Area-wide transition to open access is possible

A new study calculates a redeployment of funds in Open Access

30-Apr-2015 - The Max Planck Digital Library has put forward a study on the transformation of the subscription-driven system for scientific publications to an Open Access model. For the first time, quantitative parameters are presented showing that the liberation of scholarly literature is possible at no extra ...

From molecules to organic light emitting diodes

10-Apr-2015 - Scientists at the MPI-P Mainz, BASF Ludwigshafen, the University of Ulm, and Innovation Lab Heidelberg have developed a simulation toolkit for evaluating properties of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) based solely on their chemical composition. The package is integrated in the free software ...

Frozen highly-charged ions for highest precision spectroscopy

16-Mar-2015 - A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig and the University of Aarhus in Denmark demonstrated for the first time Coulomb crystallization of highly-charged ions (HCIs). Inside a cryogenic ...

An assembly line for medications

Efavirenz can now be produced more cost efficiently and sustainable utilizing continuous flow chemistry.

25-Feb-2015 - Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPICI) and the Freie Universität Berlin have succeeded in developing better methods of producing APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients). As a result, Efavirenz, one of the preferred agents for treating HIV in combination ...

Light in the Moebius strip

A Moebius strip created from laser light opens up new possibilities for material processing and for micro- and nanotechnology

17-Feb-2015 - Physics sometimes borders on light art. An international team headed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and Friedrich-Alexander-Universitaet Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), can easily compete with the light artists, at least as far as the skill of forming light is ...

Dr. Jiayin Yuan receives ERC Starting Grant

05-Dec-2014 - One of the ERC Starting Grants of the European Research Council goes to Dr. Jiayin Yuan, research group leader in the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (Potsdam). Endowed with up to 1.5 Mio EUR this grant promotes basic research on nanoporous polymer membranes in the next five ...

Interstellar molecules are branching out

29-Sep-2014 - For the first time a carbon-bearing molecule with a "branched" structure was detected in interstellar space. The molecule, iso-propyl cyanide, was discovered in Sgr B2, a star forming region close to the center of our galaxy that is a hot-spot for molecule-hunting astronomers. The branched ...

A molecule in an optical whispering gallery

With the help of a microsphere and a nanowire, single unlabelled biomolecules can be detected through light

24-Sep-2014 - Being able to track individual biomolecules and observe them at work is every biochemist’s dream. This would enable the scientists to research in detail and better understand the workings of the nanomachines of life, such as ribosomes and DNA polymerases. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute ...

Smart polymers: Complex matter where simplicity matters

17-Sep-2014 - Physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Mainz unveil the microscopic mechanism behind the puzzling co-non-solvency effect that leads to smart polymer collapse in a mixture of good solvents. MPI-P scientists Kurt Kremer and Debashish Mukherji, together with their ...

Nature's chemical diversity reflected in Swedish lakes

06-May-2014 - It's not only the biology of lakes that varies with the climate and other environmental factors, it's also their chemistry. More knowledge about this is needed to understand the ecology of lakes and their role in the carbon cycle and the climate. Today an international research group led by ...