Research News
Erwin Schrödinger Prize 2010
Last year scientists tried out the new arsenic test method in real-life conditions in Vietnam and Bangladesh and determined that it worked reliably. Photo: Carola Endes/UFZMore than 100 million people worldwide are at risk from arsenic-contaminated drinking water, especially in Southeast Asia. Local levels of arsenic vary widely and, ideally, every well should be tested. In the past this would have required complex laboratory analyses, but now Professor Hauke Harms and Dr. Mona C. Wells of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) – working together with Professor Jan-Roelof van der Meer of Lausanne University – have developed a new test method...more
Mini power stations for heat and electricity
Whether they are used in hospitals, industrial plants, vineyards, breweries, kindergartens or single-family homes – mini power stations that produce heat and electricity close to consumers are an efficient, low-emission supplement to large power plants. The Stuttgart-based German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG...more
Helmholtz pushes ahead with open access
In summer 2010 the Helmholtz Association signed up for an open access membership in SpringerOpen, the new imprint of the Springer scientific publishing company. Under the agreement, the Helmholtz Association’s individual research centres will cover the costs incurred by their researchers when they publish in the open access journals of...more
Mentoring in Research
Mentoring emerged in the United States as a formal counterpart to old boys’ networks, originally to promote underprivileged groups of people. Now there are mentoring programs for a wide variety of target groups. They have also been introduced by non-university research institutions in an effort to provide targeted support for young scientists and...more
Technology transfer 2010/09
The launch of ViaLight Communications GmbH on 1 October sees yet another company joining the group of start-up projects selected for Helmholtz Enterprise funding. Four other start-up teams already availed themselves of the annual grant on 1 August and 1 September, and another will be joining them in 2010. Along with ViaLight Communications GmbH,...more
