Research in Germany

Prestigious European research funding Outstanding success for three physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU)! The European Research Council (ERC) has selected two projects in which they are involved for so-called Synergy Grants, which count among the most generously endowed European funding lines. These grants are aimed at bringing complementary expertise at different locations together to answer an interdisciplinary question.

Modern immunotherapy may leave patients vulnerable to rare and potentially severe infections, according to a case study by researchers at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and the Leibniz Institute of Virology (LIV).The team identified an avian virus, typically harmless to humans, as the cause of a fatal brain infection in a cancer patient. The patient, who had multiple myeloma, had undergone a stem cell transplant and was treated with the bispecific antibody teclistamab. He developed rapidly progressive encephalitis, a severe inflammation of the brain, and died despite intensive care. A highly mutated Newcastle disease virus was revealed as the cause.

The cars of the future must be climate-friendly to drive and built in a resource-efficient manner. They must also have a long service life, be repairable and be suitable for high-quality recycling. Although greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars in Germany could fall by almost 60 percent by 2045 thanks to electric mobility and an increasingly renewable electricity supply, it does not mark the end of the car’s journey towards sustainability.

The Universe is filled with light at many different energies. Some of it is invisible to our eyes, including extremely energetic gamma rays, which can only be produced in the most extreme environments in our Universe, for example supermassive black holes, exploding stars, or astrophysical jets. To “see” gamma-rays, astrophysicist use particle experiments in space, such as the Fermi-Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT). This instrument was launched into space by NASA in 2008 and it can detect photons from 20 megaelectronvolts (MeV, a unit of energy) to beyond 1 teraelectronvolts (TeV).

Roads, buildings and other infrastructure can restrict the movements of wildlife in cities. As a result, urban wildlife from different areas encounter one another less frequently, potentially resulting in reduced genetic diversity. Scientists from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) and the Technische Universität Berlin (TUB) investigated whether these effects are also evident in squirrels in Berlin. While genetic differences between the populations studied were generally small, subtle differences between locations were already evident.

As humanitarian funding shrinks, conventional fundraising wisdom says to hold on to loyal donors. But new research shows that the value of a donor depends on how a nonprofit is set up. For many organizations, winning new donors matters more than keeping loyal ones.