASCA (Platform for Advanced Single Cell Manipulation and Analysis).

Scientists discover new properties of nerve cells through computing - and contemplation Freiburg, 10. Using computer simulations of brain-like networks, researchers from Germany and Japan have discovered why nerve cells transmit information through small electrical pulses. Not only allows this the brain to process information much faster than previously thought: single neurons are already able to multiply, opening the door to more complex forms of computing.

BIOSS scientists discover the mechanism of how our immune system can be activated for the production of antibodies against thousands of different structures, publication in Nature Freiburg, 10. Just 110 years ago in 1900, Paul Ehrlich, one of the founding fathers of modern immunology, gave the Croonian Lecture to the Royal Society in London "On Immunity with Special Reference to Cell Life".

Scientists at the Bernstein Center Freiburg propose a new theory about signal propagation in the brain Freiburg, 27. For more than fifty years, the neuroscience community is engaged in an intensive debate on how information is coded in the brain and transmitted reliably from one brain region to the next.

Scientists from the Department of Molecular Immunology, Institute of Biology III, Faculty of Biology and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies, BIOSS have discovered a new mechanism that drives the development of B-lymphocytes in our bone marrow. B-lymphocytes are an important part of our immune system.

Scientists of the University of Freiburg and the University of Frankfurt have elucidated the architecture of the largest protein complex of the cellular respiratory chain.They discovered an unknown mechanism of energy conversion in this molecular complex. The mechanism is required to utilize the energy contained in food.

Mobile versions of websites are very popular - but are rarely offered. This is the result of a study by the St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences, which shows that Austria's mobile Internet surfers clearly prefer websites that are specially optimized for cell phones.

A reasonable amount of chocolate lowers blood pressure and prevents the risk of heart attacks. German nutritionists obtained this result from an eight-year survey of 19,357 people aged 35 to 65 years.