The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and five European companies have teamed up in the RETro Propulsion Assisted Landing Technologies (RETALT) project to jointly advance the research and development of key technologies for European vertical-landing launch vehicles. The consortium will spend three years examining the aerodynamics, aerothermodynamics – that is, in-flight surface temperatures – flight dynamics…

The chemist Theofanis Kitsopoulos, MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, will receive an ERC Advanced Grant endowed with 2.5 million euros. Another ERC Advanced Grant goes to Stefan Jakobs for a project at the UMG Clinic for Neurology, where he is appointed as professor. He further leads a research group at the MPI. The European Union awards the funding to top researchers who have already achieved scientific breakthroughs and would like to tackle a…

For a long time, ecologists have relied on their senses when it comes to recording animal populations and species diversity. However, modern programmable sound recording devices are now the better option for logging animal vocalisations. Scientists lead by the University of Göttingen have investigated this using studies of birds as an example. The results were published in the journal Ecological Applications. "Data collection by people is less…

Reliably evaluating walking and gripping movements of patients is essential for the diagnosis and therapy of movement disorders, for example after a stroke or in Parkinson's syndromes. However, the success of this challenging diagnostic procedure depends to a large extent on the experience and skills of the attending physician. This is where the "Deep Movement Diagnostics" project, coordinated by Alexander Gail, scientist at the German Primate…

The cell contains transcripts of the genetic material, which migrate from the cell nucleus to another part of the cell. This movement protects the genetic transcripts from the recruitment of “spliceosomes”. If this protection does not happen, the entire cell is in danger: meaning that cancer and neurodegenerative diseases can develop. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the University Medicine Centre Göttingen have demonstrated the…

When synthesizing proteins, ribosomes move in exact small steps over long distances along a messenger RNA (mRNA). At certain sites, ribosomes stumble and start sliding before they land at a defined site and resume their accurate work. Marina Rodnina and her team at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have now solved the question what makes the ribosome slide. Ribosomes are the macromolecular machines that…

Forest conservation can be a source of tension between competing priorities and interests from forestry, science, administration and nature conservation organisations. The different stakeholders can create the public impression of disagreement with regard to the objectives and measures in forest conservation. Scientists from the University of Göttingen, the HAWK University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen and the North…

Human language and communication skills are unique in the animal kingdom. How they developed in the course of evolution is being researched, among other things, using the alarm call system of vervet monkeys. East African vervet monkeys warn their conspecifics against predators with special alarm calls that mean "leopard", "eagle" or "snake". In a recently published study, scientists from the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for…

More and more processes are being automated and digitised. Self-driving delivery vehicles, such as forklifts, are finding their way into many areas - and companies are reporting potential time and cost savings. However, an interdisciplinary research team from the universities of Göttingen, Duisburg-Essen and Trier has observed that cooperation between humans and machines can work much better than just human or just robot teams alone. The results…

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), the Georg August University of Göttingen, and the Sonneberg Observatory have discovered 18 Earth-sized planets beyond the solar system. The worlds are so small that previous surveys had overlooked them. One of them is one of the smallest known so far; another one could offer conditions friendly to life. The researchers re-analyzed a part of the data from NASA's Kepler Space…