Press releases
News and views on research at the Helmholtz Association - this is the place to look for all the press releases issued by the Helmholtz Association Research Centres. A comfortable search function helps you to view specific news items from the Helmholtz Research Centres in chronological order. Older press releases since 2003 can be found in our archive or on the website of the relevant Helmholtz Research Centre.
At present only a selection of press releases is available in English - switch to the German version with the topmost navigation bar for a complete overview.
28 May 2013, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
Many solids are produced from melting. Depending on how quickly they cool off, invariably, internal tensile stresses begin to build up. One example are Prince Rupert's Drops, or Dutch tears: you can hit their thick end with a hammer without breaking them while a slight pressure applied to their thin end is enough to shatter the entire tear. The properties of safety or even gorilla glass are determined to a large extent by their internal tensile stresses. However, until now, our understanding of the unique characteristics exhibited by the condition of the glass as compared with a tough molten mass was spotty at best. Now, a collaboration of several German and Cretian research teams has offered a surprisingly simple model to explain the difference between glass and molten materials.
28 May 2013, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch
Tomorrow, at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), in Barcelona, directors and staff from ten top European research institutes will kick off a new alliance, called EU-LIFE, that will promote European research (www.eulife.eu). The mission of EU-LIFE is to foster excellence, share knowledge, and influence policies in life sciences. Partners in EU-LIFE are renowned research centers that operate with similar principles of excellence, external reviews, independence, competiveness, and internationality. During difficult economic times and within a highly competitive international research landscape, they believe that they can join forces to better address complex questions, thereby contributing to pushing European science forward.
27 May 2013, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Aachen/Jülich, 27 May 2013 – A favourable outcome for the Bioeconomy Science Center (BioSC), which is the largest research cluster for a sustainable bioeconomy in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) involving RWTH Aachen University, Forschungszentrum Jülich and the universities in Bonn and Düsseldorf: it has been granted more than € 58 million to explore ways of establishing an integrated bioeconomy over the next ten years. A joint goal of the federal republic of Germany and the federal state of NRW is research for a sustainable bioeconomy and its implementation. NRW Science Minister Svenja Schulze and Thomas Rachel, Member of the Bundestag and Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Education and Research, have now agreed that Jülich biotechnology will be permanently incorporated into the Helmholtz Association, and that NRW will fund a unique European project on the integrated bioeconomy at BioSC.
27 May 2013, German Cancer Research Centre
Tests for hidden traces of blood (“occult blood”) in the stool provide clues to colon cancer or precancerous lesions. For over 40 years, an enzymatic detection method has been used to detect the diseases. Now immunological tests have also become available. Epidemiologists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) compared the two methods and have proven the superiority of immunological tests. They detect more than twice as many cancer cases and deliver fewer false positive results.
27 May 2013, German Aerospace Center (DLR)
European astronaut Luca Parmitano's 'Volare' mission will begin on 28 May 2013 with the launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The International Space Station will be his place of work and home for the next six months.
