Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the ubiquitous energy currency of all living organisms. Without it there would be no metabolic processes or growth possible – for animal cells as well as plant cells. Headed by the University Bonn an international team of researchers was able to visualise the ATP distribution and utilisation during stressful phases in living plant seedlings.
In 1997 the IBM-computer “Deep Blue” defeated former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. In 2011 the IBM-computer software “Watson” beat its human counterpart during a US- game show. By now the former pioneer of artificial intelligence broadened his abilities even further and is being used by companies worldwide. Especially the healthcare sector and the insurance industry appreciate the unprecedented potential of “Watson” to collect, analyse, and interpret mostly unstructured information and be able to make predictions based on them.
Normally, dowels are made from highly robust and resistant plastics such as nylon. The Baden-Württemberg-based construction company Fischer relies on a polymer that is partly based on castor oil as a raw material. The oil is extracted from the seeds of the castor oil plant Ricinus communis, which belongs to the spurge plant genus.
Until now, converting organic waste into fuel has not been economically viable. Excessively high temperatures and too much energy were required. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) managed to significantly reduce the temperature and energy requirements for an integral step of the chemical process by using a novel catalyst concept: they confined the reaction to small spaces inside zeolite crystals.
In line with the increasing demand the production of wood pellets also increased dramatically over the last ten years.
What do Antarctica and space have in common? Nothing can grow there. Except, that is exactly the goal of a new long-term experiment as part of the EDEN-ISS project. The EDEN-ISS project aims to develop plant cultivation technologies that can be used for safe food production in space in so-called closed-loop systems or closed greenhouses.
Wild Emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) is the wild form of nearly all the domesticated wheat in the world, including both durum (pasta) and bread wheat. Wild emmer is too low-yielding to be of use to farmers today but it contains several attractive characteristics that could be used by plant breeders.
Bayer aims to further grow its Animal Health Business. Until the year 2021, the company will invest an estimated €92 million into the further development of the production site in Kiel, where some of the most important products for the global market are being manufactured.
20% of bee colonies in Germany did not survive the winter – a high toll: the average loss per winter is about 10%. Since the turn of the millennia there have been several waves of widespread bee death with detrimental consequences for the agricultural industry. However, the reasons behind these disappearances are not entirely resolved yet. Nonetheless, it seems very likely that global climate change, as well as the use of pesticides, especially neonicotinoids, play an important role regarding these disappearances.
The majority of Central European forests such as the German Black Forest are characterised by spruce. The Norway spruce is Germany’s most important commercial tree. Due to climate change droughts are expected to become more and more common and intense in Europe. However, not every plant species has adapted to this. Researchers of the University of Freiburg (Breisgau) and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) investigated conifers in the Black Forest.