Max Planck Institutes and Experts

Around 1600, modern landscape painting blossomed as a distinct artistic genre. A research project at the Bibliotheca Hertziana explores the diverse ways in which Netherlandish artists in Rome contributed to this development. From the comparison of exemplary artistic careers, it becomes evident that the new perception of landscape did not only result from an intensive study of nature, but also from the cultural exchanges catalyzed by the experience of migration.

A multi-modal fMRI platform is developed for a better understanding of the neuron-glio-vascular interaction in normal and diseased brain states of animals. Combining the single-vessel fMRI method with optogenetics and genetically encoded calcium indicators enables to identify the specific contributions of distinct vascular and cellular components to the fMRI signal. The translational application of this work is to identify vessel-specific dynamic biomarkers of patients with vascular dementia, ranging from small vessel diseases to degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.

The higher the life expectancy in a society, the smaller the difference between the ages at which people will die. This relation can be described by a mathematical rule, as demographic data from many countries show. The relationship holds not only for very different human cultures and epochs, but similarly for non-human primates. Although separated by millions of years of evolution, for both humans and non-human primates the lives of females tend to be longer than the lives of males, suggesting deep evolutionary roots to the male disadvantage.
 

A project at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History is devoted to the genetic reconstruction of various pathogens of past epochs. Using innovative molecular biological methods, it has been possible to reconstruct numerous genomes of the causative agent of plague from the mortal remains of plague victims. The results help to better understand the evolution of the pathogen and open up new insights into (pre-)history. Further studies examine, for example, the origin of tuberculosis in the New World and the evolution of leprosy pathogens.

One of the main difficulties of communicating the urgency of a reduction in worldwide carbon emissions lies in the mediated way in which people and governments experience the dangers of a changing climate. We perceive the temperature and humidity of our immediate surroundings at a particular moment, but we lack any direct experience of the global environment. The working group Experiencing the Global Environment at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science strives to examine the history of this perceptual gap.