A new study examines how individuality develops

13-05-2013

How do organisms evolve into individuals that are distinguished from others by their own personal brain structure and behaviour? Scientists in Dresden, Berlin, Münster, and Saarbrücken have now taken a decisive step towards clarifying this question. Using mice as an animal model, they were ...

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Computer simulation shows that the reduction of natural dental wear might be the main cause for widely spread non-carius cervical lesions in our teeth

26-04-2013

Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt together with dental technicians have digitally analysed modern human teeth using an engineering approach, finite element method, to evaluate the biomechanical ...

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Researchers in Freiburg identify a protein responsible for the correct arrangement of the chromosome centromeres in the nucleus

05-04-2013

Two metres of DNA are packed into the cell nucleus, presumably based on a strictly defined arrangement. Researchers working with biologist Patrick Heun from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg have now succeeded in explaining a phenomenon, which was first ...

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Can extra-pair relationships give rise to sexual dimorphism?

04-04-2013

In the bird world, male and female blue tits are hard to distinguish for the human observer. However, in the UV-range, visible to birds, the male is much more colourful. A closer look at the monogamous mating system of these birds again reveals that all is not what it seems: in every second ...

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Microbes use a channel protein as a syringe for toxins

21-03-2013

The bacterium Photorhabdus luminescens is a constant companion of some roundworms. These worms assault insect larvae, thereby infecting them with the bacteria; the pathogens then attack the cells of their victims with a deadly cocktail of various toxins. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute ...

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Insect odorant receptors regulate their own sensitivity

20-03-2013

Highly developed antennae containing different types of olfactory receptors allow insects to use minute amounts of odors for orientation towards resources like food, oviposition sites or mates. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now used mutant ...

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City birds that experience light at night are ready to breed earlier than their rural cousins

14-02-2013

Street lamps, traffic lights and lighting from homes are causing a rise in our night-time light levels. For some time now, scientists have suspected that artificial light in our towns and cities at night could affect plants, animals and us, humans, too. Studies, however, that have tested this ...

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EEG activity predicts learning success

14-02-2013

The reason why some people are worse at learning than others has been revealed by a research team from Berlin, Bochum, and Leipzig, operating within the framework of the Germany-wide network “Bernstein Focus State Dependencies of Learning”. They have discovered that the main problem is not ...

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14-02-2013

How do you compare the impact of a researcher in chemistry or physics with a molecular biologist who may be working on similar projects? Two experts support the use of citation indicators that are based on percentiles, a statistical parameter that allows for comparisons with a carefully ...

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The Department of Microsystems Engineering of the University of Freiburg is Coordinating the Research Project NeuroSeeker

12-02-2013

Developing tiny probes for research and brain-related medical applications – that is the goal of the project NeuroSeeker, launched in February 2013 with a kick-off event in Leuven. The interdisciplinary project pools the expertise of ten partner institutions from Europe and Canada. The ...

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