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.
16 May 2013, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
The DZNE and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin are internationally leading institutions for research in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. Now, both have signed a cooperation agreement to seal their close scientific collaboration. The objective is to combine existing expertise and to bring new outstanding researchers to Berlin. Together, the scientists want to decode processes in the brain and in nerve cells that are not only relevant for some diseases, but relate to various neurodegenerative diseases. The cooperation will also foster the translation of results from fundamental into clinical research.
15 May 2013, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
Photosynthetic water-oxidation is one of the central processes of life on Earth but remains incompletely understood. Now, a German-American team of scientists has set out to observe the intermediate stages of this complex catalytic reaction using ultrashort snap shots taken at light sources including BESSY II in Berlin and the Linac Coherent Light Source at Stanford. To support their efforts, the Human Frontier Science Program has now pledged funding of approximately 900,000 US Dollars for a total three-year period. The team includes HZB physicist Dr. Philippe Wernet, chemist Prof. Dr. Athina Zouni of Humboldt University of Berlin, Dr. Uwe Bergmann of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Dr. Junko Yano of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who is in charge of the project.
15 May 2013, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
The High Energy and Particle Physics Prize 2013 of the European Physical Society goes to the research teams of the ATLAS and CMS particle physics experiments.Together with the three experimental physicists, Michel Della Negra (Imperial College London), Peter Jenni (CERN and University of Freiburg) and Tejinder Virdee (Imperial College London) the collaborations are awarded for the discovery of a new heavy particle with the properties of the long-sought Higgs particle.
14 May 2013, Forschungszentrum Jülich
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf has invested more than € 1.8 million in new teaching facilities on the campus of Forschungszentrum Jülich, thus considerably expanding the space available at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry – an institute of the University of Düsseldorf. This will especially benefit students from Düsseldorf. The new facilities were officially opened on 15 May.
14 May 2013, German Cancer Research Centre
Unlike conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes do not produce thousands of toxic and carcinogenic substances. Nevertheless, they are not harmless. They contain, as their main ingredient, a substance that irritates the airways, usually along with toxic, addictive nicotine and some carcinogenic substances. In addition, they frequently have various technical flaws. Nevertheless, electronic cigarettes are currently sold unregulated as lifestyle products without any appropriate quality control, turning consumers into involuntary experimental subjects. The German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) has compiled and analyzed available scientific data on product characteristics, potential health risks and prevalence of the products as well as their potential usefulness in smoking cessation in its latest report entitled “Electronic Cigarettes – An Overview”. According to this report, the electronic cigarette is not a safe product.
