german research

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) The newly implemented Tsunami Early Warning System for the Indian Ocean, German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System, goes into operation today and with this, the system enters its final phase of optimization

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Climate change will have different effects on lakes in warmer and colder regions of the globe.

This is the conclusion reached by Japanese and German researchers following studies of very deep caldera lakes in Japan.

Scientists from Hokkaido University, the Hokkaido Institute of Environmental Sciences, Kagoshima University and the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research compared current measurements with measurements taken 70 years ago.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) A group of antibiotic natural products discovered at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research in Braunschweig points out a new mode of action against pathogenic bacteria.

Isolated from myxobacteria, the substances prevent an enzym of the pathogens from being able to translate their genetic material.

In this way, the propagation of bacteria -- such as tuberculosis pathogens -- is inhibited. Today, the results are published in the distinguished journal Cell.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) For the first time in more than 80 years a promising live vaccine against tuberculosis has passed into the clinical phase in Germany: Since Monday of this week the new vaccine, which goes by the designation "VPM1002", has begun safety testing on volunteers in a Phase I clinical trial in Neuss, Germany.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) German research vessel Polarstern, operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, transits the Northwest Passage for the first time.

Polarstern left the port of Reykjavik on Aug. 12, is now located in the Northwest Passage. Its destination is the East Siberian Sea where geoscientific measurements at the junction between the Mendeleev Ridge and the East Siberian Shelf are the subject.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) In China, new legal regulations prescribe the recovery of petrol vapour at filling stations (vent processing) in especially polluted regions like Beijing or Shanghai.

Due to these new conditions, the Chinese oil company PetroChina has now equipped about 140 filling stations with a membrane technique developed by the polymer researchers of the GKSS Research Centre Geesthacht.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) The Tunguska catastrophe in 1908 evidently led to high levels of acid rain.

This is the conclusion reached by Russian, Italian and German researchers based on the results of analyses of peat profiles taken from the disaster region.

In peat samples corresponded to 1908 permafrost boundary they found significantly higher levels of the heavy nitrogen and carbon isotopes 15N and 13C.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig have joined up with colleagues from Spain and Great Britain to identify an enzyme that requires acids and dissolved metals in order to function.

The team describes its findings regarding the extreme protein of the archaebacterium Ferroplasma acidiphilum in the latest online edition of the renowned US research journal PNAS.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Technology Transfer Award 2008 for the detection of disturbance zones during tunnel construction.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) For the first time in 81 years the International Congress of Genetics takes place in Germany again.

From July 12-17, 2008, six Nobel Prize winners get together with more than 2000 scientists in Berlin to discuss the latest findings in genetics and genome analysis.