Max Planck Institutes and Experts

Air pollution has been significantly underestimated as a health hazard. Calculations of the global health study Global Burden of Disease (GBD) indicated that the global mortality rate due to air pollution was around 4.5 million people a year. In a new study, we show that this number is much higher: 8.8 million per year. In Europe alone, nearly 800,000 people die prematurely every year as a result of air pollution.

In the age of electromobility, electrochemical energy converters such as fuel cells will play an increasingly important role in everyday life. On this point, diagnostic tools that can precisely determine the various fail states (flooding, drying out, catalyst degradation, poisoning, etc.) of these devices are becoming increasingly important. We report on a new experimental method for fuel cell diagnostics, based on frequency response analysis of concentration input and electrical output (current or cell potential), which can selectively distinguish between the different fail states.

In order to reduce the volume of traffic on our roads, the number of passengers per vehicle must be increased. This can be achieved by ride-pooling and by strengthening scheduled services. Using statistical physics methods, we have developed a general description whose predictions we have been able to confirm through experiments (i.e. pilot projects). We have now brought this system close to market maturity. We are aiming at large scale commercial deployment in the near future, with the aim of increasing sustainable mobility in the countryside and the quality of life in cities.

Injuries resulting from severed nerve tracts are difficult to treat sometimes requiring complex operations. We have asked ourselves: Would it be possible to stimulate nerve cells to grow using tailor-made materials? This would help the cells to close a gap in theinjured nerve. In the laboratory, we have produced an artificial material that may solve this problem and provide an alternative to surgery in the future.

Just how has nature optimized certain biological structures to optimally transduce chemistry into living systems? In the area of barrier-crossing, which takes around 100 femtoseconds, there is a proposal that nature has optimized form and function to exploit quantum effects by environmental engineering to extend coherences - even electronic coherences - on the timescale relevant to electronic motions sensitive to the environment fluctuations. In enzymatic processes lasting microseconds and above, stochastic thermally driven motions need to steer the chemistry to drive biological functions.