news 2015

Mice suffer from a decrease in biological fitness if their internal clock is mixed up Mice with deviant internal rhythms due to a genetic mutation have fewer offspring and shorter life spans than normal conspecifics whose rhythms follow the 24-hr cycle of a day more accurately. This discovery was made by a team of scientists led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and Princeton University.

12/23/2015 How many messages have been written in my WhatsApp chat? Who sends the most pictures' And who rarely participates in conversations? "WhatsAnalyzer" developed by Anika Schwind and Michael Seufert from the University of Würzburg's Institute of Computer Science now gives the answer to this question.

Depending on its age, condition and even engine, how much does an individual vehicle pollute the urban air? Researchers from Heidelberg University are looking into the matter. The team led by environmental physicist Dr. Denis Pöhler has developed an innovative device that can measure nitrogen dioxides in the exhaust of the preceding vehicle.

Increasing the level of a certain DNA-modified enzyme in the brain significantly improves cognitive ability. The discovery was made by the research team led by Hilmar Bading at the Interdisciplinary Center for Neurosciences of Heidelberg University. Mouse experiments showed that the Dnmt3a2 protein can boost memory performance in the animals.

A German-Dutch team has succeeded in immunizing dromedaries against the MERS virus. As the camels appear to be the major reservoir of the virus, the vaccine should also reduce the risk of future outbreaks of the disease in humans. Research on MERS has identified camels as the primary source of human infections, although the virus causes only mild symptoms in that host.

For the first time, biopsies of patients with irritable bowel syndrome have shown that the nerves in their gut wall respond poorly to a cocktail of inflammatory substances. This refutes the previous theory that patients with irritable bowel syndrome have an overly sensitive gut. The new study by scientists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) was carried out in collaboration with several German hospitals.

The cognitive map for spatial navigation is thought to rely on grid cells. Scientists at LMU and Harvard University have now put forward a mathematical theory that explains key grid-cell features and how these give rise to a neural metric for space. One year ago, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to the discoverers of the mammalian "GPS system" for spatial navigation.

New Findings by Earth Scientists from Potsdam and Berlin Published in Science Earth scientists Dr. Wolfgang Schwanghart and Prof. Oliver Korup, PhD, from the Natural Hazards Group at the University of Potsdam investigate extreme events in the Earth's recent history. In a study recently published in the science journal Science, Schwanghart and Korup were part of an international team who investigated thick deposits in the Pokhara valley in the Himalayan country Nepal.

German Research Foundation Approved Funding for Establishment of Two New Research Groups at Freie Universität Berlin The German Research Foundation (DFG) approved funding for 15 new Research Units nationwide, and two of them will be at Freie Universität Berlin.

German Research Foundation Grants CRC 765 "Multivalency as Chemical Organization and Action Principle: New Architectures, Functions and Applications" Additional Funding through 2019 / New Partner: Robert Koch Institute The German Research Foundation (DFG) has extended the funding for a Collaborative Research Center (CRC) based at Freie Universität Berlin, "Multivalency as Chemical Organization and Action Principle: New Architectures, Functions and Applications.

A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable, according to scientists at UCL, Universidad Complutense de Madrid - ICMAT and Technical University of Munich. It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven.

Using a new procedure researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Ludwig Maximillians University of Munich (LMU) can now produce extremely thin and robust, yet highly porous semiconductor layers. A very promising material - for small, light-weight, flexible solar cells, for example, or electrodes improving the performance of rechargeable batteries.

Six researchers from Europe reveal just how far they go to discover some of nature's deepest secrets or test novel technologies. Among them: Prof. Elisa Resconi, experimental physicist from TUM. Find this and more exciting stories about science and innovation from Europe in the new issue of the Technologist magazine.

Researchers from the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center (BZH) have discovered a complex of four proteins that, much like a multi-tool pocketknife, serves as a knife, a file and a pair of scissors in the manufacture of ribosomes. The complex helps eliminate the residual ribonucleic acid (RNA) that are produced during the manufacturing of the ribsome and must be removed to complete the process.

If rubbish is too big and unwieldy for normal household waste, its removal becomes the job of specialized experts. Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now discovered, in cooperation with colleagues from the UK, how large, fused cells help our body to deal with bulky items that may otherwise obstruct normal physiological processes.

Bodies of water are "sinks", and thereby bind contaminants particularly well. If even slightly toxic concentrations in water are to be detected, the growth and swimming behavior of small crustaceans, mini-snails and copepods should be used for ecotoxicological assessments. This was the conclusion of a scientist from the TUM, who carried out a number of studies on the subject in cooperation with the University of California in Davis.

Study finds that changes in the composition of phytoplankton community of North Pacific Subtropical Gyre relate to large-scale regional climate phenomena [Deutsche Version folgt in Kürze] It is unparalleled: the subtropical North Pacific Ocean has recently gone through a change of plankton regime that enhances nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterial production.

The effect of a widespread genetic variant that increases the risk for childhood asthma can be neutralized. A new study shows that young infants are particularly responsive to the positive influence of exposure to farm dust. LMU asthma researchers have shown, for the first time, that specific environmental influences can neutralize the effect of a prevalent genetic variant that increases risk for childhood asthma.

Whether in the form of antibodies, enzymes or carriers: proteins play a crucial role in biology. While researchers have been able to at least partially determine the three-dimensional structure of many proteins, the structures of many other protein building blocks and even entire protein molecules remain as yet unknown.

Researchers at Heidelberg University have devised a new way to study the phenomenon of magnetism. Using ultracold atoms at near absolute zero, they prepared a model that simulates the behaviour of electrons in a solid, which enables the investigation of magnetic properties. The findings of the team led by Prof. Selim Jochim of the Institute for Physics are expected to contribute to a better understanding of the fundamental processes in solids and lead to the development of new types of materials over the long term.