All over the world, droughts are causing  plant damage. Trees wither or die and entire forests perish. Such scenarios are being observed more and more frequently in the Southwest of the USA. Climate change is often cited as the reason for this. But this explanation does not go far enough. The increasing pollution of the environment by particulate matter also contributes to this, as an international study carried out with the participation of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn shows.

Better together – this applies in particular to many creatures that form symbioses with microbes in order to tap new food sources or protect their offspring. The same goes for the wool beetle Lagria villosa. This beetle is colonised by several strains of closely related Burkholderia gladioli bacteria, which protect the beetle's eggs from fungal attack.

The ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the regulation of crops created with new molecular and genome-editing breeding techniques was announced yesterday, July 25^th, in Luxembourg. The long-awaited decision was met with cheers by environmental groups and consumer organisations, but caused disillusionment and lack of understanding among researchers and entrepreneurs

If material researchers and engineers had a favourite material, carbon fibres are probably it. Why? Because they are light-weight but extremely sturdy. Motor and wind energy industry as well as space, aviation and naval industries are already using the composite material for their lightweight constructions and applications. However, thus far the versatile material is still petrol-based. This not only translates to an expensive manufacturing process, but also requires large amounts of resources and is simply not sustainable.

Brand and product piracy is a worldwide problem. The economic damage is immense: in 2016, German companies alone recorded losses of around 53 billion euros, as a study by management consultants Ernst & Young (EY) shows. The use of such fraud in medicine is particularly problematic. The scandal surrounding inferior breast implants in 2010 showed what health consequences this could have. The French manufacturer Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) had used cheap industrial silicone to reduce production costs.

Methionine is an essential amino acid which is used on a large scale in animal feed. It is currently being manufactured from petrochemical source materials, in a process that uses highly toxic hydrogen cyanide. In 2013, Evonik Industries, one of the world's largest producers of methionine, invited university researchers to propose new processes for making the substance safer to produce. Now, researchers at the Technical University Munich (TUM) have developed an enzymatic process that extracts methionine from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Pathogens such as salmonella can be transmitted through food. These bacteria are found most frequently in eggs and poultry but also in cheese and sausage slices. Researchers from the Institute for Food Quality and Safety of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation (TiHo) together with terraplasma GmbH have developed a new method to protect food from bacteria. The team uses cold plasma for this purpose. Plasma is produced when gas is supplied with sufficient energy, for example via an electric field. This produces charged particles.

They hang upside down from the ceiling, adhere effortlessly to steep trees and even polished glass won't make them slip: geckos. Millions of small hairs on the toes give the inconspicuous reptile adhesive forces like a magnet. For scientists, such natural wonders have always been a fascinating field of research and an incentive to transfer these abilities to technical applications and materials.

Soil is much more than dirt. It contains a slew of microorganisms, fungi and roots of a plethora of plants. All of which interact with each other and together, they make up the soil microbiome. Headed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the University of Tartu in Estonia, an international research team for the first time conducted a study of bacteria and fungi in soil.