Virtual Reality and the virtual world are taking over more and more areas of our lives. This means that it is really important that virtual worlds are user-friendly and offer a high usability. Up until now, the only way to check this was to conduct manual tests with volunteers. This can be both time-consuming and cost-intensive. Dr Patrick Harms from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Göttingen has developed a technology that…

Tropical forests are being deforested at an alarming rate to make way for agriculture and pastureland; the good news is that they can regrow naturally when the fields are abandoned. An international research team including participation from the University of Göttingen has found that regenerating wet and dry forests actually show opposite pathways. This implies a fundamental change in our understanding of how tropical forests change over time,…

Approximately every two Earth years, when it is summer on the southern hemisphere of Mars, a window opens: only there and only in this season can water vapor efficiently rise from the lower into the upper atmosphere. There, winds carry the rare gas to the North Pole. While part of the water vapor decays and escapes into space, the rest sinks back down near the poles. Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Max…

Similar to farm animals such as cattle or sheep, wild red deer grazing in open landscapes can also contribute to the conservation of protected habitats. This was demonstrated by a research team from the University of Göttingen and the Institute for Wildlife Biology of Göttingen and Dresden. The results were published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. The interdisciplinary research team, which involved the Divisions of Grassland Science and…

As part of the "Forum Wissen", Director Ramin Golestanian guided a group of 20 interested guests through the historic city cemetery in Göttingen. His theme: "Göttingen giants on whose shoulders we stand" - mathematicians and physicists whose science continues to influence research and teaching to this day. The tour begins with two real giants, Wilhelm Weber, one of the Göttingen Seven, and together with Carl-Friedrich Gauss the developers of one…

Animal health is essential for scientific research with nonhuman primates. Viral infections can threaten the health of these animals. In addition, some viruses that infect nonhuman primates also pose a threat to humans who come into contact with these animals. Similarly, some viruses that circulate in humans may also cause disease in nonhuman primates. In order to prevent viruses from spreading in the monkey colonies at DPZ, it is essential to…

Graphene is celebrated as an extraordinary material. It consists of pure carbon, only a single atomic layer thick. Nevertheless, it is extremely stable, strong, and even conductive. For electronics, however, graphene still has crucial disadvantages. It cannot be used as a semiconductor, since it has no bandgap. By sticking hydrogen atoms to graphene such a bandgap can be formed. Now researchers from Göttingen and Pasadena (USA) have produced an…

In a recently published study, scientists led by Prof. Tobias Moser, head of the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) and the Auditory Neuroscience and Optogenetics research group at the German Primate Center – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ), have characterized the spectral resolution of natural and artificial hearing. In Mongolian gerbils, they compared optogenetic excitation of the…

The European Physical Society has awarded Dr. Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) with this year's Early Career Researcher Prize of the European Solar Physics Division (ESPD). The ESPD honors Chitta's new view of processes enabling the exchange of energy and mass between the visible surface of the Sun and its atmosphere. His research results could help to explain the huge temperature difference…

The seismometer SEIS on board NASA's InSight lander may have recorded the first “marsquake”. The event occurred about two and a half weeks ago on 6 April and was significantly weaker than typical earthquakes. Insight landed on our neighboring planet on 26 November last year. The main objective of the SEIS team, which includes researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen (Germany), is to deduce the planet’s…