3/31/10
Despite the fact that bats are active after sunset, they rely on the sun as their most trusted source of navigation. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology found that the greater mouse-eared bat orients itself with the help of the earth’s magnetic field at night and calibrates ...
3/31/10
Dutch researchers from the University of Nijmegen have discovered bacteria that oxidize the methane without oxygen. Instead, these bacteria used nitrite, commonly available in freshwater sediments in agricultural areas. Methane is a very stable molecule and its degradation was generally believed ...
3/31/10
In plant cells, the cell nucleus and the mitochondria are not the only places where genes are read and translated into proteins. The organelles of photosynthesis - the chloroplasts - also have their own DNA, messenger RNA and ribosomes for forming proteins. Max Planck scientists have now ...
3/30/10
Rapeseed is one of the ten most important agricultural crops worldwide. In spring, the rapeseed fields with their bright yellow flowers are widely visible: this year winter rapeseed is being cultivated on 1.46 million hectares in Germany; at least 2.2 million tons of rapeseed oil can be ...
3/30/10
In four several-week-long expeditions in as many years, LMU researcher Dr. Christian Wild and his work group CORE (Coral Reef Ecology; www.palmuc.de/core) of from the GeoBio-Center and the Department of Earth and Environmental Science studied key biogeochemical processes in coral reefs in the ...
3/30/10
Nature likes some symmetries, but dislikes others. Ordered solids often display a so-called 6-fold rotation symmetry. To achieve this kind of symmetry, the atoms in a plane surround themselves with six neighbours in an arrangement similar to that found in honeycombs. As opposed to this, ordered ...
3/30/10
An international team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has sequenced ancient mitochondrial DNA from a finger bone found in southern Siberia. The bone is from a previously unknown form of human that lived in the Altai Mountains of Central Asia ...
3/29/10
Systems biology is an active and growing field across Germany, among other locations at the four systems biology centres in Freiburg, Potsdam, Heidelberg and Magdeburg, all of which are supported by the Federal Ministry of Research. 45 million euros is being invested in the construction of key ...
3/29/10
Small metal clusters fill the gap between the atomic scaleand the metallic state with its distinctive bulk phenomena. Besides being of high fundamental interest, this intermediatecharacter of metal clusters also gives rise to unique andpotentially useful electronic, magnetic, and optical ...
3/29/10
A delegation of members of the state parliament in Baden-Wuerttemberg is visiting Dresden at the moment in order to gain information about the Saxon research landscape and the design of teaching in the area of biotechnology. Today, the delegation visited the CRTD to catch up on information about ...
